The Pen Addict 708/transcript

The Pen Addict Podcast Transcript
Episode:	708
Title:	Writing on a Banana With Biro
Release Date:	March 19th, 2026
Hosts:	Brad Dowdy Myke Hurley
Guests:	No guests this episode
Additional Information
Official page:	Episode 708
Audio File:	Audio Episode 708
Podcast page:	The Pen Addict 708
Length:	6161 min <br />1.017 h <br /> minutes
Previous Transcript	Next Transcript

From Relay, this is The Pen Addict, episode 708. Today's show is brought to you by the Fine Folk Enigma Stationery and Penidex. My name is Myke Hurley. I'm joined by Brad Dowdy. Hi, Brad.
Hi, Mike. How are you?
I'm good. How are you?
I'm good. Like mental state, physical state. It's allergies, man.
It's that time of year for Brad. Allergy time.
Allergy season.
You know, I agree, actually. A couple of days ago, like I woke up and I was like, oh, there it is. Like my eyes were a little itchy in the morning.
Yeah.
So it's like, aha. So now it's the time of year where I create a new reminder in due, like my little app that I use for these kinds of like reminders. And it's like every morning at like 8.45, allergy medicine.
Yeah.
And then that will run for the next couple of months or whatever.
I didn't get ahead of it early enough today, so I'm still dealing with it. You know, it hasn't
kicked in, but we're lucky. I mean, like where we live, we literally have cherry blossom trees in our yard. So when those things are popping off, I was like, yeah, man, it is go time for the allergy meds.
So you put a video in the show notes to me today, which made me think that I'd maybe taken too much of my allergy medication.
So there's two parts to this video that we need to discuss.
This video, it genuinely feels like I'm on acid.
And because there's two things going on that contribute to the problem here.
And like one of them, I understand it, but then the other one makes it all worse.
Now, part one is, this is a video that is a comparison between the Sailor Kaysera and the Pilot Friction, right?
So like here's a comparison between these two things.
The video includes an individual, a human individual who is using the pens, talking to a mascot.
It's like a, looks like a cross between a fox and an owl.
Hoot.
Hoot.
It makes sense.
Yep.
As it would be.
And is it a Tanuki?
It's not even really a puppet.
I don't, actually, is the mouth moving?
Yes.
It's a puppet.
Wait, what?
It's not digital.
It's a puppet.
It's a puppet.
What are you talking about?
You think that's not real?
Again, acid.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I can see the person behind it.
Yeah, I know.
Sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I was focused on what this product is, this video is about.
Yeah.
More so than the Tanuki suit.
But the biggest issue for me is that the audio is auto-dubbed, and it is dubbed so badly that...
It duplicates in different voices and stuff like that.
And sometimes they just say to each other, dot, dot, dot, dot, and then it continues.
It's like, what is happening?
The auto-dubbing on this video is what contributes to me feeling like I'm losing my mind.
It's fantastic.
I need some kind of dubbing because it is fully in Japanese with Japanese subtitles.
And so, like, I need something.
And it's over 11 minutes long, right?
Yeah.
It's not a short video.
Yeah.
But it's intense.
Shout out to our friend of the show, Wei, from Incredible Colors, who sent this over to me and did make a point about actually listening to it.
Yeah.
Mentioning it might be a little bit of a challenge.
It is.
It is.
But I thought it was a good video.
Yes.
They tested things I didn't even consider.
And this is done by a stationery shop, I believe.
What is the name?
It looks like, yeah.
Yorindo, I believe, is the name of the shop.
And this video came out on March 16th.
It already has 138,000 views.
So, like, this is a big deal, especially in Japan.
Yeah.
Video amazingness aside, do you want to hear my thoughts on, like, the test and the testing?
I mean, I do.
I absolutely do.
I want to take just a momentary second, I think, victory lap because I was right.
Yes.
I know what you're going to say, but yes.
And I said that last time.
Yep.
But this is even more proof of it.
Mike was right.
100%.
Yeah.
So, basically, the case of raw ink sits above the page.
Yeah.
And you're actually peeling the ink off the page, which the best part of this video we'll
get to is that.
And, you know, they did a lot of comparison tests.
And a few times in the audio, Mike, they would mention that the case of raw ink has rubber
in the ink.
Did you catch that?
I did, yeah.
They were mentioning, like, the ink formulation.
So, the ink formulations of these two inks are very different.
Incredibly different.
And how they operate.
Yeah.
These are completely dissimilar products other than you're designed to remove the ink from
the page.
But they seem to perform very similarly, like, in the writing tests, which is very interesting.
Even though they are so different to each other in the way that they're made, they seem to
perform well, which would make, would suggest to me that Sailor absolutely tried to match
the performance, the writing performance of the friction.
Like, whether they achieved it or not.
But, like, they look very similar.
They do.
Even in color, right?
Yeah.
Which is not, in this case, they use black gel ink.
It looked like a 0.7.
I don't know that they actually specified, but that's what it looked like.
0.7 black gel ink, which, for both the friction and the case of raw, is, like, dark gray, right?
It's not, like, a pitch black.
Yeah.
Friction does have some models that are much darker than some of the other models, so I don't
know what the deal is there.
But these are two different formulations.
They both erase in different ways, and they both do a pretty good job at that.
I think, looking at this video, the erase, if you take all the erasability tests, I think
friction's the clear winner, just in getting the ink off the page.
But that comes with its own flaw of, to your point, the ink technically still exists, right?
You can bring that back, putting it in a freezer, something like that, where the case
of raw ink, you're literally removing it from the page, and it's gone, right?
So, is it more erasable than the friction?
I'd maybe market that yes.
Like, that seems like a marketing point, which we've mentioned in the past.
This will actually erase your stuff.
It will not magically return.
The interesting test, I thought, was the coin test, where no one does this, but that's
why we love videos like this.
Like, you do the things that no one does.
