From Jerry Dennis's book, page 101-103: The key to these remarkable paddles is the wood-both it's quality and the way it is handled. They are made of maple but, not just any maple. Hitchcock considered finding the right tree the biggest challenge to building his paddles. It must be very large at least two feet in diameter at the trunk, and it must grow in dense, sheltered woods and have no limbs for the first forty or fifty feet of height. The trick is to find a tree in Hitchcock's words, "that splits perfectly straight for six or seven feet. Even in a hardwood forest full of fine trees this is literally a one-in-a-thousand shot. From the stories I have heard from the old men (from whom he learned) there was only one man in the area who could look at a tree and tell that it would split straight, or, as they would say, "it was a paddle tree." They honestly believed these trees "growed to be made into paddles."
Hitchcock gets his trees from a pair of hardwood sawmills near Buffalo, NY. Occasionally, from the thousands of maple logs processed, a prime log is set aside to be made into veneer (something I know quite a bit about myself-MF). When a particularly fine one shows up, a foreman calls Hitchcock. If he likes what he sees, he buys the log and immediately splits it lengthwise, using wedges and a maul. If the log splits straight, he splits the halves into quarters, then takes them to an Amish sawmill, where they are rough-cut into planks an inch and a half thick.
At this point, the lumber differs dramatically from most used in paddle making. Ordinary boards are "flat sawn" from a log by running it lengthwise against a circular saw blade, slicing it into equal widths from the outside in, resulting in boards with flat grain. Hitchcocks's planks are "quarter-sawn" cut from the bark to the heart of the log. This is time consuming and difficult, because after each cut the single plank remains and the large remaining piece falls away-just the opposite of conventional milling - and the larger piece must be set up and adjusted again before each cut.The result is that the grain of the wood is never crossed during the sawing, and the plank ends up patterned with the tight, striated grain of the tree.
Each plank is air dried for a couple years, then the general shape of the paddle is cut out with a band saw. Hitchcock has a friend do this since he owns no power woodworking machinery. Once he gets the piece back he submerges it in water for a week to make it easier to work with and to make sure it does not split or check. All the remaining work is done entirely by hand with drawknife, spokes shave and sandpaper. Each paddle requires about 25 hours of work to carve and make ready for finishing.
The finish is the most time-consuming process of all, requiring an initial rubdown of linseed oil thinned with mineral spirits, followed by 15 - 20 coats of French polish (consisting of equal parts of shellac, linseed oil, and alcohol), and concluding with several coats of marine varnish, sanded and steel-wooled between coats. The finish is allowed to dry for a month, then hand rubbed first with pumice stone to remove imperfections and finally with rottenstone to bring out the gloss.
Mr. Dennis goes on to describe a paddle that is light as a feather, the color of a palomino and can hold the weight of a man sitting on it that weighs 120 pounds.
Frankly, I don't see myself doing this regardless that I am in the wood industry. Meanwhile, per some detective work, I have found a street address and have written a letter. Stay tuned . . . .