The Pen Addict 660/transcript

• From Relay, this is The Pen Addict, episode number 670. Today's show is brought to you by Kenro Industries, Pen Chalet, and ExpressVPN. My name is Brad Dowdy, and today I'm joined by Kimberly Lau, aka All The Hobbies. How's it going, Kimberly? It is going. Getting a little nervous with all these Ask TPA questions, but I'm ready. Let's do this. Yeah, we have big plans for a big catch-up session of Ask TPA. I asked you to join me, but first, I wanted to say thank you for joining me today for your annual Pen Addict performance review. Were you prepared for this?
• No, I thought this was just Ask TPA. What the heck, Brad? It is, it is, and it is just Ask TPA, but I thought I'd make you panic because you have not done any of these podcasts with me before, so we had to freak you out a little bit, and now everything else is easier. Consider myself freaked. If I was smart, and if I had literally 48 hours in a day, I could have written a performance review. It would have been all like, what are the common numbers now in performance reviews? Last time I had them, they were like 1 to 5, and 5 being the best. You would get all 4s because you're not allowed to give 5s, right? That's how corporations work, but definitely all 4s. My last company, they made it ranking a 4, so you couldn't pick a 3 in the middle. You had to decide. Okay. Is someone a 2 or a 3? Gotcha. Yeah. It's really up to you. Yeah, yeah. So, yeah, top scores, Kimberly. I'm not going to pretend that you're not great and that you're awesome, and I really appreciate everything you do for me and the Pen Addicts. So, don't ask me to repeat any of that. It is recorded for posterity's sake, and that's all you're going to get. Now, if only I could get rid of those double spaces after periods, right? That's the easiest fix of all the editing I do. I do not care about that one. That's a good one. So, if y'all don't know Kimberly, we should probably do a little bit of an introduction.
• I'll let you do that, but y'all might see Kimberly at Pen Shows working for various pen companies. She writes for the Pen Addict and does great articles and trip recaps and all that stuff. Is there anything else you want to really say real quick?

Introduction of Kimberly and her hobbies

• As you mentioned, I am all the hobbies on Instagram, although if you look at my Instagram, it is really pretty much just one hobby, which is the stationary rabbit hole that I've fallen into. But there have been a lot of other hobbies, and hopefully after foot surgery next month, I will be re-engaging back into the running hobby again. So, wish me luck. I do. I think you were, like, probably the very first time I met you, you were running pretty actively all these years ago. So, yeah, I'm sure you're ready to get back into that and get past the pain. So, yeah, good deal. Well, I thought you would be the perfect candidate for answering all of our listener questions. And since Myke's been out, when Myke's here, we usually try to do a couple of weeks. Sometimes we don't have time to even get into them. And every now and then we'll do a big catch-up episode. Well, I thought, you know, Kimberly would be great to answer all the questions. She's smarter than I am. And has... You said that. Everyone heard it. Everyone heard it. And, you know, you're dialed into this. So, I thought, let's go down the Ask CPA questions. I will be the question reader today and then we'll, you know, collaborate on the answers on what we need to do here. I started off with a banger. I kind of did this on purpose. I didn't really, you know, rank and move around the questions. I basically just copied them. So, you can go to penaddictfeedback.com to leave us feedback. You can email me hello at penaddict.com. Content from both of those places has filled out the Ask TPA sheet today. But I did put this one first on purpose because it took some research from both of us. I cheated on that. I'll let you know how momentarily. But let me get to it. So, from Gustavo. I'm looking to have a collection of inks that each represent the truest form of each color of the rainbow. The Roy G. Biv scale. By truest, I mean something with no shimmer, minimal to no sheen, and shading. And each try to hit the hue of the color dead center, like a red that's really red and not slightly orange or not slightly pink. Think what Chokuro does for black inks, though not necessarily pigmented. What inks would you place in such a collection? First off, Kimberly, what did you think when you read this collection? I mean, when you read this question. Oh, dear God, was my first reaction. Me too. Me too. And then I rapidly scrolled through the others to go, oh, okay, they aren't all this going to be this scary. But this is probably one of the hardest questions to answer, for sure. And I completely agree. And I think it's difficult because people like you and I and a lot of our friends do not use the very straightforward colors. Like, we're not getting, like, the most standard red in the rainbow, right? We're getting lots of reds and might have a bunch of lovely reds, but they're all going to lean, you know, maybe maroon. We might have one, like, really bright red that looks like a traditional, like, red marker, right? Or something like that. But it was super hard. So I'm going to let you go first with the red. But I want to say that I did cheat today, Kimberly. I did a little bit of wisdom of the crowds on Twitch because, yeah. So we spent, yeah. Wrong. That's so wrong. I had to do this by myself. Yeah, I know. Made my swatch cards all by myself. Yeah, we did this for at least 30 or 40 minutes just to get through these colors. And there's some challenges along the way, which we'll get to. But I think this is a great place to start. Let's start with red. And what were you thinking about when you were thinking about a just straightforward Roy G. Biv red? So the two that I picked out, this first one I would probably pick over the second one. But it's the KWZ UK Pen Shows Beef Eater Red. It is a very solid red red. And I really like it a lot. It's pretty saturated and a wet ink. And if you don't mind the slightly vanilla scent of the KWZ inks, it's awesome. It is obviously a little harder to get because it was an exclusive to the UK pen shows. But if you can't get that, I actually really like Robert Oster Red Candy, which I believe a certain other pen addict enjoys as well. Yeah. So we're going to talk. I'm glad we don't have our list shared like right now to see what we each put down. And I didn't. In the end, I went off of red candy. But for a red red, that is my red. Right. Red candy. It's, I felt in the end, it leaned a little bit too dark. But it's just such a good red. It's a really good color. It's really hard. Like you said earlier, you know, I mean, to be smack dab in the middle of a particular color is really, really hard. I had a couple others that I would say maybe were close, but they weren't, I wouldn't say they were my favorite of the red reds. Diamine Matador and J. Urban's Moulin Rouge were also two candidates as well. But I don't know. This one was, this one, I mean, they were all hard to be honest. But those were the four that I managed to pick. So we will have a bunch of links in the show notes. I'm probably, I'll go ahead and tell y'all right now, we could end up with 50 links just from this category. So I'll probably pick two or three from each category to link in the show notes so y'all can play along at home and see what y'all think about these colors. The answers that I ended up going with in talking with Twitch chat, I tried to end up with two inks. And I tried to end up, not always successfully, with something that was readily available, right? If you could went to an online pen shop or an in-person pen store, they're probably going to have. And then maybe something like a little bit, you know, harder to get. And this first one's like a really good example. So the red that most people put down, and I've never used it, but I always hear it when it comes up with red, is Schaefer's Script Red. It's this color of red that is what I call pen company red, right? Like Lamy, Pelican, all of these colors tend to be a little bit light. I don't know if you've ever used that one. I have, and I love it as a, you know, if I was a teacher editor and had to use red to correct people, I would probably pick that one. But I didn't pick it because in my swatches, it leans ever so slightly orange to me, just a touch. But that was a borderline one for me too. But that was definitely a very close, very close. The kind of outlier ink that was on the list, and I think in the end it might be something I even look at as not a red ink user, Birmingham Fire Hydrant. We looked at images of this. I don't have it. Like I don't have all of these, so we're just trying to figure out images online to check out. This one really pops. It's really, really vibrant. Again, I can only tell from the images and everyone's computer screen is going to be a little bit different. And, you know, the samples are going to show off different colors depending on how the samples are done and edited. But I thought Fire Hydrant was something at least I wanted to look at down the line. All right. Let's get into orange. I'll go first this time. And shockingly, well, to the shock of no one, there were two inks you listed here. One which I definitely went with for my little bit of an outlier color. Ackermann number 16 is just a crazy, I call it traffic cone orange. It's a little bit fluorescent for the orange. I almost went with diamine pumpkin or diamine orange for those oranges. Orange is more standard, a little bit like a traditional orange peel color where pumpkin has a little bit, it's a little bit hotter. I don't know exactly how to describe it. It's a little bit more fiery of an orange for pumpkin. Totally agree. Totally agree. I was looking, one of the resources, and I'll put this in here, is Kelly's Ink Swatches Online at Mountain of Ink. Aurora Orange is shockingly basic in a good way, right? Most of these standard inks from companies just don't really do it for me. It was kind of the most straightforward orange I could find because orange, which we're going to find in the next color, yellow, orange can be very complex to just do a basic one, right? Almost all oranges lean on the red side or the yellow side or the honey side, right? Never just like it's hard to get just like a completely good orange. So what did you think about the oranges?

Discussion on orange inks and their characteristics

• Yeah, this one was hard too because it really depends on where you want the brightness of it. And so, yeah, I had Diamond Pumpkin and Diamond Orange as two what I would call very good examples of straight up oranges that don't actually look alike. Yeah, exactly. And yes, I also had Ackerman 16, Orange Bovin, and then also Kobe 25 Turumi Apricot. But Turumi Apricot is also a little bit more electric than your typical orange.
