The Pen Addict 409/transcript

The Pen Addict Podcast Transcript
Episode:	409
Title:	Looks Like a Milkshake
Release Date:	May 6th, 2020
Hosts:	Brad Dowdy Myke Hurley
Guests:	No guests this episode
Additional Information
Official page:	Episode 409
Audio File:	Audio Episode 409
Podcast page:	The Pen Addict 409
Length:	6262 min <br />1.033 h <br /> minutes
Previous Transcript	Next Transcript

Brad Dowdy: From RelayFM, this is The Pen Addict, episode 409. Today's show is brought to you by Hullo, Pen Chalet, and ExpressVPN. My name is Myke Hurley, and I am joined by the one and only Brad Dowdy. Hello, Myke Hurley. How are you? Hello.

Brad Dowdy: Lennon Toolbar. Lennon Toolbar. Lennon Toolbar. We got a lot of feedback after one of the most epic segments in podcast history. Not just our show, Myke, just in the general, you know, podcast. History of all podcasts. We got some great feedback about the Lennon Toolbar translation, because Myke was very concerned that we were missing something here, right?

Myke Hurley: Mm-hmm. We were. Were we? We were. Say it. Provides me with, like, it's strange and I like it. Like, I like to say it. It's joyous, yes. Yeah. But I know that I did. My point was that this was definitely a translation thing, right? Like, once you take it from the original, which, again, I think is Cantonese. I'm not sure on Mandarin. It's one of the two, right? Like, I'm not actually sure. I apologize. I don't know. But when you take it from the original. Because it's English. Because it's English. And you adapt it or not adapt it, right? And then you end up with something a little weird. Because if you would have made... What they ended up doing was like a literal translation, I think, which is Lennon Toolbar. Right? But the better... the kind of anglicized translation should have been lennon's tool house or lennon's well actually lennon's tool house of tools is better house of tools yeah that is the better one because that's the other thing about this is it's not possessive right it's just lennon toolbar like that's the third part that i forgot to mention it is not like it's just like there is this concept of lennon and then there is a toolbar which doesn't make any sense that's the perfect situation right

Brad Dowdy: that's that's the dream scenario lennon toolbar is the dream scenario of the name of this brand right and even jasper admits like it's pretty accurate lennon toolbar is reasonably accurate for the translation that i would expect right and the other possibilities and see i could see where they got to where they did is that okay i see that this could be construed as lennon's house of tools or lennon's tool house but lennon toolbar is a reasonable translation and it's the best name i i it's just really really good so i got i got the ink and just so you know the packaging direct from lennon toolbar lennon toolbar says lennon toolbar on it and toolbar is camel cased that's the other part that i've forgotten why that is one word that's this is the bottle from the shop on the packaging is lennon toolbar but camel cased toolbar not a space so um that's on the on the packaging they do have another uh bit on on the box that is translated into english and i haven't looked at the translation of that it says to turn love into ink so i love that stuff right like ink tells more

Myke Hurley: right like all these they're brilliant lennon toolbar you had so what did you think of your lennon toolbar

Brad Dowdy: so what how many inks did i get one two three four five six ten inks in in the past uh week it is my single favorite out of the entire batch of things that i got yeah because it's this really traditional blue black and there is a range of that color of blue black that can go very wrong like it can be really really dark it can you know show different colors in there it could be a lot of gray in there and this ink reminds me it's kind of like a cross between sailor blue black and pilot oroshizuku shinkai it's just as a blue black fan right even more than an orange like blue black is my go-to ink and it's just a right on the money blue black ink color which is not as easy to get as you would think so i have it's the first ink out of all these that i've inked up it's actually i mean it's the most normal ink let's be clear we're going to talk about some of the other inks that i got um so it is the most normal ink i got out of all the inks but um inked it up immediately and i love it it's it's a fantastic color so the color i bought is called indigo tegan i don't know exactly what that means i don't know what the t-i-e-g-a-n um not chrissy tegan indigo tegan or tygan i don't know the pronunciation or what that means but super great color very i mean it's a two thumbs up type of situation great color very very fan about it but uh this is my colorway right like that's the ink that i love the most and know a lot about the blue blacks and this was a good one uh so you like this more than the color inks it's different right like you how do you compare linen toolbar indigo tegan with color neon groovy right it's like brad look at those i'm so jealous

Myke Hurley: of you look at the colors that came out in these pictures that you posted on instagram like yeah so wild i'll put the link in the show notes but the colors that is they're like so vivid

Brad Dowdy: so the color neon inks i got four of the eight colors i got groovy which is purple boogie which is the hot pink joy which is the bright orange and dude which is the blue these are brilliant like every one of these is brilliant but how do you compare one of the most traditional ink colors with kala neon joy like it's like fluorescent orange like so if what's the question that you ask to me to answer well which one do you like better the blue black or the neon orange you just you can't you can't do that like it's totally separate i mean tech sure technically you could do anything but there's not an answer to that question right no i guess so okay yeah these are pretty spectacular so i swabbed up the four of them that's the picture you're referring to we'll have it in the show notes i just i just dropped it on instagram i was opening these on on stream yesterday and i was like well if i'm going to take these over and stream i got to get the swabs out so i got my just little q-tips and got my color ring oversized which i love and just started putting down the inks the kala neon groovy is the purple it's the first one i put down i was a little concerned about it the moment i put it down because it came out very flat so these are pigmented inks which means they're going to be waterproof but to get that waterproof in it they have pigment in them so there's a little bit it's a cloudy looking ink right it's not a clear water looking ink it looks like a muddy pond if you will for whatever

