Resurrecting broken kayak paddles for the C

[caverdan]

So a buddy gave me a couple broken bent shaft kayak paddles (Green River victims) that I'm thinking about working up for spares. Any opinions on bent shafts (or maybe "crank shafts") for C1 and OC1 paddling? Is this a waste of time or a common thing?

[Smurfwarrior]

I use a few crank shaft c1/oc1 specific paddles; Esquif/Ophion bent shaft and the Sawyer Venom paddle. I like em. I get more forward reach than with a straight shaft. Cut em to size, pop on a tgrip and have at it.

[hankrankin]

I have an old bent shaft riot kayak paddle that snapped and i use it as a playboat C blade(it's short), its a righty blade and I love it. I've also had a snapped AT bent shaft i got from a friend and i turned it to a Cblade, it was a lefty blade and I still liked it, probably wouldve been great for a lefty paddler. Either way, If you got a free paddle, its definately worth throwing a Tgrip on it. I've had great success with the Riot paddle, it is the old style blade they used that was concave on the bottom of the blade, it has good catch and the shape of that particular blade is concave to the side of the boat

[KNeal]

Either way, If you got a free paddle, its definately worth throwing a Tgrip on it.

Yep!

[Paddle Power]

go for it, it sounds like a great idea even if the paddle turns out to be a good spare or loaner.
Plus it might help you decide if you even want to get a new bent/crank shaft paddle.

[caverdan]

Thanks for the advice/reassurance. I'm going to work on the paddles this coming weekend. One of them looks a lot like the one hankrankin posted pics of, and is a righty, and the other is one of the werner performance core paddles with the thick blade. I think it is a lefty, but don't have it here to check.

Thanks again!

[caverdan]

Got some Tgrips made and put on. Went to the store to get parts to make grips out of dowels, then swung by the plumbing section to see if there was anything that could be easily and cheaply re-purposed. Found a PVC tee where the tee was for 1" and the crosspeice was for 3/4" also found caps the same size and a short peice of 3/4" pipe to join the caps to the tee. However, the tee and caps added up to about 5 1/2" which was too long, so I cut some off both ends of the fitting and the ends of both caps so the total length was 4". Then, before gluing the caps on, made a plug of minicel to put in the"tee" to keep my epoxy from running out once the paddle shaft was inserted into the 1" end of the fitting. Glued the paddle shaft inside the 1" end of the fitting with G-flex, let that cure for a few hours, then used PVC cement to glue the caps on with short peices of pipe, very short so the fitting sits flush to the end caps. I worried the fitting would get in the way of gripping, since you usually put the Tgrip on the -inside- of the shaft, but tried it out and it didn't feel too weird. Lastly, hit the whole assembly with some 30 grit sandpaper and sanded off all the stamps and logos from the PVC and smoothed the joints out. About $5 worth of parts for 2 grips. I think these paddles will work fine for spares, but will report back after I get 'em on the river. Weight of the finished paddle is about the same as my Werner Bandit.

[caverdan]

Well, the bends and cranks aren't really in the right spots to get any ergonomic benefit from them, but luckily, my default gripping width falls right on a straight part of the shaft, so they're not really in the way either. grips seem to work fine. Sorry to go into all the gory details on the grips in my earlier post,, but I searched the forum archives to see if someone had done grips that way before, and didn't find anything, so decided it might be useful to someone else to document it.

[KNeal]

Congratulations. You have two paddles when there used to be just one. Now THAT is economy!