Question for Greenland Paddle builders: Right now I’m re-shooting my entire free Greenland paddle building course to bring it up to the quality of the rest of our video courses, and also to add process updates and more info.
Thinking about wood selection, generally I recommend the people not build out of any species that weighs more than 27 pounds per cubic foot to keep the finished paddle weight below 2 lbs. 4 oz. (I use the cubic foot metric because it’s easy to compare in the wood database.)
So for me that means western red cedar, any of the three soft pines, anything in the spruce family, butternut and basswood.
Northern white cedar deserves an honorable mention although for that I would probably laminate a thin hardwood spine down the middle.
The question is, what species am I not thinking of here? I’m especially curious what people outside the United States are using. Do you agree with the 27 pounds per cubic foot cap on species weight and the 2 lbs. 4 oz. limit on acceptable paddle weight?
___
This post was originally featured on our Instagram feed.
See the original post and discussion here.
