The Pen Addict 198/transcript

The Pen Addict Podcast Transcript
Episode:	198
Title:	Plen Replair Place
Release Date:	March 30th, 2016
Hosts:	Brad Dowdy Myke Hurley
Guests:	No guests this episode
Additional Information
Official page:	Episode 198
Audio File:	Audio Episode 198
Podcast page:	The Pen Addict 198
Length:	5151 min <br />0.85 h <br /> minutes
Previous Transcript	Next Transcript

Myke Hurley: From your friends at RelayFM, this is episode 198 of The Pen Addict podcast. My name is Myke Hurley, I'm joined by Brad Dowdy. This episode is brought to you by the lovely Pen Chalet. What up, Dowdy?

Brad Dowdy: What up, Hurley? How are you? Good, how are you? Good. Two more episodes to the big 2-0-0. What do you think about that?

Myke Hurley: It's crazy. The thing I'm really like, I know that the way that this stuff works, you know, calendars are always confusing. But like, I look at it and I'm like, hang on, 198 means only one more episode in between. And that feels like it would be very close. And I look at my calendar and it's like, but it's still like two and a bit weeks away. It's very, it just confuses my brain for a reason I can't understand.

Brad Dowdy: I will allow that because I feel the same way. It's a little bit weird. Because, yeah, I'm with you. It's a mess.

Myke Hurley: It feels like it should be super close. I know.

Brad Dowdy: And it's not super close. It's not, but it's still pretty close. Mm-hmm. A couple of weeks. I'm ready. I mean, as ready as I'm going to be.

Myke Hurley: My body is ready.

Brad Dowdy: I don't know what that means. And I have to room with you. So I'm going to need some clarification upon your arrival.

Myke Hurley: I think it's best for you not to know.

Brad Dowdy: You're a mess. You're, you're just recovering from your last trip. And we're going to send, we're just going to send you across the pond now. Again, like the second time in a month or so, you've, you've made the cross Atlantic flight, right?

Myke Hurley: Yeah. And I just came back from a trip because Europe. Yep. So I'm, I'm a bit frazzled, but that's, that's, that's fine. I can live like that. We're all good.

Brad Dowdy: Yep. Yep. Yep. Yep. So we have some great follow-up. Oh my gosh. We have a ton. We have a ton of follow-up. This is going to be a very follow-up-y episode. And as we're typing and I see, uh, Mr. Doug Beal in the, in the, in the room, I remembered there's one more link I wanted to add to this, uh, document. So we'll see how it goes if we get, uh, if we get there quick enough.

Japan Times Article

Myke Hurley: So, uh, Archie sent us a link, um, to an article in the Japan Times. And this is in reference to a couple of weeks ago, we were talking about the Hobonichi and the little pink extra. It was the best way it could be described that they put in there, which is a tissue holder. And me and you were completely befuddled as to why such a thing exists. Well, it turns out that in Japan, there is a real trend, a craze, maybe you would call it, of tissue marketing. So companies put marketing messages on packs of tissues and then hand them out in like public areas like train stations. So people tend to have tissues with them because they get them for free. So Hobonichi created a little tissue holder for the free tissues that you get. All of this, whilst it's now an explanation, does not make it any less weird.

Brad Dowdy: It doesn't at all. And, um, did you read this article?

Myke Hurley: I glossed over it.

Brad Dowdy: So it was a, it was a female named Jacqueline that wrote in. It's basically like a, uh, you know, it's like a Q and A in this Japan times where they have a, uh, someone named Alice who's, you know, just answering questions by, by others. And, um, this lady, Jacqueline, um, was in the subway and, um, saw them handing out the tissues, but she was actually refused one. So I'm going to read this little snippet here. Where did I go? It says, as for that snub you suffered in Shibuya, my guess is you refuse not because you're foreign, but because you're female. Well, tissues handed out by men are often advertising what I'll delicately describe as male oriented services. Mr. Shibuya may have assumed you'd be uninterested or worse offended or me or may, or he may have been acting under explicit instructions not to give his goodies to women and save his supply to men. What do you think they mean there, Myke? Um, I, I wouldn't possibly know. Yeah. I think they mean it's, it's men have much more runnier noses.

Myke Hurley: Yes, that's exactly it. Men have bigger noses.

Brad Dowdy: This, this boggles that, I mean, I was good with like the handing out the tissues and the marketing and stuff like that. Then reading a statement like that, I was just like, wait a minute.

Myke Hurley: Different culture, man. Different culture.

Brad Dowdy: Maybe their pollen count is as high as I'm, uh, I'm experiencing right now. So I don't know, but that was amazing. Thank you, Archie for that link. Um, this link's even more amazing though. I got to admit, Myke. So, um, good friend of the show. Um, Rebecca. She sent us this Google doc. Cause we've been talking recently about, um, you know, compiling the old show notes so we can kind of get a grasp of. The overall, we want to, we want to kind of recreate like an entry point for new listeners. Right. But part of that is we kind of got to go back through these old episodes, get some of the main talking points, kind of collate that information together to be able to present it in a podcast in a coherent way for a new users to go in. And, um, you know, review that information. Well, Rebecca sent us this link of what she started, this Google doc. What did you think about this?

Myke Hurley: It's amazing. Like, I can't believe that somebody would go ahead and do something like this. I can't either. It's a Google doc, which currently includes the first 53 episodes. Um, and it's basically the correct show notes, including all of the links, um, and the descriptions for the first 53 episodes as taken from the web archive that we were talking about last time. Mm-hmm. This is an amazing effort and it's a real great, uh, tool and, uh, resource to have for now. Definitely. Like, this is amazing. But this lends into another thing that a few people have suggested and it's something that I think would be really great if we could set up a wiki. Okay. So, I don't know how to do that. Um, so, again, I'm going to ask for suggestions from people from a good service we can use. Um, because I think a wiki would be a really great thing. We could have the show notes for these episodes in that wiki. Um, and then one of the things that people could do, which I think is really interesting. I've had a few people recommend this if you wanted to do it. Um, is to kind of find a way to end up linking together all of the pens. So, find every time that we've spoken about the Zebra Sarasa. That's like the end goal. Okay. Yeah, and that's what a wiki would be good for. Yeah, but that is like, that feels like a very long process to get to that point. But if we could get to that point, wouldn't that be incredible?

