The Pen Addict 434/transcript

The Pen Addict Podcast Transcript
Episode:	434
Title:	Trick Ink Window
Release Date:	October 28th, 2020
Hosts:	Brad Dowdy Myke Hurley
Guests:	No guests this episode
Additional Information
Official page:	Episode 434
Audio File:	Audio Episode 434
Podcast page:	The Pen Addict 434
Length:	6464 min <br />1.067 h <br /> minutes
Previous Transcript	Next Transcript

Brad Dowdy: From RelayFM, this is The Pen Addict episode 434, and today's show is brought to you by Squarespace and Green Chef. My name is Myke Hurley, I am joined by Brad Dowdy. Hi Brad. Hey Myke, how's it going today? Good, my friend, how are you? Yeah, I'm pretty good. Like, I feel like I'm knee-deep in the stationery, which is good, seeing that's my job, right? It's useful. It's very, very, like, you know, lots of cool things happening, lots of new products coming out. I guess it's that time of the year. Usually, like, September is a lot of new products. I think a lot of things are getting a little bit slower and delayed this year. So there's lots for us to talk about this week. Which is useful. Some new stuff that's catching my eye.

Myke Hurley: We get towards gift guide season, which is coming up. We're going to think we're going to be doing our annual gift guide episode in a few weeks' time, right?

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, can I invite Anna? Anna? Anna. God. I told Myke ahead of time, this is going to be a rough show for me. I've had some goings on beforehand, so I'll invite Anna right now, because I haven't texted her yet. So, Anna, I'll send you the date. This is a live show call-out. This is a live show podcast for the gift guide show. It's, like, November 18th or something like that, but yeah.

Myke Hurley: That's when we're recording it. I don't know if we're going to be releasing it that week or Thanksgiving week. I don't care when we're releasing it. That's what we're going to do in our gift guide episode of the year.

Brad Dowdy: So yeah, I should probably tell her about that. So yeah, there's the invite. But yeah, lots of good stuff going on. Chat already wants to know if I'm okay. I'm not, but in a good way, right? So I've already told Myke he's going to have to pay attention to me today.

Myke Hurley: Everything's good. It's all good stuff, but you're just tired.

Notes Presentation

Brad Dowdy: Yes. Yeah, very tired. So let's dig into the notes today and see if we can get me on track. And the first one is a really cool project done by my friends Kat Palmisano and Michael Harris. So y'all know Kat from the Bent Tines podcast. Y'all know Michael Harris from the Temp Track. Or what you really know them both from is the Slack channel. So they approached me, I don't know, a month or two ago. And they had been talking about, hey, could we just, there's a lot of interesting people in the pen addict Slack. And we're just kind of curious, you know, could we put together a survey of the pen addict Slack room and just kind of get an idea for our own, you know, discussion purposes. On, you know, what, you know, people's ages and people's backgrounds and people's collection size, lots of things. And the results are in. Number one, however they built the results PDF, we'll have this linked in the show. It's fantastic, right? I think they did an awesome job.

Myke Hurley: I do have a couple of criticisms over the presentation, but overall, it's beautiful.

Brad Dowdy: It reminds me of one of those infographics, right? One of those cool infographics pages. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Myke Hurley: This is good for like, it's got that look to it for sure.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, yeah. So, and then Michael has an addendum video where he walks through and provides a lot of context to, okay, we understand, you know, we're essentially shooting fish in a barrel, right? In the pen addict Slack room, there's going to be leans to certain things. It's like, you know, Myke, when you go to the furry convention, there's going to be a lot of My Little Pony merchandise there. There just is, right? That's the way it's going to be. So, a lot of it's going to be biased in the directions of the people that are in the room. So, Michael does a good job with that context in going through this. So, I don't want to go through the entire thing, but I have a few points I wanted to break up and point out specifically. Is that okay by you?

Myke Hurley: Yeah, let me just say that because I don't want Kat and Michael to be listening to this and thinking about it like I'm going to rip them. The only thing I would like to have seen different on this is in one of the pages, it's called Pen Hobby. It's a bunch of pie charts that are breaking up the answers. I would have liked to have seen trying to see them label these segments with the corresponding answers in text, not just in color. Like one of them, the fountain pen collection one, does have it, but the other ones don't. You see what I'm saying? It's like you have to correspond the color because when you see like time spent on Slack per day, it's not 38% of your time in the day spent on it. You see what I mean? So, that's the one. That is the only thing, which is a super nitpicky thing, but everything else is great. I do have, we can go through this, but I also do have a very serious question for the people who undertook this survey. I wonder if you know what that question is going to be, but we'll get to that, I guess, as we go through some of this.

Brad Dowdy: Okay. So, I think that's good feedback because there will be another one of these. So, they might make this an annual thing. I know they've been talking about it. Because I think it's valuable. Like, this is valuable data.

Myke Hurley: Well, also, so there was 154 people that undertook it. If they did it again, I guarantee they would get more people. Because that's just how these things go. Yes.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. Once people see what it is, I wouldn't be surprised if it was double that next year easily. Like, I feel like 154 is short.

Myke Hurley: Well, especially now because we could mention it on the show instead of it just being the Slack if they wanted us to do that. Yes.

Brad Dowdy: We could broaden the scope of the answers. So, the first one, the question I wanted to point out or discuss was the year collecting began. Yes. Because it is very much a Slack-centric answer in that the bulk, 34, well, the two largest answers were 37% for 2011 to 2015 and 34% for 2016 to present. Like, that fills my heart. Like, that fills my heart. But it's also, that's the group of people that are in this room too, right?

Myke Hurley: It's the best part of three quarters of people have started their collecting whilst we have been producing the show. Mm-hmm. Which makes sense.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, but I do think you can extrapolate that a little bit outside of our world because those are the customers now to all of the stores and all the retailers and all the vendors and all of the pen shows. And that shows that, you know, there is a more current interest in this hobby has grown and has continued to grow over the past decade.

Myke Hurley: Which is definitely something we have seen, right? Like, me and you have made many comments on this and that the time that we have been involved in it, and I'm not trying to say that we are related to it by any stretch of the imagination. Oh, yeah. But just over the time that me and Brad have been producing this show and have been really looking at this stuff in more detail together, there has been a shift in makers, small companies, and the purchasers, the collectors, has trended to start to be younger, but also newer. Like, people that are newer to the hobby who haven't been collecting for 30 years or whatever.

