I've made some progress on the oars now so thought I'd update the process. I managed to buy a nice quarter-cut length of Douglas Fir to replace the useless plank that was intended for the job and I've now cut out the blanks for both sets of oars. Pete Culler recommends building spoon bladed oars from two lengths of 150 x 25 glued together, but I've had to go for 50 x 50 section gluing 'wings' to the ends of the main stock to form the blades. The main reason for this is that at present I don't have a bandsaw and so I'm having to cut the curves with a jigsaw and so am limited to the width I can cut through. Actually, I now have two jigsaws - its just that one has blown up doing this job and I've had to pop out today to buy a replacement ... unexpected costs in boat building! So the first photo shows the rough blanks of Kauri stock guied up and the second shows the two Douglas Fir oars taking shape - not finished yet but the lower of the two is starting to look the part and I'm pleased with the way they're taking shape...