The Greg Barton non-answer
The purpose of this thread was not simply to elicit a general answer as the whether you like feather. It was to elicit the WHY and, specifically, a NON-WIND WHY.
Greg Barton, Olympic kayak champion and high end kayak-surfski-paddle entrepreneur, has written an article on the subject of feather and even has a survey.
http://www.surfski.info/getting-started/tips-other/item/1270-what-feather-angle-do-you-use?-greg-barton-on-wing-paddles.html
The most striking thing to me about this article is that Barton never answers the non-wind WHY question. He fudges, waffles and gives some history about wind. He pooh-poohs the wrist strain argument against feather simply based on his experience with racers, but with no anatomical or physiological analysis or medical citations. And in the end he just lays the whole feather angle subject off basically as subjective preference.
For example, at the beginning of the article he says, “there is no single best feather angle for everybody.” At the end he says, “use the setting that best suits your paddling style and personal feel.”
Yet, Barton mentions in the article that racers use feather. He makes the headwind argument and appears to give it credence: “A higher feather angle will be more efficient because the returning blade pushes less air.” But he doesn’t give any specific non-wind reason as to why racers seemingly prefer feather.
Barton also has a survey of 608 surfksiers, which shows that 30% prefer 67 degrees, 21% prefer 60 degrees, and 15% are tied at 45 degrees and “Don’t Know”. The rest of the angles are spread all over with 0 degrees getting only 1%. (I suspect all or most of the participants were using wing paddles and none GPs.) Yet, Barton makes no attempt to interpret or explain the survey results.
The striking feature is that Barton makes NO argument for feather based on paddle physics, boat physics, arm anatomy, torso rotation, paddle entry, wrist angles or any other technical or technique thing. I was expecting an Olympic sprint Gold Medalist to do exactly that – to explain technically why feather increases performance, at least for short sprints.
But Barton completely ducks the non-wind WHY question.
Why?
What can we logically conclude other than that he either has no non-wind technical performance explanation for feather, or that he does have an explanation but for some commercial or political correctness reason he doesn’t want to argue it.
.
I have yet to see explanation beyond wind resistance that passes any sort of critical analysis.
Maybe this would go a long way explaining why paddles get feathered?
http://theoatmeal.com/comics/religion
More on Barton and feather…
Barton has the following to say in the “Barton Mold” about feather:
“Barton uses wing blades that are offset 82 degrees, the same as his old, traditional paddle. The way he came to 82 degrees is interesting:
A lot of people switched to less than 85-90 degrees offset with the wing, but since I had already been at less than that, I stayed the same. Struer, the manufacturer of the paddles we used at that time, claimed all his paddles were offset 85 degrees. I had one which was my favorite paddle and after a while I realized that it was less than that. It was about 82 degrees, so when I started making my own paddles, I made them 82 degrees and kept that with the wing”.
So, in other words, Barton became accustomed to 82 degrees early on, and then stayed with what he knew and what worked for him.
Barton does have this hint, about paddle feather for sprint racing:
“Perhaps the biggest revolution in sprint racing since the introduction of offset paddle blades in 1936 was the invention of the wing paddle, and its advent has
changed paddling technique significantly”.
By this statement I assume Barton is saying that prior to 1936, kayakers were using unfeathered blades for sprint. It would be interesting to see the history of the times posted in 1935 versus 1936 to quantify this change.
Greg Stamer
Well
I certainly have seen that people prefer all manner of feather angles, but re: the generalizations made, sorry, but I have to disagree with both. I use a GP and there is no need to move my hands during a stroke, unless I feel like it. A too-short or storm GP will require a sliding stroke, of course.
Also, I have a long history of wrist injuries, both minor and severe (both wrists) and find that a zero-feather Euro (AT crankshaft in my case) is most comfortable. Almost as comfortable as a GP, but not quite.
1936
I assume the sentence in which Barton refers to 1936 is plagued by bad grammar.
What he is more likely saying is that 1936 was the first year in which sprint kayaking and canoeing were included as Olympic sports.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canoeing_and_kayaking_at_the_Summer_Olympics
No one invented the feathered double blade in 1935. History clearly shows its use in Europe in the 19th century and in the earliest times of Rushton.
Here’s Fredric Remington and his wife Eva as a tandem team in 1900:
http://www.cartermuseum.org/sites/all/files/imagecache/artwork_full/images/tl_event/1918-76-160-226_s.jpg
Here’s Remington in a Rushton canoe in 1902 (how’s his form?):
http://www.cartermuseum.org/sites/all/files/imagecache/artwork_full/images/tl_event/71-831_Page5_s.jpg
I am a sociologist by trade
And one of the things we see all the time is behaviors and beliefs that were established at an earlier time for apparently good reasons and have hung on for a long time simply because they get passed on from generation to generation even though the original reason is no longer appropriate. The term is cultural lag. Each new generation of paddlers is taught to use a feathered paddle and explanations and justifications are created by teachers to support what is being taught.
I agree
There’s no doubt that non-analyzed practices get passed along and excepted as good. 20 years ago, feathered is what kayakers did and it was always to combat the wind. But now it’s very common to see good paddlers using un-feathered a lot.
