My homemade Sheaffer Vac-Fill tool!

If you're the DIY repair kind of person, you'll love this little tool I made.

Ever struggled trying to find something to unscrew that nut inside the blind cap of a Sheaffer Vac-Fill?

Finding something that fits is next to impossible, so you're left with only one good choice - make something of your own.

If you're looking for inspiration on doing this, hopefully this post will help you out.

I'm not going to go into great detail on how I made this. I will give you the basics though. It's not hard to do, granted you have the tools. Besides, I want to leave you some room to be creative. :)

I started out with a nail. Can't remember the size. A bigger one though, not a tiny finishing nail.

I don't have a large anvil, so I used two hammers to make this. One hammer for pounding, and the side of the other one as my anvil! Worked like a charm.

I used a blow-torch to heat the end of the nail up, and then I pounded it out flat. combined with a grinding wheel for shaping, I ended up with a good squared end.

Then I used pliers and bent the tip at the angle you'll see below.

Lastly, I used my rotary tool to cut the notch down the middle. A little sandpaper cleaned it up a bit too. :)

I unfortunately was unable to make a handle for this. I don't have a lathe, or any other equipment to help out with that kind of thing. As of now, it works just fine with a rubber grip I have in my workshop.

The notch has been cut to fit right around the Vac-Fill rod.

Here it is in action. Works like a charm!

The last thing I need to do is get a hold of the proper chemical, and harden the steel. As of now, it's a tad soft and I fear it will bend if to much force is used.

Once hardened, this will be the perfect Vac-Fill tool for me, and will definitely be an improvement over my v1.0 "tweezer" tool.

Anyone else here ever made their own pen-repair tool? I've made a few now, and it's always a lot of fun. There's nothing more satisfying than successfully repairing a pen with a tool the you have made!.