@bnystrom, One point often overlooked is how the bevel angle depends on the blade steel and the wood hardness it’s used on. I understood that, but didn’t fully appreciate it until we started discussing how to tune tools to get better performance. Sometime we know too much and ignore logic. I had my spoke shave for 20 years and just accepted the inferiority, until you pointed out the obvious - fix it. The bed wasn’t flat and the blade Rockwell tested at 45. I brought that up to 59. Now its like a new tool. When I read a forum post, I never know what I’m about to learn. Steve ended up explaining how he makes inlaying gouges from piano wire.
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Thank you.
I feel fortunate that I don’t suffer wrist issue. I biked frequently during the 90s and noted warnings about carpal tunnel syndrome that so many people I know ended up with from hand position while typing. That made me conscious of handlebar set up, shifter positions and bar end angles. I think it paid off, because I found errors in the way I gripped the bars.
Although my shoulder injury occurred from an unrelated incident, micro tears from repeatative stress was not linked to the tear. The only repetative stress I can think of is paddling. I change paddling technique to reduce further shoulder damage and to make sure my paddler box grip aligns my wrists to avoid carpal tunnel stress. The position is now automatic. Not sure if that will help anyone, but it pays to look at the motions your arms go through and analyze your hand placement, then imagine how you can reduce the impact.
Bnystorm, you are 100% Correct.
A common human fault for all people is to assume they have enough skill and/or knowledge in a given field, and that is what causes them to stop learning. Funny, we all know this is true and yet we all do it as a default system. It’s how our brains work and the times we don’t do that is are ONLY the times we discipline ourselves to assume we can and we should learn more. But that’s a conscious decision. It’s what we do through self discipline. Left alone and without that conscious decision we ALL have out default. What I say is not an attack on my fellow men and women. It’s just a simple truth and the sages of old wrote extensively about it, from the days before Moses to Will Rogers and Regan.
If we think we can’t learn more we get to be correct. We can’t! But if you think you can and you should – you will.
As far as the small but important details of blade sharpening, again you are totally correct. I have taught stock making and wood working on and off for many years. In most of my classes I found that the large majority of students were not new to the trade. Like you, most had decades of experience. But show them a few new little tricks and tweaks to make, in both techniques or in equipment, and they are amazed at how much easier something becomes. Things that were easy became VERY easy. Thing that were difficult become less difficult.
One thing I learned as a Marine is to REALLY LISTEN to those less experienced then I had when they asked questions and try to get them to expound on the issues instead of simply giving an answer. In my years of teaching students I don’t think there ever was a set of classes I taught that I didn’t pick up something new, and 75% of those new techniques I learned with the help of students who were supposed to be learning from me. That has been true in the subjects of wood working and metal working as well as wilderness subjects, combatives, law, history, and economics.
I wanted to point out how blade sharpness and blade revel were so important, because of the posts of people who might think making a GL paddle would be too rough on their joints. If you set up your tools correctly before you start the work on the paddle, making it is not as hard as using that paddle when it’s done. Said another way, if you can’t use a properly sharpened and set wood plane on a soft wood, I’d guarantee you can’t paddle a canoe of kayak either. It takes more force to use the paddle then it does to make the paddle.
Besides you can rest any time you w ant at the work bench. You will not drift in the wind of current making the paddle as you might using it later.
I have learned all I know about paddling from a handful of teachers and ALL of them but one were “met” on line and spoken to only over the phone. Only 1 time have I met a real instructor face to face, and that meeting was only about 4-5 hours of time.
Yet all of them told me similar stories about where to learn and what to watch for. Every single one told me that even at their levels of expertise, (one has 55 years) they are still trying to learn new information or perfect what skills they have already, and that going to a class set up by paddlers who have less experience then they do, it nearly always gives them new trick and/or new insights.
The best instructors I ever met in ANY field I’ve studied were ALL humble men and women.
Plato was right. “I became the wisest man when I learned I knew nothing”. No one knows it all,----- ever.
I am ravenous for new skills and learning in all fields I have any interest in. In being hungry for better and better ways to do things, and for more and more knowledge, I have learned that the information is all around us, and OFTEN it’s not just from those “above us”. It’s around us in all kinds of places and people, but we miss it when we think so-and-so knows less then I do.
Maybe So-and-So DOES know less, but he or she may know a few things you don’t, and if we really listen and ask, if we really want to know, we can learn — even from children. How much more can we learn from equals? We need to see people that way. That’s the constant DAILY decision we should all make. So what really makes us all equals in the eyes of God?
Well… Will Rogers said “We are all incompetent! Just in different areas.”
Feathered no real need for wrist movement. No real grip always lose unless bracing. No wrist problems swinging a brick trowel 50+ years although many do in the trade.
Once in a blue moon I try 0° feather and it feels horrible and awkward now.
Push with palm and hook fingers pulling in sync.
Having some degree of flex in the paddle helps to minimize shock loading to your body which results in less chance of injury. Wood paddles are a good choice. I recall that Epic gave a choice of shaft construction with each one having a different amount of flex.
I agree completely with your points. At various times in my life, others have tagged me as an “expert” in one subject or another and I have always refused to accept that. Not to be rude, but because I’m concerned that if I actually start believing that, I’ll stop learning. That would be the proverbial “fate worse than death”. I may be pretty skilled at a few things, but there’s always more to learn. That’s what make life an adventure!
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