The Pen Addict 155/transcript

The Pen Addict Podcast Transcript
Episode:	155
Title:	Sealed and Labeled for Archiving
Release Date:	May 21st, 2015
Hosts:	Brad Dowdy Myke Hurley
Guests:	No guests this episode
Additional Information
Official page:	Episode 155
Audio File:	Audio Episode 155
Podcast page:	The Pen Addict 155
Length:	5454 min <br />0.9 h <br /> minutes
Previous Transcript	Next Transcript

Podcast Intro

Myke Hurley: From RelayFM, this is The Pen Addict, episode 155. Today's show is brought to you by lynda.com, where you can instantly stream thousands of courses created by industry experts. Squarespace, Build It Beautiful, and Harry's, an exceptional shave at a fraction of the price. I'm Myke Hurley, and you have all come here today to listen to the musings of the wonderful Mr. Brad Dowdy.

Brad Dowdy: That was a very inquisitive style intro. I like you there. I think you've kind of fallen back into that style of announcing on the podcast. It was kind of cool.

Myke Hurley: Well, you know, I wanted to sort of really big you up, because I appreciate you being here. Oh, no problem. In case you can't tell, Brad is a little under the weather today. So, you know, it's tough to talk when you're kind of a little bit frazzled.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. Yeah, I haven't done much talking, so we'll see how I hold up over the next hour or so on the podcast and see if I make it through. But I appreciate you allowing me a sick day on Monday. How many sick days do I have left this year?

Myke Hurley: Well, I know I've already taken more than you have, so I think you have quite a few more.

Brad Dowdy: Okay, okay. So we pushed back to Thursday, and I'm glad we're able to do it. I don't think I could have done it any day sooner than today. So that's good. I appreciate it.

Myke Hurley: Right, so we're going to go into follow-up, and there's a big chunk of text, which I'm going to make you know, which I will read. So if you remember, I think this was a couple of weeks ago, we were talking about the Marriott pen, right? Yeah. Because I'd seen one in a hotel. And a couple of people sent this to us. This comes from Marriott's brand guidelines, and this is what it says. So this is for the dashes that you'll find on the side of Marriott pens, right, in the hotel chain. It says, branding and advertising. Yeah. I mean, I used to write in this kind of crap.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, this is corporate speak to the nth degree, and it's horrible.

Myke Hurley: So I said this to a couple of people on Twitter, and I still believe this. I think that those stripes have been around for a while. Like, they're an old thing.

Myke Hurley: And Marriott's advertising agency rebranded them, took the stripes, and turned them into a thing. Yeah. That's my feeling. Because there is literally no explanation for why these stripes convey this. The only thing I can think of is, like, if you're going down a road fast, then the lines on the middle of the road will look like they'll get smaller the quicker you go. Right. But I just don't buy. I kind of refuse to accept that somebody came up with this, and somebody signed that off. I feel like there's something there that an agency has then attributed this meaning to afterwards. That's right. Maybe I'm just trying to be a little bit too romantic.

Brad Dowdy: No, that whole brand guideline thing is just, it makes your head hurt when you read it. And, you know, the performance stripe and the meaning or lack thereof is just kind of a mess. I'm not sure how we didn't get this last time, because we had several people send it to us this time. Last time we were kind of, you know, left in the dark. What does this really mean? And we figured if we couldn't find anything, it didn't really mean anything. And it turns out we did find something and it still doesn't mean anything. So at least we have an answer now.

Myke Hurley: That document is now behind a password.

Brad Dowdy: I saw that. I was going to tell you that.

Myke Hurley: Do you think that we might have peaked something somewhere?

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. So whoever sent us this got this PDF. It's in the marriottbrandworks.com. It's like their learning site. And we were able to access it. And I didn't download it. It just went to the page that it was on. And I tried to access it last night just to double check the text. And then it was right. And it was locked. It's password protected now. So I think that's pretty funny. They're like, who are these people hitting this thing from London and from Georgia? That's pretty funny.

Myke Hurley: Well, because this type of stuff you don't show externally.

Brad Dowdy: This is not public information. No. You know, like I work for a huge company and like you'd never see this stuff like accessible to the public. It's very, it's not like it's a secret, but they want to present it in their way specifically, right? Yeah. So it's very lock and key.

Myke Hurley: You don't ever want to talk about branding choices that you make to try and make your customers think about you in a specific way.

Brad Dowdy: Right. You'd never tell your 24-7 achievement guests that the Stripe is for them.

Branding Choices

Myke Hurley: Yeah, exactly. Yeah, because as well, like the Stripe should be for everyone. Right. So yeah, there you go. That's a nice bunch of bullcrap to start this week's episode.

Brad Dowdy: Speaking of bullcrap, Tom Cruise is full of bullcrap. He is one bullcrap dude. But we got a picture of the pin we talked about last week with Kevin Pollack's video, which everyone who saw that thought it was just hilarious. It was really funny. And it turns out it's from this book that Kevin Pollack did. And in the book, people sent us, several people sent us the link to the book. And the pin is actually pictured in the book. So we'll put that in the show notes. I don't know what this pin is. It's kind of big and funky. How do you see it?

Myke Hurley: I don't see the pin.

Brad Dowdy: Oh, I see it. I put this big link in the chat room, if anyone can pull it up. You scroll down. You know, the link I have in the page goes right to the conversation about the pin. And then you scroll down a little bit. It's on page 100 of the book.

Myke Hurley: See, this is taking me to .co.uk. Okay. So maybe I can't.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, you're hosed.

Myke Hurley: Can't see it for whatever reason.