• And then one that I would say was pretty, fairly good orange too is Scribo's Aranjo de Sicilia, which is a beautiful orange ink. I didn't think it, it had a bit of shading, but I wouldn't call it like a super shading kind of ink. So it was just a really nice orange. I'll have to look at that one. I haven't tried that one. I think I've seen pictures of it, but I have not tried that yet. I also don't need to drop their bottles on my foot. So I kind of like keep away from them a little bit. They're huge glass bottles. I would love to read a murder mystery where someone gets killed with a bottle of Scribo 90 mil.
• They're kind of amazing. Amazing. I said you could build one of those like non-see-through like bathroom shower walls, right? Like the glass bricks. They're like glass bricks. Yes. They're kind of amazing. Kind of amazing. All right. Let's get to what I think was honestly the most difficult to pick just because of availability for these colors. And that's yellow. So why don't you tell me what you thought about yellow? Yeah, I don't have any straight up yellows, yellows, partly because it is not always the most easy to read. And then also because a good straight up yellow, I mean, also they just don't make that many that are a straight up yellow. There's a lot of yellows that lean brownish or lean orangey, but not really what I would call a true yellow. So the only two that I really thought were good candidates were the Pilot 100th Anniversary Daiko Kuten and the Colorverse Project Series No. 8 Ornament Yellow. I know a lot of people talk about Rohr and Klingner's Helianthus as a good yellow ink, which I do think is a good yellow, but not for this purpose. It's actually a bit too orange, in my opinion, for this category. I totally agree with everything you just said. Yellow is difficult because a pure Roy G. Biv yellow color is practically unusable. We need some other color in there to actually see them on the page when we're writing with our pens, which is why I'm a super fan of Daiko Kuten. But I didn't consider it for this because it's, I don't know, it's almost like a little bit golden orangey. I don't know. But it was impossible. Like, it's impossible. If you don't have these swatches sitting in front of you or, you know, you're able to look them up online, it was really hard to pick them up. I thought the Colorverse one, Ornament Yellow, did come up as a really, really nice yellow. Diamine Yellow, which I'm not just going to pick Diamine Inks for all this. You could probably go answer this with all Diamine Inks, and I have at least one more on this list for colors.
• Diamine Yellow seemed actually pretty good. And then for like the specialty lineup, Myke actually uses this ink. It's Sailor 770. It's a really bright yellow. I just don't know if you can get it right now. So I don't know if they're still making the Sailor Ink Studio line, if you can get them. I think yes, but I don't know. I think so. Yeah. I just, I, again, it's tough because I don't seek out inks that I don't plan on. Oh, that's not true. I was going to say, I don't seek out inks I don't plan on using, but I clearly have. But, you know, a straight up yellow like that, it's just not something that I would actively seek out. And therefore, I don't have any swatches for. Yeah, exactly. All right, let's go to green. I think green's the easiest, right? Because I think... Maybe? It's my least favorite, which is maybe why I didn't want to spend a lot of time on it. But Robert Oster Emerald just looked like a really just mid-green. I'm saying that like it sounded like in a derogatory way, but like it is just basic, like Mont Blanc Irish green, right? That's the first thing that came to mind. That's on your list. That's on your list. I cannot use that ink color. I just don't use that ink color at all. So, but between Robert Oster Emerald and Tasha Midori, those were kind of like the mid-greens that I liked to answer this. What did you think about green? Because I think you differ a little bit than me. Yeah, so I didn't go with Tasha Saba Midori because it is too teal for me. Not the Saba Midori. They have one just Midori. Yes, sorry. Yes, never mind. I didn't... I kind of went with something a little bit different. The first one is a nice straight up, I think of it, borderline spring green. It's the Rohr and Klingner Verdura. Verdura stands for... It means vegetables in Italian. That looks really good. That's a good color. I see this now. Yeah. And then I do have Mont Blanc Irish green. It is a little bit, a little darker. And then I liked Anderillium's Spirula Green and KWZ's Green No. 2, which is a very creative name. Maybe not. But... And then these are also close. Seconds would be Twisby Forest Green and Schaefer's Very Verde. Okay. Yeah. I'm going to have to look at these and see because like this is just... I just generally avoid like the just right in the middle greens. I like my greens really, really bright or I want like a black green. You know, it's like I am very much on the opposite end of the spectrum when it comes to green. And for me, I have a lot more greens that lean more olivey or greens that lean more teal. You know, and so same here. I don't have a lot of what I would call straight up greens. Yeah. Or sometimes there's too yellow, etc. So this was actually the rest of the rest of this was really, really hard for me to do. So this is... So up until this point, I think it's been pretty clear whether we have a good answer or not. I think our task has been pretty clear.

Transition to blue and other colors in the rainbow spectrum

• Blue, indigo, and violet. Now we have a problem. Right? Especially if you look up any chart of the expectation of the rainbow or like a Roy G. Biv chart that your kids might learn in school. What color do you think blue is expected to be in Roy G. Biv when you're looking at these images? So my first thought was all of the quote boring blue slash school blue type inks that everyone loves to hate or at least is bored of. And that's kind of what I think of when I think of that blue. And I put down two colors and then rapidly said, screw this. There's too many. I can't figure out which one of these I want to pick.
• So I would say, actually, there's one I didn't even put on the list. I totally should have. I'll start with Pelican Edelstein Sapphire, which is a nice straight up blue. Ackerman No. 3 Blau, which is also blue. And then Franklin Kristoff's Blue 72. It's what we ink up their testers with. It is a nice, solid blue. But there is just so many in this range that it's hard to pick one.
• There's just too many. Before I went into this category, I was like, oh, I'm just going to pick, you know, Kaweco Royal Blue or something like really straightforward. But like all the charts I was looking at, I was like, okay, let me look at these. You know, if I just Google Roy G. Biv, you know, what are they going to tell me blue should look like? Because there's indigo right coming up next. And I was like, what is their differentiator here? And most of them put like almost like a turquoise or cyan type of color in for the blue. So I went that route, which I think is good that we did something a little bit different here. Because like Sapphire, I thought about, but like I don't, that almost fits in between these of the blue and indigo. Like this is really complicated. This is where you and I sit at a bar one night and argue about this for like an hour on what's right. And I don't think there is a right. So it's a good thing I have my, I don't even know how many bajillion color rings in front of me that I can pull out the turquoise section. Because I never think of turquoise as blue. I think of turquoise as yet another color. And a few favorites kind of jumped out at me.
• Lamy turquoise slash Pacific Ocean Blue. That one actually is the same ink. Unlike Petrol and Lamy Dark Lilac, the two versions. I also really like Inky Barra Sky Blue. Okay.
• Hold on. There's probably like 800 more of these that like are so good. Well, I'll tell you exactly what we picked. We picked Lamy Turquoise because it's just a good straight up, straight down the middle turquoise. And Roaring Klingner Blue Mare. That's a good one too. I think might be slightly brighter than Lamy Turquoise. Or maybe it has a little more depth to it or something like that. It's slightly different. Slightly different. And if you like a slightly drier ink, not super dry, but just a wee bit slightly drier. Both Kaweco Turquoise and Caran d'Ache's Hypnotic Turquoise, also very good turquoise-y. But it's... God, there's so many in here. Yeah. Too many to pick, really. So as we head into these last two colors, do you think Gustavo is regretting asking us this question? Have we solved any problems yet? I don't know. But the next two, because... Well, the next one with Indigo, I have a different version of Indigo in my head than apparently what the Roy G. Biv version of Indigo was. So I pivoted pretty quickly as soon as I looked it up in Google. Yep. And this is a legitimate problem, is deciding what color Indigo is. So why don't you go ahead with what your thoughts were, and then I'll back it up with mine. Okay. So in my head, originally, without looking at Google, when I think of Indigo, I think of blue jeans and a kind of a denim-y color. And so I was going to go that route, but I thought, I don't think that's what they meant. So I looked it up in Google and found that it's a bit more of a blurple, like a brighter blurple. So that's the route I went. So my current favorite blurple is the Tasha Hiroshige Ruri. It is just such a, almost electric, but not in a bright way. It's just such a really rich blurple color. I'm also a big fan of Colorverse Stars and Stripes and Monteverde, I don't know how to say this word, chariot? Yeah, I don't know. Charoit? It's a gem. It's a gemstone. It's a gemstone. That's all I know. And then Robert Oster's Dragon Knight, Dying My Billberries, a great go-to. And then just for funsies, Straits Pens Happy Accident Lilac. Yeah, classic, classic naming there from Straits Pens. So- Absolutely. I took indigo as more of blue, right? So the more denim-y stuff. I think when we were discussing this and doing a little bit of Wisdom of the Crowds, I think more people, when you say indigo, think about it how you would think. And I agree with you completely. Like, that's what I would think.
