Originally posted by sbell111
You can also make these yourself. The brass and bullets are quite inexpensive and the process to turn them into a pen is not complicated.
Absolutely. It takes a few tries to develop the technique for drilling clean, concentric holes (especially through lead) without marring the surface (or breaking a drill bit) -- but it is not especially difficult. You can do it without specialized reloading tools, but even those are not outrageously expensive.
Originally posted by bitshird
The worst part is having to buy 100 cartridges and 100 bullets, but you can also solder the tubes in place, I've been a bit leary of the glued in tubes
If you want to try drilling the case and bullet yourself but are stopped by having to buy components in quantity, send me an email. I buy cases by the thousand, and bullets in boxes of 250. I can sell them piecemeal at a reasonable price (plus shipping).
I won't dispute that a good solder joint is stronger than a press-fit, or (possibly) a CA glue joint. For a pen, however, I do believe that press-fit and CA are sufficient. After all, we press-fit the slimline transmission. If the other joints are stronger than that one, does it really matter how much stronger they are? I've only ever had one cartridge pen CA bond fail, and that was a brass/wood joint, not a brass/brass joint. Soldering wouldn't have helped there.
Regards,
Eric