Simple Waterman Body/Mont Blanc Cartridge Mod

I recently received my Prometheus Writes Alpha, a magnificent pen designed to take Mont Blanc Fineliner and Rollerball refills. After using it with the Fineliners I had purchased, a friend of mine, a lovely artistic girl fell in love with how it wrote. While I would be delighted to be able to order her an Alpha, work is slow and I just can't afford to. She of course did not want me to spend all that money on her either... So I immediately set about looking for a budget conscious way to give her the Fineliner experience. In a post I found on EDC forums, I saw that one guy had used a Waterman Kultur Rollerball with the Mont Blanc refills with minimal adjustment. So I ordered up a Kultur from Amazon to see what I could do.

Here is the Waterman Kultur Rollerball, a nice pen in its own right, and less than $20 shipped to me. The benefit of this pen is that unlike the Pilot G2 or other pens suggested as cheap hosts for MB refills, it has a cap, which is essential for the Fineliners as they will dry out very quickly without it.



You can see that the original Rollerball cartridge (below) is very similar to the Mont Blanc cartridge (above), just slightly shorter.



Fortunately the back of the MB refill has a plastic nub on it that is easy to shave down. I took my multitool's file and filed a bit of material off the end and filed the edges to narrow it.



This is all that it takes to fit it in the Waterman and allow the two pieces of the body to fit together snugly!!



And you're done! You can now have a Mont Blanc writing experience without paying for a Mont Blanc pen body. I will be giving it to her tomorrow and I am very interested to see how she likes it. Give it a try and Enjoy!

nbp said:

Here is the Waterman Kultur Rollerball, a nice pen in its own right, and less than $20 shipped to me.

Click to expand...

I don't see them that cheap on Amazon, do you have a link? I see them around $30.00.

I'd like to make a red pen for my wife.

Norm

Hmmm. All I see now are the Kultur fountain pens which are NOT what you want. Maybe the rollerballs are sold out. I'll look around to see if I can find more somewhere.

Thanks.

Norm

This is very cool; thank you for sharing. I am also interested in doing this sometime for my mom who has loved pens all her life but hasn't spent a ton of money on any one.

I see the Kultur Rollerballs on ebay, but you're right, they seem to be $25-$30. If you're patient, maybe more will come up for cheaper on Amazon. The seller I bought from was Pen Seller From France. Go figure, they ship from France. Haha. It also looks like you could probably use the Phileas which seems to be the US version of the Kultur. I'm no pen expert, that's just what I read on another forum while searching.

So, I recently received a titanium Prometheus Writes pen as a gift and I ordered some Mont Blanc Fineliner refills, and like nbp's artistic friend, I instantly fell in love with this writing point! This is what I have been searching for in a pen all of my life, I think. There was always something missing. Everything had parts of what I wanted in a pen point, but until now, there was always something missing.

And, of course, in the process of finding and ordering the fineliner refills, I came across the Pilot G2 pen hack, which is pretty darn cool. It also led me to buy some G2's for myself to try, and I really like these pens! I didn't know what the whole Gel ink thing was about until now, and now I'm trying a bunch of different new pens. The Uni-ball Jetstream's came highly recommended, but I actually like the Pilot G2's better--go figure. Better ink--darker--and I like the way they write better. Seems I am in the minority on that one, though. Either that or the Jetstream quality took a sharp downward dive.

But in any case, I don't like the G2's nearly as much as the MB Fineliner (and I suspect the same would go for the MB Rollerball refills--but I am going to order some of those too to find out).

So I went searching online for a Fineliner hack a la the G2 hack--because, as nbp says, you need a cap for the Fineliner.

And, as a digression, I will say that I added two o-rings to my PW pen. They are the 9mm i.d. x 1.5 mm thick Arc AAA (or Sapphire) o-rings and they fit perfectly on the PW Pen almost as if they were made for it (or vice versa)! They fit just inside of the threads in a rounded groove there. I think they look cool, and they improve the feel, and they mean far fewer turns to cap or post the pen, and the lower one means a great air-tight seal when capped. No drying out the FL cartridge. Not sure that it would dry out even without the o-ring. Haven't heard anyone complain about this. But I like the o-rings for the other reasons either way. But I digress.

Anyway, so the Kultur isn't available for cheap, as mentioned. Plus it looks LARGE--like in diameter. (nbp, what is the diameter of the pen down where you would hold it while writing? If you could measure, and post, I'd appreciate it.) Plus, I'd rather buy from Amazon or some other seller than ebay. Recently had some bad luck with ebay, actually. Sort of.

Well, in my research, I have found that Monteverde standard rollerball (or fineliner) refills are interchangeable with Waterman refills, and a number of other rollerball pens. So, I figured if I could find an inexpensive Monteverde rollerball pen, I could do the shortening mod to a Mont Blanc Fineliner refill.

Enter the Monteverde Artista Crystal Rollerball pen! Available from Amazon in a number of colors, including clear, turquoise, purple, lime green, etc., and the fountain pen version of it has gotten good reviews over at Jetpens in terms of feel in the hand, etc. It's $34--same price as the Kultur pens on ebay--and it looks like more my kind of pen. So I'm going to give it a try and report back.

I'm still on the lookout for a very cheap MB FL hack--almost thought that the Uniball Jetstream Stick pen could be made to work, but no dice. If anyone knows of any cheap refillable stick pens with a cap that would accept a nearly 1/4" diameter refill, please chime in. It'd be great if we could find a similar hack to the G2 MB rollerball!

So, I believe I have found a fairly cheap MB FL hack!

The Pilot Metropolitan Roller Ball Gel Ink Pen takes G-2 ink refills and has a cap! It is $13.50 from Jetpens, and they do free shipping on orders over $25, so if you can find $12 more to buy, you're golden. And there's a lot to like on that site.