Brad Dowdy: Right. Which is beautiful to see. Like, even though I know, like, in context, like, that's who should be answering this question, right? Like, I get that. But to see, like, this past decade of new people coming in and to have played a little role in just kind of the uprising of this community, like you said, the vendors around the community, the makers in this community, the content creators in this community, it's pretty cool. Like, I was very happy to see that. But turning the corner a little bit, the nib preferences chart, I have never had a better answer for this question for my uses than this chart right here because I'm actually surprised at the answer. So, the question is favorite nib size and it's your, and out of the basics, right? Extra fine, fine, medium, broad, double broad. What would you, if you did this, like, what's your favorite nib size? I guess it's probably medium, but that's Japanese, right?

Myke Hurley: Yeah, I'd probably say medium. I mean, I really like broader nibs, like broad music stuff, right? I love those. But if I had to, if, you know, someone said to me, you can have, you can choose one. I'm going to go with medium because I know I'm going to get a result that I enjoy in both European and Japanese sizing, which is, I don't know, would necessarily be the same for any other. But like medium, I know I can always be happy with that.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, so maybe that's why medium is not quite an outlier, but it's at 36% of the chart. And that, to be honest, surprised me. I thought it would be fine by an, at least a reversed margin, which fine was 26%, medium was 36%. And I thought it would be fine by a wider margin. And then I thought, honestly, like, maybe not broad, but maybe double broad might have had, double broad at 10%, I think is pretty good. Like, I thought that might even be a little bit bigger because I just find a lot of extremes. And that's my own bias of what I use, right, in nib sizes. So I just thought it was interesting that medium was a pretty decisive vote for there. And I think about this a lot because when I do fountain pen projects, I have to order nib sizes, right? And that's always a challenge. And medium is usually my third or fourth quantity size. It's usually fine, extra fine, stub, like 1.1. And then I get to medium. That's weird. Like if I'm ordering 50 pens. If I'm ordering 50 pens.

Myke Hurley: See, I'm not surprised by this answer at all, you know.

Brad Dowdy: The more I think about it, I'm not because like Japanese medium nibs and things like that are really popular, right? It's the same. You can answer medium whether you're a Japanese nib fan or a German nib fan and have a completely different writing experience, right? So anyway, I thought that was cool. And then there's a chart in here, which I don't know that we'll break down further, but it's the more specific grind on the nib, right? This is the group of people that you can ask this to.

Nib Preferences

Myke Hurley: Do you get grinds done?

Brad Dowdy: So Curse of Italic and Stub combined for 42% of the chart and then Architect at 17%. And then, you know, a good group of Don't Grind My Nibs, 18%. So I thought that was pretty cool. So the other hobbies chart is pretty cool. You know, we talk about a lot of overlap. I think next year we'll have to get like keyboards on there that we might see that one ramp up. It's in the word chart, but it didn't. It's in the other cloud. So the clouds are generally the other. Like video games runs in there, cycling, reading, tea, music. So, but, you know, bags, coffee, cooking, you know, knives, watches, you know, that kind of stuff is cool. Yep. And then the final question, which they mentioned, they put that in there for me, to post the cap on your pen or to not post the cap on your pen. That is the question. So it's about where I thought it would be. So 68% do not post their pens and 32% do, which I think is about right. Like this is the question where if you put it depends would take up the majority of the circle, right, of the pie chart. But I don't think, I think you have to make a statement. Like if you answer it depends, then you post the pen, right? You just do it sometimes. So maybe I'm a poster because I guess there's a few pens that I do. So I've over the past year almost of doing the friend of the show where I ask everyone that question, I have come around to understanding why the posters are the way that they are, Myke. And they're not the demons that I once thought they were.

Myke Hurley: All right. Do you want my additional comments? Yes. So I liked the non-Fountain Pen usage page. It was really interesting. I'm sitting on that now. But what I found more interesting was the brands. Like so they ask a question of which standard pen brands do you regularly use? I would have liked to have seen this for fountain pens. I don't think they asked this question. Fountain pens. Okay.

Brad Dowdy: I would have wanted to see that. So yes, we can add that next year. Yeah.

Myke Hurley: Because we don't, that's, I like to see this. I like to see Pilot Retro 51 in their studio, in their show design and stuff like that. So that's cool. But like in that, you know, in there, you actually have small makers and large companies. So I think I would have also wanted to see that for fountain pens. What fountain pen brands do people use? Small makers, large companies. How does that break down? That would have been super interesting. But my biggest question that I have for people that undertook this survey. So it's 154 total respondents of this survey in the pen addict slack. There was a question about entertainment consumption. Which podcasts do you listen to regularly? Of the 154 people in the pen addict slack, 118 of them said they listen to the podcast regularly. So for the people that are in the pen addict slack that do not listen to this podcast regularly, I ask you why. That is why, right? Like, what are you doing? Come on, what are you doing? Every single person should have said the pen addict, right?

Brad Dowdy: I didn't do that math, but that's pretty funny. What's going on here? Now that you say that out loud.

Myke Hurley: Maybe regularly is a thing that could throw people, right? Like, because I understand that maybe people don't listen to every episode. But even then they should be. Come on.

Brad Dowdy: Come on. I mean, what's regularly to you once a month? I don't listen. Like, I listen to probably all of these shows, but I am not a completionist, right? So what is my definition of regularly is probably one out of every three or four episodes I listen to. And I would check off the box for, you know, the majority of these. Yeah. Come on. That's actually pretty funny. Come on. That's pretty funny. Okay. So, and then, you know, and then we got to get on the YouTube train as well. So our boy, Myke Madison, Inc. Dependence, 81. Fig Boot is 75. So we need to ramp those numbers up, to be quite honest. All 154, you know, people who responded. You know, I think we need to get that up. I know some people don't do video, which is understandable. But yeah, I think we can ramp all this entertainment consumption up, Myke. What do you think? I think that's your overall point. Let's get 100% on the pen addict. There you go. Oh, it's just 100% on the pen addict. Brad, that's my only point. And then nothing else.

