The Pen Addict 138/transcript

The Pen Addict Podcast Transcript
Episode:	138
Title:	We All Want a Lightsaber
Release Date:	January 19th, 2015
Hosts:	Brad Dowdy Myke Hurley
Guests:	Anthony Sculimbrene
Additional Information
Official page:	Episode 138
Audio File:	Audio Episode 138
Podcast page:	The Pen Addict 138
Length:	6868 min <br />1.133 h <br /> minutes
Previous Transcript	Next Transcript

Myke Hurley: From RelayFM, this is The Pen Addict, episode 138. Today's show is brought to you by lynda.com, where you can instantly stream thousands of courses created by industry experts. For a 10-day free trial, visit lynda.com slash penaddict and pen chalet. Great deals on high-quality pens with a 100% satisfaction guarantee. My name is Myke Hurley, and I am joined, as always, by the man of a plan, Mr. Brad Dowdy.

Brad Dowdy: Hey, bud. How's it going? Very good, sir. How are you? I'm good. I'm good. And I'm especially excited because we have a guest today, Myke.

Myke Hurley: We do?

Knives

Brad Dowdy: Yes. We are branching out. And we have a non-pen-related guest, but as a totally pen-related guest. And this is something that you and I have talked about and all our listeners are into. And it's the man behind Everyday Commentary, Mr. Tony Skullembreen. How are you, Tony? Hi, Brad. I'm good. Well, thanks for joining us. We really, really appreciate you coming on. And we're going to pick your brain to death, and you're going to laugh at us today with all the dumb everyday carry questions we have for you.

Anthony Sculimbrene: Nah. Anything's good. Anything's good.

Brad Dowdy: Well, you're going to school us today. That's the plan. And, you know, me and Myke have been talking, and Myke even mentioned it, I think when we did our bag dump episode, Myke, you were something, and you wanted to know, we need to talk about knives sometime.

Myke Hurley: Yeah, I wanted to talk about knives because...

Brad Dowdy: I was actually shocked to hear you say that.

Myke Hurley: Well, just because there seems to be this, like, crossover. We'll talk about this. But it seems to be this, like, crossover between pen nerds and knife nerds. So, like, I don't want one, but I'm just interested in understanding. Like, I don't have, like, a real desire to buy a knife, but I just want to understand, like, what is the kind of the correlation between pen nerds and knife nerds. And also, like, I'm more interested, you know, I spoke about in my resolution, one of my resolutions for this year is to kind of to perfect my everyday carry. So, Tony is the man.

Anthony Sculimbrene: Well, I don't know about that, but I can help you. My job here is to proselytize and hopefully convince you that you should carry a knife.

Myke Hurley: I feel like... I don't know what kind of the laws around that kind of stuff are here, really.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, that's something we'll definitely talk about because I have questions about that, too.

Myke Hurley: Okay.

Brad Dowdy: And Tony's a lawyer, so he can answer all of these questions, right, Tony?

Anthony Sculimbrene: No, actually, the one thing I would have to say is I probably can't legally give out any advice. I could say, like, consult your local knife laws, consult a lawyer, but I would get in trouble if I gave out, like, actual legal advice. So I could give you advice about, like, steal choices, but I probably couldn't, like, solve your search and seizure problems.

Myke Hurley: If consult your local knife laws is not the title for this episode, I don't know what's going to be the title for this episode. Because that is, like, just incredible. Consult your local knife laws. That is so amazing. Yeah.

Anthony Sculimbrene: It's a disclaimer I have to put on, like, all different kinds of stuff, you know, because, like, every state in the United States has a different set of knife laws. And then ordinances, local town ordinances are different. So, like, you'll go into a town that'll have, like, Boston or New York City has especially restrictive knife laws. And so you could be in upstate New York and catch a train and board the train with something legal and exit the train with something illegal. So it's complicated. That's, like, the big disclaimer I always have to put on stuff that I write. Like, consult your local knife laws.

Brad Dowdy: This is going to be an amazing episode.

Anthony Sculimbrene: So nerdy.

Notebooks

Brad Dowdy: All right. So I got I have one thing I want to cover real quick, Tony, before we get into it. And a little bit behind the scenes last week, Myke, I'm going to I'm going to give up our our behind the scenes chat. Last week, when we ended last week's episode, we talked a lot about the I guess kind of our main topic was how many notebooks we're carrying. And we talked about a bunch of other different topics during that episode. And both Myke and I stopped recording that episode. We hit stop and we both go. That was terrible. It was like we both felt we had we were we weren't on our we didn't bring our A game last week. And I think it was a lot of it. We had some technical difficulties throughout the show. So we were both frustrated, a little bit disjointed. But Myke, I got to be honest with you. I don't know that I've gotten more feedback from a single episode than we got on that episode about talking about notebooks.

Myke Hurley: Why does this always happen? Like I'll never understand. I feel like every bad podcast I ever make ends up being the good ones. Like and I don't know why that is. Like maybe I should just stop trying and then become like the most successful podcaster in the world.

Brad Dowdy: That's right. So me and you, we were equally frustrated. We both were very frustrated at the end of last week's episode. Like we just didn't do a good job. You know, we want to do a good job for everyone. And, you know, make sure we put out a good episode. And both of us, without even talking to each other, felt the exact same way about how it turned out. I cannot tell you how much feedback we got for that episode. So that's why I have no follow up in this episode. And next week, we'll just do an entire follow up on that notebook episode. Wow. Because I have that much to talk about. I, it's easily the most feedback we've ever gotten on a single episode.

Myke Hurley: Wait, unless the feedback was the show was terrible. I mean, you haven't. Okay, just checking. Like, you sound like we got so much feedback and everybody universally hated the episode. No, no.

Brad Dowdy: It was everyone telling us about their notebooks. And I want to say that we are on the low end of the notebook carry scale by far.

Myke Hurley: Oh, yeah?

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. So, everyone who I told we're going to talk, we're going to follow up on all their emails and comments that they sent in for that episode. Look for that next week because that's a good, that's an entire episode just on following up on what everyone does with their notebooks.

Myke Hurley: So, man.

Brad Dowdy: That's what I wanted to bring up for that.

Brad Dowdy: So, let's get into it, Tony. How about that? Before we do, we want to talk about one of our good friends and sponsors, Myke.

Myke Hurley: Yeah, let's just start off the show real quick by thanking our friends over at lynda.com. Lynda.com is used by millions of people around the world and has over 3,000 courses on topics like web development, photography, visual design, and business. No matter what you want to learn, lynda.com can help teach you. Maybe you want to learn some new skills. Maybe you want to invest in a new hobby. Maybe you're looking to find a new job. Anything that you're looking to learn more about, lynda.com's experts can help you. All of their courses are taught by people that know exactly what they're talking about. And they are adding new courses every single week. And you'll get access to all of these along with the huge catalog of thousands of courses that lynda.com has. You get unlimited access to every course on lynda.com once you sign up. And you'll even get unlimited access in your 10-day free trial too. You'll be able to watch these on your computer, on your Mac, your PC, or you'll be able to watch them on your tablet or mobile device with their apps for iOS and Android. We've spoken about a couple of times the fantastic design video that Aaron Draplin did for lynda.com. That's just a taste of some of the incredible stuff that you can get. Maybe you want to learn some art skills, some drawing skills, some typography skills. They have all of those courses. But maybe you just want to learn how to do better at your business or maybe to improve your skills in the workplace like team management stuff. Maybe you want to go paperless. Maybe you want to learn a bit more about getting things done. Maybe you want to learn about Photoshop, Illustrator. Maybe you want to make your own podcast. They have courses on all of this and so much more. I could sit here for 20 minutes and talk to you about all the different courses that lynda.com has. But let's save us both some time. Go sign up for a free 10-day trial right now. Go to lynda.com slash penaddict and sign up right now. Not only will that help you learn something new, it will help support this show. Thank you so much lynda.com for supporting the Penaddict and RelayFM.

