...to the well until it breaks. And the jug that doesn't travel well, well, it gets set aside, and thus survives. You make a good and interesting point, Nick, about those samples that have survived.

But as you said, speculation is fun, and some of us just can't seem to help ourselves. I did think the earlier logic leading to the conclusion that the pic was drawn wrong was sound and solid. I still do. Which of course doesn't say anything about Mr Jensen's paddle, one way or the other. But I couldn't resist throwing in another plausible theory, which happened to pop up. Just to see if somebody would step out to correct my "conclusions".

I wonder if I should find out how one adds those little yellow "smilies" to the subject line of a posting? Then everybody would recognize a joke when one is coming. Can anybody tell me how to make "smiley" appear? please...

: 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.