Myke Hurley: color it is it has that look of the um the ink you're not supposed to put in fountain pens what is that 100 what do you know what i'm talking india ink india yeah yeah yeah yeah so it's thick and rich

Brad Dowdy: right it looks like a uh looks like a milkshake kind of situation like it would if you didn't know what this was it would kind of creep you out like oh can i put this in my fountain pens and kala has designed them to do this like there's other inks like this the sailor storia pigmented inks exact same thing so just a different line of colors these neon colors are amazing so the groovy i was like oh this is a little flat going out on the paper but when it dried it kind of brightened up i thought it was going to be a little bit too light of a purple but it kind of brightened up the kala neon boogie the pink is killer it's just bright and punch you in the face pink the neon joy which is the orange this is the fluorescent that you would think of like in the 80s or maybe the 90s when you're at the roller skating rink and they turn off the lights and you get those kinds of colors is that a little too specific it's like it's totally glow in the dark neon and i don't know that it does glow in the dark but it looks that way that's the level of orange this ink is the kala neon dude is the brightest turquoise ink like traditional fountain pen ink basically layered on the page like three times to where it just jumps off the page it's really good so i'm happy with all of these groovy i'm the least happy with but i think it's going to be fine but when i put it side by side with the rest of them it has a texture that doesn't quite hit you know in the neon aspect that i want it to but maybe we'll see in pens and that's going to be the biggest thing with these right how does it act in a nib not in a big ink swab right so how representative are these ink swabs so we'll test them out i'll test them out in some stub nibs first see how they go um and then test them out in some finer nibs see if that's worthwhile i think it kind of it might be neat to have something like the boogie right which is the pink and like an extra fine nib and have like a full page of writing of that i think that effect might come out really really nice so i'm very pleased with these i might have to look at getting the green one that was the only one i had to i had to slow down somewhere on my ink purchases so i picked four but the green one's kind of appealing they're all appealing really um but yeah i'm very very happy with the choices that i made they look awesome on the page right even through a photograph you can

Myke Hurley: see just how cool they are i am jealous of you that i think they look really nice i think they look really cool they're different they're super different i mean it's but it's like one of those things where would i how much would i really want to write with those inks i don't know yeah so let's

Brad Dowdy: just talk about the pigment inks just for a second and so people that are not aware know what they're getting into you have to have a more rigorous maintenance schedule with the pens that you're using these in you know you're gonna have to i know right so that's that's what made me think of that and like we're gonna talk about this later too right that's what made me think about mentioning in this right you would not want to leave this in your pen for you know three to six months right like two weeks like if you're not using it regularly after about a week you probably need to clean it out like it's not going to damage your pens it's going to be easy to clean at least the collings that i've used before that are pigmented super easy to clean don't stain anything you just don't want them in there forever right it's just it's not your typical ink where you can get away with uh you know fast and loose rules on cleaning them pigmented inks are not something you want to do that with um it just makes it harder to clean you're not gonna i don't think you're gonna do any damage or anything like that but it's it's a little bit of a challenge so there you go i will i haven't inked any of these up yet um like i said i just inked up the linen toolbar out of the 10 inks that i got so i'll be inking these up soon i'll be also sending these out to the review crew at the pen addict so they're gonna get some of these so i'm gonna i'm gonna share the love um except to

Myke Hurley: not with you linen toolbar linen toolbar clearly i need to become part of the review crew if i want to get

Brad Dowdy: these inks and that's right that's right or not in the uk one of the two okay today's episode is

Promotional Break

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Brad Dowdy: saying i'm gonna get on it every time i do it i know i know i know so we have this next topic but i want to do something that i rarely do that is really not my style as we lead into this topic mike and i want to stroke my ego for one second uh-oh stand back everyone i am so not this person but it made me laugh so i just wanted to share this little story so one of our listeners sent me a link to the platinum mount fuji blue black ink that i rave about right the cartridges you and i got right from the platinum curidos launch they also issued those in bottles this was all part of a 100th anniversary celebration for platinum pen and they made bottles of this ink so i just assumed all those bottles were long gone any links i've seen were long gone then we had a listener send me a link hey i bought these from this place here's the link so it's like cool and i went and i placed an order and it went through i ordered two bottles because so i can order one for me and one to give away i will not be sending you this ink um i have cartridges still i'm fine so this site is called uh silo steel dot et did i do dot it did i do that okay like steelo yeah so you know us and our pronunciations we don't have federico on this show but um steelo and steelay this is steelo and steelay um so i'd never heard of them you know never heard of the site they're based in rome place the order for my ink we'll put the link in the show notes where y'all if y'all really want this thing you should go try to order order from there and the owner sent me an email oh it is brad from the pen i have listened to you for years and i appreciate you ordering i didn't know we're like this new site and trying to do this thing and he was like super appreciated i was like that was cool i was like oh that was very nice of him to send me that so anyway that was uh that was that was the high point of my week mike is is the the pen store owner of the pen shop that i never heard of has listens to the pen addicts so uh so there you go

Myke Hurley: good story i feel like there's a gdpr violation in there somewhere is there i wouldn't even know what

