The Pen Addict 79/transcript

The Pen Addict Podcast Transcript
Episode:	79
Title:	Golden
Release Date:	November 5th, 2013
Hosts:	Brad Dowdy Myke Hurley
Guests:	No guests this episode
Additional Information
Official page:	Episode 79
Audio File:	Audio Episode 79
Podcast page:	The Pen Addict 79
Length:	5151 min <br />0.85 h <br /> minutes
Previous Transcript	Next Transcript

Myke Hurley: Hello and welcome to episode 79 of The Pen Addict podcast, your weekly show where we discuss pens, paper, and the analogue tools that we love so dearly. My name is Myke Hurley and I am joined by a man who is surely now got a gold tip nib. It's Mr. Brad Dowdy.

Guest: Good grief.

Myke Hurley: How are you?

Knock Kickstarter Project

Guest: I'm good, how are you?

Myke Hurley: As I was saying it, I was trying to back out.

Guest: Yeah, I know. I'll be right back. I need to go wash my hands and brush my teeth real quick.

Myke Hurley: Yeah, I was well committed, so I just carried on going.

Guest: I am going to the dentist this week though, so maybe I can come back with a little something extra gold. Some grill. You can get like a grill. Yeah, exactly.

Myke Hurley: How are you?

Guest: How are you, sir?

Myke Hurley: Oh, I'm good. Are you good?

Guest: I'm golden. I'm golden. I'm trying to get over this cold. You can probably tell I sound a little bit different. So if I blow out your headset on this episode, I will try to catch myself. But yeah.

Myke Hurley: Thankfully, the fireworks have stopped here.

Guest: Oh, yeah.

Myke Hurley: It's Guy Fawkes night.

Guest: That's right.

Myke Hurley: It's 5th of November. So I recorded with Patrick, I recorded the last episode of the Enough podcast today.

Guest: Oh, I'm so sad.

Myke Hurley: Yeah. And there were fireworks throughout the entire episode. It was like popping in the background.

Guest: Yeah, it's usually something out Patrick's window or something that's making the noise, but this time it was you.

Myke Hurley: Yep. It was all. Well, I was. It was every. I have my windows closed and everything, but it's so loud, you know. Yeah. You can't really escape fireworks.

Guest: Well, that was a deserving send-off then of the Enough podcast.

Myke Hurley: Exactly. In a way, it was kind of nice. But this hasn't been the only fireworks that there's been this week. I mean, surely there was some in Georgia.

Guest: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The Knock Kickstarter project funded. It was successfully funded, Myke. I don't know if you know that.

Myke Hurley: What? I didn't think you guys were going to make it. It was going down to the final minute.

Guest: It was tight there at the end.

Myke Hurley: So, I remember on the show that you said that you hoped you'd break 2,075. So, 2,000 backers, $75,000, where you got 2,000 backers and $78,000, $662,000. So, congratulations.

Guest: Thanks. I appreciate that. I'm just shaking my head. You know, you can't see that, but I'm just like, wow.

Myke Hurley: What an incredible amount of money. Yeah. Like, isn't that amazing?

Guest: It really is. It really is. And we're excited. We're excited that the backers are so excited about this project. I mean, we get so many – I mean, people don't even have these things in their hands yet, and they just keep sending us messages about how excited they are, you know, how happy they are for us. And I don't know. It's a good feeling. It's a good feeling. I'm not going to lie.

Myke Hurley: Of course, Jeff has been updating the Instagram.

Guest: Yeah.

Myke Hurley: He's loads of pictures.

Guest: He's hard at work. He's pretty much doing cases full-time starting yesterday. And then I'm going to be up there this weekend helping out with that and hopefully bringing back the first batch to start getting organized. We don't have our – we're waiting – we've got to wait until the Kickstarter funds come in to get some of our shipping stuff set up. But I'm going to start organizing that because I'm going to be handling a lot of the shipping.

Myke Hurley: So you're basically going to start getting some of the packages ready, I guess.

Guest: Yeah. Yeah. I've got to figure out the – get some organizational things going, basically, so I can fulfill in an efficient manner. I'm not overly concerned about it, but it's just something that's not set up until – I can't really set it up ahead of time kind of thing.

Myke Hurley: Yeah. You can do it, but it's about how you do it, really. Right. Right. I imagine lots of huge buckets.

Guest: Yeah. Yeah. Definitely. That's exactly right. So – which will be good. I mean, it's good times. It's good to get this thing going, and I'm glad we were able to start manufacturing early because I think we would be behind if we weren't. But I think even Jeff's just starting this week. He's already feeling pretty good about the process so far. So, I mean, I think we're going to be in a good shape. So we did send out the survey this week for any listeners. Yeah, you did, didn't you?

Guest: What? Carry on. No, I was just going to say any listeners who are backers who haven't seen a survey, you need to check your junk mail folders or something like that, your spam folders.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah.

Guest: I know some got delivered there because I guess they come from a different address than our backer updates come from Kickstarter. I think most people were getting those, but the surveys get handled a little bit differently. But I never thought I would see so many tweets or messages about how hard it is to choose the colors on the survey. People are excited about picking the colors and they're having a hard time.

Myke Hurley: I went pretty heavy in the orange.

Guest: Yeah. It looks pretty sweet. I'll admit that.

Myke Hurley: I got like the, is it the high tower that was in the peacock? Uh-huh. Right. I got that one because, you know. But most of mine were orange. I did choose like a, I think I got one, maybe one blue and one steel. Okay. Nice. I didn't realize until I got the survey how many pen cases I now will be owning.

