[dc]T[/dc]he Surface Pro 3’s stylus pen isn’t the most comfortable drawing tool. While the pen functions well enough, it lacks in the comfort area—at least for me with my big hands.

At the moment, there aren’t any official replacement stylus pens (to my knowledge), so I was left with two options: suck it up and use the pen as is, or hack the sucker.

Hack It To Me

What I really wanted on the Surface Pro 3 pen was a grip of some kind, for two reasons. First, for comfort. Second, to keep me from accidentally bumping the two function buttons on the pen’s side.

My solution? I took the grip off one of my SumoGrip mechanical pencils.

surface pro 3 pen hack

A grip from a SumoGrip pencil on my Surface Pro 3 pen.

Let’s Slice

To make the side buttons usable, I simply sliced out one of the textured middle sections of the grip (using my trusty Leatherman C33TX). The textured section of the grip aligned well enough with the Surface pen buttons, which left out any guesswork when it came time to cut.

Sliding the grip down the stylus pen took some effort, but it was not too difficult.

I’m sure this will work with other pen or pencil grip you have lying around, but I had an extra SumoGrip pencil and figured Why Not?

Get a Grip

Adding the grip made the Surface Pro 3 pen much more comfortable and easy to hold. I also don’t accidentally click the side buttons, but can still use them if needed.

sumogrip pencil

Grip it. Image via Amazon.

Until Microsoft (or some other company) starts offering more artist friendly Surface Pro 3 pens, this is an easy (and cheap) fix.