I needed a set of oars for my Jon Boat build so I started looking around for an affordable set of quality oars. The first thing I noticed were the quality price tags. A good set of oars will set you back plenty and synthetics were not an option I cared to consider. I found a few sites on the web where other guys were building their own oars so, I decided to follow suit.
The next decision I was faced with was what style to build. On the Web I saw: PVC pipe with plywood blades glued on, closet rod with plywood blades glued on, one piece oars cut from a single board (not bad), a host of other schemes using synthetic cutouts and finally, a set of oars made from 3 boards glued together, laminated. This made a lot of sense to me because it meant strength. I took the process one step further, I used 6 boards to increase strength even more.
I began this build by trying to find the straightest grained hardwood planks I could come up with. I had at hand some Red Pine which was free of knots with ruler straight grains and some left over hardwood from the shipping pallets I dis-assembled. I decided to laminate the oars using both woods to reduce weight and add strength to the finished oars.
I matched 1 hardwood plank to 1 Red Pine plank and clamped both pairs together in an attempt to keep the bundle as straight as possible while the glue sets. I utilized a square steel tube to assist in this matter. The rubber strips were cut from discarded inner tubes and serve honorably as extended clamping, the more turns you apply, the greater the clamping pressure.
You can see here that both looms are 1/2 Red Pine and 1/2 hardwood. I can't nail down this hardwood species, however, an educated guess would place the species between Hardrock Maple and Poplar. The grain is gnarly, fibrous, springy and tough to break. It is very difficult to plane, but when scraped, I've never seen any wood grain more beautiful.
The blades are built up: hardwood--Red Pine--loom--Red Pine--hardwood and glued in that configuration. I think this lamination configuration will be a lot stronger than cutting the oars from a single plank, not to impune any other craftsmans' work. Staggering joints and staggering knots/wood grains has the same effect: strength!
This view shows the lamination sequence in detail.
I fabricated this taper gauge from a piece of the hardwood. The inner opening of the gauge should be 3 times the width of the loom with pencil holes drilled at 1/3 and 2/3 the length.
In practice, the taper gauge is used to mark the loom for carving the octagon, 8 sides, and tapered portion of the loom, 16 sides. I use the Jack Plane to cut the octagon and, I use the Spokeshave to taper the loom from the button to the blade.
I used this jig on my tablesaw rip fence to cut away the excess wood from the blades to make it a lot easier to plane the blades to the required dimensions.
These are the four tools that I used to build these oars: Spokeshave, Jack Plane, Wood Rasp and my Tablesaw.
There are no tools more beneficial to a craftsman than hand planes. Once you have learned to used them, it would take an act of God to seperate you from them. I care for mine religeously.
Using the spokeshave, I tapered the loom from where the octagon stops (button location) down to the blade. The spokeshave made this a simple task, one of my better deals from the auction.