Myke Hurley: It didn't dawn on me until I was checking them all. And then one thing, I had a concern. I have a concern that I want to share with you, which is customs charges.

Package Size

Guest: Yeah. We've had a couple of messages about that.

Myke Hurley: Because it's potentially going to be quite a hefty pack. How big do you think it will be?

Guest: We were doing some measurements the other day, but I didn't do any weights yet. It's not going to be supremely heavy. And it's going to be about, what was the dimensions? Eight by 12.

Guest: So we'll see. I mean, yeah, hopefully there's not going to be a real hit there. And I don't know if there's a way to put in the description. That's more feasible. I don't know. I'm going to have to look into that. That's a good question.

Myke Hurley: I would suggest that. For example, I received a t-shirt last week. Just a t-shirt. It cost me $20 in customs fees. So I'm just concerned that I will be going back to vanishing point days. Not that I will mine for your goods, but it's not just me.

Guest: Well, sure. Yeah, and I don't want to get raked over the coals by a bunch of backers saying, oh, I didn't know there was going to be these additional fees.

Guest: Shipping is awful. It's just awful. There's no two ways about it. People want to know, well, can you reduce your shipping fee? I'm like, well, I'm already losing money in my shipping fee in this project. I mean, there's certain fixed costs that just are. And it's like shipping fees, people usually don't have a way to get around them. But we try to be pretty reasonable. And I'm fairly certain we're going to lose money just in shipping. But we wanted to get these products out and get them in a lot of people's hands. And that's what this Kickstarter was about was getting the word out and getting the product out. And we're certainly not going to lose money overall. But I know just on the shipping part of it, we will. But that's totally fine. And we accepted that in the beginning just because we wanted to get these just all over the world. And it turns out it worked out that way pretty well.

Myke Hurley: So we'll see what happens. I mean, I think customs is a bit of a dark art. I've had things come through absolutely fine. I've had things locked away in cabinets and in post offices and places. So we'll see what happens.

Guest: Yep, we'll see what happens. So yeah, no, that's a concern. I just don't know the best way to handle that. And that's something I'll be looking into.

Myke Hurley: You should maybe contact some of your friends.

Guest: That's true. That's true. I just wrote myself a note here. So I know Dan's had to deal with it. So I will enlist Dan.

Myke Hurley: Like jet pens and people like that, you know?

Guest: Yeah. And actually, I'll probably hear from Dan before I text Dan. It seems like he listens pretty quick to the podcast and starts saying, hey, I can help you with that.

Guest: He's great. He's great.

Field Notes

Myke Hurley: So in a pretty shocking release this week, we have a new field note.

Guest: That was completely out of the left field, I thought. Yeah. How awesome is that? So it's field notes pitch black. Great name.

Myke Hurley: What a great idea.

Guest: Yeah. They killed, they pretty much killed it on this one. And I don't know if you saw on the day they announced it, they turned the whole site black. Did you guys see that? I did see that. It's back to normal now, but I thought it was a pretty cool book.

Myke Hurley: So it was Halloween. They announced it on Halloween.

Guest: Yep. So what they did was, in a nutshell, is they have a pitch black edition. Think of the cover as sort of like the night sky, wouldn't you say? It's kind of the same gray ink, dark black cover, stealth gray text ink, and then the dot grid on the inside.

Guest: So, and the black staples. I mean, that makes sense for me.

Myke Hurley: It's like all of your boxes, doesn't it?

Guest: Yeah, totally. I'm like, I so don't need these yet.

Guest: Because I'm still working on the drink local editions, you know, filling them up. But as soon as the winter edition comes out, I'll be adding these to the order. Because I've always said I use the, just as when I'm not using a regular edition, I mean, a limited edition colors edition, I'm using the red blooded. So this will replace the red blooded for me. And unfortunately, they're shutting down the red blooded edition.

Myke Hurley: Yeah, this will replace the red blooded.

Guest: Yeah, it's, I don't know if they're, yeah, they're calling it a retirement. But it could make a comeback. They did three full print runs of those. I don't know what the quantities are. I don't think it's going to be some super collectible thing. I'm a little bit sad that the letterpress covers are my favorite field notes editions. Right. So I'm sad in that aspect that that red one's not going to be available. But I think this is a more than fair trade off for me. This is a sweet book. You ordered some, right?

Myke Hurley: I have two packs. And they came in? I haven't got them yet. I don't know why I ordered two packs. Like, I thought that they was going to run out. I was actually talking to Jim Kudal about it. And I was like, I've ordered two. And he was like, thank you. I was like, I don't even know why I did it. And he was like, yeah, a lot of people are doing it.

Guest: Yeah. So they'll, yeah, these should be around for a while.

Myke Hurley: It's like I'm so used to, when I make these orders, like I tend to order in pairs. And so just, I guess it was just habit. I was like, well, I better get two packs in case they sell out. Even if they sell out, they'll just refresh them.

Guest: I do it for shipping purposes. I mean, I've never ordered just one three pack. It's just not good shipping management. Yeah. Shipping loss management. So yeah, I always order at least two, three packs whenever I order. So I'm anxious to get these. They'll be a good. I've got so many of the most recent additions, though. That's why I just haven't jumped into these.

Myke Hurley: Didn't you subscribe, though?

Guest: I did. Okay. Then I order extras. I mean, you know, I mean, I have. Ah, you order extras.

Myke Hurley: Yeah, because I wonder what you meant. But no, I understand.

Guest: Oh, no, no, no, no, no. Well, it depends.