So, what they did was, they were doing writing sables, and they were using the same conj
characters, so they had similar comparisons.
And they took a coin, they took, like, a 10-yen coin, I forget which denomination they said.
And they started scraping the ink, and, like, it didn't touch the friction ink, because the
friction ink actually gets into the paper.
Yep.
By design.
In the case of raw ink, doesn't get into the paper.
So, they took a coin, it's basically like a scratch-off lottery ticket, right?
They took the coin and just scraped the ink off.
And I was like, do I want that either, right?
Like, neither one of these solutions, the more you, the further you look at this, neither
one of these solutions is great.
Yes.
But then that brings me to my main point in all of this.
No one cares about all these tests.
They only want to know, does it write well?
Yeah.
And I think it's pretty clear the friction right now is a better writing pen from everything
I saw in this video, and what I felt already from seeing the other videos.
And I think at the end of the day, that's the, you know, 98th percentile outcome that most
people are going to look for.
Does it write well, and can I maybe erase it if I need to?
And I think the friction wins in every count on that.
Are you throwing frictions across the room right now?
Are you mad at me?
I did.
Sometimes I'll over in my studio.
It's totally fine.
But you heard that.
I apologize.
That scared me quite a lot.
Yes.
Yeah.
I flipped to desk.
Mike is really on, doesn't like me talking bad about the case or off.
But I think, like, the friction has a 20-year head start, too, right?
That's one of the points we've been making the whole time.
That the friction didn't look like a good writing pen when it first came out.
The ink was much more gray.
Yeah.
It was terrible.
It was unusable.
Yeah.
And now, it's just as good as a standard gel ink pen.
Maybe not quite, because they have to do the ink formulation, right?
It's never going to be as, like, smooth writing as, like, a G2, right?
You get a little bit more lubrication in, like, a standard gel ink.
There's always trade-offs.
Yeah.
But they've continued to work on that formula.
And K. Serra, I guess, has a chance now to do that.
It just handles – these are way, way more different than I ever thought they would be.
And I think that's a good thing, right?
I want to see how the K. Serra can do.
I think it's – just from, like, complete Brad penatic levels, it's a far worse pen, right?
And I don't – even if it does erase, I don't want the eraser shrapnel on my page.
But then do I have in my head that, well, I'm actually erasing it with the K. Serra,
where the friction, I'm just disappearing it for a moment.
I think, like – and this video to me is only, again, like, underscoring how I feel about this,
which is I think this is an absolute win from Sailor because I think they have created a product
with market differentiation, which is exactly what they need if they're going to go up against
such a dominant pen, where in their marketing they can so easily show how their product is superior,
whether it is or it isn't, right?
They can say, look, it's truly gone, and with our competitor, you can return the ink.
And I think a lot of people would value that even if they don't fully understand what that means.
Right.
And just to be clear, truly gone means in a graphite pencil kind of way, right?
That's never truly gone.
But it is very different than what the friction does, right?
Yep.
So neither of these –
You can just bring it all back again, right?
Yeah.
And so, like, you could put into someone's mind just in the way that you show it of, like,
oh, is it going to make it all messy?
Yes.
Like, you know.
Right.
And I just think that – I think this is – I think they've done a lot of really hard work to create this ink.
I think this is the work, right?
Is creating this ink.
They absolutely need to produce a better-looking product than this.
But I think if they can do that, I think they have a product that can find some success compared to the friction.
Yeah.
I think they've actually done a good job here.
And they actually have a product they can build on in the coming years.
So I think they actually have a chance here to maybe not compete but to hang side by side and be a valid option and continue to exist and continue to sell products, right?
It's going to see if they can get that marketing out there, like, just lean into that erasable marketing, what that looks like, and then just kind of do something different, you know, as the years go by.
I absolutely cannot understand the scenario that they create a product that looks the way this pen looks.
I'm a little bit lost on that myself.
It absolutely begs belief.
Like, I don't know how you are a company like Sailor who produce such beautiful products and that you have clearly put so much R&D into this and this is what you churn out, which is like an off-brand Sharpie.
Like, it's mind-boggling that this is the way that they would introduce this product to the world, I think.
But for some reason, this is what they chose.
The only things I can think of is the fear of using what would be called just a traditional pencil eraser because historically those pens that have the traditional pencil erasers are the worst erasable pens.
My issue is not the eraser, Brad.
It's the overall design of the pen.
I think you could still produce that eraser, have it look exactly as it is, but just do anything with the bow, like absolutely anything with it, and you would produce a better product.
Because it really looks like they just did nothing.
Like, it's mind-boggling to me.
Yeah, in the beginning of the video, they put it up against the Pentel sign pen as saying it kind of like was that style of design.
And the Pentel sign pen is one of the classic design, great design pens ever.
And I was like, oh no, no, no, no, no.
This is not the same.
These are not in the same category.
No.
So, I'm happy with this.
Like, the more I see about the KSERA, the more I think they have a chance to be competitive.
And like, you know, the next couple years we'll see how it goes, right?
You know how products go with especially these stationery companies is how quickly they lean into like version twos and version threes.
We've seen this with the Zento here recently, right?
The Zento's only been out a little over a year.
And Uniball, apparently, on release, it went well.
So, now it's just go time, right?
Everything's Zento.
Like, they're putting Zentos in the ones, which is, again, I'm still thinking about that from last week.
But, yeah, I think this is good.
And we'll see how it goes.
I'm anxious to get my hands on it just to see.
I think the writing performance is going to win the day.
And a 20-year head start is nothing to sneeze at when it comes to even just a gel ink pen.
And then we'll see.
What I really want to know is how this feels on, like, Hobonichi paper or something.
I've been using my friction.
Tomorrow River paper.
Yeah, I've been using my friction in Tomoe, and I've been using a 3mm friction, right?
Which is crazy, given the lack of saturation, relatively speaking, in the ink color.
And it's been great.
