Remake activities reuse and recycle waste materials, working them into something useful. The experiential activity seems to be prevalent, yet limited literature covers creative ways of thinking about pedagogical approaches. This paper examines some of the emerging waste education literature before exploring further possibilities for remake activities, using the example of paddle making as a pedagogical practice in outdoor, environmental and sustainability education. I perform a new materialist praxis for paddle making, enacting a diffractive investigation into a piece of timber as a way of framing paddle making activities. I present the investigation as a narrative that considers the life of the timber and the broader ecological history of the material. This charts ethical and environmental problems relating to particular forests whilst posing different ways of conceptualising timber. Through this, I offer an example of the pedagogical diffractions that can be made during remake activities. In summary, the paper attends to materiality in divergent ways, through the use of new materialist ideas, to open up educational possibilities.