The Pen Addict 2/transcript

The Pen Addict Podcast Transcript
Episode:	2
Title:	My Favorite Pens
Release Date:	February 16th, 2012
Hosts:	Brad Dowdy Myke Hurley
Guests:	No guests this episode
Additional Information
Official page:	Episode 2
Audio File:	Audio Episode 2
Podcast page:	The Pen Addict 2
Length:	3737 min <br />0.617 h <br /> minutes
Previous Transcript	Next Transcript

Myke Hurley: Hello, and welcome to episode two of The Pen Addict. I am Mr. Michael Hurley, and with me, as always, is the Pen Addict himself, Mr. Brad Dowdy. How are you, Brad?

Brad Dowdy: I'm great, sir. How are you today?

Myke Hurley: Very good. Excited to be getting the second show done. We had a really great reception to the first episode, and I want to thank everyone for downloading, and especially to those of you that have stuck around to listen to the second episode.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, I was really blown away by all the positive comments and great feedback, and some of the emails we got about the show and comments on the 70 Decibels page. It was really, really awesome, so I appreciate all you guys listening to episode one, and hopefully that's a sign of things to come. I think this is going to be a really good thing.

Myke Hurley: Yeah, I'm really excited about this show. You mentioned feedback. Now, there's a number of ways that people can send us feedback about this show, right? So you can email Brad directly. Brad, what email can people grab you on?

Brad Dowdy: The best way to send me an email is thepenaddict at gmail.com, spelled just as it sounds. If you want to have a long discussion or talk about pen recommendations or talk about show topics, that's the best place to get me. Otherwise, you can catch me on Twitter at dowdyism. That's D-O-W-D-Y-I-S-M. I'm always available to chat on Twitter. Those are probably the two best ways to get in touch with me, and you can also leave comments on the 70 Decibels penaddict page. There's a comment section on there for you as well.

Myke Hurley: Indeed, and you can also get an email to us at the contact page of 70decibels, which is 70decibels.com forward slash contact, and that's another way you can fill out the form there. Or if you want to share with me the reveling in Brad's geniusness of all of this, then you can talk to me on Twitter, and I'm at imike, I-M-Y-K-E. And we can talk about how amazing Brad is there if you want to do such a thing. So talking about reader email, Brad, you had a couple of messages that you wanted to share with the readers in case there may have been other people that were thinking the same sort of stuff.

Feedback Topics

Brad Dowdy: Right, right. I did get a couple emails for feedback for show topic ideas, more questions on episode one. So I did want to share these just so people know that we would love to have your feedback and love to hear your ideas for the show going forward. But let me go through a couple of them here that we got. First one's from Jim, and he was talking about the glossary subjects that we covered in episode one. And let me just, I'll read a little bit of it here. And he said, you touched on it in the first episode, but I think it should be discussed in more detail. I love pens and consider myself a pen addict, but I'm still confused at the differences and when I try to explain those differences to others. And what Jim's referring to is all the different types of pens and different, you know, breakdown between ballpoints, fountain pens, gel ink pens, what type of ink particular pens use. And he says it's such a confusing topic that it warrants a lot of time. And Jim, I could not agree more. That's something, you know, I'm going to elaborate on some of those topics today. After we finished last week's episode, there was so many things I had in my head, just even basic stuff that I didn't cover that. Well, while this won't be a glossary episode, I think a lot of the topics we're going to talk about today are going to hopefully help elaborate and expand on some of the topics we covered the first time around. And, you know, it's an ongoing thing. A lot of this stuff I didn't learn right when I started doing this. I had to, you know, figure it out as I went and try to figure out the differences between certain pens and why they were different. So, you know, I think the more you listen, the more you hear the same topics, the more you hear examples of what these terms are. I think it'll start coming easier. And today's episode, I think, is going to help a lot with that, too.

Myke Hurley: Cool.

