#320

NOW SOLD

NB Birchills Oak, Chrome and 24ct Gold Plated Ballpoint Twist Pen

(25% of the selling price is donated to the Black Country Living Museum, the owners of NB Birchills)

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.

The rotten parts of these rebuilt boats are usually used to stoke the fires that steam the new planks for bending to the hulls shape so half a day later this flaky gunwale would have been burned. I wasn't sure how deep the rot would have gone and how deep I would have to delve into this piece to find stable wood. The pens I make from historic boat materials have been thoroughly tested by me to make sure that they will give pleasurable daily use.

That old flaky gunwale went on to make a few very nice pens and I was lucky enough to be given some more wood by Ade at A P Boat Building in Alvecote. This time a piece that appears to be from the old red cabin hatch surround.

We'd now been through the tunnel at Harecastle, stopped for a few days at Church Lawton, Stopped for an overnight break at Rode Heath and were close to Middlewich where we were going to be trading at the Folk And Boat Festival. With a couple of washing loads to do and a good few pens to turn we decided to moor up in the middle of nowhere at Bridge 164 a few miles (and half a dozen locks) south of Middlewich to do some catching up.

The weather was lovely, Dudley tired himself out running through the long grass at the side of the little used towpath the washing dried quickly in the sunny breeze and chips of oak, elm, Bubinga, Sycamore, shavings from NB Birchils and Dane, and colourful acrylics floated around the back deck of the boat. Just what we needed and our first night away from civilisation for a good while. Even the rattle of combines in the next field and lorries along the A553 from Sandbach couldn't dull our moods.

Pen #320 was turned on Monday 15th of June 2015.