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, that would be great. And starting a document like this, which is shareable. So, anyone who is listening to old episodes and taking notes, look at this doc, edit it as you see fit. And, um, you know, it's at least a great starting point, um, if not ending point for this because it's so thorough.

Myke Hurley: Yeah, this is, this is a fantastic place for where we need right now. Yes. But the problem is there's, there's very little that I can kind of do with this to help the RSS feed.

Brad Dowdy: Right, right. But then, um, we can take this information and get it into a wiki somehow. And I'm, I'm fine with at least, you know, getting the wiki started. And, you know, we just want to hear like people who have set these kind of things up before, if they have, you know, some kind of platform recommendation or anything like that. Any, any, any kind of wiki tools that were, are good for, you know, um, something like we're trying to create just for ourselves. So, yeah.

Myke Hurley: Ideally, I would like something that wasn't self-hosted, that it's hosted, a hosted solution. And paying for it is not a problem.

Brad Dowdy: Right, right, right. Yeah. But we don't want to self-host this, but we're willing to, um, to, to pay for a solution because I think it will only benefit everybody. I mean, I think it's just a brilliant idea. Um, as we continue to grow, you know, to be able to refer back to those things, that would just be awesome. Yeah.

Myke Hurley: And then that feels like a wiki would then be part of where the starter pack episodes would live. So the more that I've, that we've been going down this road, the more that I think that is the next step to, to get a wiki set up. And we'll get some people who are willing to spend some time as well as me and you, uh, to try to fill that out and, and really kind of create a great resource for the community of this show. And also people that are just trying to find out an answer to a question, which we can probably help provide.

Brad Dowdy: Yep, exactly. So thank you for Rebecca, for getting the starter. And, uh, I, I'll put the link to, uh, we met in LA. Um, so I put the photo, she just did a, uh, uh, a throwback Thursday last week of when her and I met at the, uh, at the barn in the LA pin show. So that was awesome. So she's super cool. Love her to death. Um, what I don't love to death is the new Kaveco mini converter.

Myke Hurley: So here's the thing that I do, right? So as we go through the week, I add links to things that I want to talk about on the show to an Apple notes document. And then I dropped them into Google docs when like on the night before the show. Right. So we've got all the things ready. Um, and so like I put a few things in, this was in my document. I mean, a lot of the times it's stuff that I see you tweeting about that I think would be fun to talk about on the show. And one of the things that I saw was this review. This is one of the most ridiculous products I have ever seen. So I want to set the stage for people. I think everybody, a lot of the people listening here will be familiar with the Kaveco mini. So it's the little pocket pen. It's kind of got the, the hexagonal design on the cap, right? So it doesn't roll away.

Brad Dowdy: You said the Kaveco mini, it's the Kaveco sport.

Myke Hurley: Sport. Sorry. Sorry. I was looking at the word mini here.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. I know there's the classic sport, the AL sport. We know what you mean. I was just, uh, correct.

Myke Hurley: No, that's very good that you did. Um, so yeah, everybody knows what that pen looks like. And I'll put, I'll put a link in the show notes for the people that don't know, like just to a general kind of idea at the Kaveco sports. Um, there's always good deals on those pens. I'll talk about them later, but you know. Awesome pens. Yeah. They're fantastic. I love mine and everything Kaveco is great except this monstrosity. So one of the problems with the Kaveco is it's so small, it doesn't fit any standard converters, right? Right. Um, so basically you have to use cartridges or some, you know, you're filling cartridges or whatever, but you are using cartridges because it's so small. It doesn't fit a standard converter. Kaveco make converters for some of their other pens, right? Um, full size, full size for the full size stuff, but they had nothing for the sport for the smaller pens. So they used to have like a squeeze one, right? I think I have. Yeah. Um, and that kind of was okay, but I've personally found squeeze converters to not really end up working out so well. Yeah.

Brad Dowdy: Um, it was especially, they're hard to fill the capacity. And then when you shrink it down, like they did with their squeeze to fit into these pens, it just makes it even, they just double down on the badness.

Myke Hurley: Yeah. And again, I found a link to the, uh, squeeze converter, uh, which I'll put in the, in the show notes too. So you can go and kind of see this, but so what they've gone and done is create a converter, which is more traditional, uh, in that it's like a little twist mechanism, like a pump filler. Right.

Myke Hurley: Except it's not.

Brad Dowdy: But they, it, it looks, so this is what confused me the way they designed the end of it. It looks like it twists, right? It's got the, um, I don't know. I guess you would call that. It's like a type of knurling where it looks like you twist it out, but you don't, it's just a straight, it's just a way to get a grip into just a straight pull out and a straight push back in. So there's no twisting involved in, in this converter at all. Despite the appearance, the design appearance leads you to believe that.

Myke Hurley: And the problem with this thing is it is so small that when, that the piston is basically half the size of the full thing, right? Once you've pulled it out. When it's fully extended, yes. When it's fully extended. So the amount of ink that you can put in this thing is a joke. Now, as well as your review, you put a video on Instagram of you filling the pen, which again, I urge people to go and see because it gives you an idea of just how little ink can actually fit inside of this converter. It's ridiculous. This is ridiculous. What's the point of this?

