: Has anyone built one?

I built one from the drawings in Brinck's book. The shape means that the
centre of effort (where you put the force into the loom) is behind the centre
of resistance (where the paddle blade pushes the water) which makes the paddle
very badly behaved - a huge amount of flutter. This put me off building or
trying to use traditional paddles for quite some time. Eventually I carved a
GP, and this is much better (except that eventually, it has warped a bit )-:

I note that the diagrams that have just been posted seem to show the blade
face being somewhat convex. With my background of using Euro paddles, I carved
the power face of my Aleutian paddle very slightly concave - maybe this is
part of the problem ...

Mine was laminated from two pieces of spruce - there's one little knot in
one blade face, but, as I recall, the laminated piece is behind this, so it
doesn't go right through... The GP was cedar with two strips of ash laminated
either side to make the loom - it has a much nicer feel.

Andy