Re: Carbon Fiber Paddle

Posted by Kurt Loup on Jul 14, 2004

This was my response to Frank's question on the Greenland kayaking forum:

I tried making a foam core Aleut paddle using pink building foam from Home Depot. The foam worked fine, but my vacuum bagging technique using my Jet dust collector was a failure. It wouldn't pull enough vacuum. I have a vacuum pump now, but haven't gotten around to trying again. The foam blank was roughed out on a bandsaw. The foam sands to shape very easily. I inspected one of the commercial carbon fiber Greenland paddles since then and I suspect that it is constructed of four symetrical pieces. There is a joint in the center of the loom around the circumference and another joint along the edges of the loom and blades. Hope this helps.

Kurt

To add some additional info, my friend made a carbon fiber euro paddle. He purchased the carbon fiber loom for about $30 from kayakstore.com, but they are no longer in business. He used a hot wire to cut the foam to shape. I don't know his layup, but I used about 2 layers of carbon fiber plus 5-7 layers of 6 oz. fiberglass on the carbon fiber coamings on my kayaks. That should be more than needed. If you have a paddle that you like, I suspect that you could put a release agent over the blade of the paddle and layup the carbon fiber/fiberglass over it in halfs. Make a front and back then epoxy together.

In Response to: Carbon Fiber Paddle by Jeffrey Ward on Jul 14, 2004

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