Pitch Question

[I. M. Rowin]

I rowed in college many years ago, and started sculling about 14 years ago.
I'm a serious, not "elite" rower, having raced in all manner of events from
500m sprints to 26.2 marathons.

Like most, I've played around with rigging ad nauseum, but have settled on
the same settings for my single for years. The one setting I never played
with was the oarlock pitch. The standard seems to be 4 degrees, and never
had any reason presented by anyone to change.

Like many scullers I see, I have a tendency to wash out my port oar near the
finish. I know that I must not drop my right hand too early, but still lose
concentration sometimes and get lazy. A friend suggested I try reducing the
pitch angle at the oarlock. A couple of weeks ago I set it at 3 degrees,
and saw an immediate improvement. Couldn't believe such a small adjustment
would make such a big change. The catches are crisper, and the oar stays
squared and buried to the desired release point with much less effort on my
part. Even more surprising, my release is even cleaner, though that was
never a real problem. The oars pop out of the water more crisply. Now that
I am used to this setting, I plan to try going to 2 degrees next week.

So my question is -- who (and when) decided that 4 degrees was the standard?
Or is it? Is this another case of unproven dogma that rowing seems to be
burdened by?

I would be interested in hearing others' experiences with pitch settings.
BTW, I carefully checked the pins and oars for non-zero pitch before,
confirming that they were correctly set.

Regards,
I. M.

[robin_d...@hotmail.com]

I'm sure folk more knowledgeable than myself will chime in soon enough, from what I was told years ago significantly larger pitches were the norm with wooden oars with the pitch being built into the sleeve / collar on the oar so you had to make sure you had the correct oar in the correct oarlock, and it has been since the onset of composite blades which both weigh less on one hand and have less physically submerged material as displacement that the standardisation towards 4 degrees has occurred in the past 30 years. Was always told that beginners would tend to need more pitch (say 5 degrees standard) to reduce over-burying, and more experienced crews could take less pitch because they had more feel and control.

Another option, apart from a fixed 3 degrees across the whole range would be to return to 4 degrees stern pitch at the oarlock, and switch the lateral pitch of the pin on both sides outwards a couple of degrees from vertical (assuming your rigger / pin combination allow this kind of modification).

This will then give you closer to 5 degrees pitch at the catch to resist diving, around 4 degrees through the middle of the stroke, and closer to 3 degrees towards the end of the stroke, thereby resisting the washout tendency at the finish.

!Under no circumstances ever have pins which are inclined inwards towards the centreline as this will row horribly!

[Sarah Harbour]

Hi there,

I think 4-4 is the standard set up for VIIIs, and as I'd only ever had experience of rigging set ups in VIIIs before I got my single, we just put my single on the same setting. It wasn't until I saw a document which listed pitch settings for different boatclasses, that I realised that 4-4 was not the catch all cases that I thought it was, so I'm now on 5 degrees positive (is this the same as you - 3-5 inserts?), and I've also seen it suggested to go to 6 degrees.

The more single sculling I do, the more I realise that it is nothing like rowing in VIIIs (apart from the obvious that you're alone and have two sticks rather than just the one). I think you do have to play around with the set up to work out what is best for you - without of course, changing more than one variable at a time!

Sarah

[Carl]

I think Robin has covered all bases and his comments on lateral pitch
are particularly well made.

Blade pitch becomes less important the harder you pull, & conversely is
at its most sensitive when you are dabbling about to see the difference
a change in pitch is making for you! The harder you pull, the more the
oar bends & the further behind the notional unflexed-oar position the
blade will be. That the blade then "tows" behind its notional position
as defined by the straight line extended out into the water through your
hands & the oarlock markedly stabilises & desensitises blade pitch effects.

