The Pen Makers Boat: #501 Now Sold

NB Dane Elm and Chrome Ballpoint Twist Pen

(£2.50 from the sale of this pen 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.

Leaving Penkridge a day earlier than we may have liked (visitor moorings are often restricted to 48 hours only) we wound our way to to Autherley Junction via Gailey and its well known round toll-keepers watch tower. This piece of canal is particularly twisty being a little older and a contour (literally follows the contour of the hills) rather than the much straighter cutting and embankment style that we would soon be going on to. In fact we passed a very modern looking recycling centre complete with living turfed roof and we were still twisting and turning around the back of it about an hour later.

The only other notable feature of the canal towards the end of our journey was a mile or so of what was labeled on our map as ‘very narrow cutting’. It certainly was too. Long sections where the canal was about six inches wider than the boat, and shallow too. It is fine as long as there aren't any boats coming the other way, or you are unlucky enough to break down - ah spoken too soon. Yes we came to a grinding halt in the narrows, our prop was fouled and not with the usual bin bags or a random T-shirt that would have allowed us to carry on but something big and heavy and noisy as the prop tried to swing itself around.

We are quite used to rushing down the engine hole to see what's gone wrong but it takes a couple of minutes to take the deck boards up, then move a wood bench off the engine covers so there is a bit of room and get down to the weed hatch which is about a foot below deck level, then unscrew the heavy steel bar that holds the weed hatch in place before the delights of the murky canal await another six inches lower. Now what is down there? Far too murky to see so its roll the sleeves up and dive into the unknown. This time it was a large and heavy rope fender that was jammed between the prop and the rudder, complete with a plastic bracket to hold it to a narrowboat roof. What was annoying is that this was entirely avoidable as a narrowboats fenders should really be raised when you are moving and just put down for mooring. Every year there are stories of boats wedged into narrow locks because their fenders took up the valuable spare couple of inches down the side of the boat.

After our delay in the narrows we arrived at Autherley Junction (on the borders of Wolverhampton) just as the sun was dipping down and changing our warm spring cruise into one that was threatening a frost for the next day. Not an inspiring location and the one and only reason that we wanted to spend at least a few days here is that there is a nice solid concrete bank and a turning point at the junction and we would be able to spend a little TLC on our boats paintwork. The battle scars of 2015 were still showing and needed a couple of coats of primer, some undercoat and some rather expensive enamel blue topcoat.

Luckily the weather was fab and I was able to get a few pens finished too.

Pen #501 was turned at Autherley Junction on 20th April 2016