Like, I'm thoroughly enjoying it.
So, yes, that's going to be a good comparison.
Did they talk about ink dry time in this video?
They did a smudge.
They did a smudge test.
And neither of them, like, they're fine.
They're both, like, it's not an issue.
Because, like, I mean, going back to what I was saying, like, I feel like with some of this, like, really high-quality, fountain-pen-friendly paper, you know, like, the shiny, smooth paper, I feel like the quesera is either going to feel terrible or incredible.
And there is nowhere in between that, I feel like.
Like, it's either not going to work, or I think I already made this analogy, or it's going to feel like writing on a banana with a biro, which is a fantastic feeling.
Like, that's how I feel like it's going to be.
And so, like, I'm desperate to know what that experience is like, because I think it could be really interesting.
I didn't go back and check which paper they used for this test, but I'd have to go back and look at that.
But it looked just, it honestly looked like a big sheet of standard, you know, like a copy paper.
It didn't look like anything special particularly.
But who knows?
And they didn't.
Like, everything is special.
Yeah.
Yeah, exactly.
So, it looked good.
All right.
Good deal.
We'll have more quesera when I finally get one in hand.
I'm not rushing out to, like, hunt these down.
I think it's going to be around for a while.
Oh, yeah.
And, you know, I'm looking forward to a little bit more from it and, like, see what they do.
Well, let me tell you where you should rush, Brad.
And then just over to Enigma Stationery.
I'm going to do that right now.
Items made from in-house designs alongside top brands and hard-to-find imports.
We are big fans of Enigma Stationery here on The Pen Addict because it's somewhere that you can go to get some of your staples, right?
Or you can get some fun designs of existing pens from, you know, from brands that you may be familiar with.
But it's also where you can go to just find some of the most fun products available, including tweezers, as we've already very well established.
I haven't gotten mine yet.
I've got to get that done.
But there is some stuff that jumps out to me over at Enigma Stationery.
I'm very fascinated by people who, you know, who are journalists and they use stamps in their products, right?
So that, like, on each day you could stamp something and then just write in the answers.
And there are a few Kodomo No Cow Journal Club stamps of Enigma.
One of them is, like, a schedule stamp.
One of them is a sleep tracking stamp.
And I find that kind of stuff to be really just, like, a fascinating way of adding some kind of, like, consistency to your journal practice.
But do it in a way that's super easy because it's just a little stamp.
You just got to fill it out.
It's funny.
I pulled up a stamp to talk about, too, but it's a different one.
And this is a wooden bottle, a wooden stamp with an ink bottle on it.
And this is kind of similar to what you're talking about where you can have, like, a daily ink swatch.
And I see a lot of people using these small stamps because you can get, like, a permanent, like, waterproof ink you use to stamp with.
Stamp it in your journal.
And then you have the little ink bottle.
And this one is, there's, like, a little dinosaur peeking out from behind it.
And it's kind of cute.
And, but you just color, like, either the ink in the ink bottle or color.
I tend to color the label and do that.
So that's a great way and something I've seen people do, like, on the daily, right, every day, do, like, an ink swatch and use one of these stamps to track those things it's called.
So this one's the Itty Bitty Bottle Wooden Stamp, which I do like.
And back to ink and a product I mentioned before, the Uniball Zento, they have some of the flow models in, which is the mid-tier Zento barrel.
So Zento went big from the jump, having an entry-level, base-level plastic pen.
Then they did the mid-grade flow model, which is what this is.
It's kind of got an aluminum barrel front end.
And, well, I don't know if it's aluminum, but it's metal.
And I have one of these somewhere, I think.
But I've been kind of stuck between just the standard, you know, $3 plastic barrel and then the more premium one, which is the Signature, which is, like, the $30 barrel.
But these Zento flow models are really, really pretty.
They do some – the good thing about the Zento, which I've enjoyed so far, is they're experimenting with barrel colors a little bit more.
And I guess you're seeing that through a lot of Uniball's product lines.
But Zento, they're doing a really, really nice job with the colors.
So, yeah, definitely check that one out there.
And that's an actual Zento premium barrel that you can acquire, unlike the Signature, which continues to be a whole thing.
So, yeah, I have the Jade body here, but they have Jade, Gray, Light Blue, and Agate.
What color is Agate, Mike?
Yeah, it's like a pinkish-reddish, coppery – yeah.
I also don't even know if you're saying that correctly, you know?
What do you want me to call it? Agate? Calore?
I got a –
Garage?
I got a –
If you would like to get $10 off orders of $50 or more, take yourself over to enigmastationery.com slash penaddict and use the code TPA26 at checkout now.
That's enigmastationery.com slash penaddict.
You'll get $10 off on orders of $50 or more with the code TPA26.
Our thanks to enigmastationery for their support of this show and all of Relay.
All right, Mike, we got our shout-out of the week.
Shout-out of the week.
Meet your maker.
Jason Olson of Right Turn.
So this is a great one, another article from Caroline Fody over at the Pen Addict.
And Jason, I've known him for many, many years, have acquired his pens in the past.
This is a great article.
If you're not familiar and you're just starting to go to pen shows, Caroline does such a great job of interviewing and learning about the stories.
And what I always take from these interviews is a focus on the thing that this maker does that's different from the rest.
And in Jason's case, it's a couple of things.
One, it's interesting materials.
He uses some really wild stuff.
Some stuff I've seen in person is just really, really cool to check out.
And more uniquely to me is he hand-makes some very interesting clips.
So they're really, really cool shapes, really fun shapes.
When I was picking out the right turns that I had bought in the past, I was like, I like the material.
And there was like three or four in the same material.
And I just did it based on the clip.
The clip designs would slightly vary a little bit because they're all handmade.
So it's really cool stuff.
Go read this article.
Learn about all these wonderful makers in our space.
Check them out at their websites.
Go see them at pen shows.
