#367

NOW SOLD

NB Birchills Oak and Chrome Ballpoint Twist Pen

(25% of the profits from the sale of this pen will be gifted to the Black Country Living Museum, the custodians 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 had arranged to travel from Blisworth to Fenny Stratford for the first ever Fenny Stratford Canal Festival. Luckily we just about had enough stock to trade with after the busy weekend in Blisworth. We weren't expecting too many towpath visitors as these events do take a few years to build up a reputation. 

The chief organiser had cleverly decided to host the event on the same day as a local Fenny Poppers day a few streets away. Early on Sunday morning we walked Dudley Boar Dawg in a now familiar loop around the local highstreet and back down the canal. The stall holders were bust setting up as were the music stage and fair ground. The stalls looked fairly run of the mill and an uninspiring mix of the usual food outlets charity and tombola type stalls. It transpired that the fairground owners organised the stalls and only granted low value participants access so that visitors had plenty of money for their fairground rides, sneaky. It was a blessing for the five of us canal traders that made it there for the day as we did a roaring trade.

It was a scorching hot day on the Sunday with plenty of power going into the batteries via the solar panels so I set the lathe up and turned a few of the pen blanks that I had drilled and glued over the last few days. We even had a visit from the dignitary in the way of the Mayor and Mayoress of Milton Keynes who treated themselves to a pair of pens. We were made to feel very welcome by the local villagers of Fenny Stratford and even invited to the organisers BBQ after we had closed up the shop for the evening. Definitely a location to bookmark for the future. 

Pen #367 was turned at the first ever Fenny Stratford Festival