• Getting into, like, this, like, Bilberry came up a lot, right? Diamond Bilberry. It's like a blurple. This was the least enjoyable for me to decide because I couldn't decide because I was just having a mental battle over what is indigo. So we'll probably get some feedback on this. This is the color I'd actually want some feedback. But I went with Diamond Oxford Blue. It's a denim color, right? I love Oxford Blue. It's so good. It's a brilliant color. I don't, I'm not convinced that it's right or not. I just really don't know what this, when we're trying to match these colors up. The last one, Violet, I thought was easier. It's pretty straightforward. It's kind of a bright purple, right? It's kind of your straightforward middle of the road, not too dark, not too rosy purples, not too magenta-y. So what do you think about Violets? Oh, man. Purple. Purple. Between blues and purples, those are my two favorite colors that I have way too many colors of. And it's also really hard to organize because sometimes it leans a little too blue and sometimes it leans a little too red.
• But I have a lot in this category. So I liked Gervon's Violette Pensée, Diamond Lavender, Visconti Purple, which is really hard to find. I think they've stopped making that years ago, but it's a perfect purple for me. Diamond Majestic Purple. Aquerman No. 13 Simpliacy's Violet. And then just for a little something different, Diamond Kong Girls, because that's a nice rich purple too. I haven't seen that one. I'll have to take a look at that one. So the one thing I wanted to avoid here, and you did too, is the Imperial Purple color, which I love. Yes. But that is so hot. Like it's really eye-searing purple, but it's beautiful, right? Yeah. So I went back to the stock colors for this Pelican 4001 Violet, just like right in the middle, you know, hitting the V in violet, I think, there for the purples and the rainbow. And then a Roshizuku Shikibu, I thought was a pretty good mid-range purple. Oh, the Murasaki? No.
• It's different. I think I wrote down Shikibu. Did I write that down wrong? Yeah, Murasaki Shikibu. Yeah, Murasaki Shikibu. Yeah. So yeah, that's just a really good mid-range purple with not a lot else going on. So there you have it. Let us know. This is the longest question we'll do today without a doubt. And that's why I wanted to do this first, because if I tried to do this at the end, we would never finish. But this is a tough question. And this is a challenge I think we could put forth to a lot of people to see if they could come up with their own version of what a Roy G. Biv colorway would look like for each of these colors and try to get something smack in the middle, you know, without too much going on. You know, no sheen, no shading, definitely no shimmer, things like that. So it was a fun challenge to try to attack here for Gustavo. I'm not sure how well we did, even after the fact, because that's how hard of a time I had with this. So I appreciate it. Yeah, I also learned that I don't know what the true Roy G. Biv colors really are, because I have different colors in my head than what Google said. Not that Google agreed with each other either. Yeah, like I would skip indigo every time. I was like, well, well, okay, that's just, what are we doing here? All right, let's move on. The next one via Daniel.

Introduction of questions about custom nib grinds

• I was recently introduced. Oh, this is actually, we have two questions. I'm going to read two that are similar here. So from Daniel says, I was recently introduced into this beautiful, engaging world of fountain pens, inks, and everything in between. My question is about custom nib grinds. Are there certain nib grinds that work better for certain nibs? Does it matter? For instance, a medium nib ground to an architect versus an extra fine nib, or a broad ground nib into a cursive italic versus a fine nib ground into a cursive italic. Does the material of the nib matter? Say gold versus steel. What should I look for and consider in a custom nib grind? So hold that thought, because we also have a question from Mac.
• Very, very similar. I still feel like a new guy in the fountain pen community and was wondering if you could explain what a nib grind is, or if you already talked about it where I could find out about nib grinds. My favorite print right now is a Pilot Metropolitan with a nib. Wanting to know if that is an italic nib and or a calligraphy nib. Thanks for reading, Mac. So similar questions.
• Mac, a little bit more like, hey, let's really start at 101. And Daniel, maybe like right there above that. So when you, when someone asks you about a nib grind, is there a place that you even start with this? I do. So I use my hands to describe what a nib looks like. And without being able to show you on a podcast, basically, I describe to them as it's like the tipping is like a ball most of the time. And by the way, apologies to all the nib grinders out there that I'm sure I'm going to be butchering all of the nib terms. This is my every week. Every week. Yeah.
• It's like you have a ball that you're working with and that's your standard nib. Now, the bigger the ball, the broader the nib. So the little teeny tiny ball will be an extra fine, you know, to a double broad. Maybe you have a very big round tipping. Obviously, there are exceptions. Like some double broads are more, have a different shape. But let's just assume for now that they're all round. When you start to grind it, you change the shape from round to something that could be an extremely sharp rectangle. So those would be typically your cursive italic where your down strokes are broader than your left and right horizontal strokes. Or it might be more of a rounded, what I would call a capsule shape. So it's no longer a circle, but instead of sharp corners on the edges, you have more of a rounded shape. Those would be things like a cursive italic or a stub. You'll still get a similar line variation where the down stroke is broader than the cross stroke. Turn that around 90 degrees and you have, wait, 90? Sorry. Yeah. Yeah. No. Yes. Yes. Yes. Turn that 90 degrees. And now you have something that's more akin to what an architect can do where the down stroke is skinnier and your cross strokes are broader. And these are very generic terms. And obviously, a nib grinder can make it work to your specific angles. And, you know, if you rotate your nibs, et cetera. But, you know, that's kind of in a nutshell what they're doing to a nib. They're changing it from that round shape to something shaped a little bit differently to give you more line variation. So that's sort of how I typically start. Yep. Yep. And that's great. So let's tackle some of the specifics now. We'll break these down a little bit more. So I'll take one part of Daniel's here. Are there certain nib grinds that work better for certain nibs? Does it matter? It does. And the reason is, like Kimberly was explaining, the difference in the tipping on the very small extra fine nib versus the larger tipping on a broad nib. If you want something like an architect nib, you're not going to get the effect of that nib grind as much on a small nib as you are on a large nib. Right. So almost no one's getting an architect grind on an extra fine nib if a nib grinder would even do that because it's kind of pointless. You're losing any line variation that you're trying to acquire by paying for this grind. And in having like a small nib, that platform is so much smaller for the architect grind. It doesn't, you know, when we look at these nibs, like we can tell a difference just with our own eyes. And yeah, they're like one's bigger than the other, but it doesn't seem like they're that big. But when a nib grinder gets a hold of like broad tipping, that's a huge platform for them to do their work. Right. Totally agree. Yeah. The bigger, I won't say the bigger, the better, depending on the nib, but it allows the nib grinder to do what they do best. And that's shape the nib into something that's going to work for you. So they can even take that down like pretty far into like something finer for you. But yet generally, especially for like your cursive italics, your architects, anything that has a wider line variation, you want to start with a broader nib. Like medium and up and probably broad enough, to be quite honest. So, and I'll ask you, Kimberly, does the material of the nib matter, say 14K versus 18K versus steel? So, what do you think? In my experience as a not nib grinder, but knowing a lot of people who are and having my own nibs ground by them, it does not seem to matter what the material is. It's more about how much material there is to grind with. And back to your point about the nib size. One of the things that I can speak about personal experience working for Franks and Kristoff at the shows is that we do an extra fine SIG, which is our stub italic gradient. Audrey Madison grounds those beautifully. We do an extra fine on our number six nibs, but we don't do an extra fine SIG on the number five nibs because of exactly what you said. The tipping, it's just so small and so little, it's almost not worth getting. So, we don't even bother with an extra fine SIG on the number fives. Yep. Yep. So, that makes sense. And lastly, Mac, we kind of answered a little bit of your questions in there, but Mac is saying their favorite pen right now is a Pilot Metropolitan. I'm wanting to know if it's an italic nib or a calligraphy nib. It's probably neither. I don't think the Metro comes with the CM, which is Pilot's cursive, does it? They used to actually have several with them, with the CM nibs. And also, you can get the CM nibs on like their Plymix and on a variety of other, you know, pen models that use that same steel nib. And it is more of an italic than it is a stub. So, I do cringe a little when people say, oh, it's a stub. And it's like, no, it's actually way too scratchy to be a stub.
• And I'm not entirely sure what Mac was asking with respect to calligraphy nib because there are so many different types of calligraphy that it's hard for me to figure out what they mean. But assuming they mean an italic style of calligraphy, then yes, it is more that. Yeah, it's in that ballpark. It's not as. And it's not a flexible nib at all, obviously. Yeah. And it's not as extreme as like a classic calligraphy nib would be. But their Pilot's steel CM nibs are fantastic. That's italic nib. So, Mac, you can look on the nib. There'll be a little marking.
• And it should say CM on there in between the little brackets. If not, it'll say, I think they do fine and medium in Metropolitans.
• Yes. Maybe some extra fines. But it'll say FM or CM. And CM would be the italic size. All right. We have a lot more questions to get to. But let's take us to our first ad break of this wonderful episode. And let's hear from our friends over at Kenro Industries. This episode of The Pen Addict is brought to you by Estabrook. If you're looking for a pen and accessory set that's playful, thoughtful, and beautifully crafted for everyday use, look no further than Estabrook.
