December was a busy time, with a couple of extra jobs needing to be done for a specific date.

Normally a little bit of time pressure is fine, but there was an additional complication to this cluster of jobs. They were all interrelated to such an extent that I had to be VERY careful to remember which client I was talking to!

It started simply enough, with a request from the members of a club squad (we’ll call him X!) for a special wedding gift for the groom, one of their squad mates. Then shortly afterwards things started to get busy when the Groom himself called and asked for a couple of blades to be painted, one each as gifts for his wife-to-be and for his best man.

Cue a bit of panic from Squad Mate X: “The groom is talking about a blade you are painting for him!” No need to worry, as I explained that the Groom was organising extra ones and that the surprise of the initial gift was not ruined. Squad Mate X was now working out how best present the first blade without clashing at the Reception with the presentation of the Groom’s gifts. All good.

Things progressed well (with various subterfuge in the background) until the day before the wedding when I got a confused note from another member of the rowing squad…

“I’ve been asked by the Best Man to help him with some blades, but this is not what I thought the squad had organised. Do you know what is going on?”

It seems the Best Man was organising a set of blades for a guard of honour after the ceremony (half from the groom’s club, half from the bride’s), but the squad rower had thought it was something to do with the painted blade.

I dealt with this completely calmly (not really) and managed to convey the basics along the lines of “don’t tell the Best Man, the Groom, or anyone else anything about any blades until you talk to ‘X’…”

Luckily, Squad Mate X was on the ball and managed to not only transport all the blades, but get them into the right hands, and keep the element of surprise for everyone.

And so the fairy tale wedding came off without a hitch, everyone got their blades, and they all lived happily ever after.

And I needed a strong drink!

Congratulations Basil and Jennie

I had cause to visit the workshop of the oar maker J Sutton, one of the best known names in timber oars. There would be few rowers over 20 years old in the UK who hadn’t used a Sutton blade at least once. The company evolved the timber oar with new technologies (including use of carbon fibre in the ‘CFR’ range) right into the 1990s when one might have thought the timber oar long dead. Indeed, in my previous job in Hong Kong I was surprised to learn that the club had ordered a quad scull set of blades as late as the mid-1990s! One of the old Captains was a bit of a purist!

The company did move into full composite construction for oars, but whilst the timber oars are still being made, the Sutton branded carbon oars are now discontinued. Jerry Sutton has also now retired, but the company lives on in the hands of Mark Stanley and the oars are now built alongside assorted vintage timber boats being restored and repaired in the workshops at Romney Lock, Windsor.

Although most of the current production is for coastal gigs and larger rowing barges, you can still order traditional racing oars for sweep and scull. It is even possible to order ‘trophy’ oars (solid) and blade-only for presentation. If you had wondered where the large oars for Her Majesty’s barge ‘Gloriana’ were made; wonder no more!

I was lucky to meet master craftsman Peter Martin during my visit. He went to work at age 14, beginning his career with oars in 1963 at Aylings. Many younger readers will remember Aylings as a builder of racing boats, but the company had started as an oar maker.

Whilst looking around it was interesting to see a few oars in various stages of production. Peter talked me through a few of the stages that could be seen.

Frames standing against wall

Here are some of the base frames for the oars. The shafts are hollow for most of the outboard length, becoming solid for the blade and also for the sleeve and handle.

With the addition of a back strap and top cap, the shaft takes on the box-girder shape that you might see if you have ever sawn an oar in half. The frame and most of the oar is Spruce, but the stiffer back strap is Ash (old Australian oars used Ironbark, a type of Eucalypt).

Blades: ‘blanks’ awaiting attention, the tip clearly seen with the grain at right angles to the grain on the blade.

The blade area is built up to the correct width with extra timber and an Ash tip is fixed across the end to provide strength. These are the ‘blanks’ ready for shaping. After a rough cut from a template, the work quickly becomes very hands-on and skilled.

(L) A roughed out blade, face down. (R) A partially complete blade beside a finished example.

Over the years, each craftsman buys and builds the assorted tools needed for the job. Peter’s collection of planes is a perfect example. The most dramatically shaped convex plane has been custom made to suit the job.

Tools of the trade – hand made planes.

After extensive shaping, then sanding, each oar is varnished and fitted out. Once completed, they await only the call of the coxswain for rowing to commence.

You can visit Sutton Oars at www.suttonblades.co.uk

An interesting little story about some old oars has popped up on the “Hear the Boat Sing” blog.

With the success of a stage play about  J H Clasper (“Hadaway Harry”), an interesting discovery of some old oars has been made.

More at https://heartheboatsing.com/2017/02/17/hadaway-harrys-oars-found/

Quite often a client will ask for a full length oar to be sectioned. This can help with shipping and storage, or it could simply offer more options for display if space is limited at the current time.

The common way to achieve this is to install a plug of some type in to the oar shaft. Most timber oars are actually hollow (unless you have a very old one!) and you can fashion some timber to match this space. Modern carbon fibre oars are simple tubes and a tapered round plug is easily shaped.

Most of the time the cavity is a regular shape. The Sutton oars (very common in the UK) have a nice neat square hole that makes creating a section join quite easy. Some of the common Australian oars (Croker and Sykes) had a curved arch shaped cavity due to their method of construction (two matched halves with a back strap instead of the Sutton 4-sided box).

Here is an example of one join:

However, what do you do when you saw an old oar in half and you are presented with this?

There is a central rib, presumably designed to provide stiffness, that divides the cavity. This was going to make work a bit more difficult. By chance I met an old oar maker after this who had started work at Aylings in 1963 (as a 14 year old) and remembered this old design well (right down to the leather sleeve and cast aluminium button).

Using two thin strips, I fashioned up some ‘D’ shapes and repeatedly trial fit them until all was well. Once I was happy I bonded the pieces into the handle end. The finished result isn’t as neat as the much simpler Sutton example above, but has come together rather well.

I hope the customer is pleased when he gets it!