#406

Now Sold

NB Birchills Oak and Chrome Ballpoint Twist Pen

(25% of the profits 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 and roof hatch 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.

The plan was working well and I was turning pens in the afternoon after an early morning cruise and vice-a-versa the next day; early morning pen turning and a late afternoon cruise - we may just about have enough stock to open at the Birmingham floating market in just over two weeks time. Now we just had to keep up the cruising pace as we still had about 70 miles and 75 locks to go <gulp>.

It wasn't actually that far to our next stop off in Market Drayton, at 6 miles but the 17 locks took their toll. Market Drayton is a great stopover for us boaters as it's quite few and far between that there are towns with facilities on the Shropshire Union Canal.

The visitor moorings in Market Drayton have large trees shading the sun and as we intended staying two days we wanted to be able to make use of the lovely sunny weather we were having so we didn't go on past the water point and bridge and stopped just before the off side pontoon moorings. The moorings here are a bit strange the signs say overnight mooring only, except on market day and pre-market day when daytime mooring is permitted. Well we arrived late afternoon on Tuesday so that was OK and as luck would have it market day was Wednesday and pre-market day Tuesday so we were fine there for our couple of days (I think?!?).

Pen #406 was turned on the 24th November 2015 on the market moorings at Market Drayton