Saturday, January 14, 2012

Making the oar's handle

Today we braved the cold to work on the oars for the river skiff.
The blanks were first trimmed to the profile we designed.  The band saw is almost ready to use.  But today we were limited to a jig saw.
After the blades had their rough shape we ran them through a radius router bit. Then it was back to the bench to form the handles.
Here is a video of that process:


Tools used are a 7 inch variable speed disk sander with a 36 grit disk.
We also used a 6 inch orbital sander with 80 grit paper.
Additional sanding will be needed but the handle took 6 minutes to form.
During my visit to Hemel in Seattle I saw Steve forming surfboards.
It was a revelation to see this.  He used this type of disk sander and had the speed very slow.  This removes material slowly and allows more control.  A huge added benefit is the life of the disks is vastly extended because of less heat generated.  Previously I had used angle grinders for this type of work.  They remove material but they spin at about 10,000 rpm.  Way less control and you go through disks like tissues.
In this video the rough oar blank is run through the radius router bit to get it closer to round.

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