Brad Dowdy: Thank you lynda.com.

Myke Hurley: I already feel like I'm back in shape from last week. I feel like I'm knocking it out of the park already, Brad. This episode is probably going to be terrible. If that's how that works.

Brad Dowdy: I think there's some seriously good energy going on in this episode. I know Tony well enough to know how good he is at this. So I'm fairly confident that this is going to be one of the greatest episodes ever. So no pressure, Tony.

Anthony Sculimbrene: No pressure.

Anthony Sculimbrene: If Myke's copy read is any indication, this is going to be a hard act to follow. Myke, do the best copy read? It's crazy.

Myke Hurley: It's all locked in my brain, man. He's the man. He's so professional.

Everyday Carry

Brad Dowdy: All right. So Tony, I want to start this conversation around everyday carry items at the very, very basics, just to kind of lay a groundwork for what we're going to talk about and the crossover that we have between like the Penaddict type stuff and the stuff you write over at Everyday Commentary. And just to tell everyone, listen, this is probably going to be a show notes heavy episode. So you want to go to want to go to relay.fm slash penaddict slash 138 if you want to play along as we go. So you can see Tony's site, everyday commentary.com. We'll have the links to all that in there. But what I want to start out with is I want you to kind of describe the basics of everyday carry and what that means to you and what, you know, for people who don't know what we're talking about at all, people that listen to the show to, you know, to hear about, you know, fountain pens. How does this apply to them? So give us kind of the basics of everyday carry.

Anthony Sculimbrene: Well, so one of the things that I think about is like the idea that people carry stuff with them all the time. Like everybody has a wallet. Everybody has a set of keys. Almost everybody has a phone. And so like when you think about it, everyone has an everyday carry. They just don't call it that. And so what happened was there was sort of a couple of things that happened. First, there were guys that carried pocket knives forever. I mean, my grandfather still carries a 1923 Queen Congress that his dad had. And when I was in college, I worked at a warehouse on a military base and I had to cut open boxes. So I carried a pocket knife with me those two summers. And then I realized like, wow, this is really useful. And so I added that to the stuff that I carried every day. And that was like in the 90s. And so it didn't really have an acronym. The acronym itself actually came from a response to laws in the United States around concealed carry weapons. So CCW was a concealed carry license, a concealed carry weapon. And so people wanted to say like, look, this is the stuff I'm carrying every day, but it's not a weapon. And so that's when the acronym EDC came about. And there were two guys that did a lot of work like getting it out there. One was Bernard Kapilong on the everyday-carry.com, which is now everydaycarry.com. And then the other guy was a guy named Dan over at Blade Reviews who reviewed one of the first like systematic knife reviewers on the internet. And he's actually on my podcast. And he is a super, super knowledgeable guy. And so Bernard sort of took this slant that like, no, no, it's not just a knife. It's like the stuff that you need. And so the way that I think about it is like, I want to take that like core set of things that I carry, my wallet, my smartphone, my keys, and add, you know, three or four things to it and be able to handle, you know, all of the little things that come up in life. Like my son gets a toy and he wants it out of the box or, you know, the doorknob on my front door jiggles. So I want to be able to fix it. And, you know, it's just about having things that are convenient, that are really well designed, really sturdy so that you can take them with you and solve problems. And then in the, in the off chance that you have an emergency, like your car breaks down or the power goes out, you'll be a little bit ahead of the game. Um, a lot of guys carry sort of, there's like two, it's like a spectrum. And on one end of the spectrum, there's the guys that carry guns. And while I'm glad that I live in a country that lets me carry a gun, I don't carry a gun. I probably never will. And on the other end of the spectrum, there are the guys that have, you know, like a knife to, uh, to sort of offset or help out with their pen. And I'm in that category. So I'm a trial lawyer. So every day I use my pen, probably, I would say that on average, I use my pen between three and five hours a day. And then the other three hours of the day I spend driving, which is why I can listen to all of the, uh, pen addict podcasts at least three times. So it's just like a small set of things that, that you use to offset the problems that you face every day. And you know, like I said, it goes back, my grandfather was the one that was like, you know, you got to carry a knife. Like, I don't know why you don't carry a knife. It's going to help you out a lot. And I was like, eh, that's kind of for old men. And you know, then I, then I carried the first knife that I carried was a Spyderco Delica and it was so much lighter. It was probably, you know, a quarter of the weight of my, my grandfather's Queen Congress. You know, Congress is like a big old fashioned knife. It has metal bolsters at both ends. It has four blades and it weighed a ton. And then I put the Delica in my pocket and it was thin and it was flat and it was easy to open with one hand. And it was just like, you know, this is a different thing altogether. And then since then I've just been, you know, modifying or paying attention to what I carry. You know, like a lot of the times the stuff that I carry is stuff that I've modified myself, you know, like the F701 pen, the Zebra pen. That pen is a great pen, but the refill is garbage. So you can mod that pen and have it take Parker style refills, which opens up this whole array of, you know, refills that are really good. And so, you know, just a little bit of extra weight, maybe, you know, like I carry really minimal. Like there's a lot of guys that carry like, you know, three, three, three knives, two flashlights, extra batteries. I'm a guy that'll carry like a pen, a knife, a tiny flashlight, a really well organized thin wallet, a really well organized key chain. And that'll be it. So I'll probably take the normal, you know, wallet keys, phone combo and add another six ounces and then be ready to go out for a hike or go to work or, you know, do whatever.

Brad Dowdy: Right. And this is why I wanted to talk to you so much, because I think what you do or what you, what you're a proponent of as far as, as the everyday carry type of gear really applies to a lot of people that listen to this show, right? We're not like into, you know, our group of fans is not into like the super tactical, you know, crazy type of stuff. This is like very practical, useful, literal, everyday use type of stuff. And, and that's why I really wanted to get you on it and pick your brain about this. So, you know, here's, this is a, there's my, there's my Delica, my Delica four, my Spyderco. That was my first like, uh, kind of decent knife, if you will. So, and, and I want to start there. So let's start with the pocket knife because this confuses Myke the most. Um.

Myke Hurley: All right. Fundamentally, I don't, I don't know why you'd need to carry a knife with you every day. Like, I can't think of any time in my life where I'm like, ah, I wish I had a knife right now. It just doesn't happen. So like, why, why, why a knife?

