The Pen Addict 55/transcript

The Pen Addict Podcast Transcript
Episode:	55
Title:	I'm Officially Jealous
Release Date:	May 21st, 2013
Hosts:	Brad Dowdy Myke Hurley
Guests:	No guests this episode
Additional Information
Official page:	Episode 55
Audio File:	Audio Episode 55
Podcast page:	The Pen Addict 55
Length:	5252 min <br />0.867 h <br /> minutes
Previous Transcript	Next Transcript

Brad Dowdy: Hello and welcome to episode 55 of The Pen Addict podcast, a weekly show where we discuss pens, paper, and the analogue tools that we love so dearly. And I am joined today by a man who has been purchased for $1.1 billion, the micro-tipping maven that is Mr. Brad Dowder.

Myke Hurley: Dowder. So my vowels get removed when Yahoo purchased me, is that the rule?

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, we put an R on the end. Okay, cool. I like that. Now this was actually my reserve intro today, because I tweeted earlier that I feel like I've created the best intro that I've ever come up with. But the problem is, it's related to Breaking Bad, which is not a show that you watch. Right. So, I'm not really going to explain it to you, because it won't ruin it. Um, so I am going to just say the intro. And if, dear listeners, if you are Breaking Bad fans, you can tell me if you think that this is as good as I think it is. So, my other intro today was, The One That Likes Knox, High Tech Seasenberg. Now, I think that that, I thought of that earlier, and fist, you know when you like, what's that called? When you, um. Like you pump your fist? Yeah. Yes. Like fist pumped, whatever you call it.

Myke Hurley: Yeah, you like gave it, you like gave yourself a high five.

Brad Dowdy: I did that. The One That Likes Knox, High Tech Seasenberg. I thought that was fantastic. You're not going to get it. And I'm so pleased I asked, because if you wouldn't have laughed, I would have been very upset.

Myke Hurley: I know, I know. And see, Breaking Bad's totally one of those shows that I know I would love. I've just never gotten around to watching it. I don't watch too much regular episodic type TV. But I kind of missed the boat on that. So, I need to go back. And it's one of those things on the list. Like, I've never watched Breaking Bad. I've never watched The Wire, but I know I would love both of those shows.

Brad Dowdy: Should we just rearrange the order a little bit while we're on the topic of intros?

Myke Hurley: Yeah.

Brad Dowdy: So, show mascot, Kanuni Reneshen. Just trying to say it as fast as possible. Yep. Today created for us, there's a link in the show notes, which can now be found at 5x5.tv forward slash penaddict forward slash 55. We'll come to that again in a minute. We're like going all over today with the follow-up.

Brad Dowdy: On her blog today, she has a Tumblr blog. She basically hand-wrote all of the intros that I have given you over the time that we have been doing the show. This was crazy. So, she took the time to do it. And also since then, Brad, she has typed and emailed them to me.

Brad Dowdy: That was at my request.

Brad Dowdy: So, we need to find a place for them. Because I would now, I haven't asked her this part. This is the next part. So, she can hear it on the show. So, now she probably can't decline. It's to then keep an updated and ongoing list of these. Okay. So, we need to be able to put this in a place where we can all access it. This feels perfect for a Wikipedia page. But there isn't one for the show. No. And there is a 5x5 wiki.

Brad Dowdy: I don't know if we're in that yet. And I also don't know how that is updated. I don't know who does that. I don't know if it's community driven or anything.

Brad Dowdy: But maybe I can find that out. But it feels like it's something that we could use. I'm just not. Yeah. I need to think of a way. So, if anybody has any suggestions for how we could keep this running list. Something that we could have access to. Maybe Tumblr would be good for it. Because it's multi-user. I don't know. But that's the plan. I think it would be fun to keep an ongoing list.

Myke Hurley: Yeah. It would be nice to have a living doc of it. Yeah. Because it's cool stuff. And it's kind of become your thing now. And the show's thing. And it's pretty cool. So, yeah. We talked about it before. You have all the pressure now.

Brad Dowdy: So, I was really enjoying it when reading through them earlier. And I think the one that I have, when looking back, found to be the weirdest was one of the earliest ones. Which is episode 24. In which I called you the chieftain. The grand master. The all-high wizard himself incarnate. The pen addict. The chief pen addict. Which is very weird, I think. Of all of them, that's the weirdest.

Myke Hurley: Yeah. That was a little rambly. But the one right after that. Episode 25. The evil Knievel of the pen world. I like that one. I had a couple other favorites. Episode 38. I like the defender of pen justice. I like that. When I get on my rants, I feel like that's what I'm doing.

Brad Dowdy: Fully leaded. Fully inked. Episode 40.

Myke Hurley: Yeah. And then I like the secret agent. You know, the James Bond one. Episode 46. That one was a great one.

Brad Dowdy: 00.4.

Myke Hurley: Yeah.

Myke Hurley: And then, of course, the His Bradness. Which spawned off all kinds of other drama after that.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. There was obviously episode 44 where you introduced me.

Myke Hurley: That's true. I forgot about that.

Brad Dowdy: Why was that?

Myke Hurley: We had... There was a specific reason why we did it. Someone had asked us to do something. I forget what it was offhand. But there was a specific reason why we did it.

Brad Dowdy: It was episode...

Myke Hurley: I can't remember it now.

Brad Dowdy: 44. If I listened to the episode. It was where... Episode 44, Pentervention, in which we discover that Myke has a problem. As if we didn't know it already, he goes through some of his travails, hunting down field notes for his collection, and Brad discusses both his and Myke's new field notes pages on their respective websites.

