> Here's a closeup of the shoulder. I like the look of the multiple
> laminations, if only the thing wasn't so darn heavy.

Seems that there is a read-across from building beautiful boats to carving beautiful paddles for this list. As a new guy to building kayaks --- but as a ten year paddler, mostly in Greenland style boats and using Greenland paddles --- I've found the best operating paddles I've made were unfinished and carved from 2" by 6" red cedar. My current paddle-of-choice is of such construction, is five years old, and weighs well under two pounds; my storm paddle was constructed from a 2" by 4" red cedar board, weighs less than a pound, and is probably about six years old. They're dirt-ugly in comparison to Ross' work, but they're light, servicable and long lasting. Of the probably 15 paddles I've made, all are still in service with me or have been given to friends and are still used reqularly, except for one experimental paddle made from a 1" by 6" red cedar plank, with the loom beefed up with oak molding pieces on the front and back; it worked very well, and was my favorite, but I snapped it during a surf landing, bracing into what I thought was water and what turned out to be a rock. Broke right at the stress riser I'd built in at the cedar-to-oak interface. Predictable as hell!

I admire the beauty of the boats y'all build --- especially the strippers --- but there's something in the functional beauty of an indigenous design, solid, unfinished paddle, too. And it doesn't wear me out as quickly, either.

Jack Martin