TWSBI Squeeze

Brad Dowdy: This was a very frustrating review to do, not to just write it, but because the product itself was such a pain in the butt to use. I mean, there were no redeeming values. You know, I like to, I can generally find something good about a product. This one I couldn't just because it's just a royal pain to use. It's not intuitive, even though it's a very simple mechanism. It's not intuitive. It leads the way it's designed. It leads you to just like making a mess. Like no one would, no one who's new to fountain pens, they would be so frustrated if they went and tried this product as one of the first products they tried. They'd give up fountain pens like forever. So it's just a bad product. And this is their, obviously it took them a while to come up with that squeeze converter at first. They realized pretty quickly that it was a bad product. And so this only came out like, what, I guess it's been about a year, no more than two. So they wanted to, okay, let's do something different because that first one was junk. Well, this one's, this one's just bad. It just doesn't work well. It doesn't fit in the Lilliputs, which I was assumed it did. I don't know why I assumed that. I assumed a lot of things about this little, this little converter. But the one thing I'm not assuming, the one thing that's a fact is that it's just not good. I mean, I hated it because it, I mean, what drove me the most crazy is when you have that piston fully extended and then you screw it back in the barrel and then the back of the barrel bumps it and it pushes the ink right up through the nib. It's just, it's just a stupid product. Yeah. Yeah. So like on my AL Sport, which it's designed to fit the end of the piston, when it's fully expanded, gets pushed back in as you screw in.

Myke Hurley: That's just like outpour design.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. So that's how my reviewing went. You know, maybe I didn't do it exactly as you're supposed to do, but it shouldn't be that frustrating of a product to use. So the solutions are several, you know, number one, you just buy short international cartridges, which are luckily starting to come in all kinds of different colors. Diamine, Cron Dash, do a wide range of colors. You can just snap them in. What I've always done is taken an empty one of those cartridges and syringe filled it with from an ink bottle, which isn't the easiest method to do. But God, it's certainly less annoying than this little piston filler. Um, I had a bunch of people in the comments that do all kinds of crazy things. Some people, the, the plastic classic, the, the, excuse me, the Kaweco classic, um, the plastic barrel ones, they can be eyedroppered. So people do that. Um, I had one commenter cut. I have actually a couple commenters modify the short international cartridges, cut off parts of them, epoxy in like part of a sack from like a, you know, like an Esterbrook sack. And that way they fill, they can still syringe fill, but they get a greater ink capacity in the barrel. So there's all kinds of crazy ways to do it. But, you know, I, I'm, there's enough options in short international cartridges now where I don't need the frustration of a product like this little mini converter. It's just too much of a pain.

Myke Hurley: They could make something else though, right? Like there is a product that could be made to fulfill this purpose.

Ink Capacity

Brad Dowdy: How, well, you say that, but they're, they're clearly over two. I mean, you say that, don't you think they know that?

Myke Hurley: And so far, they're over two. Well, they clearly do because they're trying to make something, right? But like my, my thinking would be something that was a system very similar to eyedropping. And not eyedropping, sorry, like a syringe filling, right? So that you, you create some kind of metal cartridge, which is the shape and dimensions of a, uh, international. I don't know, maybe with like a little screw top or something. I don't know how it would work. And you, they would just give you something like a syringe that you could fill it with. Like it just feels like, whilst that's not elegant, it would be the best solution to something like this.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. Cause something, what they did here, they wasted so much space with that piston. Yeah. It's just, it's, it's nonsensical. And, um, you know, I'd like, what would be nice is like, I want this converter to work like a vacuum converter. I want to push the piston down and have it suck in the ink and have the piston like at the end of the barrel. That's how I wanted this thing to work.

Myke Hurley: The size of the barrel, couldn't it? Yep. So there are, you know, there are many options here, but for whatever reason, they chose probably the worst.

Myke Hurley: Cause it's just the pure amount of ink you get in this thing. Once you've also got an air bubble in it too, it's, it's kind of a joke really.

Brad Dowdy: It's bad. It's, it's, it's a, not a good product.

Myke Hurley: That would last most people a day.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah.

Myke Hurley: You shouldn't be filling your pen every day. No.

Brad Dowdy: And if you, and if you use this pen and you're used to that type of type of writing, you, you're carrying around extra cartridges, cartridges with you anyway. So, I mean, something like this isn't, isn't going to be a benefit at all.

Myke Hurley: No. What a weird product. What a weird, weird product. From a company that seems to usually get it right. They really, really got it wrong on this one.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. I mean, their pens are great. I mean, everyone loves their pens. I love their pens and gosh, I've got too darn many of them. Did anybody use it there? Like, just make it? Like, did anybody actually try and use it? Yeah. With products like this and that squeeze converter, it's like, how do you make this and, and not realize that it's not very good? I got me. You got me. So a product that is very good, because I have it myself and it was actually kind of a, huh, this is pretty good, is the Baron Fig Squire. Were you a backer of that on Kickstarter?

Myke Hurley: Yeah. Yeah. Remember last week, I spoke about the fact that I thought it was great that they got it all shipped in time.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. So have you gotten yours in while you were gone?

Myke Hurley: No, I don't think mine's shipped yet. Or if it has, I haven't seen the shipping notification.

Brad Dowdy: Okay. So mine shipped last week, and I got to say, this is a really good pen. Um, I love the shape of it, the size of it. It's smaller, but it's full enough to be, you know, just like a full size pen. I don't feel that it's a mini pen. Um, it's not extremely long. It's not extremely heavy. Um, the finish of it is well done. The twist mechanism that they use is pretty cool. Um, the shape of it's good. It uses the Schmidt P8126 slash seven, uh, rollerball refills that we like, um, from the retro 51. I mean, it's just kind of an all around pretty good pen. Um, I don't know what else, uh, I have to say of it. I got a link in the show notes to, uh, my buddy Joe's, uh, review over at the Gentleman Stationer. He enjoys it. Um, I have a, uh, guest review coming on the Pen Addict, uh, hopefully eventually by one of the readers is going to go ahead and do a guest review of this pen for the blog. So, and they enjoy the pen. Um, I pretty much, uh, kind of across the board praise for this pen. So good job by Baron Fig and, and making something pretty cool.