Brad Dowdy: that would um what the issue would be we don't have those kind of rules in in the americas you say that though uh okay we just don't pay attention to those rules you still have to do that you still

Myke Hurley: have definitely still have to pay attention to them um because the european union can get very upset at

Brad Dowdy: you yeah yeah so let's see if they get upset about the topic that i really want to talk about so what i did at stelo and stelae when i was looking for those inks well let me see what else this store has maybe they have something cool that i've never seen before so i'm browsing around this that bring yes they yes they do mike harley have you seen the i have i have a lot to say about this but it's the the 350th anniversary limited edition of g or bon and i say inks and by inks i mean 500 milliliter bottles of inks michael so number one did you know g or bon has been around for 350 uh years and we're celebrating their anniversary did you know that didn't know that yeah did not know that would not have registered that in a million years um number two do you need a bottle of ink that is 500 milliliters for example the linen toolbar bottle of ink i bought is 30 milliliters most normal size bottle of inks are 50 milliliters so do you need the 10 plus x bottle of ink

Myke Hurley: at your household michael or maybe the other thing you're asking me is do i need half a liter of ink right i don't know it could go in the cabinet next to the pasta you ordered maybe it could yeah you know what maybe right now brad i do need half a liter of ink um but i will tell you that is quite a that is quite an investment to make right like if you've never used the ink before to be like you know what i'm gonna get half a liter of this like that is that is quite a thing isn't it to do like yeah you really you're really committing to i'm only going to use this ink for the next 17 years

Brad Dowdy: right and let's talk about the commitment you're not committing to the price right it's a very reasonably priced 35 euros right you're committing to the volume of ink in this bottle and using it it's very pretty packaging like that's what caught my eye is like these are neat g herb on bottles

Myke Hurley: weird right like it looks like um i can see why they've done it right that they're going for for the old look but it almost looks like a kind of um like a western snake oil salesman would sell

Brad Dowdy: you from the back of a car like a pharmacology bottle or something but that's what it was back in the day because there were no filling systems right they were pouring it into an inkwell or an inkpot to dip nibs right so that's what this ink was used for back in the 350 years oh god if you this this would suck to refill a pen with right yeah that's not what it's designed for it's like it's made to be

Myke Hurley: put into another vessel yes because you want to get down very far before you couldn't use it anymore

Historical Context

Brad Dowdy: so here's the game i want to play all right all right so i'm i'm just trying to i as i was writing reading the notes before you came online today just kind of going over them in my head i was like i just had this thought would mike commit to using one color of this j herbon ink this only comes in five colors it's the blue mitosis pearl noir violette uh rouge carubier and vertebracita this is some of their classic ink colors none of which are my favorite at all would you commit to one of these ink colors for the rest of your life if you could get any sailor pen that you wanted so you can get any sailor pen that you want at any time for the rest of your life but the restriction is your only choice is one of these inks all right let me let me understand that

Myke Hurley: when you say like so i have an unlimited budget of sailor pens yes right forever in the future point i can say i want this one i want this one i want this one and it shows up and it will show up and i can keep them yes but i can only put one of these five inks in them and that's the only i'm allowed to use that is an incredibly difficult question i mean because one like if there was an ink color of these five that i actually like the look of yeah that was good it would be easier but like if you said to me that's a hundred percent why i'm asking this question because the question if the question is mike pick one ink you're only ever allowed to use one ink of your choosing for the rest of your life then i'll be like yeah no problem yep right because all i'll do is i'll pick one ink that i really like and i'll just use that ink forever because but these things they're not that good they're not that good are they no um this is this is much more complicated than which is the point if i okay so am i allowed in this scenario am i allowed to test these inks out before i make the decision to like pick one yeah i think that's reasonable if that's a reasonable ask before you commit it to the one you can try all five of them i feel like i could do it if i got that i got to choose i mean i probably end up with either the gray one or the like so what is that the uh noir noir or the violet one of those two i think i would do it because i mean come on look what you've offered me right right any sailor pen forever i go wild on that but you're stuck with the one ink so all right so i have the same for you then i have the same for you any nakaya you can unlimited nakaya budget for the rest of your life but you gotta have one of these inks

Brad Dowdy: nah i wouldn't do it which is kind of why i ask because i don't think i would do it like i i i have a lot of inks and i like what they bring to the table as far as what they provide me like i get a lot out of the nakayas right obviously but there's a combination factor that makes me feel things about a pen that i wouldn't feel the same way if i was restricted to one of these five right okay so yeah that's kind of why i put the question because i don't think i would do it and i didn't know what you i really didn't know how you would answer um um like a lot of times we can think of what the other one's thinking but i didn't know how you're going to answer that but i was thinking as i was formulating this is like i don't think i i i wouldn't do it i wouldn't make that choice that's a good question that was fun that's what happens um in the minute the minutes right before the show that wasn't in there yesterday when the doc was created so um i just uh thought about that one of the other things we do mike on this show is we guilt our listeners into things and you really caused a problem last week i'm not gonna lie i'm gonna blame this on you it's

Myke Hurley: just people's reactions to me like i didn't you know i didn't do it i just lived my life and then people reacted the way that they're gonna react to it you know i can't be blamed for that so good

