The Pen Addict 587/transcript

From RelayFM, this is The Pen Addict, episode 587. Today's show is brought to you by Wild Grain and Squarespace. My name is Myke Hurley and I'm joined by Brad Dowdy. Hi, Brad. Hey, Myke. How are you doing?

I don't have a top register of my voice right now. I can tell. Yeah. Like, I've been sick this week and you can hear it all the time, but if I try and get up there, I lose it. You know, like, hi, Brad. How are you doing?

So I thought I'd just go ahead and call that out up front, Myke. A little bit under the weather. This is like a thing that I've always had. A little squeaky today.

You know, doing what I do for a living, you can't get away from it when you're sick. Like, there's no hiding. Everyone's going to know, you know? And that's where I am in my life today.

Yeah. Well, we appreciate you being here. You're sounding okay. You're sounding okay. We can get you through this stationary world. Mostly, you just need me to ramble for about 45, 50 minutes. I've got the best man for the job.

We'll be in good shape. And I've got really good things to ramble about up front. So I was talking on Twitch, as I do, several times a week. Last week, just talking about how notebook usage, right?

Like, you and I talk about this all the time. We're big notebook fans. We've both made, you currently make notebook products. I've made notebook products in the past.

We have opinions, you know, general opinions. We're not that strict on notebooks. But I had a question more, not about notebook style, but notebook quantity. And it came up because almost every day before I stream, I will sit with my three notebooks that I use on a daily basis.

And I was like, huh, that's interesting. Like, I'm really, like, dead set on this setup that I have. So these are all things we've talked about before, so I'm not breaking any new ground here. But my plotter, narrow, is my planner and kind of to-do list, brain dump, little quick ideas, things like short, short format stuff plus planner.

Then I have my Hobonichi five-year journal, which is, you know, takes me, you know, one or two minutes a day to fill out. So that's in the stack. And then I have my regular A5 notebook, which I call my everything notebook. Like, it's a catch-all, right?

I can have, I can journal, I can explore ideas, I can test pens and inks. It's just whatever I want to put in there. So those three things are in action every day. And so we got to talk about that on Twitch.

And I was like, oh, well, let me go, let me go pop a poll up on Mastodon. Since, like, I use the ivory app and Mastodon's got some good polling features and they're all integrated. And it was real easy. And I got a surprising amount of feedback on this or surprising amount of votes on this.

We're going to link in the show notes. You don't have to have a Mastodon account to see this. You can go see this. So I put out a poll that says, how many different notebooks do you use on a daily basis, right?

I kept it super simple, right? I didn't want to, like, really, really just kind of go into, like, more details than, hey, every day, what is your notebook setup like? And the options were one, which is obvious. Then I did two to three, which I thought was a fair kind of catch-all for, like, the multiple notebook users.

And then I thought four was the transition point. Four or more was the transition point into, like, yeah, this is a real, like, real thing for some people use, like, six, seven, eight notebooks. So maybe not on an everyday, but pretty, pretty close. So we got 115 votes.

And I'll have a link to the results also in the show notes you can see. So 29% were one notebook a day. 65%, Myke, were two to three notebooks per day. And then 6% were four or more notebooks a day.

Now, I also, one of the good things that I enjoy about Mastodon is the ability to follow hashtags. So I put a hashtag in here, fountain pens, and there's a really good fountain pen community on this. So that's why I feel like I have, like, I don't know, not even a thousand followers on Mastodon.

And that's a good number of votes. Like, if I did this way back in the day on the old bird site and had, you know, 13,000 followers, I'd do the same poll. I wouldn't get that many more votes than I just got on this. So that was a pretty telling, pretty telling result.

But regardless, the results, I think, probably lined up to my expectation. What would you have thought, knowing that, you know, it's a little bit rigged that I've, you know, tagged the fountain pen users into this post? What would they think? So number one, what do you use on a daily basis?

And number two, what do you think about the results? I mean, I'm probably in the two to three range, I think. Yeah, that sounds about right to me. Like, on average, I mean, there'll be the occasion where I might do more.

But like, my kind of like average daily uses would be two to three. I guess because, this is like a funny thing, I would probably have more than three, but I don't use all of them. Right. Right. Right. Like, that's maybe a, I don't know if that's what you're asking, right?

But like, I would have more than, I would have four, I have four or more notebooks that I may use. Yeah. But on a daily basis, I don't use all of them. Right? Right. So I think there's a daily use aspect and then there's an active notebook aspect.

My daily would be two to three. Like, I call that active notebooks. That's a different category. And I would say I'm probably very rarely over two.

But I do have two to three different notebooks in use on a daily basis. Yeah. And also, these numbers, the 65% number, that actually, I think, is a little high. Like, I would have expected maybe a little more than 6% in four or more. But... That's the one.

Yeah. Same. But it makes sense to me. You know what, though? I wonder if you polled the second one, like, how many notebooks, like, could you use? You know, like, how many notebooks do you have, like, active right now?

That might be a... I wouldn't be surprised if we saw the four or more skew higher. Because, like, I naturally answer two because it's what I use rather than what I may use. Yeah. So I think about this kind of the same way you do.