Anthony Sculimbrene: I don't get it. All right. So this is, this is the explanation that I give to the people that I work with. Cause I, I, I work in an office. When they're like, Tony put down the knife. No guys. Right, right, right. No, they've gotten used to that. I have all the review samples sent to my office cause I don't want them to, you know, get misplaced or get wet or anything. And so like, you know, I'll get a, a nine inch Bowie knife sent to the office and people are like, what is that? So they've gotten used to it. And the way that I explain it to the people that I work with, all of whom are like very, very liberal is I basically say to them, having a knife on you is like owning a truck. You do things when you own a truck that you wouldn't even conceive of when you have just a car. And so like, you know, just like you would never take home, I don't know, a sheet of drywall when you own my car, which is a Subaru Impreza. If you have like a, an S10, you'll take, you'll take not one or two sheets of dry home. You take, you know, five or six. And it just, it changes the way that you approach things. And it's hard for people who don't have experience using a knife to be like, oh, why do you need that? But once you have it, and that's what happened to me, like I had to carry one for my job. And then it was really hard for me to give it up when my job ended and I went back to college. And so it was just like, oh, like, okay, so I can, I can open this package of, you know, like my son really likes a little gummy dinosaurs. I can open this package of gummy dinosaurs with my teeth and then spill them. Or I can tear the package and it falls all over the place. Or I can take out, you know, my, my Leatherman PS4 squirt, which is a tiny pair of scissors and just snip the end off of it. And not only does it not spill everywhere, but he can pour them into his hand. And so it's, it's really sort of, I don't want to say it's a mindset because it's kind of silly, but it is something that once you have it, it changes the way you approach, you know, problems and tasks. So that, that's why, that's my pitch for why you should carry a knife. Maybe not a knife. If you, if, if knives are not comfortable or if that's something that you don't want to carry, you know, like the Swiss army knives out there, and then you can get them anywhere, especially in America, you can get them at like target. They're legit. Like there are guys that have, you know, two or $3,000 custom knives and they still carry a Swiss army Knox, a Swiss army Victoria Knox ALOX cadet. And it, they're great, great tools. I mean, they can, you know, like an ALOX cadet can get you through a ton of things. You know, like I, you can cut open a bag of gummy snacks. You can re redo the door handle as you walk out the door. You can pop open a brew at the end of the day. It's, it's a really great kind of thing to have on you. So that, that's my pitch for why you should carry a knife.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. So my, my pitch, I get asked, you know, from time to time and my pitch is, well, I live in Georgia. That's what you do. So that, that's my reason for carrying a knife because I mean, you see it, I mean, you see it everywhere from the grocery store to church to, to, you know, the most formal to the most informal events. You'll see guys walking around with knives clipped in the, into the, into their pockets. And I do find that, you know, my use case is, is different than most, you know, you think being, you know, a computer techie guy, you know, sitting behind, um, you know, a Unix terminal all day, um, doesn't really need the, doesn't really need to be carrying a knife, you know, especially at the office. But like this weekend I worked on cabling all weekend and I used my knife and my flashlight all weekend long, you know, just trying to, to get my work done more efficiently. So it's useful in those cases. Do I use it every day? No, but I carry it every day. Just, you know, just in case. So tell us what makes a good knife, Tony, what, what are you looking for in just like your basic knives? Like, you know, you just, you know, something that's, you know, readily available. Well, we're going to talk about some high end stuff, you know, and some crazy stuff later on, but just, you know, your basics, like what are you looking for in just your, your standard pocket carry knife?

Folding Knives

Anthony Sculimbrene: So there's really like two different classes of folding knives. There's traditional folding knives, which are like the Queen Congress that my grandfather has. And they usually have like, you know, stag handles, bone handles, and they're typically really heavy and they have what's called a nail nick. It looks like a little slit in the metal blade where you put your nail in and pull it up. Um, and those are good for everyday carry, but you have to be, those are sort of like more knifey knives because they're not as easy to open. They're not, they don't have a lock. You have to have some sense about how to use them for like somebody that's just starting. I would say that you want to get a knife that has a device that lets it open with one hand that has a pocket clip and that weighs less than four ounces. If you get a knife over four ounces, it's just, I mean, and I, I, I'm going out of the way of telling you this right now. I have very minimal, very light requirements. There are guys that will regularly carry an eight ounce knife, but I've just found that it's, it's inconvenient. It smashes up against stuff and it really hampers. Like I go outside with my son a lot and my son and my wife and I go hiking probably twice a week. And if I have an eight ounce knife on me, I feel like I'm tired afterwards. So four ounces is probably the max that I would ever carry. So a clip, a one handed opening, a lock, and then under four ounces. Those would be my three or my four requirements for somebody just starting out.

Brad Dowdy: Do you see why this can be a problem? Myke has, we talk about fountain pens. Do you listen to him talking about this and going in? It's, it's, it's insane. The similarities that, you know, a guy like Tony and I have in just how we approach things, you know, how we look at a pen or look at a knife and how obsessive we get. But it's more just, it's almost like second nature at this point where you just kind of have this feeling, you know what you want. You've been doing it long enough and you can kind of, uh, and Tony always freaks me out. He just rips all these things off, like all these, you know, these different, uh, phrases and terminology that we use for fountain pens. He uses, you know, for knives and flashlights. I'm like, I have to look up these terms half the time, Tony, when I read your blog, you know, like, uh, choil and, uh, jimping and, uh, this is part of it though.

Myke Hurley: Cause we do exactly the same, like when you're getting into something like this and you're going to people that are like deep within it, you know, this is kind of just how people talk. Like you talk in the terms that you know, like it's just, it's interesting for me to hear. Cause I know now how, like, you know, like when people hear me talk about this stuff and like, I don't even understand why you would need a pen like that. Like I'm listening, I'm like, I'm listening to the, like the way that you guys are talking about knives. Right. And I appreciate the, the, like the reasoning that you kind of give for it, but it's like, to me, it's just like, I can see them. I think that I look at them and like the beautiful objects, but I would never carry a knife because it is just not, it's just not really something that you see people do here. Like, I don't know why that is. Like there are people, like people carry knives in like Swiss army knives or in Leathermans, you know? Cause it's like, it's a thing. It's a thing. It's not just like a blade. Cause it's kind of, I don't know. There's like, there's, there is a slightly different culture here to, to things that could be seen as weapons, you know? Cause obviously I can't imagine that either of you are like carrying a knife so you could stab someone if you needed to. Like that's not like, yes, you could. But that's not why you're doing it. You know, like in the same way that I could take a guy out with a fountain pen, right? I'm sure I could find a way to do it, but it's not the purpose, right? But so like, but here it's kind of seen slightly differently. And I think there's a bit more of a taboo around it. And of course there are going to be people that write into me and tell me that I'm wrong, right? Which is fine. Cause there are people that will carry knives in the UK, but I think it's, it's less, it's less common, I think.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. No, I think I can see that.

Anthony Sculimbrene: My understanding was that there was a, to the, that there's essentially a gun, a very heavy gun restrictions in the UK. And then, and this is just my understanding from doing research for articles that after guns went away, that it was like the sign of being a thug or a gangster that you carried a tool that was just a knife in the UK. It was like, yeah. Yeah.

Myke Hurley: Knives, knives are like for that, you know?

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. Yeah. It's a perception thing. So yeah. Yeah. All right. So the one question I have about knives, I just, sorry, I just, I just thought I would

Myke Hurley: bring, bring in there cause I'm on the government website. Our government website is amazing, by the way. It's very, very good. Somebody redesigned it like recently. They've got this awesome design firm in and it's so easy to find anything. So it is illegal to carry a knife in public without good reason, unless it's a knife of a folding blade, which is three inches long or less, for example, Swiss army knife carry by or sell any type of band knife or use any knife in a threatening way. Even a legal knife, such as a Swiss army knife, lock knives, knives with blades that can be locked when unfolded and not folding knives and are illegal to carry in public without good reason. The maximum penalty for an adult carrying a knife is four years in prison and a fine of 5,000 pounds. Oh my God. So the good reason, sorry guys, I'm giving you so much information now, but good reasons for carrying a knife. Examples of good reasons to carry a knife in public can include taking knives you use at work, to and from work, taking knives to a gallery or museum to be exhibited. The knife is going to be used for theater, film, television, historical reenactment or religious purposes, e.g. the kirpan some Sikhs carry. A court will decide if you have a good reason to carry a knife if you're charged with carrying it illegally. And then it has like a list of all the other types of banned knives. So you can get the idea. It's basically illegal to have a knife.

