#196

NOW SOLD

NB Dane Elm and Gun Metal Ballpoint Twist Pen

(25% of which will be donated to The Narrowboat Heritage Foundation for the continued upkeep of NB Dane)

European Elm

Ulmus procera

European Elm has is a light to medium brown, sometimes with a hint of red. With an oil finish, it can turn a beautiful golden brown colour. Unless, of course, it's been kept at the bottom of a canal for an awfully long time.

Narrowboat Dane was built by the Mersey Weaver and Ship Canal Carrying Company and used as part of their fleet. She was built in November 1946 and first registered on January the first 1947. Ade from A P Boatbuilding is currently restoring her on behalf of The Narrowboat Heritage Foundation, the work being done is rebottomed with new chine planks, kelson, stem post and soon to receive two new bow planks, gunwales, decks, new back cabin and engine room. The pens that I will be making from Dane are all from a heavy lump of Elm bottom plate.

#195

NOW SOLD

NB Dane Elm and Chrome Ballpoint Twist Pen

(25% of which will be donated to The Narrowboat Heritage Foundation for the continued upkeep of NB Dane)

European Elm

Ulmus procera

European Elm has is a light to medium brown, sometimes with a hint of red. With an oil finish, it can turn a beautiful golden brown colour. Unless, of course, it's been kept at the bottom of a canal for an awfully long time.

Narrowboat Dane was built by the Mersey Weaver and Ship Canal Carrying Company and used as part of their fleet. She was built in November 1946 and first registered on January the first 1947. Ade from A P Boatbuilding is currently restoring her on behalf of The Narrowboat Heritage Foundation, the work being done is rebottomed with new chine planks, kelson, stem post and soon to receive two new bow planks, gunwales, decks, new back cabin and engine room. The pens that I will be making from Dane are all from a heavy lump of Elm bottom plate.

This pen was made in central Birmingham on Saturday the 24th January 2015.

#194

NOW SOLD

NB Dane Elm and 24ct Gold Plated Ballpoint Twist Pen

(25% of which will be donated to The Narrowboat Heritage Foundation for the continued upkeep of NB Dane)

European Elm

Ulmus procera

European Elm has is a light to medium brown, sometimes with a hint of red. With an oil finish, it can turn a beautiful golden brown colour. Unless, of course, it's been kept at the bottom of a canal for an awfully long time.

Narrowboat Dane was built by the Mersey Weaver and Ship Canal Carrying Company and used as part of their fleet. She was built in November 1946 and first registered on January the first 1947. Ade from A P Boatbuilding is currently restoring her on behalf of The Narrowboat Heritage Foundation, the work being done is rebottomed with new chine planks, kelson, stem post and soon to receive two new bow planks, gunwales, decks, new back cabin and engine room. The pens that I will be making from Dane are all from a heavy lump of Elm bottom plate.

This pen was made in central Birmingham on Saturday the 24th January 2015.

#193

NOW SOLD

NB Dane Elm and Silver Plated Ballpoint Twist Pen

(25% of which will be donated to The Narrowboat Heritage Foundation for the continued upkeep of NB Dane)

European Elm

Ulmus procera

European Elm has is a light to medium brown, sometimes with a hint of red. With an oil finish, it can turn a beautiful golden brown colour. Unless, of course, it's been kept at the bottom of a canal for an awfully long time.

Narrowboat Dane was built by the Mersey Weaver and Ship Canal Carrying Company and used as part of their fleet. She was built in November 1946 and first registered on January the first 1947. Ade from A P Boatbuilding is currently restoring her on behalf of The Narrowboat Heritage Foundation, the work being done is rebottomed with new chine planks, kelson, stem post and soon to receive two new bow planks, gunwales, decks, new back cabin and engine room. The pens that I will be making from Dane are all from a heavy lump of Elm bottom plate.

This pen was made in central Birmingham on Saturday the 24th January 2015.

#192

NOW SOLD

NB Dane Elm and Chrome Ballpoint Twist Pen

(25% of which will be donated to The Narrowboat Heritage Foundation for the continued upkeep of NB Dane)

European Elm

Ulmus procera

European Elm has is a light to medium brown, sometimes with a hint of red. With an oil finish, it can turn a beautiful golden brown colour. Unless, of course, it's been kept at the bottom of a canal for an awfully long time.

Narrowboat Dane was built by the Mersey Weaver and Ship Canal Carrying Company and used as part of their fleet. She was built in November 1946 and first registered on January the first 1947. Ade from A P Boatbuilding is currently restoring her on behalf of The Narrowboat Heritage Foundation, the work being done is rebottomed with new chine planks, kelson, stem post and soon to receive two new bow planks, gunwales, decks, new back cabin and engine room. The pens that I will be making from Dane are all from a heavy lump of Elm bottom plate.

This pen was made in central Birmingham on Saturday the 24th January 2015.

#191

NOW SOLD

Karen's Pen

'Birchills' Oak and Chrome Fountain Pen

(25% of the selling price of this pen will go to  the Black Country Living Museum for the continued upkeep of NB Birchills and their other historic boats)

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.