So I think a lot of us that actually listen to a podcast about pens, a lot of you may have a planner and a journal, right? That's two, like, just by default every day, which is kind of why I wanted to, like, catch that in that two to three category.

And that's why I think it jumped up so high in this. I actually thought, which I'm surprised to hear you say this, that four or more would be more. Just not like 10%, right? Not like some... Not like 20-something percent.

But, like, I thought it might be more like a 10% type of rate. But that's where you start having that line of differentiation, like you were talking about there. It's like, I use these definitively every day. I also have X amount of active notebooks, which if I use three per day to do, like me, journaling, catch-all, and planning, I might also have some, you know, a sketchbook or some idea notebooks or whatever that may not get used every day that would fall in this category.

So I thought it was interesting. So it was some really good feedback on this. It did kind of pretty much went how I thought. And I was just, I was more than, more than anything.

I was happy with the amount of votes I got, which was pretty cool to see. So that was, that was nice. There on Mastodon getting to pull that up. And I'm not surprised people have opinions on the notebooks, you know?

Yes. That's why we ask. That's why we ask, Myke. People also have opinions on this next pen, Myke, as they should. This is, this is a very divisive product, not for everybody, but as you know, it's a product I love.

It's the CW and T pen type B. I was scrolling through Instagram and they got me, Myke. Like I haven't ordered this, but they're doing an orange Cerakote. Remember like the, the Mark one did the orange Cerakote barrel for the Mark one pen type B and orange Cerakote.

It's like, come on, man. It looks excellent. Yeah. Like this is the, this is the kind of pen kind of like the Mark one where you just have this platform for color and creativity. And I actually didn't know they, that they had done a bunch of anodized models as well.

Anodized ones are fun. so I, so I have two, I have the titanium in matte finish, which is my favorite. And then I have the original brass sleeve, which was my first one, which I, I prefer the titanium one. Cause it's a little bit lighter, sleeve, even though when I use them, I'm only using the, the pen barrel part.

I usually don't re sleeve it to use when I'm writing. If that makes sense. Those words didn't come out exactly as I intended, but I'm usually, it's like a posting thing, right? You unsleeve it. I use the stainless steel barrel to write with.

And usually the sleeve is in my hand or on the desk. but it's just lighter. I like the titanium feel better, but this, they, I like, I'm trying to be, trying to be good as I go into finishing like my, Panatic 100, which we're going to be wrapping up soon and at least getting into past phase one.

It's like, do I need to spend $230 on a high tech C pin? I'm actually not going to buy this right now. So then it means that the 100 is working. This is the point.

It is. It is. And like, I'm not even counting like roller balls and pins like this in this, but it's like, I'm trying to just manage the overall thing. And you know what? If I get to a place where I want this later, fine. Like I'm just trying to, I'm doing that thing where you see the thing that you want and then you sit on it for a while.

Yeah. Right. And if you still want it six months from now, okay. Yeah. Go for it. Like that's kind of the way I'm thinking about buying expensive products right now, because that's a very expensive pen. Yeah. Right. And it's something I wouldn't use every day. So I try to think about that a little bit more than just like jamming buttons.

But now all I want to do is carry around my titanium one. So that's what I end up doing, Myke, when I see products like this, like if a new retro 51 comes out, right. Cause like, oh, I like that. And like, it's easy to just go like buy them all.

Well, I'll just go grab one that I already love and start using it. And then I'll forget about the FOMO one that I'm staring at on the screen and hovering over the buy button. So I don't know if you ever have that, that feeling as well to where you like, you know, someone in my situation, I already have a lot of these things.

So do I need a second one? So I'll just use the first one for a while and kind of get my fix and go, yeah, boy, this is a really good pen. I'm pretty happy with this. So yeah. Just don't, don't click on the anodized ones either chat.

They're good. They're really good. I mean, as I've said many times, pen isn't for me, but these are cool looking. Like these are, that orange that they've chosen, it looks similar to the orange that Tom and Dan used, right. That kind of like safety orange. I wonder if it's like a literal, like brand item number, right?

Like, you know, Cerakote number 289, right? Is this color kind of thing. I don't know how that works, but I, since it's like a paint or like a finish, I would imagine it's like a, there's a very fixed range of certain colors and it could just happen to pick the same one, right?

I mean, yes and no. So there are Cerakote colors, but it's very easy to mix, to blend a color. So. Oh, okay. Okay. Because it's just paint essentially. Yes. So the Cortex one, the blue one, that's a custom mix that Tom did for us to try and, I was trying to get something that was, it's like the Cortex logo is interesting, right?

Like if you actually take what the blue is, it's not that blue, like the light blue in the scan lines. So I have like colors that I believe are like representations of what the blue appears to be. Yeah. And that's what the blue of the Cortex brand one is.

And yeah, that was a mix, that was like a mix that Tom and Dan did for me. Cool. Well, that sure came out great. So yeah, like Cerakote is incredibly customizable. Like you can just be like, take this one, like take this paint, take this paint and just mix them together and you get a color out of it.

Like you get off the shelf stuff, right? And so like potentially they're going to use the same off the shelf one, right? I don't know. But you could take that orange and maybe mix it with a little yellow or a little red and you could change up the color and then just spray it.

