In 20 plus years of making pens, I have learned never to assume a blank is dry enough to make a pen!!
This makes sense when you think about it. The guy who cuts the tree wants to sell the wood quickly==the guy who buys the wood is probably converting to pen blank size, he wants to turn it quickly, the guy who sells it to the penturner will put it on the market--the best stuff will sell first, probably before it is dry.. So, the "blah" blanks will have time to dry.
As a vendor, I just bought several thousand blanks from Australia. They had to be fumigated for a month (to allow into USA) But, they are still very wet. As a penturner, I will either advertise them as top quality (I got lucky) and wet or I will wait and dry them, in which case they will be more expensive as I have a lot of money tied up.
I am truly interested, would the penturning community prefer lower cost for great wood you have to dry or higher cost for "ready to turn" burl blanks??
comments welcome, I may start another thread on this, later.
Ed