#412

Now Sold

Purple Heart and Chrome Ballpoint Twist Pen

PURPLE HEART - Peltogyne

When freshly cut the heartwood of Purple heart is a dull grayish/purplish brown. Upon exposure the wood becomes a deeper eggplant purple. With further age and exposure to UV light, the wood becomes a dark brown with a hint of purple. This colour-shift can be slowed and minimized by not leaving the pen in direct sunlight for too long.

Sometimes called Amaranth, this colourful Latin American hardwood is tremendously popular for furniture and other designs that call for a unique splash of colour. In addition to its colouration, Purple heart has excellent strength properties, and can be used in applications where strength is important—a wood for both form and function.

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 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 #412 was turned on the 25th November 2015 on the market moorings at Market Drayton