Brad Dowdy: So anyway, it's this big, fat, round, black. It's a black and white picture. But I'm assuming looking at the color of it, it looks like a black pin. And it's very large. And it comes in this wooden box. But there's no features that tell me it's any type of brand of pin. So I have no clue what this is. So we'll throw that out there in the show notes if anyone recognizes this pin. It's got a little crown on the cap that makes you for about a split second. Think it might be a Mont Blanc. But this is too ugly to be a Mont Blanc. It's not a real good-looking pin. And I think, what is he saying? This is like a $500 pin at the time in the early 90s. Yeah. So I have no clue what this pin is. But we'll see. And he got it from Barney's. And, you know, that's a department store. And they might have had something just made for them by some, you know, white-labeled.

Brad Dowdy: So, yeah, there's that. If anyone knows what this pin is, let us know. And we'll take a screen cap of the picture. And we'll link that to the show notes.

Myke Hurley: I'm taking a look now. Okay. So Doug Beal, as awesome as he has sent me it. There's some engraving on the side there, isn't there? You know, that would indicate what this is. That is an interesting-looking pin.

Brad Dowdy: Interesting as in ugly, right?

Myke Hurley: Yeah.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. It's not a very good-looking pin.

Myke Hurley: Huh.

Brad Dowdy: So we'll see. We'll send the research crew out on that to see if we can figure out what it is. I'd just like to know.

Brad Dowdy: Just for sanity reasons. But it's not that big a deal. Because I don't think it's anything that any of us have ever heard of. I'm not holding up to be some pin that was released, you know, 25 years ago. And by some, you know, large manufacturer like Pelican or something like that. It's just random.

Myke Hurley: We're going to next week get like a Tom Cruise brand guideline document. The big pin is to show that Tom, I don't know, is actually bigger than he is. I don't know.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. Then we're going to have people, Scientologists knocking on our door. So let's not do that.

Disney Pens

Brad Dowdy: I don't need the extra spying on me at this time. All right. From Tom Cruise to princesses. It's a good transition. I love this Uniball Kurutoga Disney princess edition that I tweeted out the other day. Did you see this?

Myke Hurley: I did see it the other day. And it made me instantly want Pixar like once. You know, I'd love to get like Buzz and Woody on some Kurutogas.

Disney Pens

Brad Dowdy: In Japan, they do this frequently. And I'm sad that we can't always get this kind of stuff over here. I would love to have some of these princess pencils. You know, for me, I would use it. I would totally use them. I'm all about some Bell. And I thought it was funny that the Tinkerbell one is the 0.3 millimeter lead. I find that endlessly hilarious, right? Because she's tiny. So she gets the 0.3 millimeter lead diameter, which I think is just hilarious. Do you think that's...

Myke Hurley: I mean, it seems too good to be true, right?

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. I mean, and she's the only one that's 0.3 millimeter. So there's Ariel, Rapunzel...

Myke Hurley: Dude, these things are on Amazon for like five pounds. Like other Disney series ones. Cool. Like not the princesses. But I just found a Mickey Mouse one on here.

Brad Dowdy: Okay, cool. That's sweet looking. Uniball and Zebra and Pilot and Pentel in Japan do all kinds of cool branding things. Lots of characters. Lots of neat stuff that we never see over here. Like, you know, I did the Hello Kitty Uniball Sino DX that JetPens got a hold of. And they'll get a hold of them from time to time, but they don't get all of them. So I thought this was super neat. And I wanted to share that because I really enjoy stuff like this. Especially on a pencil like the Kuratoga.

Myke Hurley: Really weirdly, it doesn't say Mickey Mouse in the description. It says Miche Glove. Huh. I don't know if that's like a really bad translation. Yeah, maybe. Or something. But they're clear. So I'm going to get one or two of these and I'll let you know. Because they're like five pounds. So that's not like... Cool. They look really cool. I mean, it's like a similar kind of, you know, Disney. But they don't have the Princesses ones just yet. But they're being imported from one of those stores.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, like an Amazon storefront from Japan or wherever. Yeah, there's several. Amazon's really expanded in that.

Myke Hurley: Oh my God. There's a Myke Wazowski one.

Brad Dowdy: Oh.

Myke Hurley: I'm going down a deep, deep rabbit hole here, my friend. You are. But that one's like... That one's 16 pounds.

Brad Dowdy: Wow.

Myke Hurley: I would totally get that. You carry on with the show. I'll be back in a little while.

Brad Dowdy: No, no, because I need your help with the next one. I want to get your opinion on this next thing. Okay. Which is, I think, pretty cool. It's as cool as the Princesses thing, I think. And it's called Blackwing Volumes. Probably a bunch of listeners have seen this, making the rounds in the blogosphere. But Blackwing, the pencil maker in pencils.com, is coming out with a limited edition Blackwing subscription service.

Myke Hurley: Huh.

Subscription Pencils

Brad Dowdy: And, you know, my first thought was, well, it comes in, you get 12 pencils every quarter. And for me, I would never use that much. So I was thinking, it's kind of cool. I mean, I'm definitely behind it. And they're going, and they admit, they're going straight Field Notes route, inspired by our friends at Field Notes. And they're not even playing around. They're saying, these are going to be limited. These are going to be numbered. And not only do you get the 12 limited edition, you get a box of 12 pencils that'll be one style, limited edition, every quarter. In addition to that, you get one additional collector's pencil of that same set, sealed and labeled for archiving. All right. That's awesome. That's awesome. They're not even messing around. They're saying, we're making these collectible right out the gate. Like, Field Notes just kind of happened organically, right? I mean, there was no plan to say limited edition and rarity and all these things. Blackwing straight up saying that, hey, we're doing this for this reason. So it's 99 bucks a year, which is the same price as Field Notes. And every quarter you get it. And I was pretty hesitant. And also, let me mention that for each subscription, $5 goes to the Blackwing Foundation, which is a child music and arts education program. So you're also helping a good cause with this, which is pretty cool. So I was hesitant. Not because it's not awesome, just because I wouldn't necessarily use the pencils. But I really, there's something about woodcase pencils that I really, really love. I mean, I love holding and using woodcase pencils. I just don't use them every day or every week. So I watched the video. And it's going through. And each 12-pack is going to be kind of a theme around... Oh, how do they word it?

