BYYB Forums

Hello Captains and Mates.  I havn't written for a while, just kept up with others who have. How is everyone ??.  Waiting , like me, for the weather to change to much warmer. All is well here in Reno. It is time to begin thinking about auxilary power and my first thoughts are to make it easy. Oarlocks and oars. My question at this time is how long should the oars be ?. I am thinking at least 7' any thoughts on this will be appreciated. I will be buying an electric motor in the future but not this spring. Hope all is well with everyone... Take care

Keith of the True North Fleet just started using oars last season.  He can tell what has worked for him once he sees this.

Well, the weekender isn't the handiest rowboat ever, but the oars and oarlocks work pretty well on mine. I mounted the oarlocks to the rubrail just aft of where the splash coaming tapers down to deck level. I used a board sitting athwart the bench seats just aft of the cabin bulkhead and row facing aft. The boat steers better if you use the rudder although I suppose you could row it in a huge circle by rowing on one side. I kind of like it actually. My oars are the common length, I guess there is a "standard" oar length, like the cheap $20 ones from the hardware store? I dunno. The longer the better, really. It's good exercise. I keep the oars bungeed to the aft stays when I'm not using them. It was Ryerson's idea. You need to be creative to find a place to stash something like an oar on a little boat.

In conclusion, I like rowing the weekender. You certainly won't win any races, though, and you won't be able to go very fast in any kind of wind. Of course, if there's any kind of wind, why would you be rowing? Oh yeah, and rowing up to the dock and forgetting to ship the dockside oar can be kind of embarrassing.

http://www.shawandtenney.com/wooden-rowing-oars.htm

Good place to store them while underway?  Velcro straps to the boom.   The boom can use the extra weight and they are out of the way.  Blades forward.  Saw a couple nifty little "J" hooks that would fit them quite well and allow you to orient them so there is less chaffing near the foot of the sail.

The pair I have worked out to a little over 8' in length for the Weekender ;D

If you want to make your own.  ???

http://marina.fortunecity.com/breakwater...NG%202001B

(03-20-2009, 11:52 AM)Barry Pyeatt link Wrote: [ -> ]The pair I have worked out to a little over 8' in length for the Weekender ;D

Well, I just paddled my weekender 8 miles. Let me tell you, paddling might get you where you're going eventually but doing it for 6 hours aint the way to get there. All that work because the crew (me) forgot to hook the negative terminal up on the second battery and there wasn't enough juice to get home when the wind died. I'll flog the crew for that later but in the mean time, I've ordered oarlocks from duckworks and don't plan on ever paddling the boat again.

My question is, are you happy with your 8 foot oars? Do you wish you had longer or shorter oars? I'm less concerned with storage. I'm going to buy collapsible metal oars.

I just made a set of oars for my boat.  I am building the Triad so it is a bit smaller then a weekended.  The Triad has a 5'2" beam and the weekender is 6 foot but you need to use the beam where the oarlocks are located.  There are two formula for determining oar length.  In my case one formula indicated 129" and the other indicated  117".  I kind of averaged te two together and decided that 10 foot was pretty close.  That seemed long to me so I climbed in the boat and simulated rowing with two 10 foot sticks of wood I had and the 10 foot seemed perfect.  My boat is still in the shop being sanded for painting so simulating is as close to rowing as I can get currently.  The oars were relatively easy to make.  I glued them up from some hemlock I had in the shop and sanded them round.  There are pictures on another post I made about oar questions I have.

The two formula for determining oar length are:

From a Paul Riccelli post http://byyb.org/forum/index.php?topic=2204.0

"To get an accurate measure of oar length, double the beam of the boat at the location you plan on having the locks, then add the length of an out stretched hand (tip of thumb to tip of pinky) if you're over 5' 10" and subtract the same distance if you're under 5' 7". This is the over all length of the oar.'

From http://www.shawandtenney.com/wooden-rowing-oars.htm

- Inboard length of the loom equals ½ the span between the oarlocks + 2"
- Total length of oar equals 1/7 of inboard length multiplied by 25
- Leverage Ratio is 7:18
- Distance from the center of leather to end of grip equals 7/25 of the total length of the oar

I have read posts where other members have used shorter oars and think they work well but thought I would use the formual as guidelines.  The oars are not very heavy, even at 10 feet, and will take up about the same room when stored attached to the bottom of the boom.  I used a small power plane to make the shafts octogon then a belt sander with 40 grit to rough them round and rough in the blade shapes.  Then I used a palm sander with 40 grit to finish rounding and blade shaping.  I just finish hand sanding with 120 and then 220 and they are delightfully smooth and suprisingly round for just eyeballing the curve.  Good luck and don't get intimidated but the ugliness of the original glue up or the piles of wood chips and dust that appear.  Just go zen and mantra "I sand therefore I am" or whistle or hum a good tune.

Using my formula you get 11' 5" (at Weekender's maximum beam, which probably isn't where the oars will go) for an average height person, using the other formula you get 11' 4" so you decide which math you like.

If any one would like a nice way to make a set of Octagonal, hollow core birds mouth spoon bladed oars, let me know.  I got a magazine article from the author.  Joel Herzel,  he figured out how to make a set and was kind enough to send me the article.  When I first made mine for my Whitehall, the were approximately 10'6"  I ended up cutting them down to about 9' on one pair and 9"6" on the other pair.

Here is a link to the pictues of the building process.  If you want the directions and specs, email me direct.

http://sports.webshots.com/album/366127989OQvvXQ

Tom...







The last picture shows them after I cut them down and started to drill them out for a new handle.  Pretty easy to do.

Nice looking oars.  I made a pair about a week ago but didn't spoon them.  I think they will work just fine and I won't have to work as hard pulling them.  Speed while rowing is not something I care about as long as there is forwaerd progress.  I am curious as to how much weight difference the birdsmouth hollow cores save over solid shafts on something that small but a pound is a pound and less weight means less energy to move when hoisting them in and out of the boat or trying to get them from their stored spot to the oarlocks.

Most birdsmouth columns are based on percentage of diameter, for stave thickness. Typical thickness for birdsmouth is 20%, which means you'll save 55% to 65% over the weight of a solid column of the same diameter. The 10% difference is a result of the type of stave layout (symmetric or asymmetric), and the material removed during rounding.

If you'd like an octagonal column, then using the symmetric stave layout saves a lot of work. If rounding the column down, the asymmetric arrangement will be slightly lighter. The asymmetric stave layout is shown in the picture above.