Myke Hurley: So I have some observations from looking at Joe's post and also some questions for you. Uh, I thought it was interesting. Joe mentioned this, that the, uh, the Schmidt refill was Baron Fig branded. Okay. Is that true?

Brad Dowdy: Well, they posted that on the Kickstarter or one of their pages. So yeah, they had that on one of the images either. I don't know if it was in the project images or one of the update images that yes, they, they definitely did that.

Myke Hurley: That's pretty cool. Um, the branding on it. What do you think about that?

Brad Dowdy: I love the sword I could do without Baron Fig. I think it's, it's, um, it's not quite to the jarring level, but it kind of doesn't belong.

Myke Hurley: I think they should have gone with one or the other.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. I don't like the both. So the, the sword on it is awesome. The, the packaging, and I am not a packaging guy at all. They did a good job on the packaging. Um, I could generally care less about packaging because that's not what's writing on my paper. Right. But they did, it was a great presentation. It looks good. Um, love, love the sword on the barrel. Don't like the Baron Fig on the, on the barrel.

Myke Hurley: So, I mean. How's the twist mechanism?

Brad Dowdy: It's great. It's like a little quarter turn click, click out, click back in. Super smooth. Um, I don't know any other pin that's got like this type of thing. It's, it's, it's a very short, uh, action, if you will. Um, very quick to deploy and quick to, to pull back in. Um, it's a very short, I don't know, maybe it's a half turn. I don't have it here in front of me, but it's, it's a short turn. It's not a, it's not a twist. Um.

Myke Hurley: I think this thing is going to end up being a bit of a favorite of mine.

Brad Dowdy: They did the balance well and the shape of it. I, I, I really just from a performance and feel wise, I don't have a single bad thing to say about it.

Myke Hurley: It's really nice because it's kind of looks like it, it ticks all the boxes of the Ajoto, right? It's the refill I love in a really nice body. Yes. You know, like I love the retro 51s of course, but they're like, you know, they're, they're, they are what you pay for them. They're like 25 bucks a piece or whatever. They feel good. Some of the bodies are nicer than others. Some of them you pay a bit more for, but this is just like a real classy made looking thing. Yeah. I'm excited to pick one of these up. Well, when it arrives, of course, I don't know when mine's coming. But I hope it's soon.

Pen Comparisons

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. I hope it's soon. Cause I, I, I'm, I'm more interested to hear what you think about it than, than me, because I mean, I really enjoy it. It's going to be, it's going to be something I carry a lot for sure.

Myke Hurley: Yeah. Yeah. I'm looking forward to it.

Brad Dowdy: So what about this, this next pin we have in our, our links, Myke, which I actually have and you don't, but it's, it's, it's something you did for both of us. So once you, once you share.

Myke Hurley: Yeah. So we've spoken about this in the past that, um, Apple have, uh, worked with retro 51 for their company pens, basically in the company store. And they were using the hex, what's it called? The hexomatic, hexomatic previously. And I have one of those here, but very recently they released in the company store, uh, in Cupertino. You know, you have to actually physically go there to buy them. Tornadoes, retro 51 tornadoes in the four iPhone colors, gold, rose gold, space gray, and silver. And, uh, Georgia Dow who works at iMore. Um, she recently got all four of them, uh, and unboxed them. And I put a video in and I kind of got into a conversation with people. And I've had this conversation with a couple of friends who like Apple stuff recently about these pens because it's interesting to me, uh, because they're not just your everyday run of the mill pens. People says to me, Oh, are these good? It's like, yeah, no, it's one of my very favorite pens. Um, I still really want to know how this came to be. Like, please, if you're out there, just let me know. Uh, I will not say anything on the show if you don't want me to. I just really want to know how this happened because it just feels to me that this isn't an accident. Like whoever has ordered these pens and has started this partnership must know about this stuff. They must be a pen addict. And I would just, I just really want to know now, uh, because it's, this is just a very interesting thing to me. This wasn't a one-off. This is clearly a partnership. This is now the second pen line that Apple have used from retro 51 to do this. Um, and I, uh, a good friend and, uh, Mr. Steve Wilson, who works at Apple on the podcast team. He sent me a, uh, email a couple of weeks ago and he, with a picture, he's like, are these good pens? Like, and I was like, oh, let me tell you all about it. So he bought me a new one, uh, and sent them to us. Um, I opted for rose gold and you, you have one too, right? What color did I, did we get for you? Silver. Silver. Silver. And Mr. Jason Snell was in the Cupertino. He was at Apple a couple of days ago and he's picked me up another one. I don't know what color there. Uh, just cause I love these and I wanted to get a rose gold one cause it was very different and I'm really excited. So I'll be picking this up in Atlanta. Uh, I just think that this is so awesome. Like it's one of my favorite pens and my favorite company together in one little beautiful package.

Brad Dowdy: So I have this guilt about using mine. Like I'm refusing to use mine until I give you yours. It just doesn't, it doesn't feel right. They're sitting in my closet, still in the box, it's still in the bag that Steven's shipped us, shipped it to us. And, and, um, I, I just totally feel guilty using it before I'm able to give you yours. So they're still sitting here. Um, I did look at them. I was like, Ooh, this looks nice. And that was about it. I haven't used them yet, uh, at all. So, uh, I, I look forward to it. So I'm sure we'll talk about them when we, uh, when we crack them open.

Myke Hurley: Yeah. This is, I just think this is so cool. It's such a great little pairing for me.

Brad Dowdy: Like it couldn't be more me. Right. Right. Right. So whoever decided on this partnership, it was, it was an intentional thing. I mean, they, they did, you just don't run across retro 51 and go, yeah, let's make some promotional pens with them. Someone, someone, someone's dialed in a little bit on, uh, on what's good. And, uh, I, they've definitely worked some stuff out very, very well.

Myke Hurley: I don't, I mean, I'd like to think, but I don't necessarily think they listen to the show, but they, they know what they're doing. Yes. That's, that's the thing that interests me the most about this is that they know what they're ordering. They know what they're doing.