And, yeah, it's just a really fun, fun article series that Caroline does.
And I always love bringing attention to these major makers.
So I have some follow-up.
Comes in from Robert.
Yes, this is good stuff.
Robert says,
As an amateur bookbinder, the tippy-taps in the Life Noble note video make sense as the best way to do it.
So this is using the little rubber hammer when you stack them up against each other to make sure they're all aligned.
Rob continues.
Stacked-up signatures.
Signatures are the, so if you look at a notebook, a big notebook, and it sometimes looks like multiple tiny notebooks all in the one notebook.
You can kind of see it on the binding.
Each one of those collections of paper is called a signature.
Stacked-up signatures resist being squared off due to the folds and thickness of the thread.
Life has far thicker thread, folds, sorry.
Life has far thicker folds than most notebooks.
Thirteen sheets instead of the usual four to six.
That's a ton of spine swell, and they'll curve outward when you press down on them.
It makes a really light touch to prevent them from bending out into a curve.
A soft cover can't allow any curve to the spine.
Amazing stuff.
Totally amazing.
And I get what he's saying.
You start to, when you have that slight curve where they come together in the binding,
they're going to push against each other and slightly shift, right, when they're stacked just by, like, the curvature and the roundness touching each other, right?
So there can be a slight shift in those.
And the constant compression of those life notebooks in different phases, like, there was as much compression parts of this video as there was cutting parts of this video, right?
Just to get this all into the final product that is flat in that area where all the signatures are coming together and the binding.
It's pretty crazy.
Like, that video, man, that was good stuff.
Yeah.
I've been thinking a lot about it since last week.
It's in my dreams.
I had a dream scene this past weekend, Mike.
I went to New Orleans.
That could take on a lot of different meanings.
Yeah.
In that particular city, given, depending on the time of day, but had a little side quest to New Orleans, take a little mini vacation, long weekend with my wife.
So we just, you know, went around the city, did New Orleans things, ate, drank, saw things, and that's pretty much what you do in New Orleans.
And we had a fantastic time.
But one of my goals, which thankfully we were able to easily fit in, was a visit to Papier Plume in New Orleans.
It's one of the great stationery shops in our country, in a country where there's not necessarily a lot of stationery shops, but there's ones to find in your city and in areas nearby you.
And I definitely highly recommend you try to visit any local shop you can get to.
Papier Plume is especially cool because of its location right in the heart of the French Quarter.
It is actually surprised me, the location.
It is in such a hustle and bustle, like touristy, like very trafficked area.
And it's just really, really neat.
So the French Quarter, I don't have totally the blocks that it encompasses, but it's a pretty decently sized area.
You know, say like, I don't know, 10 by 6 blocks or something like that.
It's a big area.
And this one's pretty close to the center, center of it all.
And I've known owner Patrick Rideau for a long time, met him.
You have actually met Patrick at the Atlanta Pen Show in the past.
I'm certain because on the first couple of shows where we were doing our podcast, he was still coming to the Atlanta Pen Show.
He hasn't been there in many, many years.
But I guarantee you've at least seen him.
You may not have actually introduced yourself or talked to him, but you've been there when he has been there.
Because that's where I met him the first time was at one of those Atlanta Pen Shows back in the mid-20-teens.
I've been in the presence.
Yes, of greatness.
Of the Papier themselves.
Of the Papier.
Papa Papier.
Papa Papier, yeah.
They're known for right now, I think, and a lot of people will recognize, if not their name, but their handiwork.
If you ever see a show-exclusive ink with a wax seal on the bottle, that's Papier Plume's work.
So they make a lot of show-exclusive inks, not just for shows that Patrick attends.
Like Patrick will be at the Little Craft Fest in Houston coming up at the end of April.
Then right after that, the Chicago Pen Show.
And he always does exclusive inks, I know, for those shows that he attends.
And I think he does even more.
I've bought some at the DC Pen Show in the past.
A classic ink that they did called Rebirth, which was a great, great ink color.
And yeah, so a lot of people know them for that, but they're also like a traditional stationery store.
And it's a little, it was interesting going to this shop as opposed to, let's say, just like someone who was making a, you know, like a fountain pen shop, right?
Like a traditional, what we might think is a stationery store.
This is also a stationery store and it has all those things, but it's also built for like that tourist traffic.
Like they get a ton of foot traffic, right?
It's always busy out in front of their store.
So they do a good job there of in the front of the store to kind of get you to come in selling a lot of things that, you know, passersby might be interested into the stationery, the smaller stuff, you know, the notebooks and wax seals and glass nibs and calligraphy writing sets and lots of fun, different local stationery.
Like we'll go through some of the things that I bought, but I bought some postcards designed by a local artist, right?
So it's a lot of those type of things for people who aren't listening to this podcast.
And then the rest of the store is exactly for the people that are listening to this podcast with, you know, all kinds of fountain pens.
They're in-house made inks.
So it's not just the show exclusive type inks, like the special edition inks.
Their stock house inks are, they make probably 20 colors of their ink there.
And again, they're making all of this, not literally in shop because I asked Patrick about that.
It's a couple blocks away.
I think he was saying they actually have the facility where they're actually, he is actually making the ink there.
So it's not exactly in the shop.
You can see them making the ink, but it's nearby.
So yeah, lots of great notebooks, lots of great storage options.
The wax seals that are on their bottles aren't just for show.
They also do a big business in wax seals and accessories.
Whenever Patrick goes to a pen show, he brings a lot of that stuff.
Yeah.
And that's what I ended up buying at the shop.
I hadn't, I've bought pens and ink from Patrick in the past, but I've never bought a wax seal.
And they had obviously a huge display of them there.
And I bought like a little skull and bones wax seal.
That's going to be fun to play with.
And a couple of colors of wax, like a purple and an orange just to play around with.
And again, I bought a pack of note cards and that's kind of it.
Like that's all I needed.
And I didn't need any ink or pens.
