A Slight Diversion

Those who know me know that I am a sucker for a project.  This has been true my entire life, so why on earth would I not take a perfectly good kayak project and complicate it??  With this in mind I began building a paddle.  I have long been interested in doing some something with carbon fiber.  i always thought it was cool stuff, but didn't have a need for anything of this nature.  Now I have a purpose!  I decided to build our paddles with a carbon fiber blade.  This began with a form made of wood and epoxy.  I used this form two halves of a paddle blade and then join them together.  Following this, I cut out my favorite paddle blade shape.  Not being that artistic, I blew up an internet picture of a paddle I liked and traced the shape on to my homebrew paddle blade and cut it out.  Having nearly finished the first blade, it is incredibly strong, but also a little heavier than necessary.  The next one will have a couple less layers and a little better compression to get all the unnecessary epoxy out.  Stay tuned!