oars
Oars
In idle moments while building Mary Constance I put together a pair of suitable oars - a little fancy perhaps but they do look good.
I hit an unexpected problem after planing and sanding the oars - size was determined purely by eye, and what looked "right". The oarlocks were of course a little fancy and hard to source - in the end I sourced bronze oarlocks and pads from Duckworks in Texas much cheaper than I could find in UK (and none at all to be found in Ireland). When I went to find the standard plastic collars I hit a problem - any that would fit the oars would not fit in the oarlocks and v.v. Traditional answer to this is to make collars out of leather - I had 2 hours to launch time and no leather handy - so - I used an idea from (I think) HH Payson's books - wrapped nylon seizing line (soft string) tightly round the oar having copper stapled one end, worked along the string to tighten it up and stapled the other end with a copper brad. That's how it was when I launched (see opening photo). Later I cut some cheap polythene rope to length and made a circle joined by melting with a lighter flame. Just for security I smeared under the ring with instant epoxy and finally glooped the whole thing with a few coats of varnish. It has worked just fine for the last year.