Brad Dowdy: So, well, it's kind of what they do. Right.

Myke Hurley: And it's their job. I really want to know. Just really want to know.

Brad Dowdy: What would be cool to see in the store is one of those, um, aluminum BICs like was on Kickstarter because we, I, we have this link in the show notes, um, for the, for the BIC crystal lovers, which of all people, Johnny Gamber, uh, the pencil, the pencil revolution himself, one man revolution, um, invited me to, and this is an amazing group. It's on Facebook. It's a bit crystal lovers. And we'll share the link, um, in, in the show notes to everyone. I get a lot of enjoyment out of old school BICs, um, because they did some unique things in the past, like in the seventies and eighties with the like extra fine ballpoints. The accountant ballpoint is one of my favorite, um, favorite BICs that have ever been created. Um, and this is just like a fun little group that, uh, they did. So seeing like, uh, um, one of those aluminum barrel BICs, I could see that like being on Johnny Ives desk and they need to get that down to the, uh, to the shop one day as well. So, um, what, were you ever a BIC guy when you were growing up? Did you ever just like get into the two BICs? I mean, you can't not be here.

Myke Hurley: They're everywhere. It is the pen that you use. They're in all stores. They're in all companies, boxes and boxes of them at school. Like, you know, if you've used a pen in the UK, you've used a BIC crystal.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. So like the old yellow, I mean, there's something to say about tradition, even though I don't use these very much now. I mean, I have a few crystals laying around, but seeing the old school yellow barrel BICs or the accountant BICs just really brings back fond memories and, um, I enjoy them. So it's cool to see something like this. And I thought this, uh, this group was hilarious when, um, Johnny invited me to it. So, uh, well done big crystal lovers. It's awesome.

Myke Hurley: Talking about cool pens. This week's episode is brought to you by our friends over at the pen chalet. They sell everything you're looking for. Roller balls, fountain pens, ballpoints, mechanical pencils, and so much more. And they have all the brands that you're looking for too. I was talking about Kawekos earlier. I went to pen chalet, found the links, put them in the show notes because they have everything and they have some really cool Kawekos as well. Stuff that you don't see everywhere else, but they have Monteverdi, Pelican, Lamy, Pilot, Namiki, Sailor. They have all of the brands that you're looking for. All the stuff that we talk about on the show every single week. They're always doing great discounts, but everything is so well priced there because this is important to them. This is all part of the overall customer service that pen chalet strive to give to all of their customers. This is something they really believe in. They have a 100% satisfaction guarantee. They have free shipping on orders of over $50 in the United States. They also sell internationally. They have great shipping rates. They try and do their best to get you your stuff at a fair price. And with that also comes the great deals that we have every week. So go to penchalet.com, click the podcast link at the top of the website, enter the password penaddict for this week's special offer, and to get the code that you need to save 10% on anything at penchalet. So if you want to go and buy one of those Lovie Kawekos, go hit that link, hit the penaddict password right at the very top where it says podcast. You'll get your 10% coupon that you can use on anything. But this week's special offer is for something I'd not heard about before, but I went and took a look at it. But this is such a fantastic deal. This is for the Monteverde Mountains of the World ballpoint in the Mount Kilimanjaro style. This pen retails for $65. Ron at Penchalet is going to give it to you for $10. It's nothing.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, I didn't see that at first. I was like looking at the pen. I was like, oh, that's an interesting pattern on the pen. And then I looked at the price. I was like, wait a minute. It was only $10.

Myke Hurley: This is one of those pens that you buy as gifts for people. It's got that look about it, you know?

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. So Ron also carries a pen that I've reviewed years ago on the Pen Addict and loved it and still love it to this day. But don't use it enough is the Monteverde Poquito, the XL Stylus ballpoint pen. It's a small little pocket pen. It's only $8. But it's an amazing rider, amazing feel. It's kind of like the Kaweco Lilliput ballpoint, but a little bit bigger.

Brad Dowdy: These are great. And they have this cool blue. Oh, graphite gray sold out. But they have some cool. This Poquito is a legitimately good pen, especially for the price. And like we were talking about the Kawecos with the converters that you shouldn't buy. What you should buy is these Art Sport Kawecos that Ron still happens to have that are really, really cool. Yeah.

Myke Hurley: That retail at $1.35. But with all of our lovely discounts, you can get for just $72.90, which is crazy.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. It looks like the red one's the only one left, which is actually one of the better looking ones anyway. So yeah. Awesome stuff from Ron at Pen Chalet. Thank you so much.

Pen Chalet Collaboration

Myke Hurley: Yeah. As always, we love the Pen Chalet and keep listening. We're working on something really special. With the Pen Chalet in the coming weeks. So you want to keep an ear out for that? I'm really excited. Ron has gone all out to help us celebrate our 200.

Brad Dowdy: I get these cryptic emails from Ron. He's like, hey, send me this. And that's like all it says. I'm like, okay. Yeah, I know what he's doing. And then no response. So I'm like, he's killing me. He's killing me. But he's an awesome supporter of the show. Awesome supporter of the community. And thank you very much, Ron, for everything you do for us.

Myke Hurley: No doubt.

Brad Dowdy: So the Big Crystal lovers aren't the only one to get on the Facebook group game. I've been asked a bunch of times recently, like in the past several weeks, create a pen addict Facebook group. Create a pen addict Facebook group. And I wasn't against it. I've just never gotten around to doing it. Well, seeing the big group and I had some time this morning, I created a group on Facebook for anyone who's interested called Pen Addicts Worldwide. And we'll have the link in the show notes. People who are on Facebook want to join groups where they can talk about things that they're into and talk about them with like-minded people. Just like the guys on the Erasable podcast. They crossed over a thousand members to their podcast group, which is just fantastic. And I was asked several times to do this. And it is now live. So you can join the Pen Addict Facebook group. And I will see you there.

Myke Hurley: Look at that. Yeah. So you have the Slack. So why do you now have this too?