Brad Dowdy: The second mail was from Lucas, and Lucas is looking more on the lines of a recommendation. He says, I'm a computer science student. A lot of math stuff is written faster by hand, so I write a lot with pen and paper. But I think my pens would make you cry, Brad. I think that you'll present better choices for that everyday use very soon. And, Lucas, definitely. We're going to work on that. I will give you a quick recommendation, though. And we get this, and this is a new thing for a lot of math students. You know, they're traditionally pencil users. You say you write a lot with pen and paper. A lot of math students have turned to an erasable gel ink pen called the Pilot Friction. And erasable pens have been a joke for decades, pretty much ever since they were introduced. But Pilot has finally come out with a pen that writes really nicely, erases very well, and is perfect for math and science students. We get a lot of compliments on that pen. So, Pilot Friction, Lucas, check that out. And then Lucas also had a recommendation for a future episode. He gets into paper prototyping, and what he means by that is sketching interfaces for applications and webpages with pen and paper. I think a lot of our listeners are probably in that same boat. So, we'll work on some suggestions for that. I have some ideas for wireframing and design layouts and user experience sketching and things like that. So, that's a really good topic, Lucas. And we will – hopefully, we can devote an episode to that pretty soon because there are some good products you can check out for that.

Myke Hurley: I've used Pilot Friction.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, have you?

Myke Hurley: Yeah, and they are pretty cool.

Brad Dowdy: Okay. I mean, it's not a pen for everybody. I will admit that.

Myke Hurley: They're a pen for a purpose. I mean, you wouldn't want to use this pen as your pen, like your day-to-day pen just for general use. And it would be cool that it also has an eraser. Right. You would use it because it has an eraser. Does that sound right?

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, exactly. And from my personal perspective, it's not a daily writing pen for me because as part of the ink properties that gives it that erasability, it's not a super dark ink. And I like very dark inks like the black.

Myke Hurley: Yeah.

Brad Dowdy: It's – you can tell it's black. But when you put it next to like a Pilot G2, it looks gray.

Myke Hurley: Yeah, it's got a peculiar coloring to it.

Brad Dowdy: And same with the blue. And then, I mean, there's a rainbow of colors now. I think there's about 24 friction colors actually now.

Myke Hurley: They do marker pens as well. Yep.

Brad Dowdy: They started doing markers. Yeah. And the cool thing is you can have some fun with the friction pens. They do disappear in very hot heat. So if you're not careful and leave your notebook in the back of your car on a hot summer day, especially where I'm at in Georgia and where your internal car temperature gets to be about 140 degrees, you'll look in that notebook and your ink will be gone. But it's not gone permanently. You pop it in the freezer and that ink comes right back. What?

Myke Hurley: You've just blown my mind a little bit.

Brad Dowdy: It's the truth. It's the truth. How? Why? We'll do this. I have a good video to share. Okay. That'll show it's a drawing done with a friction. It's put over the steam of a tea kettle. You watch the ink vanish. And then you take that same sheet of paper with the ink disappeared. You throw it in the freezer and it comes right back.

Myke Hurley: That is incredible.

Brad Dowdy: So that's the fun side of the friction. But a lot of students like that pen just for math and science for the erasability.

Myke Hurley: Because there are some things where you don't want to be writing in pencil because it's not good really in the long run. But they're the types of things where you want to be able to have the ability to erase because it's very easy to make mistakes.

Brad Dowdy: Right, right. And you're not going to want to use it for notes, not for any type of permanence, right, for obvious reasons. You know, the science students who have to keep a lab notebook where those lab notebooks are very protected and have to use specific types of inks and dated and noted and signed. You're not going to want to use a pen. But for general studying, it's a great pen.

Myke Hurley: Indeed. So, Brad, what are we going to talk about today? Oh, before we do get into that, sorry. I just wanted to mention, we've mentioned a couple of pens already. In the show notes for each episode, which we've mentioned before, you can find, you know, if you're not using an iOS device, you can find them in the app of choice that you use. Or you can go to 70decibels.com forward slash the pen addict. You can go to the show that you're on. And in the show notes, we include links to all of the pens that we discuss as well as just general cool links like the video that Brad's talking about with erasing with the heat and using the freezer to bring the ink back. That will be in the show notes. But we also have the pens and the paper sections, which have links to all of the pens and paper that we discuss.

