I think the most important thing is the center lines. This is what you need to pay attention to as you are planing.

The next thing I see on almost everyone's first self carved GP is that they make the blade too thick. The thinner the thickness of the blade, the finer the entry. A thick, rounded blade profile is a litte more forgiving for paddle flutter, but not as powerful.

Keep in mind you can always narrow the width of the paddle blade to get less bite and a faster cadence while paddling, as well as shortening the paddle overall. Maligiaq Padilla, several time Greenland champion, prefers a long an narrow paddle. My widest paddle is now 3 1/8" wide at the tip, and the other one is 3", because I have narrowed it, but not trimmed the ends. It's a long paddle for me...

Brian

: Hey guys,

: Working on my first GP. On Holst's step 2 (mark the narrow faces
: and cutting) I did the first cut by hand with a saw and block
: plane, and it took a few hours. The next three cuts I did with a
: band saw and jack plane and it took a fraction of the time.

: However, after doing step 3 (mark wide faces and cut) on the band
: saw, I see things are coming out a bit rough. Part of this is
: probably just needing to smooth out the bandsaw cuts (I did this
: on step 2 with the plane), but I see my edges looking a bit
: rough, and I'm worried if I start planing everything even after
: each step I'll end up with too narrow a paddle.

: Since most of the uneven cuts are getting planed/shaved away
: anyway, I wondered how important it is to have everything dead
: even before moving onto the next step. Thoughts?