Myke Hurley: Yeah. So, that's what it was. So, we were going to talk about you having a problem. So, I felt like we'd flip it up and I would introduce you since you were going to have the addiction problem in that episode.

Brad Dowdy: And every episode.

Myke Hurley: It's become quite a problem, hasn't it?

Brad Dowdy: For everyone, including all the listeners.

Myke Hurley: Oh, the amount... I mean, I really appreciate all the listeners. And I can tell just the behind-the-scenes stuff that just the audience is growing. And I hope you all think we're doing a good job. And everyone has a lot of fun with this podcast. And I can tell by the increasing amount of tweets and posts on App.net that I'm getting where people are calling us the enablers and things like that. It's pretty cool. So, despite the fact that we're spending people's money and they're mad at us, but not really.

Brad Dowdy: Indeed.

Myke Hurley: But I can tell it's really ramping up. It's pretty funny to see the quantity of... Look what I got. Check out my new pen. I'll blame the pen addict and stuff like that. It's pretty funny. It's pretty frequent now.

Brad Dowdy: It's nice to have those new listeners. And some of them will be because of 5x5. So, we have moved over to 5x5 now, as I mentioned in the previous episodes. The show is now at 5x5.tv forward slash pen addict. And if you are listening to any episode of the show, you just go to the slash the number of the episode for the show notes. Which is a lot easier than it was before. So, for example, as I mentioned earlier, this show is 5x5.tv forward slash pen addict forward slash 55. It's a much, much easier system than what we had before. And you may have also noticed, if you're downloading the episodes, they will be much, much faster now. Much faster. So, thank you for persevering with us through the transition. I hope that you're all here. If you're not, you don't know this. But I'm sure we'll hear from you. So, there you go. If you, yeah, there you go.

Myke Hurley: Quick note to any new listeners. Because today is going to be the first day that the episode gets published on 5x5. Even though we're live. I mean, I don't want to say live because that means something else on 5x5. But the show has moved over to 5x5. But last week, it was uploaded through 70 decibels first. This is going to be the first one that's going to go through 5x5 immediately. So, if there's any new listeners out there, we'll go through the content. I'll get my contact information at the end. But, you know, I'm always available to answer any questions. If you enjoy the episode and you have questions, you know, did you do something in this episode? What episode number can I listen to? Or any questions about pen, paper, anything. Y'all can... Please feel free to hit me up. I love to get the new listeners involved. And we're definitely happy to be here.

Brad Dowdy: Also, as well, it's worth mentioning, this is kind of a show that is timeless. In that there isn't really anything news related to this show. And it also, as you listen from episode 1 to now, there is actually a clear narrative across these 55 episodes. So, I would personally suggest going back and listening from number 1.

Myke Hurley: Yeah, I would agree with that.

Brad Dowdy: I think you would gain a lot more than you would lose by weighting it out and being so far behind.

Brad Dowdy: Simply because there is a narrative in which, even if you're just following my journey from a guy who liked pens to someone who is now completely consumed by them. And also, there are pockets of discussion that take place over a certain period of time. Like when Brad truly discovered fountain pens, when I truly discovered field notes, notebooks, and stuff. And also, as well, I think I have learned a lot through listening to you every week. So, I know that people that have an interest in this stuff will have learned a lot, too, by going back and learning along with us.

Myke Hurley: Yeah, there's definitely a common thread. Like if you listen to the show as a group or in its entirety, and you can just pick that up as the episodes go on. And we talk about different things and just how it all connects together. So, I definitely agree with that. So, I'm definitely happy to be on 5x5 now. So, I just want to make sure any and all new listeners know that I'm available, Myke's available to help out in any way we can. Sure.

Brad Dowdy: And people can find our contact information, like our Twitter information at 5x5.tv. But we'll talk about that at the end of the show, as we mentioned.

Pens

Myke Hurley: Yes, sir. All right, let's get into the pens.

Brad Dowdy: So, yeah, this may be a follow-up episode today. We've got quite a bit to cover. So, the first one, I guess, is probably one for me, right? Yeah.

Myke Hurley: Well, I really want to talk about this, too, for a lot of reasons.

Retro 51

Myke Hurley: First up is the new Retro 51 pens that were introduced this week. I guess it was this week. I didn't even look at the date. But this is when I started getting notifications from people saying, did you see this? Did you see this? Just a couple days ago, it seemed like. So, what Retro 51 did, I guess it was about a year ago, they introduced a cool king and queen design. You know, like a playing card design of king and queen of spades on their pens. And then now they followed it up. They've made the ace and jack of spades. Which these are really great looking.

Myke Hurley: Oh, excuse me. You still there?

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. Are you?

Myke Hurley: What was that? What was that? What? Is Hackett on here? My Skype is just like dialing.

Brad Dowdy: Oh, really?

Myke Hurley: Yeah. It sounded like you disconnected.

Brad Dowdy: No, no. I haven't gone anywhere.

Ace and Jack

Myke Hurley: Okay. Sorry. But it was you. It made the Skype sound. It's an invasion of the Hackett. So, sorry. Anyway. The ace and jack are now available to. It's not quite a royal flush set with the ace, jack, king, and queen. But I think they're pretty good looking. I've had the. Did you ever pick up the king or queen? You got one of them, didn't you? I got the king. Okay. I thought you'd have the queen. You would think that, wouldn't you? Yeah, you would. You would. You would. But I was undecided on that one. Jetpens shipped me the queen last year for a giveaway. And I thought it was good looking. I just didn't think it was one that I would use. But, I mean, of course, Retro 51, they do a fantastic job. I mean, it's a beautiful looking pin. So, if you had the king and queen, the ace and jack is now available. But what I really want to talk about is the vintage surf wooden tornado.

