Just in case you thought crystallization was just for Waterman 100 year pens, here are a couple of pics of a WWII era twist filler I acquired recently. It's a mess, but the cap and 8461 nib are in great shape. It's so brittle, just handling it causes wear. I guess it's what you'd call a "placeholder"




Thankfully, I've never seen this from any other model.

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Brian

Oh no! Now I'm going to have nightmares!

It looks like it's made from the same material as the J series? I wonder if that pen was used as a swizzle stick for some mad scientist stirring some acid containing potion?

You're sure the cap belongs to that pen?

Absolutely positive the cap goes with the pen as it has the paladium silver trim on it. I don't think you have to worry about all your J's turning out like this though, I've heard of this happening with varying degrees of crystallization in twist fillers only. If this was happening to later J pens, we'd have seen or heard of it by now.

Of course, if you've got a whole pasel of twist fillers, perhaps we need to talk

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Brian

With the danger of being a semi-expert on this... It does not look like crystalization. Usually crystalization preserves the overall shape and creates a network of cracks. This looks distorted. Maybe it was dipped into a solvent. Can you get a better picture of the surface?


AZ

Aha! So my mad scientist premise may not be so far off

There are bazillions of cracks throughout the entire barrel end. In this particular case, it could have been a number of things that happened (Got squashed, dipped in a vat of HCL, natural crystallization, etc.). The mechanism's on these are well known to crystalize, which is why most I've seen will _never_ work without some form of aftermarket non-original repair, if at all.

I'll try to get better pictures later.

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Brian

This looks like it was exposed to high heat. Like desert sun, or on the dashboard of a 1933 ford pickup truck.