Anthony Sculimbrene: Those are some pretty hefty restrictions. I will say that Spyderco makes a line of knives called, and they all started with a single knife called the UKPK, which stood for the United Kingdom pen knife. And it was designed to meet the requirements that you just laid out. So if you're in Great Britain and you want a really fine everyday carry knife and you just want it to be simple, the Spyderco UKPK should work. I mean, that's the whole purpose of the knife.

Myke Hurley: Yeah. So there you go. You can see why then like specific knives exist for the UK because we have such restrictive laws over it. And I think it's just because they're like, I don't know why, like what the fundamental difference is and why it's there, but just tools that can be used as offensive weapons in this country are illegal, you know, like guns, you know? So yeah, just the way it is. So there you go. That's why it's so weird to me, guys, because I never see them.

Anthony Sculimbrene: And by the way, if I had like a Tommy gun to go hunting, right? You know, like a Tommy gun has a really specific connotation in American culture because of all the gangsters and gangster movies. So like no one has a Tommy gun. You know, the people have that exact same gun without the barrel, the drum barrel clip, but no one has that gun because it just looks so weird. So I guess it's the same thing.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. By the way, Myke, you're going to have some challenge for the show title. I'm watching the chat room and I'm cracking up here. So this is going to be a tough challenge. So I want to the big nerd question I have about knives is I want you to tell me the basics of steel types, because this is the part where my eyes start to glaze over. And, you know, I know I'm the same way about fountain pens and how I can talk like about the details of a nib and the specifics. And just if you're like looking at a knife and just, you know, your basic knives, your more common knives, how what are you looking for as far as steel and why is that important?

Anthony Sculimbrene: Well, OK, so steel is like a rabbit hole and it's just like nibs. Like when you talk about the Japanese nibs and the German nibs and the gold and the rhodium, it's exactly the same kind of rabbit hole. But I want to say at the very beginning, like I fashion myself as a steel junkie. That's what people in the knife world call in a derogatory sense, people are obsessed with steel. But there are guys out there that know way more than I do. Like Cliff Stamp knows a lot. A guy named Joe Talmadge knows a lot. There's a guy that runs a knife company named Myke Stewart and he knows a ton, as does Sal Glesser, who runs Spyderco. But basically, steel's think of it like plotting on four axes. And the rule is you get you get three, but never four. So the first axis is price. Steel is a combination of iron and other elements and the other elements give it various properties. And so you can get a really great steel, but it's really expensive. And so that's the first axis. The second axis is hardness. And steel's hardness means that the steel is resistant to deformation. And hardness is really helpful because it means you have to sharpen your steel or sharpen your knife less. And it also means that you can put a higher angle on the cutting bevel, which will give you better slicing action than you would otherwise. Then on the other side, sort of in balance with that is toughness. And toughness is the ability for steel to resist chipping. So it'll bend instead of break. And the best way to think of hardness and toughness is hardness is like a diamond where it's really, really hard. But if it gets hit by an impact, it'll shatter. And toughness is like taffy where I could take a bat to to like taffy. And as long as it's not frozen, it won't break the bar of taffy. It'll bend it, but it won't break it. And then the last thing on this four axis is corrosion resistance. And oftentimes that just means it's resistance to water or like to getting stained by water. In reality, there's a bunch of different things that cause corrosion. And the best steels are corrosion resistant to virtually everything. Like Brad, I remember you had a Sprytaco Dragonflight in H1 steel. And H1 steel is a really, really corrosion resistant steel developed for marine environments. So it's resistant to water and salt water because salt water is a little bit worse than regular water. So there are steels that will be really tough, really hard, and really corrosion resistant. But they are incredibly expensive. In fact, the one steel that I can think of is actually not technically a steel because it has no iron in it. And it's called nitinol 60 or SM100. And it will do everything you ever need it to do, except for the fact that it's probably between 10 and 15 times more expensive than even the most expensive steels that are out there. So that's sort of the four things you're looking for. And you'll often get like three of the four or two of the four. And in an everyday carry knife, you don't really need it to be that tough because it doesn't have to, you're not going to be chopping through a tree with it like you would with like a fixed blade for outdoor use or like an axe. So in my opinion, the way to best spend your pennies is to get a hard steel that's corrosion resistant. And like M390 is a really good steel in that regard. 20CV is a really good steel. My personal favorite steel is a steel called ZDP 189, which is a steel developed by Hitachi in Japan. And it is exceedingly hard. It has more carbon than even high carbon steels. And it has a huge amount of chromium, which makes the steel resistant to staining. And it is, in my opinion, and I know there are lots of people that disagree. It's the perfect DDC steel because you can get it, you can get it really, really super sharp and it will hold an edge forever. And while it's not the toughest thing in the world, it will chip. If you're careful, then you'll be fine. Like I'm not, I'm not going to like, you know, debone a chicken because if I hit bone, it'll probably chip it. But everything else, it's fine. It's really great for general utility tasks.

Brad Dowdy: All right. So that is, that's a total rabbit hole. I now have more questions about steel than I did when we started. But at the, at the, at the risk of having a five hour episode, I'm going to pivot real quick. And let's, let's move to flashlights because this is where like, I'm okay on knife basics. Like I get it. I understand kind of what I need. And, you know, I found some things that, you know, work best for me. Flashlights. I've carried just one little flashlight. It's a, it's a Phoenix L1T. So I've had it for a few years and it's just a good little flashlight I'll carry in my backpack. And like I use it this weekend, you know, for hours, but what makes a good everyday carry flashlight and what are you looking for as far as, you know, functionality in the lights that you carry?

Anthony Sculimbrene: Well, the first thing I'd say is that up until about 10 years ago, it was definitely not worth carrying a flashlight every day. Because while I find that myself that I use a knife more than I use a light, if I was going based on how much it weighed and how big it was 10 years ago, I wouldn't have carried maybe 15 years ago, I wouldn't carry it a flashlight. But now we've gotten to the point where emitter technology, which is the bulb in the front of the flashlight, coupled with the little micro computers that exist inside the flashlight, they've gotten so efficient that you can run a really small flashlight, like one the size of your pinky, you can run it for an hour with, you know, 100 lumens. And that's, that's really good. So the things that I would look for in a flashlight are the battery format. And in my opinion, the emitter technology has gotten to the point where most people for everyday carry don't need a battery, don't need a flashlight that has two cells. You could get a single cell flashlight, like a single AA or a single AAA or a single CR123, which is like a lithium battery that it's used in cameras. And that, that will do pretty much whatever you need. And then the second thing that I think is really important to look for in a flashlight is you want to look for the emitter and emitters come in like a huge, like alphabet soup with numbers. And it's just really confusing, but the, the better emitters that there are a couple right now and they change like emitter technology changes as fast as computers can because the emitters are generally constructed in computer programs to maximize output and balance heat and that kind of stuff. So like right now the XML2 emitter is a really good high powered emitter for like big lights. The XPG2 is a really good emitter for like regular everyday pocket lights. But if I was going to say, if I had my choice, the number one thing, the number one emitter right now is called the Nichea 219 emitter. And the reason why is it's a little less bright than the other two I just listed, but it has a really high color rendering index. And that means that the light it produces is truer to sunlight. It looks closer to sunlight. And this is really important to me and to a bunch of different people. Like I remember when I was first, when I first had my son and I was changing his diaper and I was always trying not to wake, like not to get them like really riled up. But you know, when, when you have a little baby, you got to check to see if they did something that woke them up. And it was always easier to do that if I had a light and if the light was, you know, not super bright, but had good color rendering.