• Estabrook relaunched in 2018, breathing a whole new life into an already iconic American writing brand. Since the relaunch, Estabrook have focused on beautifully crafted products that blend heritage with modern storytelling. They're known for creative materials, clever packaging, and meaningful collaborations that speak directly to writers, journalers, and pen lovers. And their newest launch is a collaboration with Helen of the Coffee Monsters Co. Helen is known for her whimsical illustrations and global journaling community. For this collaboration, Estabrook and Helen of the Coffee Monsters Co. have created a special edition Estee fountain pen. The Estee is presented in cafe latte-inspired resin, exclusive to this release. It features a custom blended grip and ring section for a tonal and textural touch unique to this edition. And the pen includes a specially engraved emoti nib, also designed just for this collection. It's packaged in a beautifully designed box featuring exclusive artwork and a sticker sheet designed by Helen herself. So I've been lucky to have this pen in hand for a couple of weeks. I've been lucky to know about this pen for a month or more. And I could not be more excited for what Estabrook has done here in collaboration with Helen. I'm a super fan. I've got to, you know, meet and become friends with Helen over the past year, meeting at Stationery Fest last year in Brooklyn. Helen, I love her aesthetic. The colors they picked out for this pen are spectacular. The resin and the cream color barrel and the coffee colored resin is just spectacular. I love the emoti nib, Helen's little hand-drawn characters that feature in a lot of her artwork and stickers and everything. I'm a super fan of the blotter paper that came with this, comes with this collaboration. Y'all know I love blotter paper. And I just could not be more excited. This is one of my favorite pen releases in quite a long time. Yes, I'm biased because I already love Helen and the coffee monsters and everything that she does over there. So I love this. They did a fantastic job. And I've thoroughly been enjoying this pen since I've had it. And now you can get yours too. So you can also grab some items that complement this new Estee perfectly. Like the coordinating coffee monsters co ink, a warm brown blend perfect for this pen. Or how about a set of blotter papers to round out your writing experience. All designed with Helen's art and everyday journaling in mind. This special Estee edition pen will be available to buy beginning April 9th. Just visit esterbrookpens.com to get yours. That's esterbrookpens.com to grab your special edition coffee monsters co pen from April 9th. Our thanks to Estabrook for their support of this show and all of Relay. All right, Kimberly. Another double question from the listeners of the show. And this is a topic I just haven't been able to get to for the past few weeks. And I thought this was a perfect time to approach this. So Wayne and Leslie both sent in a similar question. Hello, Brad. Hope that you're well. I have some news for the show. So Nibs.com has lost their distributor rights for Nakaya in the USA. So let's just leave it right there. So that's kind of the emails and the first notifications that I started getting here in the past few weeks concerning news about Nibs.com. But it's actually much bigger and broader than just the Nakaya contract. Nibs.com actually filed for bankruptcy early in 2024. So the best thing I can do is point listeners to a couple of documents or a couple of links that were shared with me both on Reddit. So there's a conversation around the Nibs.com bankruptcy. And then there's a page listing their bankruptcy documentation that was officially filed. But the problem with this scenario that is, you know, for listeners of this show is that they didn't tell anybody.

Discussion on Nakaya and Nibs.com updates

• And they were continuing to collect money for products. And in the case of a lot of Nakayas, people are not getting their products. So I can't really speak with more detail than that because I haven't been involved in that, right? It didn't happen to me. So I don't want to speak for anyone else. But check out all these articles. There's several anecdotes that you can check out in this. And do you have any input on this or anything you wanted to say about this?
• Actually, yeah. As of today, Nakaya has a post on their website informing them that they are no longer working with Nibs.com. So this is an official thing literally just came out today. I did send you the link, Brad, so you can include that in the show notes for everybody to read. But basically, you can order Nakaya directly through them or one of their authorized retailers.
• Yeah. So I have not looked on Nibs.com site. But as of like a couple weeks ago when this was coming out, they were still offering Nakayas for sale. I would avoid that. Like I would not put my money there right now. And, you know, that might be, you know, borderline getting me in trouble to say. But like that's okay. Like I feel pretty safe in that this is a situation I personally would not want to be involved in and do not want to see any of our listeners get caught up in. So check out all the links. And I'll add Kimberly's link. I did get that from you right now. So put that in the show notes. Educate yourself. Like it's hard to know, right? Like this stuff just happens. And, you know, we're as big as we think our community is. It's super tiny and super small. So I appreciate everyone sharing their information and giving us their input on this situation, which honestly, it just stinks. Like, you know, we all hate having to discuss this. But I think it's fair to put this forth at this point. All right. Next up from Jim. Hey, I have a Pilot Custom 823 that I'm currently having a love-hate relationship with. It's a beautiful pen and I love the nib. However, it has a tendency to hard start and or just stop flowing while writing. Yes, the back cap is slightly opened. I'm using well-behaved ink, usually a Roshizuku Shinkai. So even Pilot ink and a Pilot pen. For the price of this spin, I expect flawless performance. I'm using good paper, Apica CD. Is it time to see a nibsmith? What are your thoughts when you read this? Hmm.
• I'm glad he included the fact that they did open the back cap.
• I am also assuming they've cleaned out their pen more than once. And it's not like, you know, either manufacturing oils or whatnot that is preventing that from happening. I haven't actually used Apica CD paper. So that would be my next question as to whether or not it behaves like this only on that paper. Because some papers, for whatever reason, just are finicky. But Jim does say that, you know, it has a tendency not only to hard start, but to just stop flowing. Which feels kind of weird to me. I'm a little bit surprised. So if it was me, I would try to see if I could pull the nib and feed out. Just pull it out straight out. But I'm actually not able to do that on all my A23s. So that would be my first thing to try. They're difficult.
• Yeah. And just to see if there's either something stuck in the feed or, you know, that's kind of preventing that. Sometimes it's just that the feed and the nib are just pressing too tightly against each other. And pulling the nib and feed out, cleaning it and reinserting it. Sometimes it's all it needs to kind of get it kickstarted again. But I don't know if it's time to see a nibsmith yet. But that's kind of what I would try is to see if I could get the flow going a little bit better. I might also try, the other thing is, try different inks and different paper. Yeah. So I'm pretty much along the line of Kimberly. Number one, Jim, this is like a perfect feedback because you included the pen, the ink, the paper, and like all the things you've tried. So like, it's like, yes, you're doing all the right things. Your expectations are correct. Like this should work really well. I have used Apica CD. I've actually used a full notebook of it. It's really good paper. It's at least as good as life paper. Like the bank paper, just a nice smooth Japanese paper. It's not the paper for sure.
• If you can't get the feet out, I'm probably letting someone else look at the pen at this point. With my 823, that's actually one of the few pilots I was actually able to get the nib out because I like cleaning it a little bit more. You know, getting in that vac and cleaning it out because it's just a pain to just constantly run water through it. But if you can't, don't force it, right? Their pilot makes it really, really tough to get those out. I think you're probably at the point where you want someone else to look at it. If you've done like the cleaning and if you're putting an email together or a message together like this, I'm assuming you've cleaned it well. So I think it's probably time. So there you go.
• All right. John asks, I've been a pen on it since childhood and that was a long time ago. I feel that, John. Enjoying pens, inks, and new planners was a useful and fun part of my career. I love taking notes with my fountain pens. Somehow the stationery made work a bit easier. But I recently stopped working full time and now I don't need a planner and I have way too much stuff for my volunteer work. My question is how might I rekindle the flame of my stationery passion? Love these questions, Kimberly. What do you think? Well, I don't have a normal job either. One of my not normal jobs is writing for you. So that's where I do a lot of my writing. We are very abnormal over here. Yes. Yeah. And I was never a traditional planner either. And so I do have a combination of things that I use. My bullet journal is one of them. But when I'm not doing that, I kind of find things to write. I love writing poems or not my own poems. I should say copying poems or writing out song lyrics, quotes, things like that. I also really like to copy people's books that I either really liked or want to read a little bit more of. So I recently finished The Little Prince last year. I'm currently working on copying some Italian children's books because it helps me with my Italian vocabulary and, you know, helps some of that sink in a little bit more. I've also been writing out Marcus Aurelius' Meditations because it is very meditative since I'm writing it in typewriter font. So that allows me to be a little bit creative because I don't normally go around writing in typewriter. And then a few weeks ago, eventually I'll write a TPA article on this. I started a book journal basically documenting the books that I read for 2024. Yes, I know it's 2025 now.
