The Parker style refill is the most widely used ballpoint pen refill. First produced in 1954 and used in Parker's first ballpoint pen (The Jotter). Since this refill was introduced it has become an industry standard, referred to as the G2, and manufactured to a recognised ISO specification. Because of its popularity and wide availability globally many ballpoint pens have subsequently been developed to use the G2 type refill and other pen makers now produce refills to the same dimensions and having the same external shape and configuration. The writing characteristics and line width of these refills can vary dependant on the ink, the ball and the peening of the ball housing socket and materials used. Recent chemical engineering has allowed for the development of gel inks and safety long life quick flow quick drying inks. Although when first produced these refills were metal bodied many generic versions are now produced in plastic. Some have a steel ball housing with steel writing balls and others have a stainless steel housing with a tungsten carbide writing ball, and some writing balls have microscopic scouring of the surface to aid ink flow and the transfer of ink onto the writing paper. The image below shows examples of the G2 ISO ball pen refill from several pen manufacturers.
In our experience in the best of the class of G2 style ballpoint refills pictured above is the Pelikan 337, it having good colour intensity in black, blue and red, and producing smooth writing with no blobbing or skipping experienced. Not imaged above but also recommended is the Schmidt Easyflow 9000 for similar reasons.
Although the ISO standard for the G2 refill specifies a length of 98.1mm we have found that whilst measuring in the shop with our vernier caliper the lengths have differed very slightly dependant on the brand. These refills still function as intended and appear unaffected by these dimensional tolerances. Thank you for visiting our blog...