Brad Dowdy: And so how much, how much did your poop checking flashlight cost?

Anthony Sculimbrene: Uh, that's, that's, uh, well, so like you could get, yeah, that's really crazy. But you could get away with like a, you know, like a $25 poop checking flashlight right now. At the time it was pretty expensive. I had a, I had a custom light to do that. It's silly. It's really silly.

Brad Dowdy: But, and that's why we love you. And that's why we have a podcast called the pin out because that's like normal usage for people like us. It's just what you do.

Anthony Sculimbrene: I feel like I'm at an intervention or something.

Brad Dowdy: No, that every week on at Monday at five 30 is an intervention for us. It's like, we talk about this stuff and it's like, what did we, what were the words that just came out of my mouth? It's amazing. Okay, Tony. So talking about all those specs on the flashlight, what are you looking for, for like, not necessarily your starter flashlight, but for a good all around flashlight, what are you looking to spend? And are there any kind of brands that you look at just for kind of these, these base level flashlights that give you everything you were just talking about?

Anthony Sculimbrene: The crazy thing is that like the flashlights in the past three years have gotten into this arms race. And it was started, it started by a company called Phoenix, F-E-N-I-X. And Phoenix basically came along and they took bodies and clickies, like the button you use to turn the light on and emitters that Surefire was using. They produced them in China and they dropped the price, you know, to 25% of what Surefire was. And that, that basically was like a starter gun going off. And since then we have gotten to this arms race where you're getting more features, better performance at a lower price. And so the lights that I, I really like, there are a couple of brands. One of the brands is Eagle Tac. Eagle Tac makes a bunch of really good lights and they do make tactical lights, which are giant and weird, but they also make really great lights like the D25 series. I've had a D25A in titanium and it was really great and you don't need titanium. It just looks cool. And then I'm testing right now for review a D25 AAA with a Nichea 219B emitter. And it's, it's a $30 light that does pretty much everything you'd ever need for everyday carry. If you want to spend a little bit more, there are a couple of brands that I like that make nicer stuff. Surefire makes really good stuff, although their lights are very, very tactically centered and they're, they're bigger than an equivalent light. Like you can get a really small CR123A light, but Surefire insists on making these big giant lights, but they're really, really well built. I mean, you can like run over them with a truck. Another really small brand that's good is Malkoff. Malkoff used to make only drop-ins, which were the emitters. You could pull out the guts of your flashlight and put in a Malkoff and it would make, it would upgrade your lights output and make it better. And then the final brand that I would recommend if you were going to go and spend, like this could be a light that you could have for the rest of your life and do everything you need is HDS. HDS makes some really amazing, really robust lights. I mean, these lights are designed to be, you know, you could take them caving, you know, like there are a couple of applications for flashlights where it's like, you cannot have them fail. Like caving and underwater diving. And I don't, I don't recommend HDS or underwater diving because I don't think they've been pressure sealed tested, but in terms of its impact resistance, its resistance to pressure, its heat sink, an HDS rotary will do pretty much everything you'd ever need it to do. Everything you'd ever need a flashlight that you carry on your person. There are, you know, 4.7s makes really good mid-price lights. They have a lot of features that people like. They have good emitters. 4.7s upgrades their emitters probably between four, every four and six months. So they're right on the cutting edge of emitters. But EagleTack, SureFire, Malkoff, HDS, 4.7s. I mean, those are all really, really good brands. I'd steer clear of Streamlight because their stuff is like stuck in the dark ages. But that's the stuff that people can get locally. Like if you go to a Cabela's or you go to an REI, you might run into Streamlight. I just steer clear. Phoenix is also a really good brand. The light you have, Brad, is a really good, easy to use light. And like the E05 from Phoenix is a great one AAA battery flashlight that is excellent for everyday carry.

Brad Dowdy: Well, just listening to this, I definitely need to step up my underwater diving flashlight carry game.

Myke Hurley: But can I get an underwater knife though, Tony? That's what I want to know.

Brad Dowdy: Hey, that's the corrosion. That's the corrosion part.

Anthony Sculimbrene: Yeah, in fact, there are two companies that make really amazing under... Well, there's one steel in one company. So Mission makes only underwater dive nights. And they're usually all titanium. So they don't set off like a landmine or a watermine. A depth charge, I think is what they're called in the water. And they're completely 100% corrosion resistant. Even the screws are titanium. And then there are a couple of companies that use that SM100, which is a metal material, a metal that was developed by the Navy in the 1960s. And it is as hard as any steel. It is 100% corrosion resistant. And it is so tough that if you heat it up, it will return to its original shape. It's like something from X-Men. So yes, you can get an underwater knife if you want it with.

Brad Dowdy: What would something like that cost you, just out of curiosity?

Anthony Sculimbrene: Oh, so I think Strider... Strider is a company that makes like really high-end tactical knives. And I think that they had a run of SM100 Striders. And I think that they started at $28 or $2,900. Wow. I mean, the SM100 is really hard to get. And it is very, very hard to heat treat. Because when you apply heat to nitinol 60 or SM100 to the trade name, it reverts. It wants to go back. So what you have to do is you have to first set the shape. Then you heat treat it and hope that it doesn't want to go back to the previous shape. And then you have to grind it. It's just, it's a massive, massive ordeal. It's much more difficult to use than regular steel. That's crazy. That's crazy. It's crazy.

Pens

Brad Dowdy: All right. So we're going to get into the great crossover product here. And that's pens. But before we do that, we want to talk about another one of our really good and actually very timely sponsors, our friends at Pen Chalet.

Myke Hurley: Pen Chalet sell authentic, amazing rollerballs, fountain pens, ballpoints, mechanical pencils, and so much more. And they're here for us again to sponsor the Pen Addict podcast. Pen Chalet have all of our favorite brands like Pelican, Lamy, Pilot, Namiki, Sailor, Kaweco, and many, many more. They're an authorized dealer of all of these. And Pen Chalet provide awesome, fast, and reliable customer service. They're always running discounts. They have great special deals all the time. They always have special offers for Pen Addict listeners. I'm going to tell you about a couple in a moment. Pen Chalet also sell limited edition pens and pen accessories like carrying cases, pen holders, refills, fountain pen converters, and so much more. They sell internationally with very reasonable shipping rates. And, of course, they sell in the continental United States with free shipping on orders of over $50. Pen Chalet has low prices on high-quality pens and offers a 100% satisfaction guarantee. So go to penchalet.com. And you can buy anything at Pen Chalet and use the code Pen Addict to get 10% off your order. But what you really want to do is click the podcast link at the top of the website on the homepage and enter the password pen addict for access to even more savings as well as some exclusive savings as well. And there's a couple of things I want to draw your attention to today. So there was something that me and Brad noticed on Pen Chalet before we started, and that's the Kaweco Art Sport Fountain Pen. Now, these are some limited edition Kawecos with absolutely stunning effects. Now, these are acrylic versions, right, Brad?