Brad Dowdy: Oh, boy. Oh, boy. I'm looking for one of these. I've not. I can't see them on sale yet anywhere. I don't know if you've come across one yet.

Myke Hurley: Yeah. Art Brown. Yeah. Art Brown has them.

Brad Dowdy: I had to buy them from there before.

Myke Hurley: So, you understand the problem, right?

Brad Dowdy: What?

Myke Hurley: There's only 500 of them.

Brad Dowdy: I've got to buy one now then, don't I? Yeah.

Myke Hurley: Yeah. 500 number pieces.

Myke Hurley: I mean, if this... I've never seen a pin that's more Myke Hurley than this pin right here.

Brad Dowdy: Because he's surfing.

Myke Hurley: Yeah.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, I'm going to buy one now then. I was waiting for them to arrive at my UK stocker. But there is obviously a chance that they might be gone by then. Yeah. You ought to email them.

Myke Hurley: Sorry? I was just saying you ought to email them just to see if they're getting it. If not, order it from somewhere else if you want it. Because they're priced at a premium. They're $44 instead of, you know, like 25-ish or whatever for the regular tornadoes.

Brad Dowdy: The thing is, though, that means that they'll be more expensive in the UK. So, I'll actually be saving money by buying them. Yeah. I'm also going to pick up the, while I'm at the store, the Ace of Spades one. Because I think that's pretty cool.

Myke Hurley: That's the best looking one. Yeah. I could do without the full-sized, you know, Jack, Queen, or King. But the Ace is pretty slick. I will say that.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. I'd say the King and Queen versions. I mean, I've only got the King, but I assume they're the same because they look the same. In person, they're actually much, much nicer than the Pictures of Injustice.

Myke Hurley: Mm-hmm. Yeah. But, I mean, this surf one has me tempted. And I'm probably not going to do it. But that's a seriously cool pen. I know our friend Mary Collis already got hers because she tweeted out a picture. And she had it, you know, she had it sitting on her table, you know, at her house taking a picture of it. So, I don't know if she got it from Art Brown. You might ought to check Daily's Pen Shop. That's where I got that, the tornado, the retractable one. What's it called? I forget already. Because I never use it.

Brad Dowdy: The Snapper?

Myke Hurley: Yeah, the Snapper. That's where I ordered that one that I was going to, you know, do the follow-up on. So, I think they're a Retro 51 retailer as well, Daily's Pen Shop. But they have them at Art Brown because I saw them on the – I went and looked at the site yesterday. And they still had them. So, because I was curious how much they were. And at their store, they were $44.

Myke Hurley: But for 500 number pieces, the retailers probably aren't getting more than 10 or 20 each, I would imagine.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, I'm probably just going to go ahead and just buy it from Art Brown. Yeah. I've already got it in my cart now.

Myke Hurley: Oh, as a matter of fact, on the page, in the show notes, it's to Retro 51's Facebook page. And at the bottom of that comment section, someone has a note in there from Art Brown saying that that's where they got them from. Cool.

Brad Dowdy: I've put some links to all sorts in there.

Myke Hurley: Cool. But that's a good job by Retro 51 there. That's a great-looking pen. I'm a fan of the limited edition stuff even though it costs more money and it hits the wallet where it hurts. But I don't have too many limited edition stuff, pens and pencils and things like that, maybe a few things here and there. But I do like the idea of it just like we've always had the problem with field notes and that addiction. So, got to catch them all.

Brad Dowdy: You do indeed, don't you? Yes, sir.

Myke Hurley: Yes, sir.

Brad Dowdy: You're writing that down as the show title, aren't you?

Myke Hurley: Yeah, yeah.

Brad Dowdy: I like it. Oh, I can hear the knock. There he is, the one who knocks.

Myke Hurley: What's funny is now that we've gotten into it, I can't believe we're already doing 55 episodes. It seems like we're on episode 10. It goes by so fast. But, you know, I'm really not that unique all the time. So, I'm going to repeat one of these show titles one of these days, I know.

Brad Dowdy: I'm not sure. I'm not sure.

Myke Hurley: Because I've used that on the blog before when I was talking about field notes. Sure.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, well, field notes is the logical.

Myke Hurley: Yeah.

Brad Dowdy: The logical one for that.

Myke Hurley: Yep, yep. So, yeah, get that ordered. I want to hear about that for sure if and when you get that one. I want to see some more pictures of it, too. I want to, other than the stock 51 pictures, I kind of want to get a good feel for what that thing really looks like because it's pretty sweet.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, sure. Well, I'll have them for you.

Fountain Pen

Myke Hurley: So, that's a nice brown wooden pencil. And I have also gotten a brown fountain pen on order, which you would think is out of my realm. But I'm starting to open it up a little bit from the standard black fountain pen, silver trim type of products. And, you know, I'm trying to enjoy the pens for their design, not really trying to pigeonhole what I want in a pen kind of thing, if that makes sense. I don't know if I said that right. But, you know, I've really just kind of been stuck on the black and silver or the solid black in the case of vanishing points and things like that. But, you know, when I went to the Atlanta pen show, I had a choice when I was purchasing my Pelican to buy the all black or to, you know, branch out and do something different. And I got the blue striped edition. And I love that pen. It's a beautiful pen. I love how it looks. So back, God, it's been months now, when I did one of my fountain pen education posts on the blog, I reviewed the Pilot Custom Heritage 91 and then the Pilot Custom Heritage 912. The 912 is the larger brother, if you will, of this line. It's a bigger barrel, a larger nib. It comes in more nib options. Like I got, that's the one I have my PO nib in. Well, the 91 comes in a few different colors. And the one I got is the Yamaguri Chestnut Brown. And the theory behind this pen color, they made three colors for, well, they make four colors for the 91. They have the black and the silver. Then they made three other colors that mimic Pilot Iroshizuku inks. So this Chestnut Brown is theoretically made to, made after the Iroshizuku ink of the same color, the Chestnut Brown. So there's also a blue one. And then there's also kind of a burgundy red one. What I like about this pen is it's a little bit more lightweight than the 912. But it's still got a 14 karat gold nib. And that's important.

