The Pen Makers Boat: NBHF Pens #5-10

A Premium Ballpoint Twist Pen in Either Chrome or Gun Metal

Dressed in Elm from Narrowboat Dane

A Pen From 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.

Our mooring a mile or so south of Knowle was idyllic, helped of course by beautiful spring sunshine. Not quite enough sun to run the lathe via the solar panels but we weren't too far off. Time to move on though up the hill towards the outskirts of Birmingham.

Knowle locks was the first order of the day though. These are the most northern wide locks that connects directly to the southern canals and rivers. If you have a wide beam (over 7ft 1in) boat you are really restricted to south of here or north of Manchester with no practical way of navigating between the two.

Knowle locks were one of the last to be instated on the canal system alongside the widening program of the Hatton flight to Warwick in the 1930's. As a result modern building methods were used, no craftsmen dressing local stone or pretty lock sides, just what seemed like acres of steep sided and rather bland concrete. Not that nice at all, luckily there are only five of these locks that replaced six narrow ones. I'm not sure that we'll come back this way in a hurry as there are far prettier routes.

Being new waters to us we didn't quite know what to expect up this way but it's common boater knowledge that the last reasonably safe and pleasant mooring spot this side of Birmingham was the rather posh sounding Catherine-de-Barnes. We duly did as we were advised and moored on the village visitor moorings. After taking Dudley for a good walk around some local fields (and noted some recently felled ash - we had two days coal left) we went to peruse the village. Well that didn't take long, a church, a chain pub and a spar convenience shop, oh and a very busy road.

We'd pretty well done Catherine-de-Barnes by early morning and with no more urgent pen turning to do we moved a mile or so further on to collect some of the felled ash tree and stop over night before continuing down through Camp Hill locks and Bordesley Junction and further overnight stops at Star City and Minworth.

After a few days of short hops we had a lovely warm day to tackle our last locks for a little while down from Curdworth to Kingsbury Water Park a few miles before Fazeley Junction and Tamworth. It's always a favourite stop-off of ours here, great for dog walking and such a peaceful location at least for a few more years until HS2 smashes its way right through the middle of this beauty spot.

Pens #5-10 were turned on March 31st 2016 outside Peels Wharf, Fazeley Junction.