How To Customize Your Paddle
About Style, Length, Feather, Aesthetics...What does it take to get a paddle custom built for you? There are some aesthetic and structural choices- beyond just the choice of a blade design.
Blade Design
Length
Feather
Heavy Duty?
Aesthetics
And then there is a choice of the bang strip- the outermost piece of wood in the blade. It supports the edging so it has to be dense. Most of the bang strips get covered with the veneer tips- but you can still see them a little bit and it’s a good place to use showy woods like Curly Maple, Chestnut, Curly Sassafras, Aspen, golden Osage Orange, or Cherry.
Veneers
Single Blade
RivrStyx are traditionally custom sized for the grip areas based on a tracing of your hand or any other specific measurement or requests you might have.
These are your basic choices. You might want to start by deciding how heavy duty you want the paddle or how much lightness is an important quality you want. You can base your bladewood choices on that and then choose the veneers for pretty much aesthetic reasons.