Lignum Vitae and Gun Metal Rollerball Pen
LIGNUM VITAE - Guaiacum officinale
Heartwood colour can range from a olive to a dark greenish brown to almost black, sometimes with a reddish hue. The colour tends to darken with age, especially upon exposure to light.
Lignum Vitae is regarded by most to be both the heaviest and hardest wood in the world. Its durability in submerged or ground-contact applications is also exceptional. Lignum Vitae has been used for propeller shaft bearings on ships, and its natural oils provide self-lubrication that gives the wood excellent wear resistance.
Unfortunately, Lignum Vitae has been exploited to the brink of extinction, and is now an endangered species. The name Lignum Vitae is Latin, and means tree of life, or wood of life, which is derived from the tree’s many medicinal uses.
This wood has a profoundly positive energy. The overall energy of the wood can be summed up as "the power and strength of goodness." The energy of the wood is considered very healing, in both physical and spiritual matters. The energies within the wood would also be excellent for divining information from far away as well as close to home.
This wood represents the end of strife and the beginning of a new, positive, cycle.
Pen #616 was turned on 8th August 2016 at Bugbrooke, near Northampton.
It's a peaceful stretch of canal between Napton and Braunston and we stayed here for a good few days watching the passing boats and thunderstorms and catching up with making penstock for our next festival at Blisworth. We even managed to bump into fellow boater and blogger Maffi who very kindly gave me a log of cherry wood that he had started to season on his roof. It's not too often that I can get good quality English cherry wood so I will cut this log down into large pen blanks and finish seasoning them over winter to see what they turn out like next spring.
After a short evening cruise to Braunston we were very surprised to find a free mooring right opposite the Boathouse pub perfect for our stop off to meet up with local friend Richard and then later the same day Jenny and Chris all of whom brought some nice seasoned wood for me to add to my stockpile. We left again early the next morning, not so early that we would disturb people that managed to go to the pub the evening before, and then it was time to go up the Braunston locks, through the tunnel, down the Buckby locks and moor up a few miles further south in one of our favourite canal side villages Bugbrooke.
You can follow my pen making here on this blog and our travels on another blog here
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