The Pen Addict 20/transcript

The Pen Addict Podcast Transcript
Episode:	20
Title:	Myke's Top 5 Pens
Release Date:	June 21st, 2012
Hosts:	Brad Dowdy Myke Hurley
Guests:	No guests this episode
Additional Information
Official page:	Episode 20
Audio File:	Audio Episode 20
Podcast page:	The Pen Addict 20
Length:	3535 min <br />0.583 h <br /> minutes
Previous Transcript	Next Transcript

Myke Hurley: Hello and welcome to episode 20 of The Pen Addict podcast, your weekly show where we discuss pens, paper, and the analogue tools that we love so dearly. My name is Myke Hurley and I'm joined as always by The Pen Addict himself, Mr. Brad Dowdy. Hello, Brad.

Brad Dowdy: Hey, Myke. How are you today?

Myke Hurley: I'm very well, very well indeed. This episode is brought to you all by Harvest and Squarespace. And we're going to talk about those fantastic companies later on in the show. So on our last episode, we discussed your top five. And, you know, me being a pen addict apprentice, I figure it's only fair I discuss mine too. So originally when I was looking at putting this together, because we spoke after, a couple of weeks ago after the show when we decided we'd do yours, you said, why don't we do my top five? And I was like, oh, I didn't really know I'd have one. But I do. Like, I know I had a top few, but I didn't know if I would be able to easily come up with five. But what I did today, I actually, no, sorry, I wrote it a couple of days ago and I just opened up my Lehit Lab case and just looked at what was in there and just quite, I mean, because I put all my favourite pens in the case. So I just picked the ones that I loved the most and it was also quite easy for me to rank them as well. There are a couple that are on your list, but there are actually some interesting ones compared to yours. There is some interesting departures. So, you know, I feel like I have a lot, I feel that mine will probably change a lot more than yours over the coming months and years or whatever, as I learn more and more about the types of pen that I like. Because my number one, which I'll talk about in the moment, I never would have expected to be my number one.

Brad Dowdy: That's, yeah, that's right. As you kind of get exposed to more, it really changes. Yeah.

Fountain Pens

Myke Hurley: Which is kind of what happened to me too, you know, along the way. So, you know, I've always been a fountain pen man, you know, always. That was what I've been saying right from the very start when we did this show. And we spoke about last week's episode, the fact that I'd helped convert you a little bit over to the dark side or the messy side. But, so, you know, and considering I own now the best fountain pen I've ever used, but it's not my number one, of course. Mm-hmm. We all know what my number one pen is. You know, I don't think that there's any surprise when I say it's the Retro 51 Tornado.

Brad Dowdy: Yep. I was fairly certain that's what I was going to be, but I just wanted to see. But, yeah, that's awesome.

Myke Hurley: I mean, I love it. You know, there is not one thing, there is not one fault I could pick with the Tornado line. I love them. I own four now. I am going to be buying more soon. After an episode, after last week's, no, sorry. After the episode a couple of weeks ago where I spoke about all of the stuff that I bought, me and Brad spent like 10 or 15 minutes after the episode had finished, where I was walking him through the Retro 51 UK site and showing him all the peculiar pens and interesting models that I'd found there. Because I'm going to put a link in his show notes to it. So it is the UK site, but they have on this site a bunch of Tornados that I've not seen for sale anywhere else. So it is very interesting. And this is one of the things that I love about the Tornado line specifically, is that there's such wide variation in the type of pen that you can get. Like, I have one that's made of bamboo. I have one that is a lacquered metal finish. I have, you know, one that's made of copper. You know, it's just fantastic. And the ink refills that they use are incredible. The build quality, the overall design, the packaging. There's just, there is no, in my opinion, this pen does not step a foot wrong in any description. And I know that a lot of our listeners think the same because every day, I feel like nearly every day or every couple of days, I'm having someone contact me, you know, mainly on Twitter, telling me that they're either going to buy a Tornado or showing me pictures of the Tornado that it just bought. And every single person tells me they love it. You know, it's an excellent pen.

Brad Dowdy: It is. Retro 51 does an amazing job with the Tornado line and really all their product lines. Their designs are top-notch and the build quality is great and the pricing is good. I mean, like you said, you know, what's not to love about that pen? Indeed.

