Shipping Their Oars

A demonstration of wooden oar making at the 2011 Rowing History Forum.

Tim Koch writes:

There have been two recent HTBS postings on wooden oar and scull making, F. Collar - Oarmaker  and Ian Marriott: Memories of Collar and Cousins. Here is a third from the Pathe film archives, a wonderful newsreel made at an Eton boat builders and oar and scull makers in 1950.

BOAT BUILDING

The clipped and assured British accent of the narrator and the upbeat tone of the commentary hides the sad state that much of British manufacturing was in at the time, just five years after the end of the Second World War. The country was heavily in debt, its infrastructure and manufacturing base was worn out and it was in the process of giving up its Empire. Though few may have admitted it, Britain was unsure of its place in the post war world. For a long time many people hung onto the idea that ‘British craftsmanship’ would be enough to beat off foreign rivals, an idea even more ludicrous when these undoubted skills were put to making the same products that they had done for years – with no thought of innovation. The result is that today we have a few people like Collars who make a high quality product for a ‘niche market’ but we no longer dominate the ‘mass market’ at home or abroad. This cannot be blamed on cheaper foreign labour as the three most popular makes of racing oar today are manufactured in first world countries where labour costs are high.

Going afloat at the 2014 Head of the River Race in London. All the oars shown are Concept2. The boat is German but that is another story.

Concept2 (Dreissigacker) dominate the world racing oar market today and I presume that they are made in the USA. Their website is not explicit about this but their headquarters is in Morrisville, Vermont, and they say that ‘factory tours are available’.

Probably the second most popular oar is made by Crocker in Australia. Their website says:

Owned and made in Australia since 1962, Croker Oars resides on the banks of the beautiful Manning River in coastal New South Wales. Today Croker Oars manufacture quality carbon composite sculling, rowing, surf, ocean rowing and timber sweep oars for surf boats as well as other quality products for the rowing world.

Empacher also make racing oars and sculls but my subjective view is that they are not very widely used. This seems strange considering the high regard that their boats are held in. Possibly they are overpriced and badly marketed – but so are their boats.

I found this online which claims that the blades among medalists at Beijing 2008 were approximately 64% Concept, 29% Croker and 7% Empacher. Concept claim that 69% of medalists at London 2012 used their oars.

Returning to wooden oars, some time ago I paid a very brief visit to Jerry Sutton Traditional Oar and Scull Makers in Windsor. Interestingly, they told me that a big and growing part of their business is making wooden Macon oars for the thriving sport of Cornish Gig Racing (which uses only wooden oars and wooden boats for racing). Sutton’s also make barge poles – work which some people will not touch.

Cornish Gig oars.

Ian Marriott: Memories of Collar and Cousins

After having run the entry about oar markers Collar and Cousins on 2 May, HTBS received an interesting e-mail from Ian Marriott (on the right), sculling coach at the Dragon school in Oxford.

Ian writes:

I loved the video about F Collar and their foreman Ron Cousins, which brought back some wonderful memories.

The small blade presented to the Oxfordshire museum was finished in my club, Abingdon Rowing Club (ARC) colours of yellow and green. Ron was an active member of ARC and at one time its captain.

I used Collar blades made by Ron to row in a coxed pair at two World Junior Rowing Championships. We were told that 12 of the best blanks had been selected for an order for the New Zealand national team 8 (eight blades plus two spares) and that we had the best two, the New Zealanders got the others!

Timber selection was critical for making high quality oars and masts. Collars would buy a whole standard of high grade timber, select the best 10% for their use then sell the remainder on for other carpentry uses. I needed some good quality timber for the keel and longerons of a sculling boat I was building and Ron sourced me 28 ft lengths of ½ by ½ and 1 by ½ cut from one piece of timber without joints.

Having Ron at the club allowed us to experiment with blade shapes. We ended up rowing in the 2+ with macons about 4 inches wider than normal, with another set slightly narrower for head winds/rough water. Same area as modern big blades, but 20 years earlier. Any changes in blade shape Ron would do and return immaculately varnished a few days later.

Later I used two pairs of Ron Cousins crafted Collar sculls (one pair of which I still have and use) to get to the semi-finals of the Diamonds.

I was fortunate to have Ron show me how to carry out blade repairs, and went to the works to see my own sculls being made. I asked how I could buy the curved wooden planes used to hollow out the blade cheeks and Ron informed me that all his curved faced planes, including the steel blades were hand crafted by the oar makers as part of their apprenticeship. Watching Ron rough out the loom shape by eye with a 12 inch spokeshave was amazing, the sound of razor sharp steel on wood was almost musical.

