The Pen Makers Boat: #490 Now Sold

NB Birchills Oak and 24ct Gold Plated Rollerball Pen

(£5 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 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.

Pen #490 was turned on the 6th April 2016 at Tixall Wide near Shugborough Hall

Fazeley Junction (Tamworth) to Fradley Junction is one of the nicest short day cruises. The down side is that mooring at Fradley can be rather tricky, it's a popular spot and you can't arrive any time in the afternoon and expect a nice mooring spot close to the Mucky Duck (Swan) pub. Due to chilly, squally weather we decided to leave Fazeley at about 2ish and take pot luck for our stop-over in Fradley. It was a stunning, warm Spring afternoon once we had set off and I wasn't surprised that we had to make do with a mooring place a good half a mile from the pub on a part of the towpath that had started collapsing, not quite bad enough for the boarding plank but still a good few feet jump off to the grassy bank (always easier to jump off than jump back on!). Never mind, we were only stopping for a night.

The next day dawned and we set off through Fradley junction a little after 08.00, by the time we were through the swing bridge the local CRT volunteers were arriving to help man the locks which was a real bonus leaving us a short hop to the next lock that we'd have to wind ourselves. Then everything ground to a halt. Deb had difficulty getting one of the gates right open and I wasn't sure if we could sneak in. The only way to try is to drift in at a pace that looks like you aren't actually moving, literally an inch (or less) at a time. There are two reasons for extreme caution. One I could cause serious damage to the structure which could close the lock for up to six weeks; and two, the lock is a little over 7 foot wide with the gates wide open and our boat is 6 foot 11 inches so there isn't much spare room and it is easy to get completely wedged in between the lock gates and I didn't want either of those to happen.

There was a serious fault and after much prodding with boat poles I suspected a corner plate had become loose and was obstructing, but moving with the gate. Even though it was the weekend there was nothing else we could do but call the Canal and River Trust (CRT) and get them to sort out at least a temporary repair as there was an increasing queue in both ways. It could be a long day or so and I was looking forward to our next destination Tixall Wide which was still about five hours away. I was nearly right with my diagnosis, it was part of the paddle guide mechanism that was loose and stopping the gate moving, bad news indeed as the lock or the whole pound below it would need lowering (quote from the engineer) "at some point next week" <gulp>.... then the beautiful words "if we can strap it up out of the way, maybe we can get these few boats through first".

YES we were on our way, the breeze had dropped, the canal was wide and deep (well about fifteen feet wide and over two deep) and the sun was out!

With views towards Cannock Chase over the Sow river valley Shugborough Hall came into view and soon afterwards our last lock of the day. A left turn at Great Heywood Junction and over the River Tame aqueduct and to our destination for maybe a week, the beautiful Tixall Wide. Bliss.

Tixall Wide, also known as Tixall Broad or The Broad Water, is a body of water that forms part of the Staffordshire and Worcestershire Canal, to the south of the former Tixall Hall. The hall was, at that time, owned by Thomas Clifford, the fourth son of Hugh Clifford, and the grounds had been designed on the advice of the landscape architect Lancelot "Capability" Brown. The lake was probably created during the construction of the canal in 1771. It is said he "gave permission for the canal to pass through his land on the condition that it was made ... wide enough to look like a lake from the house" and thus in order not to spoil the view.