Crack happens

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qquake

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This would have been a PSI Cameron rollerball. Never had lignum vitae crack before.
 

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qquake

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I've turned others that were pretty thin, and they didn't crack. I don't know why this one did.
 

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qquake

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how tight was the tube when you pressed it in? was there any glue or burrs on the tube?
Like normal. It didn't feel any tighter than usual. I use modeling clay to keep epoxy out of the tube, and clean them out with an appropriate sized drill bit. The same routine as with all of my pens. But it definitely happened when I pressed in the lower cap. There were no issues with the upper body.
 

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monophoto

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I don't know why this one did.
Thin does not cause cracking, but it certainly can increase the risk that some other factor, that might otherwise be innocuous, could cause a crack.

I would speculate about three possible causes:
1. Overly aggressive sanding. Sanding too fast, or with too much pressure, can cause overheat heating that can trigger a crack.
2. The crack is at the end of the barrel where the bottom finial is pressed into the tube. How do you assemble your pens? Specifically, it is possible that the finial axis was not perfectly aligned with the body axis when you pressed it into the tube? If the pen part being pressed into the tube is not perfectly aligned, it can distort the tube and cause the kind of crack shown here. DAMHIKT When you watch other people assemble pens in videos it looks really simple, but my experience is that it seems to take at least one more hand than I have available to hold everything together while operating the pen press, which means that its entirely too easy for something to not be lined up exactly right.
3. Green wood is notorious for cracking as it dries, shrinking circumferentially and creating cracks that extend radially from the pith outward. While that phenomenon is always a possibility, I would be inclined to not suspect it in this case. Lignum vitae is a tropical wood, and it takes time for tropical woods to progress from green logs to pen blanks; by the time a pen blank is turned, one would normally expect that the wood would have dried to the point where the internal moisture content is similar to the ambient humidity. That said, it is possible that there could be additional shrinkage that is confounded by the constraint that the brass tube can't move and that leads to a crack. How long had you owned this blank before starting the pen? Also, how much time transpired between drilling the blank and gluing in the tube, turning the body, and finishing and assembling the pen?
 
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monophoto

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One final thought - other than the crack, the pen is very nice. If you can disassemble the pen without damaging it (my success rate with that is rather low), you can sand lightly, apply some CA to the crack, and then refinish the barrel. The crack will still be there, but it won't be as obvious.

I was a fountain pen person long before I started turning, and many years ago my wife bought me a pen that was turned by the husband of one of her fellow teachers - an El Grande in a dyed burl. It's a beautiful pen and writes wonderfully, but close inspection reveals that it has a crack that I think developed long after my wife bought it. But I still like the pen very much and it's still part of my EDC rotation.

If you want a pen that won't crack, choose plastic. If you want the natural beauty of real wood, you sometimes have to accept that cracks happen.
 

jttheclockman

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Cracks happen for one reason and one reason only and that is stress. weather it is mother nature's internal forces or from external man made forces. We all have posted countless times the many possible reasons why man made could happen and I believe OP has seen and read them all. He has shown us countless pens here that can fall in the catagory of this. I think it is a case of chalk it up to "things Happen catagory" and move on. Guessing what could have caused it is pointless in my opinion. Good luck as you move on to other pens.
 

Bats

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I tried making a lacewood Cameron last month and cracked the wood on that one, too. In that case, though, the hardware (all of it, actually) was far too tight for the tubes, despite cleaning them out and beveling the edges. Unfortunately by the time I realized just how tight it was, I couldn't manage to disassemble it, so I just had to press forward (no pun intended) and hope for the best. The best isn't what happened.
 

qquake

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Thanks for all the input, guys. I didn't think the crack was that bad at first, and went ahead and engraved it. But afterwards, I noticed the one crack was bigger than I thought, and it had several other cracks. I'll disassemble it and start over.
 

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