Oar Leathers

[Jack I]

I have been able to find information on attaching oar leathers to my oars but have not understood how to attach the thick leather ring to the top of the leathers without using nails. I have also read that I can use a turks head to form the ring at the top of the leathers. How do I do this using either leather or small rope?

[TimT]

I used gorilla glue. While the leather was still damp after sewing, I spread a bead of glue, wrapped the strip, and pulled a zip-tie tight around it. a little glue squeezed out when it expanded.
A couple of days later I spent an evening putting the turks heads on the oars.

[StevenBauer]

I've just epoxied the leather buttons on to the oar leathers. Lasts a few years. I think traditionally there would be a pair of tacks holding it on.


Steven

[JimConlin]

I've successfuly used Pliobond adhesive for buttons. Clamped 'em with a hose clamp.
Copper nails are OK, too.

[Ian McColgin]

No glue or tacks.

Cut the leathers with about 1/4" gap when dry. Cut the button (the stopper strip if you don't use a turk's head) leather just a nudge longer - maybe 1/8" gap when placed on the outside of the leather. You'll see that there's some shape as few oars, only very bad ones, have an exactly right cylinder for a shaft.

Stitch each leather to a button strip. I punch the holes in advance which makes it easy to the the same number of holes for each part but with very slightly different spacing. Don't pull the stitches so closely that they gather the button material. I use a double needle flat stitch for this.

Make your holes down the leather so your stitches will be easy to make and nice and even. If you do much leather work, you already have a multi-tined punch that makes angled slits. I just use an awl.

Soak the leather so's it'll streatch and after the starter wrap, make with the double needle herringbone. If you like that fussy stitch with the knoting down the seam, by all means do that but the herring bone works for baseballs and works for my oars.

Once the leather dries it will be so tight that it won't ever move till you have a reason to cut the stitches. Greasing the surface helps the leather stay dry enough that it won't stretch again.

If you row much and row hard, your oars can easily go through a set of leathers every five years or so, which is why you don't want to glue them onto the oars.

G'luck

[Paul Scheuer]

If you decide to go with Turk's heads, here's an example. These are actually two knots on each oar. A four-strand knot tied over a three-strand results in good stopper without being as bulky as a single knot tied with heavier line. No glue and no tacks. Working a turk's head with a spike results in an incredibly tight knot. The sash cord that I used doesn't stretch much.

http://s306.photobucket.com/albums/nn278/PaulScheuer/th_OarLeathersOne.jpg

[landlocked sailor]

Excellent Paul! I never thought of layering turks like that. Rick

[seo]

I use the method described by Ian in #5 above, stitching the leather on. I use a "baseball stitch," which involves punching matching holes in the leather on both sides of the seam, and then using one doubled loop of waxed dacron sail thread with two needles, crossing each other from left-right, right-left as you go down the seam. Go look at a softball, or "Arts of the Sailor" by Hervey G. Smith.
I have also used 5200 or Sikaflex as glue. Works fine, and doesn't need much to keep the leather from sliding up and down, but it doesn't replace the stitching, either esthetically or practically, because no matter what glue you use the leather seems to peel along the edge.
Tacks are a bad idea. A ring of tack-holes around the wood right at the fulcrum (oarlock) is a dotted line for the oar to break on. Turks heads are nice. I'd never heard of using one over the other, but that sounds good.
One problem with most factory-made oars is that they taper from the handle all the way to the blade. A tapered piece is hard to get a leather to stay put on without glue or tacks.
I wonder if it wouldn't be better to make the eighteen inches or so in way of the leathers cylindrical in section, no tapered.

[Thorne]

For buttons I just use a strip of leather tacked to the wood (a single small copper tack) and wind it over itself, using one tack per layer into the leather below. (If you have more patience than I do, you can just glue the tapered end of the leather strip to the oar and skip the tack into the wood, always a possible rot point) I shave the leather ends down to make a scarf-shaped finish so the button ends stay smooth.

I use PL Premium to glue the damp oar leather to the oar, and also to glue the button layers in place. It likes moisture but doesn't foam up as much as Gorilla Glue -- I call it "GG's Big Brother" as it is the same overall glue but with much more solids -- so it is stronger in my experience.

Below is my standard 8' spruce oars using that method-
http://www.luckhardt.com/ST07/images/21.jpg

Below is a more extreme example on a set of 8' spoon oars. The leathers are built up to use Douglas locks, with turks heads at the outboard end of the leathers -
http://www.luckhardt.com/douglas_lock1.jpg

[Vinny&Shawn]

http://i419.photobucket.com/albums/pp278/vgeorge1/Leatheronoars003.jpg

http://i419.photobucket.com/albums/pp278/vgeorge1/Leatheronoars005.jpg

Here is an example of a captive oarlock, these are done accordingly as Ian describes. The turksheads have been shellaced for adhesion and some protection. This pair was done about 4 years ago. apply tallow and some shellac once a year.

