Gooey Cube

THE MOST NON-SKID, STICKY, SEMI-RIGID SURFACE I'VE FOUND IN MY 27 YEARS OF PEN REPAIR. These are great for at least two things done by practitioners of our avocation: 1) Turning-out Parker jewels (clip screws).  REMOVING PARKER JEWELS FROM THE TOP OF CAPS  To get a jewel (Parker called them "clip screws") off, try any and/or all of the following:  First, put the cap with the stuck jewel / clip screw into an ultrasonic cleaner and run it several  times for 3 minutes with several minutes of cool-down time between runs; you may want to then  let it soak overnight in the ultrasonic cleaner with a detergent solution in there without it running  and then in the morning hit it with a few more 3 minute runs. I have an ultrasonic cleaner that  runs for 3 minutes each time the start button is pressed and then it shuts off. So I hit the button  several times in the course of a day when I walk by.  Secondly, after you take it out of the ultrasonic cleaner, wave and rotate it around in a 150 degree  Fahrenheit airflow ( DON'T USE A HEAT GUN) for 1/2 minute or so; you don't want to get it  too hot or the threaded stem of the jewel/clip screw can break off in the next steps while you are  trying to turn it out.  Now, before it cools off, try some of these tricks: ----- Note ----- Parker tool #8057, if you're lucky enough to have one (Pentooling sells them), fits  up and inside the inner cap and gives you a good, non-slipping grip on the body of the cap and  has a big handle which you can use to bear down on the jewel / clip screw.   Idea 1, shown to me by a grouchy old timer at the Chicago Pen Show decades ago: take a  short piece of tape, almost any kind, about 1 1/2" long. Make a cylinder out of it so that the  sticky side is out and then fold it flat. Stick it to the tip of your opposable thumb and press and  try to turn the jewel with that.  Idea 2, that I use a lot: get a piece of latex or sticky rubber and put it on a sort of firm  surface. Something else on the market called “Gooey Cubes” works really well also, without a  top layer of latex or rubber.  Experiment with this; some surfaces work better than others, but if  the second surface is sticky too, that will help. Press the jewel into the soft, sticky rubber while  trying to turn it.  Be forewarned: Gooey cubes, at first glance, don’t look like anything that would  work.  They are not wet or necessarily that soft.  In fact, they appear to be dry.  But they are the  best thing I’ve found for this job in almost 3 decades of pen repair.  Idea 3, layer the materials used in the above two steps together.  Idea 4 (and this is the most helpful), start over with the ultrasonic cleaner followed by  heat and the rest of the steps. SOMETIMES IT TAKES ME A WEEK OR MORE OF  REPEATING THE ABOVE STEPS, but I can usually get that sucker off by going through the  sequence over and over.  Any good source of supplies for working on pens can provide most of the above tools.  Copyright 2013 Dale Beebe …… 2) Un-clogging buffer sticks and other abrasive tools such as tiny sanding drums. You can do this over and over. The use of Gooey Cubes can increase the useful life of abrasives by as much as 5 times.