The original poster was asking about non-wind related reasons and I think you hit the big one. It’s because that’s the way it’s done. The guy who wrote about getting whacked in the teeth may have a point but it seems like a lot of discipline for very little chance of it happening at least for sea kayaking.
unrealistic expectation
"The striking feature is that Barton makes NO argument for feather based on paddle physics, boat physics, arm anatomy, torso rotation, paddle entry, wrist angles or any other technical or technique thing. I was expecting an Olympic sprint Gold Medalist to do exactly that – to explain technically why feather increases performance, at least for short sprints. "
Greg Burton is a world class athlete, not a world class physicist.
What you expect is unrealistic.
In fact, one of the biggest problem is people attach too much weight to what these world class athletes SAY, which may or may not be the right explanation. These guys have prove themselves as great doers. That doesn’t automatically make them great physicist.
Agreed
Yes, feathering has been around for a very long time. I wasn’t aware that kayaking/canoeing appeared in the Olympics at Paris in 1924 as a demonstration sport and later in 1936 as an official sport. That explains the date in Barton’s comment.
So I assume that Barton’s statement,
“Perhaps the biggest revolution in sprint racing since the introduction of offset paddle blades in 1936 was the invention of the wing paddle, and its advent has
changed paddling technique significantly”
really means,
“Perhaps the biggest revolution in sprint racing since the sport was introduced into the Olympics in 1936 (where “traditional” feathered paddles were used), was the invention of the wing paddle…”
Greg Stamer
Greg Barton is an engineer
"Greg Burton is a world class athlete, not a world class physicist.
What you expect is unrealistic. "
Greg Barton is not only a past Olympic Gold medal winner but is also an engineer with a degree in mechanical engineering.
Greg Stamer
Keeping an open mind, maybe?
An instructor whose advice I respect and find useful was (maybe still is) biased towards feathered paddles. However, he stated that he and his partner do sometimes change their minds!
This is yet another aspect of paddling where you need to pay attention to what your own body tells you, in addition to what a variety of experts suggest.
Make up your own mind!
Feather Foe Again
I’d be interested in knowing how much feathered paddles interfere with learning to roll… or at least hinder the ability to roll on both sides.
“Let’s see, when I sweep on this side the power face is here and when I sweep on that side it’s ummm… ummm.”
(My feather paddler neighbor is a single-side roller.)
I’m sure people learn to do it. It just seems like it’s unnecessarily more complicated.
Unless We Paddle At The Highest Level
We won’t understand why Barton paddles at 82 degrees feather. For 24 years, America has not produced another successful sprint paddler like Greg. But other countries have, and perhaps their gold medal paddlers are using 82 degrees feather?
Perhaps the answer is with watching children learning how to paddle a kayak without any instruction from grown-ups. Eventually, they get it, much sooner than we expected, and will experiment on their own trying out different feather angles and lengths. Watch these kids over the years develop as they strive to keep up with faster peers. If they are in to racing, most will have switched from unfeathered flat blades to wings with 40 to 60 degrees feather. Somehow, the faster paddlers will usually settle on more than 75 degrees feather. Why? Because it “feels better.”
On the other hand…
it doesn't always matter if the blades are "right" when rolling. There have been times I've had a diving blade yet still rolled up without strain. Sometimes when I immediately know the blade is "off" I just release my grip and it ends up being an effortless roll despite not using the blade for help. Maybe knowing that there will be no purchase from the blade makes me more conscious of getting the body movement as close to perfect as I can.
You can train your mind to adjust to different angles as long as the body doesn't protest.
You don’t need a Paddle to Roll
Many roll without them.
So does many on this forum
have engineering degrees.
While we’re not as good paddlers as Greg Burton. There’s no guarantee he’s a better engineer than the rest of us who have similar engineering degrees.
Yes, but…
What does that have to do with Greg Barton ‘not knowing physics’ and just being an athlete, as you were saying earlier?
As an engineer, Barton obviously knows something about physics.
“knowing something” vs “expert knowledg”
"Greg Barton ‘not knowing physics’ and just being an athlete, as you were saying earlier?
Where did I say that?
“knowing something about physics” is not the same as being an expert in paddling bio-mechanic. He may know something. You may know something. I may know something. There’s no guarantee he knows more than you and I. That’s all I’m saying.
He may know HOW to paddle, but not necessarily WHY.
Plenty of professor kind got their day-to-day physics wrong despite being an expert in some other specialized sub-topic of physics or engineering. I know because I work with those plenty. So I don’t attach a whole lot of credence to Greg Burton the engineering degree holder in the field of paddling bio-mechanics!
The amateurish NOC study of feather
The Nantahala Outdoor Center did an experiment with rank amateurs using 0 and 45 degree feathers. Wasn't much of an experiment and didn't prove much, in my book. You can read about it here and form your own opinion:
http://nocpaddlingschool.blogspot.com/2008/04/paddle-offset-study.html
The only thing I get from this study design and these results is that the amateurs were about equally amateurish with both 0 and 45 degree blades, and had a slight aggregate preference for the 0 degree after paddling a grand total of ... get this ... 30 yards, two times. So what?
I'm actually shocked at the apparent lack of serious research on this subject. When I was researching entrained breathing techniques for rowers, in a thread here that didn't draw much interest, I came across a lot of serious studies of rowing techniques by top academic institutions.
Subject to confirmation by our site sociologists and engineers, this could be because the top and manly minds of Harvard, Yale, Oxford and Cambridge have rowed crew for centuries, whereas they don't have much personal or institutional history with or interest in skinny kayaks and their sissy feathers.
Examine Oar Blade Design For Clue?
They also use a sliding seat, while kayakers use a swiveling seat, oarlocks are like our bottom hand, and both craft travel in the same direction as the force.