Episode Topic

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, that was a good idea to break it out like that. Excellent idea by you.

Myke Hurley: Thank you. Thank you. So, yeah, what are we going to talk about today then? What's the topic of today's episode?

Brad Dowdy: Today, in order to kind of continue what we talked about on the first episode being the glossary and just kind of about pens in general today, I want to talk about what my favorite pens are. And that's a question I get asked constantly. So, and the interesting thing about that is it's not – you're not always going to get the same answer from me. If you ask me today and if you ask me six months down the line, the answer might be different. But I use a lot of pens on a daily basis and I definitely have a group of favorites that I like. So, I wanted to kind of touch on each of the different pen categories like gel pens, ballpoint pens, liquid ink pens, and so on. And what my one single favorite pen in that category is. So, let's kick it off with gel ink pens since that seems to be the flavor of the moment. But that's what's getting a lot of press and praise and comments these days. And going right along with that, I've probably got my favorite gel ink pen that – and it's really on the tip of everyone's tongue these days – is the Pilot Hi-Tech C. And specifically, when I talk about my favorites, I'm very specific. I use the Pilot Hi-Tech C 0.3 millimeter black gel ink pen. That's my favorite gel ink pen. And the reason why I like it is I like super fine lines. That 0.3 millimeter is very, very fine. It's a little bit scratchy. It's a needle tip, but I love the feedback it gives me when I write. My lettering is really sharp and clean. And I love the feel of the pen, even though, as a lot of people say, it's just in a cheap plastic barrel. That's fine by me. Just because the writing experience, to me, is so awesome.

Myke Hurley: So that is my main issue with the Hi-Tech C is, to me, Brad, it feels uncomfortable to hold. I do find it uncomfortable to hold. Because it has a rubber tip, but the rubber – what would you call that? Not tip. A grip. A grip. That's the one I'm looking for. The grip feels, to me, too high up. I like to write quite far down. Yeah. I like to hold my pens quite far down. Yes. And like most pens that I've used, the grip goes all the way to the – what would you call them? Again, what do you call the part, the silver part?

Brad Dowdy: I call it the tip, even though that's not necessarily an accurate term. Basically, the part you can unscrew. Yes, the part you unscrew there. But it doesn't go all the way down. Yeah, there's a gap. So there's two base types of Hi-Tech C. There's a Hi-Tech C grip, which is the one with the rubber that you have. And actually, the one that I have in my hand is also the same. And then there's the basic Hi-Tech C, which is – it's basically just plastic ridges all the way down.

Myke Hurley: Oh, man.

Brad Dowdy: In place of the rubber part. So like you, what I call it is I grip the pen the same as you, even though I'm a righty, you're a lefty. I call it a low gripper. I'm a low gripper. I get – I'm down – I'm down like my middle finger is completely below the grip on the Hi-Tech C.

Myke Hurley: Yeah, totally.

Brad Dowdy: If you grab the pen, put it in your hand, and like the tips of the meat of my index finger and thumb are on the grip, but the tips of those fingers are down south of the grip. So I would consider myself a low gripper. So I don't really count the grip on the Hi-Tech C because it's not that awesome. I mean, I'll be honest. There's two downfalls with the Hi-Tech C. One is what we're talking about. It's basically the overall pen barrel. It's cheap. I mean, it's a cheap pen to begin with, and that's not a knock on it. It's designed to be that way. It's an inexpensive pen.

Pen Barrel

Brad Dowdy: So the barrel can be a little bit brittle. And the second thing is sometimes the needle tip needs a little bit of scribbling to get going. I call that priming. A lot of pens that would frustrate me if every time I had to, every time I uncapped it and started writing, that it didn't write right immediately. That doesn't happen all the time with the Hi-Tech C, but there's a few times that it does, and it takes a little bit of priming to get it going.