Brad Dowdy: good friend and follower in uh twitch supporter aaron tweeted us and it says i'm gonna read this out it says thanks to i mike i felt highly motivated to exercise some of my own demons after listening to the podcast today i probably have another batch this size to clean so aaron has how many pins here we're gonna we'll just ballpark 20 pins here to clean after we heard you discussing the number of pins you know more than 20 you know probably in the 30 to 40 range that you had to clean you made our listeners feel so bad mike that they had to go clean their own collections so how do you feel

Myke Hurley: about this i think it's great for them you know that they feel that you know that i'm i'm helping

Listener Motivation

Brad Dowdy: people do something that they want to do you know okay yeah fair enough fair enough now in the week since our last episode has your situation changed like aaron's like aaron was proactive and said hey you know what i need to clean these pins you know i think i will be happier or uh less less put out um from the internet people telling me to clean my pins did you change your situation at all in this

Myke Hurley: past week i didn't clean anything okay but i did make a change i created a table oh so like a

Brad Dowdy: like a wooden table yeah i made a more place to store you need to store more dirty pins on this

Myke Hurley: table very busy no i created an apple note where i've listed all of my inked fountain pens with a few exceptions which i'll get to in a bit um and refilled all of them with an ink and noted it down so now i will no longer have the issue of which ink is in which pen so when it comes to refilling them i can refill them with the correct ink that is the thing that i wanted to fix about my situation and so that is

Brad Dowdy: what i have done there was a word you failed to mention there okay i'm a little concerned okay you didn't mention that i cleaned them yeah then i filled them that's what i said i did and wrote it

Myke Hurley: down i didn't i didn't do it it was because i wouldn't have done it before so why why start why start now look brad i'm living my life you know i love you so much the change i've made to my life uh is to i just noticed one uh lami petrol has been changed at autocorrected to lady petrol and i kind of like that more nice but no i i didn't clean them no lady petrol i like that because like that wasn't the point of this like the point of this for me was i just want to know what ink i have in which pen it wasn't about oh now i'm going to change my ways and clean my pens every time i fill them okay okay so we're going to talk about this why what are you gonna you know no no no listen listen

Brad Dowdy: i like what you did here all right i like exactly what you did here but did you know there's a website that can help you with this yeah i know you prefer your little apple note deal and you know i'm going to go into the fp fpc.inc fountain pen companion yeah that could be you mike i could i could see

Myke Hurley: you using this site because it's dead simple maybe i'll tell you all right like i'm aware of this i knew we were going to talk about it today but like at the same time i was like ah i for you listen for

Brad Dowdy: you i can see this being very useful like exactly what you did and we'll share your table in the show notes this is perfect for you this is all you need right because really a lot of it is you don't have a lot of inks you have way more pens than inks and i think a lot of people are flipped around right

Myke Hurley: is that exactly like yeah and i feel like the the fpc.inc is more about like i'm an ink person but that's not what it's about for me like i just wanted to know what was going in where because i have like four orange inks right like that was the problem and so which orange ink is in which pen well i didn't know the answer to that and i preferred to know the answer to that so now i do know the answer to that you know i'm having flashbacks well look you know this is me i like what you did

Brad Dowdy: this is exactly what you needed you you did good like i i am proud of you for this like this is this is a really really good good idea um there is a few pens on here that like

Myke Hurley: so it's a few pens that are not on here because i haven't uh refilled them yet so like my canalea pens are not on here because they're all full and i don't know what ink is in them so the thing is and it's the same when there's i have a couple words question marks that's because they're not empty yet and when they're empty i'm going to clean them and then put a new ink in them okay yeah fair enough i like

Brad Dowdy: it i especially like the the twisby go is cult pens question mark well i have four cult pens

Myke Hurley: and i can't tell the difference between them but i know one of them is in there because you've you've got those cult pens inks right like the mori i find them very hard to work out which one is which you just have to look online i do i look i totally agree with that statement the the pictures online they don't match what like you know they're like throwing ink all over pages and getting the sheen in them right and i i i can't see that when i'm just used just writing with a twisby go on a page because plus i think i have there's like a couple of them where like they're both red based and it's like well how the hell am i supposed to tell the difference just like oh this one has gold sheen this one has blue sheen was it yeah but i can only get the sheen to show up the way that they show it if i'm pouring the ink on a page which i'm not doing oh boy i love this i'm proud of you really good job this is this is

Tracking Methods Comparison

Brad Dowdy: like ahead of of what most people do how they how they track their stuff so that's good but i want to talk about how i'm now tracking my stuff because it's a little bit more um complex than the situation and a little bit cleaner cleaner than the situation you're in um but we should we should talk about our good friends at pen chalet first because then we're going to get in get in deep into some fpc.ink

Myke Hurley: talk yeah i feel like we need to cleanse cleanse everybody's palates because yes nobody nobody got on my case by the way so i was happy about that i don't think you're an outlier no i don't either

Brad Dowdy: but like i'm the only person brave enough to talk totally fair absolutely yeah so we'll see i i yeah

