A bit of LAMY DIY

I already wrote a bit about how great ballpoint pens, and especially the ISO-standardized refills, are for drawing. Since then, I have been doing a lot of ballpoint sketching and started to look for other exciting pens to use. I enjoy my LAMY fountain pens a lot (especially the metal AL-Star and Lx series) but was disappointed that the pens I wanted to try (the ones with caps and without retractable mechanisms) were not ballpoint but of the roller-ball type.

The problem is that roller-ball pens use less tacky, water-based ink, which maybe allows smoother and sharper lines when writing text, but somehow never worked so well for my drawing purposes. Maybe it’s because of my line work style, but with water-based or gel ink pens, I always get dry starts and jagged, uneven lines.

If only I could have the nice, metal bodies of LAMY roller-ball pens with the great line qualities of ballpoint pen oil-based refills…

Some quick searching online confirmed that the LAMY roller-ball M63 refills are bigger than most ballpoint pen ones so, in theory, I should be able to fit one in! I could try to DIY convert the roller-ball into something I could use for my art!

First, I bought on the second-hand online store Mercari two beautiful LAMY AL-Star roller-ball pens and some ballpoint pen refills from LAMY to experiment with (so far, amongst the many refills I tested the LAMY ballpoint refills worked best for drawing – so I decided to go with the brand).
Actually, adapting the refills was very simple: the ballpoint pen LAMY M16 refills come with a plastic cap that can be used quite nicely to extend the refill barrel, and a bit of scotch tape is the only other thing that’s needed!

STEP 1: Cut about 1cm off the plastic cap and tape it to the end of the M16 refill. Insert the modified refill into the roller-ball pen body to check if it closes and if the tip of the refill does not protrude too much – the cap will not close if the tip is too long!
If necessary, cut a bit off the end of the plastic extension until the refill fits nicely.

STEP 2: Because the refill will fall down a bit when the pen is held vertically – put some tape on the thin end of the refill – just about two windings were enough for me. This way, the refill will fit snugly into the pen end and not rattle.

FINISHED!

Now I have two nice, metal LAMY pens converted to ballpoint refills to use in my work – I made one with the medium, M and one with the thickest line, B refill for some line variation.
I’m also convinced that it would be easy to convert the similarly sized Parker-type refills this way.

And what’s more, apparently, I’m not the only person with such ideas – a bit of online research revealed that there exists a whole line of excellent (though a bit expensive) converters that help to adapt third-party refills that are more popular and cheaper to get here in Japan to be used also in the LAMY roller-ball pen bodies.

Even though I already converted my pens, I bought one of the adapters to try it out – a well-made out of machined metal (aluminum?) adapter really makes using popular Japanese refills in the LAMYs quite straightforward, and because it can be adjusted a little, it also helps in adapting other refills as well.
Using it, I was able to fit a PILOT BKRF-6F refill with minimal effort and was even able to put the D1 refills in with a bit of DIY scotch tape magic, too – it seems that the LAMY roller-ball pens are indeed perfect for such experiments!

I’m very happy with this little bit of DIY action, as the results are excellent. I much prefer the pencil-like qualities of oil-based ballpoint pen refills that allow me for a lot more expressive touches and are also nicely waterproof for use with watercolors. I’m also happy that with this pen body I’m not limited to what brand of refills I have to use – just a bit of tape and the possibilities are huge!