Anyone turned a barrel for a Bic Cristal?

[BHuij]

Back in my Jr. High woodshop days, our shop teacher ingeniously came up with a way for us to turn pens without spending a bunch of money on kits. He took a regular old MT2 mandrel, cut it off until the rod was about 5" long and had no threads at the end, and had us drill blind 1/4" holes into pen blanks. The blanks fit right over the mandrel, and with tailstock support, we could make "kitless" pen bodies, and then stick a regular old Bic Round Stic refills into the hole for a nice friction fit. I made a lot of pens like that before I learned about the wide world of kits.

I have a friend whose absolute favorite refill is the 1.6mm Bic Cristal. I wonder if anyone has turned a pen for the venerable Cristal refill using a similar (or any other) technique? If not I may give it a shot and report back.

 

[Monty]

Don't know if the Bic Crystal ink is the same as the regular Bic but if you Do a search for Bic you will find quite a few threads on them.

 

[Mortalis]

I live in The Bourbon Capitol of the World, Bardstown, KY and when I read, "has anyone turned a barrel", I immediately thought you meant barrel stave.

 

[duncsuss]

I made a couple at a workshop with Kurt Hertzog. His technique for getting the refill to stay in the barrel was rather clever - drill it out so it's a snug slip fit, then dampen the inside. With a toothpick, apply the tiniest dot of polyurethane glue (like the original Gorilla Glue) to the inside of the hole and put the refill in place right away. The glue foams. When it is set, give a quick twist to the refill (might need section pliers) and you've created a ridge that holds the refill in place but with a firm tug it will come out and you can replace it.

 

[PatrickR]

Here's some I did. I wanted to replicate the original design. You could shape it in any form you would like.

Bic Stick - hexagon

I have wanted to do this for awhile and it seemed like a little break from the flashier pens I have done recently. Mostly a practice in precision and utility. I wanted to burn the logo and all of the markings found in an original but realized I no longer have an operational laptop to run the...

www.penturners.org

 

[Penchant 4]

Played with the concept.

 

[BHuij]

Seems straightforward enough. I should clarify that the Bic Round Stic and Bic Cristal have similar but different sized refills. The Cristal will need a hole significantly narrower than the 1/4" that worked great for the Round Stic. Might be a bit of a challenge to find a drill bit narrow enough and long enough at the same time. Then again, maybe I can just drill a normal 7mm hole through most of the blank, and just the end gets a smaller hole. I'll figure something out and report back when I've given it a shot.

 

[BHuij]

I think I pulled it off okay. The part of the refill I hoped to friction fit had a diameter of exactly 5/32". I bought an 8" long 1/8" bit, did my best to drill a straight and centered blind hole in a piece of padauk (tricky but it went okay drilling on the lathe), and then used a hand drill to expand the first inch or so of the hole to 5/32" with a regular bit in my hand drill. Then I just mounted it with the dead center in that hole and a standard 60° cone center in the tailstock and turned it. Sanded quickly 320/400/600, did one application of scratch freee, and 3 coats of Pens Plus (I'm new to this stuff and pretty impressed so far). Then one last coat of ren wax for good measure before parting off with the skew and lightly touching up the back of the pen by hand. The refill had to be trimmed a bit shorter, but slipped right in and stays put no problem.

Good to have this method in my arsensal now! The material cost on a pen like this is so cheap it might as well be free. Time cost isn't bad either. And as far as ballpoint refills go, I think Cristal is one of the better ones.