Myke Hurley: Indeed.

Myke Hurley: I just love that where I am, you know, where like most of the people listen to this show, I am a pen collector. I can actually, there are enough variations of this one pen, this one pen in this company's whole line that I can make a whole subset collection out of it.

Brad Dowdy: Oh, for sure. That'll keep you busy for a while.

Myke Hurley: Yeah, and I think that that's awesome because this isn't the only pen that Retro 51 do, but they have so many versions of it that it's actually enough for me to start collecting on its own, which I am doing. And, you know, it is the pen I use the most. That has changed as well. So my next pen, which of course, well, maybe not of course, but my number two is the Vanishing Point. I love my Vanishing Point, but especially since I had the new additions in the Retro line for me, I have been using those more. But when it comes to fountain pens, of which as a whole I do prefer fountain pens as a writing instrument, there is no better fountain pen than the Vanishing Point.

Myke Hurley: And, you know, for me, it's not perfect. As I've said before, the clip does kind of get in my way a bit sometimes. But that is the only fault on what is otherwise a perfect writing instrument. You know, we spoke about it at length in last week's episode because it's your number one, right?

Brad Dowdy: Right, right. And, yeah, I mean, I just find it suits so many needs and does all those things well. And, yeah, it's, like I said, it's almost spoiled me, you know? It's such a good pen that you don't have a hard time, you know, switching up fountain pens just because that one's so unique and so good and so quality. It's really great.

Myke Hurley: It's, there's so many great things about this pen. And for me, it's mainly just the mechanism. That's what I love the most about it. Like, it writes as well for me as a bunch of other fountain pens do. And my next pen that I will talk about in a moment. You know, the actual nib qualities, of course, it's excellent, but it doesn't stand out, you know, like far and away from the crowd in a way, I don't feel. It's a very good nib, a very, very good nib. And I use the broad and I love it. It's the perfect nib. But I have had that sort of quality from another, from other fountain pens, in my opinion. Much cheaper fountain pens. But it's the mechanism and the whole package, the weight of the pen, the pen is weighted, like, it's perfect. It is perfectly weighted. And it's the best weighting that I've had in a pen. And I would expect that from the price that I'm paying for it. Right. But it's, you know, we just, we go back to it and it's just this one little noise.

Myke Hurley: No, that's fantastic, isn't it? For me, that is what makes this pen as special as it is. And every time I use it, I still get the joy out of it.

Myke Hurley: The, you know, every time I pick up the vanishing point and I do that click, it feels special every time. And that's what makes this pen so awesome to me. That is why it is, you know, it is high up on my list. It is my number two.

Myke Hurley: Number three is a pen that I've used for years. And before I was a confessed pen addict, before I knew as much as I know now, which of course is nowhere near as much as my partner in crime about pens, but it is, of course, a fountain pen. And it's one that I had been using just out of chance. It's the Lamy Safari.

Myke Hurley: Now, I've been using safaris for about three years. And I, you know, I just, it was one that I picked up in a mid-range stationer because it looked good. And, you know, it was a reasonable price. It was priced enough that I knew it was a good pen, but it wasn't so much that it was going to break the bank. And I've, I think I've owned three safaris. Two are currently still in use. I have one that is ink, like a cartridge, and one that I have of a converter. They both work exceptionally well. You know, with the pairing of my current safari with the Nudeless Heart of Darkness ink is incredible. I forget until every time I use the safari how great that ink is as well. It's a slight aside. Like, it is black as black can be. Like, startlingly so. But the ink distribution from the Lamy I find to be second to none. And the way the nib feels, like, from the moment you take it out of the box, it's ready to go. I don't feel like I've ever had to work a safari in. But the more that I use it, the more it becomes accustomed to me. But I never start using it and it's scratchy or difficult or I feel like, oh, no, it's not. You know, I've got to use this for a couple of weeks. Which I did feel with the Vanishing Point. I didn't feel like it. I do now, but initially it did feel like it needed some working in. And that might just be because I'm a lefty so those things can be a bit more difficult.

Myke Hurley: But, I mean, you know, it's a plastic pen but it's built nicely. It looks fantastic. I mean, I've been a fan of the safari for years. I haven't really got anything bad to say about it.