Myke Hurley: Everything else can just shake out how it shakes out. My point is that 100% of the people in the pen addict Slack should be listening to the pen addict podcast. I feel like there is a one-to-one here. Come on.

Brad Dowdy: See, all I did was like, yay, big bar on the pen addict. Like, that's cool. Like, I didn't look at it more than that.

Myke Hurley: I will say, if any show had beaten the pen addict, then we would be having some serious conversations around here, Brad.

Brad Dowdy: We would have special guests on the podcast. We would be throwing down at that point. Oh, I would be like, you know, killing a man with a trident in that one.

Myke Hurley: It would be, yes, just like that scene in Anchorman, if you don't know what Brad's referring to. But yes, that we would be outside of the back, socially distanced fighting with each other. Yeah, then we would be in trouble. So everyone is, you know, you get a pass from me there because that would be serious stuff. But in all seriousness, this was fantastic. I hope that this does become an annual thing. Maybe it could be like a census, which would be fun because then we can see over the year how certain things change, which would be fascinating. Right. So that's why I would like to see brands in there and stuff. You know, like things about like, do you have more pens that are made by small makers rather than large companies?

Myke Hurley: Considering that this seemed to have gone so well, I personally would like to see it expanded. Because I think it's a very interesting thing for the community to see and to be aware of. Yeah.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. And I just want to tell Kat and Michael, number one, thank you. And number two, really exceptional job. Yeah. Like they did a fantastic job.

Myke Hurley: It's aided so much by the presentation being so good.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah.

Myke Hurley: So I appreciate it.

Survey Success

Brad Dowdy: Awesome. I look forward to next year's version. I'm glad they got this off the ground and we'll make this an annual thing, hopefully.

Myke Hurley: Yeah. Definitely. All right. Let's take our first break and thank Squarespace for the support of this show. Make your next move with Squarespace. They will let you easily create a website for your next idea or project and give you all of the tools that you need to make it shine. With your unique domain name, they can do it for you. If you want to customize an award-winning, beautiful template to make your content look exactly the way that you want, they have all of that. If you want an all-in-one platform with nothing to install, patch, or upgrade, that's what Squarespace is all about. They have got you covered. And who doesn't want that? When you have a project, an idea, a thing you want to put online, you don't want to jump through a million hoops to get it done. You just want to get the thing out there. And that is what Squarespace is best at. And if you run into any issues along the way, they have 24-7 customer support. If you need any help, they have got you covered. This is why I have used Squarespace for so many projects over the years. I think I have like three or four active Squarespace websites right now. And that's just a thing for me. Like if I want to put something online, I go to squarespace.com. That's where I go because that's how it starts for me because I can get everything set up exactly the way that I want, looking, feeling, performing perfectly. And they have fantastic apps for iOS as well. Like now you can actually build your entire website in the Squarespace iPad app, which is fantastic. And I've done that. I've gone in and edited stuff. I've edited layout stuff, text stuff. It's so good. So go try it out for yourself today. No credit card required by going to squarespace.com slash penaddict. And their plans start at just $12 a month. When you decide to sign up, make sure that you use the offer code penaddict to get 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain and show your support for this show. That is squarespace.com slash penaddict and the code penaddict for 10% off your first purchase. So thanks to Squarespace for the support of this show and all of RelayFM. Squarespace, make your next move, make your next website. You know, mentioning Kat was part of creating the survey, I am using today the Retro 51 bump in the night. Yeah. Which Kat was responsible with in collaboration with Matthew Morse. And it is probably one of the best Retro 51s ever made. I think without a doubt. In my book, anyway. It is super good looking. Like the texture of the pen is nice even. Which I don't know if I've really noticed before on other Retro 51s. Like it's got like a matte texture to it. Super good. I have number 007, by the way. That was the number that I ended up getting, which I greatly appreciate.

Brad Dowdy: There's a long story behind that. We'll save that for another day. But yeah. The, yeah, the way, number one, I love Matthew's artwork. So like give me all of that. But the way the colors came out. Yeah. And the, the, the glow in the dark and stuff. It's, yeah. And, and all the color differentials and everything. It's just super, super sharp. So yeah. Very cool. So you kind of, you know, went off topic here, but continued on the topic I wanted to do, which is continuing a few community shout outs. Some of my friends in the stationary world, specifically Les at Comfortable Shoes Studio and Johnny at Pencil Revolution have started to make zines. I have always been a zine person. Being such a fan of music in the 80s and 90s in my entire life, you know, that's how I felt cool is going to the indie record store and they'd have a shelf full of zines that somehow they found, you know, in these, you know, nascent days of the internet. And me picking up my zines, figuring out which ones I would like, and then mailing off to subscribe for, you know, a few different ones. And I still probably have, I don't know, I got a pretty good stack of zines from 20 plus years ago.

Myke Hurley: Can we go back a minute? Sure. What is a zine?

Brad Dowdy: So I see, you could probably get a lot of different definitions and there's probably a technical definition, but I see it as just a self-published, low-budget piece of art, essentially.

Myke Hurley: So Wikipedia defines zine as a small circulation, self-published work of original or appropriate texts and images.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. So I think my personal definition was pretty close to that. Right? So that's the way I see it is if someone has an idea and they want to publish those ideas, whether it's words or pictures or poetry or lyrics or art or whatever, and they build something themselves, they publish it on an extremely tight budget, usually stolen copier budget is the OG zine world. But now you can go to Kinko's and get your files printed or, you know, things like that. So, um, very low to no budget, very raw, um, you know, put together, you know, very, you know, kind of randomly just stapled together with the, the, you know, staples that you can find and just basically collecting whatever you can to put your words or whatever art you're creating out into the world, into other people's hands, whether it's, you know, something you make five copies of that you've handwritten written and drawn yourself, or you make a hundred copies that you run off a photocopier. And then you send them out to people who are interested in those types of things.

Myke Hurley: It's super interesting to continue to make these things today. Like I understand, obviously I understand the value of the tactile thing, but the amount of effort required today to do this, I actually think is more in the sense of how easy it is to do this stuff digitally.