Brad Dowdy: Yep, yep. They're acrylic pens. And I was surprised to see these, to be quite honest. I get lots of questions. I've reviewed one in the past that Kaweco has sent me. It was a brown tortoise art sport. And they've never been really, really widely available. And I get emails about once a month, hey, where can I find an art sport? And I'm like, I don't know. You're really kind of out of luck. And Myke and I stumbled on this today, actually. That Pen Chalet has about four of the colors in. And I'm shocked. They have the Akashir, which is the kind of blue, excuse me, the black and white swirl. They have the lapis blue. They have the rosette red. And they have the granite. These are not easy to come by. And I'm curious that they're on here now. I'm wondering, are they starting to sell more of them? Or is this something that Pen Chalet was just able to get a hold of in a special run? But this is kind of a big deal for people that are looking for the art sport line. It's such a good upgrade to like the classic, the regular molded plastic barrels that the Kaweco Classics come in. These art ones are really, really beautiful. The one I have was stunning. I actually sent it to our friend Anna at Well Appointed Desk as a gift. Because I knew she would like it. And these are just, I'm really, really shocked to see this. And the price right now is, what, it's $81. And another 10% off with our Pen Addict code, Myke? Is that how it's working?

Myke Hurley: Yeah, with the Pen Addict code, you can get one of these Kaweco Art Sport fountain pens for $72.90. So that's after you get the discount by going up to the top, hitting the podcast button, typing Pen Addict. And you go through there, and then when you put the Pen Addict code in at checkout, it's where you get $72.90. But I also have another exclusive, Brad. I don't know if you know if you know this is happening. You can get 25% off a Pilot Custom 823.

Brad Dowdy: Oh, yeah. That's an amazing pen. That's Pilot's vacuum filler. That's a big boy pen. That's a lot of people's grail pen, the 823. It's a really, really beautiful one. I know Ed Jelly has reviewed its pen before. I do not own one of these, but it's been on my radar for a while just because it's a super beautiful, highly functional with the vacuum filling system that gets rave reviews. A lot of people swear by this pen. This is their one and only pen. So the Custom 823 is an awesome deal.

Myke Hurley: So you can usually pick one of these up at retail. They're $360. But from the Pen Chalet for Pen Addict listeners, you can get one for $243, which is 25% off, which is an incredible discount. So go to penchalet.com. Support them. Support us. They're great, guys. Thank you so much to Pen Chalet for continuing to be so awesome.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, I'm stumbling over myself here because I can't believe they have the art sports. That's pretty fascinating. I'm going to have to give Ron an email and see what's up with that. So that's very cool.

Myke Hurley: I can tell you. I have to give email a Ron. You know, you're struggling over there, buddy.

Brad Dowdy: I am struggling. That's not something you see every day. So I will be taking a look at that further. All right. So Tony and I did something cool. It's been, gosh, it's been like a year and a half or so now since we did this. And when we, you know, kind of started talking, you know, when Tony was starting his blog and we were kind of going back and forth about pens, he wanted to try out the Pilot Vanishing Point because it looked like it would be kind of a good pen for his blog. You know, his readers might be interested in something like that. You know, the retractable and usefulness of the Vanishing Point. And he was offering up one of the, you know, best knives, you know, probably ever made. I, you know, I'll let Tony explain it, why it's so special a little bit more, but it's a Chris Reeve Sabenza 21. And he sent that to me to review. So we kind of did this, we did this swap where, you know, I reviewed one of his knives. He reviewed one of my pens. And I got huge, you know, feedback on that. Everyone loves seeing that knife review. And I know the Vanishing Point, you know, kind of became a thing for you on Everyday Commentary. And you ended up getting one finally for Christmas, right?

Anthony Sculimbrene: Yes, I did. I did. I really did. I was, that pen was like beguiling. I just could not get it out of my head. I had to buy one. So the whole idea was like, I was trying to find a pen that was sort of, had the same, I don't know, what's the right word? Had the same sort of gravitas as the Sabenza 21. And your review of the Vanishing Point, just like I said, it was entrancing. It was something I had to buy. And so I thought like, oh, this would be really awesome. I want to send you one of my favorite knives ever made. And you were kind enough to send me your Vanishing Point. Although I still feel bad for losing that piece.

Brad Dowdy: So here, let me explain real quick. Any of you Vanishing Point owners know that when you get the Vanishing Point, at least like in my black matte model, you know, they're easily made for cartridge fill. But since there's a retractable button on it, they give you that little, that little metal sleeve that goes over the plastic. So you don't eventually break through the plastic. Not that I would ever think that would happen. And when Tony returned that pen, that piece might have been missing in the return package. And what happened there, Tony?

Anthony Sculimbrene: I thought that the piece was like, you know, like when you get some of the cartridges, like if you get like the, I just got them today. The Sharpie comes with like a, the Sharpie cartridges come with like a little cap on it. And I was like, wow, this is like a fancy pen. Even the cap has it, even the cap is metal. And just pitched it. I was like, oh, no, that's not right. So dumb.

Brad Dowdy: Yep. Hit the trash can. But it's almost an unnecessary, unnecessary piece of the pen. So yeah, not a big deal, even remotely. And if you have more than one vanishing point, you can swap it between them. But I'd rather use that piece anyway. I just usually set it aside. So no worries there. So what did you think about the vanishing point?

Anthony Sculimbrene: Well, so the thing is like, I write so much for my job that my hands, like if I do a trial, a trial will start at 10. And it'll end at four and we take an hour break. And then there's usually a potty break in the morning and a potty break in the afternoon. And so I'm writing for two, maybe three hours. And it's even worse if you do a deposition. Like in a deposition, I've had six or seven hour depositions. And, you know, it's just, it's an immense task on your hands. And when I was using roller balls and ballpoints, it would kill my hand. And so I eventually switched over to using fountain pens for those things. And the vanishing point, most of the fountain pens I had, I was either, you know, the cap was breaking or was getting crushed. I mean, like I travel so much. I go into really tough places. Like it's really hard to write in the secure psychiatric unit. There's just not a whole lot of places to write. And, you know, so like my pens would get destroyed. And I was worried that if I had a cap on a fountain pen, it wouldn't last. So a retractable fountain pen seemed perfect, but there's only like two or three out there. And none of them have the, you know, like I said, none of them have the gravitas that the vanishing point did. So when you gave me a chance to review it, I was like super, super pumped. And then I just kept trying to figure out a way to get one and like set aside the money. And then finally Christmas came and I was like, oh, done. I'm done. I got to buy this. And I've used it every day since. It is wonderful. Yeah.

