The Pen Addict 56/transcript

The Pen Addict Podcast Transcript
Episode:	56
Title:	Them’s Fightin’ Words
Release Date:	May 28th, 2013
Hosts:	Brad Dowdy Myke Hurley
Guests:	No guests this episode
Additional Information
Official page:	Episode 56
Audio File:	Audio Episode 56
Podcast page:	The Pen Addict 56
Length:	5050 min <br />0.833 h <br /> minutes
Previous Transcript	Next Transcript

Myke Hurley: Hello and welcome to episode 56 of The Pen Addict podcast on 5x5. This is a weekly show where we discuss pen, paper, and the analogue tools that we love so dearly. My name is Myke Hurley and I am joined today by the man with refillable insides and an eraser for a brain, that is Mr. Brad Dowdy.

Brad Dowdy: That is awesome. Thanks. How you doing?

Myke Hurley: Good, how are you? Yeah, I'm good, man. I'm really good.

Brad Dowdy: Good. You sound good. You sound refreshed, raring to go.

Myke Hurley: Yeah. Yeah, super excited for my holiday in a couple of weeks.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, yeah. And me, not so much. I had a long party weekend here at the house. I haven't been doing any pen or paper action. I've been pretty quiet on the internet. I was kind of not fully off the grid, but probably since Friday till right about now, I have not really been online very much. I haven't picked up a pen until right now for this episode for days. Wow. Can you remember how to write? Yeah, no, it's hard sometimes. When I don't pick up a pen for a day or two, I start to miss them. I have to go look at them all and decide what I'm going to use.

Myke Hurley: Do you feel like you have to apologize?

Brad Dowdy: I do. I do. I feel guilty. I was like, oh, I'm sorry I left you guys inked up this whole weekend and didn't use you. Are you dirty now? Do you need a bath?

Myke Hurley: I have. I don't. I don't even know where to go with that. So I figure we should probably just move into the first topic.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, that's true. We probably should.

Brad Dowdy: So last week you were talking about different kind of refills. For what in particular were you looking for?

Render K Pens

Myke Hurley: So I was looking for, I mean, we were talking about my new collection of Render Ks from the Fantastic Rows Customs.

Brad Dowdy: Something that would fit a Render K. Yeah.

Myke Hurley: Yeah. So I was asking for some suggestions for things that would fit that. So we worked out that they were Parker refills. So I was looking for something along those lines.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. Did you get some good answers? Because I didn't really come up with anything great. I mean, you know, I use the, aside from the high tech C that I use in the Render K, I use the, what's it called? Fisher Space Pen is the park style, you know, with the cap. We talked about that last week. That's something I use. I didn't know if you got any good feedback from the crowd on that.

Myke Hurley: So I actually got a handful of responses really sort of ranging. And what they were kind of telling me was, you know, I should go for X, Y, Z. I got a bunch of people suggesting Schmidt refills because people know that I love the retro line and that they're the guys that make the retro inks, aren't they? That they rebrand. I believe they're Schmidt, aren't they? They're Schmidt inks.

Brad Dowdy: Yep. Yep. And Schmidt's going lots of other brands too. They're excellent quality cartridges.

Myke Hurley: So I got those. I got suggested those quite a lot. You've put one in the show notes, the Schmidt P8126 capless rollable pen refill.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. And that was actually for the retro 51. I don't know if it fits the Render K.

Myke Hurley: Yeah. So that one does look like it wouldn't. In all honesty, that looks like it wouldn't fit. Yes. Have I got that in for the wrong part then?

Brad Dowdy: Yes. I was going to talk about that in the retro 51 part.

Myke Hurley: So I moved the notes around incorrectly after you moved the notes. So what I am trying to do at the moment is to check my previous order, an order that I just placed through Colt Pens. But I cannot find the previous order thing. But I can tell you what I got and then I can just... All right. So I bought a few different ink refills from them. I bought the Schmidt 900M Easy Flow refill.

Myke Hurley: Okay. I bought the Schmidt P900B Ballpoint Pen Refill. The Schmidt P900M Ballpoint Pen Refill. Myke Dudek suggested the P900. So I'll try bold and medium. Myke Dudek, who actually sent me the pens in question from last week. Then I tried a couple of extras. I've tried one extra, actually. It was the Schneider Express 735 Broad. They were what I went for. Gotcha.

Myke Hurley: So just... I'm waiting for them to come in. They should probably arrive tomorrow.

Brad Dowdy: Those are all rollerball styles except for one ballpoint?

Myke Hurley: Yeah. They're all rollerball except the one ballpoint. Well, two ballpoints, actually. The Schmidt P900 are both ballpoints. So I'm going to see how they come out. But the Dude, as I'm going to call him, instead of Dudek now, he will be the Dude forevermore. Okay. I like that. Sold. He suggested... He said that I would like them. So I will take his word on it. And I'll see what comes out. Cool. But I made another purchase. Uh-oh. Whilst on the Colt Pens site, I was like, I cannot just go to a pen website, a fantastic site like Colt Pens, and just walk away with four refills with the total cost of like six pounds. I was like, that's not... That's not how it works here, is it? Who am I? I'm a pen addict for freak's sake. I have to do... I can't just buy some refills and leave it at that. Can I, Brad? You know these things.

Brad Dowdy: Absolutely not.

TWSBI Diamond Mini

Myke Hurley: So I bought something I've been hankering for for a while. It's a TWSBI Diamond Mini.

Brad Dowdy: Oh, cool. I forgot. Forget about that. That's a fantastic pen.

Myke Hurley: So I figure I love my TWSBI. It's the pen that I use all day, every day now. So why not try the mini ones? Because I've been looking at the... What's the new one? The 580?

