Push-pole plans?

[chainpuller]

Looking for plans/ideas for constructing a 16' push-pole out of wood. Must be strong, light, flexible. Thanks for any help.

[Wild Dingo]

mmmmm a chainpuller looking for plans for a push pole?

Okay I will bite... :rolleyes:

Not brain surgury is my guess... sorta like go find a nice long length of timber some good Jarrah would do the trick... nice and straight members?!... scape all the bark and crud offun it then put both ends into a clamp thats been clamped to the work bench or between several sawhorses along its length depending on its length of course... okay now get a length of sandpaper heavy grit to start er off with then wrap that sucker around the naked pole and go for your clacker!!... DONT STOP!!! keep goin till its pretty smooth then go down a step with the sanpaper grit and wrap it around the pole again and go like the hammers of crap... DONT STOP!!!... then go down again to a smoother grit and do all the above all over again and keep doing it till the said push pole it smooth as a babys bum... and bobs yer uncle!!! :rolleyes:

See no brainstrain! no worries and your welcome :cool:

Now you just watch some smartarse come in and say "but Dingo yer galah he wants to get some plans for a push pole boat"... yeaaaa Shane does it again!!! tongue.gif if not then see above. :D :cool:

Take it easy
Shane

[ishmael]

Bamboo

[htom]

A bird's-mouth spar would be more work, and more likely to be stolen.

[Mike Field]

Hardwood's likely to be too heavy. I'd use bamboo, as Jack says, or oregon. Put a foot about 9" square on the bottom, preferably working on a fore-and-aft hinge. Otherwise the first time you're poling in mud you're likely to lose the pole altogether (or you'll stay attached to the pole but lose the boat, which is even worse.) Also put a flat rounded cap on the upper end that you can lean your shoulder against for pushing.

[Wild Dingo]

Gawd!!! :eek: ...Yer mean I was flamin well right? HA!!! :D

I was jokin about the Jarrah mate luggin a 16ft length of that stuff in the thickness you want would seriassly strain the back...

Take it easy
Shane

[Gordy]

Sorry, aluminum is the way to go.

I have a six sided colapsable shaft and a store-bought 'ducks foot' that snaps on the end. The whole thing stows out of the way the 99% of the time when I'm not using.

A step up in price is a one piece fiberglass pole pointed on one end and 'Y'ed at the other. The pointed end is for 'poleing out'. Stick the thing in the mud to keep the boat in place. Often is much more convenient than using an anchor in two feet of water and then pulling in all that mud.

I've had a wooden pole and it worked. It was much shorter than you want, and to make one 16 feet would make it pretty heavy. Mine was a closet pole of straight-grain fir. Fir is quite strong but can splinter badly.

I hadn't thought of bamboo. I don't see any reason why it wouldn't work nicely. It would certainly look nicer than my aluminum one.

It wouldn't stow as easily.

Gordy...(It got down to the upper 40's here in Orlando last night!)

I start out slow...then taper off.

[Ian McColgin]

When I was doing a lot of gunkholing I made the Cadalac of push poles that was for easing over shoals and up creeks. It was 16' long, which let me work my Narasketuk and later the Electra in depths up to about 10'. Generally that was enough depth.

Weight just did not matter as it mostly goes into the mud. This one was almost 3" diameter but in use felt light enough since much of it stayed in the water.

It had a little spike on the end that pierced a plywood disc about 1' diamerter to act like the basket on a ski pole. The hole was off center and a line ran from the nearest to the pole part of the rim up the pole.

The purpose of that, besides keeping the disc from falling off, was to allow the disc to come parallel to the pole on lifting both to ease it out of the mud and to make it's passage through the water less taxing. The bit of string would ensure that the disc ended up normal to the pole when it was set.

G'luck

[Ben Fuller]

Spruce used to be the material of choice for push poles; I also have used fir. What happens on the muddy end sometimes depends on your bottom. For relatively hard mud or sand or marsh rail bird gunners used to favor a three pronged crows foot. Drawing are in collections like Chesapeake Bay Maritime and Mystic in some of the gunning boats. Hinged flaps were often used when the bottom was real soft. I have also seen blade like affairs on the bottom when the pole was also used as a paddle. And iron tips in rock. No reason that bamboo should not work as well, but for some reason it was not used in this country.

[Bill Perkins]

Ian I'm always interested in stratagies for poling in soft mud , we've got some world class glop in the marshes of the Georgia coast. Would you elaborate ? " The hole ( for the spike ? ) was off center ( how much ? ) and a line ran from the nearest ( nearest part of the rim to the spike ? )to the pole part of the rim up the pole."

[Wild Dingo]

Ian... excuse me Aussie igorans mate but what exahatakaly is a...

"Narasketuk" ??

