Huon Pine/Rainbow Spirit Stained and Chrome Ballpoint Twist Pen
HUON PINE - Lagarostrobos franklinii
It is truly an ancient species - members of the same plant family (Podocarpaceae) existed more than 200 million years ago. In Tasmania, the oldest recorded fossils of leafy Lagarostrobos twigs are more than 2.6 million years old.
Huon pines vary in size from shrubs less than 2 metres high to trees more than 30 metres tall. They grow very slowly, taking about 500 years to reach maturity, and some trees have been known to be more than 3000 years old.
In western Tasmania, Huon pine grows in rainforests along riverbanks; it also occurs in swampy flats or lake edges in the state's southern and central regions.
It thrives in cool, wet conditions, and is very susceptible to fire. Seed is produced in female cones, with male cones usually growing on separate trees.
Huon pine can also reproduce by 'layering', where low-hanging branches touching the soil produce new roots, while still attached to the parent plant.
Genetic testing of a stand of male trees on Mount Read on the West Coast has shown that they have been regenerating in this way for more than 10,000 years (although none of the current trees are more than 1500 years old).
Huon pine timber has a high oil content and is extremely durable. Early settlers valued it, particularly in the boat-building industry.
Its easy accessibility on West Coast rivers was one of the primary reasons for the establishment of the penal settlement at Sarah Island in Macquarie Harbour, in the 1820s.
Curiously, early settlers had been milling Huon pine for decades before the species was given its formal name, Lagarostrobos franklinii, honouring Sir John Franklin, Lieutenant Governor of Tasmania from 1836-1843.
Today, Huon pine is a highly valued timber used in small quantities for furniture making as well as boat building.
After a post market treat of a curry out at Kudos Indian restaurant in Fazeley we once again pulled pins and headed for the first length of our journey to Mercia Marina in Willington to trade at Derbyshire's first ever floating market.
We were looking forward to this one as it had the added benefit of all the marina facilities. We would be plugged into 240v electrics for the first time this year and Debbie had warned that the washing machine would be doing overtime!
First we had to get back to Fradley Junction and drop down through the busy locks and a run across glorious countryside to Alrewas and down onto the main Trent River for a short run past fast flowing weirs to stop at Burton-on-Trent for a good few days and make the last of the pens up that I was behind with and do lots of preparation for the next lot of turning using the electric hook-up at Mercia marina.
The preparation that I needed to do involved - sawing some of the historic narrowboat wood into manageable sized pieces - turning these to rounds - marking/cutting/drilling/ them to accept the pen mechanisms and then stabilising some of the softer pieces with wood hardener. Once that was done it’d be time for gluing the brass tubes in place - cleaning the overspill from the insides and lastly barrel trimming the ends to get everything to fine machined angles.
In amongst all that I managed to get some pens finished, pen #537 was made at Burton-on-Trent on 19th May 2016
You can follow my pen making here on this blog and our travels on another blog here
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