Myke Hurley: Counterbalances the amount of effort it is to put a project like this together, where before the internet you would make a zine because how else were you going to do it? Right. But now it's like to go ahead and make the zine, you are, it's kind of like you, you start from a negative position, which is like less than zero position of how easy it would be to get it online when probably most of the content was produced on a computer anyway, like if it was written and probably emailed to the person putting it together. So it would be so much easier for them to just copy and paste it. Also as well, I imagine these days as well, people are setting these things on a computer and have digital files to go and print, right? So considering you're doing all of that, you could just put it onto any like website creation platform and it would be out there, right? And would have a larger audience to it. So, and especially because all of these zines have websites where you get them from, the three that we're talking about today. So I'm just saying that it's interesting to me and I appreciate that desire to do it when it is easier these days to just share it online.

Brad Dowdy: Well, then it's not a surprise that people who are into analog tools would be into zine making, right? Those things go hand in hand because by default, you're choosing not to do the easiest things to put words into existence by picking up a pen and grabbing a piece of paper. By default, you could open up your computer or your phone and do it the easy way. And to have that bit of creative outlet that a pen or a pencil brings us as, you know, stationary fans gives the zine makers the same kind of thrill to put this thing together and get their words published in a physical format that goes against everything, right? In the modern times, like a zine shouldn't exist. And they're starting to have, and it's been going on for a while. I follow it just kind of adjacently. You know, there's zine conventions, you know? It's no different than a comic convention or a pen show, right? People get joy out of making these things with their hands and with their minds. And that just doesn't always translate on a screen, even though they make our lives easier, you know, producing them that way. So, yeah. We'll put some links in the show notes. I've bought all of their zines so far, Johnny's and Les's. And then it was Les who turned me on to a zine maker called The Word Distribution, who is very prolific. They have an Etsy store. I bought a handful of their zines that I've been reading. They're really good, like pencil reviews. It's like a pencil review zine is one of them. And they do a whole, whole slew of different style of zines. And they do zine shows and things like that. So, I just wanted to point that out as another way to, you know, support our community. Get, you know, inspired by the creativity and see, you know, if that's something you might be interested in doing yourself. Like, I don't think I could ever pull off making a zine. Like, I don't know that I'd be, that's in my wheelhouse. But I do enough other things, you know. If I would have wanted to make a zine, like that's refill. The idea for refill was to be a zine or even a smaller, you know, more official publication. And then I decided that it would just work better digitally for me. But that was the original idea for refill, to be honest.

Myke Hurley: It does. Because I think that now that I think about it, refill is basically an email zine. With what you do, which is like you, it's like you, you have a, like an introduction essay. That's the word I'm looking for, right? Like you have a kind of an essay that you write every time, which I always love. And then like a selection of related works from other people, which you add your own commentary to. So it actually does have that kind of vibe to it, which is really interesting. I'd never thought of it that way before. But now that you say it, like, I guess that actually makes a lot of sense.

Brad Dowdy: And if I can also add that one of the selling points to a zine for me is that it's never strives to be the perfect example of what it's trying to be, right? There's flaws and there's emotion. And, you know, there's things that, you know, you wouldn't necessarily see from an advertising or marketing firm in there because it's coming either from a singular person or a collective. And I try to put that through in refill, right? It's not too glossy, right? It's not, it's not too perfect. It's not too, you know, white glove and white tablecloth, right? It's, it's, it's a little bit more personal than that. And I think that's why people enjoy either refill or reading zines, right? Because it's, it's imperfect at times. And a lot of times the people writing them are imperfect human beings and they're trying to share those things about how, how, why that's okay. And why, you know, they like this weird stuff and want to share it with you. So I think that's an important part of, you know, the, the, the zine idea, right?

Myke Hurley: Yeah. Yeah. That's really nice. So, yeah.

Brad Dowdy: So there you go. That's why, that's why I think I've enjoyed it so much because, you know, I, I've tried to do things with that ethos. Yeah. Um, as well. And, um, it's, you know, it's a, it's a platform for all in publishing. So, all right. Ooh, I didn't, I didn't mean to get too meta on you there.

Zine Discussion

Myke Hurley: No, that was a really interesting discussion. Yeah. Did you mention the, because we got into the weeds. Did you mention the three that you put in the links here?

Brad Dowdy: Yes. Okay. So, um, useful journaling is, uh, less is from comfortable shoes studio. Uh, that I have that one on order. She shipped the first one, uh, or is about to ship the first one and already had of issue number one and is doing a second print run. It went so well. So I'm happy to see that Johnny's pencil revolution. He has several in the works. Um, and we'll have links to all these in the show notes and then the word distribution, um, as well. So we'll have links in the show notes as well. So, all right. So I want to hit a few product things that have crossed, uh, my screen here. If that's cool by you, I'm actually very interested in this first one, not from my perspective, but from your perspective, because I don't recall if we've talked about this specifically before. Um, we've had a picture. I know we've seen, we saw a picture months ago of the TWSBI VAC 700R iris, but I don't think it ever made the show notes. Because with TWSBI, as we found, they used to be really good or really bad, depending on, on how you want to put it at showing off their prototypes of amazing stuff. And it never come into fruition. And this looked like it was one of those things. It was like, well, let me see. Let's wait and see how this happens. But this is coming to pre-orders. It's starting to be able to pre-order. So it's coming into existence. I want to know what your thoughts are on this pin in general, because I have my own thoughts. Yeah. And as, as a TWSBI fan and, and, you know, TWSBI VAC 700 previous user, but I'm not sure that you're familiar with this model at all.

Myke Hurley: I never had a VAC. Uh, I always wanted one. I've always wanted one, but never found one that I wanted to go for. And plus this was back when TWSBI was a lot less, um, reliable. And so I, I, I ended up just not going for it because also to really make the most of it, you want to get their bottle as well. Uh, they have a really, they have a very cool bottle, right. That they use for their VAC filling system. Yes. Which is, if you have that, you're, you're kind of good to go and you can put anything you want in that bottle, but the bottles for the system. Um, I don't like this pen. Uh, so. I don't know. So the way that it looks, it, it's kind of a weird look where parts of the pen, the metal parts and the end of the nib, they have a kind of oil in water effect. So they're kind of like this metally rainbow effect. And I have not found a picture of it that I like. I think it's, I think it looks.