Myke Hurley: It's not important. That's the wrong term. This is a really good value pen. For me, I bought it used. The guy had used it one time. I bought it off the Fountain Pen Network, off the classified section. I paid $95 for it shipped. Which is about how much it would cost me if I went to one of the Japanese sites and ordered it from there. Then they would add on shipping.

Myke Hurley: Now, if I bought, if a U.S. retailer had this pen, it would probably cost me about $150. But the real value in this pen is the nib. 14 karat gold nibs, or really gold nibs in general, on any pen are about $90 to $125 premium. Does that make sense, Myke? I bought this pen, like the barrel, is nothing fancy. All the price is tied up in the gold in the nib.

Myke Hurley: So the barrel, while it's just basic plastic resin, I pretty much just bought a nib. So this whole price is tied up in the nib. So if you can get a gold nib pen for $100 or less, you're doing pretty good. Does that make sense?

Brad Dowdy: It makes perfect sense.

Myke Hurley: Okay. So that's one of the reasons why I wanted to... This was just, I bought this on a whim, and only because I'd used one before. And I reviewed it on the blog, and I enjoyed it. I thought it was a great pen. And I liked the chestnut brown color, and it just happened to come up. It was a good price. I mean, it was just kind of one of those things I couldn't turn down, because if I bought it from a U.S. retailer, number one, I can't think of a single one that carries them. Maybe nibs.com, I didn't even look to see what they are on there. It would have to be $140, $150, $160.

Myke Hurley: So I paid $95 for it. I haven't gotten it yet. It should come in probably in the next couple days or so. So we'll talk about it more in the future. But I was real happy with the purchase. And, you know, it's not an ooh-ah type of pen, but I wanted to talk about it so I could make the point about the nibs. And that's something I learned from Thomas going through his collection, that you can buy a Pelican pen for $125 with a steel nib, or you can buy the same pen for $225 with a gold nib. So when you're able to purchase a pen with a 14-carat gold nib for under $100, that's a pretty fair deal. So that was just kind of something I wanted to bring up.

Brad Dowdy: Well, I mean, just buying those two retros and the shipping required is $100. Yeah. But again, where I know that's $100, but if I was to buy them here, it would be about as expensive, not more so.

Myke Hurley: Right, right. And that's, you know, that's, again, it's part of my whole fountain pen education. You know, I didn't realize how much the gold nib weighed into the price of the pen before. Right. So people blink a lot at a $250 pen with a gold nib. Well, you got to realize that more than half of that is probably caught up in just the nib alone. Yeah. So there's some give and take there when you're looking at prices and trying to figure out what you want to purchase and why things cost the amount of money that they do. So I'm happy to get a pen like this for a pretty fair price. So I look forward to getting it in and there'll definitely be a review forthcoming when I get it. So I'm excited about it.

Brad Dowdy: Excellent stuff. Excellent stuff.

Myke Hurley: And it's chestnut brown. So that's, I'm trying to branch out a little bit. Yeah. I still, still no gold trim, but I am, there's plenty of options otherwise out there for different colors, different barrel designs and things like that. Just trying to, you know, I looked at my collection one day and it's like, everything's the same. What makes, what made me want to do you, what would make me want to use all these different pens? So adding that variety in there, I think is, um, I'm enjoying that so far. So.

Brad Dowdy: Awesome. Should I take a quick moment to thank our sponsor before we carry on?

Myke Hurley: Yeah, let's do that. We got it still. We got a lot to talk about.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. I think it's definitely going to be an all, uh, follow up episode today.

Myke Hurley: Yep. I think so.

Brad Dowdy: So I want to take a quick moment to thank squarespace.com who give you absolutely everything that you need to make an amazing website. Squarespace provide you of all of the tools to build a fantastic site online. It doesn't matter how experienced you are when it comes to building websites, you can put something online in minutes. They are a fully hosted, completely managed environment that allows you to create and maintain a beautiful website, blog portfolio, or even an online store as well. You don't have to worry about hosting, scaling or integrating with other services. Squarespace take care of the whole thing. They give you beautiful themes. They're out of this world, really clean, feature responsive web design and let your content do all of the talking. They have a drag and drop platform that makes it really easy and fun to create your own pages, which you can do in seconds and you can make your pages look however you want. They have real time statistics and analytics built right into Squarespace and there are even iOS and Android apps that let you see these and post to your site on the go too. They have a blog importer if you want to bring over your blog from somewhere else and they, you can easily set up sharing and syncing with your social media accounts. Squarespace delivers award winning 24 seven customer support that responds in minutes to queries and they also have live online workshops to help walk you through step by step everything you need to know to build your amazing site. If you sign up for one of their one or two year plans, you'll also get a free custom domain name. But if you want to pay month to month, you can easily link your current domain name that you hold somewhere else with just a few clicks. It's really, really simple. There's no credit card required to try out Squarespace. Just go to squarespace.com forward slash 70 decibels. That's seven zero D E C I B E L S. You can start your free trial there. Also, if you use that link and if you use the code that I'm going to give you in a moment, it helps directly support this show. So if you enjoy the show, go and try them out. Squarespace plans start at $10 a month for their standard plan and $20 a month for their unlimited plan. If you sign up for one year, you automatically get 20% off. If you sign up for two, you'll get 25% off. As I mentioned, you get custom domain names with the annual plans too. If you decide to purchase a plan, use the code 70 decibels five, that's 70 decibels and the number five to get an additional 10% off your first order. So go check out Squarespace, everything you need to make an amazing website.

