Red Acrylic Crystal and Chrome Premium 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.
Pen #580 was turned on 19th June 2016 at Middlewich Folk and Boat Festival
Westport Lake on the edge of Stoke on Trent is about an hours cruise south of Harecastle Tunnel. Long, dark, smelly and noisy Harecastle isn’t one of my favourites. It’s a single direction tunnel so there is no chance of meeting oncoming traffic but it is also very low in places, almost kneeling down low. This means that the roof boxes have to come off which is a tad inconvenient to say the least. The next ones I build will be narrower and shallower!
The tunnel also has an extraction system rather than tunnel roof vents as it is too far underground, a few moments after you’re in the gates are closed and noisy extractors pull the heavily diesel fumed air from all the boats in front of you (we we’re last of 8) past you - not nice.
Out the other side and into the brilliant sunlight awaits heartbreak hill - a long flight of locks through pleasant countryside and down through Cheshire. The warm sunny weather changed to warm and wet, actually torrential, as we descended to Middlewich ready for the following week's Folk and Boat Festival.
You can follow my pen making here on this blog and our travels on another blog here
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