NB Birchills Oak and Gun Metal Fountain Pen
(A donation 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 #604 was turned on 29th July 2016 at Flecknoe, near Braunston.
It was a bit of a flying visit to Birmingham this time, not to worry though we will be back again at the end of September for a Floating Market and will be here for some of the winter time too. We did manage to meet up with a friend of ours, photographic artist and soon to be follow roving canal Traders Dave Cresswell for an evening in the Flapper pub and we found a rare thing amongst the boating community, someone who like me, limits themselves to only a few pints and not a few gallons! I even managed to take Deb out to the cinema and dinner whilst we were here…. well the last few minutes of Les Miserables at the outside cinema Festival in Brindley Square and a burger and chips from the kebab shop… well it's not all work you know!
We made good time over the next couple of days heading out of town through Bournville back into the countryside and down the very pretty Lapworth flight. We stopped shortly after for a night at one of our favourite spots a lovely wide grassy towpath with far reaching views. We set off before 7 o'clock the next morning to tackle the Hatton flight and were at the top, raring to go just before 8 o'clock just as another boater exited the top lock having completed the whole flight before the sun had started to warm the day; a good plan as the forecast had promised us 32 degrees C by the time we would reach the Saltisford Arm in Warwick in the early afternoon . Luckily just as we were about to enter the top lock volunteer lock Keeper arrived and amazingly saw us down through the whole flight, usually they have to work the locks that are closest to the visitor centre. By the time we had arrived at the bottom of the flight close to Saltisford Junction it was indeed above 30 degrees C outside and a few more degrees C inside, the rest of the day was spent sat around melting.
After a restless night we reversed into the Saltisford Arm moorings and found a spot where would be stopping for a week off the boat. Saltisford Arm is only about quarter of a mile from the train station where would we would be travelling from the next day down to our daughter's house in Poole via a stop off to spend the day with Deb's mum in Mortimer.
We had a fabulous time at our daughter's house and even managed to couple of days to ourselves whilst Jess and Lee were both at work and then had a relaxing long weekend together, we were truly blessed with the weather as well.
Time goes so quickly when you are trying to do all you can to slow it down! It was soon time to take Deb’s mum's car back and get the trains back up to Warwick. The very next morning we extricated ourselves from the muddy corner we'd been moved to and headed out to restock Lois Jane’s larder and then a longish days cruise to the bottom of the Stockton flight.
Another day of locks today but unfortunately we had lost all of that sunny warm weather and it was now blowy and drizzly. We should have left early again but neither of us we're in the mood for a wet cruise so we waited until a brighter time mid morning for the slow ascent of the locks queuing behind all the boats who had left before us. By early evening though we had made it up the hill turned at Napton Junction and moored in an unseasonably quiet spot near Flecknoe, usually at this time of year the moorings are full - where is everybody?
You can follow my pen making here on this blog and our travels on another blog here
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