Brad Dowdy: They're going to do it around... Okay.

Brad Dowdy: Writers, musicians, and craftsmen, you know, what numbers have stories to tell? Like the Blackwing 602, that's a number. That number has a story to tell. So they're going to base it around that. And, you know, I have a feeling, you know, looking at the video, you're going to see like maybe like a Mozart set, you know. And the one that got me, that turned me from I don't need 12 pencils every quarter to I'm buying this is in the video. They popped up number 42 in Dodger Blue, which is Jackie Robinson's number, who is the man who broke the color barrier in Major League Baseball. And that's a big deal for me, as big as a baseball fan as I am. So that number means a lot. Jackie Robinson means a lot to me. And I was like, well, if they're teasing this in the video, there's going to be a Dodger Blue Jackie Robinson number 42 pencil. And I'm going to have to have it. So I'm just going to have to subscribe to this right out the gate.

Myke Hurley: Are they not going to do like what Field Notes do and sell like sets?

Brad Dowdy: They will, excuse me, they will have them individually because they list, they say a guarantee to receive each release, even if they sell out to non-subscribers.

Myke Hurley: Right.

Brad Dowdy: So that makes me say it's going to be exactly like the Field Notes. Subscribers are guaranteed that they'll have X number of sets made to purchase. And when those are gone, they're gone. I mean, really, they're inspired by Field Notes is no kidding. It looks like they're just straight up the same style, which is fine. I mean, for people like us, you know, we like that kind of stuff. We like the lead up. We like what's going to be next. We like the idea of all the cool things that they can do, things like that. So I thought it was pretty neat. So I think I'm going to have to break down and subscribe on this just because their video got me once I dug into it a little bit. So, yeah, it looks pretty cool.

Myke Hurley: I think that's genius.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, it totally is.

Myke Hurley: Especially if you straight up say like, you know, I think if you're going to do it, like be open about it and be like, look, we love what Field Notes are doing. We have something that we think people would really love if we did this. So we're like, you know, straight up say we're inspired by them. We're going to do it too. Like I'm on board with that kind of thing.

Brad Dowdy: Yep. Yep. And here's how in the theory being that, you know, here's your 12 pencils to use, but you'll always have this one archival one that's sealed that you'll have forever. That'll be your keeper, if you will. Like, you know, people like myself keep one pack of Field Notes sealed and file it away and then use other ones. Right. So that's they're just going ahead and taking care of that right out the gate.

Myke Hurley: Yep.

Brad Dowdy: So pretty cool. All right. Lots more to get to. So why don't we talk about one of our friends real quick and I'm going to get a drink of water.

Myke Hurley: Yeah, you do that. I'm still looking at Kuru Togos here. I found that one Monsters Inc. one.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, I'm a big Myke Wazowski fan and my daughter always finds the Myke Wazowski stuff for me. She's a nut about just trying to find that stuff for me. So it's pretty funny.

Myke Hurley: Maybe you can grab it.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, I'd like that.

Myke Hurley: This week's episode of The Pen Addict is brought to you by lynda.com, the online learning platform. We have over 3,000 on-demand video courses to help you strengthen your business, technology and creative skills. For a free 10-day trial, visit lynda.com slash penaddict. That's lynda.com slash penaddict. So lynda.com, they are a service that will help you learn incredible things. You can sign up and you'll be able to watch and learn from these fantastic experts who create these really awesome videos with excellent production values. And they make it so you can learn new stuff. It's to help you solve problems. You know, maybe you've got something you're trying to fix. You've got something you need a solution for. Or maybe you're curious to learn a new hobby. Or maybe you just want to help make things happen in your life. Maybe you want a promotion at work. Maybe you want to change your career path. lynda.com is a way to help you get trained up in this sort of stuff. Maybe you want to learn Excel. Maybe you want to learn negotiation tactics. I was listening to one of our shows, Rocket, earlier. And Simone and Rocket had found humor in the workplace as a course on lynda.com. You know, I just love stuff like that, right? So they teach you all these. You can learn all these interesting things. You can learn about marketing. You can learn about how to bootstrap a business. You know, maybe you've got a business idea. lynda.com can help you, like, from start to finish. And, like, thinking about how to bootstrap it. How to market it. Like, if maybe you need to set up a website. That kind of stuff. They can help you do all of that. lynda.com is incredible. You can watch these thousands of video courses on demand. You can learn at your own pace and in your own way. You can watch them on your Android and iOS device. You can create and save your own playlists. You can, like, they have these great transcripts as well that you can read whilst you're watching so you can follow along. They have downloadable resources that you can have and stuff like that. It is really, really cool. So, your lynda.com membership is going to give you unlimited access to training on hundreds of topics, all for one flat rate. Whether you're looking to become an industry expert, you're passionate about a hobby, or you just want to learn something new, I want you to go ahead and visit lynda.com, that's lynda.com, slash penaddict, and sign up. And you'll be getting yourself a free 10-day trial and also help support this show. So, thank you so much, lynda.com, for sponsoring the Pen Addict this week.

Brad Dowdy: Awesome. Thank you, Lynda. And you mentioned Rocket in your read there. If our listeners do not listen to Rocket, they need to add it to their podcatchers immediately. Gotcha. Pen Addict should be number one in your queue, and Rocket should be number two. Brianna, Simone, and Christina do a wonderful job, and they crack me up every week. So, I love that show.

Myke Hurley: This week's episode is also really, really good.

Brad Dowdy: Okay. I haven't listened to that yet. All right. So, we have a link from our good friend, friend of the show, friend of the community, J. Robert Lennon. And I'm guilty that I didn't listen to this beforehand. I kept trying to listen to it last night, and I kept getting sidetracked. But he did a bit for Marketplace.org called The Perfect Writing Service. He did an audio interview with them about his Tomoe River notebook. And I bring this up for two reasons. One, you should go listen to this because John is awesome. And two, it's mine and yours reason he got this gig, right? Let's be honest.

