#413 Now Sold

Green Acrylic Crystal and Chrome Ballpoint Twist Pen

Whenever I start to make a pen from an acrylic blank I always remember the negative points. Acrylic turning is messy, I really try to clear every last scrap of it up; it can also be smelly; the sharp little chips get everywhere and it can blunt the turning chisels really quickly. By the time the pen shape is turned and I start the messier job of wet sanding through about fifteen different grades I'm usually trying to convince myself that maybe its better to just concentrate on turning wooden pens.

Then the final grades of sanding and polishing start to reveal something special and I really like acrylic again... until the next time.

As soon as you are across the aqueduct on the outskirts of Market Drayton you are out into unspoilt Shropshire countryside. It is a pretty little market town though. At the centre of the town lies the Buttercross, a lovely stone portico that was built in 1824 to act as cover for the local market stalls. The old town fire bell still hangs from the Buttercross to act in memorial to the fire that started in a local bakers shop in 1651 and almost destroyed the town. 

Market Drayton has also been the home of gingerbread for the last 200 years. In the past, not content with rum in their secret recipe, decadent Draytonians dunked it in port. It is reputed to have curiously restorative powers.

Once out of town the pretty Tyrley flight of locks rises only thirty three feet up to Tyrley Wharf with its picturesque cottages and canalside gardens before turning through the quiet, narrow and deep Woodseves Cutting. A few hours later came our next stopover, Gnosal.

Pen #413 was turned on the visitor moorings at Gnosal on the 26th November 2015