Brad Dowdy: And it might have the best clip going on any pen. I love that clip.

Myke Hurley: A really good looking and strong, durable clip. Great. It's a very enjoyable pen and it's very, you can happily sit at my number three.

Sponsors

Myke Hurley: Now, before we move on to my number four, I want to talk about our first sponsor this week. That is Harvest. Harvest have come back to sponsor us again. They sponsored a little earlier in the month. Harvest is a painless time tracking and invoicing application that's relied on by the most innovative teams in over 100 countries worldwide. Companies including Happy Cog, which is a fantastic design company, Squarespace and Volkswagen. There's also a ton of other freelance developers, designers and consultants that use Harvest. And if you go to their website, you will definitely see logos of companies that you recognize and trust. You can track your time effortlessly from anywhere using their web client on one of the many apps that they have on platforms including Android, iOS and they recently released a native Mac application too so you can track your time whilst you're working away on your Mac. You can send your clients professional and attractive invoices directly from within Harvest via email or PDF and they can pay you instantly by credit card or by using fast payment gateways like PayPal, Authorize.net, Trust Commerce and more. Basically giving you the flexibility to get paid in the way that you want as fast as you need it to be. Harvest have created a service that's so intuitive and easy to use that you can spend a lot less time worrying about your timesheet and a lot more time focusing on getting your work done. You can try Harvest for 30 days for free today. No credit card is required to do this, no obligations either. You can go to getharvest.com and sign up for the free trial and once your trial period is over you can use the code 512, the number is 512 at checkout and you will receive 50% off your first month. Do this quick as this offer expires on August 1st, 2012. Thank you very much to Harvest for sponsoring.

Myke Hurley: So where are we? Number four. So number four on my list is a pen that you introduced me to. It's a pen that I use every day. It helps me out in my day job immensely because of the way that I like to take notes. Some people already know what this is by now. That's the Hitec C Colito.

Brad Dowdy: Oh, that's right. Good choice. I like that.

Myke Hurley: So the Hitec C has made it on my list in a fashion. But what I love about the Colito is it's a cheap pen. You know, the actual pen itself is cheap. I mean, how much are we talking here?

Brad Dowdy: Like $250, $330, something like that.

Myke Hurley: Depending on what you want, you can get them from like $3 up to like $10.

Myke Hurley: And then you can buy like a pack of the refills. They're refills in every color under the rainbow.

Kaweco Sport

Myke Hurley: They last for a reasonable amount of time. I bought a new red refill recently because I use red a lot at work. But I mean, I've been, I use this every day since the first time we spoke about it, which was a couple of months ago, and I've still got life left in it, you know, in that red refill. That's really good. Just having a multi-pen with the quality of refill like this is incredible. Everyone knows how great the Hitec C is. And my favorite thing about using the Colito is I can hold the barrel because I've spoken before. My main drawback with the Hitec C is the traditional barrels that they come in I find to be very uncomfortable. But the Colito is nice size. For a multi-pen it's very slim, very, very slim. And it has a nice like sort of rubber casing around the barrel but it's circular. It's not like any sort of pointy crazy shapes. I love the way that, you know, the way that you change the ink. You like flick off the little top which is cool and change the ink that way. Yeah, it's a pen. I use it every day and still love it. It's fantastic.

Myke Hurley: So there you go. And my number five on my list is the Kaweco's Classic Sport.

Myke Hurley: Nice. I think the reason that I wanted to put the Kaweco on the list is just because it's so different and I love it for that. It's this tiny little thing but it doesn't, you know, from what you lose in size, you don't lose in quality. It's a very well built, very, you know, really nice looking pen and they obviously pay a lot of attention to their nibs. I mean, I use a medium nib in this which is rare for me because, you know, it's quite fine.

Myke Hurley: But it's very comfortable. And all the other medium nibs I've used like the Prera, I enjoy the Prera but the Prera I have because it's a medium, but it's a medium Japanese nib I know but it's very scratchy. And even other medium nibs that I've used in the, you know, the non-Japanese standard I still find to be quite scratchy but I don't find that with the Kaweco. It feels a lot more comfortable for me to use. So, I enjoy that pen very much. I know that you are obviously a Kaweco fan.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, I mean, I think you hit the nail on the head which, you know, I didn't necessarily mention directly, you know, when we were talking last week about my AL Sport is that they, they really do have a unique design compared to most other pens on the market. And, and that's a big, that's a big selling point and they do such a good job with it that, you know, not only is it, is it unique looking but it's really quality to hold and the nib qualities are, it's top notch. So, yeah, it's, they, they, they can do almost no wrong in my book. They, they, they do a really nice job.