Myke Hurley: I mean, you surely don't need to order extras if they don't, like, because the drink local, because it was six. So you didn't get two packs or three. Do you buy more than just two packs or three that you get with the colors then?

Guest: Yeah, you wouldn't think that I would have to buy more, but I kind of do.

Brad Dowdy: So why don't you just get two color subscriptions? I bought, I should.

Guest: I bought four more three packs of the drink local.

Myke Hurley: Four more?

Guest: Yes. So then I gave, I gave a, I gave two of them to Jeff, though. So I gave him a lagers and an ale. So I only have two extra. So I got two with the color subscription. Then I got two extra. So then I gave two to Jeff.

Myke Hurley: So you have 12.

Guest: No, I have four three packs. Four three packs. Which is just two lagers, two ales.

Myke Hurley: Okay.

Guest: Does that make sense?

Myke Hurley: Yes, I understand that. Yeah. Yeah, I'm on, I got two and two as well. Yeah. I'm on my second of the drink local.

Pencil Revolution

Guest: Nice. I filled that first one up quite quick. Do you follow Johnny Gamber from Pencil Revolution?

Myke Hurley: I'm not sure. I don't think so.

Guest: Well, you, you follow field, you follow field nuts. He's the one he posted like yesterday. He just finished filling all six books of the drink local edition.

Brad Dowdy: How?

Guest: I don't know. I don't know.

Brad Dowdy: Did he post it in the group?

Guest: Yeah. Yeah. He said, all right, I'm done. I just laughed.

Myke Hurley: What was he putting in them?

Guest: He put down in there what he does. We'll have to find the post. We'll try that. We'll link that one in there.

Myke Hurley: My drink locals are empty, uh, full.

Guest: I don't think he said burp or something.

Myke Hurley: Crazy. Yeah, that was crazy. That is crazy.

Guest: So, yeah, um, this should be around for, this, this is obviously going to do extremely well. Um, and I look forward to getting them and, and, and using them because I think it's a, I don't know that I'd change a thing unless they want to do a letterpress cover. But, um, this is fine just like this because I love that gray, that gray text on there. It looks sweet.

Myke Hurley: Dot grid.

Guest: Dot grid. Awesome. I'm all about it.

Myke Hurley: Yep. What else do we, should we, uh, what else have we got? We've got loads of perfection. We've got a bunch more stuff. Shall I, uh, should I take a quick break now?

Guest: Yeah, why don't you do that? Why don't you do that real quick and then, uh, we'll go from there.

Myke Hurley: That probably sounds like a good idea. So let's take a quick moment to thank our friends over at squarespace.com. Squarespace. They are who give you absolutely everything that you need to create an exceptional website. We love Squarespace. If you are looking to build a site, maybe you want to build an online portfolio or a site for your business. Maybe you want to sell things online like Brad will be doing. He's going to be doing that on, on Squarespace. They've got everything that you need to do all of that stuff. For a free trial and 10% off your first purchase, go to squarespace.com and use the offer code Tallyho11. Um, I have been, I put a post on my site today on mikecurley.net because, uh, our, our friend, Mr. Matthew Alexander, he launched his, uh, new company today and I wanted to post about it because I had an image. Did it go live today? Yeah, it did go live today. It's, uh, needlifestyle.com. Um, I had an image that I wanted to post because I took a photo of, uh, Matt about in December of last year when he came to visit me and he told me about his idea that he had. And he spent the rest, we spent the rest of the day talking about it and I convinced him to buy a pad and paper, a pen and paper so he could write the ideas down so he wouldn't forget them. And I took a picture of him, um, because I felt it was like a moment to, to like, to sort of chronicle. And I wanted to post that and just write a little thing about it. So I just typed some stuff up into my Squarespace, uh, blog and I, I was able to drag and drop the image from my desktop into the window. And then I was able to, to use the sort of the selectors to shrink it down to the right size, easily put a caption in. And then I was able to just drag and drop it to where I wanted it and have the text wrap around. It was so easy. Like that's the stuff that I love. And then I was able to, to save it as a draft waiting for him to announce it. And then when he announced it, I was able to publish very simple. It's what I love about Squarespace. I love that. I love the fact that they're always adding new features. I love that. They're always making them more easy to use. I love that. They're always adding new designs and their designs. You know, they're just fantastic. They've won numerous awards for their beautiful designs. They all feature mobile experiences. It's all responsive from a web design perspective, which look fantastic. They have 24-7 customer support. And their plans, believe it or not, just start at just $8 a month. And they include a free domain name if you sign up for a year. I just think they're fantastic. As I mentioned before, they're a commerce platform. So if you want to set up a shop to sell things, you can do this in just a few minutes as well. And that's something that I think we'll be talking a lot more about as Brad switches all that stuff live over at NotCo. So, I mean, you can see, right, what I've mentioned there just through talking is Brad has his sites there. I have my sites there. I mean, you can't get more of an endorsement than that. We trust Squarespace with our website. So you should too. I want you to go and sign up for a free trial. No credit card needed. And when you decide to sign up for Squarespace, make sure that you use the offer code TALLYHO11. That's T-A-L-L-Y-H-O-1-1. That's going to get you 10% off your first purchase. And it will also help show your support for The Pen Addict and all of 5x5. Thanks so much to Squarespace. They give you everything that you need to create an exceptional website.

Guest: One quick comment on Squarespace. They update their blog pretty frequently on whatever changes they're making. And, you know, some of it's back-end stuff. Like they had an analytics change here recently that they did a big update on. But I just happened to stumble on it yesterday. They did a post a couple days ago. They have a new commerce template called Supply.