I can get that from Patrick at a pen show when I see him.
But yeah, it was great.
Such a fun little shop.
Actually, I say little.
It's not exactly little.
It's a decent size shop.
So I can't recommend them enough.
You know, check them out.
You can, you know, go to the website and see some pictures and, you know, poppierplume.com
and see what I was seeing.
But really fun, really good shop.
And yeah, I just had, I was, I lucked, I didn't let Patrick know that I was coming because
I didn't know exactly when I'd be stopping by.
And luckily he was there because he doesn't normally work weekends.
He was telling me and we went on a Saturday afternoon and he was there.
So I walked in and he was like, oh, hello.
I was like, hi.
So that was fun.
So that was my visit to poppierplume.
Could not recommend it highly enough if you're in New Orleans.
It's, you don't even have to make an effort to get there because it's in the heart of
where you're going to be anyway.
If you're not, if you're going to New Orleans and you're not in the French Quarter at some
point during your time there, you're probably not doing it right.
But who am I to say?
So very easy to get to, literally on foot from anywhere.
So it's great.
Go get them a visit.
How do you feel that this kind of store compares to others in the way that they lay things out
or like from a footfall perspective?
Because this is much more central than a lot of pen stores tend to be.
So I'll make a good comparison for you.
This is closer to a choosing keeping than say like an Atlas Stationers, which you haven't
been to, but I've been to, where Atlas Stationers is very pen and ink forward, right?
You walk in and it's just hammer time with all the pens and all the inks.
And then like your accessory stuff is more spread around where choosing keeping is in
the heart of a busy shopping district, right?
And so their window displays are going to be a certain way to draw in a person who may not
be searching them out.
Like choosing keeping or a Papier Plume is a destination location for you and I, right?
We're going to make a point to go there and go do the thing.
Papier Plume, where they're located with the foot traffic and choosing keeping in London,
where they're located with the foot traffic.
What's the name of that neighborhood or that area?
Seven Dials.
Seven Dials, yeah.
Very heavily foot trafficked, right?
So they're going to have like very beautiful notebooks, right?
Something where someone can spend, you know, $20 on a memento of their trip at the forefront
of what they're doing with that foot traffic type space.
So it reminds me a lot of choosing keeping.
And then you go into choosing keeping and just like Papier Plume, the fountain pen counter
is in the back, right?
Whereas you go into someone like Atlas Stationers, it's in the front.
So it's just kind of like different areas where like Atlas is in a business district.
They're not necessarily getting tourist foot traffic, right?
Like a Papier Plume and a choosing keeping would.
And I expect that, you know, it also amends the type of product that you keep in store
also.
Totally.
Where choosing keeping has a lot of things that are very visually striking in the shop.
Yes.
And that's how Papier Plume is.
And then you do the, one of the things I noticed was you put up in the forward, up in the front
for people to see are the tools to make fancy handwriting, whether that's a glass dip nib
pen or like a calligraphy nib set, because that's what people a lot of times think when
they see these stores, right?
Oh, I'm going to do calligraphy.
So what notebook and what pen can I get for calligraphy?
Right?
Fancy writing.
Yeah.
Things like that.
So that definitely plays in locations like this.
So yeah, I think it's an interesting, it's something I immediately thought of when I walked
in.
I was like, oh, yes, I see what we're doing here, right?
It's very clear.
As opposed to when you go into like a fountain pen store, very different type of experience.
Very cool.
So yeah, so good stuff.
One thing I did want to mention and cover a little bit is what stationery I brought.
Oh, yeah.
On the trip, I just brought one notebook and one pen, and I put the notebook in a cover.
So I carried a Field Notes 50th, yeah, the 50th edition, which this one just has a red
cover, gray grid.
They did these little inserts.
They did like a cutout of the O on Field Notes on the cover, and then did some, like this one
has a grass stained green, like paper color insert.
And they did other colors.
There was like the blue and other ones.
So I brought that, and the cover I have was sent to me by a company called Letterpress
Play out of Austin, Texas, and they're doing a lot of in-house letterpress work, as the
name would suggest.
It would suggest, yeah.
But this one isn't necessarily a letterpress thing.
It's a leather cover done by another Texas company called Grit Mercantile that Letterpress
Play carries.
And what Letterpress Play does is, will emboss your initials on it if you buy one.
And this is a really nice leather cover, and I was honestly surprised it's only $22.
And they stamped my initials BD on there, on the cover.
This was a surprise.
I didn't know what they were sending me.
They said, hey, can we send you some things?
And this showed up.
And it's kind of perfect for the way I do my travel journals.
So I wanted to take this on this trip.
It pretty much lived in my back pocket for three days.
It wore perfectly.
It actually handled everything.
It sat on bar countertops that were wet, and who knows what was on there.
This is New Orleans we're talking about.
You know, I took notes, you know, at various times, either out and about or back in the hotel.
I could not be more impressed with this just little cover that I use.
And it's so well done for such a small product.
But this is exactly what I want.
And I mentioned this before, what I've learned in my notebook life.
I prefer smaller and thinner notebooks, right?
Like I tried to do a traveler's setup before.
And you could do a single notebook and a traveler's leather cover.
But they're really made for like two and three, right?
They're made for you to put lots of inserts in there and accessories in there.
This has nothing but a field notes in it.
No pockets, no extra, you know, ephemera in there.
And it's really, really perfect.
This is why this style of notebook and shape of notebook cover is why I've gone with the plotter so much.
Because I have learned my preferences over the years of a thinner notebook or a thinner notebook cover for traveling, for how I like to use things.
And so for this trip, I do, which I mentioned in the past, I do little trip notebooks.
Um, so I filled up just over halfway of this field notes, which is pretty good for a weekend trip.
Um, I, I do all my writing on the right hand side of the page.
And then on the left side of the page, I have things like my hotel key, my dinner receipts, my museum tickets.