Myke Hurley: You know, we spoke about, we spoke about a couple of weeks ago about the Oto Rook that I bought on a whim. I mean, you compare these two pens together because they're trying to compete in the same class. You compare these two pens together and, you know, the Kaweco just walks all over it backwards and forwards for hours. Not even close. It doesn't even come close to it and it feels like that pen, the size has been its downfall but in the Kaweco it actually feels like the size is what, what makes it better than the rest.

Brad Dowdy: Yep, yep, I would agree. That's exactly right.

Myke Hurley: So that is my list. Do you have any comments on my list?

Brad Dowdy: I, I think it's great. I mean, I, I, I could have predicted, predicted the top three in some order. I figured the retro because we didn't talk about it beforehand but I, I knew the retro 51 was going to be one and that's awesome and I actually struggled with that one. You know, I thought that might slide into number five but for me, but you know, we have, we like different tip sizes and nib widths and, and that was one of the things that held me back from making, from putting the retro 51 in my top five.

Myke Hurley: I really had my fingers crossed when I was reading your list that it would be on there. Now,

Brad Dowdy: if I wrote a list that was called the top five pens I would recommend to people, that would probably be number one.

Brad Dowdy: So, I mean, there is a, you know, it may not be the absolute perfect pen for me but if someone came to me and with, you know, certain criteria, that pen is probably one I will recommend almost more than any just because it's that good. Does that make sense?

Myke Hurley: Yeah, of course. I mean, I am biased but it's the pen when people, when listeners get in touch, new listeners get in touch and they say, you know, I want to be a pen addict or, you know, I want to start trying some new stuff out, some unique stuff, you know, things that I don't get from just the store. What do I go for? I tell them the retro. Yep, same here. It really opened my eyes. It was one of the first pens that I bought since doing the show with you and that was out of my comfort zone and it totally just changed the way that I look at this stuff because it shocked me so much. I bought it because of the way it looked and I thought it would just be cool to own and then was just totally shocked by the writing performance.

Brad Dowdy: Right. Now, if I could find, I admittedly have not done the research and put the time and effort into finding it but if I could find a .5mm refill for it it would probably be a top 5 pen for me.

Myke Hurley: I think you probably could, you know.

Brad Dowdy: I think I could too. I just have not delved into that completely. I think I could too.

Brad Dowdy: So, we'll make that a goal of mine.

Myke Hurley: Yeah, I've actually, I've just gone to their site right now.

Myke Hurley: Need refills. You know, find online dealers.

Gel Refills

Brad Dowdy: If I could find a .5mm gel refill that would be a huge win which is what I like in the Moleskine Classic Roller.

Myke Hurley: What, are we looking for a .5mm?

Brad Dowdy: I'd take a .5mm anything though.

Myke Hurley: Hmm.

Retro 51 Refills

Myke Hurley: It's not in packages really, it doesn't, on their site it hasn't got like, hasn't got sizes but.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, I think I've looked through their site before and it's all the standard medium or .7.

Myke Hurley: Yeah.

Brad Dowdy: But there's, there's tons of compatible refills. I just got to find that one.

Myke Hurley: You got to find the one that works for you, right? Yep. Yeah, because it kind of just,

Myke Hurley: they don't really, all the refills that they use, the standard ones, either the retro branded ones or the Schmidt ones, from what I can see, I can't see any sizes on them which would suggest obviously that they're one size.

Brad Dowdy: Right. Right. Right. But Schmidt, Schmidt themselves have such a huge line of refills I could probably find a Schmidt.

Myke Hurley: Yeah.

