Lendal Crank Shaft to Blade Angle

Looked today at my lendal paddle a little more carefully and noticed that one of the blades is not as aligned to the plane of the crank as the other. At first I thought that perhaps a little angle is good, for aligning the blade for a sort of a “canted stroke”. But then it occured to me that the shafts are intended to be switchable from left to right hand control, in which case there should be no angle so that one can switch left to right and maintain symmetry.



So the conclusion - poor craftsmanship. Whoever drilled the hole did not put it where it is supposed to be …



I have not noticed an effect while paddling, but I also have not paddled that much with this set. Still, I have an itch to fix that. However, I’m curious which way to fix it. As it is, on the left, I have the above mentioned slight forward canting angle of the blade relative to the shaft, where on the right the blade is mostly aligned neutrally.



Here is the question - is this slight canting angle something good? Perhaps I should “fix” the straight bladed side to give it a little canting…



Then there is the question about how to fix that. One solution is to just make the hole for the button near the blade end of the shaft oval, so that the blade can be twisted a bit relative to where it is now. The other would be to unglue the insert with the button from the blade and rotate that then re-glue it so that even though the button hole on the shaft is off, the button being off in the other direction will negate that…



Thoughts? I probably won’t do anything for a while to see if paddling that paddle more I actually notice that offset or not but curious mostly about the canted angle part of the question above in terms of paddling mechanics…



Thanks!

I can’t believe no one …
… has any thoughts about the blade to crank angle -:wink:



Would:

  • a little “diving” angle be a good thing (to support a canted stroke like with a GP), or
  • should it be neutral (for more close to the hull pulls), or
  • even be the opposite angle climbing-up for a more “wing” paddle paddle stroke going away from the hull?



    Again, I’m talking about the angle of the blade relative to the shaft’s crank