And I just put all this and build out this whole little notebook of the trip.
And then I'll take this notebook out and file it away, um, with my other travel notebooks and trip notebooks.
Like I don't worry about filling the rest of it, right?
Like it's just, it's a self-contained notebook from this specific trip.
So this will go get stashed away now that I'm done with it, uh, filling out everything, putting everything in ephemera wise that I wanted to.
Now, the pen I carried was important because it had to work with field notes paper.
And so I did not carry a fountain pen.
Um, so I chose, I had a couple of choices to make, but I ended up going with the Zento signature, the very, uh, unobtainium pen that has taken the internet by storm.
Um, because it's a really nice pocketable, lightweight, portable pen.
And I wanted to give it like a full go outside of my desk, right?
Like it's sitting here with everything else, but like this could be a good travel pen.
And so I wanted to see if it lived up to that because it's capped, it has a clip and it's easily postable.
Like it, uh, posts deep, right?
So you're never having like a really long or awkward pen in use.
And I switched out this refill with the Uniball one 0.38 millimeter black gel ink refill because I prefer it over the Zento refills.
And it was perfect.
Like this, so the notebook cover is literally just a cover.
There's no pen loop, no anything like that.
I could clip the pen to the leather, but I tend to don't not do that in my back pocket.
So I'm not sitting on the pen itself, even though I did do that several times and it's not really noticeable, but as a habit, I would clip this pen to my shirt and you wouldn't even know it's there.
It's so lightweight and, but you can get that with any gel pen with a clip or any jet stream with a clip, something like that.
All of those things would work fine.
And it traveled extremely well, never had any issue writing.
And in the short version of it is I would do it again.
It's a really, really nice travel pen just for its lightness and its durability and the good refill options that are available for it, which I swapped out.
But you can use a lot of people use like the standard Zento one as well.
So it's a good pairing for field notes.
I use gel pens.
I use fineliners and I use pencils and ballpoints, I guess.
Pretty much any standard pen I'll use with the field notes when I travel.
That's kind of my thing.
But I only took one pen and one notebook and it worked out great.
I think that the Zento signature is a very weird looking pen.
It really works.
It's extremely well done.
I'm very impressed.
To me, it just doesn't look like it knows what it wants to be.
So it's the posting area is where I'll grant you the weirdness.
And it's designed, so this is a magnet ceiling pen, right?
So that little ring around the back end is for the back end magnet to attach and for it to post deep.
So for that magnet to work, it has to get all the way into the top of the cap, right?
So the magnet's in the top of the cap.
So when you're reversing that, it's got to post down deep, so it has that weird shape on there.
I get it.
Yeah.
It's like a bowling pin.
It's odd.
But when it's posted, it looks great.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Which is what you want, obviously.
Yeah.
And the magnets are good, right?
I never had any issue with it falling off or even being close to falling off.
So yeah, I think they did a really, really good job with this design.
I'm impressed by it.
It's not an easy thing to do.
This episode is brought to you by Penadex, your digital stationery companion for all things Pen Addict.
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Penadex is built by a solo developer who's been a part of the Pen Addict community for over 10 years.
Brad, I know you're a big fan of Penadex.
Yeah, and actually, Connor, who makes this app, I think I actually have known him for about 10 years at this point.
He's been around a while.
So what I did right now while you were talking is I went into the app, I pulled up the Atlanta Pen Show, which, Mike, that's not this weekend, but next weekend.
No way.
This is about as early as it's ever been on the calendar.
It very rarely gets into March dates, so I'm very not prepared.
So I'll be there for – I'll only be there for like a day.
I'm spending one night there, and I got to get back home for an event at home.
But so, for example, I went into Penadex, pulled up the Atlanta Pen Show, clicked on it, and right there when I bring up the show, it's got the dates.
It's got a map location, right?
So you can just click on the map and pull up the location if you're traveling to it.
And right there on the main page, it's got a checklist.
So I can put in any vendors I want to see, any products I want to make sure not to miss, and I can go through this checklist and figure out what I want to do at the show so I don't forget to do things.
It also has a budget you can track, which is scary.
So you can have a budget, and then you can put in things as you go and make sure you track your budget, which honestly is quite nice and very important.
So – and then there's just a generic note section you can have on there.
I don't know.
I just think the whole layout of the Pen Show pages is super useful and is exactly kind of what I want to see as I'm doing these things.
And you can even add in your – like if you're doing any classes or things like that, you can put in like what time and date your classes are.
Nice.
It's super, super well done.
And the map location is so good for travel because you can just go in Pentadex, hit the map, and then just bring it up and get your directions there.
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All right, Mike.
I didn't have to do this.
I didn't have to put this on the show.
No.
But I quite enjoyed this.
Sure.
This is some hashtag marketing, okay?
You know, and it's great.
Like, good job, Kaweco.
But I literally put in here, settle down, Kaweco, is what I titled this section.
I was like, okay.
So this is a true, they had us in the first half, Mike, okay?
So they posted an Instagram post, and it says, story time.
You won't believe what happened.
And guess, I mean, guess what pen this would be about?
Like, if you hadn't seen, I know you've seen this already, but you probably could have guessed
in one guess that it's about the Titan.
Everyone's favorite.
Everyone's favorite pen.
And if it was any other pen, I probably wouldn't put this in here.
But it's the Titan, and we have past history with the Titan, so I had to bring this up.
So, story time.
You won't believe what happened.
All right, next page.
With this Kaweco Titan Sport.
It's a beautiful, shiny Kaweco Titan Sport.
We'll have a link in so you can go see this story for yourself.
It's worth it.
So I'm just going to click through and read this.
A Kaweco retailer in the Philippines shipped out a Titan Sport to a customer.
The customer booked a same-day motorcycle courier for delivery.
That person's desperate.
Yeah.
That Titan Sport.
Big Titan energy.
Bring it to me right now.
Big Titan energy.
