Gettin' Tipsy!!!

I've decided to try a new way of toughening up the tips on my paddles. I'm going to make them (the tips)from solid maple. My first attempt at doing this involved the use of wood biscuits - a wonderful invention often used in furniture making. I'm not going to go into detail about them here but just Google "Wood Biscuits" and you'll see what I'm talking about. To make a long story short, the biscuits did not work well in my last paddle attempt - see my earlier entry - so I'm trying something different this time. I've decided to run the outside maple laminations up the side of each tip. This will add a fair amount more gluing surface and the outside laminations will also provide extra support to the tip join. I'm very optimistic about this paddle. The only thing is that it took a long time to make the tight joins and it starting to p!ss me off. Luckily it turned out well on the first tip so I now have the enthusiasm to complete the second. But that's for another night!!