#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 I love the fact that even my out of date phone has all my email accounts with a homepage for each and different alert flags.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.