Help! Snakeskin blank troubles

[MartinPens]

I had a customer return his snakeskin pen. The cap and body tubes had bad cracks. (This was an El Grande kit, which I no longer use do to low quality parts) I disassembled them and took a couple macro shots to highlight what I'm seeing.

This pen was under normal usage - no, he didn't step on it, drop it, run over it or expose it to extreme heat.

I realize that I did not do anything to seal up the ends after trimming the tube. Could this be all it is? I'm noticing that the brass tube itself is actually cracked! There is also some type of reaction on the brass tubing causing some green buildup.

Any thoughts/solutions would be appreciated.

Martin

 

[its_virgil]

The El Grande is a favorite of mine but we can discuss that later.:biggrin:The amount of material left on the tubes of the El Grande is very very thin. The amount of resin over the skin is even less. Because of the small thickness I either don't make the El Grande with snake skin blanks. Turning into the skin is often a problem with the El Grande. I don't think sealing would have helped. Parting off the end 1/8 inch and adding wooden bands may help but then the pen looks like a mistake was made and the wooden bands were used to cover or hide the fault....oops band. The only way I will make an El Grande with snake skin is to turn the blank oversize and round over the ends to the pen parts.

The reaction with the green is one of the reasons I paint the tubes so the skin is not touching the brass.

Good luck.
Do a good turn daily!
Don

I had a customer return his snakeskin pen. The cap and body tubes had bad cracks. (This was an El Grande kit, which I no longer use do to low quality parts) I disassembled them and took a couple macro shots to highlight what I'm seeing.

This pen was under normal usage - no, he didn't step on it, drop it, run over it or expose it to extreme heat.

I realize that I did not do anything to seal up the ends after trimming the tube. Could this be all it is? I'm noticing that the brass tube itself is actually cracked! There is also some type of reaction on the brass tubing causing some green buildup.

Any thoughts/solutions would be appreciated.

Martin

 

[Chasper]

I had a brass tube in a Baron snake blank crack from end to end. I think the crack was probably related to using too much pressure to force the fitting into the tube, but I didn't use any more pressure than normal and there wasn't any sign of CA or other build up inside the tube.

I wrote it off as a freak one time occurance. It will be interesting to see if anyone else has had a brass tube break on a snake blank.