Myke Hurley: They are trying to emulate something that they are not doing a good enough job with. Like what they are trying to emulate is something we're going to talk about in a little bit, which is when you take, uh, like heat to a stainless steel. I think that's what they're trying to emulate here. I don't believe that they are doing that. I think that this is some kind of coloring. They are adding on top of metal is what it looks like to me. I don't know if you know exactly how this is made. Um, I don't. So it says chrome plated. That's the way it's described. And yeah, it just doesn't do it for me, Brad. It really looks like a fake version of something, which is what it is.

Brad Dowdy: Right. So I'm putting in a link in the show notes for you. I don't know if you've seen this, but it's the same, uh, way that Visconti, uh, made the watermark. It's like this iridescent rainbow, but this is the, this is the premium version of what you're talking about and will sear your eyeballs if you're not careful. Yeah, I hate this too.

Brad Dowdy: So we'll put that link in the show notes just so y'all can see it. It is a wild outrageous pin.

Myke Hurley: It has a kind of look of like when I was a teenager in like the 2000s, you would go on vacation somewhere and you would go to like a market. And there would be like sunglasses with this kind of treatment on them. Yeah. It looks so tacky to me. Like I don't, I don't like it. And I would not want to spend $1,596 on a Visconti that looks like this. Yeah. Especially this specific thing because of the way they styled it with all these go faster stripes all over it.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. Get some. So the, the, the radical, radical, gnarly. So the VAC 700 is only 80 bucks. I, I love how this looks.

Myke Hurley: Okay.

Brad Dowdy: I just do. But I dislike this pin. The VAC 700, I thought they were going to change this at some point and maybe they've had some minor tweaks to the original VAC 700. It is one of the most disconnected engineered pins I've ever tested out. What does that mean? Like it doesn't, it doesn't fit my hand. It's like these, like the clip doesn't go with the section and the, the piston filler, the, the VAC plunger mechanism doesn't go with the rest of the design. I don't know. It was just kind of, it seemed like a very broken apart design.

Myke Hurley: I remember people saying it's big. Right. And when you filled it with ink, it's like, it's a weirdly beast.

Brad Dowdy: It is. It is. But for what it is, it, and that's a TWSBI, that's TWSBI thing, right? For what it is, like, it's pretty darn good and it's pretty well priced. I kind of like it. I'm going to go against you there. I, but I couldn't never, I will not own one of these. I kind of want to give it another shot though. And you like get one maybe to give away, but like test it out first and see. But like, I don't need to add this to, to my collection. Did you see the nib? Like I got to find you. The nib also has, it's like a half and half coating. It's like the worst part. The nib is actually a little bit. I will kind of be on your side with the nib.

Myke Hurley: But I've also put a picture on, on, uh, from TWSBI's Instagram, like their announcement.

Myke Hurley: I really don't, I don't, I don't know why, but this just, I think it's because it's like reminding me of something else, which is tacky. It's making me feel like it's tacky, but I'm interested to see what the, what our listeners think of this. But this one is, it's really not for me, man.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. I like it and I think it's going to do well. Um, I, I don't need to own one personally. So I will, I will test someone's out when we, when we go back to pin shows next year, hopefully some point.

Myke Hurley: But I would like to see one, but I'm not going to put the money down to bring one to me.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. Yeah. Uh, keeping, keeping on the TWSBI front, someone sent me this link. Did like, did you see this? And I was like, no, I had no idea what this was. So it's called the TWSBI Eco Rose Gold Golden Horse Awards Edition Fountain Pen. Um, had you seen this before?

Myke Hurley: I think I saw it on their Instagram. I think they've posted it.

Brad Dowdy: Did you? This, I have more questions about this pin than the VAC, to be perfectly honest. Because this is like a, they're calling it an Eco, right? So it's got the Eco front end, but I'm not used to, the back end looks like a 580 of where the, all the, the mechanics of the piston are. And to, I'm interested in what is going on here. I kind of want this pin for research purposes. Yeah. Because I think the mechanics are a kind of like a Frankenstein of the 580 and the Eco. And they're definitely charging, you know, a premium for that. And I'm just curious in what's going on here.

Myke Hurley: I don't even, I guess only really, to me, the cap looks like an Eco. Eco.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. But I'm sure, I'm guessing the, the grip section is the Eco grip section. So that's the same. It's got the little fins on it. It's got the, the kind of the molded grip section of the Eco. But then the back end is, like they even have a picture that doesn't even, the comparison drawing does not compare to the pin they have sitting right next to the drawing. Which I don't, are they trying to show me it's different or are they trying to show me it's the same? Because it's clearly different. And I, I want one of these because it looks like they were fidgeting with an Eco and throwing these parts together and then made a cool, a cool pin out of it. And I want to see what, what exactly is happening. I would, I would get one of these if I could, like they're sold out. It was, they probably made very few of them. It was very limited for the Academy of Taiwan. And these are the extras.

Myke Hurley: Like they made these for the Academy Awards and then they just sold what they had left.

Brad Dowdy: Right. Which I can't imagine was that many. No. But I, I would like, at least if I don't get one, I would like someone, if someone in the community ever gets their hands on one, I want to see what the deal is because they have done something with this pin and I want to figure it out.

Myke Hurley: Yeah. It's interesting.

Brad Dowdy: It's, it's interesting to me. So anyway, when someone, someone sent me that, I was like, Oh cool. Limited edition Eco. And then I looked at it more and I was like, there's a lot going on with this that they have never put together. Yeah.

Myke Hurley: I saw it and didn't spot that, but you're totally right. There's there's, it's a bit of a mix, a mismatch of, of their product lines and makes me wonder like you, like, was this maybe the original design for the Eco or, you know, like it was a separate design for the Eco where it's like, it's a 580 mechanism, but with some kind of cheaper body and they ended up working out something that made more sense financially. I don't know.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. I was going to say it would have to be cheaper, right? The Eco, I don't want to say cheaper, but the, the Eco mechanism looks like it costs less and which is good because now we get a cool pin for like 25 bucks or whatever. So, you know, um, next one I am on, uh, I got some new Kaveco products email, like a PR email. And I, you know, it's probably in all the retailers that are getting all this and probably whoever signs up for it's getting all this, but I thought it was interesting, not Myke for what I want to talk about first, which is the Kaveco Supra in fire blue. Come on down, Michael Gubberle, get your blowtorch out.

