canoe maker

A monthly favourite of mine, the current items (April) at the CherryGallery.com features a circa 1900 Adirondack Guide Boat Paddle with an interesting spined grip. This seems quite different from the circular "lollipop" grips seen commonly in this unique paddle design




Adirondack Guide Boat Paddle
This maple guide boat paddle has a roll-top handle with a prominent center ridge, and a gracefully tapered blade.
Circa 1900
5" w, 70.5" h

The Flickr page of the Adirondack Museum has some great images from their 2011 auction. A few paddles were featured in the collection




The white painted beavertail guide paddle above (2nd from left) has a copper (or maybe brass) tip protector. A while ago, I wrote a post about these vintage paddle accessories which seem to have fallen out of favour with paddle makers today.

Thanks to the winter storm hitting my region today (which really isn't that bad in my opinion), my workplace has cancelled all classes...this means a SNOW DAY and a chance to post another paddle picture. This one is from February's "Current Items" page at the Cherry Gallery which features a nice looking Adirondack paddle.


Looks like it has already sold. The details from their site...

Adirondack Guide Boat Paddle
This guide boat paddle has a characteristic elaborately carved diamond-motif handle and a long, narrow blade. The front of the blade is painted with the four playing card suits - perhaps the guide was a gambler...
Circa 1900
5" w, 58.5� h

The carved motif area below the circular grip adds a nice decorative flair to whole piece. Here's another angled shot showing this interesting Adirondack feature.


Diamond Motif on grip

November 2010 current items at the Cherry Gallery features an Adirondack Guide Paddle circa 1890...

A delicate cherry guide boat paddle with a lollipop top and a diamond shaped and chamfered upper shaft. Good original surface, with minor damage to one edge of the blade. Circa 1890
4.75" w, 66" h
$1,200

The "lollipop" grip the description refers to is similar to a historic one documented in Dr Gordon L Fishers's 2008 publication Guideboat Paddles: An Adirondack Treasure. Specifically, it resembles the grip design popularized by Adirondack Guide and Boatbuilder, Caleb Judson Chase and is often referred to as an Arrowhead Motif grip.


Arrowhead Motif
An online excerpt (.PDF format) of Fisher's book has some photos of the author carving out this interesting grip shape (see last page of excerpt - pg 60). The book has a nice schematic of this grip design with a table of offsets for the blade in the appendix section. I'm planning to get more lumber stock in a few weeks and figure I'll attempt this new grip design as a winter project.

Back at the MEC Paddlefest in June, I met David Donaldson, who was displaying his homemade stitch and glue kayak and had intentions of making his own greenland style paddle. We've been in touch since and he let me know about his efforts to raise money for Cancer Research with the Annual Kayak for a Cure Event in nearby Mississauga, held this year on September 18th.

In support of his cause, I've donated one of my paddles to be auctioned off - the walnut-poplar Adirondack style paddle.


Whole Paddle; Barred Owl Decoration
More details about this event and David's efforts can be found on his Fundraising Site which includes mention of bidding by email to Ontario@kayakforacure.org

The Adirondack Museum in Blue Mountain, NY, is featuring an antique show on August 14-15, 2010. A pic from their event page shows some paddles featured in the sale.


Antique Paddles from the Cherry Gallery
The set includes some interesting Northwoods style paddles with elongated grips. In particular the largest paddle on the far left has a grip shape reminiscient of the grey painted Penobscot paddle sold by Summer Antiques in Lake Placid, New York.

The painted red paddle has in interesting sculpted grip shape and while I'm not a big fan of painted paddles, this one stands out for whatever reason. A few feature some interesting etchings and pyrography and the tiny dark paddle (3rd from right) has a spherical grip very similar to basic Adirondack Guide paddles.

For those in the area, this might be an fascinating event to check out. Here's some additional info from their site.

The Antiques Show and Sale will feature, vintage Adirondack furniture, historic guide boats & canoes, genuine Old Hickory, fine art, Native American jewelry & artifacts, folk art, Oriental & Persian rugs, Olympic advertising, camp & trade signs, taxidermy, books & ephemera for the collector, and everything camp and cottage. Managed by Rod Lich, Inc.

In my never ending quest to learn more about unique paddle designs, I stumbled across the page of Dr. Gordon L. Fisher describing his recent (2008) publication, Guideboat Paddles: An Adirondack Treasure. Available online is a PDF format excerpt from the book that shows some black and white photos documenting grip carving. Intrigued, I ordered a copy and recently received it in the mail.

Single blade Adirondack style paddles are quite a speciality in the paddling community. Their usage and history localized to the Adirondack region of New York state. My knowledge of guideboats in general was quite limited having assumed that they were exclusively rowed with oars rather than propelled with single blades, but an informative opening section in the book describes how many guides would silently maneuver the guideboats with single blade paddles as their sporting passengers would hunt deer and other game. Often, while one person powered the craft with oars, a helmsman would steer the boat with a single blade from the stern. Single blade paddles were therefore quite functional with guideboat touring.

The truly interesting feature of the paddles, however, are the circular grips. The book details some of the surviving historical paddles now at the Adirondack Museum and provides plenty of computer generated sketches and technical details necessary for reproducing the unique handle designs. Offset data as well as fullsized portions of the blade curves make reproduction a breeze. From a canoeing persepective, the narrow, straight sided blades would serve well for solo paddling, although the length of the paddles (and proportional blade lengths) would need to be reduced , especially when kneeling. Other than that, these are some designs I intend to replicated soon.

What I thoroughly enjoyed about the book, besides the plentiful illustrations and photos, was the historical context of each of the museum paddles described in the text. To many, a paddle is just a utilitarian object until a story is attached to it and its history revealed. All in all, I thoroughly enjoyed Gordon's contribution to the paddle making community and hope to make a trip to the Adirondack Museum one day and check these unique designs out with my own eyes.

Another Adirondack Guide Paddle for sale by the folks at Summer Antiques. The grips on these paddles are so unusual. A previous post shows off some more of their selection which haven't been sold by the looks of things.