Myke Hurley: Looks nice, right?

Guest: Yeah, I sent that to Jeff and he about fell out. That's going to be perfect for us. I think we're going to switch our commerce template, which we haven't put live anyway. It's still behind the scenes because it's going to be a few months before that's totally live. But, you know, they're always doing updates and things like this, adding new templates. And it's really neat and clean. And I think that's going to be our commerce template.

Myke Hurley: And I know this ad's been going on forever now, but the great thing about the way they do that stuff is you can just change it.

Guest: Yeah.

Myke Hurley: And that's it. Like it doesn't break anything. You just change it.

Guest: Yeah, like we have all this stuff built out. I'll just go pick new template and then, you know, I'll just check and make sure everything landed in the right spot.

Myke Hurley: Yeah, so you choose the new template and it loads and shows you what your site's going to look like. You can click around and everything. But until you click save, it doesn't change it. It's just awesome.

Guest: Right. So, hey, quick pro tip for you on reading your Matt Alexander post on need. And first of all, congratulations, Matt. I'm pretty excited for this. It's going to be awesome. Did he launch it on his birthday on purpose?

Myke Hurley: I don't know if it was. I think it was just a happy accident, but one that he was very pleased about. Like he was saying to me earlier that all of the birthday wishes and the world wishes for this, it felt like his heart was going to explode.

Guest: So, yeah, quick pro tip for you. Next time you give him a pin, take off the little UPC label.

Myke Hurley: That was to show you how like he literally ran around a department store. He bought there to the Moleskine Volant. I think they're cool. Yeah. Yeah. Pack of those. And then I think that's a G2. And he just sat down and just started writing.

Guest: That's awesome.

Myke Hurley: I'm so happy I took that photo.

Guest: Yeah. That's really good. And it's not just the photo. I mean, it captures a moment. Yeah. You know exactly what was going on there and then something great came out of it. So, that's very cool. Very cool.

Myke Hurley: Mad Alexander. Well done.

High-Tech Pens

Guest: Yes, sir. So, I got another well done product here that kind of I tried to not buy just because I don't know. I spend a lot of money on pins as it is, but on Kickstarter, I've been eyeballing this project called the Apollo Technical Pin and Drafting Scale. Have you seen this one?

Myke Hurley: Yeah. Somebody sent it in to us. I can't remember who off the top of my head. Yeah. And I was just like, it looks interesting, but it's not for me. And I did not expect you to buy it, but you have bought it.

Guest: I didn't either. I thought, this looks really good. It looks really well done. It's not for me.

Myke Hurley: That was how I saw it.

Guest: Sure. And I can understand that because you're not a super high-tech C fan. And even though it takes other refills, it's just, it's not up your alley.

Guest: But I literally looked at this. I think I went to the project page every day for three days and read the whole thing. And the first time I looked at it, I was like, man, this looks really good. I'm just, you know, I'm not going to back another pin. And then I looked at it the next day. I was like, oh, check out that black one. I didn't see that black one the first time. And I was like, that's pretty neat. And then the third day I finally came in and said, yeah.

Myke Hurley: It's like a Rotring.

Guest: Yeah. I came in and said, forget it. I'm backing it. I keep going. I keep pulling up the web page. I'm going to back it. So I want this black one because I traded my Rotring 600 rollerball that looks a lot like this. So this will be kind of a replacement for that. And I don't know. It just looks extremely well made. And the price is good. For a titanium pin, I think mine was $59. And you can choose your color of the silver or the black. And I thought for $59, it was like totally fair. And it does have a stylus on the back end, which I don't really use on my pins.

Myke Hurley: I can't stand that. I wish people would just stop doing it.

Guest: Yeah.

Myke Hurley: Do you know what? I watched the video. And that was one of the things that made me close the tab. Because I'm like, they're not good, those styluses, those little ball styluses. They're not that good. Especially not in a size like this. So I was kind of just like, you've annoyed me now. I know it kind of seems a bit crazy. But I was like, you just annoyed me now because you're trying to cram more functionality in it. And you're actually probably creating a lesser product because of it. I think it's an addition though, right?

Guest: Yeah. Yeah. So it's got like, I don't know if it's a screw or if it's a separate piece, but it does come without it. Just frustrates me. Yeah. So, and actually, yeah.

Brad Dowdy: But yeah, I wish, I mean. Because I'm going to. Many manufacturers don't have to do this.

Myke Hurley: I'm totally going off on one now. If you're creating a drafting pen, a technical pen, which is all about precision, then you shouldn't be making a stylus for the iPad where there is no point precision. Right. And it's like, you know, the Studio Need guys, they knew what they were doing. They created something that felt and acted like a board marker, like a dry erase marker. Right. Because that's what it feels like to use because you have very little control over it. It's just something that frustrates me to see people because you clearly aren't doing it to be precise. It's being done as like a value add. I don't know why I've taken such offense to this. Maybe I should be quiet and let you say how great the product is again. I apologize.

Guest: No, no. No, no, no, no, no. I'm with you on that. I will not use the stylus piece for this. And when this started becoming a thing a few years ago, I was like, okay, let me try a few of these. I could see how this would be useful. I carry my iPhone. I carry a pen and I carry paper. Right. But I never use a stylus on my iPhone when I'm out and about or when I'd be carrying that pen with the stylus piece on it. But if I'm at home and have my iPad out, I'm always using the Cosmonaut. Right. I would never reach for the pen with the stylus on it because I'm not going to be writing at that time. So I've just found it to be – even though I was behind a few of these and I've just found through use that I never use the stylus piece of it. Excuse me. It just seems extraneous. And fortunately with this one, I mean you don't have to use it and it comes right off and you'll never see it again and Myke can sleep well at night.