Myke Hurley: I wondered if you were going to say that.

Brad Dowdy: So, John, if you're listening, you're welcome. But no, they actually contacted us. They're doing this series about people. It's called Pro Tools, Tools of the Professional. And so, they wanted to have someone talk about pens that used them for their daily work. And I was like, well, they contacted me and wanted to talk with you and I about the podcast. And we're like, well, it's not our day job, right? So, they wanted someone whose day job was in this. I said, I got the perfect guy for you because I know he has the perfect tool that he uses when he writes his novels. So, I got them in touch with John, and he's an awesome dude. So, be sure to go listen to this and go buy John's latest book, See You in Paradise, which I have broken back out now that it's almost summertime and I'm outside more. And I just broke it back out this weekend before I even knew this was coming up. And it's great to read. And it's in kind of short story format. So, you get all kinds of new stories. And he's a really good writer. So, check that out.

Brad Dowdy: We got a pen blog of the week, Myke. And this is a new blog, which is a resurrection of an old blog that I never linked to before. But a bunch of people always send us links. We might have even talked about it in the podcast called The Fountain Pen Physicist. There was a blog called that. And this woman, Amanda, she has moved that blog into her new blog called The Pearl Bug. P-U-R-L. And we'll have that linked to the show notes. And she does videos and pen reviews. She does really good pen reviews. And being the physicist that she is, you know, like if she does an ink review, she, you know, kind of takes them to the task and does all the water tests and things like that. So, I'm enjoying reading her new content and watching her videos. She's reviewed the Pilot Custom Heritage 92 recently, which is one of my favorite pens. So, check that out as the pen blog of the week. And hopefully, she'll be doing some more cool physicist stuff, you know, with her reviews. And she's really done some cool tests and things in the past. So, hopefully, we'll see more there. And this will give her the push to go forth and do that. So, it's very cool.

Myke Hurley: Awesome.

Brad Dowdy: Awesome. So, we kind of have a mini topic today. And I just want to start down this path. And we can elaborate more in future episodes because this isn't really a one episode kind of deal. There's no way we can cover everything.

Kickstarter Giveaway

Myke Hurley: Before you do, though, let me just mention that we are going to be doing the Kickstarter giveaway at the end of the show today.

Brad Dowdy: Oh, yeah. We should have mentioned that right up front. So, we have winners drawn. And we're going to be giving them away. If you didn't see the link from the Kickstarter backer page, you should have gotten an email today. But we will go over that at the end of the show. So, hang tight. We're going to get there.

Myke Hurley: Everybody listening later now has just skipped.

Brad Dowdy: Yep. That's why we're going to do it at the end. So, they'll have to forward back. And then they'll have to rewind. Or they may just kick us out if they didn't win and just rage quit the podcast.

Nibs

Brad Dowdy: All right. We're going to talk about nibs a little bit because it seems like I know we've done some general nib topics before. And the more we talk about nibs, the more questions people have about nibs, which is great. I like that because we've gone to the very general and broad topics of the past. Now, we're getting to very specific topics about nibs. So, I have a few questions that I got from the Slack room, which, you know, we haven't talked about the Slack room in a while. And we'll put the link for the auto invite page that I set up. Thanks to your help for pointing me in the right direction. Oh, excellent. We have like 560 people in that Slack channel. Really? Yeah.

Myke Hurley: No wonder it's always like lighting up.

Brad Dowdy: It's pretty awesome. And everyone's handling it really well. It's a really fun place to be. So, we'll add that into the Slack room. I'll get you that link. But the first question is from Phil Lee. It says, I'm interested in your thoughts on writing and learning to write with a cursive italic nib or any non-standard nib. Having got my first one, a Franklin Kristoff Model 20 with a steel Masayama medium cursive italic last week. So, if you're looking for a broader, wider nib with some line variation, you're either looking at a cursive italic or a stub nib. Cursive italics are harder to write with in general because they have sharper edges on the side of the nib. So, if you think of like a rectangle, you know, the narrow edge of a rectangle pointing towards your, hitting the paper. A cursive italic nib is not far off from that. It's got, it's known for its very sharp edges. It can be, still be very smooth, but the angle you hold the pen and the way you write your lines and the consistency of that angle does change the feel of the pen. And you can, with a cursive italic nib, you can get the edges caught in the paper, if you will. It's not extreme. I don't want to turn anyone off from it. It's my personal favorite nib. Um, because usually the, the people who are making these cursive italic grinds, they're not trying to make like razor blades that are cutting up your paper. They're trying to make a sharper line. Um, so when you have, you have wide horizontal, um, wide vertical strokes, thin horizontal strokes. The difference between that and a stub is the stub. Think of it as that same rectangle, but those two corners are rounded. So, you get a lot smoother flowing writing style. But you won't get the variety of that huge of a line variation. There's definitely some, but like the vertical lines will be the same width. The horizontal lines will be wider. So, the cursive italic nibs have a thinner horizontal line than a stub. They're a little bit sharper on the edge. You have to hold it. Um, you just have to, I can't tell you what angle to hold the pen at. You have to find that sweet spot and you'll know when you find it, it'll be very smooth and crisp and clean. And that's what I like about the cursive italic nibs.

Myke Hurley: Um, so the cursive italic is what I have on my Franklin Kristoff. And I had to use, I had to get some of that stuff. What was it called? Micromesh.

Brad Dowdy: Micromesh. Yes.