[seo]

Do make sure that the stitching doesn't bear against the oarlocks during the stroke. That will wear them out tout suite.
SEO

[Ian McColgin]

SEO has a point I believe in but am not sure is true.

I lay the seam down in line with the blade and then shave a small wedge out of the end of the handle such that when I lay my thumb on that spot the seam is straight up and the blade is verticle. Not quite straight up and not quite verticle as I actually row with a little bit of blade angle like this / boat going from left to right. Anyway, that allows me to easily orient the oars in the dark.

In actuality, if you've stretched the leather and really pulled the thing together then the stitches lie deeply in the leather and won't actually wear away.

G'luck

[Thorne]

Most folks seem to line up the stitching with the flat of the blade, then row with it up and visible.

[seo]

On the Pride of Baltimore 1, there was lots of leathered rigging bits, and clapping on leather was practically a cottage industry. I found it quite restful. They had a neat tool, which was a bar of steel maybe eight inches long, with a sharp-pointed pin sticking out the bottom every 1/4" or so. The leather to be baseball-sticheded was folded over so that the two edge lay over each other, then the punch-bar was held against the leather and whacked with a hammer, which drove the pins through both layers of leather. This made the alignment and spacing perfect, which enhances the general effect.
In my retirement I plan to make these punch-bars in my shop, and give them away to youth groups, college sororities, etc. Or something like that.
The other great passtimes on Pride were tarring things, and making and applying baggy-wrinkle, which I developed the habit of calling "Baggy-warkle."
There are students who sailed with me on other schooners in the subsequent years who think that it's actually spelled that way.
I should be ashamed.

[Jack I]

Thank you for all the replys. Lots of good ideas out there. How do I tie a Turks head?

[seo]

Buy a book. I have found that Hervey G. Smith's "Arts of the Sailor" has done all right for me for the last thirty-five years. Other people will have different opinions. After all, it's difference of opinion that makes a fistfight...
SEO

[Paul Scheuer]

"The Ashley Book of Knots", at about knot # 1300 will get you anything you need.

Here's something to get you started. Four strand- five bight


http://i306.photobucket.com/albums/nn278/PaulScheuer/FourStrandFiveBights2.jpg?t=1244087069

[rbmichup]

I found this site to be very helpful. Be patient; it took me a couple of dozen tries to figure it out. The tightening process is slow (one strand at a time) but when you are done it is really tight.

http://www.animatedknots.com/turkshead


http://i69.photobucket.com/albums/i62/thebarons/primerpics12.jpg

Ray B.

[rayven]

Or forget the whole thing and just leather the oarlocks! Easier to wear shoes than to leather the road.

[rbgarr]

I've only found that buttons are really necessary for oars used in competition (racing shells and surf rowing) when keeping the balance of a boat and equalizing oar thrust determines so much. Otherwise it's not so important.

[seo]

They're nice for a tender, where if you use ring-style rowlocks and buttons you can come alongside a boat, feather the on-side oar flat, lift the handle, and the rowlock pops out of the socket. With a deft twist of the wrist the oar and rowlock flip inboard on the tender, with nothing to scrape or gouge the yacht's side.
This is a contrast to how it works with open=top rowlocks that are on keeper chains. With that arrangement, as you come alongside you first have to ship the oar, and then pull the rowlock.
The object with the button with the ring-rowlock is to make it big enough so that the rowlock can be removed, but it's not easy.
Another advantage of this arrangement is with a tender that has two rowing stations. My Beverly Dinghy has one station admidships for rowing with one person, or three. With other loads, the rower moves to the forward seat. That dinghy will carry six people in flat water, which is a useful trick when everybody's going ashore together.
In any event, with ring-rowlocks it's not necessary to have two sets of rowlocks, or to take off their tether-chains from one set of sockets, and make them up at the other.
But, other people might like something else. It's difference of opinion that makes a fistfight.

[Ian McColgin]

I agree with seo that rowlocks on tethers (I used line rather than chain) are a bit of an annoyance but for me the annoyance was the way they flop about when the dink is inverted either on deck or on the beach. So I use the pattern type wher the lock hangs in it's holder. I don't mind having two sets of rowlocks any more than seo minds getting two sets of holes for one set of pins.

I also agree that in coming along side it's two steps. However, since with an open top rowlock the step of getting the oar shipped inside the boat is but the snap of a wrist, I don't see that as a problem. Also, as I've written elsewhere, the rowlock attached to the oar is a definate hazard in rough weather.

But the captive oar is still just the thing for a sport fishing in a flatwater lake.