Welcome to- The Fountain Pen Community!

Looking over the site I notice this is one of the great unloved forums so i thought I'd try to pull some interest over this way with a little how to. Yeah it could have gone under the repair forum but it works in here as well.

The Wahl 5th Ave CA (Capillary Action) Ball Point 1945-47





Jim Mamoulides has an awesome article on these pens on his site. penhero.com so i'll let him tell you the history of these pens.

http://penhero.com/PenGallery/Eversharp/EversharpCABallpoint.htm

These are older pics & I just never shot one of the original refill, so we'll have to make do.

The conversion is fairly straight forward on these & not hard to do at all. It's easier if you have a lathe but can be done with hand tools.

You'll need:

Either a Lathe OR a drill and a rotary tool w/ a cutting disk
2 ~ 1/16" ID o rings
Felt/cotton for packing material
1 3/32" drill bit
1 Parker BP/Gel refill

To begin the conversion to modern refills, the old refill has to be used. It unscrews from the front of the section. (in the pic below, the brass bp tip unscrews from the section) Remove the old refill. Set the pen aside. The OR has a stem/tube on the back side of the brass tip. Using a lathe or a hand rotary tool (dremmel) with a cutting bit, cut off the very tip oif the original refill just beind the ball point. Then on the back side of the refill, cut off the stem/ink tube flush with the end of the threads. Then using a 3/23" drill bit. you'll need to bore out the inner diameter of the threadded bit you have left so the new refill can fit properly. Clean up the front face of the 'new' adapter you just made with some fine grit mylar buffing boards to remove any rough spots. Slip the 2 O rings over the tip of the new refill to be installed. Insert the refill into the adapter, check the end of the refill vs. the end of the adapter for length of the exposed refill tip. Add mor lose o rings as needed for a proper fit.

Set the adapter aside.

Get the barrel, find some felt or cotton to use as a packing material for the end of the barrel. I like to use the felt buffing wheels that come with most rotary tools. (they aren't good for polishing pens, they generate too much heat & burn the pens more often than not). I cut them into 1/4's and fill the end of the barrel with them. Fill the barrel end with the material and replace the section/new refill/adapter in the barrel. If the refill is pushed back into the barrel any, just add a bit more material until it's a snug fit when the section is replaced & your done. This is a simple 20-30 minute  quick & easy job that just aout anyone can handle.

All told I've probably done 20-25 of these over the past few years & always have fun doing it.

The Skyline CA BP can be converted the same way if your lucky enough to find one. They are pretty tough to come by.

Dennis