Myke Hurley: all right this episode is brought to you by pen chalet they sell authentic amazing rollerballs fountain pens ballpoints mechanical pencils and so much more they have all of your favorite brands monteverde pelican lami pilot namiki salika veiko so many more and they're an authorized dealer of all of them pen chalet have excellent prices they're doing sales all the time to do close-up specials every couple of weeks and they're adding new styles of pens every single month so you're getting great deals great stuff all the time so you've got to keep going back to pen chalet they have not just the writing instruments but also everything that goes along with the accoutrement as some may say brad we're talking pen holders and cases and refills and inks and converters and so much more they sell internationally they have great shipping rates and they do free shipping on orders of over 50 in the u.s pen chalet has low prices on high quality pens and they offer a 100 satisfaction guarantee so go to pen chalet.com and click the podcast link at the top of the website enter the password pen addict for this week's special offer and to get the code that you need to save 10 on anything at any time at pen chalet brad what do we see on offer this time they have these really cool

Brad Dowdy: platinum makie fountain pens that i have reviewed before and i love they're really inexpensive for what they are they i'll put a link in the show notes to one that i reviewed i'm shocked to see these on here i have one called the kanazawa leaf mount fuji and i don't know that that's in this series but they rotate these series out these are hand-painted uh platinum fountain pen barrels so black barrels gold trim but the artwork on there is great and they're really inexpensive for like what they are like i was surprised at the price originally like the full retail price and these are the ron retail price which is everyone loves the ron retail price is different math right so um yeah i would uh implore you to check these out they're really good he has also got tasha inks for sale i just got a bottle of that i have not tested yet and the kaweco uh the carbon sport

Myke Hurley: you know the uh the carbon fiber if you need a race car pen i think this pen writes faster because it's carbon fiber totally you know these platinum pens these macae pens yeah this is a pen which is i think a rare example of if you bought this for the fantastic ron price people would think that you spent like four times the money that you spent on a pen like this it has that look about it which i was saying that's a reason to buy this pen but it's just an interesting thing right that they look way they look way more expensive than their retail price but for the prices that you can get them for

Brad Dowdy: i mean as bananas bananas good yeah i'm pretty surprised so i i really enjoy i did not think that this would be a pen that i would particularly love mainly because you know just traditional black and gold but the artwork's really cool and i loved writing with it now i'm like anxious to get it back out and fill it up because i don't have it inked right now but when i reviewed one i was extremely pleased and we'll put the link in the show notes so you can see what i'm talking about but uh yeah

Myke Hurley: really good deals today from pen shelley yep uh so go right now to pen shelley.com p-e-n-c-h-a-l-e-t.com click the podcast link at the top of the website and to the password pen addict to get your hands on this stuff our thanks to pen shelley for the continued support of this show and relay fn

Brad Dowdy: so i'm really glad you made that table i know i i bust on you just jokingly and it's just out of fun but i i really love that you made that table because like i think it's cool to like track your fountain pens and inks yeah um because it's helpful to know what you have inked up in particular fountain pens it's helpful to know like when you use things or what's you know i don't think i've

Myke Hurley: really realized until last week that i was doing what i was doing i can see that like in my mind it was like oh i know what ink goes in these right but that was i always say that yeah i say that all

Brad Dowdy: the time i was like oh i have this under control mike let me tell you i do not have this under control whatsoever like i just inked up a fountain pen today and i already have like 15 fountain pens inked and that is just way way way too many for me like i don't roll that way at all so there'll be some cleaning going on this weekend but what i did discover and so many people discovered before me and i'm way late on the bandwagon is fountain pen companion so i just wanted to do a little quick rundown of what fountain pen companion is and i've talked to urban's been a follower urban uh hafner who put this together he's a programmer he built this whole website on his own he uh it's a free service he has a patreon you can choose to join to support him which i have done because i think it is what he has built is pretty incredible and what fountain pen companion was made for was for people to catalog their inks essentially logging their ink libraries right and then sharing them with other people to swap basically you could see what person a has and what person b has and they could look at each other's collections see what was missing and they could trade ink samples or bottles or whatever they wanted to do and it was also a way to keep a catalog of your own personal ink collection which is something i've always wanted to do but just never got around to doing fountain pen companion made that super easy it was shocking how easy it was for me to set this up so we'll share a link to like my ink page that's public on the um on the fountain pen companion site so you have like a little profile page and i've only put in 60 inks so far let me tell you something like so if you asked me before i started cataloging my inks into fountain pen companion you said brad how many bottles of ink do you think you own my guess would have been i don't know 150 bottles give or take right that's a super outrageous ridiculous number so i have this one shelf in my closet where they're all my inks are on and i said well i'm going to start with fountain pen companion so i'm going to grab my sailor section of inks bring them out to my desk and log them all because sailor inks i know i have the most of they're my favorites and i want to start there so that was like 50 inks right out the gate and that was like one tenth of my shelf of inks i think i'm gonna have more than 150 bottles of ink mike do you think

Myke Hurley: that like doing this cataloging is going to make you do something about that or or no it doesn't have to but i just want a hundred percent yeah you think this is gonna make you get rid of some how do you