Everything seemed normal until the courier made a shocking call.
What?
The story is so ridiculous.
Like, what do you mean, it seemed normal?
Like, people are sitting around there being like, well, that was a really normal delivery.
Wow, yeah.
That's a normal collection.
This is all going so normal.
The package had fallen off the motorcycle box in the middle of the road.
Even worse, the parcel was run over by passing cars.
The retailer and the customer both feared the worst.
A crushed pen.
A destroyed nib.
A lost order.
Best part of this, by the way, for me, the Titan Sport that is in the image is not a fountain pen.
Yeah, it's a rollerball.
It's a rollerball.
Or a ballpoint.
I forget how they do that model.
Destroyed nib.
Yep.
Yep.
Nib is destroyed.
So, it's now a rollerball.
But wait, Mike.
Yeah, it changed it pretty aggressively.
But then came the update.
The Kaweco Titan Sport was completely unscathed.
And this is titanium built to last.
It's bulletproof.
Oh, God.
Nothing to loose.
Fire away.
Fire away.
I don't know what that means.
Oh.
You shoot it down.
In spite the fall, it is titanium.
I don't know what that means.
That is the song Titanium.
Oh, okay.
I don't know that song.
These are the lyrics to the song Titanium.
And it'd be nothing to lose.
Nothing to loose.
Yeah.
This, I didn't read this the first time.
That makes it like, this is, I want to just die.
I hate that so much.
I don't like that song anyway.
This is part of it.
I hate that song.
Well, good.
I'm glad I didn't know that song.
So, I will never listen to it now.
So, then.
Okay.
So, we have all this build up, Mike.
We click to the last page.
And we have a picture of the pen and the case.
And I'm like, I don't see anything.
Like, this looks normal.
And then if you look at it a little bit more.
And so, Kaweco pens come in little tins.
The tin looks like if I had it in my back pocket and sat on it.
Yeah.
Not much damage.
Not much damage going on here.
I think it's safe to say that the box that this was packed in absorbed the majority of the issue.
Yes.
The tin is squashed, for sure.
And the tin is broken.
But I'm not sure that this really warranted the whole thing.
I wanted to see, like, a damaged pen that still works.
That's what I wanted to see.
Give me some scratches on the barrel.
I want to see some tire marks.
Give me, like, a run over the barrel.
Yeah.
I want to see tire marks.
I want to see some asphalt scrapes.
It's literally the retailer packed the box well.
The box fell off, got banged around.
And the product survived because the box was packaged well.
But it's this whole, it's tight, take me home, so it survived.
Nothing to lose, Brad.
Yeah, nothing to lose.
Well, their Kaweco Classic Sport also would have survived this.
And it's, like, a little ABS plastic thing.
There's, like, no damage to this at all.
It's marketing.
We understand.
That's why I led with that.
Like, this is hilarious.
This is, yes.
And the story's like, the comments are like, whoa, I found my next Kaweco pen.
I was like, okay.
It's like, settle down.
So, pretty amazing stuff.
So, shout out Titan.
And you keep, you are very much living up to the hype of everything that a fountain pen should be.
So, amazing stuff.
All right.
That's all I had this week.
Do we want to hit some STPA?
We do.
All right.
Let's do it.
All right.
Cleanse the palate.
John writes in and says, I'm a couple of years or so into my fountain pen interest in listening to your show.
Before getting into the hobby, Waterman and Montblanc were the only two pen brands that I was really aware of.
And yet, they seem to be two brands that you do not talk about very often.
Why is that?
I don't own either.
So, I do have limited, I have no experience with them.
I am just curious.
Great, great question.
So, I'm going to answer this question.
But this question goes a little bit into the next question.
And then, unrelated to these two, I got a different email about Montblanc in particular, which I think kind of fits in with the second question.
But it's interesting that we have all these together.
So, to John's question, why don't we talk about Waterman and Montblanc that often?
So, Waterman, let me tackle first because it's the easiest.
They don't change very much.
They're not doing a lot.
They're very – I'm not trying to be derogatory, but it's a very standard issue, right?
This is just a very – nothing wrong with the product.
Literally, nothing wrong with the product.
Solid product.
Great writer.
If you buy a Waterman, you're going to be happy and you're going to enjoy it and it's going to be great.
And they just don't – for our purposes – I won't say our.
For my purposes, they're uninteresting and just standard, right?
A standard business pen.
And that is totally fine.
But that means there's not a lot to discuss.
Yes.
Because even with Montblanc, we talk about it when they do something different, new, weird.
Yeah.
But otherwise, they don't come up very much.
Yeah.
But Montblanc is different in that they do a wide range of accessories very well.
Like, Waterman inks are very prominently talked about in the stationery world.
Like, their fountain pen inks are some of the best inks for a wide variety of pens.
So, you'll hear about Waterman inks probably more than Waterman pens, at least the modern Waterman pens, to be honest.
Montblanc is a different story in a different category.
They are exceptional pens, right?
The quality, the craftsmanship, the nibs on their pens are spectacular.
I think we tend to not talk about them just from price point perspectives, right?
Their base, really good, solid base fountain pens are between $500 and $1,000, right?
So, that's, like, I don't mind talking about that because they are just that good.
And I honestly, you know, as expensive as they are, I think, worth the price.
Yeah.
But it just doesn't come up in regular conversation that much.
But their special editions are just, like, next level.
They do that as good as anyone in the business, if not better than anyone in the business.
Where we will talk about Montblanc a little bit more, and maybe I talk about it more off the podcast, more in reviews, or more in live streams.
Their inks are spectacular.
And they make great accessories, right?
Their notebooks, their pen cases.
We will definitely talk about Montblanc some, while we'll talk about Waterman almost none.
Never.
And I don't see that.
That would be cool if it changed.
Like, I would have no issue talking about it.
Like, Schaefer's trying to have a resurgence right now.