And you create formulas, right? Like this part, this to this part, that. Gotcha. Look at that. There you go. Look at me teaching you something. That was good. Yeah. I didn't know that.

But like the Cerakote then didn't, I didn't even consider mixing them. I was like, just, yeah, like a, like a Pantone color. Like I was thinking it more of a just picking like, but being a paint, like that makes complete sense. Yeah. I knew nothing about Cerakote until the Mach 1 and then like talking to Tom and Dan about it.

Cause like really Cerakote, like it mostly comes from, it was mostly used in like, I mean it sucks, but painting guns and stuff. Like people get like guns custom painted and knives and stuff like that. It's very heavy in EDC. Right. But now as well, like I'm used to it with the keyboard hobby.

Like people get their keyboard Cerakoted. Oh, so like the base or whatever you call it. Yeah. Like the, like the frame, the aluminum part. You should get it Cerakote.

Like some, some keyboards are sold with Cerakote and some people just do it as like an aftermarket thing. You just got to find a place that would do it and they'll just spray it for you. Kind of like how you'd get a car sprayed or whatever. Yeah. But there are like accreditations you can go through with the Cerakote people and be like, yeah, you can do this.

Like, and you know, you go doggone little course and stuff like that. But yeah, there you go. Cerakote. Nice. Look at you. Love it. And it's ceramic coating in case anybody was interested. That's what the Cerakote and the coat.

Yeah. Allegedly more durable, but yeah, it depends on how much you beat yourself up, but it's supposed to. More durable than what? You know what I mean? Right. Right. But I do think that that is why like it's pretty heavy in EDC because it is, it's durable and it produces and can produce really interesting color and it's a matte texture.

It's very different to anodization or whatever. I prefer Cerakote to anodizing personally from just like a visual perspective. You just get way more vivid color. Yeah. If you coat than if you anodize.

I found anyway for my taste. Sure. Sure. Just, yeah. Two completely different things, right? Depending on what you're going for. Yeah. Very different look. Yep. Yep. Looks great. Random note on here.

I'm one of the backers of CW&T's product called 556688. I'm a, I'm spoiler. I'm a CW&T super fan. I love everything they do.

Nobody's surprised about this. So this is a Kickstarter and Myke, would you be surprised that it's been a catastrophe so far? Oh no. They got, they got everything. They received everything back from the manufacturer and rejected 100% of the order.

So good times, good times over there in Kickstarter land. Oh, this was the little phone stand thing. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. They came back all dinged and like, it was, it was bad. They were sharing pictures.

Like, Stay Away was sharing pictures and it's like, oh my gosh. This is what terrifies me about Kickstarter. Right? Because if you were just doing that on your own, you're just dealing with it, right? Like, you're just dealing with it and it's just like, oh, this is annoying.

Yeah. And you just keep dealing with it. But yeah, this is like, oh my gosh. What are they going to do? They're getting them all redone?

Yeah. Yeah. And I think they've already got the samples of the redone ones. Like, Stay Away, I don't know if Taylor joined him, but what did, I apparently did like a whole Zoom call just to like explain and show everything. Like it's been, I didn't join it, but it's just been a mess.

It's been, it's just like. They are pros so they know how to handle it, right? Like this is, if you're going to, if you do it, this is how to handle it from like communicating with people. Yeah. But what an, oh my gosh, what a nightmare.

Yeah. So they're going through it right now. But anyway, I thought that was worth pointing out. I was like, there you go. Yeah. There you go. Kickstarter, everybody. That's why, that's why we do our, our Kickstarters a little bit different.

If, and when we do them, we do them like almost, do them a little bit differently, you know. Known quantity. We're not making, yeah, known quantity type of things. Like when we did retros or other things like that. So yeah. Yeah. Or like when you've made stuff, right?

You and Jeff made stuff. So you know how to do that. Yeah. Hands on. Like I'm literally putting my hands on this until it gets out the door. Yeah. Right. So, it's yeah. Kickstarter. Woof. Still gives me nightmares, but it's, I, I also love it.

Right. It's this very, very weird feeling about the whole thing. So yeah, it's really good. Really good. All right. Let's take our first break. And thank a new sponsor for the show.

That is Wild Grain. Wild Grain is the first ever bake from frozen subscription box for sourdough breads, fresh pastas, and artisanal pastries. Every item bakes from frozen in 25 minutes or less. No thawing required. Brad, can you tell the Panatic listeners a little bit about the box of goodies you got from Wild Grain?

Yeah. So this box showed up at my door and I did not know what to expect, honestly. So I ended up with two loaves of sourdough, a set of pastries, apple, like apple turnovers, and a couple of different pastas for them. And looking at this, I was excited to get the sourdough into the oven, like immediately.

Like I'm a bread person. You're a bread person. All of the things. Like I have to try this out because I was just kind of blown away with the whole box setup.

So you just grab the loaf. I fired up the oven. I forget it was like 350, 400 degrees. Put the loaf of sourdough in for like 25 minutes.

And this, just to be clear, this is like keyboard size loaf of bread. This isn't like a small little serving. This was like multiple meals worth of bread. And it just came out flawless and I loved it.