Cheers -
Carl


--
Carl Douglas Racing Shells -
Fine Small-Boats/AeRoWing Low-drag Riggers/Advanced Accessories
Write: Harris Boatyard, Laleham Reach, Chertsey KT16 8RP, UK
Find: tinyurl.com/2tqujf
Email: ca...@carldouglas.co.uk Tel: +44(0)1932-570946 Fax: -563682
URLs: carldouglas.co.uk & now on Facebook @ CarlDouglasRacingShells

[Steve]

If I recall correctly, I'm sure my coach set my pitch at 6 degrees in an 8+
I was in around 28 years ago. We were using wooden oars at the time.

--

Regards

Steve
"Sarah Harbour" <saraha...@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:fefcc979-facd-463b...@googlegroups.com...

[Jonny]

>
> I would be interested in hearing others' experiences with pitch settings.

Robin covered lateral pitch. The old wooden oars did tend to have 6+
degrees. Less pitch will help prevent you washing out.

ALSO
Different blade types and brands (Croker, C2, Dreher) all 'feel' a
little different. For eg I always feel like I need an extra degree
when swapping from Croker to C2 sculling blades (smoothie).

[robin_d...@hotmail.com]

>
> Different blade types and brands (Croker, C2, Dreher) all 'feel' a
>
> little different. For eg I always feel like I need an extra degree
>
> when swapping from Croker to C2 sculling blades (smoothie).

I also noticed a substantial difference with sculling blades a few years ago when I had recently bought my Fluidesign single and had several hours on a beautiful afternoon to trial different sets of blades with the same boat setup.

I had my own pair of first generation Fat Smoothie blades (with the flat lower half) ; a fellow rower at the club had bought a pair of Smoothie2 blades which had the curved lower section analogous to a Big Blade (but lacking the ridge in the centre of the face) and likewise similar to Croker Slick or whatever the name of that generation of blade was.

My experiences were that my own Fat Smoothies gave me an absolutely bomb-proof lock onto the water at 4 degrees (oarlock), bearing in mind that the bulk of the blade face is underpitched with respect to this by a couple of degrees. The one thing that I encountered was the need to be fairly aggressive with them at the finish because they held on as long as you could hold them in. As discussed in another ongoing thread this tended to make an incredibly loud "BANG" through the oarlock / rigger / shell combination, albeit without significant bounce unless doing a very high rate sprint start.

I found that then mid-90s Big Blade and Crokers gave me the next-most- positive feel in the water, set at a conventional 4 degrees (oarlock) = 4 degrees (blade). Perhaps not as "grippy" when you really pushed on them, but conversely much easier to release cleanly from the water than the Fatties. I would definitely use these over the Fats in a crew boat to avoid disrupting the rest of the boat. The only real difference between C2 & Croker were in the grips fitted to either - I would have been happy to row with either blade.

Finally - the Smoothie2 (normal blade shape rather than Fat). I found them incredibly difficult to row with - they seemed to wander with their depth, you couldn't really feel what they were going to do etc, and seemed to wash through the water rather than move the boat past it. Checked the pitches - all were spot on. Conversely, they were easier to finish than any other blade listed above - and the guy who owned them (an experienced and technically adept sculler of many years) said that they were cleaner in and out of the water than anything he'd ever used but even he accepted that they were perhaps a bit trickier to handle, especially if the water was uneven.

[Carl]

It is not widely appreciated that the need to inbuilt pitch may be
affected by how the water flows along the blade.

I had an interesting experience when coaching a sculling crew after they
were provided with new (wooden) blades. One crew-member kept
complaining that one blade seemed to vary in pitch through the stroke,
despite correct pitching of pin & gate, & apparently correct pitch of
blade WRT sleeve (something one should always check, BTW). Her partner
became incensed & said she'd show the blade was perfectly fine - but
then had to admit she had the same problems.

The cause was the blade's symmetry (these were Macons). With a small
difference in curvature between what was the top & bottom edge of that
blade compared with its opposite blade, the flow along the blade near
catch & finish generated different lift forces between these upper &
lower parts, causing it to behave erratically except in the mid-stroke
it seemed fine. That slight difference was not great but was sufficient
to change the apparent pitch & cause these difficulties.