Myke Hurley: Awesome. Thank you, Squarespace. And I keep, I keep, I keep tweaking my site and they, they make it easy to do so. So as a matter of fact, I was, I've been playing around with it so much. I felt like I needed to do a post this weekend where I said, I told everyone where all the features are, how to get in contact with me, how to, you know, use the search box and where the RSS feed is and all that stuff. So I felt, you know, they, they make it so easy to make changes. I've been making a bunch of them at one time. So I've got that post out there now for everyone who needs to know how to use pinaddict.com. You can go check out the post I made on Sunday and give you some tools to use. Awesome. Yep. So, uh, what's next on the agenda here? We got a, we got a new pilot Prera in at JetPens. Um, I guess it came in a couple of weeks ago and I'm a fan of the Prera. Myke, do you have a Prera?

Nibs

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, I do, but I don't reuse it for a while. I bought the wrong nibsets.

Myke Hurley: Okay. What did you buy? Medium?

Brad Dowdy: Uh, yes.

Myke Hurley: Yeah, that's what I thought.

Brad Dowdy: I should maybe try and go back and try that again. I haven't.

Myke Hurley: Yeah, I mean, medium still, it's pretty fine and that's a, that's a whole topic we'll cover. We'll maybe save, uh, we have a whole conversation around nibs, um, that we'll do, we'll save for maybe next week, something like that. And we'll have a long discussion about nibs and just to reiterate some points that we've made in the past. But, um, the Prera, the Prera has come in fine, medium, and broad nibs for years now. And they just introduced, well, I, JetPens just started carrying. I don't know when Pilot actually introduced it. It could have been in Japan this whole time. And it was just never carried in the States. But they introduced, JetPens now carrying a nib called the Calligraphy Medium nib. And this piqued my interest big time. One, because I don't have one of the Prera clear body pens, you know, the demonstrator type, the see-through. And I've always thought that was a beautiful looking pen. And I've never bought one. I've just held off and held off because I've already got two. I've already got a fine nib Prera and a medium nib Prera. I didn't necessarily need, it would have just been another fine nib in the, the clear body. But once the Calligraphy Medium nib came out, I was like, oh, that is really cool. I got to have that. Because as I've found, the more I've gotten into fountain pens, I'm liking the, I can't use a broad nib, a standard broad nib. But I love stub and Calligraphy and Italic type nibs, you know, that kind of squared off nib.

Brad Dowdy: You're crazy.

Myke Hurley: I think, and it is crazy. It works well with my print style handwriting. That's a good, you know, one of the challenges that we all have when we're trying to buy pens and why I get so many emails is what's the best pen for me. Sometimes it's, it's trial and error. I would have never thought that a stub nib or a Calligraphy nib would be a really good fit for my style of handwriting. I was always extra fine, fine. And now I love writing with this type of nib. So when this one came out, I definitely had to order one. So I've just got it. It should be here. Gosh, it might be here today. It should be here soon. And I'll talk about it more once I get to use it. But I'm excited about it because it looks like a pretty narrow nib. They call it a medium nib. It looks pretty, compared to the other stub nibs I've used. Like I've got a TWSBI 580 1.1 millimeter stub. And I've got a TWSBI mini 1.5 millimeter stub. This looks smaller than the 1.1 millimeter. So I'm really, really anxious to get it in my hands and see what it's all about. So have you ever had the opportunity to use a different type of nib? Like a flat nib? Like a stub or a calligraphy? Anything like that?

Brad Dowdy: I haven't. It's making me feel like I should try it out. These Prera... I mean, but the thing is with that, though, I don't really do a lot of ink testing. So I probably wouldn't use the pen very much. I can't imagine you would use a pen like this as a daily driver.

Myke Hurley: You would be shocked. Oh, really? You'd be shocked. Yeah, I got my vanishing point, my old school vanishing point modified at the Atlanta pen show. It was a medium nib. And I got Myke Masuyama to turn that into a stub nib. I use it constantly. It's one of my... It's one of the top two or three pens I use on a weekly basis. And I use it just for regular writing. You would be shocked. Especially... You wouldn't want to use... I wouldn't want to use a super, super wide one, like the 1.5. Even the TWSBI 1.1, it's too broad for just regular writing. But the smaller width ones, I think, work well for everyday writing. And I'm thinking that's along the lines of what this one might be. When I get it in my hands, I can't wait to see.

Brad Dowdy: These clear Preras are even nicer looking than the original ones. And they remind me a lot of TWSBI's.

Myke Hurley: Yeah, I think they're beautiful. For years and years and years, I've always wanted one of these. It was really difficult to pick which color I wanted because they all look great. Which color would you have gone with?

Brad Dowdy: I would go for either orange or green. Yeah, gosh.

Myke Hurley: I couldn't narrow it down. I had orange in the cart for a couple weeks. Ever since it came out, I had orange in the cart. Then I switched to the light blue. And then I ended up going with the darker blue. So I couldn't make up my mind. They're all really good looking. I didn't want to go with the black just because that one really looks like the TWSBI's that I already own. The green I considered too. So it was a tough call. But I went with the darker blue. What do they call it? Clear blue instead of the light blue. So we'll see. Because I use so many blue inks and blue-black inks. I think it'll look good in there. So that was kind of a consideration. The vanity consideration, if you will. How good is it going to look?

