Lesson learned

I used to use the heavy, clunky, SINKING carbon fibre shaft oars with the floating blades.  When I purchased my first ADIPOSE flow skiff, I got my first pair of Sawyer square top Shoal cuts.  I was used to the carbon and plastic type oars which required very little to no maintenance.  I had left my sawyers fall into disrepair. It took 7 years, but they needed some love badly.  

This June I set into getting these babies back in shape.   It was quite a process.  I had to sand and refinish the square top part, fill in some areas where the wood had rotted and fallen out in the blade, reattach the material the blades were covered in, and fix the composite wrap stuff that was bordering the whole thing and give them a coat of shiny.  Forgive me for not using all the proper names and terms.  I would hate to have someone think that I am pretending to know how to actually repair these things properly.  I wish I’d have taken some before pictures the repair.

Being busy between a couple different seasons and venues, I was fixing them today to use tomorrow sort of deal. I didn’t necessarily have the time to do as good a job on the oars as maybe should have or could have.

All in all for a rush job it didn’t go so badly.  I learned a valuable lesson from it tho, and that would be never to let them get this bad.  Oars aren’t cheap, and with the American dollar being what it is now It would sting a little to buy a new pair. Learn from my mistakes . . . . Don’t let them get so far gone.

L