#410 Now Sold

NB Dane and 24ct Gold Plated Rollrball Pen

(£5 will be gifted to the Narrowboat Heritage Foundation, the custodians 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.

The rotten parts of these rebuilt boats are usually used to stoke the fires that steam the new planks for bending to the hull's shape.Luckily these pieces of elm were too important to burn and have been properly stored. 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.

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 re-bottomed 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.

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 for 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 #410 was turned on the 25th November 2015 on the market moorings at Market Drayton.