Myke Hurley: Yep.

Guest: So – but yeah, I think it looks really good and I think the price is right. So hopefully it's –

Myke Hurley: It's super good looking. And I mean I'm sure people that buy it are going to love it. I just looked at it and was like that's more than I need and I probably wouldn't use it that much personally. But it takes a ridiculous amount of great refills.

Guest: Yep. Yep. All the – All the usual characters. All the high-tech Cs and yeah, what, 50, 60, 70 refills. A bunch of good stuff. So it's real good.

Kickstarter Campaign

Myke Hurley: They've done a good job putting the page together. And they're doing well. 62,000 against 30,000.

Guest: Oh yeah. And one other thing. It does come with a pencil modification. I mean I'm not going to be ordering that but I thought that was interesting because this does look like the Rotring 600 line. And you know that's a – I think that was a famous pencil before – well maybe they made the pens at the same time. But the pencils really took over the world.

Myke Hurley: What's so special about the ruler thing?

Guest: I don't know. I'm not an engineer. Okay, cool. And I guess it's just a – I guess it's just a balance and maybe it's got some measurement stuff that's handy or something. I couldn't really speak to that. I don't think mine – does mine come with a ruler? I don't think it does. Yeah, mine doesn't come with – it's called a tri-scale.

Guest: That's actually a pretty expensive thing. But a lot of people are raving about that. That's – I have no interest in that. I just want the pen.

Myke Hurley: Does yours come with one?

Guest: No. No, it doesn't. Okay. Plus the black one would look silly in that thing.

Myke Hurley: They have a black tri-scale.

Guest: Do they? Okay. Oh, that's right because they have a brass pen too.

Myke Hurley: The black tri-scale looks like something you find in the Death Star looks awesome.

Guest: Yeah, it does look pretty – oh, they're all great looking. Yeah.

Myke Hurley: Yeah.

Guest: And I think the engineering and drafting and architectural community seem to be very positive on the tri-scale piece. But I just don't understand it, so I didn't get one. Cool. I don't have any need for that. Don't have any need. But yeah, we'll see how this goes. They've met their goal. They've doubled their goal so far. They had the 30,000 goal. They're up to 62. And they got 37 days to go. I guess this was a 60-day project. So they're well on their way, so I'm anxious to get it.

Myke Hurley: Cool. So a couple of weeks ago, we spoke about the Field Notes Everyday Carry. And I had Keegan from One Star Leather Goods get in contact with me. I'll put a link to One Star Leather Goods in the show notes, which you'll find at 5x5.tv slash panaddicts slash 79. I was actually introduced to Keegan by our mutual friend, the dude, Myke Dudek. Mm-hmm. And basically, One Star Leather, they make really beautiful products out of leather. And some of the stuff that Keegan makes are like everyday carry notebook holder type dealios. So I was very lucky that Keegan sent me one of his. He asked me what I like the look of. And I went for the Park Sloper Senior, not just because it was the most expensive item, but because it was made to fit Field Notes sized notebooks. So what I've got here is a really nicely put together, like it smells good, leather piece. I've got like a green and brown, like the main image on the page that you'll see, which is in the show notes, is what I went for. It's really, really well put together. The Field Notes fits in like a glove. Like it's, you have to be really careful when you're sliding it in sort of the, so you slide like the back cover into like the inside of the, like the right hand side of the piece. Like, so it's just slides in there, you know, I'm trying to think like you've like a passport holder. Yeah. So you have to be careful as you're putting it in, right? Because it's obviously tight for a reason, but that means you could end up accidentally folding your Field Notes book in half. And that's on one side. And then on the other side, you've got some like a credit card holders and you've got like a pocket that you could put other things into. So in the description, he says, you know, you can put like bills and stuff. He says you can put like another notebook in there. Unfortunately, it doesn't fit another Field Notes notebook in the other side, which was a bit of a shame for me. Because I like to be able to carry like two Field Notes notebooks around me because I'm crazy like that. But the average human only needs one. And then you can put other stuff like money and things in there. And I've been using it sort of just as a nice piece to carry the Field Notes notebook in. Like if I was the type of person that was able to wear jeans in their daily work life, then I would be carrying this around with me as my sort of wallet slash notebook holder every day. But it's just slightly too big to fit in the back pocket of my work trousers. And it's kind of also then too wide to go in like a front pocket. Gotcha. You know, in a back pocket in the jeans, it's perfect. And then I've got my wallet and my Field Notes book. Now, one of the things that I was excited about was the fact that you could put a pen in the side. It's got like a part you can slide the pen into. The only problem for me is most of my favorite pens don't fit.

Guest: It's like too thin. It's like standard ballpoint width.

Myke Hurley: Yeah. Yeah. So it fits, like he says, fits many pens from Barker, Barker, Parker, Bick, Cross, Fisher, etc. So that's perfectly standard. I mean, you know, really you should be catering for regular people because if you catered for me, then most of the regular people's pens wouldn't fit in it. That's all out. Yeah.

Guest: That's what it's in. And it's probably not going to fit in your pocket anyway with a larger pen.

