Protecting oar edges & ends - options?

[Thorne]

I keep chewing up the corners and edges near the ends of my spruce oars -- just a confirmed gunkholer I guess.

Bob S's web article on building oars shows inserting a strip of harder wood on the ends, and coating with a thin layer of epoxy. But what I'm damaging are the corners and lower edges of the blades.

Somewhere I read that the trad metal edging for oars was not such a good idea, and that the fasteners often caused the wood to rot. I have had really good luck with a brass strip both epoxied and nailed to the edge of my oak kickup rudder blade, as it has taken a lot of abuse, abrasion and impacts without bending or failing.

Should I consider doing the same for my oar blade tips and edges?

Currently I'm trying a wide bead of epoxy thickened with Cabosil on the edges and tip, but it tends to wear through with just a few strokes hitting sand or small gravel.

http://www.luckhardt.com/oartips.jpg

[donald branscom]

What about some fiberglass cloth and epoxy on the tips of the oars?

[Bruce Hooke]

A few thoughts:

1. I trust you are not using your oar blades to push against anything harder than the edge of a wooden dock? Trying to use your oars to push off rocks and mud is a good way to chew up the blades in a hurry. One alternative is to flip the oar around a push with the grip, which is less prone to getting chewed up, but you can do a good bit by simply paying attention when you are doing things like getting in and out of the boat and don't get in until the boat is in deep enough water so that once you are in you won't have to push to get the boat off the bottom.

2. Spruce oars are especially damage prone, so one solution would be to make a pair of hardwood oars.

P.S., I run into a similar problem with canoe paddles. On some rivers your paddle is going to bang into stuff no matter how careful you are. I use two solutions that might have some application to your situation. The simplest is I carry a beater paddle that I can switch to when the water gets shallow. This is a commercially made wood paddle with a cast plastic end that can stand up to abuse better than wood and that I won't feel too sad about if it gets damaged. I also carry a pole with a metal tip so if the river gets really shallow I can stand up and pole. For most rowboats the first solution, using a pair of beater oars when you know you are going into "dangerous" waters, would probably be the more viable option, but for some types of rowboats poling is very much an option -- as long as the bottom is hard enough that there is something to push against.

[mizzenman]

one trick I have used is to wind some fiberglass tape around the tipp, maybe tre turns per oar. Lett the tape portrude ca 1/2" over the top so that it forms a cavity where you cha fill upp whith thickened poxy. Naturaly the oars need to be painted, so that this blasfemous act can be hiden from the world

[Bob Smalser]

Smalser's article also shows a sturdy boat hook. It's there for a reason. ;)

http://pic20.picturetrail.com/VOL12/1104763/4518261/57815588.jpg

[P.I. Stazzer-Newt]

I had this problem with kayak blades - seen a variety of answers - none of which work terribly well.

18 swg Alloy wrap on a square ended blade - gets just as chewed as the naked blade.

Epoxy/glass tape rope inset into a groove - end gets chewed glass rope cracks and splinters...

Cross grain piece of hardwood laminated and shaped - works as well as anything else - it gets chewed but the blade does not split - combined with a rounded end (no delicate square corners) and the result is useable.

[Thorne]

Thanks everyone!

I may not have been clear enough -- I'm not pushing / poling / punting / fending with the oars, just rowing in VERY thin water.

If I was pushing with the oars (and I don't as I also carry a boathook), I'd just bang up the ends mostly. But because I'm rowing in water with sand or gravel bottoms, the edges of the oar blades are what makes contact with the abrasive stuff.

http://www.luckhardt.com/rriver4.jpg

[paladin]

sorry no pics.....but my oars are made from fir, and while the blades were still somewhat square I epoxied on tips and edges of Bois d'arc (osage orange....doesn't stop the problem, just makes it a helluva lot easier to deal with..

[htom]

For a temporary fix, the U-channel plastic report binder edge, slipped onto the oar blade. Pop it off to let the oar dry, replace as needed.

Better would probably be making the outer edges of the blades from some extremely tough wood; perhaps ipe or some other "ironwood".

