Thread: making wooden oars

One way is an Oar making machine Denis . I have one . Made at the Goldie factory NSW Australia just for Oars. Its a copy of a type of machine made for all sorts of copying . Like Gun stocks , propellers , axe and tool handles .

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One of those and a long enough Pattern makers lathe with the traveling tool carriage like the Wadkin RS 10 or longer and you would have a reasonably fast way of manually turning and then fitting into the copy machine to do the roughing out of the Oar Blade . Its called the Blade isn't it ?

Depends on how many you want to do though . If its just 20 then sawing and shaving the handle with planes may be the way after CNC or Hand shaping blades?

With the wood . Light and strong with as little run out and knots as possible . Oak is to heavy . Something out of Spruce , Pine or Fir has probably got to be right . The Boat guys on forum here would probably know . The Boat guys closer to your home may know better ?



Rob

I'm not sure about using a CNC. I do know my father used to make them and I have memories holding an old drill used to to turn the oar as a makeshift lathe from blank stock.
The other end was held on a pole by a nail and we had to wet it regularly to stop it catching fire.

Wish I had a photo because the end product was great, especially considering the agricultural setup we used.

A bloke I worked with in the 70s told of shaping oars on a spindle Moulder.
On one occasion the cutter caught the oar, flung it 30 foot across the workshop and straight through a brick wall.
H.

A friend of mine had a very successful oar manufacturing business. Sadly he passed away about 10 years ago but his business is still running under different management.

He started out with square stock big enough for the handles and glued and dowelled on two short pieces on opposite sides to make the blade. The blanks are then put on to a shaping lathe with cutterheads and three oars were shaped at a time to mach a blank of the particular style of oar he was making at the time. They then went through a finishing process including machine sanding followed by an inspection and minor hand sanding of imperfections before being dipped into a length of PVC pipe, full of marine varnish, set into the ground. As the varnish drips off the oars it drains back into the pipe. They are then left to dry before palletising and transport.

His wife used to collect the wood shavings made by the cutterheads and sift out the fine dust before bagging the rest up and selling it for pet bedding. She was making a very comfortable income from the waste product of the oars.