NB Birchills Oak and Gun Metal Fountain Pen
(£5 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.
Our daughter Jess called from Poole and gave us the great news that she would be able to pop up and visit us towards the end of the month. It'd be the first time she drove up to visit us and Birmingham isn't the best place for parking. With nothing else needing doing in Birmingham we decided to head out of town to new waters for us and get as close to Stratford upon Avon canal basin as possible for her visit.
Canal cruising is a bit trickier in the depths of winter. Frozen ropes and icy back decks are enough for me after about four hours or so and there is a real danger that a couple of cold days in a row could mean the canal is frozen solid and we wouldn't be going anywhere.
32 miles and 54 locks doesn't sound an awful lot but it equates to a trip of about 28 hours. Luckily most of the canal down here is fairly deep, without too many moored boats to slow right down for and at this time of year hardly any other boats are moving so we made fantastic time. We left Cambrian wharf early Monday morning and by Wednesday we had moored up in Stratford upon Avon a little after the sun had set over the basin.
Pen #463 was turned in the canal basin at Stratford upon Avon on Wednesday 2nd March 2016
You can follow my pen making here on this blog and our travels on another blog here
oh and please like us on Facebook too here
No comments:
Post a Comment
Thanks for commenting, you can always contact me via email at thepenmakersboat@gmail.com or find The Pen Makers Boat on Facebook. I'll get back to you as soon as I can.