And the pastas were spectacular. The pastas just come as like individual pastas. They're like not part of a meal. You make your own meal around it.

So we did like grilled chicken around the pasta. Oh, that's good. Had the sourdough bread. Yeah, it was great. I loved the whole kit that they sent.

It was kind of spectacular. Was it easy? It was beyond, it was too easy. Too easy. To where, yeah, to where I was like, there's no way I'm doing this right. It's like, there's literally no way I'm doing this right.

But I did. Like it was literally just put it in the oven, put it on for 25 minutes, let it cool when you take it out, and then go to town on some awesome sourdough. It was fantastic. I'm not too good at the letting it cool part. That was legit the hardest part because you know what that smells like in your kitchen.

Yeah, I'm not good at that part. Cooking like fresh bread. That was actually like, oh, I was taken out of the oven. I was like, oh, you need like another 20 minutes or whatever it was to let it sit.

I was like, okay, fine. We'll just let this sit. So I'll plan better for the second one to know what I'm getting into. So out there, you can fully customize your own wild grain box.

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You can get $30 off the first box plus free croissants in every box when you go to wildgrain.com slash penaddict to start your subscription. That is correct. Free croissants bread in every box. Easy for me to say. And $30 off your first box.

Just go to W-I-L-D-G-R-A-I-N dot com slash penaddict. That is wildgrain.com slash penaddict. Or you can use the promo code penaddict to check out to get that wonderful offer. Our thanks to Wild Grain for the support of this show. And Relay FM.

I got to go turn on the oven as soon as we're done here. Get that extra lift going. Let's go. It's also shout out of the week time, Myke. And as I like to do, I always like to meet our makers that Caroline writes up every month for the penaddict.

This has been a wonderful series that Caroline has put a lot of work into. This month, we have Mayfair pens. Ben Stewart, who I got to meet at the DC Pen Show. And these are some of the most interesting pens I've seen in a long time.

I started seeing these on Instagram earlier this year. And was just really compelled about what Ben was doing and seeing the designs he would come up with. It's a very different and unique shape pen. Admittedly, not for everybody, right?

So it's a bigger, broader pen. A little bit of a different, non-traditional setup, which I love. I love the experiment. I think these pens are really cool looking.

Yeah, the materials are nuts. This is the wild stuff, right? We're not making your basic black barrel pen with gold trim here. This is a really interesting use of materials, interesting shapes, interesting designs.

Do you have a favorite shape? Well, the one I bought is called... I always forget the name. It's the bottom one here.

The Vanyar? Where is it? Vanyar. So it's the longer shape with the shorter cap and the different mid-color there. So I got to test them all out at the DC Pen Show at the table, right? So I could see the shorter ones, the longer ones. There's some eyedropper-specific ones.

I got one that you could eyedropper, but you can use with a converter as well. So that was kind of like the bigger model. I like the look of the Silmaril model. That's probably where I would go next, yes.

Because it's got some flair, but it's maybe the least out there shape-wise. Like it's maybe the closest, but still got something going on. So maybe you kind of like dip your tongue in with it. But like... So the one that's on here, like on the page and the Mayfair page where it just looks like it's full of glitter.

I freaking love the look of that pen, man. I think I saw that one. I think I saw that one at DC. I was like, this is wild. This is wild. That is a good looking pen.

Yeah. So I picked one up from Ben at DC. Caroline wrote Ben's story up this week for the Pen Addict. So go check that out. We'll have a link in the show notes. So meet your maker.

Shout out of the week. Mayfair pens. Thank you, Ben, for participating in this. And thank you, Caroline, for getting this all taken care of. So I love this series, obviously, because I keep raving about it.

So you put something in the notes and I've looked at it multiple times and I don't understand what it is. It's called the Sailor Limited Edition Dipton Ink and Hokoro Dip Pen. What is this? What is this? Yeah. So I'm kind of excited about this. This was not...

There was no intention for this to be in the show notes until I did an unboxing yesterday. Okay. And used this product that I just picked up. So a little bit of backstory. Sailor, last year, maybe even the year before.

Started making these individual dip pens. The lineup is called the Hokoro Dip Pens. And they had just, you know, fine, medium, I think they maybe did stub, stub dip nibs. Right? So it's just basically, you know, a plastic barrel with a steel nib and like no like ink filling system.

Right? Literally just a dip pen. And Pilot around the same time, like they were just doing these dip nib pens. This was, I don't know if you remember last year or the year before when like we were talking about the Japanese glass dip nib pens and how that's like all the rage.

So this was right around that time that Sailor and Pilot decided to make like a very entry level type of dip nib pen. Just literally a plastic stick with a metal nib. Sell them for around $10, $12, something like that. So just that entry point.

And they're all very good. Like, you know, neat little dip nibs. We've reviewed several of them, things like that. So this one, I've always wanted a Fude nib to play around with.

And, you know, you've had different dip nib options to grab like a Fude nib, something like that. And a Fude nib, if you're not familiar with them, we'll have a link in the show notes. It's like a turned up nib. Like the tip of the nib is like turned up like a nose or like a beak type of situation.