I will probably pick one of these up, depending on how much I like the Monteverde Artista, (assuming, of course, that the Artista will accept the Mont Blanc Fineliner refills! If not, I will definitely be picking up a Pilot Metropolitan Roller Ball.

Hey js -

Sorry I didn't reply, I didn't see your previous post until just now. I don't have the pen personally, I gave it to my friend. She looooves it though. It is kinda of a thick pen though, you're right. I don't recall if it was uncomfortably so, but it is thick. Please keep us posted on your other hosts, and how the FL refills fit in them. It would be nice to have some options if someone else I know wants the MB FL experience on the cheap. I'll keep using the Alpha.

nbp,

No worries! I figured you hadn't seen my post(s). If you didn't reply by the end of this weekend, I would've shot you a PM.

Anyway . . .

So, great success with the Monteverde Artista Crystal! As my research concluded, any pen that accepts the standard Monteverde Rollerball refill will accept a shortened Mont Blanc Fineliner refill. Just as with the Kultur above or with the Pilot G2, all you need to do is trim off some of the plastic at the end, and it fits perfectly. If you line the refills up side by side, you can see how very close they are. Nearly identical after the extra length is trimmed off.

I'm quite pleased with this pen. Amazon has them for just over $30 in a variety of colors. I got the turquoise, but there is also clear, purple, lime green, pink, orange, and yellow. You can see the refill through the pen body, and the steel of the refill goes nicely with the grip portion of the pen, which is also shiny metal, and the clip and accents. And, as a side benefit, the rollerball refill that comes with the pen, drops in completely unmodified, into a Pilot G-2. I think it's just a bit smoother than the stock G-2 refill.

But, as I said, since the Pilot Metropolitan Roller Ball Gel Ink Pen takes the standard Pilot G-2 refills, it should take the shortened Mont Blanc Finerliner. And it's only $13.50 right now from Jetpens. So, significantly less than the Artista Crystal. Metal body pen. Decent aesthetics. Well liked and reviewed in terms of its ergonomics. (This body is used for a fountain pen version). I'll probably place an order at Jetpens in the next few weeks or month or so, and I'll probably grab one of these just to confirm that it does indeed work. For now, however, I've been spending way too much money on pens and related items.

Unfortunately for my wallet, I've gotten into Fountain pens. LOL! Or I'm just starting to. Started with a Pilot Prera, Medium point, which I simply adore on Rhodia 80 gram dot paper--and any other decent paper. Not nearly as good on standard 20lb copier paper, though, and even worse on cheaper grade stuff. That's where the Fineliner shines. It writes really well on just about any paper. And it dries almost instantly. Something just slightly over 2 seconds on the Rhodia paper, and less than that on copier paper. It is just a touch too broad in some cases, but I still love it. Mont Blanc apparently no longer offers the Fineliner in anything but a "B" size, as far as I can tell.

As for the Prometheus Writes pen, I'm having an issue with the weight and balance of the pen. It's a bit too heavy and the balance is off when posted, and yet it's a bit too short to my taste when unposted. (I suspect the aluminum version might solve this issue, and I'd be interested to try it in aluminum.) Also the threads on the CP Ti are really not smooth at all. Capping and posting the pen isn't really that pleasant. Part of why I like adding the o-rings to it. Plus, I'm not digging the feel of the body of this pen, with it's wide, deep, rounded grooving. Really well made pen, though, obviously.

I want a Lambda Top.

Thanks for the advice on the Monteverde taking the FL refill. I suspect some folks will be interested in trying that out! And if you end up trying the other one as well let us know. Pics are always fun.

Also, if you are interested in trying the Alpha in aluminum, shoot me a PM. Maybe I can loan you mine to test out. I suspect it would be lighter and better balanced and the threads are very smooth.

nbp,

Thanks! I may take you up on that at some point!

So, my wife loved the way the Artista Crystal / MB FL wrote so much that she wanted her own (sound familiar?), but she didn't want me to spend $34, so I ordered the Pilot Metropolitan Rollerball. She decided on the animal collection--matte blue Leopard version. After I ordered it I was searching for reviews of the Mont Blanc Starwalker with Finerliner cartridge, and I ran across this blog post:

An Alternate Pen - The Montblanc Fineliner Body Hack

So, before I even got the Pilot Metropolitan, I knew it was going to work. And, true to that, when I got the pen today, I converted it right away and found that, yes, indeed, it does work.

However . . .

You do NOT want to trim the MB FL cartridge to the same length as the Pilot one! For whatever reason, the MB FL wants to be longer. The best way to figure out how much to trim is to insert the unmodded FL into the Pilot and screw down the tip cover as much as possible. The gap left will show you how much to trim. If you trim too much, you will have this annoying metal clicking sound / motion when you write. That is the force of your writing pushing back the cartridge into the body (or releasing it forward) against the spring tension. If you find this, then just wrap a layer or two of blue painters masking tape (or similar) around the back end of the cartridge, with a 1/4" or so of extra sticking out the back. Then crush this down towards (and into) the back of the cartridge and insert into the Pilot body. If the clicking goes away, you're all good. If the pen tip won't close, then trim some extra. Etc. Pretty straightforward. Best, of course, is to carefully trim until the pen tip cover just closes the gap with the body. But it's no great loss if you have to add tape, though, as you can't see the cartridge inside the pen anyway.

With the Artista, on the other hand, you can see through the body, so you should take more care with that one. That one, however, is very close to wanting the same length as the Pilot. But it too, wants to be just a titch longer.

I'll see if I can take some pictures and post them a bit later. The Pilot Metropolitan is a nice looking pen and comes in a range of colors--most of them more metallic, and/or subdued (i.e. no red, yellow, green, etc.--more like silver, white, black, matte blue, gold, etc.)