Brad Dowdy: You know, like I said, I just haven't, you know, gone to, to match the, match the size and the shape of the refill to see if I could

Myke Hurley: find a compatible one. that they fit, haven't you? Mm-hmm. Retro 51 gel refills. They have like, yeah, it's got medium, they've got some Parker one. Interesting, never mind. But yeah, I'm sure, I'm sure that there is, that it's possible. I would love to know if you can, if you are able to do it and then what you think about it after that, you know?

Brad Dowdy: Yep, yep. I'm gonna, I'm gonna work on that because that would make a huge difference for me for my personal use of that pen.

Pen Rankings

Brad Dowdy: Well, hey, I do, like you said earlier, I did submit some questions out to our Twitter followers about their top fins, top five pins. You want to hear a couple of them real quick?

Myke Hurley: Yeah, I'd love to.

Brad Dowdy: Let's not go for the first one. The first one's from one of my best pen friends around. She's been reading my, she was one of the first readers I ever remember at Pen Addict and the first commenters and I've known her for ages and now she writes one of my, maybe my favorite pen blog out there. That's Anna from the wellappointeddesk.com.

Myke Hurley: Yeah, great, great, great site.

Brad Dowdy: She's awesome. She's so cool and she sent me a top five list and I think you're, yeah, huh? That's great. Yeah, I think, I think you were gonna, I mean, it's an awesome list and you will very much appreciate this list. Her number one is the Coeco Classic Fountain Pen.

Myke Hurley: Oh, awesome.

Brad Dowdy: She, you know, she wrote some blurbs about each of these. I'll, I'll, I'll read a little bit of it, but she's just saying, you know, inexpensive, portable cartridge, cartridge filled fountain pen available with a wide variety of nib widths. It's the best quality fountain pen for the price and I think that's a very, very accurate, accurate statement. Her number two, she cheated and she actually said, don't shoot me for, for cheating, but it's basically gel ink multi pen. The high tech C Colito, the uni style fit or the Pentel Slissies. She says those are all essentially interchangeable. So, you know, pick the one you like best, load it with your favorite colors or even a pencil and you have, you know, you know, you have all of your options right at hand just why you like the Colito so much, you know, and the style fit and the Slissies are, you know, nearly identical in, in style and, in quality and, in usage. So, that's her number two. Her number three is the Pilot V5 Precise, which I think in the UK, I think this is the Pilot VTech. I think we've talked about it. It's the needle point.

Myke Hurley: Yeah.

Brad Dowdy: Liquid roller. This is, this is like an all time, you know, like a pin hall of fame type of pin. You know, it's been around for 20 or 30 years. You know, you can get it at the big office supply stores and, and Anna says, you know, in a pinch, it's my go-to pin. You know, you can buy them a dozen at a time, have them laying around everywhere. You know, you have a decent pin at, at arm's length and, you know, you're not worried if someone's going to run off with it, but, you know, it's a good quality rider when it's there. Her number four is the Uniball Jetstream and her comment is, it's official. The world is over. I found a ballpoint pin that I like.

Myke Hurley: Just can't get on board with the Jetstream.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. And I think that's a, I mean, it's a ballpoint bias, right? I mean, the ballpoint pins are traditionally junky and they're horrible writers and, you know, the Jetstream has done a good job at fixing that. But I can understand where that writing, that ink or that feel from that type of pin is not for everyone. I love the Jetstream. I'm a huge Jetstream fan. They've, they've been littered throughout my top five over the years. And, I think Anna just recently, you know, tried one out and found that she liked it and now, what's your hold up on the Jetstream?

Myke Hurley: I just don't like the way they feel when I'm writing. I don't like the ink and I know that when you originally sent the pen to me, you know, it was like, you thought that I would like it because of the ink. But for some reason there was just something about it that didn't, pardon the pun, just didn't gel with me.

Brad Dowdy: Sure, sure. Yeah, it's, I mean, it's different. I can certainly grant you that.

Brad Dowdy: And, let's see, Anna's number five pen is the Marvy Le Pen. And she says, you, Mr. Dowdy, go for the Secura Micron. I go for the Le Pen. I love the colors and the small portable size. You know, the Le Pen is, you know, a felt tip or plastic tip, plastic tip pen that comes in, you know, just a huge rainbow of colors. you know, I, the Le Pen to me, why I don't, you know, say rank it as highly is it's, it's a much softer tip. You know, there's different levels of softness in those plastic art pens and drawing pens and the, the Pigma Micron's a firmer, more solid tip. And the, the Le Pen has a little bit more, it's a little bit softer, a little bit more flex in the tip. So, that's her top five list. That's a pretty, that's a pretty solid list right there. A lot of pens that we like and we talk about a bunch. and I, I do have another top five. Do you want to do our second sponsor before I dive into this?

