Whoops, my bad!! Guess I need to backtrack................
I have a dwindling supply of some great royal blue curly maple, and wanted to use it for the pens (in addition to experimenting with some Lapis tru-stone), so sent Ken Nelson the uppers to do for me where I had already drilled, glued in tubes, and rough turned the upper barrels for 9 pens. Ken was kind enough to accomodate this request, and returned the uppers cut for the stars, with stars out of holly (lower barrell had stripes out of holly as well). As such, the tube was already glued in place, and I guess I forgot that is not the case with Ken's normal kits. Here's a pic of 5 of the 9 I had Ken do........
and I want to say that it only took about 10 - 15 minutes to glue all the stars in the way I mentioned, given that the tube was already in and providing a lot more support. I definetly would not have done it as I mentioned in the earlier post without the tube already in for the additional strength and support. My apologies for the confusion..........and in my experience, the stars do fit tight in there without the glue at first, so I wouldn't rule out the possibility of the version pianomanPJ mentions, dry fitting the stars with the tube inserted but not glued in place, then gluing the tube in place, and coating the exterior with thin CA as well to penetrate from the outside.