My local kayak shop has a variety of Greenland-style paddles. Some are laminations of hard and softwood that are epoxied together and epoxied all over the outer surface as well as varnished. These seem to be the strongest. Then there are paddles made of one piece of clear cedar that are simply oiled. These are very lightweight, but are pretty flexible and are definitely not to be used as a pusher to help in launching. None of the Greenland-style paddles I've seen have been fiberglassed.

So your paddle as is is probably good enough for basic paddling and rolling, but if you want it to be bomb-proof for pushing off of rocks with, better put some glass on it.

Dean

> I've been working on building Greenland-style paddle according to the
> dimensions described at http://seacanoe.org/grnpadle.htm and it's almost
> ready for finishing. I have a couple of questions:

> 1. I used what I had on-hand which was a clear piece of Aspen I picked-up
> at Home Depot. It seems like it will work ok. It's pretty flexible, in
> fact maybe a little too flexible. I hate for it to break, so I thought of
> covering the blades with some 2oz glass, but that seemed like overkill. I
> thought I could run an inch wide strip of glass down the center of each
> blade and that would give it a bit more rigidity and reduce the chances of
> it breaking. Any thoughts?

> 2. I could use epoxy to waterproof the paddle, but I understand a less
> slippery surface is more appropriate. What's a good coating for doing
> this?

> Thanks for any suggestions.

> Ross