The Pen Makers Boat: #175

NOW SOLD

NB Birchills Oak and Chrome Fountain Pen

EUROPEAN OAK - Quercus robur

Usually straight-grained, the heartwood of European Oak varies in colour from light tan to brown. Quarter-sawn pieces show attractive flame figuring. The wood is fairly hard, heavy and dense, clean but with the occasional knot. European Oak is a beautiful timber and with an oil finish, the grain will turn a deep golden brown.

This particular piece of oak (probably English rather than European) is just a little bit special though. It comes from the rear cabin side gunwales of Narrowboat Birchills. I was given a few off cuts by the superb craftsmen who were carrying out a little light refurbishment to this historic boat, in fact the guys had cut the whole back cabin off!

Birchills is an historic, ‘Joey’ boat with a small day cabin, built in 1953 by Ernest Thomas of Walsall, ‘Birchills’ it is one of the last wooden day boats made and was used to carry coal to Wolverhampton Power Station. This boat is double-ended and the mast and rudder could be changed from one end to the other. This enabled its use in narrow canals or basins where there was no room to turn the boat around.

This particular pen was turned on Saturday 29th November 2014 a short distance below Hilmorton locks. The towpath was just about wide enough for me to set up and the shavings from turning kept the path relatively firm.

Unfortunately this pen had a problem with the threaded cap. I think I have narrowed down the problem to the way I assembled all the pieces. This style of pen is tricky to assemble because the grain has to line up as closely as possible to do this I thread the cap onto the finished pen and apply a little pressure to start the process off, it looks like I applied too much pressure. Luckily this was the one and only times I have tried to assemble a pen this way as it looked like it could save me quite a lot of time getting everything lined up - back to plan A then.

Anyway the new owner let me know straight away and luckily I had another NB Birchills blank glued up and ready to turn. It was turned, polished, assembled and posted the next day - good job the weather was good. Here's a few pics of #175 mk2 turned on 21st December 2014 at Fazeley Junction near Tamworth.