• So, you know, and in that book journal, I'm including quotes that I have either highlighted on my own in the Kindle app or that other people have mentioned in Goodreads, etc. And I'll write those out as well. So it gives me a good way for me to look back at the books I've read and go, oh, yeah, right. I remember this one was about this and I really liked this or didn't like that. So I basically find ways to use the pens that may not be your typical use them for work or use them for planning type purposes. Yeah, so I do similar to you in that I'll write lyrics or songs or book passages or quotes. And I'm writing just because I'm writing that because I like I like what they've said or I've enjoyed the lyrics or something like that. And one of the things and you mentioned what you do, you do it like you do two great things with this. One, you're learning a new language. So this helps. And two, you're practicing your handwriting in whatever specific font you want to to work on. You know, maybe it's typewriter, like you're saying, or just in your general handwriting. Like you also teach a handwriting class that I've been to. So like the handwriting practice is very important to you. So an additional thing I do is I've started to color with my fountain pen inks a little bit recently. You know, there's a dominant industry ink book that's out. It allows you to use your inks a lot more. Kimberly does this too. You color a lot with your inks and use them for a lot of extra things and mixing, you know, a water brush with color and changing the color of these inks and seeing how these inks behave. We all have more inks than we need, even more so than pens. And getting to use those inks for, you know, other things. I've actually bought watercolor paper for the first time in I don't know how long because I want to play with my inks. So that's something I'm doing that's, you know, outside of what we'd call a work usage situation for the pens.
• Also the reading, like I would love to see, you know, an article from you someday about this because I write, like literally I was sitting down last night. I keep articles I want to read and Instapaper. Open up Instapaper was just firing through some a bunch of articles. And like I'm looking at a page where I wrote three different quotes from an article or from three different articles, three different quotes, just in a field notes with a Copic multiliner, like sitting on my lap. I could, I don't even know if I could reread these again, but it's just using, finding other ways to use your pens. I think that's going to be like a big focus of mine over the next like five or 10 years, right? I think that's kind of the phase of the hobby that I'm in myself, even though I literally use them for work all day, every day. But finding the ways to use them that would not be a traditional, hey, let's write something for work type of situation.
• I realized there are a couple other things that I do that didn't come to mind until you were talking. With respect to coloring books, I used to have, and I still have way too many what they call adult coloring books with all these intricate designs and whatnot. And I realized that I couldn't use, I just couldn't color in them because there were too many choices of inks or pens or pencils to choose from. So I don't do that kind of coloring anymore, but I started doing these things called spiroglyphics. And basically all you're doing is you're just coloring between these lines and it goes into a spiral pattern and it eventually, you know, something will show up in, you know, like a city or a monument or, you know, some design. So that's kind of cool because it doesn't actually take brain cells other than pick one pen and just start coloring.
• And then the other thing that I completely forgot about is pen palling. So I am way overdue on my letters to pen pals, but that's a really, really good way for me to use up my pens because I try to use a different pen and ink combination on every page.
• And I don't try to practice handwriting on it. I'm just there to get thoughts down and, you know, I'm messaging with people from around the world. And it's just a lot of fun to talk to different people from all sorts of cultures and backgrounds and walks of life and talk about whatever. So pen pals are a great way to use your pens as well. Yeah. And like I do postcards, right? So like I don't do like the full letters. Like it's a big joke that Brad doesn't write letters, but I scratch that itch with postcards and it's fun. So yeah. And I love this conversation. If you have any more questions, John, you know, definitely email me or, you know, let me know what your, what products you have and what kind of things you want to use. All right. Next up, Kimberly, before I read this question, are you a severance watcher on Apple TV?
• We have only watched, I would say five, four or five. I want to say four or five episodes of the first season. So I'm familiar with it, but I don't, I'm not remotely caught up. Okay. So you, you, you were involved when we talked about this earlier, but this is follow up from the severance fountain pen, the, the, what is that pen that they're using? So I'm going to read this email from Fox because this actually blew my mind. It might be a little bit spoilerish for you. I don't know. I, I, I can't remember where exactly in season one, this came up. That's okay. So, okay. So Fox says, Brad on the severance pen, I definitely thought of you and initially was like, so fountain pens are torture now because it was shot to emphasize the unforgiving tip of the really dark and forced left-hand writing on a right-handed Gemma. But as far as a brand, there's a clear answer. Lumen or Lumen. I should, it's not Lumen. I was reading, I was reading this literally Lumen. Since all of the stuff in that world is Lumen Industries branded, I suspect that the testing floor uses Lumen pens. That has to be the answer. That's the canonical way I'm going to think about this. I brought this up on stream and everyone's like, yes, it's optics and design. It's an optics and design pen. Optics and design, sorry for spoilers. If you haven't watched season one, they make everything that's in these facilities, like, like from paintings to computers to chairs to like literally everything. There's no way that canonically this is not a Lumen optics and design pen. That's what I'm going to go with. And I think Fox, that is super smart. And I think that's, that's where I'm at with this. I really like that idea. Yeah. Lumen pens with Lumen ink, of course, on Lumen paper. Yeah, totally. Like, I mean, they're literally on a Lumen set when they're doing, I know you haven't seen this scene, but they're like in a Lumen created room. It has to be a Lumen fountain pen. It just has to be. They have a Lumen, like, what is it called? Like when you have like a, well, I guess their version of the Closet of Doom where you can go get notebooks. Exactly. Like I just remember that one episode where she goes and she gets a whole stack of notebooks. Yep. Like that's probably where she also gets their Lumen pens. Yep. Yep. So I'm going to go with, this is an optics and design pen, created pen. And that's, that's what we're going to go with. So thank you, Fox. That just like the little light bulb went off in my head and we don't have to figure out what it is from there. But if you're wanting pens, maybe not Lumen pens, I know you can get them over at Pen Chalet. So let's hear from our good friends and sponsor this week, Pen Chalet. This episode of the Pen Act is brought to you by Pen Chalet. They sell authentic, amazing roller balls, fountain pens, ballpoints, mechanical pencils, and so much more. They have all of your favorite brands like Monteverde, Pelican, Lamy, Pilot, Namiki, Sailor and Kaweko, and of course, an authorized dealer of all these great brands. They have very fast and reliable customer service. They run special discounts twice a month, including closeout specials every two weeks. They're always adding new styles of pens every single month. As well as the brands I mentioned earlier, Pen Chalet sells limited edition pens and all the pen accessories you ever need, like pen carrying cases, pen holders, refills, fountain pen converters, and so much more. This week for the Pen Addict over at PenChalet.com, you click the YouTube radio podcast button, type in the code Pen Addict, and you'll get to our podcast deals page. And let me tell you, they have a crazy fun pen ready there, right at the top of the list. The Pelican Twist fountain pen. It is such an enjoyable, fun, great pen. I love writing with this pen. They have some new colors out. These yellow and green colors look spectacular. I'm a huge fan of the Pelican Twist, and at this price, it makes it easy to pick up. They also have the new Monteverde MP1 piston filling fountain pen. They have the Pelican 670 warm gray, which is a stunning and interesting Pelican fountain pen. And there's Aurora Inks, and then there's the Le Bon Jonathan Brooks limited edition pen. They have all kinds of amazing pens for Pen Addict listeners out there. So head over to PenChalet.com, type in the code Pen Addict, and yeah, take a look at all the fun stuff they have.
• Pen Chalet offers free shipping on orders over $75 in the United States, and they also sell internationally with very reasonable shipping rates. Pen Chalet has low prices on high quality pens and offers a 100% satisfaction guarantee. So go to PenChalet.com slash Pen Addict to get 10% off anything at Pen Chalet and to see this week's exclusive offers for listeners of the show. That's PenChalet.com slash Pen Addict. Thanks so much to Pen Chalet for sponsoring Relay and the Pen Addict.
• All right, next up we have Scott. Scott says, I'm going through the back catalog of the podcast and have heard Myke compare pen resin to glass techniques several times. It got me thinking about beach glass and whether anyone makes a pen with a clear material and matte finish. I love finding it at the beach and think of it would be a fun aesthetic for a pen.
• For a simple question, this is quite complex, at least how I think about this question. So the short answer is no, right? No one's making like a sea glass.
• I'll put a link if you're not familiar with what sea glass is. Are you familiar with what sea glass is? I am. I'm assuming. So yeah, it's basically just polished rock essentially that is made into this finish and a lot of it's translucent, like translucent green or translucent blue. There's a lot of pen acrylics that can be made to mimic this style, but never with the actual product of what we would call, quote, beach glass. Is there something that you could think of that would be possible? The closest I can think of that is, I mean, yes, not with actual sea glass and not with actual glass either. But I think Kakimori has a new fountain pen that's kind of frosted, which is kind of in that aesthetic.
• But yeah, I think most people that are making pens, they tend to polish them up so that they're nice and shiny and not what I would think of as sea glass. And even Franklin Kristoff's antique glass, it's polished on the outside.
• And so I don't think of sea glass when I look at that either. But the first thing that came to mind was the ones from Kakimori. Yeah, so they have like an external frosting. They're lightweight because they're plastic, right? So you're not going to get... You can get glass dip nib fountain pen. Not, excuse me, not the same word. Glass dip nib pens that have a glass nib. Those are not like a glass pen with a nib unit in it. Like it's literally like a glass tip nib that you just use for dipping. And there's not like a filling system in there like you would think of like a traditional pen. And the frosted designs that someone like Franklin Kristoff might make give you a little bit of that aesthetic, but not the feel, right? Because like a lot of that's internal, right? Like you were saying. There's one pen I'm thinking of, which I didn't grab beforehand. And it's not sea glass. But there are a lot of interesting materials that pen makers use. So I know Adolphus from Derail Pens uses a certain type of rock recently that he's been making the pens. And I'll have to find the link in the show notes for that. Or maybe, I don't know if you can grab it while I'm vamping here. Because I also wanted to talk about like a Fordite material that some companies use.