Myke Hurley: Is he actually still doing this?

Brad Dowdy: There's no way.

Myke Hurley: There's no way.

Brad Dowdy: But it's the exact same style, right? Of torching to the pen. They did not say that he's doing these at his desk like he did with the original fire blue lily puts as the story goes. But I just can't help but bring that up anytime they do this, especially because I think the fire blue is really, really nice. Like it's one of my favorites.

Myke Hurley: This is what I'm talking about, right? This looks fantastic. The TWSBI is trying to do this and it, and it ain't it chief, right?

TWSBI Torch Pen

Brad Dowdy: Like, so this is the look. We'll have to figure out the technical parts of it because I think the TWSBI is more of a coating and this is more of a finish. And my distinction in that is that a coating will stay the same over the time where a finish will change over time.

Myke Hurley: Yeah. Well, I mean, the coating can come off. Which would be bad. But like that's one of the other properties though, right? Like coatings can wear off. The wear on a finish most of the time will just change its look. But it remains the same. Like you cannot make the Kaweco Supra look like a stainless steel pen again. Right. It's changed. Yep. Right? You have to sand it, I guess. And that's bananas. Why would you do that?

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. I have one of the original fire blues and I've used that pen so much. It is vastly different looking than when I got it, right? It just changes.

Myke Hurley: Yeah. But that's like if you bought like a brass pen, right? Like it's going to patina. Yes. It's got a patina. It's got a fancier name for what happens to it rather than wear. I mean, it's called – it's a benefit. Yes.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. So these are the – I'm talking on my butt now. This didn't really happen. But these are the Kaweco Supra stainless reject models that they took a blowtorch to.

Myke Hurley: Maybe.

Brad Dowdy: I'm only half joking. But it's smart. It's smart business because who would know? But anyway, the Supra is one of those pens I want to be better than it is. It's a really hard pen to recommend. We spoke about this pen before. If you remember – When I did my review.

Myke Hurley: Yeah. Brad did a review of it. This is the Kaweco that looks like and tries to be three pens in one. And it kind of almost fails all of those.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. What I found interesting in this email – and again, we'll link this in the show notes – is they made a point to put Kaweco refills in here for their pens. And they have two new refills, including a D1 ballpoint refill with a needle tip. And the D1, for those who don't know what that is off the top of your head, it is the tiniest refill. It's used in multi-pins or really miniature pens like the Kaweco Lilliput ballpoint. And they don't normally come with a needle tip. So this will have a .4 millimeter needle D1 refill. That is way more interesting to me than the –

Myke Hurley: What other pens would this go in?

Brad Dowdy: Oh, boy. Off the top of my head. Yeah. The Kaweco Lilliput is what they're making this for and some of their other sport refills. But let's see. I'm blanking. And so, like, the Shone pin has a D1 converter. There are several multi-pins that the D1 – Like, when I use the Sharbo, the Zebra Sharbo, those use D1 refills. So, like, in the three-pin multi-pins, the Lamy 2000 multi-pin uses D1 refills. So things like that. And it's always – there's not a lot of experimentation in D1 refills, right? Like, it's hard. Like, Zebra makes a gel D1 refill. But they're very expensive and they run out of ink very fast because it's so tiny.

Brad Dowdy: So I find this interesting. So I want to get this tested out. I'm going to correct myself. It's 0.5 millimeter. But in a ballpoint, that writes, like, a 0.4 millimeter line. So, yeah, pretty cool. So, like, out of all of the Kaweco's, you know, holiday link, my most exciting thing is the cheapest thing on the page. And that's the D1 refill. But that's just how I roll.

Myke Hurley: All right. Should we take a break here? We've actually got a few more products to talk about today and a little bit of industry news.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, totally. Because I want to hit these other topics. Let's do a break now.

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Brad Dowdy: Yeah, so there were three choices. I was kind of excited when you sent me this because we like, as a family, we like having these kind of delivered meals that we can cook ourselves. And, you know, probably at least once a month we have three or four meals from, you know, these types of kits. And this one was super customizable. So my choices were the keto and paleo plan, which is, you know, gluten, grain-free meals. Balanced living, which is, you know, meat, seafood, and vegetarian recipes. And then plant-powered, which is all vegetarian and vegan meals. So you can choose between all those. I went balanced first. I was super close to going to the vegetarian and vegan one because they look so good. And I like that type of eating anyway. But so first go, I went with balanced living. And I'm excited to get these. We really, as a family and as, you know, we're all in the COVID times, I don't get to the grocery store as much. And I know my family doesn't go out to dinner as much. So getting to have these awesome meals delivered at home and we cook them all together and we make a little event out of it. It's just cool. And I can't wait to give this a shot.

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Brad Dowdy: So I want to hit one more new product news. Then we'll get into our two kind of news topics, which I think we'll have some pretty decent conversation around. But the first one, Myke, did you see the Sailor Pro Gear British Racing Green Gold Spot Exclusive? Yeah. With that voice, I have to ask you, did you order it?

Myke Hurley: I have not ordered it. Okay. I'm tempted. Let me tell you right now, Brad. This is tempting to me. They made a king of pen out of this. Right? How good would this look as a king of pen? Oh, my God.

Brad Dowdy: They will not do that. So you're safe. I'm tempted to, is what I'm saying.

Myke Hurley: I know. But this is beautiful because it's a deep green in the body, but the grip and the finials are more, it looks like it's more see-through. This is a very, very good looking Pro Gear. I find it rare that a Pro Gear can be so simple these days and look as good as this one.

Brad Dowdy: That's very well put because I agree with you wholeheartedly, but it took me a minute, right? Like someone sent me this link. I had not seen it and they sent me the link and I just stared at it. I'm like, yes, I obviously like it. But like, what am I? I was trying to figure it out. I was like, am I missing something? It looks very simple. It's like, I see the finials. It's like the lighthouse look, right? Where the top and bottoms of the pin, they do this translucent thing like Sailor will do. But these are green translucent. It's kind of, I almost want the comments where the green section, it's almost like a trick ink window, right? Because we're so used to green ink windows and other pins, especially like from someone like Pelican. It throws me off a little bit. But I think from a store exclusive from an execution perspective, it's dead on. Like it's great, right?