Myke Hurley: Do you match your inks to your pen barrel?

Brad Dowdy: I don't yet. I mean, because another thing for me is really... I don't really use a lot of inks.

Myke Hurley: Yeah, that's true. That's true. I don't necessarily try to match them. But on the clear barrel pens, I do consider how it's going to look in the pen. So I won't have something really off-putting in the pen. I know a lot of people do that. Match their inks to their pens. Even if it's just like the chestnut brown pen that I got, they would use brown inks for that pen. I won't go that far. But I do find it hard to use a really different ink color from the pen barrel color. I don't know. Sorry. I'm getting weird on you. But it's a consideration. And it's amazing how many people think that way. I bought this pen, so now I have to buy an ink to go in it. That's going to be the ink for that pen. And I get these emails all the time and read all this stuff. So yeah, we have problems, dude.

Brad Dowdy: Oh, for sure.

Myke Hurley: And the worst problem is I could sit here and talk about ink colors and pen colors for another 30 minutes, and that's what's scary.

Myke Hurley: And we didn't even have that. That's not even a discussion item. But I know people take that stuff seriously about how they match up their inks to their pens. It's all good. It's good stuff. But now I got to – did you have something you want to talk about or do you want me to switch it up real quick? Because I got a real outlier here for me.

Brad Dowdy: No, go. Keep going. Keep going.

Myke Hurley: All right. So I did something crazy, and I've kind of alluded to this on Twitter at least, if not app.net, that I might have a new problem coming up. I don't think it's going to be as bad as the fountain pen problem that I have going right now. I don't think it's going to be quite that bad. But I'm starting to get fascinated a little bit and wanting to learn a little bit more about woodcase pencils. So JetPens, you've probably seen on a bunch of our friends' blogs, they've been talking about the new Blackwing Pearl.

Myke Hurley: JetPens is going to have those coming out this week. And they sent me a box to check out. And knowing that I had this new woodcase pencil come – and I've reviewed the old Blackwing, not the original Blackwing, but when Palomino Brands came out with the Blackwing last year or two years ago. I reviewed that one. But I've never had – I thought I needed a better pencil sharpener to do these. I've just had the little handheld pencil sharpener or something you used in first grade or elementary school. And I never felt I had anything really nice. So I looked at my friend – I talked to my friends, Andy from Woodclenched and Johnny from Pencil Revolution. They're the woodcase pencil gurus that – my go-to guys for when I have questions about woodcase pencils. And we'll link to their sites in the show notes. And I asked them – I said, I want like a desktop sharpener, something that you would find like in elementary school, like the one that was attached to the wall or to the desk, that was bolted down. Just a little bit more serious than a little pencil sharpener you hold in your hand and throw in your backpack, something like that. So they both pointed me to this product. It's from a company called Classroom Friendly Supplies, which makes sense. And it's just a – some of these pencil sharpeners can get seriously expensive. Like some of my friends, like Topher and – I forget the guy's name that writes this site called – I'm going to butcher the name – Blystift.de. I link to him all the time in Ink Links. There's this Fabric Castle pencil sharpener that's like $350.

Pencil Sharpener

Myke Hurley: I mean, pencil sharpeners can get to be serious business. But both Johnny and Andy recommended this Classroom Friendly Pencil Sharpener. And it was, I think, $25 shipped. And I was like, great. That's totally in the budget. I was going to spend up to like maybe $50 to get like a real nice sharpener. But they said, this one's great. It's about $20. And you'll like it. I got this thing in the same day. I got these new Blackwing Pearls in. And I put it together and threw the first pencil in there. And I was stunned with what came out of that pencil sharpener. And I've got an image of the tip that it put on this pencil.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah.

Myke Hurley: I have never seen anything like this before in my life. Stabby. Stabby. I still haven't used it because I'm so scared of it. This isn't your mama's Kuru Togger, is it? No. No. I mean, you know, I don't know if I'm going to become, you know, a wood pencil guru. Just because I don't think I will use them that much, to be quite honest. But I like the idea of it. I like the utility of it. I like how there's a whole other world of products to discover out there. I don't know that I will be a hardcore user of pencils just because I don't like to write in pencil that much. But when I see something like this, something as good a quality pencil as these Blackwings are, and then combine it with a new tool like this classroom-friendly pencil sharpener, and I end up with something like this, it fascinates me. And just kind of gets the ball rolling. I was like, okay, you know, we're going to have Andy on the podcast one day. I keep telling him I need to get him on, and we'll talk pencils. I want to get a little bit more learned about pencils, so I'll have some good questions for him and things like that. But we will do that soon, and we'll have an all-pencil episode of the pen addict. But I could see this being a problem just because of the quantity and depth of products out there for pencils. It's just like anything else, like with these pens. You would not believe, you know, when I started this blog, I wouldn't believe that I would be finding all these products, all these pens in different sizes and everything. And it's the same way with pencils, and I haven't even scratched the surface on that. And so, yeah, that could be a serious, serious problem for me. But we'll see how it goes. I just got to get using them more, get more comfortable with the pencils, and go from there. But it looks like it could be fun. So we'll see. We'll see how that goes. Cool.

Myke Hurley: All right. So we got some good mail last week, and you did too, right? You get a nice package in the mail from our friend Myke Dudek.

Brad Dowdy: Yes, listener of the show.