I now work as a sculling coach at the Dragon school in Oxford. We have found a unique pair of wooden F Collar racing sculls in the back of the boathouse. They are longer than standard and the end of the shaft is laminated into about a 20 degree curve (towards the stern) and carries a small triangular plywood blade. They must be of late manufacture as they have what appears to be a carbon insert at the front. Looking at the profile I am guessing they are designed to exploit the aerofoil lift of the blades at the catch.

One of Collars former employees is now the St Johns College boatman, so I plan to see him to make further enquires. If I find anything of interest I will let you know. I am also planning an outing with them but waiting till the water gets a bit warmer!

Thanks for finding this video!

Thank you, Ian, for your interesting feed-back.

F. Collar ~ Oarmaker

On the cover of the May 2012 issue of Rowing & Regatta, British Rowing's publication, 'Bert' and 'Dickie' were holding sculls made by the oarmaker Collars for the film about the two Olympian champions Bert Bushnell and Dickie Burnell.

Yesterday, Greg Denieffe made a nice find on YouTube, a film about the oar and scull making business F. Collar in Oxfordshire. Frank Collar, whose father and grandfather had been oarmakers, decided in 1932 to leave his accounting work to start building oars and sculls in Oxford, and soon his father joined him. The company still exists today, now also making masts for yachts. Below is the fine film about two museum volunteers who set out to find more information about Frank Collar and Ron Cousins, who joined Collar in the oarmaking business. Enjoy!

Make Your Own Oars

Pat Mahon of Great Lakes Boat Building School talking about how to make your own oars.

Today, at the last day of the WoodenBoat Show at Mystic Seaport, I attended a so called Expert Skills Demonstration at the Henry B. duPont Preservation Shipyard. Close to noon, Pat Mahon of the Great Lakes Boat Building School (GLBB), located in Les Cheneaux Islands of the Eastern Upper Peninsula of Michigan, was giving a demonstration on how to make oars.

Boat builders' math it not really the same kind of math they taught us at school.

Lines drawn on the loom indicating what you need to shave off to eventually making the oar round. This wood for this oar is yellow cedar.

The kind of oars they are making at GLBB are not the oars used for racing shells, they are more the type you use in a skiff and a dinghy. Good wood for this oar is for example ash, fir, spruce or yellow cedar. Pat, who is a good teacher, explained how to ‘measure’ out the different parts of the oar: the handle, the loom (where the closes part to the handle can be square as that’s the counterpart which balance the oar), neck, shoulder, blade and tip. The boat builders in the olden days – and I am now talking about builders more than 1,000 years ago –  knew that the important part in oar making is to figure out the proportions, not the exact measurements; the most important tool you use in making an oar is your eyes.

Make sure that the oar is fasten when you are working with the tools as you will be needing both hands.

To cut out the piece that will be your oar, you need a band saw. After that, you only need a few tools like a pencil, ruler, drawknife, plane, spokeshave and a patternmaker rasp. Pat showed how easy it was to use these tools – or, should I say, it looked so easy when he did it.

The tools that you need to make your oars: from the bottom, drawknife, plane, spokeshave, ruler and rasp.

I appreciate a good craftman’s work. Pat taught me a good lesson during the one hour session that will save me both time and money. As much as I wish I had the skill and knowledge, and maybe the guts, to make my own oars for my little 10-foot dinghy, alas, I now understand that I do not posses these skills – I just have to buy the bloody oars.

Up the Creek with an Oar

In the September issue of Down East, which calls itself ‘The Magazine of Maine’, there is a nice little article about the old oar and paddle making company Shaw & Tenney in Orono, Maine. The company was founded in 1858 and today has seven workers who hand-make all the products: oars, paddles, masts, spars, flag poles, and parts for canoes, kayaks and Adirondack guide boats, etc.

I had, of course, heard about the company before, but it was first when I began looking around for a pair of sculls that I spent some time on Shaw & Tenney’s website – lovely stuff. I did not buy a set of sculls from the company this time as, in a round about way, I came across some used sculls.

While the company sells mainly oars and paddles to be used on an outing, so to say, they have also started to sell ‘engraved paddles’. One of the latest ones of this kind was actually sold to Paul McCartney’s children who wanted to order an engraved paddle for their father for his birthday. Shaw & Tenney has also sold props to different films, Virginia M. Wright writes in her article in Down East.

One of the problems for a small company as Shaw & Tenney, the article tells us, is that the company does not have a large inventory, as it hand-crafts oars and paddles more or less ‘on demand’. One big order for the company was when another Maine based company, L.L. Bean, ordered 500 paddles because of the company’s 100-year anniversary this year.

If you are looking for a first-class, handcrafted pair of sculls for your boat, Shaw & Tenney is probably the company for you! Here is a video from the company:



The photograph on top is from Shaw & Tenney's website.