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, the 580.

Myke Hurley: But I want to get one of those in a color. Yes. And all that seems to really be widely available, or just available in any way at the moment, is the clear one.

Brad Dowdy: Yes. Yeah. No, that's all that's available right now.

Myke Hurley: So I figure I will wait for that.

Myke Hurley: But what I'm... I did actually go for the clear with the mini, though. Because I think it looked the nicest. Which is kind of weird that I'm doing it that way, but...

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, I had a hard time choosing myself. I mean, I went with the fully clear one. I didn't like the... It was either all black or all clear. I didn't like the one that was kind of mixed up.

Brad Dowdy: But yeah. What nib did you get?

Myke Hurley: Oh, yeah. This is the... I can't believe I didn't even think of this. Guess. Guess what I got. This is the big part of it. I can't believe I forgot to mention this. This is the whole point I wanted to bring it up today. I'm so pleased you reminded me. Guess what nib size I got.

Brad Dowdy: 1.5 stub.

Myke Hurley: 1.1 stub.

Brad Dowdy: Oh, good. Cool. Because that's... I think you're going to like it.

Myke Hurley: That's what you have, right? 1.1?

Brad Dowdy: I have one of each, actually. I have the 1.5 in the mini and the 1.1 in the 580.

Brad Dowdy: And honestly, there's not a lot of difference between those two. Every time I use the 580 with the 1.1 and I have it inked up, I look... I always have to check the nib. I'm like, are you sure this isn't 1.5? Because it's not super fine. So it's barely smaller than the 1.5.

Myke Hurley: Which I love on both. I can imagine once you get to that sort of range, the difference is so minimal once you're at that sort of thickness. But yeah, I thought, why not give it a go? I mean, after last week, and you were like... You really surprised me by saying, yeah, I write in it. I was like, really? I was like, okay, I'll give it a go.

Brad Dowdy: So I'm giving it a go. I'm interested to see what you think, especially from a left-handed perspective. It's a little bit different feel, a little bit different style, especially cursive, which you write in, right? I mean, like I'm a print style writer. You write more in script cursive, right?

Myke Hurley: Well, I flip-flop, but yeah, I do write in cursive. Yeah, that's right. But I go between cursive and script.

Brad Dowdy: Okay. So yeah, I'm interested to see, get some feedback from you, just to broaden my knowledge on how someone would feel with that type of nib in your type of handwriting. So yeah, that'll be awesome.

Myke Hurley: That will be awesome. We shall see. Yeah. It's going to be exciting.

Brad Dowdy: So what are you going to ink it with?

Myke Hurley: Well, I mean...

Brad Dowdy: You should know these things before you even order.

Myke Hurley: Yeah, I mean, well, I've still only got the one, what I consider a really good bottle, you know, which is the Pilot Ireshizuku. So I figure I should probably get some more ink, but I've not jumped into that yet. I'm probably just going to put the Ireshizuku in it and see where we go from there.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, that'll look awesome. And that stub nib, that Konpeki, is going to be awesome. You'll probably never want to take that out. That's really a perfect choice. But I shall see. But what I need to do, I need to send you an ink sample because I've developed quite the ink problem.

Myke Hurley: Well, I still have. I still have these ink samples here.

Myke Hurley: Where are they?

Myke Hurley: So yeah, so I still have these ink samples from Joe that he sent us. So I'm probably going to try these out first because I've got some of the Noodlers Bernanke. Is that how you say it? Bernanke? Yeah. Bernanke? I have no idea.

Brad Dowdy: Bernanke.

Ink Samples

Myke Hurley: I still have those. And I saw you did a review. Is it Bernanke Black?

Brad Dowdy: Blue. Blue. I did the blue.

Myke Hurley: And how quickly the dry time was. Yep. So I might, when that comes in actually, give the blue or the black, well, blue and black a go because I've only got a little bit of age and then maybe that will help inform me to buy a new ink too. Okay, cool. Did you do just a straight review of those? Yeah, there it is Bernanke Blue. That'll be in the show notes.

Brad Dowdy: Just the blue. I haven't done the black yet, but I plan on it because I was pretty impressed with the blue.

Myke Hurley: I'm going to put it in the show notes. So I want to mention again to people, because I've had a couple of queries about the show notes. So you can find show notes now, because obviously they have moved. They're not at 70 decibels anymore, because we've had some people that used to go there and have been going there. So one listener whose name has escaped me now, so I'm sorry, I've forgotten your name, but thank you and I've done what you suggested, which is to put a link on the 70 decibels page for anybody that was going there to find the show notes. They are now at 5x5.tv and this episode is slash penaddict slash 56. So it's really easy to get to them now, because before you couldn't just type it in, but now they'll always be at penaddict slash the number of the episode. So it's really simple. And all of the shows are at 5x5.tv forward slash penaddict. That's much easier than it was before. Yes. So people can find them all there. So that's great. Fantastic.

Myke Hurley: What should we talk about next?

Brad Dowdy: Well, since you brought it up, I did a couple of things too, as far as shopping goes online, and I forgot about it till you mentioned it, but I placed my first cult pens order.

Myke Hurley: Excellent.

Brad Dowdy: And it was around, what made me think of it as talking about inks. I ordered some inks that I can't get from U.S. vendors.

Brad Dowdy: So that was one of the reasons why I went to cult pens for them. And one of them is one I wanted to try, and it's the standard, the Pelican blue-black. You know, I can get every color of Pelican in the U.S. except for the blue-black. And I apologize I didn't do my full research, because this just popped into my head as we were talking. But there's a specific reason why the blue-black is not available in the U.S. It uses some, one of the ingredients is like on the banned list.