Brad Dowdy: even get rid of ink i would just sell it you know i would have like a one-time ink sale because inks are really nightmare to ship and like i might just do it in a ridiculous fashion where you get like three bottles like grab bag style or i don't know we'll see like selling one-off bottles of ink sounds like a nightmare so i'd want to do something else so we'll see i'll have to i that i haven't gotten that far this is totally going to make me look at what i have and eventually sell some things and it goes for pens too you can add in your pens here so adding it like adding in an ink is as simple as typing in the ink brand the ink color and what format you have the ink in do you have a bottle do you have a sample you know do you have it in the cartridge and hitting save and it pulls up the ink color if it's been entered into the database already so you can see like all these colorful swatches on your page you know as digitally representative as it can be which is it's pretty close like it's really good and that's it like it takes you like 20 seconds to enter in an ink and so i just grabbed all my inks all my 50 sailor inks and just put them all in in about 20 minutes and then they were all in there so what that allows me to do mike is then i can go to the pen page and enter in my own pens and that's just as quick and easy those are more just like line items like you're almost like you're filling out a spreadsheet you know pen brand pen type nib and then you take your pen page and your ink page and you go to the currently inked page mike and that's where i think you're at with your table is i can take my currently inked uh pen and go on the currently inked page i can go i have this pen with this ink in it and this is the date i inked it up and then boom i now have a page of currently inked pens right now mine it says currently inked you have five pens inked um i have about 15 so i have a little catching up to do but what i've done is just on my browser toolbar mike whenever i grab something to use i put in the information right i'm not going through spending all of saturday cataloging everything if i wanted if i have 15 minutes to catalog some inks i'll go grab some or heck even take a picture just so i can reference it without moving or bring my laptop into the closet which that seems lame but i can enter you know so many products in a short amount of time and that's the best part about this i was like oh this is going to be unwieldy it's going to be time consuming i'm not going to get any benefit from it and all of those assumptions were wrong it's very very simple to use one of my favorite things the page that will get you in trouble mike is called leaderboards i saw oh my god so you look through that and you see all of our friends names on there like we know like everybody on these pages killing these so jesse between jesse and yagen um machiato man they uh they're oh and kelly mountain of ink and there's there's like all these people uh ink antidora is in there every everyone's in here this is outrageous so um we know all these people it's outrageous so yes it's pretty one could suggest this is too many

Myke Hurley: bottles of ink one could suggest well i would not but 2002 uh bottles of ink could be oh sorry

Bottles of Ink Collection

Brad Dowdy: 1138 bottles of ink could samples let's say those i think those are samples not bottles oh well yeah i'm sorry uh you're right you're right those are bottles jagen is the bottle man i think he bought the entire sailor ink studio in bottles i mean that's like all of it you know that's like 125 150 or more just in that order yeah yeah i have a feeling i don't think i'll get into the bottle leaderboard i hope i don't but i bet i probably i'm probably more like 250 instead of the 150 i was thinking i had so that's pretty nuts and i'll have to do something about it but that's what's helping me right i'll be able to narrow down some of these inks i'll be able to narrow down some of these pens really try i've already set aside a space for like future sales oh i should probably sell this type of stuff and yeah i like i'm gonna put a blog post on pen attic one day once i i kind of did my walkthrough for the pen attic members and i'm gonna post it publicly one day just my walkthrough of my setup it's i stayed away from it honestly because i thought it was going to be too much and too time consuming it is really simple and easy just to add one ink and one pen and pair them up together in like a minute and then you're done and then do it tomorrow if you grab another pen like it's very easy so uh annabelle who is part of the fountain pen companion podcast also does work for apple bomb and also is the nib repair person in europe that all of that we are now sending any of our friends in europe that are asking us hey who can repair our pens annabelle she did a video kind of doing a walkthrough of the setup of fountain pen companion i'm i'm committed i'm a huge fan i love what urban did i talked to urban about this um we might have to get him on the podcast to one day to just like discuss this a little bit more because he's just programming this in his spare time right like he's a computer programmer and i like what he built here and it's so very cool on this page where does it

Myke Hurley: show the pen that you have the ink in or does it not ah that's a very good question mike so

Brad Dowdy: pens are private until you make them public that's good because you don't want people seeing that level of product without permission right because that's that's value there isn't a lot of value in inks but there could be a lot of value in pens yep so when you go to the pen page there's a big big message that says hey this is private because you know these can be like essentially valuables for some people and we don't want to make that information public so i thought it was very cool that is good actually yep yep so you can share that information on your own but it's not publicly accessible for people to stumble upon i think that makes a lot of sense yeah this is like again this is a

Myke Hurley: very cool thing but it's just not for for me personally because i would have like 10 here's

Brad Dowdy: the best way to say why it's not for you based on your table you're done yes right you don't have to do anymore like you've you've filled all the blanks that you have right now for me it's helpful because i'm just getting started right yeah so i can see the one thing that might be interesting for you mike is you don't have to necessarily list fountain pens in the pen category like you could list out all the retro 50 ones you own on a page yeah but that wouldn't stop you from putting in the table because that's pretty static as well nor do you like why would you need that necessarily it would

Transition to Sponsor Break

Myke Hurley: take me a long time to work out the retro 50 ones because i don't know the names of most of them yeah so i would have to like find them with that would be hard that would be really difficult to do yep all right let's uh take one final sponsor break and then do some hashtag ask tpa to round

Brad Dowdy: out today's show what do you think yeah yeah we've been running behind on ask tpa we'll see what we can get to this week we won't get to all of them we've got lots yeah i keep i keep promising i should probably like highlight the ones i keep promising people to answer then don't answer them for weeks