Myke Hurley: I mean, you probably see that most in ballpoints, right? Yes. So if you've got a ballpoint that's just been sitting around for a while, you have to go scribble, scribble, scribble until it starts working.

Brad Dowdy: Exactly. It's a little bit dry to start with. And the Hi-Tech C gets that way too, a little bit. But once you get it going, it usually doesn't stop unless you cap it and put it away and come back tomorrow. Maybe you have to do it again. Maybe you don't. But I have found that to be the case. But I get over it for this pen because when it does write, it's the best pen for me.

Myke Hurley: So what I know of the Hi-Tech C is people consider it to be one of the best pens ever made. But it's more the refill than it is anything else, right? So that's exactly right. They're not commenting on how great it's designed.

Brad Dowdy: Oh, exactly right. Yeah, there wouldn't be so many Kickstarter projects trying to redesign the barrel if it was the greatest pen designed. And personally, I don't think this is the greatest pen ever made. Myke, if you came up to me tomorrow and asked me to make a pen recommendation to you, I would never, ever tell you to use the Hi-Tech C. Why? To be that first foray into this type of pen. Because if the only thing you've ever used is the pen from your office or the pen from your office supply store, this pen is going to be very foreign. And it's going to write differently than anything you've ever used. And it would probably turn you off more than it turns you on.

Myke Hurley: See, I have a 0.5. And even that feels too scratchy for me. I mean, we spoke before, I like 0.7s. I'm ridiculous about that. Right. Which Brad hates me for. No, no, not at all. And he's trying to educate me in the ways of smaller point sizes. But even the 0.5, it does feel like I'm running a needle across a page. Yeah.

Brad Dowdy: Right. And my whole goal is not to tell people they should use micro-tip pens. You know, not to use something, not to use a 0.3 or 0.4 millimeter pens. My whole point in doing the pen addict and doing the things I do is to let people know that there are choices. Yeah. And that you can think about what pen you use. You're not stuck with what's offered to you at the bank. There's actually other things out there that might be better. They might not be. But I just want people to be aware that there are choices out there. And, you know, I would never, you know, say this is the only way to go. And, you know, I certainly use 0.7 millimeter pens on a regular basis and love many of them. So, you know, it all boils down to personal preference. And the one thing I want to make clear is that, you know, there are so many options out there. And we're all going to have different tastes in pens.

Myke Hurley: So let's move on to ball points. What is your favorite ball point?

Brad Dowdy: My favorite right now, as much as I talk about the Uniball Jetstream, it's not the Jetstream. It's a pen that's in the same category. It's a hybrid ballpoint ink pen. It's called the Pilot Acroball. And we talked a bit in the glossary episode about what a hybrid ballpoint ink is. And it's an ink formulation that these companies have started to use to make a smoother writing and more consistent ballpoint. Darker colors.

Brad Dowdy: Less. I talk about white space in ballpoint lines. If you've ever used, you know, just a basic ballpoint, you'll be writing, say, a black ink ballpoint.

Brad Dowdy: And that line will have kind of white spots in it. That's because the tip of the ballpoint is not really rolling that smoothly and the ink's not sticking to it very well to give you that solid line. These new hybrid ballpoint inks are kind of aimed to solve that problem. You get a very solid line. It almost looks like a, you know, just a gel ink line or liquid ink pen line. Now, one of the things about the Pilot Acroball, and Myke, you're a good candidate for this, is that not all pen – okay, how should I put this?

Myke Hurley: Are you about to offend me?

Brad Dowdy: No, no, no, no, no.

Brad Dowdy: Surprisingly enough, the pen market is regionalized, okay? So the Pilot Acroball does not exist as the Pilot Acroball in the United States. The Pilot Acroball in the United States is called the Pilot Easy Touch Pro.

Myke Hurley: Okay.