It looks perfect. Yeah. It looks like you dropped it on the floor and bent it. But it's on purpose to give you a very angle dependent writing. So if I keep a very, very low angle, I get a very wide line, almost like a highlighter esque line. And then the more I go vertical with my writing, the finer the line gets.

So it also applies a lot of ink. Like when you're having that low writing angle, you can like really spread the ink around a lot. And Sailor actually makes angle in a different product. They actually make angle specific Fude nibs.

It's like, hey, this one is a, you know, 60 angle or this one's a 35 angle, something like that. So it's a very angle dependent pen. But what it's really good for in this particular case and why it comes in this set, which we'll talk about is because it puts a lot of ink on the page.

So it's a very good ink sampling, ink testing type of setup to have this Fude nib. Very good for artwork. Very good for throwing a lot of ink around. So Sailor, separately from the dip pens, has made a couple of different series of inks, which they don't normally offer in their standard ink lineup.

They make now a shimmer ink and they make a heavy sheening ink, right? So Sailor traditionally has not offered those as individual products, right? If you go look at all of the litany of Sailor products, of ink products that they make, there's no shimmer options and there's no like ultra sheener options.

So they've said, hey, we're going to make some of these inks and we're going to sell them with these dip pens. So there's a couple of different series. And so the one I bought was, so I guess this whole series is this, the questionably named Dipton series. So in this one with the Fude nib, I bought Mellow Forest.

So it's a green and kind of purpley blue shimmer ink. I broke this out on stream yesterday, Myke. I had the best time with this silly nib and this great ink color. It's a really, really kind of a dark foresty green and a purple shimmer that really pops.

And what I really liked about it was how much ink this nib held as I was testing it, right? Like it's supposed to be like a testing nib kind of, right? Like you want to get a lot of ink and you want to be able to write a lot of words or, you know, put a lot of ink on the page or however you're going to test out, you know, draw a lot with it, you know, for your artwork.

And it really did. Like any dip nib, you want to have, you don't want to have to go back into the bottle constantly, right? And this did a really good job with that. So I, and it's also, as I found out after I kind of like fawned over just the process of writing with it, dipping it and what the ink color was like, it's crazy easy to clean.

Like the way that they made this, it's almost dummy proof to where you can just remove the nib, rinse it in the sink. So it has a feed on it, but the feed is not, doesn't have the fins like you would think on a traditional pen. So it's very easy to clean.

And just the overall setup of this was really good. So I definitely recommend these. They're not cheap. So they're like $23 for the set, right? It's literally just, you know, again, a plastic stick with a steel nib and the bottle of ink, the bottle of ink is only 10 milliliters, right?

So you're not getting a whole, a whole thing out of this. Like you're, it's not like a huge, huge setup, but it's a good test. I want to use, I immediately wanted to use this pen for other things because I was very pleased with just how the nib and feed worked, right?

You always worry about the, like the dry time, like how quick, you know, you're going to run out of ink and you do have to be careful with these shimmer inks, right? You want to, you want to get a lot of shimmer. So you kind of want to shake it beforehand.

So make sure that after you dip it, cap the bottle again. So you don't pick up and shake the ink bottle without the cap before your next dip. So that's a pro tip there. Not that I did that.

So the instructions were very funny in the packaging. This is, it's a very little, I don't know. I'll take a picture of the packaging. They did a good job with this.

It's a, it's a good things come in small packages type of setup, but the instructions are shake, dip, write, wash. So like, it's this little, like, it's like a dance move chart, right? Where you have a circle, number one, and then circle number one connects to number two.

I'll put this on Instagram or something, but it's little, it's literally like you're doing the steps for like the, the Charleston or the Foxtrot or the Waltz or something. It's like a one, two, three, four type of step. And I just got a big kick out of that.

So I got a kick out of this project as a whole. I, I, I kind of want some more of these things. I want to try one of the sheen ones. I want to use this food aid nib for everything.

I am putting this in the podcast because I was stunned at how much I enjoyed this little product. So it's really fun to use clearly. Do you think this is something that I would be interested in? I honestly think yes.

Huh. Okay. And I say that without question. Like I, I'm not even hesitating to test out inks. It's just fun. Yeah. And I guess with the food aid nib, like, especially if you, if you are trying out like shimmery inks or whatever, like you're just going to get such a good ink spread, right?

That it's, it's good for that. Yeah. And I think like, it's pretty clear that it took me until I could get the food aid nib option to actually buy one of these because I have other dip nib options, right? I have things I can use as a dip nib and I have standard dip nibs, but to have this angle, this turned up angle on here gave me what I really want for an ink sampling pen is put down a lot of ink very easily.

Yes. Right. I'm not having to sling ink onto the page, like, you know, like throw the pen at the page. I'm not having to just like, like almost like eye dropper out and spread a bunch of ink. This one handled exactly what I wanted. Like I could see this being like a sole ink testing, a nib, just the way it handled it.

And believe me, I'm very late to the party on this, on the food aid nibs, right? This has been a thing for a long, long time, but I was not really sure how I would use it. And like my handwriting style, like my print handwriting style, block style is not really great for a food aid nib.