Myke Hurley: but yeah yeah there's that well you have a few minutes to get those together while i thank expressvpn for their support of this show expressvpn is the software that i and many others use day after day to protect the data online because hacking methods now are more sophisticated than ever maybe many of you might be working from home at the moment without your it department to protect you that's why i recommend using expressvpn it's one of the many reasons i recommend using expressvpn um i use it whenever i'm not connected to uh my home wi-fi but but there are still times when i'm connected to my home wi-fi that i will want to use expressvpn um for me mostly it's like a lot of the geo restriction stuff right like i might want to use it for that like if there's an article that i want to read but i can't read it uh in europe which is a thing that happens quite a lot expressvpn can help me kind of spoof my location and let me read that stuff you may know about expressvpn by now but you could be leaving the door open to people uh bad people out in the world one of the easiest ways to secure your internet data is with expressvpn so why haven't you tried it yet go to expressvpn.com slash penaddict and get an extra three months for free protect your internet today with the vpn that will keep your data safe that is expressvpn.com slash penaddict our thanks to expressvpn for their

Brad Dowdy: support of this show and relay of them all right very first question here from timmy gu hashtag ask tpa what's your favorite kit for letter writing i don't write letters me either but i have answers for this question so it's a it's a running theme and and joke that brad does not write letters generally true but i have several sets of writing papers and envelope sets mostly for the paper like i like to test out the paper that these letter writing kits also these are like aspirational

Myke Hurley: things like i like to think of myself that one day i would write letters so i buy letter writing kits

Brad Dowdy: you know absolutely so the clairefontaine triomphe uh tops the list it's just really really great i have

Letter Writing Kits Discussion

Myke Hurley: tools for cleaning pens not that i use them bar i wish i had a tool bar if i had a pen tool bar cleaning bar then maybe i would do it anymore but i stepped over here clairefontaine you said right

Brad Dowdy: clairefontaine triomphe that's probably the most popular right it's just really good quality paper in a pad that's um like glue brown but it's very clean so like when you rip off the sheet it looks like you're just using a single sheet not that you tore something out of a pad of paper and it can come it comes with the envelopes you know as part of the kit so like that's what i'm assuming you're asking for the kit my favorite though would be the pilot letter pad which is just a really you know any japanese product is gonna you know pique my interest for sure i like this it has a really wide ruling which is kind of neat so if i'm writing a letter you know on the few times i've ever written a letter i have used this paper because one of the points is my letter of my letter would be to show off the ink and the nib so i'll have these big spaces between lines and use like a 1.1 stub nib and use my big blocky blocky letters it works perfectly on this paper it also can come with matching envelopes so those are my two really go-tos i actually use those papers all the time just because they're good

Myke Hurley: paper so next up mike hobby collector 9 says am i crazy for skipping over almost all cartridge converter mechanism pens i much prefer piston filler piston fillers and the like but i'm sure that i'm missing out seems like converters never write as well for me with regards to ink flow tell me that i'm

Brad Dowdy: missing something okay you're not missing anything i do think that the ink flow is comparable between the two i understand the idea that you might think it's different maybe it's like this placebo effect thing going on that oh this mechanism isn't as nice as the other therefore my writing experience is assumedly not as nice but you're not missing out if you choose to only use piston fillers like i don't think you're missing out like that's totally fine i know several people that do the same thing that you do that they will not consider a pen let's take leonardo as a perfect example and you know none of them are piston fillers so are you missing out no because you're enjoying what you like right and you shouldn't force yourself into purchasing anything that you're not that you don't have like a just a direction for liking right that you might question after you purchase like you never want to spend your money on something that you're just not dedicated to so no i don't think you're missing out right so you know there's brands you just have to eliminate but you like the piston filling mechanism you like what that brings to you and if that's all you want to use i don't think you're missing out at all because

Myke Hurley: you're using what you enjoy yeah i think so i mean honestly i can't i can't say that i have noticed any difference in ink flow for me like it's never something that i've that i've noticed like it's all they all i don't think i've ever used a pen where i'm like oh i think the ink flow is not so good because of the filling system but maybe i'm just not attuned to it i don't know but i've never noticed

Brad Dowdy: it yeah i haven't noticed that either i think that's probably just you know putting two two and two together like incorrectly i just don't think that's the case but you know can i can i prove that no but it doesn't you know based on years of using all kinds of different pens i've never thought oh this pen isn't working as well because it's not a piston filler that's never come up

Myke Hurley: frost virus asks after finding the show i wanted to try a fountain pen and got a platinum preppy to dip my toe into the water but i hated it i also picked up a sign of the x and it's my new favorite pen is it okay to like pens but not fountain pens is there something else i should try

Brad Dowdy: these these two questions are very similar right they want or they're looking for support to their stance and yeah like use what you like right we're always going to say use what you like some people absolutely hate fountain pens and you know love their gel ink pens or love strictly pencils and won't use a pen right you have to look at how you use things what you get your enjoyment from what makes your handwriting look great and it doesn't have to be all of the things like me like i use all the things and can find enjoyment in all of them maybe a fountain pen doesn't work for you that's totally okay my website was built on not fountain pens right like everything for the first couple years of the pen addict first two or three years there was probably just a handful of pen reviews if that fountain pen reviews if that so yeah it's totally okay like i love the signo dx it's one of my favorites of all time for obvious reasons like i've made helped make a pen barrel around that refill i adore that refill and you should too if that's the pen that works the best for you you know it's uh it's totally okay to use that pen and you know if that's your favorite pen you just say it loud and proud i'm i'm a dx person and that's my pen and it's the best because it works the best for me and that's all you need