Brad Dowdy: So while I say I like the Pilot Acroball, you can't walk into a store and buy this pen. But if you knew what you were looking for and knew that in the U.S. it's called one thing, in other parts of the world it's called a separate thing, you might be – you might get a good surprise when you purchase your next pen. So that's something I wanted to make aware of. The Pilot does it with the Hi-Tech C also. In some parts of the world it's called the G-Tech C.

Myke Hurley: That doesn't even make any sense.

Brad Dowdy: It doesn't.

Myke Hurley: Like it's so close. What's wrong with Hi?

Brad Dowdy: I have no idea. I have no idea. But you're going to find that on a lot of pens and I've noticed a lot in the U.K. a similar pen to what I might have on my desk. I mean the exact same design will have a different name. I'll see if I can get some more examples for you but it's pretty prevalent.

Myke Hurley: You'll have to do some pen spotting. Yeah.

Rollerball Pens

Brad Dowdy: I actually think the next one on my list – so that's the ballpoint, the Pilot Acroball, the .7 millimeter blue. That reminds me. One more thing on this Acroball and related to the glossary. Actually, ballpoint – I think I might have touched on it in the first episode but ballpoint tip sizes do not correlate to gel ink and liquid ink pen tip sizes from a line width perspective. They're the same measurement, right? A .7 millimeter is the same size whether it's in a ballpoint or a gel ink pen but the line width of a .7 millimeter gel ink pen is going to be much wider than a ballpoint .7 millimeter pen and that's because of the ink properties. You know, you're used to – you like the .7 millimeter gels. You know, that makes a nice wide rich line. You know, with the ballpoint, it's a little bit of a drier ink. So if you're expecting that nice wide rich line with a ballpoint, you have to go up to a 1.0 millimeter ballpoint to get that same – that comparable .7 millimeter gel ink tip width. Excuse me, line width. See, I'll mess that up nearly every episode.

Brad Dowdy: So what's next? The liquid ink or rollerball pen that I like using the most – it's probably my – it's definitely my favorite liquid ink pen. But I will say I use my gel ink and ballpoint pens much more than the liquid ink pen is the Uniball Vision Elite. And I think this might be another one that's called something different over there in the UK. And this is a pretty common pen, so I'll have to look that up for you.

Myke Hurley: I'll tell you what. I'm going to go get one from my bag.

Brad Dowdy: Okay. You know which pen I'm talking about?

Myke Hurley: Yep. I've looked at it on Amazon and I have one.

Myke Hurley: Keep talking.

Uniball Vision Elite

Brad Dowdy: One thing I like about this pen and why I recommend it so much is this pen is considered airplane safe by Uniball, which I get that mail a lot. Whoa.

Myke Hurley: Yeah, I'm knocking things over with the phone cord, but it's okay.

Brad Dowdy: I wasn't sure you were coming back.

Myke Hurley: No, I'm back.

Brad Dowdy: But this plane is considered – Uniball markets this as airplane safe, which means you're not going to get an exploded pocket full of ink or an exploded backpack full of ink when you travel. So that's – this is a – one, it's very popular for that. And two, it's an exceptionally smooth writing liquid ink pen. And I really like it a lot, but I like the Uniball Vision Elite Micro as opposed to their – I think they call it the Fine, which is a 0.8 millimeter. Did you come up with that pen?

Myke Hurley: Yep. It's called the Uniball Vision Elite.

Brad Dowdy: Okay.

Myke Hurley: Yeah, I have one. I don't – mine isn't the Micro. Okay. What drew me to this pen is it – I do prefer fountain pens. And this pen has the – for me, it had the smoothness, like the smooth feel of a fountain pen.

Brad Dowdy: I would agree with that completely. It's a similar type of water-based ink.

Myke Hurley: Yeah. Yeah, it feels very good. It's a very, very comfortable feel.

Brad Dowdy: Yep. And actually, in what Uniball has done recently is they have this thing called Super Ink Technology, which is – this could be a long show.