Myke Hurley: Yeah. I would say the price is a little high.

Brad Dowdy: That's the new price of them, right? So the regular is 312 and the slim is what? 228? 220? Something like that.

Myke Hurley: I am more used to $250 for a Pro Gear. You know, like that is more of a price that I'm used to. So like, I really like this, but I have paused on it because over $300 for a standard size Pro Gear, you know, I feel like that that is more of a let me think about this rather than $250, which is like, yeah, I'm going to go for it. That's kind of how it's been in the past.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, and just so the record is clear, this is the new standard price. This is not a premium limited edition price. This is the new correct MSRP with the discount pricing that Sailor North America is doing in the U.S. So this is the now standard price for the Pro Gear and the Pro Gear Slim. So, yeah, you're paying the 312 if you want the big one and 220 for the smaller one, which like I have, I'm better with the 312 than I am with the 220 to be perfectly honest.

Myke Hurley: Okay. Yeah.

Pro Gear Review

Brad Dowdy: So, you know, but anyway, I think it's a great pen.

Myke Hurley: $312 for a Pro Gear is good value in the sense that Pro Gears are the best, right? In my opinion. Yeah. But my thing is that where I would be, it just makes me stop and think about it rather than where I would, if this was $250, I would have bought it already.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah.

Myke Hurley: Yeah. But over $300, I'm now thinking about it.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, it's the same reason why I didn't buy Ink of the Witch. Like, I have no interest in buying this, but I think it's a great looking pen, right? Yeah. I just don't need that many $300 Sailors that I'm not going to use. Like, I'm good. I'm good on Sailors for a while. So, speaking of Sailors, Myke, I might not be good on Sailors for that long because our good friends at Bung Box have opened an English storefront online.

Myke Hurley: It's an actual international storefront that you can go to and buy Bung Box products. This is such a big deal. You can buy pens, limited edition pens, and their inks directly in English in local currencies. You can change the currencies on the site. This is so fantastic. I am so pleased that they have done this because we've mentioned it before. It has always been possible to buy Bung Box products from anywhere around the world, but the way in which you did it was daunting and confusing sometimes.

Brad Dowdy: It's a popular email topic in my inbox. I want this pen. How do I get it? I'm like, well, you can email them and cross your fingers, right?

Myke Hurley: Yeah.

Brad Dowdy: And they get it. They're a small shop, but they do customs as well as anyone, and they want other people to have them worldwide, right? They're not shy about keeping them in-house, if you will. They want to share their work with the world.

Myke Hurley: There's no problem from their perspective, right? They have never put up a barrier for me to buy their products, but just the way in which you did it was difficult. Maybe you don't want to deal with things by receiving PayPal invoices, right? Right, right. Which is the way that they would do stuff. And it works great for me. It doesn't bother me at all, but I can understand why people wouldn't like it. But now they have some of their limited edition pens. There's some great stuff on there. I cannot believe they still have the Hello San Francisco in stock.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah.

Myke Hurley: Jump on that pen. It is a fantastic colorway for a Progress Lim. It's one of my favorites. I call it the Spider-Man pen. Because it looks like Spider-Man. But yeah. So there's some good stuff there. And I'm also like, I don't have any Mung Box inks. So I'm going to look at that at some point.

Brad Dowdy: Oh, they're some of my favorite. Yeah. They're absolutely some of my favorite. You have Ebisu Gold. I will say you do have that one.

Myke Hurley: I do. Yes, you're right. I have Ebisu Gold. Thank you.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. But this is cool. I like that they're doing this and putting forth this effort. That's kind of a big deal, I think, for a Japanese storefront to make this decision. Because they're not even close to the biggest player in their local world. But to us, like hardcore pen addicts, like Bung Box is like the Pinnacle. You know, they may not be, you know, the Nagasawas or the Kobes or, you know, the Morizans and things like that. But, yeah, it's pretty cool. So it'll be interesting to see how this goes. So there you go.

Myke Hurley: Yeah, I'm going to be intrigued to see how or if they split the really cool stuff across these two storefronts. So, like, when we get the next Sweet Love, right, Sweet Love 2021 or whatever, or Pink Love, whatever it will be, will it be available on this website at the same time, if at all?

Brad Dowdy: Right. Do you remember, like, this is how long they've been thinking about selling to international customers. At one point, before even, like, sending the PayPal invoices, they would put the item up on an Amazon storefront in the U.S. and tell you when it was there so you could go through that process just so they could get you the pen.

Myke Hurley: Do you remember that? Yeah, I remember that. Super weird.

Brad Dowdy: That's how long they've been trying to, like, accommodate their international customers, which I think is pretty cool.

Myke Hurley: But I'm just wondering, like, will, like, the hot ticket items find their way to the store? I assume so, but we don't know that yet. Yeah. And also how they handled that because my expectation was, B, that they will have two different order systems because this is not the same website platform I don't think that they use for their Japanese website because it looks and acts very differently.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. So we'll see how it goes. There's not a lot of inventory on there because, like, they're putting through all their limited stuff. This is not the bung box. If you were going to their store, storefront, this is the limited edition storefront, essentially.

Myke Hurley: Which is most of what you would want to buy.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. Yep. All right. Last news topic. I got an email this morning from my new best friend, Myke, at Uniball US. So since we had our Pilot G2 discussion and I made a couple of Instagram posts, you know, just saying, like, what other gel pens that I like. I've had Pintel reach out and now I've had Uniball reach out through Instagram. And I was like, hey, look, you know, I'd love to talk to you. I'll shoot me an email. So I got an email this morning right before the show.

