Yo Pete

I am buddy building a greenland paddle right now (a buddy and I are making one each and repeating the same mistakes . When I bought my prime piece of western red cedar I took a copy of Chuck Holsts greenland paddle "recipe" (first 5 reads it looks way complicated, but is brilliant when you actually do it see http://ross.secant.com/kayak/) with me. I showed it to the lumberyard guy and said I want to make one of these and need a piece of 4 x 2 with really straight grain.

We must have snooped and hunted down the best piece we could find because the piece I have is absolutely prime. The grain runs straight as a die in both planes (4" face and 2" face). It will be a joy to plane/whittle away.

In contrast my buddy's first piece of wrc 4 x 2 had knots and all sorts running along the 2" face. I showed him mine and he went back and exchanged it, His new piece has parralel grain running lengthwise on the 2" face, But the 4" face has intersting grain patterns on it. I think we can work with that and the interesting grain patterns will be a nice feature of his paddle when it is finished.

Moral of the story: Not all lumber is created equal. Since you are paying top dollar make sure you get top quality. Snooping is ok!

Cheers Pete