Myke Hurley: Yeah. Because it was just too sharp for me. And I think it might be because I'm a lefty. Because, for example, with the way that I hold the pen, Brad, I have thin horizontal and thick vertical. So, it's the opposite. Right? Yeah. Right. Because of the way that I hold the pen upside down. So, it wasn't, it was good. But if I had it, like, just ever so slightly in one direction, like, it would start scratching. And it was, it was too much. And then once I used the micromesh with it a little bit, and I kind of just softened it just a tad, it helps me a lot more. But I still have the line width variation. But now I can actually use it because before it was, it was too frustrating. And I think it's because it is quite delicate. So, my, obviously, if you're going to buy one of these nibs, either buy it somewhere you can try it, buy it somewhere you can have it amended, or buy it from somewhere you know has a good return policy.

Brad Dowdy: Right. Right. And I have done the same thing on some of my cursive italics. Some of them are exactly perfect to how I write. And then some of them I have to tone down the edges just a little bit. And I use that micromesh as well to do that. And if you do use micromesh and if you buy it on our recommendation from the show, be really, really careful. You want to buy the finest grit that you can. It's like a 12,000 grit micromesh. Be very, very gentle. Go very slow. Wet the pad a little bit that you're writing on. And just go very, very slow. And, you know, use the micromesh. Test it on paper and back and forth until you get a better feel for your pen. But, yes, it's a very helpful tool. And it will tone down the edges just a little bit. You don't want to go crazy with that stuff. So, you actually freaked me out when I sent it to you. You said, yeah, I've already used it. I'm like, oh, God, I didn't really tell you what to do.

Myke Hurley: Yeah, see, I didn't do all that stuff. But I was careful. Well, even if I wasn't, the pen works great. So, no matter what happened, I'm really happy with it.

Brad Dowdy: Right, right. So, the next question is from T1 Demand. I don't know if that means something or not. He says, custom ground nibs and how they make a good pen into a great pen. This is a total personal taste thing, right? I never recommend anyone to get a custom ground pen unless they're looking for something very specific. When I started getting into fountain pens, I was looking for the absolute finest lines I could get. And even, you know, like German or Western extra fine nibs were never fine enough for me. So, then I found Japanese nibs. And their stock nibs actually were fine enough for me if I got down into fine and extra fine. But if I bought a German pen like a Pelican with an extra fine nib, I wanted it way, way, way, way finer. And that's totally on my personal writing style, right? And we're going to talk about this more because I'm going to talk about a music nib here in a minute on how it fits your writing style. I'm a block letterer. Basically, you know, I print block letters. So, not every nib style fits my style of writing. The extra, extra fine nibs do. And the broader nibs that are squared off like cursive italics and stub nibs do. So, how they make a good pen into a great pen, it's not so much that as it makes a good pen into a pen that fits your writing style better. So, it's a very personal thing.

Myke Hurley: I couldn't imagine getting a custom grind now without having it done in person by somebody. That, to me, just feels like the way you should do it. Like, so you can try it and then they can see how you write and you can try it. That's how I feel anyway now. Having done it both ways. Because I've had custom, I've bought pens that have been custom ground and they're just not right for me. And I think it could be because of the way I hold a pen. So, if I'm going to get something done like that, because it does add a bit more cost on, I personally would prefer to do it in an environment where we can have some revisions.

Brad Dowdy: Yep. No, I'm with you. That's a very good point. And, you know, it comes down to personal taste. And it's hard to go into, to your point, it's hard to go into that blindly, right? Never having used something and saying, this is what I want. And not being able to, like, sit down and have someone do that while you're sitting there. It's a little bit harder task than that. Hopefully, we can help, you know, guide people into what they need. So, if you have questions about custom nib grinds, definitely email me or get in touch. And we can talk about more specifics on what you're looking for. Our good friend, Dan, who was in the chat room today, Mr. Design Concussion, Mr. Karis Customs, Dan Karis, we'll call him. And he says, I also would love to hear about nib grinds. I still feel like I have no idea what any of them are for and why Estabrook made a bajillion different ones. I haven't done the Estabrook history, but it's got to be over 100 nibs that they did. And they, at the time, when they're making millions and millions of pens a year, I guess they were trying to fit the needs of everybody. And they felt the need, or they felt they had the skill and the wherewithal enough to make highly specific nibs for highly specific uses, like accountant nibs. Like, for accountants that are filling ledger books, they have extra fine, extra firm nibs and things like that. There's a huge range. You see all these Estabrook posters of all their nib sizes and they have names for all this. It's like, why does this person need a specific nib? And nowadays, you know, we look back at it and me personally, I look at it and go, wow, that's pretty cool. I could get any nib for anything that I want.

Brad Dowdy: So, Dan says, he says, I have no idea what any of them are for. And it goes back to personal taste and it goes back to something that fits your writing style the best. Medium nib, like stock medium and stock broad nibs do not fit my writing style well at all. The way I print, those nibs make my writing look messier than if I had an extra fine nib or if I had a edgier nib like a stub or a cursive italic where I can make my lettering look better. It's really personal taste. And then you can get into some really wild specific nibs, which we'll talk about in a minute. And that's also something we'll talk about in a future episode. But, you know, no idea what they're for is basically, it's personal, basically. I don't know any way to elaborate on that more. You know, you either have a specific writing style where you're trying to have your writing look better or you have a specific use case where you need to do something very specific with that pen. And no stock nib can handle that. So, that's the short version. We'll maybe elaborate more on some really wild specific nibs. All right. So, I have a few more nibs I want to talk about. And actually, a couple of these are a little bit wild. So, let's talk about another one of our friends and I'll hit up some of these nibs.