Myke Hurley: Oh, my.

Brad Dowdy: For sale in the U.S. So I was actually surprised. So I just ordered it up from the U.K. and got it shipped over here. But I don't even know what the ingredient is. Someone who listens to the episode, they can send me a link, or I can find it pretty quickly afterwards what it is. But it's just, for whatever reason, it's just like on the banned list. And I don't know why, but I'm willing to take that chance, because I have a blue-black ink problem, as I noted on today's review on the blog. But I'm excited to get that. I actually try to have a sample of that that my friend Thomas sent me. I really enjoyed it. So I wanted to order a couple bottles from them, and they carried it. And then the other ink I ordered from them is a really cool one, one I'm excited to get, and one you can only get from Cult Pens, because they had Diamine make them a special ink. That's the Cult Pens ink. It's called Diamine Cult Pens Deep Dark Blue. And like I said, I'm a fan of blues, and especially dark blues and blue-blacks. And this looks like an awesome, awesome color, and it's a special formulation, only through Cult Pens. So I was really excited to get that and try it out. So we'll see. It hasn't come in. I expect to get that order this week. I think I ordered it at the beginning of last week, and I think it should probably come any day now. I actually thought it might be here today, but it's not. So anywho, that was my first Cult Pens order, and it was really because I wanted these inks, and I can't get them anywhere else. I mean, you can find the blue-black from different other European vendors, but not the Diamine Deep Dark Blue, special formulation for Cult Pens.

Myke Hurley: Awesome.

Brad Dowdy: So that is awesome. I look forward to those. And yeah, I think I'm going to put you, I'm going to make me a note here. I'm going to put together a sample pack for you of some other inks. I know you're not a big ink swapper like I am, you know, switching things out constantly, but I'll shoot you over a few things here eventually. Some of my favorites, not just any random stuff. Some I think you might have a chance at liking. See if I can spend some more of your money.

Myke Hurley: That would be definitely. I mean, I would like to have more, but it's just buying them. Yeah,

Brad Dowdy: it gets out of hand pretty quick, honestly.

Myke Hurley: Yeah, just because of the space that bottles of ink take up as well. I mean, and I know that there are loads of programs you can be on where you can get testers, but at the moment, I'm not at that stage, like all the maintenance and the cleaning and that sort of stuff to try them all out. I mean, it's simple enough, and we've had a bunch of friends help us, you know, in some tips for cleaning them out, but I don't feel like I'm at that point right now.

Retro 51 Pins

Brad Dowdy: Right, right, right. Right. So, the other thing that happened, you know, in the past week or so, was everyone started getting their Retro 51 vintage surf pins, got them in.

Myke Hurley: Yes, they did.

Brad Dowdy: And, except for you, right?

Myke Hurley: Except for me.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, so, you chastised me, before we started recording, there was a little squeaking sound going on, in my house, and, you know, it sounded kind of something like this. Oh, yeah. Damn you. So, I thought I'd do that again for you.

Myke Hurley: Oh,

Brad Dowdy: please stop that. Hopefully, no one had it turned up too loud, but I was checking out, I was looking at the refill in my Retro 51 vintage surf, which is in my hands. Just for the record, Myke, it's number 367, so you will not be getting number 367.

Myke Hurley: They're numbered.

Brad Dowdy: Huh?

Myke Hurley: Ooh, they're numbered.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, out of 500. So, up on, up just below the, the knurling on the, the twist mechanism, um, is 367. Um, and, there was a funny story that happened with this. I'd say, after last week's show, we talked about this pen, how it was available for order. I'd say within an hour of us, of this show going live on 5x5, of it being able to be downloaded and listened to, we, we, we, I got a tweet from our, our friend, uh, John Martin. And, he said, hey, look at this. And, sent me a link. It was an Amazon link. And, it went to a page that was selling the Retro 51 vintage surf for $20.

Myke Hurley: I like that you think that's funny. Because I, I don't think that's funny at all.

Brad Dowdy: I think it's hilarious.

Myke Hurley: I'm sure that you do think that. Yes.

Brad Dowdy: Because, because what happened is, during last week's episode, you ordered it while we were on the show. Mm, I did,

Myke Hurley: didn't I?

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, you went and ordered it. While we were sitting here talking, you went and it's like, all right, my order's in. I forget it. Did you get it from Art Brown? I forget who you got it from.

Myke Hurley: I bought it from Art Brown.

Brad Dowdy: Yep, yep. So, because you didn't want to wait until the, until it came to your UK vendor, just because it's limited to 500 pieces. Well,

Myke Hurley: my UK vendor's probably not getting them.

Brad Dowdy: Right, that's right. Because the quantities may not be high enough. Everyone might not get them. So, after the show, I got this link. I was like, ah, there's no way this is going to go through. You know, it was $20. I think the suggested retail, I think is 55. Most vendors were selling them for like 45 to 49. So, that seemed to be the going price. And this price on Amazon was $20.

Brad Dowdy: So, John placed his order, and I wasn't even going to bother. I was like, there's no way this is going to work. And I said, what the heck? The worst thing it's going to do is just going to cancel. So, I went and placed the order, order, get the email, order accepted. All right, no big deal. Next day, your order has shipped. I was like, hmm, okay, that's cool, but there's no way that this is going to be the right pin. You know, I was, I was fully expecting like your, your balsam for field notes, you know, too good to be true. It's not going to be the right pin. There's no way. But still, even if it was just a, some other retro 51 tornado, $20 is a good price for any retro 51. But then it, it showed up at the house and sure enough, here it is. Vintage surf for 20 bucks. That link is no longer active. Needless to say on Amazon, I'm not how sure how many people took advantage of that, but I know at least John and myself did. And I think we're very happy with, with the results. And it's, it's as, it lives up to the hype. It's as, it's as good as to be expected. So I'm real happy with it. Well,

Myke Hurley: I will have more to say when mine arrives, which will hopefully be by next episode. But do you know how much it costs me including shipping?