Myke Hurley: Hi, Myke. Hey, Myke. Myke's a listener, and he reached out to Myke and myself. It's been a couple weeks ago. And what he does is, just for fun, he does different woodworking projects at home. And he has been making these pen holders for, like a desktop pen holder, like with round openings to stand your pens vertically on your desk, if you will. And he'd sent the image to me, and I said how much I enjoyed them. And he said, well, let me make one for you and Myke. I was like, whoa, that's really, really nice. So why don't you talk about it real quick and tell me what you got.

Brad Dowdy: Cool. So what Myke sent us was a beautiful, I believe it's walnut. I've got his letter here, so I'm going to check.

Myke Hurley: Yeah, I believe it's walnut.

Pen Holder

Brad Dowdy: It's a walnut pen holder. So it's basically like a block. It's got like a window in the middle that you can see through. And there's 15 sort of holes in there that fit most pens. And he said to me very specifically that it fits the Retro 51, which I can verify. And I'm very happy that it does. So that's awesome. So he sent us those. And we also got these other things. And I've included a picture that you posted to Instagram of a wooden iPhone amplifier.

Myke Hurley: Yeah, I guess that's the best thing to call it. It's like an amplifier made out of a block of wood.

Myke Hurley: It's wicked cool. I've used it several times already. I've been using it when I work at home at night to play music or listen to podcasts from my phone. Because I don't have – I usually listen to podcasts on my laptop at work. So when I have my phone at home, I don't really have a speaker I hook them up into and listen to. So I've been using this. And that was actually a picture of me using it that night just to listen to podcasts. I was surprised when I got – at first I didn't know what it was. Did you when you took it out of the box?

Brad Dowdy: Because I'd seen your picture.

Myke Hurley: Oh, okay. That's right. Yeah. It's a little bit slower to the mail over there. I only got it today. Yeah. We didn't exactly get them at the same time. But it's really well done.

Myke Hurley: It's just cool. It's like an amplifier. You sit the phone in the top and it just amplifies the sound out through – it's got like a small notch in the dock section, if you will. And that goes into the bigger speaker section. And it amplifies the sound wonderfully. I thought it was fantastic.

Brad Dowdy: His products are really, really well made. Like really well made.

Myke Hurley: He does a good job. And he's actually – I don't know if he relayed this to you or if you picked up on it from me. He actually lives near Karis Customs and his friend with our friend Dan who makes the Render K and the Bolt and things like that and who we've had on the show. So he actually goes into Dan's shop from time to time and they talk turkey. So he's good buddies with them.

Brad Dowdy: Oh, boy, do I know. And I'm going to get to that in a second. But just before, Myke has a site. He has a website that I put in the show notes. He didn't ask me to do this. But we were talking because he's such a cool listener. He set up a Squarespace 6 site. Nice. And I think people should go to it because his photography of his equipment is beautiful. And it's clickypost.com is his website.

Myke Hurley: I love that name. That's a fantastic name.

Brad Dowdy: And I'm going to put one of the posts in the show notes because it's about a Render K that I have been sent.

Myke Hurley: Ooh, look at you.

Brad Dowdy: So basically Myke said, oh, I'm popping in to see the guys at Render K because he heard the show that we did. We have Dan at Karas Customs. And he said, I know that you don't have one. Would you like me to pick one up for you while I'm there? And we can sort of sort that out. And I was going to send in the money over. And I was like, oh, yeah, great. I would love that. Because then it obviously would save me money on shipping and stuff. Because Myke was going to send it all over together.

Brad Dowdy: So he said that he got that stuff. And then he told me, oh, I got you one. Send it over. And we'll sort that out later. So my package arrived this morning. And there's a great handwritten note from Myke. And this is what he said.

Brad Dowdy: He basically has sent me three Render Ks. So I have an orange Render K, which was the one that I asked him to get me. And I have read, I have a white Delrin plastic Render K. And this is from Myke's letter. It says these are like unicorns, as they only made a small batch when they are experimenting with materials. So I have one. I have a plastic Render K. And I also have a rod stock Render K. With these, they only machined the inner parts and cap threading. This is what a Render K looks like before it becomes a Render K. So it's not tapered in any way. So it's like the width of the cap in its hole. It's just like one piece.

Myke Hurley: Yeah, like a block, but rounded.

Brad Dowdy: So that's what I have. I have two very rare Render Ks now.

Myke Hurley: So my, when you said he posted about it, I went over to the, to his site, which is fabulous looking. And it's now subscribed. And now you will see some in Inklinks going forward. I scrolled down until I saw, all right, what Render K post does he have? And then I went to that Delrin post and my jaw dropped. I was like, no way does Myke have this pen.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, I do.

Myke Hurley: That is cool. Literally my jaw dropped. I've never, I've never even seen that. He didn't even like show me this picture of it. Dan's never sent me a picture of that. I didn't even know it existed. So yeah, that's the, the, the benefit of living nearby those guys. You get to drop by the shop and see all the cool things they're working on. But that pen is fascinating looking. I mean, yeah, it's, um, it's like a, it's like a molded plastic version of the Render K.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. It's like acrylic, I think. Okay. So I guess this is, as I said, this is what they would playing around with. I mean, I haven't read Myke's post cause I just saw that he had a post on it after, you know, I recognized it.

Brad Dowdy: But it's, yeah, it seems like it was what they were, I guess, deciding what they wanted to make the pens out of.

Myke Hurley: Yeah. I think it's probably like a prototype.

Render Ks

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. And I have one.

Myke Hurley: Damn. That is cool. I'm, I'm officially jealous. That is really neat.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. I'm very, very pleased actually. So thank you, Myke. And, and, uh, yeah.

Myke Hurley: Does it look as good as it does in the pictures? I think it's really good looking.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. It's, it's really, it's really sort of striking.