Myke Hurley: Sounds like a good idea. This week's episode of The Pen Addict is also brought to you by Squarespace. Start building your website today at squarespace.com. And you'll want to use the offer code INK at checkout to get 10% off Squarespace. Build it beautiful. When it comes to finding a home for yourself on the internet, there is nowhere better than Squarespace. They put all of the power that you need into your hands and take away the pain points like having to worry about hosting, scaling, or what to do if you get stuck with something. If you're looking to build a personal website, maybe a portfolio, maybe you're looking to start a store, this is the sort of stuff that Squarespace can help you out with. You can build a site that looks professionally designed regardless of skill level. There's no coding required. They have intuitive and easy to use tools that make your website and let you make your website look exactly how you want and feel the way that you want. Squarespace has stated the art technology that can power your website and will also ensure security and stability. They're trusted by millions of people around the world and have some of the most respected brands using their platform. Their site templates are really great to look at. They feature responsive design to make your site look great on all sizes of device. But this is just getting started. Squarespace have tons of other awesome features like 24-7 support with live chat and email. They have teams located in New York, Dublin, and Portland who are there to help you. They have their commerce platform which allows anybody to add a store to their Squarespace site to sell physical and digital goods. For example, that is how we have our store at RelayFM and that's how the Nox store is run as well on Squarespace's commerce platform. Don't forget their cover page which allows you to build great looking single page websites either standalone or as an intro page maybe to your own website. And this is all built on top of their rock solid fast hosting and they have so much more. If you want to sign up for a year, you'll also nab yourself a free domain name allowing you to choose exactly what you want your site to be called. And Squarespace's plan starts at just $8 a month. You can sign up right now and start a free, no credit card required trial. It's just a free trial so you can give it a go and start building your website today by going to squarespace.com. And when you do decide to sign up for one of their plans, make sure that you use the offer code INK, I-N-K, to get 10% off your first purchase and to show your support for this show. We thank Squarespace for their help with us today and for helping us out at RelayFM. Squarespace, build it beautiful.

Brad Dowdy: And thanks to all our listeners who have used that code INK to build their own sites. It's been pretty cool to see.

Myke Hurley: Indeed.

Brad Dowdy: So Jeff Abbott, who writes for The Pen Addict, did a review of a TWSBI 580 AL Orange with a custom nib from Pendleton Brown. And Pendleton is known for a specific type of nib grind that he does. It's called a Butterline Stub, which is essentially the sharpness of a cursive italic with the roll and soft edge of a stub. So kind of like what we're talking about. It's kind of like a combo of the two. And he did this review and I basically went over to Pendleton's site and ordered one for myself because I never got the AL Orange yet. I was like, well, if I can get a funky nib grind like this, I like to do that sometimes. You know, I have enough TWSBI's where I didn't need another one. But if I can get some cool nib work done, I will get that done. So what I got is actually called a Bad Boy, which is the Butterline Stub with added flex. So I'm going to have to take some pictures of this. I haven't had a chance yet. But what Pendleton does is he puts the Butterline Stub nib grime on, which is a real soft. It's a great nib. I will definitely do some more on this. It's just wonderful. You can see it in Jeff's review. It flows wonderfully. It's got great lines. And then with mine, he cut two slits in the sides of the nib and took out a little bit of the side of the nib, like a little curve. And so now mine has added flex to it. So it's the Bad Boy. It's pretty crazy awesome. I think I'm going to have a hard time not keeping this pen inked at all times. It's an expensive grind to get. It's like probably 60 bucks on top of the pen. You know, I think I paid like 130 for it.

Myke Hurley: Jeff's eyedropper in this, isn't he?

Brad Dowdy: Well, no, this is a piston filler. So it just sucks up into that.

Myke Hurley: Of course it is. Of course it is. It's a Twisby.

Brad Dowdy: Have you heard of Twisby? Have you heard of Twisby?

Myke Hurley: I don't know. I don't know why. Anyway, carry on.

Brad Dowdy: Well, that's how good Jeff's pictures were. That's what made me go buy it, right? These are beautiful. It's a really sick view.

Myke Hurley: He has a great camera, but these are just stunning looking.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. So I was like, forget it. I'm going to go do this. And I just went ahead and got the added flex so I can play with it. So there's guys and gals out there that can really get specific things done to your nibs. And, you know, there's Spenserian grinds that I know, like nibs.com, I think they will do that for you, where they really cut out like a Pilot Falcon nib and they cut it and shape it to where it's got extra, extra added flex and things like that. So that's when you're getting really into it and crazy like myself, you get these, you just keep going off the deep end further and further and further. So I'll have more about my nib and I'll definitely take some pictures, some close-up pictures so you can see the slits and the cutouts in this nib is pretty cool. Then I did a review of a music nib recently, a Sailor music nib, 1911 standard with Sailor's music nib. And I've never used a music nib before this one. And what they're designed for originally was writing music scores, right? Back in, I don't know, whenever, hundreds of years ago, the shape would allow for a narrow vertical line and a wide horizontal line. Like you were talking about the way you hold your pen, right? That's what you would get. And the music nib was actually, which I didn't learn until I did this review, they're actually made to hold differently, almost like a lefty hook. They're made to hold it so the nib's at like a 90 degree angle to the page. So you can write those wide horizontal lines and thin vertical lines. And, you know, these days there's not much need for that because there's so many nib options. We can manipulate whatever nib we need and to make whatever shape we want. But the thing about these music nibs is they put a lot of ink on the page. So for people that want big, beautiful handwriting, like if you're doing big scripts and big printing and just, you know, want a ton of ink on the page, you want to look at a music nib. A lot of them have two tines, I mean, excuse me, three tines and two slits. So the ink flow is that much more. Sailors is cut with one slit and two tines, but it still has that same amount of flow in there. If you want to read up, I did a little bit on the background of a music nib on this post. And you can read up a little bit of it. But I basically related the music nib to like a chisel tip marker. It's very wide, very broad, but you still get a sharp line. Like my lettering came out really, really good. But for my style, I don't know that I could use it every day because it's a little bit too big. It would be a very specific nib for me. Some people like writing in this all day, every day. And, you know, I've seen some wonderful, wonderful examples of music nib handwriting. No one really uses them to write music scores much these days. So that's a really good nib if you want a lot of ink flow and have a marker style fountain pen. And then the last link we'll throw into the show, which is on the opposite spectrum of the music nib. Leigh Reyes, she did a post on some of her extra fine nibs, which I just thought was kind of neat in relation to this podcast. She did all kinds of different nibs that she has, did a lot of close-up nibs. Because she's kind of like me. She likes the extra, extra fine. And then she goes way into like the stubs and cursive italics. Like not a lot of middle ground there. And she just has a ton of great pictures. If you want to read about a bunch of extra fine nibs that she has. Even her really old Watermans, Waterman flex nibs that are extra fine are fascinating. I need to get one of those. I have a Waterman, but it's a wider nib flex pen. So that's just something for everyone to check out because Leigh always does something really, really cool.