Myke Hurley: I would love to. And, of course, our second sponsor this week is Squarespace. I'll tell you a couple of things about Squarespace. We've spoken before about, you know, all of the excellent things that they have, including WYSIWYG design tools that allow you to create your site to look exactly as you want. If you want to change the fonts, you can do that in a pinch. If you want to change the colors, it's just a case of going into the editor mode, selecting the part of the, the site that you want to change and then just select the new color. It really is as simple as that. They have rock solid hosting and the whole time I've been with Squarespace, I've only known them to go down twice and that was scheduled maintenance. I'm not exaggerating. I've been using Squarespace for about three years in total, maybe a little bit over and they just don't go down. I've had, you know, I've had the fortune of being linked to from, you know, some, some quite large sites and stuff like that in our time and the site doesn't even blink when, no matter how many people we've got coming. It will just continue to load fast no matter how much junk I've put on it. Squarespace do a, a real great job of taking care of the whole package for you. You have social widgets that you can implement so you can natively have your tweets come into your sidebar if you want. You, you know, they offer, as I say, not only with just the hosting stuff, it's a whole solution, it's a whole package. They give you the ability to, if you sign up for one of their annual plans, you can get custom domain names for free as part of the annual plan. If you want email, then they'll sort you out of Google, Google Apps email too. Squarespace just take care of absolutely everything for you. There's a native iOS app that you can use to view your statistics, to, to post to the site. They just take care of the whole shebang. What I want you to do is go and try them out. You can try Squarespace for two weeks for free and to do that you just need to go to squarespace.com forward slash 70 decibels and you can get, you can try the whole system out. You can build your site, import your old posts, you can try out the iOS app, see what the statistics look like, absolutely everything. And then, once you decide that you want to buy, as I'm sure you will be blown away by what they offer, at checkout, we can give you 10% off your first order, whether you buy an annual plan or a monthly plan, you'll get 10% off the first purchase. To get that, you just need to put in the offer code 70decibels6, that's 70 D-E-C I-B-E ls6 at checkout, you'll get 10% off. Thank you very much to Squarespace.

Brad Dowdy: Awesome. So I got our, our second and our final top five list from one of our listeners. This is, in your area, this is from Dave in Leeds, UK. And Dave says, huh?

Myke Hurley: I said, hiya Dave.

Brad Dowdy: Hiya Dave. And Dave said, you know, that this list, he's kind of gotten, he's new to this, right? So he's, you know, been listening to our podcast and getting some suggestions and, you know, he's tried out different things and so he's, he says, this is my, my favorites from a, from a newbie's perspective. So his favorite is the Uniball Sino retractable. I'm guessing this is the, the 207 line. Is it, is it called the 207 in the UK?

Myke Hurley: As far as I'm aware?

Brad Dowdy: I think so. I don't know if he's talking about the Sino RT, which is also a really good pen, but that's one of the pens that really got my whole pen addiction started so I can see why it's his number one. It was my favorite pen for the longest time. It's a really good quality, dark ink, really good, consistent writer and it's, it's readily available. That's a pen I recommend to people a lot too. When I get emails, they're saying, you know, here are my criteria for a pen and the Uniball Sino RT or the 207 come up a lot as far as recommendations go. The second one is the Pentel Energel XM retractable. Since it's a pleasingly constructed pen, writes a little thin for a 0.7, which many, which many will like.

Brad Dowdy: I don't know if I've used this.

Energel Pens

Brad Dowdy: I forget what they call it. I'm blanking on the Energel, retractable Energel that they introduced not long ago. It has X something in the name and I've reviewed it. It's really good. Energel gel ink pens traditionally.

Myke Hurley: X metal tip.

Brad Dowdy: What?

Myke Hurley: Pentel Energel X metal tip retractable. Okay.

