Perhaps you came from this video. The article below will explain how to accomplish the swap.

A visit to Montblanc's website to look at ball point pens shows prices ranging from $200 to $1215 USD. Yes, over $1000 for a ball point pen. What is perhaps more striking is that it isn't the actual writing implement that causes the prices to be so high. In fact, a refill for one of these beauties can be had for about $15 USD.

Compare that to the first pen I grabbed out of the pile - a Tul gel roller ball. Retail price tops out at about $1.99. In contrast to the fancier pen, the actual business end of this pen comprises most of the cost of the unit, at around $1.29 most places. So perhaps it would be more accurate to title this article "How to make a $2 pen write like it uses a $15 refill", because that's exactly what what we'll be doing.

The blue ball pen refill from montblanc does write smoothly, but it is a different shape from the djbpensdirect.com refill that comes in the Tul so it is not a direct swap. Fortunately, Montblanc includes a handy refill adapter made specifically to fit in the Tul body. (Not really, but they do provide what we will make into such an adapter.)

The blue plastic thing pictured next to the actual refill is actually a cap that ships on the end of the refill. We will use this bit of plastic to make the refill fit inside the Tul, and have the rectraction action actually work as designed.

Compare the shape of the two refills. The Montblanc refill is shorter overall by about xx mm.

If we line up the butt, you can see the thick part of the Tul refill body is almost as long

as the entire Montblanc refill and if we line them up nib to nib, you can see that the thin part of the Montblanc refill is about xx mm longer than the Tul's.

By cutting it so that we have one piece measuring xx mm from the closed part of the cap to the other end, and another open-at-both-ends piece measuring xx mm we can use the blue plastic cap provided by Montblanc to make up for both of these differences.

Unscrew the metal cone off of the end of the Tul. This will allow you to remove the refill and spring.

Cut the plastic cap as mentioned above and insert the longer blue plastic piece, closed end first, into the Tul body as shown.

Place the shorter segment up on the collar of the MontBlanc refill, also as shown.

Then the spring, insert the whole thing into the Tul body, finish up with


the cone. et voila! a $2 pen that writes like a $1000 pen! it extends and retracts as it should. Plus, this one has a cool removable rubber grip! Does the MontBlanc? Didn't think so. Enjoy.