So I'm not going to be out here like doing calligraphy or beautiful artwork, but what I am going to do is put a lot of ink on the page for testing inks and have something that I can clean out very easily. Like, like I almost didn't need to rinse it out.

Just like a wet paper towel, pretty much clean this thing a hundred percent, which I was impressed with. So yeah, it's good stuff. I, I, I usually, this is not a product I thought I would be fawning over, but I had so much fun with it yesterday. And they're all sold out in pen shelly.

So, you know, it's a, it's a, my eye on it. Yeah. So they've done, this is the first time they did, they did the kit where you could get the pen and the ink together. So they made it easy. You've been able to buy things separately, separate barrels.

And then when you buy the ink separately, you can actually get a larger 20 milliliter bottle instead of the tins that it comes with in the little kit. So there you go. All right. Let's take a break. And then we've got a fun, we've got a fun little topic to run out today's episode.

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Our thanks to Squarespace for their continued support of the penaddict and RelayFM. I need to find my born-on date for my Squarespace site. Oh, man. Because it's been a long time. I think the first version I used was Squarespace 3.

Yeah. But like Squarespace 1 and 2 were like instant. Like it wasn't like a years-long thing. Squarespace 3 was really early. Yeah. It's got to be older than the show, right?

It's got to be close. Yeah. I think it's maybe around that time. So, yeah. It's been a hundred years or something. It has been. It's good stuff. Good stuff. All right, Myke. So, last week we had a question where we wanted to build a kit and, you know, based around certain parameters.

And we asked for more options for that kit. And, you know, what are the things y'all wanted us to build? You know, we may not do. We're not going to do this every episode or anything like that.

But we got some quick feedback and had another kit that we wanted to build. But first, mea culpa. I said last week's episode I was going to put an image of my kit out on Instagram. And I didn't. Spoiler. That was an episode recorded out of time.

So, I had to wait a week to put up the image to match. And then, of course, there's no way I was going to remember to do that. So, I owe y'all an image of that. That kit's still sitting here on my desk.

So, needs to use it. But this week, what kit do we want to build, Myke? So, this one came in from Greg who said, You've done a fountain pen, a non-fountain pen, a pencil, and case question for travel. So, that's what we just spoke about.

But what you chose was focused on utility. What if the need that you have is both functional but to also impress in a business meeting? What would you take for a fountain pen, a non-fountain pen, a pencil, case, and notebook for a higher-end business meeting where you need to impress the other parties?

No limit on price, but you can't possibly have anything malfunction or run out of ink. I kind of like this one. It's a little bit more particular. The whole idea of these scenarios is to get something super particular in how we answer these very particular questions.

So, if I'm going to a meeting and I want to impress, what am I going to bring? And I thought about this. The fountain pen is obviously, any fountain pen is going to impress because most people aren't expecting someone to bring out a fountain pen. But if I really wanted to impress, and given the fact that I don't have a chaos pen, which was like, let's be serious.

That is the most impressive pen in the world. Yeah. I thought about what I owned and what I want to do. And to me, one of the most impressive pens that I own is one of the most simple designs that I own. And it's the Nakaya Eotamanuri, which is essentially just a black pen with a slight hint of green, blue-green trim.

And the reason why I think that pen impresses so much is because it's so simple, right? Yeah. It is so simple, but it really pops. Like the gloss of the finish of the Arushi lacquer just really pops. And then you open it up and you can see like the blue-green of the threads, even though someone at a meeting may not even notice that.

They're going to notice it's a fountain pen and say, oh, let me see that. And, you know, I could bring something like more externally, like stunning, like the Milky Way or like your 3776. What's the model? The Galaxy. Galaxy style. Yeah, like you could bring just like a really, really, you know, bright, you know, kind of stunning design externally.

But I went with that kind of subtle look for the fountain pen. And maybe that says something about me as well as like what I think is going to make me feel good in the meeting as well. For the standard pen, this one's more impressive. And the only kind of catch with this one is you can't possibly have anything malfunction or run out of ink.

Sometimes the Pilot High Tech C refill in the aforementioned CW&T pen type B. It's a little bit of a slow starter, a little bit of a finicky pen. But mine in these pen type Bs tend to always work because the seal is really good. Yeah. I mean, obviously, we can't.

It's impossible to guarantee this, right? But like we can just get like what would we choose that we feel we'd have a pretty good like attempt with based on existing. And I just needed to work for an hour here. Like I'm not in a month long meeting where like I'm going to run out of ink or something like that.

So like I'm going to be in good shape here. And plus, that's a that pins such a talker, right? That's a real talking point. Like the pencil choice.

I went completely opposite of what I thought I might bring. And I'm bringing a Blackwing 602. I think that is one of the more interesting things that you could break out in a meeting is a traditional wooden pencil, but not your standard. Not your standard yellow Dixon Ticonderoga, like no knockoff on the Dixons, but like bringing like a very interesting Blackwing 602 with that gray, like that gray silverish barrel and the gold ferrule and the interesting eraser.

I think that would be pretty cool, especially one that's been like half used, right? Not like your fresh Blackwing because I do have a case limitation. I like anytime y'all are going to ask us for a case, it's almost always going to be the Sinclair because I'm not bringing 500 pins, right?