Myke Hurley: Always approach Leigh's website with caution though.

Brad Dowdy: Yes, yes. Hide your wallet. Yep. Hide your wallet.

Myke Hurley: What is that called again? The flex, right?

Brad Dowdy: God, you had to do that to me because I can never remember it. When they got the cut out. It is, yeah. But it starts with an E. I don't know. I'll think of it in a minute. You do our next sponsor and I'll be thinking of that name. Okay. Elastic. Elastic. Elastic. There you go.

Myke Hurley: Look at you. You did it.

Brad Dowdy: Pro tip.

Myke Hurley: Right. So we just want to thank our final sponsor and then we'll get into talking about the giveaway stuff. Rather than, you know, telling people what the pens are and then doing the big drum roll. Yep. This week's episode is also brought to you by Harry's. For many of us, shaving can be a pain. It can be uncomfortable, not just on the parts of your body that you shave, but also on your wallet as well. It can be very expensive to have to buy razor blades to make sure that you're refreshing them freshly enough to make sure that you get a good shave. And this is the type of stuff that Harry's was created to solve. Harry's was started by a couple of guys who wanted a better product without having to pay an arm and a leg to get it. Harry's make their own blades. They work with a and they actually own a factory in Germany that creates high quality, high performing blades crafted by absolute shaving experts who've been doing this basically forever. And in doing so, they have great blades that they that, you know, they're known very well how to make. They look good. They feel good. And they're made at a great cost. Harry's, their razor blades, they will basically save an average everyday shaver about $150 a year. So if you're shaving one of the other big brands and you switch over to Harry's, that's the sort of savings that you'll be looking at, which is an incredible amount. You could say they're definitely shaving quite a bit off the top there, Brad. You could say that. Harry's offers a high quality shave at about a fraction of the price of the big brand blades and all the other razor companies. They ship for free to your front doorstep and they have a fantastic starter set that can get you $15. For $15, you can get yourself a razor, moisturizing shave cream or firming shave gel and three razor blades. Brad, you are a fan and user of Harry's products, are you not?

Brad Dowdy: So it's kind of ridiculous. I just placed another order Monday or Tuesday this week because my, I'm not the only one in my family that uses it. I bought one for my wife. She loves it. And now my daughter, unfortunately, is getting older. You know, I want the kids to stay young. She keeps stealing my wife's razor. So my wife came to me. She says, hey, can you order her a handle? So she stopped stealing mine. So I had to order my daughter a handle. So, yeah, we're a full Harry's family at this point. So it's pretty funny. And then I, of course, ordered me some more of the aftershave lotion, which is one of my favorite products in the world.

Myke Hurley: Yep. I love the lotion. I love the foaming shave gel as well. That's my bag. You put this gel in your hand, you rub it in your hands, and it turns into an incredible amount of foam. It's kind of magical.

Brad Dowdy: I love the science. I'm a shave cream guy.

Myke Hurley: There you go. They got it for everybody at Harry's, you know. Yep. Whole family. Cater the whole family. You can experience a clean, close, comfortable shave with Harry's. Go to harrys.com, and you will get $5 off if you use the coupon code PENADDICT with your first purchase. That's H-A-R-R-Y-S.com. Use the code PENADDICT to check out, and you'll get $5 off. And start shaving better today. Thank you so much to Harry's for their support of this show and all of RelayFM. It's worth noting, Harry's are a U.S. company. I believe that they also ship to Canada, but they are U.S. and Canada only at the moment. Gotcha. Very nice. I'm upset when I forget to mention that. Ah, yeah. I understand. Trust me. I understand, too. It's good stuff.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, it's great stuff. I want everyone to get that in their hands, because I love it. I think it's great. All right, so are we going to talk about what we're giving away, and then we'll announce the winners? Is that what you said?

Myke Hurley: Yeah. Yeah, let's do that. Let's talk about it. So me, Anna, and Brad, we spent some time on the PEN show. Basically, we walked to the Anderson PENs table. We took a look at what they had, and we decided we divided up an amount of money. So we all had a certain amount of money, and we bought what we could with the cash that we had. So we have three different packages. So Anna's package was a, is it Wall Eversharp?

Brad Dowdy: Wall Eversharp.

Myke Hurley: Wall Eversharp Skyliner 50 Menthol Green with matching die-cast 1957 Corvette. Not like it's a model. It's not an actual car. Plus one bottle of the new formulation of J. Unbon Ocean Blue. Now, this pen is incredible. It's awesome. I think Anna actually bought one for herself as well.

Brad Dowdy: When she found that and showed it to us, we went, oh my god, that is so you. And you totally have to give that for the giveaway because that pen could not be created more for Anna if she designed it herself, I think. And then when the Anderson said, wait a second, look at the box it comes in, and it has this matching little Corvette in there, like a Hot Wheels Corvette, you know, a little bit bigger than that. We're like, oh my god, this is great. We both fell over when we saw that. It's super cool.

Myke Hurley: It's just fantastic. The color is amazing. Really, really great. And then obviously the beloved J. Unbon. This is the blue, which has the gold in as well, right?

Brad Dowdy: Right. So the original formulas, formalizations of the J. Unbon 1670 inks were standard, I guess you will. They were kind of heavy, heavily saturated. It had some sheen on them. But now they've taken their red, blue, with the success of the Stormy Gray with the gold flecks in it, they have added that to the red and the blue. So any new 1670 blue ink, the Ocean Blue and the Rouge Hematite now contain the gold flecks. And that's what this Ocean Blue bottle is. It's one of the new bottles with the fancy bits in it.