Brad Dowdy: So when you sent me, when you wanted to do this, I was like, I still don't understand what's the deal with this knife and why do I want to try it? And then once I got it in the hand, I was like, oh, I get it now. I understand. And like, if you look at a picture of this Chris Reeves, Sabenza, the 21, you'll say, looks good. You know, you know, seems okay. And then, you know, I tell you it's going to run you what? $350, $400, right? Is that about what those run? You'll be go, wow, really? And it doesn't seem like that. But then you get it in your hand and you flip it open and you lock it. And then it kind of like that puzzle starts to get put together. And you're like, I understand now why this costs what it is. And then you read more about how it's made. And you're going, I see what the big deal is. And when I compare it to, you know, like some of the Spydercos that I have, I see why, you know, this one's $100. And then this Sabenza's $400. And it really kind of grabs you and fascinates you. Like with me, you know, I refer to it like discovering like a Nakaya pen that's such a high-end pen. But then when you get it in your hands, you're like, I kind of get it now. You know, it makes sense why these things cost this much. Just from that fit and feel and finished, it's hard to relay that in pictures and words, right? Until you can get that into your hand and into use and using it for what it's made for, then it kind of starts to add up. And you're like, I get it now. So it was a really eye-opening experience to be able to borrow that knife from you. And I just thought that was a super cool thing that we did to do that switch up. And, you know, I think we'll end up both costing each other money because that's probably the next knife I'm going to buy.

Anthony Sculimbrene: Yeah, I mean, the Sabenza is really an unusual thing. I mean, it's now in its 25th year of production, which for a knife is really unheard of. I mean, there are a couple knives that have been in production for longer, like the Buck 110. But the Sabenza did things that no one else was doing. And then the things that weren't totally new, it just killed everybody. I mean, Chris Reeves' factory, the machines that he has, he's dialed them in so that the tolerances exceed the aerospace industry tolerances. You know, like when you look at, and I'm sure you know this from like your technical job, Brad. Like when I was working at an audio store, everybody wanted six nines copper. And that meant that the copper was 99.9999% pure. So six nines copper. And like his tolerances, you know, his machines will go out, you know, not a hundredth of an inch, not a thousandth of an inch, like ten thousandth, a hundred thousandth of an inch. And that level of fit and finish gives you a feel in the hand that is impossible to describe in video. You can't take a picture of it. It's really hard to write about. But when you have it, you know it.

Fountain Pens

Brad Dowdy: Yep. Yep. And that's what I realized with, you know, that Sabenza or with a Nakaya fountain pen or something, you know, that, you know, is honestly, you know, I don't know. It's not a necessity, you know, but it's an awesome to have kind of thing. And it really changes your perception on a lot of things. So that was really cool. I'm glad we did that. So besides the vanishing point, give me the rundown of like what other pens you use because you're a real heavy user of pens. And, you know, if you're not using a vanishing point, what's getting it done for you on a daily basis?

Anthony Sculimbrene: So today I did some, we're having our second baby. So we're nesting and I'm doing a lot of home repair and like fixing up the room and stuff. So today I carried a Sharpie, the metallic bodied Sharpie pen. It's a great, it's a great marking pen. It works well on wood because I can sand it out and it takes like maybe one or two passes on my sander to take it out as opposed to some of the other pens that like leach into the wood. But if I'm at work, you know, like I have this thing, I have this product that's really important to me. And it sort of defines the status of my pen. So like if you're lookout status, then that means that you're in my, my knockout lookout, which is the, the pens that are in there right now are my Max Magco bold action pen.

Brad Dowdy: My such a good pen.

Anthony Sculimbrene: Vanishing point. And then my Prometheus writes pen. Nice. They've got me covered. So like, you know, when I'm, when I'm in a, a rough and tumble place and I need to write it, I have a pen that can write on, you know, uh, cinder block walls. Uh, the Max Magco pen will do that. And I, I have a Fisher space pen refill and I swap it out when I'm not in rough and tumble places with a Schmidt easy flow 9000 refill. And then I have the, um, when I, when I want to impress somebody, I have either the vanishing point or the Prometheus writes. And, and both of them are really unusual. I mean, Prometheus writes looks like a, a blaster from the fifties and yeah, it's a stunning looking pen. Yeah. And the vanishing point looks like nothing else. And when people see it's a retractable fountain pen, I had a guy that's like this famous, very famous, very wealthy lawyer in the part of country where I practice. And he's a huge fountain pen. I mean, he's the guy that has like, you know, one or two or three, you know, $1,300 Montblanc, uh, fountain pens on him. And when I showed him the fountain pen, he was like, Whoa, I don't know. So if I can get a whoa out of him, it was, uh, it was really nice. So those are the three pens I use on a pretty much everyday basis. And like I said, they've got all of my bases covered.

Myke Hurley: Vanishing point is a much more interesting looking, uh, much more interesting looking pen than any Montblanc I've ever seen. Because all Montblancs, you know, to a point they all kind of look similar, you know, or they look like every other kind of luxury pen. But the vanishing point, like that, there's something about that. Like it's just got this thing about it, you know?

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. And no one's been able to mimic that at all. Nope.

Myke Hurley: Lamy have bought the Dialogue 3, but it doesn't, it's not as good. It doesn't look as good in my opinion. Like, right. I own a vanishing point because I just love, I just love how it looks. Like that's, that's it. And I just love the way that thing looks.

Anthony Sculimbrene: I actually like the clip part. Like Myke, I know I've listened to the podcast enough. Like I said, I think I've listened to every episode three times. I like the way that the clip is put at the end because my, my grip is, is perfect in that position where it is like the, it gives it like a teardrop profile. It works perfectly in my hand. So.

Myke Hurley: So I don't know if it's a lefty problem for me, but it's, it makes me sad because like I always wanted one. And I still think like the vanishing point has the ability to be like the perfect pen for me, but it's just that clip, man. It makes it really uncomfortable for me to use over long periods. And that's just not, that's not a winning pen for that reason for me, but I know why it sits atop so many people's lists. It just makes perfect sense.

Flashlights

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. It's, it's pretty nuts. Um, Tony, I'm going to get you out on one last topic and. And, you know, I hope I didn't throw some grief your way the, the other couple of weeks. I didn't mean to sick my readers and listeners on you, but it was kind of funny at the same time. Um, because we're, we're actually on the same page and a lot of things. And I love how you wrote this article, but there's an item that you wrote about called the cool fall spy double Oh seven. And are we calling this a flashlight? Do they call it a flashlight? What let's, let's talk about this product and give us the background on this light and then blow our minds, um, about what it is and what it does and what it costs.

Anthony Sculimbrene: Okay. So the guy that, that designed this flashlight, he's a guy named Dave and all the flashlight. He's a guy named Dave, guy named Dave, guy named Dave, who hung out on a forum called candle power forums and candle power forums is for flashlights. What fountain pen network is for fountain pen. Right. And what happens in these places is that there's this sort of arms race to make like the most outlandishly awesome thing ever. So there'll be like a, a special edition pen with, you know, a rhodium nib or something crazy. And then that, that same thing happens in flashlights. And so what, what had happened was this guy, there were a couple of makers that made really good flashlights and a guy named Don McLeish, who goes under the name of McGizmo. He sells really high end flashlights and a bunch of people. And you're like, Don would, Don would put out a message on his message board on the forum saying, you know, I'm going to release a new wave of flashlights. And they would sell out in like, you know, 20 minutes and he would sell out, you know, 50, $500 flashlights in 20 minutes. Boom.

Myke Hurley: Are people just buying because it's his name? Like, you know, they will just buy it because they know it's going to be awesome.