Myke Hurley: No, no, no. I just think that the name, like, is –

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, well, they actually have a robot. He's pretty cool. But they have a Super Ink Technology. And that's this whole check washing marketing they did probably. They started – it's been around for a while, but they started pushing it a couple years ago. And the ink properties across all the Uniball products now are moving to the Super Ink Technology where the ink really sinks into the paper. And it's supposed to be a protection, a security measure. So your checks can get edited and washed and re-signed. And it's good for signing other documents and things like that where your name can get washed out of the page and then someone forged your name.

Myke Hurley: I'd like to see how that works in real life. I just feel like that sort of stuff, these people are smart enough that they will – they'll find a way around it.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, yeah. I haven't done any experiments on that.

Myke Hurley: So you have a drawing pen.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah.

Myke Hurley: Which interested me.

Drawing Pens

Brad Dowdy: I put that on there specifically because we didn't cover that in the first episode. I kind of alluded to it when I talked about the Sharpie pen. A lot of people refer to it as a felt tip pen or a plastic tip pen. But there's very technical kind of drawing pens that have a real needle point with a small plastic tip protruding. Like I said, a lot of people will call it a felt tip pen. I actually use them to write with a lot because my – it makes my lettering very clean. I like – I like writing with these sort of pens too. Yeah. I like using drawing pens for everyday writing. I say I use gel pens first and then probably the second most pen I use is a drawing pen. And my favorite is the Securo Pigma Micron. There's a tip size called 03, which translates to a 0.35 millimeter line width. It's just a really nice pen. It's a good quality. It's not going to last you forever. It's a little more fragile than your metal tip pens when you're dealing with a more pliable material like plastic. If you're a heavy-handed writer, meaning you put a lot of pressure down on the page when you write, these drawing pens are not going to be good for you. You will burn through them in no time. But if you have a nice pace to your writing or if you're actually using them for what they're intended to, drawing, sketching, things of that nature, it's going to be really good. And the reason why I always carry a few microns with me is because their ink is archival. And that means it's got a permanence to it. It's waterproof.

Brad Dowdy: It's light fast. A lot of people use them for journaling just because they know that their words will still be there 20 years down the line without vanishing away on the page. It's a really, really good pen. It's one of my favorites.

Myke Hurley: I mean, these are quite popular in Japanese markets because, obviously, these sort of pens, like drawing pens and stuff, they help with writing in Japanese lettering.

Brad Dowdy: Yep, absolutely. And you'll see that these manufacturers like Secure will make extremely, extremely tiny tips on these pens down to, like, you know, I forget the smallest micron, but there's some around one millimeter.

Myke Hurley: Minus two millimeters.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, but there's definitely some one millimeters out there. Now, that's something you're going to – you'd need a specific use for that pen if you're going to buy that pen. Like, that would not be a pen I could use for everyday writing. It's way too fragile. But, yeah, for writing Japanese characters or comic detail design, they definitely make them very, very tiny.

Myke Hurley: That one's just got put on my shopping list.

Brad Dowdy: It's a great pen, and it's a good value. I mean, they're relatively inexpensive.

Myke Hurley: What was the name of the crazy, crazy thin one that you mentioned? Did you give a name or just a type of pen?

Brad Dowdy: The crazy, crazy thin one. So you said, like, the one – Oh, that makes the point one. That makes the one? Yeah. The point one? I think Secure makes it. If not, I know Copic, a brand called Copic, C-O-P-I-C, makes it. And I think Uni might actually make it. They have a brand called Uni Pen, P-I-N. So there's a few of the drawing pen manufacturers make one that small. I'll find you a link.

Myke Hurley: That would be awesome.

Brad Dowdy: Actually, Pilot makes one that actually – I think I bought it on accident.

Myke Hurley: So next up, we've got Fountain. Now, this is a big one for me.

