Shipping to areas of different humidity?

[bgray]

I shipped a pen from Ohio to Texas a couple of weeks ago.

The customer emailed to let me know that a crack developed.

The pen is Brazilian Rosewood with a CA finish, and it was in perfect shape when it left Ohio.

My shop is pretty well controlled at about 35-45% relative humidity, so my pens start in a good environment.

The client is using the pen in an office where humidity is controlled by air conditioning.

Maybe being in hot postal trucks could effect the humidity?

Has anyone ever had a pen crack and you were SURE that it was due to shipping to a different climate?

I'm going to replace the pen, of course. But I'm thinking about strategies to avoid this if indeed the different climate was the culprit. I'm cranking my dehumidifier in the shop to about 25%, anticipating that Texas is much drier than Ohio. I'm also going to seal the blank ends with CA, just in case.

Putting the pen in a ziploc for shipping crossed my mind, but I'm not sure that suffocating the pen and not allowing it to breath is a good idea...this is probably OK for the wood of the pen, but I'm not sure that it's OK for the finish.

I'm wondering if I'm over-analyzing this.

Maybe it was just a blank that had a pre-existing crack that showed itself a little after being turned (???)

 

[dalemcginnis]

Check this site http://www.weather.com/?par=DW_weather5 to get the humidity of where your shipping to. Not all of Texas is dry, right now the humidity is around 50% in Waco. I shipped some pens from Ca to my son in San Antonio recently, he hasn't mentioned anything about them cracking though. I've read a lot about cracking pens when they are shipped to differant regions. I wonder if it has anything to do with a ca finish? None of my pens had a ca finish.

 

[Fred]

Brian, Try having your blanks professionally stabilized by one of the services that uses acyrlic resin as their source of stabilization. After this process is performed you should have absolutely no problems with anything short of a fire.

Pre-drill and also turn the blanks down to almost finished size. This allowes you to make adjustments after the process. The pre-drilling and turning will reduce the costs a bit as these processors charge by finished weight.

Don't turn the wood off the tubes yet. Try disassembling them, fill the cracks, and refinish the blanks with thin CA. Gather as fine a batch of dust as possible and try to use dark sawdust in the dark areas and lighter sawdust elsewhere... then seal it into the blanks with the thin CA. Do not use any accelerent to fast cure the CA. Re-finish with your normal procedures and then show us your results this time around. You possibly can save the pen for yourself at least. Good luck! []
Let us know of your results.

 

[Fred]

Brian, I forgot to give you one name that is very qualified for the stabilization processing of woods...

http://www.stabilizedwood.com/info.shtml

There are others out in the world that are just as qualified, but these folks have worked some magic for some folks I know that have used their services. []