I trust Gails drawings as well. I wouldn't spend too much time speculating on why Mr Jensen made the shape he did. There are all sorts of possibilities and no way of knowing exactly why he settled on a particular shape. He could have been lazy and just didn't feel like rounding out the shaft. Maybe the reason the paddle is in the collection is it is one he really hated and didn't mind giving it up to the stupid european collector. Maybe he had some crazy idea on a new technique, maybe the technique worked, maybe it didn't.

Like Greg said, there is a lot of variation in surviving paddles. We really have no way of knowing if this is because everyone made different paddles or just the paddles that people were willing to give to collectors or were found happened to vary a lot. The best shape is whatever works for you.

It is fun to speculate, but you can't really draw any conclusions unless you see some characteristic which is consistent. And, then all you can really conclude is they probably had a good reason for it. You can never really know what the reason was.

: After posting I had a "second thought" about the weirdness of the
: loom shape. What if Mr Jensen senior simply preferred flexible paddles,
: rather than stiff ones? With the pictured loom shape he might just have
: achieved a somewhat softer touch on his strokes.