• Which is a really... You're not going to get the texture, but you're going to get this weird kind of like rock internals that could be polished. So like I'll put in a link from Right Turns. I know Right Turns does some Fordite pens that are really, really beautiful.
• One of them even used like some surfboard resin and some things like that. So you can get some cool material pens. I don't know that we're going to get anything with like, you know, like a beach glass. But man, it's something to think about because like beach glass is really, really cool on its own. So yeah.
• All right. So Scott, I will add some links to the show notes for a couple of like really unique pens that may be something for you to look at. All right. Next up. I think this might be Kimberly's favorite question we're going to get today.
• Via Enid. I love fountain pens, but every now and then I reach for a good refillable ballpoint pen. Is there any website where I can find which refills work with a specific pen? For example, if I have a Parker Jotter, I would like to know which other brands and point size carry refills that will fit that pen. Should I even throw this over to you or are you just going to yell at me? No. I think, I mean, well, why don't you start and I'll yell if I have to. So as a well-known ballpoint pen lover, you can find reasonably easy what will fit like your Parker Jotter. And there's a couple of ways to do that. So one, there's a website called Refill Finder that is put together by our friend Tom Otto from who also works at Gold Spot. But there's that site will allow you to kind of learn about the refills, see what shapes you have, see what refills are similar. And, you know, if you need like replacements and things like that, it's pretty comprehensive. Our friend Anna at the Well Appointed Desk also has a refill reference guide that I'll link in the show notes that you should just go see. It's kind of like a general idea of what's compatible, what's not with each other. But what I like to do the most and what works the best for me, and I do this probably weekly because I use so many pens, is you go over to JetPens.com. You look up, in this case, Parker Jotter, right? So you click on the Parker Jotter, and then there's a link that says Compatible Products or Compatible Refills. And you just go look, and you see everything listed that is known to fit that pen. That's how I figure out which, if I want to get some different refills for my pen. So like, recommended refills or parts for the Parker Jotter is 67. So you click on that, and you go, and it's got the Oto Flash Dry Refill. It's got the Uni XSR Refill. All of these are going to fit in your Parker Jotter pen. So that's the easiest way that I find to kind of get to an end point of, hey, I have this pen. If it's something, you know, that JetPens might carry, you can go that way. Or if you don't know and you just have the refill, you can kind of backtrack it through Refill Finder and see what fits. See, I learned something too, because I didn't know about Refill Finder, but I already have my favorite refill for the Parker Jotter, because I am a Parker Jotter girl. Oh, nice. I cannot stand the Parker Jotter ballpoint. Yeah. So as soon as I get one, I basically swap it out for the Parker Jotter refill. So easy peasy. It works great. That's my default pen when I'm working, because I'm a clicker fidgeter. Yeah. And it's my favorite, I guess, technically ballpoint, but I put the gel refill in there. So that's what I use pretty regularly. Yeah. The Parker gel refill is much better than Parker's ballpoint refills. I never use, I always switch out any, I love the Jotter. Like, it's awesome.
• That's an instant change refill for me. I think that's one of the poorer ones. But it's funny, like, I'll stand for the Lamy ballpoint refills, and people don't like those either. So, like, you know, we can question my taste on ballpoint refills. Well, we already do, Brad. Yeah. Yeah. Definitely. Definitely. All right. Scott has a really interesting question, and I think a lot of people will get something from this. So, I have noticed larger dynamiter and length pens lately and picked one up at the Philly Pen Show last month. Some use a number eight nib, which is new to me. So, besides the obvious size difference of a number five, a number six, or number eight nib, or others, if they exist, they do, are there any other differences or characteristics about the nib size that we should know about? How do you want to tackle this one? I would say the biggest difference that I know of is often in the feed.
• The smaller the nib, the smaller the feed, and related to that, you're going to get a little bit less ink flow. Yep. That's an average. It's not always the case. But, you know, for example, a size three pilot nib is just not going to be as juicy as a size 15 or a size 30 pilot nib, even if they're both mediums. You're just going to get a bigger feed, bigger channel, bigger everything to go with that bigger nib. And that's kind of what I also see at the Franklin Kristoff table where we have testers for the number five and the number six, is that you just get a little bit less ink flow. It's not that it's, you know, it's not starved for ink. It's just not as juicy. So if I'm using a number five nib, I try not to use my dryer inks as an example. And you definitely don't want to be putting like a shimmer ink in a five. You're probably going to have a bad time, right? Just there's not enough room there, right? It kind of, you as a fountain pen user, it's like, oh, I've got this great pen and all this ink. And like, I do this all the time. I'm just going to put this in here and we're going to go to town. It's like, well, that's not really a great match just because of how it's going to flow with a number five nib versus a six. And then the eights will just give you, you know, they're just a larger nib. Like you can still get like a point size on an eight. Like you were saying, you know, a medium is going to write kind of the same, right? Like they're relatively close as far as what you're going to get for nib size, but they're going to give a lot more flow. As far as like point size, like a line width on the page, a medium five and a medium eight, probably going to be in the ballpark. At least on steel nibs, like gold nibs, you can get some differences because the larger nibs, generally speaking, will have a little bit more bounce to them, right?
• Yep, exactly that. And that little bit of softness from some of the other materials like gold and whatnot can lead to a slightly broader line. But all things, everything else being equal and we're just talking about the size difference, it's a lot of it comes down to the feed. Yeah. Yep. So Kimberly referred to other nib sizes, like companies will make specialty nibs, say like a Sailor King, a pen nib or a Pilot, like Emperor nib. Like, and they like Pilot has their own numbering scale. So like a number 50 nib is like gigantic. It gets much bigger than a number eight nib, right? So like you can look at that, but that's not going to be something you're going to see on the regular, right? You're going to see, I'd say six, you're going to see most of, and then five, and then number eights are starting to become popular over the last couple of years as stock nibs become available from different makers like Bach and things of that nature. So yeah, I haven't quite gotten on the number eight nib pen, Myke, and someone got me an extra fine one and I had to admit it's pretty good, but I tend to not use the large pens anyway, but a lot of people love them. So definitely something to look for. Yeah. For me, the number eight nibs and similarly the, you know, Pilot 30s and King of Pen and those type of nibs, they're too long for me. And I have a very steep writing angle and I don't have gigantic hands, so I'm actually unable to write with my angle without propping my hand on my other hand, which is not comfortable for writing. So it thankfully saves me a lot of money because all of those options are out the door. Not even, they're a no-go. Yeah, that's a great point that we didn't bring up. The distance from the page on a number five versus a number six is noticeable. And then if you go from a number five to an eight or even a six from an eight, you're gaining quite a bit of distance from your finger, from the grip of your fingers to where that nib hits the page from the grip section of that pen, right? So you got to think, how does that work with my writing angle? Like I'm a low gripper, so in a small writer, so a number five nib that I grip low works really well for me, right? In this style of writing, someone who writes in cursive with their hand a little bit farther back could probably use a number eight nib a lot. Right, and even, you know, most of the time I'm perfectly fine with a number six nib, but there are some pen designs I just can't use because the grip forces me too far back. So one example is the, like the Kasamas. I wish I could use them. I've owned two and instantly sold them both because the grip sections are further up. And as a result, it means I'm too far away from the paper and I can't use it comfortably. So it's not even at that point, not the nib size, but also the combination of the nib and the grip. Yep, yep. All right, next up from Tomos. Simply, why is the Lamy All-Star not called the Lamy Safari AL?