Brad Dowdy: It's completely different. I don't think there's like probably hardly any crossover at all. There's people that live on Facebook and want to be in there all day and use it as a platform for different things. And just to give them that opportunity, like the emails I was getting or the messages I was getting were basically like, hey, I want to be able to eventually find people in my area that maybe we can meet up with and, you know, go and talk about pens and things like that. So that was kind of the impetus behind it. Even though it'll be, you know, just kind of a general group, you know, it allows people to meet up other people in their area that they may not have known. We're also into the stationary thing that we are. It's a completely different platform.

Myke Hurley: Yeah, that's definitely. Yeah. I just wanted to like, you know, managing all of it. So you've got a real community going on here, buddy.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's fun to do. I mean, the Slack doesn't take much management. Fortunately, I did take down the auto signup thing, but just like the Facebook thing, you know, you just have to send me an email. I'll send you the invite or in the case of Facebook, I just click approve. I just rather do that than just have things wide open, you know, make sure if someone wants is going to take the time to like send in the email or, you know, ask for membership, you know, then I'll do it. But anyone who's just like doing a flyby and jumping in for just random reasons, there's kind of no point in that. So I'm not trying to keep people out. I'm just trying to keep it kind of normalized, I guess. I don't want it to be all of a sudden, you know, a million users, which I know would never be. And I don't care about the numbers, but I just don't want it to be just kind of a wide open free for all in either place.

Myke Hurley: Cool.

Brad Dowdy: So, yep. So another thing and there's more. So I'm adding more to the schedule at the blog, which I have been wanting to do for a while. You know, I talk about that ever since I've left my Jade job. I've been doing this full time, adding content to the blog itself. And I've been wanting to do this Q&A, like a weekly Q&A. And I found some software that integrates with the blog really nicely. So I think I'm going to try to do this like every week. I launched the first one last week. It was kind of quiet, you know, maybe 15 or 20 questions. But it's cool because I can put them on the blog. They live there permanently. You know, they don't go away. So you can, you know, they're basically like a blog post by date. And there's like a whole embedded Q&A where everyone can see the questions and answers and go back and look at them at later dates. And what do you think about something like this?

Myke Hurley: I think it's really cool. Are you planning on just opening up the questions at certain times? Or would you want people to be submitting questions and then you answer them at a certain time?

Brad Dowdy: I haven't figured it out. Right now I'm doing it at a certain time. So like I don't have a permanent schedule for this yet. I want to do it once a week for an hour a week where I'm available. That's the window where I'm answering the questions. But I can also open it up for people to submit questions earlier. And then I can get them then. But I also kind of like the almost live feeling of it where people come and ask at that time. But so I'm thinking of like if I open it up two or three hours earlier, something like that may work. Still trying to figure it out. Still trying to figure out what the right schedule is for me. And it'll probably move. It's probably not always going to be Thursday at 4 o'clock or whatever. It'll be kind of a moving target depending on what my schedule is like during the week. But I think it's fun because you can just kind of hit some questions here real quick that people are interested in. They can just jump in. And it's a real easy format to handle. So I'm enjoying that so far. The test went good a couple weeks ago. So I brought it live last week. And that went good. So now I'll just keep going with it.

Shirts and Sharpies

Myke Hurley: Cool. Nice job, man. Thank you, sir. That's not all, though. You got some other stuff going on. Shirts and Sharpies. Shirts and Sharpies.

Brad Dowdy: So I'm wearing my shirt today, actually, which I just randomly. So I finally got in the shirts. They came out great. Sharpies came out great, too. I wanted some orange Sharpie logo pins. I've always followed like artists who have their own Sharpie. And I thought that was the coolest thing. So I wanted my own Sharpie.

Myke Hurley: How did you get this?

Brad Dowdy: What do you mean? How did I get this?

Myke Hurley: How do you how does that happen? How do you get branded Sharpies? Where do they come from?

Brad Dowdy: Well, one actually one of the advertisers on my blog brought it to my attention. Cheap pins dot com. So and I worked with them. And once I saw they had Sharpies, I knew that I wanted them. And then I saw that orange Sharpies were an option. Well, that was a done deal. So that's where I got them from.

Myke Hurley: What was the website?

Brad Dowdy: Cheap pins dot com.

Myke Hurley: So they print on them.

Brad Dowdy: Yep.

Myke Hurley: Huh. That's kind of cool.

Brad Dowdy: They came out really good. Yeah, they look great.

Brad Dowdy: Yep.

Myke Hurley: Okay.

Myke Hurley: Cheap promotional pins.

Myke Hurley: Yep. They came out good. That's real cool, man.

Brad Dowdy: And the shirts came out great, too.

Myke Hurley: Yeah. I'm looking forward to seeing them. So you went with orange.

Brad Dowdy: Yes.

Myke Hurley: Yeah.

Brad Dowdy: I could have gone. The other option was black with the black Sharpie with the orange print. That might be cool. Maybe that'll be round two if I do do another one.

Myke Hurley: Yeah. The shirts look great. I mean, it's just the logo, right? I'm looking forward to picking one up. I understand that they're being held aside for me in Atlanta.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. Yeah. And they're like a bright orange, like kind of like our episode 100. Um, orange shirt. It's kind of in that, in that color way. It's kind of bright, kind of, kind of cool. I really, really like how they turn out comfy.

Brad Dowdy: So yeah, got all the stuff going, man. I'm a busy bee.

Myke Hurley: And fishing vest pins and stickers. Oh yeah.

Brad Dowdy: I forgot about that. I forgot about that. Yeah. So our pins came in. There are enamel like lapel pins, except they're huge. Um, they're like two inch lapel pins. So they're really nice and heavy and the colors came out good. And all the pins and everything pop in the little notebook. Um, I have one in my backpack right now and, uh, we got a matching sticker to go with it. And, uh, just a new NotCo sticker, um, with, uh, a phrase we like to use for our paper lineup. Start with the first leveler. So, uh, so, um, they came out really good, really good. Um, we were having those, we got them in early for Atlanta. So we decided to just pop them up on the shop for anyone who was interested in. So, uh, they're, they're cool. They've, uh, gotten good response so far and I'm really, really happy with how they turned out.

