Wayne, I have made my share of Bog Oak pens, mostly Baron, Slimline (due to blank size) and Perfect Fit Convertable. The oldest are now well over 6 month old, and mostly sold, but I have two of the first ones left, they are fine, no cracks or else. Maybe the wood you turned the pen from was not quite dry.
From our vacation in Ireland I brought back some real large blanks, all over 1" square and 6 1/2 to 7 1/2" long. They have not too long been out of the bog, they were really heavy and wet and I am drying them now.
As soon as there is no weight change (loss) for some time, I will send them out for stabilization - this wood is worth to be stabilized. It is supposedly 3000-5000 years old, they can calculate this from how deep it was buried since they know the growth rate of the bogs (I think it was 1 mm per year, so 1 meter deep would be 1000 years). From my seller I also learned quite a bit about radio carbon dating. He was telling me that the certificate of radio carbon dating from the Queen's University in Belfast is a fake one (the one with the age of roughly 1500 years, the time when St Patrick was living in Ireland - good selling point for Americans with Irish roots). Well, myself I got a copy of the same certificate from two different sellers for quite different looking IBO. An analysis for the age (Radio Carbon dating) costs accrding to my seller about 1700 Euros, that is over $2000. So one must have a ship load of Bog oak to recover the cost for this by selling pen blanks.
LOL I thought that would get your attention. By BO I mean Bog Oak. I made a Baron with Bog Oak about six months ago and when I took it out of the pen box yesterday to admire again it had a nice long crack in the bottom barrel. Now that my friends is a real pisser in my opinion. I'm really 