Take it easy
Shane

[Ian McColgin]

I don't know that anything will work on soft glop. Anyway, the one I made lo those many years ago was before I'd heard of the sorta pronged folding unit mentioned above, which I think is perfect for sand and dense mud.

So the disc bit:

The hole that the spike pierces needs to be big enough that the disc and fold almost flat to the pole but not so big that the pole itself goes through the hole. You can easily get too elaborate with this, but if the hole is gouged out a bit from both directions - like a shallow V - maybe think of the disc as looked at from the rim and verticle using available type symbols like >< but shallow slope there should be enough flex in the whole system that the disc can tilt about 70 degrees. A control string from the nearest part of the rim to the top of the pole will keep the thing from slipping off and will keep the disc from flopping the wrong way when pushing though the water.

The spike needs to be long enough that no matter how much flop develops when the pole is lifted and the disc tilts, the disc cannot simply slip off. If you have the disc's control string run right to the top of the pole, you can shorten up on that by hand, which also helps.

The hole is off-set so that the water or mud pressure will cause the larger area to drag, starting the tilt. This really helps in breaking the disc out of the mud - no way you can pull it straight up - and it's easier to move through the water as well. Another reason for bringing the control like to the top of the pole is that you can hold the disc feathered against the pole.

When you plunge the pole down, the disc will naturally want to tilt the other way but the control line leading down to the nearest point on the rim to the whole will stop it when the disc is about normal to the pole.

How big a disc? I never did any scientific research on this as it happened that the foot diameter disc worked for where I was. I've no clue how much smaller might have worked well enough or how much larger might have been even better.

How far off-set? Again, the first one worked well enough so i don't have a proper answer. If memory serves, it was about 1/2 a radius from the true center. Maybe a little closer to center.

It's been about 40 years since I used the thing and the days then were sunnier, the flies bit less hard and I didn't need shoes for anything from June to September.

Mother was always after me to wear something around the horses and was sure I'd get worms, but it was just horses so I didn't, but I would wear my boots if the day's ride involved a saddle.

Now I'm off on a reverie about bareback riding with only cut-offs and splashing into the creek with the cute little girl and her horse who lived just down the way . . . Nothing like the memory of a swim with two horses, five goldens and first true love on a hot summer morning.

We all but lived in the marsh those summers, mid day being for slithering about by boat looking for new free diving adventures catching founders and crabs and various mollusks - anything we could grab by hand - for the evening bonfire cookout with all our families. . .

Thought for improvement - I never tried this, but were I to make a new push pole, I might try hinging the disc to the pole. That would allow it to fold flatter. The disadvantage is that it makes the disc pretty permanent to the pole. For stowage on the boat, it was nice to slip the disc off. Who knows?

[DustMight]

I Have a 20ft.Celebrity that needed some method of propulsion. The quick and easy answer for me was a trip to the athletic Dept. at the local college, they normally have older pole vault poles that get discarded now and then. They are good fiberglass about 16 ft.with a ball bedded on the end and they are light weight to boot.
It worked great for me.

[Wild Dingo]

I dont think you saw my small post up there so I will generously repeat it for you Ian... :rolleyes:


Originally posted by Wild Dingo:
Ian... excuse me Aussie igorans mate but what exahatakaly is a...

"Narasketuk" ??

Take it easy
Shanepictures information... eeerrr please? ;)

Take it easy
Shane

[Ian McColgin]

The Narasketuk is a South Shore of Long Island sail boat. Seems to me Loon was looking at that, among other things. Nice pix in that thread.

It made about the best gunkhole boat as its board up depth is almost nothing and it has nice decks for walking about pushing the pole.

[Donn]

Shane...here's the Narrasketuck YC link:

http://members.tripod.com/NarrasketuckYC/fleet.html

It's about a quarter mile to my west.

[Bruce Hooke]

I don't know as much about poling over a soft, muddy bottom; but for poling canoes in moving water there are some details of pole geometry that can be important to making the pole work well. There is a detailed description in Beyond the Paddle by Garrett Conover, which is, I believe, out of print, but should be available used.

[Ben Fuller]

There is another trick to soft bottom poling that I learned in Norfolk ( UK) Coot Club land. There they call the pushpoles quants. I can't remember what the dirty end looked like but I know that when you went to pull it out giving it a twist helped to unstick things. For Delaware push pole details see the various Delaware ducker drawings that are around. Gunners often used them as decoy retrival tools by cutting a notch in one of the toes of the crows foot, and a groove in the pole to tell them where it was. Then you could use it as a boat hook. On a larger boat poles are sometimes used as sounding poles or Florida sextants. It is nice to put a cap or knob on the end of one so you can feel it when you get to the end. I have a shoulder cut in mine as it also serves as a sprit.

[Wild Dingo]

Thanks Ian and Donn... pretty cool looking boats! :cool:

Take it easy
Shane