Brad Dowdy: Thank you. That's the, that's the one I was thinking of. I'm guessing, you know, we've talked about before how companies for whatever reason will brand and name pens different, the same pen in different parts of the world differently. So I, I don't know why they do that, but I'm guessing this is probably the same pen because there's not many Pentel Energel retractables on the market. And, you know, the Energel is another pen that I recommend a lot over, say, like a Pilot G2 because the ink is, is really awesome and it dries a little bit faster than some of your other gel ink pens. So that's a good quality. Now here, number three, this is a curveball right here because I've never heard of this. And I'm going to butcher the name and, and I'll, I'll just read his whole, his whole statement here. The pen is called the Xing Fing Land 2 SF 2101. He says, what? I hear you cry. A total no name Chinese rollerball. Got a box of 12 for three pounds on a market stall two years ago. And despite the lack of pedigree, they are good consistent riders at 0.5 millimeter. Not seeing them since though, alas, somewhat similar in look and performance to the Uniball Eye.

Myke Hurley: I'm not even going to bother. Oh, hang on. Wen Zhao, Wen Zhao Sheng Feng. You found it? I found it. But I'm going to put it in the show notes, but this is, this is a weird, this is a weird website. It looks like they've ripped off the Uniball. They've ripped off a Uniball.

Brad Dowdy: That would be my guess looking at, looking at the name and it's probably a knockoff line.

Myke Hurley: You know the, you know what I mean? The Uniball with, they've got their silver body. They've got like red, blue or black nibs. Sorry, their tops and they've got a silk, flat silver clip. with a see-through plastic right on the top of the cap.

Brad Dowdy: Yep. That's just like the vision or the eye.

Myke Hurley: That's it, the eye. That's what I'm looking for.

Brad Dowdy: Yep.

Myke Hurley: But it's going to be, it will be in the show notes.

Brad Dowdy: I'm surprised you found that quick. That was awesome.

Myke Hurley: I am quite good at the Google. I really am. I'm quite good at Googling. I don't know why. Fast, fast, fast.

Fountain Pens

Brad Dowdy: Now this one, this is right up your alley. Number four on his list is the barrel handwriting fountain pen. Yes. And that just must be something you grow up with in the UK, right? That's kind of what you mentioned before. Yeah. Yeah. He says, I think Myke mentioned this on the podcast a while ago, on Prudential's three-pound fountain pen. I've owned three.

Brad Dowdy: You know, it just says it's a good all-around pen. And it's number five is the Zebra Z-Grip ballpoint. Lovely ergonomics on this pen, even though I'm not a big ballpoint fan, must try the gel versions. Um, I've tried the Z-Grip. The, I'll say the one good thing about the Z-Grip is if you want ballpoints, ballpoint ink that comes in a lot of colors, Zebra is one of the few that puts out like a 10-pack of, you know, rainbow ballpoint colors, which are not always the easiest thing to find. You find that more in gel pens and liquid ink pens. That said, the quality of the ballpoint line, I've used them before. They're not that great. Um, they, they skip a lot in, in the ones that I've used, but, um, Dave, you should, you should definitely try a couple, a couple different, uh, ballpoints. Maybe try a jet stream. I like them. Myke doesn't, you know, maybe we'll, maybe you can, you can try one out and you can, you can tell us where you lie in there. but, uh, that's Dave's list. Awesome list. You know, the, the biggest thing is, you know, about these lists is it, it's definitely finding out what works, works best for you. And it's, it's, it's as both you and I have found out, Myke, it is a moving target.

Myke Hurley: Yeah. Yeah. The more entrenched you get into this stuff, the more, um, random things you start to find. And it's those crafted pens, like some, even some of the Kickstarter stuff that we were talking about a couple of weeks back, that's, you know, that's where you start to find some real gems and that's where it starts to get out of hand.

Brad Dowdy: That is the truth. That is the truth. All right. Well, I think that, uh, I think that about covers it for today.

Myke Hurley: Excellent. And you can find us online. Um, Brad is at penaddict.com and he is at dowdyism on Twitter, D O W D Y I S M. I am I Myke. I M Y K E. Thank you very much for joining us for this episode of the pen addict podcast until next time. Thank you, Brad.

Brad Dowdy: Thanks, Myke. I will talk to you later. Oh, cheers. Bye bye.