• I laughed so hard. This is such a good, this is such a Brad question. Tomos, you were so right. Why isn't it the Lamy Safari AL? I don't know. Can I give the Brad answer? Okay, yeah. The Brad answer would be because Lamy's gonna Lamy. Yeah, it's exactly right. There's no shape difference on those pens. The grip, the triangular grip is the same. The front end section is the same length and diameter. The clip's the same. The finials are the same. The barrel diameters are the same. The only difference is the weight, right, with the aluminum barrel versus the plastic barrel. But they're still both lightweight. Why isn't it called the Lamy Safari AL? I don't know. I'm gonna start calling it that now and just make Anna mad, I think, is probably what I need to do. I kind of get it because it is a completely different material. So, you know, size and everything else being the same, it is a completely different material. So I could see that they would want to call it something else. What I don't understand is why they have the Lamy Vista, which is the same weight and plastic and whatnot as the regular Safari. But no, they have to call it Vista because you can see through it. That makes even less sense to me. But like I said, Lamy is gonna Lamy. I don't even want to. Yeah, that's an entire episode. And I've done many of those episodes already. But the great question. I like that. I like that. So I don't know if you need to buy pens from Germany. Maybe you need to use a VPN service like our friends over at ExpressVPN. So let's hear what they have to say this week over at ExpressVPN. So this episode of the Pen Addict is brought to you by ExpressVPN. Going online without ExpressVPN is a bit like not having a case for your phone. Most of the time you'll probably be fine. But all it takes is one drop. And you'll wish you spent those extra dollars on a case. I believe that. When you connect to an unencrypted network in cafes, hotel, airports, your online data isn't secure. Someone on the same network could gain access to your personal data, including passwords, bank logins, credit card details, and other things you wouldn't want in someone else's hands. ExpressVPN stops hackers from stealing your data by creating a secure, encrypted tunnel between your device and the internet. There are loads of reasons to choose ExpressVPN over other VPNs. It's super secure. It would take a hacker with a supercomputer over a billion years to get past ExpressVPN's encryption. It's easy to use. Just fire up the app and click one button to get protected. And it works on all your devices, phones, laptops, tablets, and more. So you can stay secure on the go. Plus, it's been rated number one by top tech reviewers like CNET and The Verge. So I've used ExpressVPN for years. I'm getting ready to do a bunch of traveling this month in April. It is already loaded on all my devices. I use it in hotels, in, you know, Airbnbs, wherever I'm staying for the next few weeks when I'm traveling. And I just think it's important to, like, keep my address hidden, keep and stay protected. I don't know what's going on on these networks. And I just like ExpressVPN to put a little block there for me. Plus, I can use it to change my location when I need to watch things like MLB TV or F1 when I'm out of the country. So that always works really, really well for me. So secure your online data today by visiting expressvpn.com slash pinact. That's expressvpn.com slash pinact to find out how you can get up to four months, four extra months of ExpressVPN for free. ExpressVPN.com slash pinact. Our thanks to ExpressVPN for their support of this show and Relay. All right. Let's hit a few more here. So this one from Flynn. This is an interesting question. I value open formats and interchangeable, replaceable, repairable parts highly in my tools. So when it comes to fountain pens, I've settled into the Yovo No. 6 as a good size feel for my writing style and preferences. The question is, why are there not more Yovo No. 6 adapter fittings for mainstream pin bodies like Platinum and Pilot? But I can find many of the reverse to get proprietary nib formats into Yovo No. 6 sections, but not any simple ways to get the reverse done. Am I going to need to find a machinist to get these made custom? This is tough because, like you've said, the magic word, which is proprietary.
• And I wonder out loud without having any data, would someone get in trouble for making these replacement parts?
• Unapproved replacement parts for Platinums and Pilot? I don't think so. In our case, there are places where you can buy different types of feeds and different types of fittings. But what do you think about the idea of making it easier to swap nibs into more what I consider proprietary pens like Platinum and Pilot? Should it be easier for us? Or do you think Platinum and Pilot and Sailor would say something and have a problem with this?
• There's a couple things. I know specifically Flynn's talking about making it so that he can use his Yovo 6 nibs in any of these pens. But even just to make it more broadly, you know, maybe I love the Sailor nib, but I don't like the Sailor body or vice versa. I think you're going to run into issues of potential invalidating your warranties because the nib housing might cause a crack or have some issue with the grip. Hard to say. I can't imagine any of the three brands be happy about that. I don't think any of the brands honestly would. Whether they do anything about it, I don't know. It's hard to say. Specifically to Flynn, who really enjoys his Yovo 6, he's probably more on the minority. I know more people who are like, I don't want any more Yovo 6 nibs, but I love this pen body. I need to put something else into it. And that's why there are plenty of housings that fit Yovo 6.
• But not the other way around. Most people just don't love Yovo 6 enough to want their Platinums to write like a Yovo 6. And I think you've gotten to the real reason as to why Flynn's not finding what they want. It's a small scale problem, right? This is not a big scale issue where someone's trying to solve for this, right? It's a niche within a niche, right? We have our very niche hobby. We have our changes we like to make to our pens and modify them and customize them as much as we can. And then we keep going on down, trying to find more things to change. You're going to start to find less opportunities and availability of these things that we want. So, yeah, I think it's just not something a lot of people are asking for. And it's going to be, yeah, it's going to be a very custom, very specialized type of situation. So, I like the idea, though. Like, I think it's a great idea. And I think now that there are more and more 3D printers out there and people who are experimenting with 3D printing, it is certainly something that, you know, if you can find the right folks who want to tinker with that, might be able to figure out something to work for you. But it's probably harder than it sounds, I think. It is. Maybe it just seems hard to me. Yeah, me too. Like, I'm not a big tinker. But, like, to your point, like, I got a feed in the mail from someone that's testing something out. It says, hey, try this. Let me know what you think, right? So, these things can happen. But, like, it's just a very small scale. And we'll see what happens. Continue to watch because people like to fidget with this stuff.
• All right, next up, Daniel from Sweden. I recently acquired a Kaweco AL Sport Rollerball. It is awesome. And because I value stability and reliability over anything else since I do a lot of writing for work, I immediately swapped the standard Kaweco refill with one from Fisher Space Pen. My question to you is what your thoughts are on reliability over other aspects you look at in pens, inks, and refill. And then the important part of Daniel's message. Thank you for the best podcast around and have a nice day. Thank you, Daniel. I really appreciate that. So, Daniel is basically asking, what's the most important part of the writing experience for you? And I think mine is how the refill itself writes on the page. And that will sometimes be ahead of reliability, right? Because I'm willing to have, to the shock of no one, multiple pens if needed. Like, if I have a failure in Daniel's situation, the Kaweco AL Sport Rollerball is awesome. So, I actually, the one that I have, I swapped in a gel ink refill into mine. I can't remember which one. I don't have it in front of me. But it's because I value the line on the page more than anything over reliability, you know? So, that's kind of the thing in a standard pen that I like for, I like to look for. It's probably the same with fountain pens, right? I buy a nib size, you know, whether I like, I have to like the pen, how it looks. But to me, is the nib going to put down a line on the page that is most suitable to my handwriting? More so than, is the pen going to last me for 20 years or 50 years or whatever? Or what filling system is in the pen? That's one thing I almost couldn't care less about. But, you know, if I have this epic filling system and don't like how the pen writes, like, what good is it? So, the actual nib to the page experience is the most important thing for me. What about you?
• Yeah. I mean, considering we were just talking about swapping out refills in the Parker Jotter, absolutely. You got to put in what works for you. And whether that's the most important thing is reliability or maybe it's line width or the type of line because maybe gel feels different than ballpoint or maybe fountain pen ink, wet fountain pen ink feels different than dry or whatnot. You got to do what works for the situation that you want to use your pens in. And like Brad, I also have more than one pen inked up at any time and more than one non-fountain pen at my disposal at any given time because I use them for different things. And there are times when I reach for my G2s or my Sarasas or my Jotters and other times when I'd much rather use my shown design rollerball and other times when I'm picking from various fountain pens. And for me, fountain pens are both a combination of like the aesthetic in hand, but also I know that some of my pens are going to dry out sooner than other of my pens. And so I am more mindful of either how much ink I'm going to put into it or am I going to use this enough that I should ink it up now or no, I'm not going to ink it up until after I get back from vacation because it's just going to dry out between now and then. You know, those kinds of questions are what I ask myself when I'm figuring out either what I'm going to ink up or what I'm going to be using at any given moment. Yep. And a couple other things that people might look for besides us and besides Daniel is comfort, right? Some people might have to have a certain level of comfort for their grip or how they write. Weight and balance of a pen might be what someone looks for for, you know, the very first thing. You know, if this isn't balanced in my hand, how I hold the pen, you know, it's out, things like that. So we all have the aspects and I thought this was a good perspective from Daniel that like reliability is the main thing for Daniel and I think that's pretty cool.
• All right. This question kind of encompasses a lot of questions and I left it there on purpose via Grizz. So hi, Myke and Brad. So today you're Myke, Kimberly. I didn't know if you knew that. I am Myke. Okay. Also, you can't spell. Sorry, Myke. You can't spell Kimberly without Myke. So I feel like this was a pretty good guess. Wow. Yeah. I know you're thinking about that now. So there you go. So hope you guys are well before listening to the show. I was very happy about my Energel 0.3 and want to use it forever. But after a few episodes of this show, now I want to have some fancy looking pen that could fit in the Energel refill. Could you please recommend some? Could the Rotring 600 ballpoint fit? Many thanks for your help and support. So Grizz, number one, go through the refill links that I answered up above for the previous question for Enid. There is a way to kind of like backfill and see what the Energel refill fits. You're in luck that it is the most compatible with anything that fits a Pilot G2 refill. Those refills generally match. There's some slight oddities and some slight differences. But a lot of the Pilot G2 pens will, things that fit a Pilot G2 gel ink refill will fit the Energel 03. And you're in luck. I know of a company called Spoke Design, which I'm a part of, that makes fancy pen barrels specifically for the Energel. And we ship the Energel refill with it. And all the Energel refills are hot swappable. So, for example, I have one of our Spoke Rody XLs, which fits the Energel. And I'll put a link in the show notes to that. And I swapped it out into a needle tip 0.5 millimeter Energel refill. And it's just glorious. So, yeah, there's some. So look through those links that I shared earlier for the previous response. And I'll put in a link to the Spoke Design pen, which I make because the Energel refill rules. All right, next one, Kimberly. I won't put you out on this one if you don't have an answer. But I thought this was an interesting question from John. Again, fellas, you're not the fella that they were looking for. Myke's not here today. I'm Myke today. Today I'm Myke. So I'm a fella. I'm an honorary fella. And you can tell how behind I'm here. Literally 20 episodes.

