Jan 27. Oars Mostly Carved

Shaping the oars is done for 3 reasons 1) aesthetics, 2) smoother hydrodynamics, and 3) to reduce weight on the part of the oar outside the oarlock. 1 and 2 are pretty obvious, but most people don't know about 3. In an age where oars have been almost completely erased from use by internal combustion engines, and by assembly line manufacturing, the art of balancing and adjusting oars to the person for a specific use has been almost completely forgotten. An oar is much easier to use when the weight of the human's arms resting in the handle, combined with the ratio of the weight of the inner to outer loom makes it balance with the blade partially in the water. Buoyancy of the blade also must be accounted for. A human arm, when rested from the shoulder onto an oar handle in proper position will weigh 2 to 4 lbs. Surprisingly little. The outer loom and blade will normally outweigh a perfectly tapered oar by significantly more than this, and that is why we shave as much material off the outer loom and blade as possible and leave as much material on the inner loom as we can. Some balanced oars have lead drilled into the inner loom, much like spin balancing a car wheel.  The flex of the loom and blade under load must also be accounted for. More on that later. 

Here are the oars, shaved on the outer loom and left square on the inner. Handles are still a bit rough. 

And here are all the shavings from just one oar. I used a chisel and a block plane for this, and a sander. It takes about 2 hours for each oar. Good upper body workout. 

The beautiful pine shavings. Great fire starter. Maybe I should sweep. 

I also spoon the blade a bit. I could taper the blade to the center, but I chose to spoon them by shaving only one side in order to test out the doryman's strike. Ancient wisdom says that you can get propulsion from chopping the blade straight down into the water and also raising straight up if the blade is shaped like this, much like an airplane's wing provides lift. So a doryman's stroke is much shorter and vertically choppy. We shall see. I don't expect much. Above you see the flat front side (toward the bow, or facing the same direction as the oarsman). That also means there is now a right and left oar. 

The shaved back side. Hard to see the rounding. 

Maybe this angle shows it better.