Anthony Sculimbrene: Yes. Oh yeah. They would buy them because they're, and then, you know, like his lights can do things at other lights. Like he does a lot of diving, like underwater diving and his lights can are really good underwater because they're all titanium and he double seals them and he pots the electrics, which means he like mounts the circuit board and the emitter. Electrics electronics in, in a glue or resin. So he would sell those things out really fast. And it became clear after about three years of him doing his thing, that there was room for more, that there were people out there that were willing to pay more than $500 for a light. And so this guy, Dave is one of, probably one of the greatest machinists I've ever seen. I mean, he can do things with a CNC machine that just blow your mind. And so what he did was he designed a light and he basically rethought the light from like ground up. Like he took every single part and said, how can I make this better? And like, one of the things that's really interesting about all of his lights is that instead of having it be like a tube, it kind of looks like a Zippo. And at the top of the Zippo, there's a big cylinder and a little cylinder. And the big cylinder is the emitter head. And the little cylinder is a knob that you use to turn it. And the only way to describe the knob is if you've ever used a crown on like a Rolex or like a Breitling. And it's really, really smooth. And you can feel the detent, but it's not like snappy or locking you in. And that's the kind of feel that you get on one of these rotary knobs that turns on the light on a cool fall light. So he produced this light called the Spy 005. And it was clear that he was going to make another one. And the 005 originally was released in an aluminum body. And then he sort of went back to the drawing board once he saw that there was demand and people bought the 005. And he said, I'm making the 007. This is it. This is the one I want to make. And he spent about 18 months prototyping this light. And this light is an incredible piece of electronics. It's an incredible piece of machining. You know, like it's the body of the light. Everything except for the head and the rotor is one piece of solid titanium. And he sculpts it out inside and outside. So the battery tube is integrated into the light. It's all one piece. And then there's a cover. And the cover even is innovative. It attaches and it has a double O-ring seal. And it has these two standoffs that you sort of drop down. And then once it gets to a certain point, it sucks in. And then you have like a little final snap and snaps into place. And it's really locked in there. And, you know, this light is crazy. It can reprogram itself. I mean, the manual is on CPF. And it was like a user-generated wiki type manual. And people are finding things on this light that you can do that are just crazy. I mean, you can – it has eight output modes. And you can go, you know, super, super high. And you can have, you know, output with the new emitter that is basically the brightness of a car headlight. And you can go super, super low. You can set the light to be, you know, as bright as a match so you can preserve your night vision. And you can set it anywhere in between. You can even do, you know, totally different things. Like instead of having eight output modes, you could have one output mode. Instead of having, you know, it come on, you could have it come on as a strobe. You could do all different kinds of things. And then he made a bunch of accessories. He made like a little carabiner. It's like a – it's really crazy. It's like a $200 carabiner. Then he machined this chain-linked titanium. Like it looks like one of those chains for like a pocket watch. And that's compatible with the light. And then the last thing that he made that was an accessory was called the Dragonfire Nozzle. And what it is is it's an aspheric lens that you put over the emitter head. And it has a platform on it. And the lens focuses the light to a point where it's capable of lighting things on fire. So if you needed to have like a fire starter on your flashlight, you buy the – That.

Myke Hurley: What? Whoa.

Anthony Sculimbrene: No way. Yeah, it's really cool. And you can see it. He has a YouTube video where he lights paper and then lights fabric. So it's an incredible piece of machining. And I mean like the optics that are necessary to do this are just off the charts complicated. And it's all this – it all fits in your coin pocket on your jeans. So it's really incredible. But the problem is the 007 is $1,300. So it's a ludicrous expense. It's not a rational expenditure. But I think if you have – if you're as bad a flashaholic as I am, then you have no choice but to buy one and at least try it. And I got a really good deal on it so I don't feel terribly guilty. But it's an incredible – and it's an incredible thing to have.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. So this thing is – it's computer programmable, right? Here's the spotlight. I found this YouTube video.

Myke Hurley: Several of the prototype pieces of the dragon. I'm trying to see it. I'm trying to find this now. If you're able to take the platform off. You're going to light stuff on fire. It's like a – I'll put this video in the show notes. But it's like a – looks like a stove thing. Yeah. All my word and now it's on fire.

Anthony Sculimbrene: It's so crazy awesome. It's so crazy awesome. Like really, everybody out there that does EDC, what they want, what we all want is we all want a lightsaber because it both illuminates things and cuts things. And this 5007 is as close as you get.

Brad Dowdy: Well, $1,300 for a lightsaber makes it sound cheap then, doesn't it?

Anthony Sculimbrene: Right, you know?

Brad Dowdy: Well, yeah. That review was awesome. I think I read it at least two or three times. I just kept reading it over and over because it was so fascinating. It was really in-depth. And I couldn't – actually because I didn't know that anything like this was possible, right? I mean this is way, way out of my wheelhouse. And like this actually exists. And someone is sitting there making this. And it's – like you said, it's a guy named Dave. And he's coming up with this stuff. And, you know, we see some of that in the pen world too with, you know, guys making custom pens and doing great things and having, you know, killer filling systems. And kind of really pushing the envelope to what, you know, some of these mainline retailers don't. And that's what's fun about this, right? Being able to play around with this cool fall spy 007 or, you know, me playing around with an Edison Menlo, you know, pump filler. That's just, you know, things like that are just really, really cool. So I'm glad you wrote that review. And I hope I didn't send too much grief your way. Oh, there was some grief. Once I sent out that link – yeah, once I sent that link out, everyone was like, oh, my God, you got to be kidding me. And I was like, yeah, it's pretty funny. So, Tony, we're going to have to get you back on because we could – I mean I feel like we're just scratching the surface on all this. And, you know, I think we'll wrap it up for today. But I imagine, you know, as much feedback as we got last week, I think we're going to hear it this week because you were awesome on the show. And we really, really appreciate you taking the time to come on today.

New Hampshire

Anthony Sculimbrene: Well, Brad, this has been so much fun. I cannot tell you how many times I've been trapped in a blizzard in New Hampshire, driving three hours away to a prison, and listening to you and Myke talk about, you know, crazy things like Myke worrying about putting silicon grease on the threads of a pen or, you know, the stories and customs. It's just really great. And Myke in particular, I really want to say that your decision to do this full time was really inspirational. And it is great to know that there are people who are rewarded for doing good work. So you do great work.

Myke Hurley: Thank you, buddy. Thank you so much. I appreciate that.

Brad Dowdy: All right, Tony, tell everyone where they can find you online.

Anthony Sculimbrene: So you can find me at everydaycommentary.com. You can find the podcast that I do, which is a very hard R. So just be prepared. And you can find that at geargeekslive.com or geargeekslive on iTunes. You can find me on Instagram, where I begrudgingly post probably once a day at everydaycommentary. I'm everydaycomment on Twitter. And then on the forums, I'm usually Rawls. And I have a YouTube page where you can see gear overviews and other random assortments of things.

Brad Dowdy: Awesome. All right, Myke, get us out of here.

Myke Hurley: There's a bunch of links that you can find in the show notes today. And you can find those over at relay.fm slash penaddict slash 138. If you want to find me and Brad online, you can find Mr. Brad Dowdy. He is the at Dowdyism on Twitter. He is at penaddict on Instagram. And he writes the fantastic penaddict.com. I am at imike, I-M-Y-K-E. I want to thank our sponsors again for this week's episode. Linda and also our friends at Pen Chalet. They're really great companies who help support this show. And thank you all for listening. And we'll be back next time. Say goodbye, Brad.

Brad Dowdy: Goodbye, Brad.

Myke Hurley: Say goodbye, Tony. Bye, Tony.