Brad Dowdy: Oh, I'm scared.

Myke Hurley: But $84.

Myke Hurley: Golly. So I am very happy for you and John, very happy indeed that you were able to get them for $20.

Brad Dowdy: You sound so sincere.

Myke Hurley: I'm very sincere. I did get, I mean, I got another pen because I couldn't justify matching shipping price to the pen. So I bought the Ace as well, which was 20 bucks. I can't believe if I would have just waited a little bit longer because where I couldn't, I couldn't buy it to ship here, but I could have had it shipped to anyone. I could have had it shipped to like Stephen or Matt and picked it up from them.

Brad Dowdy: Or I could have just bought you two of them. Yeah. Or shipped it to one of the guys at WWDC and just brought it with them. Yep. Exactly.

Myke Hurley: But as I am a semi collector of these pens, I couldn't let it go.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. That's all right. Don't, yeah, don't, don't sweat it. Don't worry. I paid, God, I probably paid 20, $25 in shipping for four bottles of ink for cult pens. So, you know, that was probably as much as the, as the ink. So that's just, that's what it takes though to get the, get the hard to get items. So exactly. You got it. You'll be happy with it regardless of the price. And so will I. Exactly. Yep. Oh, quick note on that. Quick note on that. What'd you say?

Myke Hurley: Let's get $20 shipping to get those inks to you. I think that's, I mean, if you look at the amount it costs me to just get two pens, so anyway,

Retro 51

Brad Dowdy: right, right. Well, I was going to say on back on the retro 51 thing, I'm going to get, um, I love the refill that's in it. Um, it's really one of the best rollerball ink refills ever. I would just prefer something finer. And, um, a few of our friends on Twitter were talking about it. And this is what you mentioned earlier. The Schmidt P eight, one, two, six is the same refill, the stock refill for the retro 51, but in a fine tip. And it comes in a medium is the standard that it comes with. And, um, um, Brad, uh, I think it's Brad Thornbow on Twitter sent that. And, um, Mary Collis, um, Brad Thorn borrow, sorry, sent us that. and Mary Collis chimed in saying, Hey, that's the one I use too. It's fantastic. And, uh, did you, uh, did you, have you happened to click on a Mary Collis's Twitter feed recently?

Myke Hurley: I have. Yeah. Mary, when you think about that, it's awesome, isn't it? She's wearing her 70 decibels.

Brad Dowdy: So cool.

Myke Hurley: Yeah. I mean, I'm still waiting for mine.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. I caught that just out of the side. You haven't gotten it yet?

Myke Hurley: No. Well, cause they're shipping overseas, aren't they? It should arrive in the next day or two.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. Yeah. But that was cool. I actually caught that out of my corner of the eye, even in the, even in the small photo, I could see what she was wearing. I was like, Oh, that's so cool. So that is very cool. I was excited to see that. Excited to see that.

Myke Hurley: Mine should arrive maybe tomorrow. Cause I received my, uh, Steven Hackett five to a pixel shirt today and they, they finished today with, you know, departed. So yeah. Yep. Shall I, uh, take a quick break? I think this is going to be another just mainly follow up. Show again today.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, I think so. We got lots to talk about. So yeah, I know, no problem at all. Let's do this.

Squarespace

Myke Hurley: So let's take a quick break and we will talk about our fine friends over at squarespace.com. Uh, Squarespace, they give you absolutely everything you need to make an amazing website. Squarespace is a fully hosted, completely managed environment for creating and maintaining a beautiful website, blog, or portfolio with Squarespace. You get everything that you need that it takes to put a fantastic site on the web. It doesn't matter how experienced you are. It doesn't matter if you have any experience or all the experience in the world when it comes to building websites, because no matter what your skill level, you can put something online in just minutes. You'd have to worry about any of the nasty stuff like hosting, scaling, integrating with maybe your Twitter feed, Facebook feed, Instagram. You'd have to worry about finding a designer or anything like that because Squarespace do it all for you. They have beautiful themes. They have a drag and drop page building system. They have all of their themes and their pages. They all restructure to look fantastic on mobile devices by using responsive web design. They have built-in statistics. They have built-in customer support, 24 seven award-winning customer support. They have live online workshops as well. If you want, you know, so if you want to have any help with setting up your site, they've got that in the bag. They have a system called Squarespace commerce, where you can add a fully integrated store to your website for e-commerce, which is incredible. If you sign up for one of their annual plans, you'll get a free custom domain name as well, which can be integrated painlessly into your site. Or if you have one else from an existing provider, you know, if you've maybe signed up for a domain with somebody else, you can easily link that in just a few clicks. I want you to go and find out more support the show and try it out for yourself. Go to squarespace.com forward slash 70 decibels. That's seven zero D E C I B E L S. Squarespace plans start at $10 a month for their standard plan and $20 a month for their unlimited plan. If you sign up for a year, you'll automatically get 20% off that price. Sign up for two, you'll get 25% off and use the code 70 decibels five at checkout. And you'll get 10% off on top of any other discount from your first order. So go check out Squarespace, everything you need to make an amazing website.

Brad Dowdy: All right. Thank you, Squarespace.

Myke Hurley: Indeed. So what have we got next on the list?

