Paddle Designs

We have built up an extensive collection of paddle designs ranging from contemporary tripping paddles through to native paddles from around the world. Historical information on native canoe paddle designs has proved to be rather scattered and quite hard to come by. There are many books and articles that have a little information but few are what you would describe as a mother lode. Similarly, many museums have one or two paddles, notably of Pacific origin, but few have larger collections. Many of our native designs have been sent to us by collectors in Canada, the US and elsewhere.

Full-size paper patterns for the blade and grip of a range of our paddle designs are available. These are no-frills tracings from our master templates but save you the trouble of plotting out the design from offset tables. Each plan includes blade tracing, grip tracing and outlines for the grip, throat and tip flexible templates. To use the blade and grip templates, tape them to your wood, scribe holes through the patterns every few mm, and then join up the “dots”. We recommend that you do this for the blade and grip onto a sheet material such as plywood, and then transfer this to your paddle wood. The other templates need to be flexible and should be marked out onto plastic sheet, such as damp-proof course material. Plans do not include dimensions for thickness of the blade edges, or shaft dimensions as these are usually decided upon by the user. We will be happy to advise.