Contact me at: rrcp@mts.net or by phone 204.878.2524

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Lots of stuff goes on in this shop, located in Lorette, Manitoba.

Primarily it's the building and repair of classic wood & canvas canoes, and the making of premium canoe paddles. I also do custom boat building, composite fabrication, and special projects. A growing passion of mine is the making of classical guitars, I'll post about that, too.


I want to be able to share with my clients the progress of their commissioned work. Later I started thinking that there might be other people who are interested in what goes on inside a wooden canoe shop operated by an artist and a recovering teacher.

If you have any questions please feel free to contact me by email, phone, or by post. My mailing address is:

Red River Canoe & Paddle
24249 River Rd
Lorette, Manitoba
Canada
R5K 0Z6




Monday 10 May 2010

Here's a peek at the April harvest of new paddles.

I have a particular interest in the paddles of the Voyageurs. There is not much information available, at least not enough to make authentic reproductions, so I have worked out something with seems right. I'll get into the details at some future time, but for now here are the results: 4 for a client, and two for me (because it was made already and there was a check in the grip and I was going to paint mine over anyway...)

RRC&P for Red River Canoe & Paddle. To enable non literate workers to identify where the cargo is supposed to arrive, the fur trade companies had a series of symbols for each trading post, or Factory-the head of which is called a Factor. The grasshopper represented Red River Settlement-present day Winnipeg. the Crocus is for Manitoba. I have no idea what the symbols actually looked at so I came up with these.

Here are April's paddles.

Including the completion of two Freestyle paddles that I had started last year on spec but never got around to completing. One is walnut and dark Red Cedar, the other is curly Maple and White Cedar. Here they are hanging to allow the epoxy coating the 2oz. fiberglass skins to cure.

Two of the paddles are wedding gifts from the grooms parents. The image of the geese is based upon a graphic that appeared upon the wedding invitation, the date is, well its THE date.

That Edmonton walnut paddle came out like this. The client commissioned it for his son, just because he and his wife are proud of him. The Walnut came from the family farm, so it has significant sentimental value. There is just enough to get one more paddle out of it, and that will be for the client's brother.

1 comment:

flatland family said...

gorgeous graphic on the walnut, doug. Nice ink. You could branch into the tattoo flash business, if you got tired of paddles, canoes and guitars.