Photograph: Werner Schmidt

Saturday, October 29, 2011

Pencil Oars As Trophy Blades

Yesterday, HTBS pointed out a very nice commemorative oar blade from the 1912 Head of the River Race on eBay. Earlier, HTBS has received e-mails from readers asking about ‘decorated oar blades’ and so called ‘pencil oars’, which are the narrow oar blades used in the 1950s, 1960s, and early 1970s. I remember rowing with these blades at my rowing club in Sweden, Malmö Roddklubb, which, I would like to point out, should not reflect on my age, instead my club’s policy that never throw out ANYTHING! I think that many rowing clubs around the world have the same policy – ‘you never know when these can come in handy…’.

Nowadays, the pencil oars are still used as ‘presentation blades’ (another name for the decorated oars), but fewer and fewer companies or people are doing this beautiful craft work. As a matter of fact, I could only find one company on the web that could offer you work like this, Trophy Blades in the U.K. Go to their web site by clicking here.

From now on you will find a link to the company on the right under 'Buy Rowing Stuff'.

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