Has anyone made oars?

I am thinking of making oars in my spare time.

I saw at the Port Townsend Washington State wooden boat festival a gentleman making large masts that were hollow. He used 6 to 8 tapered angle cut lengths of wood that when glued together make a tapered circular mast. We are talking 80' and longer.   I thought this would be a fun way to make oars. The hole in the center would of course be very small but would the strength of the oar be better because of the way the grain would change around the circle? any ideas would be well received.

thank you

Bob

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Comment by Mark Stuberr on February 21, 2015 at 1:02pm

http://shoelessmusings.blogspot.com/search?q=oars

Here is a link to all the oar making stuff i have on my blog.

Comment by David Witton on February 21, 2015 at 6:40am

You will also find a few thoughts on building or tuning oars on Brad Dimock's blog at 

http://fretwaterlines.blogspot.com/

Comment by Bob Herman on February 15, 2015 at 3:08pm

Thank you Rick,

I will do the search and read all I can before I take on the task.

I am only looking for oars to row in small lakes as the boat I am making now is only 8'.

The oars do not need to be strong as in a real river drift situation.

The boat is based Clark Craft on a stitch and sew drift river boat design that I built using conventional a method.

It was fun converting to the conventional method from stitch and glue but in my mind it was worth it.

I also added extra design ideas from the plans to make the boat more appealing to the eye.

I will post pictures once I am done.

thank you again for the info.

Bob

Comment by Rick Newman on February 14, 2015 at 11:13pm

Bob, if you do a search using the search engine at the top right hand corner of the page you will see 50+ posts on making oars. I haven't seen any birdsmouth oars built but am familiar with the technique. On the woodenboatforum website you can also look up the technique. It would be interesting to see a pair of oars built that way but I wonder if they would have sufficient strength for some applications. Using a router lathe is a reasonably quick way to turn down an oar shat and certainly quicker than cutting all the pieces required to make a birdsmouth style shaft. It would also be a bit difficult to attach the oar shaft to the blade in a sufficiently strong manner. What type of water are you considering rowing in with such oars? what kind of flex characteristics are you trying to achieve? What woods are you considering? A combination of oak, spruce and ash would be unique in a birdsmouth style.

I would love to see a pair of oars built like this along with a photo essay on the construction. One guy, James McMullen even built beer tankards in a similar manner on woodenboatforum.com.

Rick N

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