Greenland Paddles > Making > Materials
Selecting materials
Western red cedar (Thuja plicata) is a species of Thuja, an evergreen coniferous tree in the cypress family Cupressaceae, which is native to the northwestern United States and southwestern Canada. It is not a true cedar, but it is the source of cedar shingles, a Canadian style of wooden cladding.Most manufacturers would recognise Western Red Cedar as the king of all woods for the construction of Greenland Paddles from a single length of timber, but it can be hard to source in some areas and perfectly good paddles can be made from Pine, Spruce or Douglas Fir.
Laminated paddles normally use a wider range of timbers and have tips made from cherry, walnut, maple, mahogany, oak and birch.
The following is an extract from Making a West Greenland Paddle by Chuck Holst
The Greenland Inuit made paddles from anything that washed up on shore. John Heath recommends pine, fir, spruce, or ash. George Gronseth recommends cedar because it is easy to work and has soft splinters. I prefer cedar for its light weight, though it does mar more easily than some other woods. Choose a two-by-four that is at least 1-1/2 inches by 3-1/2 inches in section and 7 to 8 feet in length. It should be seasoned and straight. Ask for clear finish-grade wood. In cedar, this would be Aor B-grade. However, not all lumber yards carry finishgrade lumber, so you might have to sort through stacks of standard construction-grade lumber to find something usable. Most lumber yards will let you do this, if you are reasonably neat about it.
The grain should be fine, straight, and more or less parallel to the sides of the plank. Knotholes should be small and few, if not absent entirely. Sometimes you can find a long enough clear section in a 12-foot twoby- four when you can’t find a clear 8-foot one. Expect to spend about eight dollars at your local lumber yard for an 8-foot standard-grade cedar two-by-four, or twice as much for a clear A-grade cedar two-by-four. more
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