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Title
Lightning Paddles - Home Page
Description
Lightning Paddles' roots go back to the early to mid 1970s when a a guy in Portland, Oregon -- a Jr. High School shop teacher and kayaker named Bob Collmer -- made a wooden white water kayak paddle for himself. He then made a couple more for Andy, a son competing in white water kayak slalom racing for spots on the U.S. National team against other Pacific NW paddlers like Werner Furrer Jr., Chuck Stanley, and Steve U'Ren. That's a picture of Bob over there to the left, as he looked when still making paddles. Well, okay, maybe he didn't wear that tie much when in his workshop.
After producing just a few paddles in wood, Bob decided he might be able to get lighter, stronger ones with a lot less work by using an aluminum shaft and fiberglass blades. He tried that that construction method, even though it meant flat blades, rather than the curved ones he preferred. The new "synthetic" construction worked so well that he formed a small company, Collmer Specialties, in the late 1970s. Bob was kept busy in his garage, crafting paddles in his spare time. His only distribution channel was retail, via word of mouth through the Oregon Kayak & Canoe Club (OKCC), the local Portland area whitewater kayak club.
About 1980, Bob figured out how to make fiberglass shaft work so that he could build the more efficient curved blades he liked, still utilize the blade construction method that made his paddles really tough, and also keep them very light. Production of the aluminum shafted paddles slowed down, and the all-fiberglass model rapidly replaced them. He started making sea kayak paddles in the early 1980s, selling most of them through a couple of dealers up in Seattle. There, the protected waters of Puget Sound were quickly becoming the first of the best sea kayak touring areas in the world.
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