Pilot Prera

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. This is something you and I have talked about a lot, and actually before we started this podcast. And I'll go on record, and I think I did it on the first episode too, I am no fountain pen expert. I don't pretend to be. I don't play one on the blog. It's a new world to me, the fountain pens. I've owned a Lamy Safari for years, and I thought that's about all I need. That really suits my needs. It's high quality, smooth writing, cool looking. And if I want to play around with different inks, I can get a converter, and I'm set. I don't need some kind of hugely expensive fountain pen because that can really – some of these fountain pens out there can put you in debt real quick. But I found a pen called the Pilot Prera that has kind of kicked my Lamy Safaris to the curb. And we talked about it. It's because Pilot Prera is a Japanese pen, and the Lamy Safari is a German pen. And the reason why that's important is because while the nib sizes might be called the same thing, both an F nib or a fine nib, they write completely differently. And the Pilot, the Japanese nib, is going to write a much finer, cleaner line than the Lamy Extra Fine nib, which is what I'd used previously. So this is a pen, the Pilot Prera, that really caught me by surprise and really knocked my socks off. It's an excellent – I hesitate to say entry-level fountain pen, but in the grand scheme of the world of fountain pens, it's not an overly expensive pen. And for what I use every day with the Pilot High Tech Cs that run about $3, $4, the Prera at $50 is very expensive. But relative to other fountain pens, it's actually quite a cost-effective fountain pen.

Myke Hurley: I am actually going to be buying one of those probably next week. Cool.

Brad Dowdy: Which one are you looking at?

Myke Hurley: The Ivory Medium. Cool. I figured Medium would be good for me.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, that's a good safe bet. And actually, it writes – I have a Medium laying around here somewhere too. It actually writes relatively fine. I think you'll probably –

Myke Hurley: That was why I thought I'd go for the Medium because I remembered you saying to me about the Japanese size because I figured I would probably quite enjoy a Medium in the regular sizing. So Medium and Japanese size would be good.

Brad Dowdy: Right. I would bet you my Pilot Prera F-Nib lays down a finer line than your Pilot High Tech C .5 millimeter.

Myke Hurley: That terrifies me. Because what I love about fountain pens and why I do prefer them over other types of pen is the smoothness of the line. Right. I've always had an affinity for a smooth line. And I don't know what that is. I don't know what it is that makes me like it like that. But I like my lines to be smooth.

Brad Dowdy: Right. Yep. And that's a good choice. I think you'll like it. So the last one I have on the list – and this isn't an all-encompassing list. But people always ask me what my favorites are. So I really just wanted to highlight a few of the main pens in my arsenal. And the last one is not a pen. It's a pencil because people don't like it when I leave pencils out. Even though I'm not a heavy pencil user, I do use them from time to time. And this is probably the most no-brainer item on my entire list of favorite pens. If I was recommended a pen or a pencil to anyone, the Uniball Kuro Toga pencil is absolutely a no-brainer for anyone who's looking for a mechanical pencil. It's ridiculous.

Myke Hurley: It is. It's incredible.

Mechanical Pencil

Brad Dowdy: It is. You never would have thought mechanical pencil technology there would be that much cool stuff going on. But what they've done with this Kuro Toga is it has an auto-lead rotation mechanism in the tip. And what that means is every time as you lift your pencil up and down from the page, when the pressure releases from the lead on that lift up, there's a tiny tick inside that you – it's really not – it's not noticeable when you write. That rotates that lead for you, just the smallest fraction. And what that keeps the pencil from doing is getting – we all know what it is when your mechanical pencil gets a flat lead and you're always twisting the pencil in your hand to get that sharp point to write with and things like that.

Myke Hurley: It gets worn down on one edge, like the edge that you're writing on.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, and your lead color will go from dark to lighter as it gets flatter and flatter. Then you turn it over and you're back to a dark, sharp tip and your line width is always changing. This solves it and it works. I mean, you would think that there's no way that this would work. It absolutely works. And this one I have actually done testing with. I've written pages of the same sentence over and over, keeping my hand still to use the same position, you know, not rotating the pencil in my hand. It absolutely works. It kept a nice, sharp, rounded point the entire time. It's crazy. I don't know how they do it. And it's pretty cool technology.

