Maple Paddle

After a few months off from canoe building I have started a new small project to get back into it. The maple paddle is being made from a 7/8" light-coloured maple board with strips of dark mahogony laminated on the shaft and handle to make them at least 1-1/4" thick. I picked up the wood from Minton's hardware in Mountain View, which after more than 100 years in business will be closing soon. While the scrap pieces of Mahogony cost a total of 25 cents, the two 5'-6" maple boards came to $100! (The guy who cut them to length for me asked "Have you checked out how much it costs to just buy a paddle from West Marine??") It sure is beautiful wood though. I was debating whether to get a thicker poplar board that wouldn't have required laminating, but I was sold on the look of the maple. I don't have real measurements from the wood I was looking at, but the Wood Engineering Handbook (see sidebar) has properties for Sugar (hard) Maple and Yellow Poplar.

So, while Maple is 1.50 times heavier than poplar, it has 1.55 times the bending strength. Of course these are only estimates as wood properties can vary from tree to tree and depending on where in the tree the wood came from. The upshot is that I should make the paddle blade relatively thin to reduce weight, but this should not compromise on strength. Unfortunately the shaft cannot be made too thin as it needs to feel comfortable in the hand. Looking at the work to failure for the two woods in the above table, it looks like Maple is considerably tougher.
Because Maple is such a hard wood, it is also difficult to work with hand tools. I found this today as I began planing the paddle blade. I initially had the edge of my block plane ground to 30 degrees, but it had difficulty biting the wood. I reground the edge at 25 degrees and found it much better. The hard Maple requires that I resharpen the plane edge frequently.