front rowing system for canoe

I'm interested in a front rowing system for my canoe. I routinely paddle a couple miles on a flat river and I think rowing would be easier. I have little experience, but I'm thinking of stick welding the mechanism myself from plain steel, painting it, and making wings and oars from ripped 2x4 and plywood.

Here's a question, which of these systems gives the most mechanical advantage do you think?

1. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vs8qBExVAIA

or

2. http://www.forwardfacingrowingsystem.com/

Thanks,
Jesse

 

jyoder,
Just sent you an e-mail. The Gig Harbor oars is what I'm going to get. They've had them for years and look very well engineered. The U tube oars are not offset like the Gig Hbr ones and look rather flimsy. On the Gig Hbr web site look at the "installation" section. Notice how gently the you tube guy rows. Could be a reason for that. By "wings" do you mean outboard oarlock mounts?
Easy Rider

 

Thanks for the response. And yes, the wings question. I'm interested to hear what you think of the Gig Hbr system.

 

I've also wanted to weld-up my own set or two of these.

$495 seems a bit much for something I might or might not use and it looks simple enough.


I did say elsewhere they generally don't work to well with very narrow beam boats like sliding seat shells w/outriggers.

Feathering the oars ('sculls') and skimming the water on the recovery stroke is an important part of balancing those boats and I don't see how you could feather oars on a Front-Rower without a LOT of additional mechanics, or maybe just a few sets of U-joints.


Can the Forward Facing Rowing System be installed on a canoe?
Yes, it works admirably well on easily-driven shapes like canoes. However, many canoes have narrow beam which does not allow a long oar handle. Narrow canoes or other narrow beam vessels benefit from the addition of small ‘wings’ to artificially increase the beam- longer handles furnish more leverage for easier rowing.

 

The high price for the front rowing systems got my mind thinking, too. I've half-built a front rowing system using a simple reversing linkage, similar to the many systems detailed in patents going back to around 1875 or so (why do the patent offices allow all these repeat inventions to be patented?).

It's a lot of work, both in designing the linkage to get the right acceleration profiles (harder than it seems!) and in making the parts, using decent bearings for low frictional losses.

I will probably be able to post some pictures in the next couple of weeks, if I get my finger out and get it finished.

Jeremy

 

shouldn't middle link be an adjustible sex-bolt?

I can't believe that these would be a 'one geometry fit all' unless the rower is expected to quietly adapt, being so amazed at the whole forward rowing thing and laughter from on lookers.

proper fit of several features is a big part of any serious sliding seat rowing.

there is that 'sit in place, sliding foot' front rowing rig. I think they want around $2000! for one.

one big advantage is your weight isn't shifting fore and aft so the boat doesn't want to be so long just to mitigate that.

 

Sorry Squidly, thats one term I'm NOT going to google from my laptop. What, praytell, is a "sex-bolt"?

 

sex bolt means your screwed!

 

jyoder presented only fixed seat systems so what's this talk about narrow boats and sliding seats? Ron Rontilla's Front Rower is a much more complicated and sophisticated system than sliding seat systems. It's more efficient and it dos'nt transfer all the pulling load through one's wrists and shoulders. The Gig Harbor system is not for narrow boats.

 

how about a non-axis rig with oars on curved tracks holding them

to a semi-circular path of motion.

I'd imagining little 'carriers' perpendicular to the oars about a 10 inches with little roller wheels, similar to rollers of a sliding seat, just strong enough to handle the force of an oar and keep it perpendicular to the track.

For example the semi-circle might be 15 degrees and 30 inches at the oar grips and the same 15 degrees and 40 inches at the trackes then 15 degrees and whatever it works out to at the end of the blades.

Sort of like a Ratilla but independent, and possibly able to be feathered if the track/holder includes a sleeve inside which the oar shaft could rotate.

 

Squidly,

What in the heck did you just describe? Can you pencil up some kind of picture?

Does anybody know where to see details on the "U-tube" system? It looked much simpler than the Gig Harbor, but I couldn't see anything.

Which sliding foot/ sliding rigger system are you talking about for $2000? Piantendosi has one for $650 that has been out for at least 10 years that is very straight forward, if we are allowed to talk about that by the purity police.

I would like a way to use the slidding rigger system as a forward rower. I get tired of my wife yelling that I am going to hit a tree in the local lake.

Marc

Marc

 

upchurchmr, here is my first try at posting Solidworks pics

for some reason I keep getting........


The following errors occurred when this message was submitted:

1. The message you have entered is too short. Please lengthen your message to at least 5 characters.

 

Sorry - it just means that there has to be some text in the message: the mechanism to prevent accidental blank messages/bumps requires at least 5 text characters for a message to be posted and what's inside a [ url ] or [ img ] tag doesn't count towards this. The title is optional for posts within a thread, so if you put that text in the message area you won't get the error complaining of no text.

From the quick reply, hit Go Advanced. Then from the full reply page click on Manage Attachments and upload the image(s) to be attached with your message in the new window (if the new window doesn't launch when you click manage attachments, be sure you don't have a popup blocker keeping the new window from launching; after you select and upload the images, be sure to go back to the main reply window and finish submitting the post to which the images are now attached). Or you can include an image using img tags if it is already on another web http server.

 

2nd try at posting SW pics

I had a bunch of extra text but for some reason using prt sc and paste from SW was giving me that errror.

I'm gonna try to attach a pic....

 

OK, seems to be working, here is closer pic of front row concept.

just one of two oars of course.

I'm just trying to show Upchurchmr the basic concept.

the oar has a little ridgy mounted block riding in a track. The red half cylinders represent rollers or wheels.