Myke Hurley: So one pen that does fit, though, is Maya Johto. Do you remember Maya Johto? Yeah. That fits in there. So I'm pretty happy about that because the Retro doesn't fit in. And the main problem that I had was a lot of pens that have a clip on them. I was struggling to fit in there. But also looking at some of the pens, like the Render K doesn't fit. That's too wide. The Retro 51 doesn't fit. That's too wide. And the same with the Edison Collier because they're quite thick pens. Sure. You know, you could get something like I say, like the Johto will fit in there. I was able to put an Autographic Liner was able to fit. So that's in there as well. I mean, you do have to have the clip on the outside for that one, but that's not difficult because it's not like a really sort of rigid clip. Sure. But the only thing is because it's leather, it kind of needs to be broken in a little bit. So it takes a bit of a pull to get the pens back out. But I figured that if you use the same pen all the time, you would end up molding the leather over time, which is kind of also one of the good things about it.

Guest: Yeah. So looking at it before hearing your comments about it, it looks extremely well made. The leather looks thick. The stitching looks amazing.

Myke Hurley: The stitching is incredible. Like it's actually one of it's the stitching is one of the highlights, which is probably not something you would always say. No.

Guest: No. I mean, hey, having to look at stitches, you know, for our cases, which are completely different than this, I can appreciate stitching. I think that's important.

Myke Hurley: And yeah, and it's just, it's really well made. And in all honesty, for $125, I mean, I think it's worth it. If you're somebody that wants to be able to put all of this stuff in one place and you maybe want a little bit more, this has got the options that you have. I've got a lot more flair than the Field Notes one. Yeah. I think that's a pretty good buy.

Guest: Yeah. I think if I was a wallet person and I'm not a wallet person, I'm a front pocket money clip carry person. If I was a wallet person, I would be all over this.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah.

Field Notes Covers

Guest: But I do think, you know, for me, it would be for what I need for like a Field Notes cover. That's why I just have, I love my, my DONE cover because it's just for like a single notebook. There's no extra pockets or anything like that. And it's, you know, it keeps the thinner profile. But man, if I was a wallet person, because I only carry like two credit cards or one credit card and like an insurance card and my driver's license, that's all I carry. And then some cash. This is like perfect. I don't know. It might make me consider carrying a wallet, but I'm not a big back pocket carry guy.

Myke Hurley: So he makes a bunch of other stuff. He actually does make Field Notes covers as well.

Guest: Oh, just a single solitary type cover.

Myke Hurley: It has a pocket in the side so you can look at those.

Guest: Yeah. Great. This stuff looks really good. One star leather goods. I've seen lots of pictures of these, I think probably from Dudek. And everyone I see always looks like really well made. That's the thing that stood out for me. It's like you can tell in the pictures. Hopefully it wears well and things like that. And I'm sure it will. It looks extremely durable. Yeah.

Myke Hurley: This is one of those items where I know that the more that you use it, the better it's going to look. Yeah, that's exactly right. The colors, all the colors that he uses for the levers are really nice. So yeah, I would check it out. And if you're interested, then I would say give it a go. He was very, very, I mean, I know that he was hooking me up. He was very responsive over email and stuff. So I'm sure he'd be happy to answer any questions that you may or may not have about his beautiful products.

Guest: Fantastic. Fantastic. Did you see that tweet that came out today from Doxy?

Brad Dowdy: I did, yes.

Guest: I don't know. The first thing I did, all right, we'll tell you what it is in just a second. But the first thing I did was, I guess you sent me that tweet. You forwarded it to me. I did, yeah. So you did see it, of course. The first thing I did is I went to the Field Notes page to see if they saw it yet. And I didn't see it posted over there. But what Doxy has done, Doxy's coming out with a new product. And they started, I don't know, they started yesterday or the day before, I guess yesterday, Monday, started kind of leaking tidbits on their Twitter feed about what this new product is. And today they leaked this sweet Field Notes.

Guest: How would you explain this? What do they call it? So the tweet says, happiness comes in textured French 100-pound cream cord tone. And a new kind of Doxy is almost here.

Myke Hurley: So it kind of looks like a canvas. So you're like a really thick canvas. It's got that look of texture about it.

Guest: Yeah, okay. That's a good description, canvas. How does it feel?

Brad Dowdy: It feels interesting. I wouldn't know what you're talking about.

Brad Dowdy: What are you saying? I don't know. It feels pretty good. It feels interesting.

Myke Hurley: It does, does it? Yeah. Funny you should say that. It's just funny. Oh, sorry. I hit the mic. I don't know what happened there. I think I bumped the microphone or something. Apparently, they're coming free with the new Doxy scanner.

Guest: Yes, there's a new Doxy scanner coming out this week. And I think you'll hear more about it this week. But this Field Notes, they tweeted it out. And this is one of the coolest Field Notes books I've seen. I really like that they did something different with the cover. Super unique. And they got their logo on the belly band and stuff like that. So I thought they did a good job with this. But yeah, there will be more coming soon about this little gem. But I was surprised it wasn't on the Field Nuts page. Because actually, one of the Field Notes people actually responded to Doxy's post, where can I get this?

Myke Hurley: Yeah, because the Field Notes Twitter account retweeted it.

Guest: Oh, did they? Yeah. So maybe it's on there. I just, you know what? I hate Facebook. No, no, no.

Myke Hurley: Field Notes. The Field Notes Twitter account retweeted it. I know.

Guest: What I'm about to say is I hate Facebook because if I go to the Field Nuts page, I always feel like it changes the order of stuff.

Myke Hurley: It does.

Guest: Like I never know what's the newest thing. So I'm like, well, I don't want to post something if someone's already posted. But I'm just so bad at Facebook, I can't tell whether it's been posted or not. So you would think it would be over there somewhere about it. Because I'm sure they're going to be raving about it. But it looks like from Doxy's response, it's going to be part of the new product that they're launching. And it's going to come with this product. So stay tuned.

