I havent decided yet, if i go standard i might not have enough material at the end for 2 paddles, greenland would use less since id have less cut off. Maybe ill go for a middle way (in look) and see what happens. Basically what i have its strips good for weaving, the idea was to weave the paddle around a foam core and then vaccumbag the whole thing with resin... Point is ineed to learn to weave stuff decently. If i had more material id go witha kayak deck but im pretty sure that to have a decent result with weaved material vacuumbagging it its the way to go. I want to avoud grinding, the fibers would pop out leaving a fuzzy edge that would be a real pita. I have seen carvings made on bamboo and those look great, sharp tools and good hand are probably better than sandpaper and powertools on bamboo. If you mold the strips to exact shapes there is no tools needed.

The pole could be too flexible, injecting foam inside could help, or you could slit the pole in half, fill it with foam and epoxy and reglue it. There are different varietes and some have a pretty thick wall, those maybe are better, its a matter of experimenting since i cant find anyone or any reference material to get suggestions from, and im still hunting for the stuff so i cant be of much help on that. They stain bamboo poles so the outside might not be that waxy after all.
Depending on time and money i might get on it in a few months, im sure that there are some really good possibilities with that stuff.

: How were you going about making the paddle? Standard or Greenland?

: I considered glueing up strips to make a blank and then using a grinder to
: carve the shape for a standard paddle. Again, not sure how the material
: would respond. There could be millions of splinters.

: I even thought it would be cool to use a bamboo pole as the shaft, but I
: think it would flex too much, unless you could saturate it with epoxy and
: to do that you would probably need to sand off the outer waxy layer to
: help it adhere and then it wouldn't look as cool.