I don't know that I'm still compelled enough.
But that's in the same category as Waterman.
And the modern stuff, it just doesn't quite interest me enough to – there's nothing to say, particularly.
Waterman, good pen.
Schaefer, good pen.
I know it's not the same thing, and there are a bunch of reasons that it happened.
But if you look at, like, Estabrook, right?
That was, like, a classic brand that got completely adapted to the modern era and then made them, like, someone that we will talk about often.
Because they're doing things in a more modern way, where Waterman especially, and also Montblanc to a degree, they're still very traditional.
Like, they have their customer base and that works for them.
And they're not really that interested in engaging with the more modern ways of doing things, I think.
Yeah, they're content to be, like, the business gift pen or the classic business pen.
The graduation gift or whatever it might be.
Mm-hmm.
Where Montblanc, I actually think they are – they do things right.
They're pretty on top of it.
I think they care more.
I'm super impressed with Montblanc in there.
I mean, just that whole Wes Anderson thing.
Like, we talked about that for ages.
Yeah, that you were talking.
I was thinking about that the whole time.
Because I think about that pen all the time.
Yeah.
But cannot do it.
An anonymous question, Oscar, wrote in and says,
I received a Montblanc Meisterstruck – that was such a good name – Meisterstruck for $149 for Christmas from a relative who knows I love fountain pens.
I was shocked about this, given that I know how much this pen retails for, and I suspect that they, because of this, may have purchased a fake.
They sent me the vendor.
Though it passes many tests, PIX is present on band, there's a serial number, the resin display is red with light, etc.
I would never tell them this, and I love the way it writes, regardless of its authenticity.
But part of me wants to get it checked.
In fact, is this foolish?
It's absolutely not foolish to get it checked, because that is one of the most counterfeit pens on there.
And I don't have the knowledge to know anything about what constitutes that.
But you can find sources online that can get that checked for you.
Relative to this, I got a separate email, and I had already replied to it, about someone wanting to buy a Meisterstruck $149.
Oh, I can't remember if it was $149 or $146, whichever.
Same model, different sizes, one larger, one smaller.
But we're worried about just buying something online and it being real or not.
And I just don't have the resources.
They were basically like, well, you know, is it better to just wait in if I can get to a pen show and do it that way?
And I was like, absolutely, because you're going to have vendors whose reputations, you know, live on whether they're selling, like, authentic goods.
And they are.
You still wouldn't know, though, would you?
I think you would if you go to, like, the vendors who have been doing this a long time because they're not going to misrepresent a product on their table.
Like, there's, like, literal Mont Blanc experts that go to these pen shows and stuff.
So I told this person, yeah, you should go to a pen show.
But, Anon, you should totally get it checked.
I just don't have, like, a great resource for you to do that.
But, like, going to a pen show, I don't know if you may not have that availability.
That's a great way.
You know, and there's a couple of sources that we could probably find to point you to.
So if you want to email me, hello at penaddict.com, I can send you a couple of links.
But, like, this is not a process I've ever gone through myself.
And I'm certainly not an expert in this area.
But you should absolutely get it checked.
It has to be the most counterfeit pen on the market.
Just don't let it diminish your enjoyment of it.
Yeah.
If you really do like it, get it checked so you know if that's important to you.
But, like, keep using it no matter what, if you like it.
That's what I think.
Yep.
It was a gift that should be more important.
Yeah.
Which I think that this person is kind of hinting at anyway.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And David wrote and said,
I was saddened to hear about the closing of William Hanna.
Their pocket notebooks are my favorite for fountain pen use.
Can you suggest any alternatives?
I do prefer dot grid in a field notes-ish size as I use a Bellroy notebook cover.
Yeah, I think we're going to have to revisit.
Again, this is not from David.
But I got another email.
It said, hey, where are the fountain pen friendly pocket notebooks now?
Because we have another question.
And we can handle it another day.
But Write Notepads isn't making their notebooks anymore.
That was a really good choice for fountain pen friendly pocket notebooks.
What you're going to have to look at, at least right now, David, are A6 size softcover Japanese notebooks.
Midori, Kukuyo, Life.
Probably Life in particular makes it even thinner.
Almost kind of a stitch-bound A6 notebook that is very fountain pen friendly.
That's probably the best choice.
I can find a link.
We can put the show notes.
Otherwise, you're just going to have to look at some of the A6 options that vary in page size.
So they vary in thickness.
It may not be totally pocketable.
Like I'm staring at a Midori A6 on my desk right now.
And it has like a tape binding, right?
So it's like a squared off binding.
It's probably 100 pages, right?
That may not be the pocket style you're looking for, like a field notes.
But Life does do some in that size.
So I think I'm going to have to redo or recreate a list because I am getting this question frequently.
And there's honestly, there are options out there, but they're not the easiest to find, right?
They're not as ubiquitous as just a standard field notes or an A6 bound Japanese notebook.
There's kind of like nothing in between.
So, yeah, I will work on that.
And I'll put a link into the Life notebook that I'm talking about that people should consider
because it's more along like the 48-page size of a field notes, but it's A6 in size.
And then you can always get like the Traveler's Passport notebooks, right?
That's very similar to the A6 Life notebook that I'll mention.
So those are kind of the two options right now.
But there's more out there.
I just kind of need to sort them out.
And maybe we'll do a topic on that coming soon.
I'll make a note of that.
If you would like to send in any questions that you have for us or if you have any follow-up
or feedback about today's show, just go to penaddictfeedback.com and you can send your
questions and your thoughts into us.
If you want to find Brad online, you can go to penaddict.com, twitch.tv slash penaddict
and spokedesign.com.
You can find me here on Relay at theenthusiast.net and at cortexbrand.com.
Thanks again to Penadex and Enigma Stationery for the support of this week's episode.
Most of all, thank you for listening.
We'll be back next week.
Until then, say goodbye, Brad.
Goodbye, Brad.