Brad Dowdy: And, you know, just their marketing department just reaching out to say, oh, I spent some time on your site. I love, you know, well, I'll go through what they said because I thought it was interesting. But then they dropped in, did you know that we are going to be a standalone US company starting on January the 1st and we'll be out from under Newell as the, you know, the conglomerate Newell that owns or manages or distributes Sharpie, Rotring, Paper Mate, Waterman. You know, all those brands. Parker is another one of those brands. And I was like, no, I had no idea that Uniball is going to separate out from there. So now I'm intrigued, right? Because they have always been, they have historically been hard to talk to. Like I can get in touch with someone at Pilot in the US because they have their own US distributor. They're Pilot USA. So now they're going to have a Uniball US, I don't know what you call it, affiliate distributor. That's not going to be under the umbrella of a different conglomerate where they're just, you know, a small fish in a big pond. Now they're going to be their own fish in their own pond. So I'm interested. They're interested in sending me some products. They got some new things they were working on. They appreciated my love for the DX. And they're like, oh, I see you made a pin for that. I'm like, yes, I did. So it was pretty cool. I just found the conversation interesting because that wasn't on my radar at all. So they already have a new site up. It looks like it's separated out. And I look forward to seeing how they participate in the community. Because Pilot, on the fountain pen side, they were great. I haven't talked to their new rep yet. Their longtime rep, John Lane, is with a different company now. So I haven't talked to their new rep. But traditionally, if I needed something from Pilot, I could email them and get an answer. But generally, we would see Pilot putting their dollars in Hollywood, right? Pilot was on the red carpet. They'd have all these red carpet events and swag bags things. And all of those types of things, which is cool. That's their job. So maybe Uniball has seen that and they want to get a piece of that. But I like that Uniball has at least reached out to me and said, hey, we like what you're doing. And can we talk about some new products that we're going to release soon? And, oh, by the way, we're going to be out on our own now here in the U.S. market, which I'm obviously a super fan of that. And I look forward to working with them.

Myke Hurley: Not really sure that I'm following what makes this different, but I'm excited that you're happy about it.

Brad Dowdy: Access.

Myke Hurley: Okay.

Brad Dowdy: It's completely different from me, from my perspective. Right. To have access.

Myke Hurley: So this is better for people like yourself. And if it affects the customer, it doesn't really make a difference.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, yeah, yeah. But now if I have a question, I can get somebody. Okay. If I want to try a new product.

Myke Hurley: To them because they're a smaller company now.

Brad Dowdy: Yes. Because I can be more direct instead of having to go through the Newell maze of trying to figure out who is responsible for Uniball. Right. Are they going to do a thing?

Myke Hurley: Because if you were able to find the person who ran Uniball or whatever, it would be useful. But trying to get to that person when you're going through this massive monolith of a company is almost impossible.

Brad Dowdy: Right, right. So anyway, and it's more just, okay, I'm interested because Uniball is probably second behind Pilot in like the standard pin market in my, I think it's probably Pilot, Uniball, Pentel. Although Pentel internationally might be bigger than Uniball. It probably is actually. But anyway, to have their own offices in the US, I'm curious why and why now. So I find these things interesting. The other thing I find interesting is I think I'm going to have to change how I type Uniball out. I think they're going with the lowercase u. I think they are.

Myke Hurley: Yeah.

Brad Dowdy: And that's going to be a problem for me for a long time.

Myke Hurley: Because their website, when I added it to the show notes, we have a thing that extracts what the website title is. Mm-hmm. And that defaults to all lowercase.

Brad Dowdy: Yep. And it's in their copy as well, which is new to me.

Myke Hurley: I mean, that's how the logo looks. So they're representing the logo in text.

Brad Dowdy: Mm-hmm. But they do things like they call some things Uni and then they call some things Uni Ball. Like there's some things have just the Uni name.

Myke Hurley: Maybe the ball will be in all caps just for fun. Mm-hmm. Uni Ball.

Brad Dowdy: So like it's Uni Super Ink and Uni Ball for the pens, even though like the Uni Ball Air is not a ballpoint pen. So should that one be the Uni Air cushion tip?

Myke Hurley: Yeah, I'm lost, man. You're going to have to draw me a map to get me out of that one, I'm afraid.

Brad Dowdy: Exactly. Exactly. So these are the things I deal with when I have to write the word Uni Ball. So when I'm talking about products. All right. Beautiful. Wonderful. Wonderful. Awesome stuff.

Myke Hurley: Amazing. If you want to find show notes for this week's episode, you want to go to relay.fm slash penaddict slash 434. You do want to go to the show notes for this one. I think there's a lot of stuff that you want to have looked at. Hopefully this is not the first time you thought of this because the episode is now over. If you want to find Brad online, you can go to penaddict.com, knock.co. Congratulations on the funding of the Kickstarter campaign. Brad Dowdy. Boop, boop.

Brad Dowdy: Putting in the purchase order. It should be Friday. I should put in the purchase order. So there's Kickstarter real quick has a new status board feature on there. So you don't have to send out an update every time you do something and just want to communicate something small with your backers. It's like a status board on the front page. I can say, hey, sent the invoice today. And like that be the update. And so it doesn't get lost in the comments page, nor do I have to send out an entire update for, you know, a small update. I look forward to testing that out. I don't see that on yours right now.

Myke Hurley: But I guess I will.

Brad Dowdy: I'm guessing because I can see it on the back end, but I haven't put anything in it.

Myke Hurley: I'll keep my eye on that. Let me know when you do that, actually, because just me. I just want to see what it looks like.

Brad Dowdy: Well, I need someone to test it, right? Or, you know, I can log into a different browser or whatever. Yeah. Yeah.

Myke Hurley: Intriguing. Interesting. You can also go to spugdesign.com. Brad is penaddict on Instagram. Dowdy is on Twitter. Tuesdays, Thursdays, 10 a.m. Eastern time. Twitch.tv slash penaddict. I'm going to watch Brad's stream. I did a stream yesterday as we were recording this where I built my very first keyboard from scratch, including all the soldering. Go to mike.live and you can still see the video on demand there for the next couple of weeks if you want to watch it. I was very pleased with how it came out. So I'm going to be doing more and more of that. I'm still in a beta period while I'm working out my schedule and stuff. But soon I will be also reporting my own streaming schedule when I talk about Brad's. So I am iMike. I-M-Y-K-E on Twitter and Instagram. Thanks to Squarespace and Green Chef for their support of this show. But most of all, thank you for listening. And we'll be back next time. Until then, say goodbye, Brad. Goodbye, Brad. Goodbye, Brad.