Oars for the Mississippi River Skiff

Having never made an oar before we referred to Shaw and Tenney's beautiful oars for inspiration. On their excellent web site they indicate how to calculate the proper length of an oar for given row boat's beam.

Howard Chapelle's lines taken from an 1870's vintage river skiff indicate a maximum beam of 58.5 inches.  Taking this number and Shaw and Tenney's formula we arrived at 8.9 feet as  the proper length for the oars.

After sorting through our stacked lumber we finally found the ash boards.  (Rough cut ash and poplar look a lot alike.)  One of our two boards was not straight enough for oars so we were only able to cut three blanks.  This gives me a reason to call John again and get back to the lumber yard.

The blanks are cut to 1 & 3/8 ths inches square.  The next step is to order a larger round-over bit for the router. We are looking forward to making these oars.

The ash is sailing through the table saw.

Once you have a clean cut on it, it is a very familiar looking wood,

(every wooden baseball bat you have ever seen).

Shopping for wood

A friend works for a local College with large tracts of land.  John is director of their forestry department.

Recently he hired a portable mill to cut trees that they are culling.

Great timing for the River skiff.

Beautiful wood, staked up neatly on a ridge line overlooking the Mississippi river.

18 foot lengths!

In our shop we had four 16 foot 1 x 12 cedar planks we cut down to 4.5 inch widths.  Then milled to 5/8ths of an inch thick.  These will form the bottom of the hull.

From John we purchased 10 Tulip Poplar boards and a couple of Ash boards as well.

The Poplar is about an inch and a quarter thick.

We will rip it into half inch strips and re-stack to dry.  This will be used to form the chines.
The ash will be used to make a set of oars, (the white ash breeze).

On my next visit he is going to show off an ancient barn that is apparently filled up to the rafters with dry wood.

On the list of wood that is cut or to be, is black oak, red oak, poplar, ash, basswood, hickory, walnut, cherry......