Fountain Pens

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, I finally got around. I don't even know what episode we, we talked about this in, but we've, we've mentioned it several times about doing some fountain pen ink testing and, and field notes, notebooks. And I've also done it in, um, done paper books. And I finally posted that on the blog last Friday, just kind of a, you know, kind of a quick and dirty sample, um, of what some of the fountain pen inks that I had loaded up. And the, the question came about is because, because the field notes, America, the beautiful edition came with the, um, the 70 pound density paper. And we were commenting on how much thicker it is. And is it nicer for fountain pens and things like that? Um, the short version is, it definitely is, um, which we would have expected. That was kind of the expected result, but I really wanted to, to put some inks and some pens to the test just to see really how it did perform. Um, it did great on all my extra fine, fine nibs, um, lots of different inks at it. And we'll, we'll have, obviously have the link in the show notes where you can go look at the pictures. Um, I tried to expand them a little bit, um, so you could see them, um, on the America's, the beautiful edition, it handled the inks wonderfully. I thought it was, it absorbed a little more ink than the standard, um, than like, um, the dome paper notebook did the utility journal. Um, and it may be even, except for one pen, maybe even bled, it bled a little bit. Um, I'm sorry. Yeah. It, it feathered a little bit on the page, meaning the ink kind of spread, but it really wasn't bad. And especially due to the thickness of the paper, it didn't hardly come through the back of the page at all. That was the most impressive part. Um, you know, I thought my wider nibs, um, and some of those inks didn't work as well. They, they, they spread and bled too much on the page. Like I wouldn't feel comfortable with writing with them in there, but all of the fine nibs that I like, I thought they handled it wonderfully. And especially the bleed through on the back of the page, even with the wider nibs and heavier inks, it, you could, you could probably use the back of the page to write with on the America is beautiful edition with fountain pens, depending on which ink and nib combination you use. I thought it, it did exceptionally well. Um, and you know, field notes might ought to consider using that paper going forward as a stock edition, but I think there's, there's lots of ramifications in, in doing that. Um, I compared it to the field notes, red blooded edition, which is one of the base, um, edition memo books with just the standard 50 pound, uh, paper, the Finch paper, 50 pound bright white. And this is what you'll find in just, you know, the standard craft paper memo books. And then lots of the other more basic, uh, straightforward memo books. Um, there was a few differences in the, some of the color subscriptions additions, but this was, this would be your standard field notes paper. Um, I use this the most with, you know, my extra fine nibs again, and it did bleed through a lot on the back of the page. Um, one particular pin that stood out on the field notes, red blooded edition was my pilot, pilot Falcon, which is a soft extra fine nib. It's got some flex in the nib. So when I'm writing the nib flexes and therefore more ink gets on the page, well, that just bled profusely on this paper. Um, you can see it's, it's obviously legible, but it looks kind of ridiculous on the paper. And of course they bled through to the back a lot. Um, they didn't really transfer to the next page. Um, some people worry about that. I do, um, that the ink actually transfers from one page to the writing side of the next page. You could never use the backside of standard field notes, um, with most of these fountain pens. Although I've talked to other people that use, you know, wide broad nib fountain pens and inks on their standard, um, field notes journals without any issue. Um, do you, do you use many fountain pens in your field notes or do you have something specific you write in your field notes with Myke?

Myke Hurley: Um, I don't really have anything specific. Um,

Brad Dowdy: but you don't really use fountain pens though, do you,

Myke Hurley: I tend not to use fountain pens on them historically because the, the paper is thinner, has been thinner. Um, and I knew what would happen, you know? Right. Right. Especially as I have many broad fountain pens, I knew that it just was a non-starter. So, you know, I typically will grab something like a retro or, you know, something like that. Um, I bought a Sharpie pen the other day, you know, I don't know why I was in the, there's a new supply store, and I went, um, near the office. They don't really have a lot of great stuff, but they had buy one, get one free. So I was like, okay, I'll do that. Um,

Brad Dowdy: had you ever used one of those before?

Myke Hurley: Yeah. Yeah. A long time ago.

Brad Dowdy: Um, I love those pens. Those are fantastic.

Myke Hurley: This is one of the aluminum ones. As you'll hear.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. Cool. I like that pen. It's refillable too. So I have,

Myke Hurley: I have a question about, sure. Well, I have one question and before though, I want to call foul actually on this review, I think that you cheated, um, Oh yeah. For the dome paper, um, test because, you know, you love dome paper so much and you only tested four pens and inks. That's what I'm going to say. Apparently you washed out the other pens. I'm not sure if I, if I agree with that. I think that you may have, uh, have cheated.

Brad Dowdy: I know it wasn't, it wasn't a fair test. Was it?

Myke Hurley: No.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. And I called, I called myself out on that because I was like, I did the first two at the same time one night. And then somehow I, I think that's about the time where I was talking about, um, uh, reducing the number of fountain pens I had inked and I inked them. And I was like, I mean, I, I cleaned them. And after that, I realized that I hadn't done the, uh, the dome, uh, ink testing yet. So yes, it is not a match. Um, I think you did,

Myke Hurley: I think you did what people wanted out of this though, what people would want, which is just to compare field notes to field notes. I think that's the most valuable test out of it. Anyway, to my eyes, I mean, this is again, the actual, the, the, the real paper themselves might, might be different, but from the images, it looks like for bleed, the field notes did better than, the dome just from the ones that you tested.

Brad Dowdy: the Americas, Americas is beautiful. Yeah. Not the standard.

Myke Hurley: No, not the standard, not even close. Yeah. But it did look like that, that did better than the, than the dome. But, um, one of the thing, the thing that I wanted to ask you the question is your Pelican M405. It's an EF nib, but it looks like the thicker than your stub nib. And I don't understand why. So from looking at the images, it's extremely thick. And I don't understand.