Myke Hurley: Yeah.

Brad Dowdy: Cause it's got the metal clip still.

Myke Hurley: Well, cool. We'll definitely link that in the show notes. Y'all should go check this out because I've never seen this before.

Brad Dowdy: And, uh, and I've, I've taken a picture on Instagram, which I posted during the show. So you wouldn't see it. Um, I'm going to put that in the show notes too, of my, my new render K collection in all of its glory.

Myke Hurley: Sneaky Brit. I know. That's what I am. So what, that was awesome. That is too cool. So what do you, what do you think about the orange one?

Brad Dowdy: Oh, I love it so much.

Myke Hurley: Yeah. That's a fascinating, fascinating pen. It's like really neat.

Brad Dowdy: It's like 70 decibels orange.

Myke Hurley: Yeah. It's one of those pens when I pick up, I look at it as much as I use it just cause it's that nice. I think.

Brad Dowdy: So this is where I need your help now.

Refills

Myke Hurley: Okay.

Brad Dowdy: So yeah. Thanks. Thank you so much, Myke. Um, yeah.

Myke Hurley: Thank you, Myke. We really appreciate it.

Brad Dowdy: And thank you, um, guys. Uh, thank you. Carous Customs guys. Yes. Thanks, Dan.

Myke Hurley: Carous is, uh, definitely a good, good friend of the show. Yeah. Dan, uh, Dan's a super guy.

Brad Dowdy: Big, big fans of Carous Customs. They do good work. Um, so I now have Render Ks, so I need refills for them.

Myke Hurley: Okay.

Brad Dowdy: And I want your help. So I have, um, a Hitek Z refill. Mm-hmm. Um, but I want something that would be more, um, more fitting to my, uh, my sort of, the sort of pen that I enjoy, basically. Sure. So my understanding is it takes the Parker style G2 refill. Is that correct? Is that right?

Myke Hurley: I'll have to look at, you know, I, honestly, I don't know offhand which exact one it takes. I know the Bolt takes some, uh, Parker style refills. I'm not sure what the regular Render K takes. I mean, I see, pop out that refill in the, uh, in the Delrin if you have it handy. And is it, is it a shorter refill than a G2 refill or does it look like a G2 refill?

Brad Dowdy: Uh, well, I'm using a Hitek Z and I actually haven't got any refills in it.

Myke Hurley: Okay. Okay. I'm just looking at, I'm looking at, um, Myke's picture and he's got, um, you know, like a conical tip, uh, pin in there. Um, the standard Parker refill is going to be like the, the Moleskine gel refill. I don't know if that's compatible with the Render K. We'll have to do some research on this. I, I've got a bunch of stuff I can play around with and see because I don't think there's a standard Parker that's like a G2 style. The G2 styles are going to be more like a Uniball Sino, um, RT. Those are probably going to fit. Yeah.

Brad Dowdy: Cause they do, this is what was confusing me, right? Because they do a G2 one, but on the site, this, I looked at the Kickstarter site, it says that they take the Parker ones and the Hitek C. Mm-hmm. So I actually have a Moleskine.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah.

Myke Hurley: I think that's going to be too short.

Brad Dowdy: Oh, there's a converter that they put in.

Myke Hurley: Oh, it's got the, it's got the little, uh, the little block. Then that might work.

Brad Dowdy: No, it doesn't fit. It's a little too tight. So I need to work out what, what, what they actually do take.

Myke Hurley: Okay. And I'll work on that too. And any listeners out there, let us know. Um, I know a bunch of y'all have the render case and I, I'm, I'm a big high tech C fan. So that's pretty much all I've been using in mind. So I haven't really played around with what other refills fit it well. Um, but I've got a bunch I can test for you, Myke. And any listeners who have, um, the render K and don't use high tech C refills, let us know which ones you use, shoot us a tweet or, or something, get in touch.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. I would like to know basically people know what I like, right? That I like something like the retro 51, I guess that sort of refill.

Myke Hurley: Yeah. I think we, you would be able to find, um, something that Schmidt makes honestly, that will be, that will fit that. Cause they have a huge, they have a lot, such a wide range of sizes and that's the quality that you're looking for in the refill.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. See, there are Schmidt Parker style, but I need to make sure it's the correct.

Myke Hurley: Yep.

Brad Dowdy: Style. Because if the Moleskine one is a G2 style, then that doesn't work because it doesn't fit. And I now have the end stuck in.

Brad Dowdy: I now need to try and find a way to remove.

Myke Hurley: But we'll ask Myke too, because I see he, he's got something different in that Delrin, which it should be the same physical dimensions as the render K, but he, he has a conical tip refill in there. So we just need to figure out what it is and then we can match the size and go from there. But I think you should be able to get a good, you know, like a Schmidt easy flow, something like that. That'll, that'll be compatible with, with it and that you will enjoy very much.

Brad Dowdy: Excellent. Right. We need to wrap up the show because I now need to record Bionic from Alexander.

Myke Hurley: Yes. I didn't even see what time it was. So yes, we will do that.

Brad Dowdy: And we were, we were going to have a quick show. It's 52 minutes.

Myke Hurley: Yeah. We said, let's keep this one to about 30. And we said, yeah, that should be no problem. And look at us now. So that's, that's what we do best.

Brad Dowdy: We even had a topic. So you can find us online, go to penaddict.com for Brad's site. He is dowdy, D-O-W-D-Y on app.net, dowdyism, D-O-W-D-Y-I-S-M. On Twitter, I am iMike, I-M-Y-K-E. Thank you very much for listening to this week's episode of The Pen Addict. I am Myke and he is Brad. Until next time, bye-bye. Bye.