Guest: Stay tuned.

Guest: All right. So we got one more topic I want to knock out real quick. This actually won't take very long, Myke. Is that okay?

Myke Hurley: Yeah, man.

Guest: So I've been getting a lot of questions on this is part of, you know, the Pen Addict blog growing and this podcast growing and people getting into new pens and people discovering things that they like. And I've been getting a lot of new people starting to use fountain pens. So along with that comes the laundry list of questions that you and I have had as we've gone through this experience in the past, right? We've had these very same questions going through our fountain pen discovery period. And this is actually an old question from Bobby Mendoza. One time when we were asking questions. I've probably sat on this for like six months. But I've just had an increase like in Twitter and an email of just some of these basic fountain pen questions. So I wanted to go through a few things real quick. It's kind of a fountain pen 101. And on that topic, Brian Goulet at the Inc Nouveau blog, which is his blog for Goulet pens, that's the first thing you should go to. It's called Fountain Pen 101. It's a video series. Brian makes some of the best videos out there. He explains everything to a T. He's very thorough. So we'll link that into the show notes. Go check out Brian's videos. And he kind of covers all these topics that I'm just going to shoot through real quick. But Brian goes in depth with this stuff. And that's where I learned a lot of my everyday tips and tricks. So a couple of the questions that I've seen recently.

Ink Properties

Guest: One, is it normal for ink to be deposited in the cap? Or is it normal to see, like in a demonstrator pen, ink in the feed section and things like that? And I would say it's normal to see ink in the feed section. That's just how the ink flows through the pen, like in a demonstrator pen. It's just that's part of the design. Something's not broken and ink's leaking everywhere. That's what's actually helping the ink be moderated through the feed in the nib. So you actually have a decent line to write with. That's a normal thing. Is it normal for inks to be deposited in the cap? No, it's not. Something's wrong, probably. If you're doing that, it's either the pen's being banged around too much, tossed around too much, or there's not a good seal somewhere that's causing the air tightness isn't there, either in the cartridge or the converter, or something's just not set right if it's happening a lot. That's just something you just want to check everything out, make sure everything's tightened up and looking good. Because you shouldn't really have ink deposited in the cap. Now, you'll see some a little bit from time to time, and you know you haven't really shaken it out. If it's just minor and infrequent, I wouldn't worry about it much. But anything larger, I would start checking it out. We talked a lot about, in previous podcasts, how to store pens. You know, does Bobby asked, does storing the pen nib down cause any of this ink to be deposited in the cap? I don't know that it necessarily does. I don't like storing my pens nib down just out of precaution for that. I lay them flat, just like a flat horizontal storage, as much as I can, or I store them nib up. I think nib down, you're probably asking for trouble, although I don't know that you would be in trouble. You just never know when something just might not be right. But cleaning is always a big issue for people that are new to fountain pens. So my cleaning routine has gotten to be very simple and very concise, and it's repeatable over and over. And anyone can do it. It doesn't take, well, I was going to say it doesn't take any special tools, but I do use an aspirator. But what I do to clean a fountain pen is you unscrew the section, which is the part, you know, where the grip area is and the nib. Unscrew that. Pull out your cartridge or converter. Run that nib section, the part that you would grip, under the sink, under the tap water. Just kind of flush that through, you know, as much as you can until you kind of start seeing ink being replaced by clear water. And if you happen to have a nasal aspirator, I've bought a couple. They work really good for pushing that water through. You don't have to have one. But once you're done kind of rinsing that nib section out, I wrap it in a paper towel and shake it like a mother. I mean, I just shake the heck out of it. And to see, get that water to come out of it, and I can see if any ink is remaining in there. And if there is, I'll flush it a little bit more, wipe it down on a paper towel a little bit more, shake it out a little bit more. And after, you know, maybe two or three times of that, it's usually pretty clear. I've gotten over the point where it has to be dead clear perfect. I don't know if you run into that, Myke, when you clean your fountain pens. You make sure they're like, like the nib is just like crystal clear water. Or sometimes is there a little, there might be a little bit of coloration from just, I don't know, the smallest, the smallest dots of ink left in there.

Myke Hurley: Yeah, I try not to get too crazy about it.

Guest: Yeah, you'll drive yourself nuts trying to be perfect on that. And you don't have to be because the new ink will take over. And you might see it in one or two strokes right when you start. But after that, you're going to take off and it's not going to, you'll never notice the minute amount left in there. Now, if I have a nib that's particularly tough to clean, like my Edison Beaumont nib, for some reason, I've got other Edisons that are easy to clean. This Beaumont nib, it just holds ink like crazy. That one I'll take off and put in a little cup of water and let it soak overnight. And then actually I'll see more ink come out by the morning time that I wasn't able to get out on my own. And then I'll just, I'll dry it off and it's ready to go. So that's all you got to do, guys, to get your pen cleaned. You know, run the nib unit under the water, shake it out, make sure all the, as much ink has gone out of it as possible. Flush it, run it through there again if you have to. And dry it off. And, I mean, you can start, I don't even let it dry, you know, overnight or anything like that. If I'm going to re-ink it, I re-ink it right there. You know, I'll either clean out the converter, clean out the cartridge. Those are easy to clean out. Those you just run under the faucet and the ink comes right out of those. Any cartridge or converter, most of them, you can just get it right out, put some water in it, put your finger over it, shake it up. Everything will come out. It's really simple. I used to overthink cleaning until our friend Sidney sent us his video and showed us how easy it was to clean pens. I used to really overthink and concern myself with cleaning fountain pens. Now it's really one of the simplest tasks and I don't even mind doing it because I can do it so quickly now. So you just got to get in there and do it. A few other basics that a lot of people ask are, are all inks safe to use in all fountain pens? And the answer is no. You have to at least be aware of what type of ink you're using.

