Traditional and Modern Oar Making
Creating beautiful oars that turn minimum effort into maximum power.
- Clint Chase — August 26–September 1
Tuition: $750
Materials: $94.50
Note: This is a six-day course ending Saturday afternoon
There are few projects more thoroughly satisfying than oar making. Making your own oars engages all the senses—the sweet smell of spruce, the feel of the plane peeling off a perfect shaving, and the sound of hand tools at work. The “tricks of the trade” that make crafting an oar truly enjoyable are not easy to pick-up on your own, but will be generously shared in this course. After a week in a pile of shavings, you will leave this course with a new knowledge about oars and rowing, along with your very own set of beautiful oars.
Clint Chase brings years of experience as a boatbuilder and oar maker and has designed this exciting course to guide students through the fundamental steps of making and finishing oars: milling the blanks, choosing a pattern, tapering, rounding the looms, shaping the blades, and tuning the oar. Clint will teach his techniques for counterbalancing each set of oars with cast-lead “slugs”. Each student will choose the spruce oars they want to create. Some will choose flat-blades or spoons. Others can choose laminated-plywood blades or Carbon Fiber. Whether you choose traditional or modern, you will learn the crucial methods and knowledge required to craft a lightweight, strong, and balanced oar, making rowing a great pleasure.
On Saturday morning, Clint will teach you how to leather your oars, make the collars, and students will go home home with fancy leathering kits, finishing instructions and resources for further learning. Most of all, each student will head home with a beautiful, functional set of oars to prove it.
Clint Chase is an exceptional teacher; patient, thoughtful, clear, and very organized. He demonstrated important oar and paddle crafting techniques, reviewed our progress each day, and clarified our understanding of the process. His course was incredibly challenging and rewarding.
