Rollerball Cartridge Swapping - the Pilot G2 and the Baoer Skywalker Rollerball Pens

This morning, one of the readers of this blog, hsmchoi, asked a question of which I had not thought before.

Have you tried putting a G2 refill into the pen - will it fit? Thank you in advance.

Of course, once the question had been raised, I had to test this!

Here we have the three test subjects. From top to bottom, the pens are a Pilot G2 0.38; a Pilot G2 07; and the Baoer Skywalker rollerball, containing its generic, unmarked rollerball cartridge. As the cartridges in the G2 0.38 and the G2 07 are the same, except for the tip width, I experimented with only switching the cartridges from the Skywalker and the G2 07.

Referencing the review that I wrote of the Baoer Skywalker Rollerball, it can be seen that the tip width of the Skywalker's generic cartridge is between that of the G2 0.38 and the G2 07. However, the important question of whether they are interchangeable still remains.

Here are two of the cartridges, side by side. The generic cartridge from the Baoer Skywalker is on top, and the cartridge from the Pilot G2 07 is on the bottom. They appear to be very close in size.

However, upon inserting the G2's cartridge into the Skywalker, I found that the width of the silver tip was too great to fit through the hole in the end of the Skywalker. Thus, I am afraid that the answer to hsmchoi's question is no, refills for the Pilot G2 will not fit in the Baoer Skywalker.


Thank you, hsmchoi, for your excellent question! I enjoyed investigating an answer. Questions like these are always appreciated. Thus, feel free to post comments or questions, below.