I see people wondering about what taps, dies, drills, etc. to get so they can start working with kitless pens and being inhibited by the cost of everything without knowing if the will like doing it.
So here's a simple solution, you probably already have everything you need to make a kitless if you do it a bit differently (which does not mean doing it second rate).
Here are a few pictures (my horrid photography as always, which is why I rarely post pics). Everything here is done with nothing other than drill bits and a lathe, no thread cutting. The section, cap, finials, etc. are made with drill bits and are all hand lapped to a perfect friction fit with no threading.
Everything is made from some leftover pieces of Ebonite I had and the feed is also Ebonite (a sort of generic 6mm feed available from a few sources and used on a number of commercial pens, about 5 bucks or so). Clip is left over from something I don't remember and nib is a Jinhao 6mm medium nib (about 2 or 3 bucks). these are the only metal parts on the pen. I made this quickly and didn't put much effort above minimal quality to finishing, but the pen actually looks a lot better than the picture.
It can be made from anything you want and have on hand, just experiment some and have fun doing it. (A note: if you friction fit the cap well enough, you may need to drill a very small hole in the finial to let air in when you take it off and avoid sucking too much ink into the feed with a vacuum effect.)
So here's a simple solution, you probably already have everything you need to make a kitless if you do it a bit differently (which does not mean doing it second rate).
Here are a few pictures (my horrid photography as always, which is why I rarely post pics). Everything here is done with nothing other than drill bits and a lathe, no thread cutting. The section, cap, finials, etc. are made with drill bits and are all hand lapped to a perfect friction fit with no threading.
Everything is made from some leftover pieces of Ebonite I had and the feed is also Ebonite (a sort of generic 6mm feed available from a few sources and used on a number of commercial pens, about 5 bucks or so). Clip is left over from something I don't remember and nib is a Jinhao 6mm medium nib (about 2 or 3 bucks). these are the only metal parts on the pen. I made this quickly and didn't put much effort above minimal quality to finishing, but the pen actually looks a lot better than the picture.
It can be made from anything you want and have on hand, just experiment some and have fun doing it. (A note: if you friction fit the cap well enough, you may need to drill a very small hole in the finial to let air in when you take it off and avoid sucking too much ink into the feed with a vacuum effect.)