Shipping Pens in Sub Zero Temps BEWARE!!!

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J

JWS Penworks

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Joined
Jul 8, 2007
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131
Location
Racine, Wisconsin, USA.
I was gifted some wood from a fellow woodworker and so I made him a pen out of the wood he gifted to me. This is what can happen when your pen sits on a mail truck in -30 degree weather. :mad: The pen was perfect when it left the shop, and this is what it looked like when it arrived at the recipients house. The wood is Rosewood, and the Cap wood turned almost black :confused: I will never again ship in the cold.

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This is posted as a Public Service kinda thing.

John
 
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I left an acrylic pen in my car overnight -- low temp of about 35. The lower blank split all the way from tip to centerband and the tip popped out of the tube. Not worried about the loss of that particular pen and glad to have learned the lesson on a cheapy. I'm finding that for many reasons, penturning is a warm weather hobby.
 
In warm weather, my laminated peppermills become "bumpy" due to the different woods reacting differently to the humidity.

The interesting part, if you take it back inside (air conditioned and humidity controlled) - in a couple of days it gets "smooth" again.

Hold onto your pens, keep them inside, they may HEAL!!

("not-so-much" if they are cracked --- DAMHIKT!!)
 
Our hand crafted pens are a lot like us, they want to be comfortable. If the environment you leave your pen in is comfortable for you, they likely won't have any problems. If you wouldn't like to be in a 120 degree car in the summer, or a 20 degree box on a shipping truck, then your pen isn't going to like it either. I agree with Ed, if it hasn't cracked, bring in to a more suitable environment, it may fix itself as for fit and finish, but the color change may be permanent.
 
fernhills said:
How do you figure that ? if Acrylic can crack as stated above.
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"The wood is Rosewood, and the Cap wood turned almost black I will never again ship in the cold."

Stabilizing should help in color retention across a wider range of temps. I wasn't referring to acrylic cracking. That aside, stabilized woods are much stronger than normal woods, and in most cases would be less likely to crack.

Then again, rosewood is oily and probably harder to stabilize. Rosewood, being a warm climate wood, obviously doesn't like COLD weather! :wink:
 
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Rosewood, Cocobolo, African Blackwood and many others cannot be stabilized. either oily or dense wood are not candidates for the process. Sorry about the loss of your pen. Also grateful my shop is heated. not only reduces the stress on all my materials. it saves a lot of wear and tear on my equipment.
 
george said:
Does thick layer of CA film helps wood from cracking ? Regarding the temperature differences ?
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Yes and no. Most cross cut/biased cut woods will move with temp and humidity changes, even with CA. BUT, CA does affect it some more than others. Softer woods that soak up lots of CA behave somewhat like being stabilized. Soaking in does better than having a thick layer on top.
 
I'm assuming the two pieces of wood came from the same blank. It is a real puzzle to me why one turned color and apparently shrunk while the other did not???

Who has a theory??
 
Just a little info on wood movement. wood will swell with moisture shrink when drying.
the way it will move has to do with the grain.
it will warp when drying as if the growth rings are trying to straighten out. it iwll also swell or shrink the most to least in the following direction.
most width of the board, next thickness of the board and least in length. assuming a typical board with the growth rings running with the width of the board.
The amount of movement is dependent on the type of wood.
it is sort of hard to tell but it looks like the lower barrel did shrink and leave a gap at the nib. otherwise the glue just did not loose the tug of war on this blank...yet. thinner wood on the lower barrel exerts less force on the glue.
Basically by cutting cross grain you allowed the most movement in the length of the blank.
regardless it all measures up to one wrecked pen.
 
I guess crosscutting the wood would explain the shrinkage; but seems to me the color change is still unexplained??

And why didn't you get the same or nearly the same amount of shrinkage on both barrels??
 
Randy_ said:
I guess crosscutting the wood would explain the shrinkage; but seems to me the color change is still unexplained??

And why didn't you get the same or nearly the same amount of shrinkage on both barrels??
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Part of the shrinkage could be due to the stresses that were put on the tree in that very particular spot during its growth. Even in such a small piece of wood, there could be a variation like that since its corsscut. It also has to do with the thickness of the wood. The thicker the wood, the more likely it is to want to move on you, especially if it froze.

My theory about the blackening is that maybe the oils in the wood (rosewood is very oily naturally) expanded when frozen on the mail truck and thus leeched its way out of the pores (which would be across the whole length of the top, since its crosscut). Perhaps it didn't affect the bottom b/c it is thinner and the glue would have "stabilized" it a little better like Hank suggested. I know that the vast majority of the pens I've made that have cracked for whatever reason were Cigar styles, and it was always the top that cracked first (sometimes the bottom too). I know that the actual thickness of the wood once turned to dimension is the thickest on the Cigar top than most any other pen. I suspect that makes it more susceptible to environmental factors (mainly b/c the glue will stabilize less and the finish will soak into less of the wood as a percentage of the whole).

Very interesting though, I've definitely never seen the wood turn black like that before. :eek:
 
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