Brad Dowdy: You don't know how good of a question that is. And let me explain to you why. Um, it's an awesome question. And you're not the only one that has mentioned that. Um, um, I've had someone else on Twitter mentioned that, um, our Canon P on Twitter who I talked to a bunch, he's in Atlanta. So we, we, we chat a bunch about pins and inks and he made the very specific comment that you did. Why? He said, is your Pelican seriously an extra fine nib? And it looks like that. And I said, yes, it is. And that's why it is at Myke Masayama's house right now. That was my answer to him. It's broken. It is not broken, but I did not, I did not elaborate on why it's the way it is. And there's a very specific reason.

Benderized Nibs

Brad Dowdy: It wasn't broken. This was a pin I bought at the Atlanta pin show. Okay. I bought it from Richard Bender and he does, when you purchase a pin from him, he, I guess it, I guess it's Bender rising, although it's, it's spelled just like his last name is spelled B I N I D E R.

Myke Hurley: I very nearly just spit cherry Coke all over my laptop. When you said Benderized it, it just sounds funny to me.

Brad Dowdy: So he has, there's this term in the fountain pen world that people know that it's a binderized nib or Benderized, whatever. And, um, so what that means is he adjusts every nib, every new pen that you buy from him goes to him for smoothing. And he adjusts the ink flow into whatever. It's almost like a proprietary, you know, this is the way I believe pen should write. So I just did it at the show, not knowing. So, you know, I bought the pen, then you wait another 30 minutes and he adjusts smooth.

Myke Hurley: I remember you mentioning this now. Yeah.

Brad Dowdy: I remember you saying he does this. Yeah. It's like a default thing with him. So I got home that night. I mean, I tested it out and I was like, okay, this is fine. Boy, this is flowing a lot. There's a ton of ink. I couldn't figure out. I mean, I assumed it was from that. And I'd always planned on sending it to Masuyama anyway to get it like Thomas's. I had his adjusted to like the super fine, the put the point two millimeter. Like if you look at the Lamy 2000 up top on those, on those reviews, I had up. My plan was always to get that done, but I was going to hold off for a while. And, um, but I couldn't just because it was just so wet and flowing so crazily. And actually that night I talked to Thomas when I got back, I said, I bought this from, uh, Richard Bender and he did, you know, his nib adjustment. He was like, Oh, he's like, you're not going to like that.

Brad Dowdy: Knowing that I write a lot like him with these super, super fine lines. And he said, yeah, you should ask me or whatever. I was like, it didn't matter because it was, it was part of the service that came with it. And I knew I was going to get it, um, ground down further anyway. So I have sent that nib off now to Myke Masuyama to get, um, like the 0.2 millimeter Japanese extra fine nib that I wanted on this pen, which was the reason I purchased the pen anyway. So I just wasn't planning on sending it off that soon, but I couldn't use it. It was so the ink flow was so great, but that was, that was a great observation by you.

Myke Hurley: Um, you're probably too nice to, no, I'm not very nice. Um, kind of seems like you buy a pen from this guy and he kind of ruins them. like you shouldn't have to, well, there's a couple of things. Like if I went to a pen show, right? And I, uh, met Mr. Bender's Bender.

Brad Dowdy: Mm.

Myke Hurley: I know that he knows more than me, right? Right. Um, and if he has one of these grind, grinding machines, whatever you call them, I'm going to assume that he is of a, you know, he, he read the guy really knows what he's doing and you seem to believe this too. So if you do, then, you know, I'm going to, and if he says, Oh, let me just, you know, sort it out for you. I'm going to assume that he's going to make it as it should be. Right. Right. You've just dropped all this money and he is forcing it into his way. Like that looks maybe even thicker than I would want to use. And that's saying something.

Brad Dowdy: Right. Right. And that's, I mean, it's one of those things I wanted to experience anyway. It's it. I mean, in this case, like, okay, I would never do it again. If I bought another pen, I just say, no, give me the pen. Um, but I wanted to do it because I'm it's, I knew every, a lot of other people have had it done. And it's kind of a thing in the fountain pen community that you've had your nib adjusted by him. So I wanted to see what it was all about. And it turns out I don't like it. So I would never do it again. So like, I didn't have a problem doing it the first time.

Myke Hurley: Is it like an initiation ceremony? Like everybody has it done and everyone gets it changed back. Nobody will tell him. It just seems very strange. Like, why would you not even ask someone how they would like it to be, um, ground to like, it's like, Oh, yep. I'll just do it.

Brad Dowdy: And to their, they don't actually do much grinding. It's more of a, it's more of just a general smoothing and a flow adjustment. It's not a lot of, uh, differentiation and not a lot of, uh, nib alteration as far as size, uh, goes, but you can adjust the ink flow is more what they did. And then made sure the nib was smooth. So it's more of a flow, ink flow issue than a grinding the nib issue. If that makes sense. Sure. There's ways to adjust the ink flow by moving the feed and things like that. So I'm assuming that's more, that's more along what it is. Cause I watched him do it. There was no grinding of the, just use a lot of, you know, like the sandpaper and stuff to smooth it out. So I'm glad I did it. So now I know to never do it again. And I would never buy a pen that was, cause I knew I'd have to have, I'd have to get it worked on again. Cause it would, it doesn't fit me, but you know, it fits a lot of people. I have a very particular writing style. I have very particular likes in the way I like my pens to write. Um, and, you know, Richard Bender is super well respected in the community. So I'm, I'm glad I got it done, but I would never do it again. It's not for me. And now I've learned that. I can't imagine getting a bold nib pen and having this done. It would be like, I'd run out, run out of, uh, ink in a day.