Myke Hurley: So that's one package. Do you want to say what you got?

Sailor Pro Gear

Brad Dowdy: I got the Sailor Pro Gear Sky Special Edition, which is the demonstrator model. It's a new one they released this year. It's a beautiful pen. I have a hard time. This has been sitting at my house. I want it so bad. But I'm saving it for our wonderful backers of the Kickstarter. This is a pen that's right up my alley. I love the blue demonstrator look with the silver trim, the rhodium trim. And I don't know. It's just it's one of my favorite, one of the best looking pens that I've seen in a while. And I'm eventually going to have to get one.

Myke Hurley: I cannot speak highly enough about my Pro Gear. I mean, I have a different model, right? Yep. Yep. No, no. I mean, it's the same. It's the exact same build design. Just different color.

Brad Dowdy: Yes.

Myke Hurley: I cannot speak highly enough. I actually think now. I don't know if I said this to you yet. I think it's the best pen I've ever owned. That's awesome. Like, I think it's incredible. The other day, I walked in on Adina in like a little office room. She'd stolen it. I was like, oh. She was like, yeah, I really like this one. I was like, it's nice, isn't it?

Brad Dowdy: Fancy that. Fancy that. All right. So what did you pick out?

Myke Hurley: So I decided, because there was a bunch of stuff that I really liked, but I decided that what I was going to do was to go with a package that I felt did two things. Encapsulated the podcast and also did what I think was give the recipient what I considered two essentials for every pen addict. So I chose the Lamy 2000 fountain pen with a... Do you remember what the nib size was?

Brad Dowdy: I keep meaning to go look and I keep forgetting. I think it was a fine, but I'm not going to swear to that. Okay. It's either a fine or a medium.

Retro 51 Bamboo

Myke Hurley: And the Retro 51 Bamboo, which I think is probably the best Retro 51 because it's slightly thicker, but it looks amazing. So the recipient of my gift gets what I consider to be maybe the Myke Hurley starter pack.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, it's totally cool. I mean, you could not have done any better. I think, you know, what we all picked out really personifies us in our tastes and likes to a T. I mean, everything is just like spot on perfect, I think.

Myke Hurley: Yep. Yeah. That's actually a really good point. We did. Because, like, you know, if I was going to say, if you asked me before I got the Pro Gear, what's the best pen you own? It's the Lamy 2000. But I actually consider now, and I say this to people, I think when you get to a certain point in your pen addictness, you should own a Lamy 2000. I think it's in the same way that I think a Retro 51 is an essential pen for basically everyone. I believe that the Lamy 2000 is an essential pen addict's pen.

Brad Dowdy: Yep. I could not agree more. All right. Let's give them away.

Myke Hurley: Cool. So we did some random drawing from the Kickstarter backers. And do you want me to do honors of mine and then you do yours? Sure. Yeah, go ahead. So the winner of honors pack is Mark North. So congratulations, Mark. The winner of mine is Ray Blake. And Brad?

Brad Dowdy: The winner of mine is Noble Ignatius.

Myke Hurley: So congratulations to the three of you on that. That is absolutely excellent gifts coming your way. Thank you so much for being backers. I apologize to everybody that didn't win. We'll do another in the future, maybe. Oh, yeah. So I guess probably the best thing to do right now, I'll say, is three of you, Mark, Ray, and Noble, contact us.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. And I have all their, through the Kickstarter backer page, I have all their information. So I'm going to reach out directly.

Myke Hurley: Then there you go. Look out for something from Brad then. I didn't know because I have nothing to do with the Kickstarter. Right.

Brad Dowdy: You have no visibility to that. So what I'm going to do, though, is I'm going to wait a couple days and see if they reach out to me to see if they're really listening.

Myke Hurley: Yeah. Well, also, as well, I think it's more fun to find out by listening to the show.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. Yeah. So I'm not going to go out tonight and start emailing. I'll probably wait until like Monday or so.

Myke Hurley: I'd give it a little bit longer than that, even.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. Because I'm evil.

Myke Hurley: I think it's more fun to find out you've won on the show than to see an email.

Brad Dowdy: Yep. Yep. Yep. Yep. Very good. So, yeah.

Myke Hurley: Congratulations to all of you. Some great stuff coming your way.

Brad Dowdy: And seriously, thank you, everybody. And for all of our Kickstarter backers, I know we've found over y'all for a long time now and we're not done yet. The cases are almost done. There's the last bit of binding and so we might be looking at shipping next week, something like that. So it shouldn't be too much longer. We'll send out an update when they're ready to ship, but it's very, very close. They're almost done.

Myke Hurley: Cool. So I think that about wraps it up for this week.

Brad Dowdy: Yes, sir. It does. And I appreciate you putting up with my voice and my mute button mashing. And hopefully I will be back in better shape next week, which is going to be Thursday again next week because I have asked us to... We have a Memorial Day holiday in the US and I am tied up Monday. So we're going to go Thursday, 4.30 Eastern time for your listening pleasure next week as well. Then we'll be back to our regular schedule.

Myke Hurley: All sorts of stuff. Right. If you would like to find us online, you can do that. You can go to relay.fm slash penaddict slash 155 to get all the links for this week's episode. Brad is at penaddict.com and he is penaddict on Instagram and dowdyism, D-O-W-D-Y-I-S-M on Twitter. I am imike, I-M-Y-K-E on both Instagram and Twitter. If you want to find us there, you can. Thank you so much for our sponsors this week, Squarespace, Linda and Harry's. And thank you most of all for listening as always to the Pen Addict Podcast. We'll be back next time. Until then, say goodbye, Brad.

Brad Dowdy: Goodbye, Brad.