Myke Hurley: I'm looking forward to getting one of those stickers on my iPad.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, for sure. It's going to look great. Yep.

Myke Hurley: Should we finish up with some Ask EPA today?

Brad Dowdy: Let's do it. We've got a bunch of good questions. And, um, I want to add in, remind me at the end, I've got one from Doug Beal that I need to grab out of my, uh, my Twitter feed. Cause it's a good one. And I have something to say about that. So the first one, this, this was the hot, the hot, uh, Twitter action last week. Um, Mr. Neil himself, I I'm assuming, you know who that is.

Myke Hurley: Neil Gaiman, right?

Pilot Pen

Brad Dowdy: Yes. So he's a huge fountain pen fan, which is, this is well known and his favorite pen. And he uses it at book signings is the pilot eight 23, which is the big pilot. It's one of the best pens. It's a fantastic pen. So he, he posted out a tweet. It says after about a million signatures, it's time for a pilot. It's time for pilot eight 23 to get TLC. Should I go to pilot or a pen repair, a pen repair repair place?

Myke Hurley: That's difficult for me to say.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, um, um, a bunch of people were adding me in like, you know, to, to see the tweet and, you know, my recommendation. I think most people with recommendations, you want to go to a pen repair, golly, pen repair. Pen repair place.

Brad Dowdy: Pen repair place. Um, just because you can get that, uh, um, extra little TLC, the real direct involvement, not that pilot wouldn't do anything, you know, wrong with it, but you don't know who's working on the pen. You don't know what their experience is. You don't know how long it's going to take with a pen repair place. You can get, um, you know, more customized work done. You can ask more direct questions and have, you know, just kind of a better one-on-one situation for your beloved pen. And this is his signature writing pen, right? For all of his book signings. So it's an important pen to him. So he wants it, uh, to be, to be worked on well. So, uh, hopefully that's what he, what he did. Not that sending back to pilot was, is anything wrong, but there's kind of no point, um, in sending that, a pen like this back to pilot. Um, I don't know what they would do anything better than what you could get from a Nibmeister or something like that. So, um, I thought that was pretty cool, but I would definitely recommend going, going to a local or, you know, regional pen repair shop. I'm sending it out to them.

Myke Hurley: Just find your local replier place and they'll replier it all up nicely for you.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. Second question from a Casey coffee. Can I put regular stainless steel Lamy nibs on my 2000? And the answer is no. Those are different shape nibs. The gold nib has, it's a very small nib, um, that you have to kind of, it has to fit correctly under the barrel design. So those, um, regular, anything that goes on the Safari, AL star studio, any of that shape nib, which is actually consistent across the product line, all the way up to the dialogue three. None of those are going to fit in the 2000. The 2000 is a unique nib of its own. Um, and you have to order those. Um, I don't know that any of our favorite resellers like Goulet or Anderson or any of those that are like really into, um, the, the brands carry 2000 replacement nibs. I think you have to probably order those straight from Lamy would be my guess.

Myke Hurley: So I'd be interested to know why Casey wanted to do this. Um, my thinking would be that there is maybe some nib work needed on that nib because possibly those nibs are fantastic. I mean, I would, I would be, I would wonder why you'd want to replace it with another Lamy nib, right? Yeah. That seems like an interesting kind of peculiar choice, I think. So maybe, cause I know that, you know, we've spoken about this in the past. The 2000 can be a little bit, uh, I'm not so sure what you're going to get, right? Like you can get a good one or a bad one. Um, so I, I would suggest maybe just trying to get some work done on the nib if you feel like it needs to be changed in some way, as opposed to trying to find a new one or a replacement.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, exactly. I would totally agree with that. And, um, yeah, you just gotta, you might have to get your 2000 nib worked on, which a lot of people have had to get their 2000.

Myke Hurley: Yeah, I was very lucky that mine came out practically perfect.

Brad Dowdy: Yep. Yep. Yep. Um, next one's from Mark Yeager says, I'll be in London this summer. What other can't miss pen and or stationary stores? Do you have any comment on this, Myke? Cause we, I kind of have a decent answer. Yeah. Um, from, from our friend Tessa who runs all things stationary. She keeps a stationary map of the world. Um, and that's where I point people to all the time when they're looking for something regional and she's kind of tracked them. But do you have any, any comment on this?

Myke Hurley: Well, my comment was, is about this map actually, cause it's quite funny. A couple of weeks ago when I met Andy and we went for a drink with Tessa and we were talking about the state of things in London stationary wise. And I was like, I don't really know of anything. And she's like, you haven't looked at my map because there is so many interesting stores here in London, uh, that I had no idea even existed. And my excuse, uh, is I'm much more tied into the U S scene than the UK scene, I think in general. Um, but yeah, there's a lot of stuff going on here. I mean, but this, this stationary map isn't just London. Uh, there are really interesting stores all over the world on Tessa's map. Um, yeah, I think she, she takes feedback.

Brad Dowdy: She takes feedback to add more. So I, not only did I send this link to Mark, I had already sent it out like once or twice earlier in the week for people looking for something in some areas. Like go check out this map. So it's, it's a really cool resource that she, she set up. It's awesome.

Myke Hurley: Yeah, it is. Uh, it's, it is fantastic. And she really knows the stuff. So.