Myke Hurley: You pick it up. Coming out of the pen. You pick it up. The ink would just run right out.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. Yeah. So, but that was a great question. And, uh, I've actually forgot about that until you mentioned that. Cause I had someone else, um, asked me that too. So he'll hear it on this podcast too. Cause I didn't, I didn't totally, I didn't have that much space to elaborate. But, um, basically what I told him. Yeah. That's why it's at Myke's house right now. Getting, getting fixed how I want it. like I said, that was the plan going into it anyway. So, so it was worth me getting it test out to figure out what the deal was. And the deal is it's not for me.

Myke Hurley: So I think we have one more pen to talk about today, which is one for me that I mentioned. If you mentioned, uh, sorry, if you remember last week, I spoke about the cross edge. Yeah. So, uh, listener Eddie Samuels got in touch a couple of weeks ago and he said to me that I should buy a cross edge pen. Um, he believes that it beats the retro 51.

Brad Dowdy: So I was like, right. Them's fighting words.

Myke Hurley: Them's are fighting words. Um, my response to him was all caps, dude, send a link. Um, so he sent me a link and links in the show notes to the cross gel pen in the green that I bought it. So, um, it's a very nice pen. Uh, the body and the, but the mecca, I've never used a mechanism like this. It's incredible. So it, you, you will see from the image and the images in the show notes. If you want to take a look, Brad too, you will see that on the body of the pen, there is like a, I mean, the pen is opened. So maybe go to the image where it's closed, which is like the third image on the Amazon page. You'll see that there's like a little silver band in the middle of the pen. And there's two green sort of plastic, um, areas when you pull. So basically you put your fingers on the green plastic areas. And you pull the pen apart. As you pull it apart, the, the nib emerges from the pen.

Brad Dowdy: Okay.

Myke Hurley: And you push it together to make it retract.

Brad Dowdy: Mm-hmm.

Myke Hurley: I've never used a mechanism like this. It's very strange.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. Zebra makes something not as nice looking as this, but I have used a mechanism like that in a zebra pen before, but not as, as well done as this one. It looks like,

Myke Hurley: it has a great feeling when you push it together. I want to see if you can hear this.

Brad Dowdy: Oh, that's real solid.

Myke Hurley: Yeah. So the, the mechanism I was blown away by the problem for me, problem number one, um, lies in the holding of this pen. So you see, you see in the, in the nib area, it's quite large and you've got that black line. Mm-hmm. See that? So that's like an indentation.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah.

Pen Grip

Myke Hurley: Um, that is uncomfortable for me to hold. And also,

Brad Dowdy: it's almost like a double indentation where it threads for one and then where the line is for two.

Myke Hurley: It's the black line that's the problem. Yeah. In my opinion. Okay. But also the, with the size of my hand, you know, probably not the same for everybody. When the pen is then extended, you see like you've got the big silver sort of gap. Mm-hmm. The, the edge of the green part on the bottom, um, it isn't totally smooth. It's a little bit rough. And that sits just in the little, like the, what would you call that part between your finger and your thumb?

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. I don't know the official term. I always call it like the, I call it the cusp. Okay. I think, I think,

Myke Hurley: uh, as a kid, I was told the rest, I think it's. Yeah. Yeah. So it just hits against there. So it rubs against there when I write. So that's not great. But what I was being told by, by Eddie, he says the cross gel refill is more smooth than a few fountain pens I own and definitely beats the retro 51. Eddie. Wow. Eddie. Now, Eddie. Now I'm sure you are a frequent listener, Eddie. Let's take it down a notch, Eddie. Come on now. You know to say to me, oh, you know that, that if, if you say to me something's better than the retro 51 and it's similar, you know I'm going to try it. And Eddie, I don't agree. I don't agree. Now, let me tell you why. So they are very, very similar. And I would even agree that it lays down as good if at some point, not even, you know, maybe even a smoother line in the retro. I wouldn't say that's consistent, but sometimes it does. However, it has one floor that the retro 51 does not have. And I consider this to be an issue. I wouldn't call it skipping. If you were to lay a solid line and you can see some white in the line, what would you call that?

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, I just call it white in the line. It's not skipping. There you go. It leaves some white space in the line. That's a lot of ballpoint pens act that way, right? You find white space within the line. It's not a solid line.

Myke Hurley: It's not consistent, but it does it. And I have never had a retro 51 do that. So Eddie, where I agree, this is a very nice pen. This is, do you know what this is? This is the pen you buy someone for Christmas. This is it. You know, we're always looking for that pen. Oh, I want to buy something for X person for Christmas. $30 on Amazon.

Myke Hurley: It's got a great weight to it, a really excellent weight. It looks fantastic. You can get a few nice colors. It's got a very solid refill, an excellent refill. Not bad on the retro 51, but if the retro 51 that wasn't around, this would take that sort of mantle for me. It is that good. It just doesn't, I mean, it probably maybe matches it, but I don't consider it better in my opinion.

Brad Dowdy: And it hasn't really gone. I was saying, let me make one comment that we haven't made clear so far. This is a gel ink refill.

Myke Hurley: Okay. Yes. Yes, of course.

Brad Dowdy: This is not a rollerball ink refill. So what would that say to you? I just want to make that clear.

Myke Hurley: Would that say that it should be this good or what? I don't really, you know.

Brad Dowdy: No, I'm just saying to me, it's not apples and oranges anyway, but you know, once you, when you get the gel ink refill, a gel ink refill should never leave white space in the lines, in the line. Anyway, that almost, that rarely happens on a gel ink pen. It should not be acting like that.