Myke Hurley: When I bought my first Kuru Togo, I only wrote in pencil for about three days. And I probably would have stuck to it for longer if I could actually write in pencil in my day job. I just was so impressed by something so relatively cheap and simple that it produced such consistency. Yep.

Brad Dowdy: And the strangest thing that I had to get used to is, I mean, for 20 or 30 years, there's a habit of turning the pencil in your hand when you lift it up. I mean, that's not a habit that goes away lightly. With the Kuru Togo, you're actually defeating the purpose. If you twist the barrel in your hand, you're not letting the pencil do its work, and you kind of have to in this case.

Myke Hurley: What's cool with the Kuru Togo is you can get it in loads of different styles as well, can't you? Like, you can get the regular plastic bodies, but they also do, like, metal bodies and that sort of stuff.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. My favorite one is the – so there's the regular plastic barrel ones. They come in a lot of different colors, and they also come in two different lead sizes. You can get a 0.3 millimeter and a 0.5 millimeter lead. Then they make what's called a high-grade, which is like an aluminum barrel Kuru Togo, which it's really a half aluminum barrel. The top half is always going to be plastic, and then the bottom half is aluminum, like in the grip area. Then they make a roulette model, which is the one I have in my hand right now, which is – it's got an aluminum grip, but it's got some knurling on the grip, which is those little metal ridges kind of machine cut into there. And it looks really, really slick.

Myke Hurley: Roulette's a clever name.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, I like that. It's always going to spin. It took me a while. I was like, roulette? That's kind of weird. Oh, I see what you did there.

Myke Hurley: You don't pull the war over Brad's eyes.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, it took me a minute, though. I won't lie to you. But, yeah, that's a list of my current favorite pins. We'll have to do this again in four or five months and see how much this list changed because it always does, and I always talk about that on my blog. There's always a new number one pin for me, and that's part of the fun of this for me. There's always something new to try out.

Myke Hurley: Maybe by that time I'll be able to join you with recommendations on each level as well.

Brad Dowdy: Cool. I think we should work on that. We should do how all the other podcasts always talk about what they're drinking or what their coffee is or what their whiskey is that they're drinking. We need to talk about what pin we're using today.

Myke Hurley: What are you using today?

Brad Dowdy: Today I've used pretty much all day. I've used the exact gel pin that I put down in my favorite pins, the Pilot Hi-Tex C .3 millimeter black. I had a lot of note-taking to do today. I wrote about three or four pages worth of notes, handwritten, which I want to do on occasion, and that's the pen I used, and I just cruised right through it.

Myke Hurley: I'm using a Zebra Sarasa clip today. It's actually my favorite show notes-taking pen. That's a good one. What's the tip stats on that one? 0.4. Okay, cool. It's the one you sent me. Okay, great. But at work, I use a Pilot G2 .7, which makes your toes curl, I think, in blue.

Brad Dowdy: No, no. See, that's a big misconception about me. I like to give people a hard time, but I also like people to use what works best for them. And if that's what gets the job done for you, then I'm a happy pen addict.

Myke Hurley: I like it. We've quailed your addiction for another week, right? Yes, yes, for sure. Thank you, Phil. So once again, mate, where can people find you?

Brad Dowdy: You can find me at penaddict.com. That's my website where I blog about all this stuff that we talk about. I do pen reviews and all kinds of other crazy stuff. And I'm on Twitter at dowdyism, D-O-W-D-Y-I-S-M. And if you want to send myself or the show an email, you can do so at thepenaddict at gmail.com. And I think that pretty much covers it.

Myke Hurley: Cool. All right. So until next week, thank you very much for listening. From me, it's a goodbye. And from Brad, I'm sure it's a goodbye, too.

Brad Dowdy: Yes, goodbye, everyone. Thank you. See you. All right. Bye-bye.

Myke Hurley: Bye-bye. in conjunction with Brad Dowdy. Brad is an employee of JetPens.com, who do not have any affiliation with this podcast.