Making the Blade Blanks

Here is the layout of the blades. The two stacks should be enough for at least 2 paddles. The wood species are, from center out, Purple Heart, Maple, Mahogony,maple, mahogony.

The Maple and Purple Heart are fairly dense, which is going to yield a heavier paddle. But, they look good, so I'm happy with the choices.

Here are the blades after cutting them out on the bandsaw. My template curve wasn't very symmetric which caused problems later during shaping.

Here is a view of the Blade faces. This is a good preview of how the paddle is going to look. Once the final shaping is complete and just before the finish goes on, I am going to soak it in the sun for several days to darken the Mahogony