[Bruce Hooke]

Looks like a beautiful place to do some rowing and it is also very understandable why the oars would get a bit beat up along the edges!

If it was me I think I might consider oiled hardwood oars that would be both better at taking the beating and easier to touch up in terms of the finish....

[Todd Bradshaw]

Most of our wooden whitewater kayak paddles used to come with metal-clad, riveted-on tips - which wore through surprisingly quickly and the rivet holes posed an obvious problem on wooden blades. After they were worn through at the corners, we would pull off the metal and use bias-cut strips of fiberglass (2-3 layers thick) which can be wrapped neatly around the tip and trimmed while green, making a cap that comes back an inch or so. We didn't fill the weave because we didn't want the extra weight, but it would make for a neater repair and if filled with a mix containing a little cabosil and graphite, it would resist abrasion better. They still eventually wore through at the corners, but it certainly made for a more stable tip area than sheet metal and rivet holes.

http://webpages.charter.net/tbradshaw/p%20001%20copy.jpg

Sawyer paddles often use a tip which is cast in place and about 1" long. They bevel the end of the wood to a gradual point, and then cast the tip that just continues the blade for another inch or so using epoxy and filler (probably cabosil). I don't know whether there is any fiber inside or not. You can knock a hunk out of one, but they're fairly tough.

If I was going to do one these days, I'd glue a sliver of epoxy-saturated Kevlar felt along the edge, covering the end and coming back an inch or two along the sides of the blade. Fair it in as needed and paint it or fill it with epoxy/graphite powder or aluminum powder to stop the UV. It may eventually get a bit fuzzy, but it's unlikely that you will ever wear through it. It's what they use for stem-protecting "skid plates" on whitewater canoes and it is incredibly abrasion resistant.

http://sweetcomposites.com/Kevlar.html

scroll down to style #4580. The stuff looks like heavy chamois shirt fabric and is just about the toughest material I've ever seen.

[dmede]

Paddle in deeper water! :D

Ok, ok... my plans for Harry Bryans Fiddelhead canoe has a short section on getting out a paddle in which he armors the tips in thin copper, let into the wood by about 1/16", tacked around the edges with small copper nails and bedded, I belive in epoxy or 3m5200? Seems like that would be ok if you took care to bed it properly.

I know you're talking about the sides more than the tip, but I'm sure with a little work you could create something that covered your tips and egdes in a C shape of thin copper that wou'ld look ok.

[neilm]

I've had the same problems with my oars. What about glueing wooden tips made of Ipe? I've seen it done with Walnut too. Ipe would be the ultimate. I use that stuff for splitting wedges. Man is it tough!

Neil

[Bruce Hooke]

I've seen it done with Walnut too.

Seems like Walnut would be pretty but not as effective at providing protection as a harder wood would be...

[George Roberts]

I would suggest deeper water or a different stroke.

I like a strip of fiberglass roving around the edge. (24oz cloth has roves the right size for 1/8" thick paddle edges.)

[Eric D]

Kevlar is my answer. Do what Todd Bradshaw mentions except use kevlar with epoxy and mix a little graphite into the mix on the final few coats. It has lasted me quite a long time, yet, it will eventually fail but that is what the stuff excells at...abrasion resistence.

[Thorne]

Well, I **TRY** to sail rather than row, but that can be hard to do when the centerboard won't drop down...

;0 )

Todd, interesting stuff! At $21/yd it is tempting to cover the whole bottom and garboard strake of the boat with it -- if it wasn't a trad dory skiff. But for river boats that kevlar felt sure looks like the bee's knees.

[Todd Bradshaw]

Might be kind of heavy since the stuff is about 1/8" thick. A friend of mine was national sales manager for Old Town Canoe when they first developed the skid plates for their Royalex canoes. They glued a strip over the stem of a canoe and hung the boat out the back of a pickup truck so that the stem was dragging on the ground. They tossed some rocks in for good measure and drove around town for a bit to see how well it would hold up and didn't manage to wear through it.

