Subjectively

I love the Zebra F701 pen.
I hate the Zebra F701 pen.
Well, anyway, I hate the lack of choices for refills and the .7 mm pencil. So, I decided to just roll my own Zebra pen and pencil set the way I wish they delivered it.
At the end of this mod, you will have a F701 that has an all metal clicker and a fisher space pen refill, along with a *matching* pencil with a .5 mm nib (also with a metal clicker).
Not possible, you say? Actually it was pretty easy.
You will need about $35 in supplies to make this work, including the pens. This mod starts by taking apart a Zebra 402 pen/pencil set and using them for parts. You will be able to make a “scrap” set with the leftovers when finished. If you are more careful about it than me, that is.

I got this set at Office Despot for about $8.50. You will also need two (2) Zebra F701 pens.
Start by putting the F402 pen in the refrigerator for 20 minutes. While it is cooling, go find yourself a lighter. When the time is up, take the pen out of the ‘fridge. Heat the clicker end of the pen body with the lighter until the metal of the pen discolors slightly. The different expansion and contraction rates of the metal and the plastic will cause the seal to break. You can let it cool a little, and you should be able to unscrew the top with just finger pressure. What you want to get out of it is this:

I heated mine waaay too long, and ended up with plastic slag inside the pen. It didn’t matter for me, because I wasn’t trying to salvage the rest of the pen, but you might want to just go 10-15 seconds. I’m not admitting to how long I heated mine.
I was able to unscrew the clicker of the Zebra F701 with just my fingers. I’m not sure that any normal human should be able to do this. I have ridiculously strong fingers and forearms. If you can’t, try using a pair of fine jewelry pliers. Whatever you do, don’t do the cooling/heating trick above. The internal parts of the F701 are ALL plastic, they will simply melt together. The nib simply unscrews from the tip with simple finger pressure, just like putting in a new refill.

Then I purchased a Fisher space pen refill. The refill cost $4.44 at Office Despot. Unfortunately, it does not come with a spring, since the fisher space pen is a solid body with a cap, not a retractable. I salvaged the spring from the F701. You will need to enlarge the nib of the F701 to be able to extend the point of the space pen refill. I did this just by jamming the space pen refill up the nib backwards like so:

If you don’t want to bother with the space pen refill, you could also use the nib from the F402 to make the set match a little better. The space pen refill does not fit through the F402 nib, no matter what I tried.
Next, you want to take the M402 pencil apart. Start by unscrewing the nib (once again, finger pressure will do). This will expose a plastic valve and lead reservoir. This plastic piece is has somewhat flattened sides just above the threaded end (close to the pencil body). Find a small pair of pliers and unscrew this from the pencil body. When it comes loose, you can slide it out of the pencil body with a little force. Be careful not to crush the lead reservoir. Just yank it from the tip.

You can then push the inner sleeve of the pencil out through the top of the pencil. The inner body, clip and clicker top will come out of the pencil as a unit.
Similarly, you can push the inner sleeve body out of the F701. Now comes the exciting part (I’m easily entertained). Slide the M402 inner pencil body into the top of the F701 pen outer body. Slide the M402 pencil lead reservoir into the business end of the F701. Screw it together with only finger pressure. Don’t get too rambunctious. Now screw the M402 pencil nib on the end. Voila! You now have a 701 series pen and pencil set that look like this:

As a bonus, the F701 has a clean body, and the 402 set has a clean clip. The merger of the two is an all metal set with no markings at all.
Here’s a picture of what I did with the leftover scrap.

Notice the plastic top and both the clip and the body of the pen are marked. Neither of which is correct, since I stuck the F402 pen refill into the M402 body with the F701 clicker. A perfect example of how *not* to do it.

References: How to mod a Zebra 701 into a 701 space pen

Dammit.
All open source projects begin with an expletive. This is due to the fact that the tool is not written until it is needed for a project that is behind schedule, over budget and generally poorly managed, and we discover that no one else has done the work for us. In fact, the open source tool that emerges from this furnace, in many cases, is the only product ever delivered. When enough failed projects have accumulated, the necessary open source tools are then available to succeed — once. We then move on to a different problem. Fortunately, there are many open source software developers failing miserably on my behalf, making the success rate of my own projects actually quite good.

Software Character
Many years ago, I played AD&D (Advanced Dungeons and Dragons for you muggles). Most of the skills I learned at the time have since been replaced with “real” skills like how to pick clothes. The only useful tidbit from that game that I (half) remember is the “alignment” system. In short, your character was determined by your stances in respect to legality and morality.

Alignment
The choices for legality were lawful, neutral, and chaotic. The choices for morality were neutral, good, and evil. Despite some wide latitude in the definitions, this system has served as a fairly decent rule of thumb for many years.

Legality
In application to open source software, the law is laid down in the form of RFCs. RFC means “Request for Comments.” But don’t be fooled — these are more like your wife telling you “we need to talk.” Unless your name is Stallman or Torvalds, you’re not allowed to actually have an opinion.

Morality
Morality is measured in usefulness to my end purpose. I told you I was self-serving, remember? As best as I can determine, all distributions of linux use the same criteria, albeit in reverse. Take note of which software is considered “core” and which is in some optional repository somewhere. The “core” software is almost useless for my project, the optional software is usually critical for me. See?

Neutral Evil
Proprietary software is Neutral Evil. M$ doesn’t give a hoot about standards, unless they get to define them for themselves. They are not anti-standard zealots. They just don’t want anybody telling them what to do when they’re operating from a position of strength. As far as usefulness is concerned, the objective is to make money, not to fulfill my needs. If any relationship exists between the two, it’s purely coincidental, and will be corrected in the next release.

Lawful Neutral
Open source software is Lawful Neutral. The nerds involved in making the packages believe that software should only be created in response to a standard being developed. In the absence of a standard, apparently no solution is necessary. This software follows the evolutionary theory that there is no purpose in life, but when enough atoms are randomly arranged in a pattern, something resembling a solution will occur. Hopefully. Someday.

Chaotic Good
So we see that all useful software (at least for me) is created in an act of civil disobedience. In defiance of standards, it needs to exist immediately, and in disegard of proprietary intentions, it needs to be maintainable and actually serve my purpose. Chaotic Good software makes an honest attempt at following a standard, until the standard gets in the way of the purpose. It also prioritizes maintainability above feature development. If “features first, fix it later” were a good philosophy, Internet Explorer would be fixed by now, wouldn’t it?

The software featured on this site follows this philosophy pretty well. I wrote most of it (with some contributions) so I should know.