I'm bringing, you know, two or three pins and they're going in a Sinclair. This one I chose. I have a specific one that Mark made me when we were when we were designing the Sinclair R for Rickshaw with the Coyote, like the light tan exterior and the just the hot pink interior.

Like I got to show off some of my style in the in the meeting. So I've got these very particular, you know, not outwardly like obsessed, like wild looking pins. But when you take out this Sinclair, it looks pretty basic on the outside and, you know, pretty, pretty awesome on the inside.

Notebook was the hardest thing because this is something I wouldn't be totally particular if I really wanted to put on a show. And I was limiting this to stuff that I own, right? So like a Plotter A5 is a very impressive product given that I've owned one. I had an orange cover one like that would be the one like if I wanted to impress, this would work with all my pens and pencils that I took.

That would be a good choice. But I really think it would boil down to like a well used or well loved standard black A5 notebook or even like a Midori soft cover A5 notebook. And something that's been about halfway used, right? I'm not taking a fresh notebook into a meeting.

I'm not taking anything into a meeting that looks like I just took it out of the package, right? Like this is how I thought about this little kit building thing, right? This is all stuff that I've used and loved and shows that I care about these products by using them.

So yeah, I really thought about that a lot as I was picking out some of these things. So what do you got here, Myke? I forgot about this pen that you have and I think this is kind of a killer choice of what you got here. Yeah. So for my fountain pen, my initial thought, and I still kind of stand by this a little bit.

Maybe it's not so much for me, but I might recommend it for other people. It's just a very simple vanishing point. Yep. Because that's a head turner to people that don't understand what's going on. And it's like it makes a statement, you know?

It's got a very loud knock and it's just cool. Yeah, totally agree. But for me, I was looking at the pens that I own and what I wanted to find was something that looked professional, impressive, which is a thing that people enjoy, but wasn't garish. Like a lot of my pens are too much for a professional setting, right?

Yeah. Like if I take like a bright orange 1911, right? It's just like it's too much. So I thought the one that would maybe work the best was me and you both had Jonathan Brooks do some Arushi work on a king of pen that we bought. So we both bought this king of pen.

We got a good deal on them. And then we sent them to Jonathan for like, I don't know, a year or something. No, that was the Larmes. He gave them those.

He was working on those for a year. It was a few months. Yeah, just you have the king of pen. Yeah. Oh, did you not do it?

I thought you did that. I did not do this one. Okay. Well, we both bought this one. It's like a clear one, right?

With like blue accents. Blue finials, yep. He or Rushi finished mine. I don't have a good image of it. I'll try and get some good photos of it, but I will have to share them next week.

But yeah, that's probably what I would go with because it's pretty understated. Standard pen is a Mark I. Looks good. Works great. Pencils are Mark III. Cases are Sinclair. Notebook is a sidekick notepad.

We made it for meetings as well. So pretty boring towards the end from last time, but that's it. Yeah. Like the sidekick would. No, I think that like, you know, this is going to work.

You know, it's going to look good. Yeah. You know, you're going to be comfortable with it. Like this is one of those things like we like, like in different, I don't know, sports or anything that you like spend money to go do a thing, but you like, you got to buy the shirt or the shorts.

It's like, it's look good, feel good, feel good, play good type of thing. And like, you want to be comfortable with the things you're bringing in. Like, that's the kind of way I look at it too. So the sidekick notepad is a great choice because of the format of it.

Like I said, like I, this, the notebook is, I could not believe I had very little opinions on the notebook when I had very strong opinions about everything else. The only thing I wanted from the notebook is for it to be used. I did want it to be like brand new out the box.

So yeah, I think that's a good setup. And that the Brooks, the King of Pen, that was like my third choice. So the three pens for like the meeting were the Nakaya, the Milky Way, Namiki that I have. And then like the, like the really, the mosaic green King of Pen that I have.

That's like super flashy. I was like, I'm just not going to be comfortable with the super flashy pen. Let me go with the subtle, subtle beauty in the Nakaya. So yeah, great stuff.

Good, good kit, Greg. I appreciate that. So let's tackle a couple of these ass TPAs and then we'll get ourselves out of here. Myke, is that okay? That sounds great to me.

All right. I want to hit this first one for sure. All right. It first comes from Elliot who says, what is the aversion that smaller pen makers have to putting clips on their pens? I'm talking to you spoke pens, but you're not the only culprit. I've written to spoke.

I've written to shown design asking about putting clips on the spoke fountain pen and the shown Alton respectively. Both told me, quote, maybe next year, but this was years ago. If this is so hard to do, is this so hard to do from a manufacturing perspective? I bought a couple of clipless pens and they lay idle in their boxes because they're hard to carry.

I've added a lot of drama into Elliot's message, but realistically, I think that Elliot was putting that level of drama into the message. So I would just do a good job of getting it across. It's a good question. Like, I don't disagree with what Elliot's looking for here.

I don't think it's a good question. You can give what you want to say you're being nice, but then I have something to say. Oh, no, no. It's a fair question. The answer is you're not going to, then it might not be a pen for you, right?