Myke Hurley: and you know i would say stay open to things try things out over time like it might just be that the platinum perp just wasn't the right fountain pen for you but there is one um but it's not that you have to uh but using one pen doesn't mean that and not liking it doesn't mean that the brand the

Brad Dowdy: category wouldn't work for you very fair point and i totally agree with that so one good thing about all the variety of things that we talk about is maybe you'll hear something one day that clicks and you maybe you'll have an opportunity to test something out before you buy it right so you can take in that information say oh maybe this other pen seems kind of interesting so when i have the opportunity i might test it out and see if i can buy it and maybe it maybe that's a fountain pen maybe it's a pencil you know maybe it's who knows but yeah i think that's a very good point by you

Myke Hurley: and carol asks i'm an artist and i'm transitioning for at koinor uh whoa from a koinor four by zero you want me to you want me to take this yeah i need you to help i know what

Brad Dowdy: translate this for me so it's it's a rapidograph right so the koinor rapidograph is a yeah so i'm explaining to you it's essentially an engineering pen where it has a very fine sharp needle in in carol's case uh 0.018 it's teeny tiny it's a pipe and these pipes out of these pens are completely flat with no rollerball in them okay so just think of it as this very needly type of deal and they use a very specific ink um to write with so very tiny very fine so carol says i'm an artist transitioning from that koinor rapidograph other companies make this but it's all the similar type of pen uh roturing is another one transitioning to a platinum century 3776 uef which is the ultra extra fine that's a one that's a 0.1 millimeter tip fountain pen right so it says i go through quite a number of nibs on the koinor because they're very delicate they are they're very delicate they clog they get dirty you have to clean and manage them like a fountain pen you could not use them i've tried i've decided to try to uh use a fountain pen and inks as a replacement as well as the koinor nibs are very expensive and now very difficult to find so agree with all that my question is how durable is the platinum nib or other fountain pen nibs in relation to technical pen nibs can i expect the wear from constant use and drawing cause the nib to wear away especially on the uef or the extra extra extra fine nibs i'm having mark back as grind me some custom needlepoint nibs to match the rapidograph can i expect that i may wear these down similar to what occurs on the rapidograph nib i appreciate your advice this is an awesome question like this is right up my alley even though i have to say i don't have a very like factual answer is so far above my pay grade this one this is right in my wheelhouse except i haven't tested this right so my thought would be your steel needlepoint nibs uefs triple extra fine are going to hold up better than the technical nibs gold nibs like the platinum you might have more variance in those nibs because they're softer and while they may not wear down you might have the tines go a little bit wonky depending on your hand pressure so right it's the i think the gold nibs are going to be a little bit more sensitive to hand pressure than the steel nibs but i like the steel nibs needle points i think would last longer than the technical nibs right they're not going to wear down like as far as like oh you're going to you know round out the nib because you use it so much it's not going to be like that but like the gold nib could become misaligned right you're not going to have that um like a technical nib is a round tube right the uef nib has a tine in the middle so there's movement between the tines i'm doing a little thing with my fingers as i'm talking right now so there's there's movement between the tines right there that over time those tines could get misaligned and i think that would tend to happen more with a uef gold nib than like a needlepoint steel nib it's just going to be firmer finer i think big picture general terms you're going to have better luck long term with the needlepoint fountain pen nibs than you are with the technical nib pins they're also going to be easier to clean those technical nib pins are not easy to clean so i i love this question that's why i put it in there because i've used all of these pins but i haven't done that type of comparison which i think is pretty cool so that's these are my general thoughts on what i think would happen having used both of these types of pins i don't think the fountain pens are going to be as fragile except the gold ones might they might have a little more maintenance with with the tine alignment so i think you might get a

Myke Hurley: little bit more variation all right did you write all that down yeah man i'm on it okay so you know for next time when i'm not here i can definitely give that answer i'm sure i'll remember all of it

Brad Dowdy: okay should we do any more today uh let's wrap it here today we have because we probably have about 10 more to go so we'll save those for next week knock some of those out i apologize if i'm a little bit slow in getting to your answers but when you get questions as awesome as these i want to make sure make sure they get in there we want to try to answer them all so though this is great thank you

Myke Hurley: everyone for sending them in yep and if you do have questions you can set out a tweet with the hashtag rstpa and it will get included or you can email them directly to hello at penaddict.com and we can pick them up there if they're longer than a tweet or two if you want to find show notes you can go to relay.fm slash penaddict slash 409 uh you can go also there's a link there in the show notes which you can find on the website or in your show or your podcast player of choice to become a relay fm member we've got tons of great benefits for you there help support the show as well uh talking about support thanks to expressvpm pen chalet and hello for their support of this show by sponsoring and thank you most of all for listening you can find brad online he is at dowdyism on twitter at penaddict on instagram and you can follow along with brad's twitch streams tuesdays thursdays 10 a.m eastern you got anything coming up this week or next week brad that you want to talk about

Brad Dowdy: um probably next week i'm going to have a big unboxing of all kinds of stuff i tend to do a lot of unboxings i've had a lot of packages come in so that's what we've been on a kick on

Myke Hurley: uh here recently people love unboxings uh i am i mike i am yke on social stuff if you want to follow along there you can we'll be back next time until then say goodbye brad goodbye brad you