Shift to discussing music and its connection to writing tools

• Congrats on 650 episodes. As I say this in episodes 670. So, again, my apologies for being so late on all these questions. And you may have deleted our podcast from your feeds now. But I hope you did not. Says, I know both of you are big music fans. Do you have any favorite songs about or that reference stationery or writing? My all-time favorite is Empty Pages by Traffic. Steve Winfoad's soulfully belting, staring at empty pages. Echoes how I sometimes feel when I sit down to journal. Other faves? Please, Mr. Postman by The Marbleettes. Dear Diary by The Moody Blues. Traveling Soldier by The Chicks. And Blank Page by The War and Treaty. So, Kimberly, do you even have an answer to this question? I have no idea what you might think. I don't. Yeah. I don't. I don't actually. I don't know that I've come across anywhere. I'm like, oh, my God. This is related to stationery or writing or pens. Yeah. No. So, I read that and was like, I have a blank. And then I'm sure now that I've said that, the next 10 songs I listen to will all be related somehow. But no, I haven't. Yeah. I don't have a favorite. And it's kind of like the severance question. It's like, oh, I notice it when I see it, right? So, if something happens and there's some lyrics that talks about writing or pens.
• But I listen to a lot of rap, as people may know. And there's always, you know, the rappers are always talking about writing a lot. And they will work in various pens and notebooks and fountain pens. And there's, you know, one rapper called MF Doom who has written a lot, who works in pens in various ways. Most of them I cannot repeat on this. I actually looked for one I could actually put in the show and I couldn't. But surprisingly, like this is usually the first one that comes to mind. It's from the Wu-Tang Clan, Protect Your Neck. Ghostface Killer, his verse, you know, my style is wild, so book me. Not long is how long that this rhyme took me. Ejecting styles from my lethal weapon. My pen that rocks from here to Oregon. So, that one is always a classic for me. So, yeah, that's a famous verse in the rap world and probably the one that first comes to mind. But there's a ton more. They're just not fit for this episode without bleeping.
• All right. From Nick, I've been looking at my last Hipponodo, RIP, for a couple months and always ended up to start to buy another notebook. Is there any notebook with similar paper with tons of line pages out there that we can actually buy? So, shout out Nick for bringing this up. The Hipponodo is a long-running, mostly unfulfilled or partially filled Kickstarter project that's been running fulfillment for like five years now. They show up every now and then. But the concept is, I didn't go bother to look up, but we're talking like 400 pages of a notebook, right? Yeah. Is that fair? Yeah. With line pages. And I put in this question, not just a harp on the Hipponodo, which I'm fine doing, but I've had this question before. It's like, this size is such an outlier. Is there such a thing? And this is like, if you didn't have an answer to lyrics, I don't know that I have an answer to this question. I mean, I know that the Taroko shop has 68 gram Tomoe River notebooks, and that's the same type of paper that's in the Hipponodo. I want to say that, I'm trying to figure out which version of it, and how many pages it has, but I think it's the writer, but it might not be the writer. I have to figure out which one it is, because it's hard to remember which one is which. I know that the Breeze has 384 pages, according to their Etsy.
• So that's actually not a bad option for an A5 notebook. It's about $28 before shipping. I believe some folks do sell it here in the States. So 384 is about as thick as you're probably going to find. I don't know that you'll get over 400. It's a really thick notebook at that point. Agree, agree. And that 392 is just one of those numbers that seems to end up there, and like you were saying, 380, whatever. We're not crossing the 400 threshold very frequently, especially now that people are a lot of that came with a Tomoe River paper. And being so thin, it was able to have like a still have a still very thick notebook, but more reasonable than a lot of other papers. So I think it's just a challenge. I don't know that there's anything I can recommend other than the ones that you did. And we'll put some links in the show notes to those that you mentioned. So all right. Last one, Kimberly. All right. Let's do this. And this is an interesting question that I'm still thinking about a little bit because I'm a big fan of the pens that Cody here is talking about. I'm trying to learn art later in life. And the course I'm taking, it's called Draw a Box, which I haven't heard of that. I'll have to check that out. Requires a 0.5 millimeter fineliner for their coursework. The issue I'm having is that with my naturally low drawing angle, the ink can't keep up after some steady usage or I will accidentally damage the nib, rendering the pen useless. I picked up a Copic multiliner SP recently only to find out the nib replacements were discontinued. Are there any other refillable and repairable options out there? And my answer, as far as I know, is no. So like I'm literally using the multiliner SP right now. And one of its great features is that not only is it refillable in the barrel, you can replace the tip. And a lot of these multiliner tips, excuse me, fineliner tips, you know, they're plastic tips, some case fibrous. They're prone to breaking down. My first thing that I thought of, Cody, is what paper are you using?
• Because you're going to have a harder time with any type of rough paper, right? And I just mean marginally rough, right? So maybe there's a requirement for the class that uses a certain type of paper and it might not be compatible with the tip. You're going to go through some of these pens. Like if you're using a Secure Pigment Micron, you might need three of them. You know, if you're using, you know, the Statler, Statler fineliner, you might need three of them. They're prone to damage. At one time, Rotring made their Tiki fineliner. And I'll put in a note to that. And I think other companies use this technology. They actually have a metal underlying tip under the exterior plastic for this for durability purposes. But I don't know that they still make that pen or not. I think they do, but I haven't used them because they're just not as good as the Statlers and the Secure Pigment Microns and the Copic Multiliner. So unfortunately, there's not a great answer for this at that fine of an angle. There's also like the Kuretake does the Karopo line with the replaceable felt tips. You could try that. I usually don't think the ink is as good with those, but they do get down to the finer tip sizes that are replaceable. But you have to kind of like build your own ink reservoir, which is fine. It's easy enough to do. But I generally don't have as good a luck. Those aren't as durable of a tip. And I don't like the ink colors that I can use with those. Do you use any fineliners at all for work or writing or anything like that? That's like one of my specialties. It's like I'm a huge fineliner person. I'm literally holding the SP in my hand right now. No, like I'm sure I can bury, like unbury some somewhere in my collection. I did, I did more of, did have more of those kinds of markers and pens way back when I used to do scrapbooking a lot more.
• But I don't really use that now. I'm pretty much, well, as we all know, fountain pens, but also the typical gel and ballpoints if I'm not using fountain pens. I was thinking maybe the Tom's Studio. They do have replacement tips, like for fineliner tips in various sizes, as well as more of a marker tip. So that's the only thing I can think of that you can easily replace the tips if you're damaging them. And it's fairly inexpensive, like a few, you know, four or five bucks, I think, for a pack of three, I think, something like that. Yeah. And they're using like the similar like Kuropo system that Kurodaki use. They might even be the exact same ones. And again, you just have to check with your, as long as you have the ink that you want, and the ink is going to work as well, because you're going to have to ink those yourself in that type of system. Like, which, which again, it's very easy. Like I've done this before with other, with more, with wider tips.
• They're just, the structure of the tip seems to be a little bit different than like a, you're like a secure pigment micron. But I think it's a cool concept. So that might work in this situation, Cody, for you to try if you're really going through tips. I, I seriously, I would check the paper. I'm curious.
• Because like heavy hand pressure damages these, these nibs on these fineliners. Like they're, they're pretty fragile, all things considered. And they're made to be disposable, unfortunately, until the COVID came along. And now if you can't get the tips anymore, that's, that's kind of a bummer because it's an expensive system to buy into as it, as it, as it is. So. All right, Kimberly, I think we're allegedly caught up. There's a lot more that we probably didn't answer, but we didn't get to today, but we've gone quite a long time. I appreciate all the time you spent with me today. Do you have any ass TPA today? I didn't ask you that. Like, I don't know. I don't. I just hope this doesn't reflect poorly on my annual review. I think you, you passed with flying colors. I mean, you're literally helping me, helping me out by, by appearing when, when my boss isn't here. You like to call me your boss, but my boss isn't here today. So we've, we found an even better replacement. So thank you very much for spending some time with us. And again, if y'all have questions that we will get to eventually, please send them to penaddictfeedback.com. Or if you have a longer than like a 500 character question, because there is a, there's a size limit in that form. You can always free to email me. Hello at penaddict.com. Thank you to our sponsors today. Kenro Industries, Penn Chalet, and ExpressVPN. And until next time, say goodbye, Kimberly. Goodbye, Kimberly.