I have no special tools and wondered if anyone had any tips to remove the J-Bar from a pen without them. Its a spares body which could be sacrificed if necessary and I want the J-bar for another pen I'm hoping to bring to life.

I have some very slender pliers, small screwdrivers etc but no experience!



Greg

You can try the pliers if they're long and thin needle-nosed.

I've had success removing them with tweezers that had a little grip on the ends.

you can do what orangutans do to fish ants out from an anthill using a slender blade of grass. what i do is to straighten a sturdy paper clip, fashion one end into a triangular handle, and crimp the straight end into an acute angle thus:

/____________________

suffices to pull anything out from sac remnants to pressure bar.

i later bought fancy tools like long nose pliers, but more often than not, these are rather useless in practice, slipping and never managing to get the same impulsive tug that the crimp manages to deliver from under the pressure bar's curved end. in 8 out of 10 cases, have to go back to my quiver of orangutan clips i fashioned in my pre-tool days

bottomline: overspecialized tools are sometimes useful, like vac wrench, but a specialized tool for every purpose that arises is best improvised at the bench.

the thing with pliers is you need to lift the lever a bit to make sure the pressure bar comes around the center of the barrel, and then gain purchase by a long nosed plier or tweezer---acrobatics is involved.