Guest: The pen type doesn't matter as much as what ink you're putting in any pen. So there's different types of inks. And, you know, I've gone over it on the blog and we'll have to check, I'll have to check and see what podcast we've talked about, the iron gall inks. But there's certain inks you want to be careful about cleaning out much more frequently. Like if I'm using a normal ink, Myke, like just a basic Pilot Blue or Pilot Blue Black, whatever. And if I haven't run it out in the pen, I'll try to clean it every few weeks, three, four weeks, maybe five weeks. That's about how long I'll leave a normal ink in a pen without just dumping it out, cleaning it, and, you know, maybe even putting the same ink back in. It just needs to be maintained that way. Now, if you're using an iron gall ink, which is a little bit more, it's a little bit harder on the nibs and on the feeds and on the mechanics of the pen. I don't want to say corrosive. That's a little extreme. But you have to be careful about leaving it in too long because it'll dry up in your nib. It'll kind of gunk up the nib in the feed unit. So you've got to clean those about every one to two weeks at the most, just depending. There's some that are a little bit more tame. But you need to be aware of what the ink properties are before you put them in any pen. And if you have a question, let me know. I'll answer it as best as I can. And, you know, you just want to be careful. People ask about certain brands of inks. You know, do they stain, you know, like a demonstrator pen? You know, if you're putting a certain brand of blue ink in a clear pen, is it going to stain it when you get it cleared out? That I don't have as much experience with. The knowledge I've gained over the past couple years is that there's a basic tenet that my friend Thomas instilled in me. That if a pen manufacturer, like a Pilot, also manufactures an ink, you generally assume that those inks are safe for their pens. Right? Or any fountain pen. Really, like Pilot can be used in a Pelican fountain pen. But the theory being that a pen manufacturer is not going to make an ink that's going to damage one of their pens. Because then they're going to have to repair it and there's additional costs in that. You know, that's not necessarily a fact. It's just a, I think that's a good working theory though. I like that a lot. So, that doesn't mean you shouldn't use things like Noodlers or Private Reserve or any of these million other ink vendors. Because they make some of the best inks. Like, I love all kinds of Noodlers inks. I tend to clean those more frequently than if I was using Pilot Blue Black over Noodlers 54th Massachusetts. Maybe that's just me being paranoid. I haven't had any problems. People report problems with certain inks. Like some of the bulletproof inks or, you know, some of the more stronger formulaic inks that might, might not stain. I don't have a ton of experience with that. But that's a good thing to keep in mind. Just know what you're putting in the pen. Understand that a pen manufacturer is probably not going to make something that's going to damage a fountain pen. Because that's, that would be kind of detrimental to their business. And then just, you know, have a decent cleaning process where you're, you're keeping track of it every, every few weeks. You know, I wouldn't leave any ink in any fountain pen for two or three months. I think that's, you'll probably have to do some, go through some extra cleaning steps with that. And that's kind of, I mean, I think that's kind of most of the questions that I've been getting. Just like the super basic stuff that, it's kind of quick answers. But never, people never having experiences before and just getting the fountain pens, you know, these are the kind of things, these are the kind of questions that I had in the beginning. And that I asked a lot and just through trial and error and talking with people that are more experienced than myself, you know, I've, I've come to some of these conclusions. And, and it's just kind of the, the habits that I've instilled in, in working with my fountain pens now. So do you have anything to add along like the very basic one-on-one stuff, Myke?

Myke Hurley: I can't add anything more than what you've just put in, my friend. All right.

Guest: So good. I'm always, I'm always free to answer questions like this. You know, I get them all the time. And since this, the frequency of this topic has been increasing lately, which is wonderful to see. I'm happy to answer these types of questions all the time. And, you know, I may, may not be, have all the answers. And, you know, there's guys that are out there that are way more, guys and girls that are way more experienced than myself. I'll defer to them quite often. But, you know, I'm at least the starting point to, to help you on this journey. And I'm glad to do it. So, yeah, you know where to find me. Where is that? That is on Twitter. Twitter is a great way to get in touch with me. If you want a quick answer. I'm on Twitter at Dowdyism, D-O-W-D-Y-I-S-M. And I'm on app.net at Dowdy, D-O-W-D-Y. Either one of those avenues, you're probably going to get a quick response from me. Otherwise, you can go to penaddict.com. And there's a contact link there that will shoot me an email. And I'm pretty good at getting back to those. Those just take me a day or two, sometimes three, to get back to an email. But that's the quickest way to get in touch. And I'm happy to hear any more questions you guys have about any topic, especially just getting started in fountain pens and things like that. Because that's a great topic. I enjoy talking about that.

Myke Hurley: If you're going to get in contact with me, imike, I-M-Y-K-E, on Twitter and app.net. That's a great place. It's the best place for me, I think. And as we mentioned earlier, if you want to find links to some of the stuff we discussed today, go to 5by5.tv slash penaddict slash 79. We've collected a selection of links there for you. And I think that's about it for today's episode of the Pen Addict podcast. Thanks so much for listening. If you enjoy the show, feel free to leave us a review in iTunes. Always nice to see. And we appreciate all of those too. So thanks to you for listening. And until next week, say goodbye, Brad.

Guest: Goodbye, Brad. Bye.