That you're not going to always get what you want because clip design is so hard to make something that we feel is aesthetically pleasing and works, right? It is so, you would not believe what we're going through right now to make the clip for our upcoming click pen.

We're not, we've like, we've almost gone back to the drawing board because it's so hard to make. And we're not just going to slap a clip on any old pen because it looks ridiculous and it's going to work poorly, right? We're not making this, we're not making the choice to have a clip or not have a clip lightly, right?

It's a decision all through the process on whether a clip works for the product. And if it does work for the product, how is it best integrated into the product? And then if it's integrated in the product, how well is it going to work for the customer? And are they going to break it and bend it?

And can we replace it? Like it is so difficult to like, make a clip decision. Like it is one of the big hangup points in design from a pen. And we're not just going to put any old clip on our pens and ruin what they look like just because someone might want a clip on their fountain pen.

Like that's just going to be a pen that's not going to be for you, right? Like, and that's okay. Like it's okay to like not purchase a pen because it doesn't have a clip because you need a clip. That doesn't mean every maker should put a clip on every one of pens they placate a customer, right?

If it doesn't fit or if it doesn't work for that particular design. So it's not easy, right? Like it is very difficult to design a good clip on a pen and we're not just going to throw anything on there just because, just because, right? I mean, the thing that I want to say is just like people make the things that they want to make or the way that they want to make them.

Like not every product will be made for you. Right. That's just the nature of the way that this stuff works. And like, if you wanted to put a clip on the pen, you would have done that, but you didn't want to. And so that's the end of it.

Yeah. And we look at like literally every pen we make, we look at it. You know what? The icon, the icon and the axle, the two fountain pens did not work in those designs that we have to work with a clip. We can make some other completely different design and make it so a clip integrates, but we wanted to make the pen we wanted to make and a clip did not work for those pens.

And like, it's, it's, it's not, we're not doing it. So Elliot doesn't buy our pens. We're doing it because we feel it's the right design decision for that product. Right. Exactly. Yeah. It's, it's, you would not believe how much we think about clips on pens and how to design them and how to make them well.

Like I, I could go on for an hour just in our products, how much time and effort we put into that. And sometimes you just have to say no, because it's a bad idea design wise or technical wise or functionality wise or manufacturing wise. Like it's a very complex, very complex answer to a very simple question.

And Josh says, I have a scary story for you. It's not quite a horror story, but it's quite harrowing. I will just, before I get to the start, I've pre-read the story. Okay. I haven't yet. There's just a slight amount of like, I'll content warning this, but I'm not sure how to do it.

Right. I just like, okay. Yeah. I see now. Yes. Right. Like this is a tad gruesome. So you've been warned. I started a pen club at my university and we were wrapping up a meeting.

I had passed around a few Lamy all-stars and people were handing them back to me. In a split second, I hear someone say, here you go. I see a flash of purple and silver and I feel a stainless steel nib puncture my bicep. Someone had thrown the pen at me.

The cap came off in the process. Thankfully the nib was a medium. Okay. So it, maybe the pen had like red ink in it because I don't know how hard you'd have to throw a pen to stab someone with a medium Lamy nib. Like that's just not possible.

So maybe there was red ink and you thought you got stabbed, but like, I do appreciate the sentiment of the story. You don't believe it's true. Oh no, no. I believe it's true. But I think, I think puncture is a little bit of a strong word.

Josh has been thrown down. We require proof. Especially when, they use the word thrown and puncture, right? Did I see thrown? Yep. Thrown and puncture. Yeah. Those and then Lamy medium.

So, you heard it here, Josh. Brad doesn't believe you. So you need to provide proof. You can email proof to hello at penaddict.com.

So what I see is someone having my back turned and someone handing this to me and me turning into it while it's being held in a hand and getting stabbed. Yeah. I like, I'm down with that. I'm down with that. But a Lamy medium nib, that's like a crayon.

Like no one, no one says Josh, no one says the crayon punctured my bicep. And that's what we're talking about here, Josh. Okay. If you would like to send in anything, if you're on, by the way, if you do have horror stories, is around the spooky season. So yeah, send those into, we might get to some.

I have at least, I have at least one. I know I have one that we can share next week. Feedback.com. If you have pen horror stories, terrible things have happened to you. Go to penaddictfeedback.com and send us in an ask TPA question and we'll take a look at those.

But you can also send in all your regular questions there too, including your feedback and follow up about the show. If you want to find Brad online, go to penaddict.com and he is penaddict on social media. You can also find Brad over at twitch.tv slash penaddict three times a week streaming for your stationary enjoyment.

If you're stationary, watch the man with the stationary, you know, like you're stationary watching the stream and you've got yours. Yeah. Yeah. I'm sure that's a new one. No one's thought that before. Never heard of it.

Spokedesign.com for Brad's products. You can find me online. Some clips. Some with clips, some without clips. Pull all the clips off.

Break all the clips off. You know, you can go to iMyke. I-M-I-K-E. That's me on social media. You can find this show at RelayFM where you can find other shows that I host and my products over at cortexbrand.com.

Thank you so much to Squarespace and Wild Grain for their support of this show. But most of all, thank you for listening. Until next time, say goodbye, Brad. Goodbye, Brad. Bye.