Trying out the Tailwind changed my course with paddles; I now paddle almost exclusively with wooden paddles. The Tailwind has pulled me through a 23-mile day at the end of a one-week trip, splashed through several days of surfing 3- to 5-foot beach breakers, and even bounced down a few Class II and III river runs. Its buoyant blade boosted my roll after many surfing errors, and braced me up on the river with reassuring authority. This less-than-gentle use has left it with a few scratches in the finish and scuffs on the edges, but it needs only a few minutes with sandpaper and a paintbrush to be restored to near-new condition.

Today, as kayaking booms in popularity, there are niches for all types of paddles. Among Euro-style blade paddles, the allure of wood remains. Fiberglass is common, and while carbon fiber has cachet, it lacks the visual beauty of natural wood. Wood appeals by feel and sound as well, with a warm surface under the hand and a mellow tone when the paddle touches a non-liquid surface.

Wood comes in a bewildering variety of species, each with unique properties. Woods are loosely divided into hardwoods and softwoods, but this division is simply based on whether the tree is a broadleaf or a conifer. While some hardwoods, such as oak or hickory, are very hard and strong, and some softwoods, such as red or white cedar, are rather soft and weak, this classification can be misleading. Long-leaf pine and Douglas fir, for example, though classified as softwoods, are stronger and harder than alder and the poplars, which are hardwoods. In addition, properties such as strength and stiffness vary from species to species. Ash and spruce are rather stiff for their weight, so they are frequently used in paddle shafts if maximum stiffness is desired, while red cedar might be used if a very light and more flexible shaft is the goal.

The strength of a wooden paddle depends on many factors, among them, how much and what type of wood is used, and in what direction it will be stressed. Since wood has a comparatively low density—wood floats, fiberglass sinks—a greater volume of it can be used to good advantage in paddles: A thick, flat piece of wood is much stiffer than a thin, flat piece of fiberglass of the same weight. Most glass paddle blades may achieve stiffness through their curved shapes, but the result is a blade that is not as buoyant and that doesn’t produce as much lift during sculling or rolling as a smoothly sculpted wooden blade.

Wood is not a uniform material. It is a naturally occurring composite and, like many synthetic composites, its strengths differ in various directions. Generally, wood is strongest in tension, somewhat less strong in compression, and rather weak in shear or when split along the grain. A hollow paddle shaft laminated from parallel strips of wood may be stiffer out on the water than a tube of woven fiberglass of the same weight, but it is much more easily damaged if crushed—say, when stepped on in a dark campsite. This weakness is somewhat offset by taking advantage of the lower density of wood by using it in greater thickness: a solid laminate can be used for greater resistance to damage with only a moderate weight penalty.

Beyond the many variables of wood as a material for engineering, the differing colors and grain patterns of woods make paddle design as much an art as a science.