Tom Benfield Journal

Brad Dowdy: All right. So I found this question from, uh, our good friend and, uh, title champion, Doug Beal. He says the Tom Benfield journal is back in the same class as the not co portfolio question mark. Uh, probably need both. Yes. You're going to need both Doug. Um, it's, it's going to be different than our folio. Our folio is way different, but the reason why I wanted to bring this up. It's because I have this field journal. It's sitting here, um, in my desk. I've just been waiting for them to release it, to, um, work on my review for it. So they did the field journal way back in the day. I will have to search for the link on my, um, on penatic.com. Myke, I did a review of the Tom Benfield journal, great little product, and they did away with it. I'm not sure why, but they had such a clamoring for them to bring it back that they are reintroducing it a little bit of a redesign. And they sent me one to check out. Um, I knew it was launching at the end of this month. And now that we're at the end of this month, um, I can, uh, work on my view review. So I have the whole setup of the, the Tom Benfield journal, all the different papers, all the different inserts, um, all the different, um, little pen holders and things like that. So I'll start teasing out some picks and answering questions on that as I'm working on my review, which will hopefully be up in a couple of weeks. So that's why I wanted to mention that because.

Myke Hurley: What are your top level thoughts of this product though?

Brad Dowdy: Um, it's really good. Uh, top level. It's really good. It's not like a useful product. That's not something I would use every day, but for someone who needs that kind of setup, it's totally useful and really, really nice. Um, so it allows you, it has a, um, the inside, it's like a ring binder on the inside. So they actually sell and provide a bunch of nice papers. Like I think I have some of the crane papers or some of the ones that they sent us. They sent me like three or four packs of papers to use in it. You can buy all different kinds of papers, but you can also, um, you know, punch your own. If you have a specific paper that you like standard three hole punch and you'll be right. It's not a standard three hole punch. I'll have to look at the shape and see what the standards are. It's not a three hole punch though. It's, it's at least six rings. Um, so I'll, I'll have to look and see what that format is.

Myke Hurley: The pictures show three.

Brad Dowdy: Oh, am I blind then? Yeah. Okay. Then maybe then even better. So, um, and I mean, the quality is amazing. I mean, everything that they make is, is elite. It's like on the elite tier of the quality scale. You don't get much better quality than what they do. I mean, for me personally, that's why I reviewed the last one. I said, I enjoyed it. It's a great product. It's not a product I would use. So I gave it away and maybe we'll do the same thing with this one because it's just not something that fits my writing style. But in this case, it doesn't mean it's not an amazing product because it really, really is. They got a sick orange as well. Yeah. I didn't get the orange one. I think I want to say mine's Navy blue. I haven't taken it out yet. Um, but, uh, yeah, it is so cool. It's really cool. They, I love Tom Ben and I'm going to be doing some reviews for some of their products, uh, very, very soon, including this and not limited, included, but not limited to this, Michael. Hmm.

Brad Dowdy: Hmm. Hmm. Hmm. Hmm. Hmm. So Doug, Doug just, uh, Doug just dropped in another ass TPA last night, which I didn't ask. I pulled it up on his Twitter feed, getting this Tom Ben when he says, what do you think of fold your own nib at the show? Just need Coke can pliers and a nib holder. I will try it out and report back. Okay. You do that, Doug.

Brad Dowdy: Good luck. Thanks. Doug's going to be folding his own nibs, um, out of aluminum cans at the, uh, pen show. So, uh, everyone bring those to Doug.

Myke Hurley: Yeah. We can, we can see that in person. So next week is episode one 99. So it is the last episode before the pen show. Uh, I want to do some ask TPA pen show related stuff next week. So if you're coming to the show or you have any questions about the show, uh, just tweet them at us with the hashtag ask TPA. Um, and we'll hopefully get some time next week to address some of those, uh, in episode one 99 before we pass the next massive milestone.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. So that's our next show. Um, and then the following week we would normally record on Wednesday. We're going to hold that all the way till Saturday night. And we don't, we can't, that's when we're going to record 200. Yeah. We don't know when that'll actually post maybe Sunday.

Myke Hurley: Uh, the very latest Sunday. Okay. The very latest Sunday. To be honest, I could probably have it out Saturday just cause there's very little you can do, uh, editing wise to a live show.

Brad Dowdy: That's true. That's true.

Myke Hurley: So you just got out cross talk because it's on all the mics. True. So really it's just a little bit of mastering, putting the music in and uploading it. So it will be either Saturday or early Sunday. Uh, the episode 200 will be live in the feed and then we'll have all the video, which, you know, as we've lost, as of last time, we'll take a few weeks to put together. Um, and then we'll put that out as well.

Brad Dowdy: Oh, for sure. Yeah. That'll be May before the video is ready easily, easily, but still a pretty impressive timeframe for how quick they turned that around last year. So it's going to be the same group this year. Um, cause they did a fantastic job. So yeah, if you have any pinch Atlanta specific questions, you need to get them in for next week because if, if it's not next week showed, um, the following week will be the Atlanta pin show show. So, um, get them in. We'd love to hear from you. Hashtag ask TPA on Twitter. And, uh, we, we get them all straight into a document and it's, uh, it's fun to go through that stuff. Cause some great questions.

Myke Hurley: Yeah. So excited. Yep. If you want to find the show notes for this week, head on over to relay.fm slash pen addict slash one nine eight. There's a bunch of really cool stuff in there this week. If you want to find Brad online, head on over to pen addict.com or knock.co. He is at dowdyism on Twitter. D O W D Y I S M. Um, and he is also pen addict on Instagram. Uh, I am I Myke, I M Y K E and all the social services you'd care to take a look at. Thanks again to the great people over at the pen chalet for helping make this show possible. And also a massive thank you to everybody that is a member of relay.fm or the pen addict, um, and it helps support both me and Brad, uh, and everyone here at relay.fm. Uh, we really, really appreciate that. And you can find out more about that by going to relay.fm slash membership and you can find out more about relay.fm memberships there. Uh, uh, but until next week, Mr. Dowdy ism, I must say goodbye. Goodbye, Brad.

Brad Dowdy: Goodbye, Brad.

Myke Hurley: Oh, you just said it on your own this time.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. I don't know. I I'm just so in tune to, to what you want to do. I go to bed at night. I say good night, Brad.