Beavertail Style Canoe Paddle

After seeing some beautiful beavertail paddles being sold at MEC, I was inspired to give making one a shot. The key distinguishing feature of a beavertail paddle is the narrow blade. This is traditionally done so the paddle can be made with a single reasonably sized board in the days before wood glue. Even though this isn’t relevant now, the style lives on.

For my paddle, I decided to use an eight-quarter slab of cherry. In retrospect, this was much thicker than I needed, however, it gave me flexibility when it came to shaping the T-grip. To lay out the profile, I free-hand drew the shape of one side on a scrap of plywood then cut it out as a template for half a paddle. This allowed me to keep the paddle symmetric about the center line. After cutting out the profile, I thinned down the blade as much as I dared with the bandsaw. To keep the shaft reasonably round and to shape the blade, I drew a center line down the paddle and worked towards my line with hand planes and a spokeshave until the shape was done. For the final finish, I decided to use a brush-on polyurethane. Besides the inevitable bumps caused by dust and other imperfections, I was quite satisfied with the finish. I didn’t end up painting the paddle as originally planned however I did experiment with the style in a later boomerang project.