Myke Hurley: You know, your mileage may vary. Eddie's refill might be better than mine. Who knows? You know, mine could be slightly different, but, and it's got a really cool mechanism that would impress people. You know, if I, basically, if I took one of these and a retro 51 and put them both on the desk in my office, the executives would love the cross.

Brad Dowdy: You know? Yeah, I think so. It's a cool looking pen. I'm with you on that. I've never seen it before. You linked it. I think it's really good looking. What's interesting also is on the Amazon page, you link to, you know, on Amazon has, you know, people can upload their own product images, the customer images. If you look at the first customer image, the first thing that caught my eye is that's not a cross refill. It looks like a pilot G2 refill. So I opened up the link and he has a highlight on it. It's a Pintel Energel LR7 refill. So it looks like this is a compatible with a lot of standard gel ink refills. I'm not familiar with cross refills, but there's someone, one of the reviewers of this product has put in a Pintel Energel refill, which that's a pretty, that's a pretty sweet option. If it's compatible with a lot of popular gel ink refills, it looks like a, looks like a basic G2 refill to me. So anything that's compatible with the G2, which is a lot like the Energel, that's a huge list.

Myke Hurley: Yeah.

Brad Dowdy: That's a, that's a bonus. That's a, that's on the plus side for this pen. Yeah, sure.

Myke Hurley: Because then you can,

Brad Dowdy: you can change it up. The stock refill that comes with it is apparently not, not so hot.

Myke Hurley: Well, I mean, it's, it's good. It's, it's very good,

Brad Dowdy: but I have, it's just not retro 51. Good.

Myke Hurley: No, I have a, I consider the, the retro 51 to be the finest pen of this non fountain pen. I've ever used like hands down. In my opinion, there is no greater pen. That is non fountain pen than the retro 51.

Myke Hurley: Every single model I have used with the rollable, with the rollable refill has been flawless. And, and, you know, however long that we've had these, like a year, I've had them a year. Some models, they still write as great. And I've never had problems with them. Um, but yeah, I would say Brad, that this would go on that list of made the list that we've had real trouble with. It was like, what do you buy somebody as a gift? This is a perfect gift because cross has a good name as well.

Brad Dowdy: That's right. I mean, the, that, that price range, like 25 to $40 is a tough price range. Um, in, in pens. That's why, that's one of the reasons why we like the retro so much. Cause that, that fits a need right there a lot. So,

Myke Hurley: but yeah, so, um, $30 on Amazon. I would say it's a great, a great, um, deal for Amazon. For this pen, $30. Great. Yeah. If you're interested, by all means, check it out. It's a nice piece. Um, by the way, you know that the, sorry, I must mention the refill that they're showing on the page is not the refill that this has got.

Brad Dowdy: Okay.

Myke Hurley: Um, it's a metal one. And it's a cross one.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah.

Myke Hurley: So the,

Ink Refills

Brad Dowdy: I'm just saying it looks like the standard cross gel refill must be compatible with a lot of standard basic gel refills like G2 and inner gel.

Myke Hurley: Yeah. I, I assume that they would work, but that's not the one that I've got in this pen. Gotcha. It's the cross gel rolling ball refill. Um, I don't, you know, I don't know why, why they would show that, but whatever. But if you look down the page, like on the Amazon page, you will see them. They have them there. Like the, the refills. Yeah. People also bought. That's the refill. Cool. Awesome. Um, anything else today?

Brad Dowdy: I think we got it, man. I think, uh, I think we're covered. Cool. Brilliant. Yes, sir. As always. So always one, one of these days we're going to make it to our topic.

Myke Hurley: Yeah.

Brad Dowdy: I have a feeling next week we'll have time.

Brad Dowdy: Maybe. Who knows? Maybe. I don't want to write that check. I can't cash. So,

Myke Hurley: well, next week we've got to record two episodes cause I'm off the week before, so I'm sure we'll get to it then.

Brad Dowdy: That's true. Yeah. Yeah. Well, we'll double it up. So we'll get to some topic, some topics and some questions and stuff. So yeah.

Myke Hurley: Oh, you have got one last thing in here, which is the page. I do.

Brad Dowdy: I do. I figured it was a good part of the kind of wrap up when we're talking about how to get in touch with us. And I did create on, if you're an app.net user, which I'm pretty active on and it's got, we've got a good, a burgeoning pin community on there. I created a, on app.net uses a chat room system called patter. Is that the best way to, to define that Myke? Yeah. It would be like a chat room type.

Myke Hurley: It's like a chat room. Yeah.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. So if you have an app.net account, you can open up a patter. Patter. And I created a room called a pin addict and we'll have the link in the, in the show notes. So you can go and it's basically just, you know, like a, it's basically like an IRC channel. If you're familiar with IRC, it's just a wide open chat room, 24 seven people get in there, ask questions, talk about different things. And I created this a pin addict room that I'm trying to be active in just for, as another way to people to reach out and, and talk about pins and, and, you know, meet some of the, the other friendly faces and, and screen names in the pin community. So it's been fun. I opened it up last week and it's gotten some good response so far. It's been pretty active. So I'm very happy with it.

Myke Hurley: Excellent stuff. So yeah, that'll be in the show notes too, of course. So people can find that. I am on Twitter and app.net. I'm I Myke. I M Y K E. Brad is at Dowdy, D O W D Y on app.net. And Dowdy ism D O W D Y I S M on Twitter. We will be back next week. Episode 57 of the pen addict podcast. Until then, thank you very much for listening. Say goodbye, Brad.

Brad Dowdy: Goodbye, Brad.