I used to have a small spot on the stem bottom of my strip Micmac tripping canoes that would wear from beaching, rock landings, etc. Even multiple layers of fiberglass will abrade through much faster than people suspect if it's continually concentrated in one small area and I got tired of patching it. So, I put a little cigar-shaped strip of Kevlar felt about 6" long and 3/8" wide on the offending area and that was the end of the problem...permanently.

The stuff will easily outlast woven Kevlar several times over and fiberglass in any form just isn't even worth mentioning by comparison. It's not very pretty, so you need to cover it with paint or something to make it look good. It takes some work to wet it out and you pretty much need to peel-ply or fill the surface since it can't be sanded smooth, but for resisting abrasion, there is nothing close.

[George Roberts]

style 4580 is 3.5oz material that compresses to .020" thick.

style 120 is 1.7oz material. 2 layers (3.5oz) compresses to .008" thick.

Since both a single layer of 4580 and 2 layers of 120 are the same weight, they will wear about the same. The 4580 will wear a bit faster because of the amount of resin that is required.

[Todd Bradshaw]

But it doesn't. The difference seems to be that style 120 is regular woven fabric and 4580 is non-woven felt. Wearing through a regular Kevlar canoe layup takes some doing compared to fiberglass, but can certainly be done. On the other hand, I've never seen that type of serious wear on a felt-covered stem, even on the canoes we used to rent. It is without a doubt the most abrasion resistant composite material I've ever seen used on a boat.

[Songololo]

Tango (my 3m folding plywood dinghy) has a 2-3mm thick layer of epoxy-graphite-silica coating (please ignore the fish-eyes!) the length of it's plywood 'plank' keel to provide some abrasion resistance.

http://lh6.google.com/Songololo/RuDzzkuLuCI/AAAAAAAAALQ/cjkQWY3PMO4/DSC03818.JPG

After a season's launching from a concrete slipway, I can definitely say that it does it's job - the little skeg wheel that you see only keeps the keel of the boat off of the concrete 90% of the time!

This could also be used to give protection to the edges of oar blades - I shall be doing this for the edges of my daggerboard and rudder blade at the end of this season.

It is probably a cheaper? option if one does not want to go the whole hog with Kevlar and epoxy.

I originally found information on how to do this at http://tomangelakis.tripod.com/graphite_bottom.htm
and http://www.gaboats.com/tutorials/graphiteepoxy.html

A black edge to your oars might also be an elegant touch...

[ahp]

I have had the same oars with brass end protectors for years. I have not seen any problems. They are secured on with copper nails and without any bedding compound, although it would have been a good idea.

[PAJ]

here's an idea Thorne. These are filed and sanded down once the epoxy's set and look OK.
Patrickhttp://www.imagestation.com/album/originals.html?id=2091028551&idx=12

[Thorne]

PAJ -

You'll need to paste the image location / link, not the location owner's link. Right-click on the image to get the image URL, which will end in .jpg

Thanks for all the ideas, folks!

[Donn]

I use Sawyer Polecats (10'), but it's ok, because my skiff is fiberglass.:eek:

http://www.paddlesandoars.com/images/oars/polecat_hpc.jpg

The blades are aluminum cored, fiberglass filled polypropylene, and can be removed for stowage or replacement. The shaft is fiberglass, and the whole thing is tough enough to pole with.

The grip is wood.:D

[Dave Fleming]

As I mentioned in your thread in another one of the Forums,http://www.woodenboatvb.com/vbulletin/upload/showthread.php?t=69431 . The Russian River at this time of the year is terribly shallow and, the sand bars are NOT SAND but, gravel.

You should see the bottom of my B-i-L's kayak from hard usage on the river even in spring after the winter rains and the W/L is much higher.
He needs to have the bottom recovered before he can use it again!

[Thorne]

Sounds like he should pick up some of the Kevlar felt mentioned above and give that a try.

Yes, the gravel was quite crunchy and hard to get out of my sport sandals as well as the bottom of the boat -- but such lovely scenery! Next time maybe I'll take our beater plastic canoe...