Saturday the 17th January, just about lunchtime Deb and I were sat inside Birmingham's market relaxing with a good ol' cuppa after having filled our shopping bags with fresh, cheap produce for the next week (I always really miss the markets once we leave Brum). Of course being generation X'ers we were stiring our teas with one hand and flipping our phones open with the other and scanning the usual culprits; FaceBook, news, weather and of course emails. I love the fact that even my out of date phone has all my email accounts with a homepage for each and different alert flags. I had an email in 'The Pen Paker's Boats' email account from Ade Moore with  a general enquiry as to when the for sale pens page of this blog would be up and running again (blogger had eaten it a couple of days before). A few emails later and we had decided on a NB Birchills oak fountain pen for Karen's, Mrs Moore's, birthday just over a week later. Luckily Ade and Karen were happy to wait a while for the pen to be made and appreciated the dificulty I was having with both the ice and wind turning pens outside in the middle of Birmingham.

No need to worry, we had a few milder (3 degrees C) days and I was able to crack on and I'm writing this blog in Birmingham library the day before Karen's birthday having just posted the pen first class. Phew! Heres a couple more pics of the pen.

And a couple of the donor, which has very nearly finished being restored in Alvecote.

#190

My pen

Yay I finally managed to make my own pen. Nothing outstanding just an everyday, every purpose ballpoint pen.

After making lots of pens for the people I have decided that using a bic pen probably isn't the best idea for a pen maker and seller.

We do have a desk pen that we've been using for the whole of last year mainly to see how long the refill lasts and if there was any issues with pen finish quality.

My new pen is a pocket pen I've made it considerably shorter than most of the other pens I make buy cutting down the refill. Unfortunately I have probably made a mistake by deciding to make it in black acrylic with gun metal finishings when all the work surfaces in my boat are black, nevermind it usually lives  in my pocket so it's always at hand

My pen was made in birmingham city centre opposite the roundhouse and fiddle and bone pub that are currently undergoing restoration on behalf of Sherborne wharf. The work is certainly coming on well although I doubt we'll get to see the finished article before we leave Birmingham on our travels.

#188 and #189

NOW SOLD

Theo's Birthday Pens

Theo is a B&B owning master baker from France. We met 'virtually' on the canal market place's Facebook page where Theo is a supporter of canal traders and regular a contributor with pictures of his perfectly formed loaves of French bread.

Theo contacted me just before Christmas asking for a pen or two to be commissioned for a milestones birthday of his in early 2015. Unfortunately at the time I was right out of the blue acrylic pen blanks that Theo had requested. Luckily I was waiting for a shipment to arrive from Australia and also had also just ordered some top quality UK supplied premium mechanism.

The only problem with accepting commission work in acrylic this time of year is that most of the process has to happen outside of the boat. It's just for far too messy to consider making a pen like this inside. When I finally got around to turning Theo's pens the temperature in the centre of Birmingham didn't rise above freezing point for two days. I even had to bring my bench top in and defrost it in front of the fire to stop the lathe sliding about. Whilst a workshop butty would be fantastic the canal and rivers trust charge is too much in my opinion for the licensing in fact any butty less than 50 foot long is charged the same rate as a fully kitted out motored boat.

Once the pen blanks had arrived from Australia it was clear that two of the three were a perfect match for a top quality fountain pen and rollerball set. To get the best colour from an acrylic pen blank you need to look at the proportion of solid and opaque colours. The decision then need to be made concerning the finished colour that need to be achieved. Painting the brass tubes that form the inside of the pen firstly insured that no ugly brass flashes change the colour, and secondly changes the saturation of the colour. Painting the tubes in this case the dark blue colour would have resulted in an almost navy coloured pen, where as painting the tubes white would change the whole pen look to a light blue colour. For this pen I chose royal blue colour or the tubes, and French blue enamel for the inside of the drilled holes. For a full belt and braces approach I also added a couple of drops of the blue enamel paint to the two part epoxy glue. The result was really worth all of the extra effort and I feel produced a beautiful set of pens.

I hope you have/had a great birthday Theo and get many years writing pleasure out of your pen set.

#187

NOW SOLD

NB Dane Elm and Chrome Ballpoint Twist Pen

(25% of which will be donated to The Narrowboat Heritage Foundation for the continued upkeep of NB Dane)

European Elm

Ulmus procera

European Elm has is a light to medium brown, sometimes with a hint of red. With an oil finish, it can turn a beautiful golden brown colour. Unless, of course, it's been kept at the bottom of a canal for an awfully long time.

Narrowboat Dane was built by the Mersey Weaver and Ship Canal Carrying Company and used as part of their fleet. She was built in November 1946 and first registered on January the first 1947. Ade from A P Boatbuilding is currently restoring her on behalf of The Narrowboat Heritage Foundation, the work being done is rebottomed with new chine planks, kelson, stem post and soon to receive two new bow planks, gunwales, decks, new back cabin and engine room. The pens that I will be making from Dane are all from a heavy lump of Elm bottom plate.

This pen was made on the very chilly morning of January the 16th 2015. We had been moored for nearly all of our allowable 14 days in Cambrian Wharf central Birmingham. With a 60ft boat tied to a 15ft pontoon turning was a bit tricky, I literally had to wait for a lull in the wind to avoid disaster with the turning chisles.