The Pen Addict 9/transcript

The Pen Addict Podcast Transcript
Episode:	9
Title:	Get The Lead Out
Release Date:	April 12th, 2012
Hosts:	Brad Dowdy Myke Hurley
Guests:	No guests this episode
Additional Information
Official page:	Episode 9
Audio File:	Audio Episode 9
Podcast page:	The Pen Addict 9
Length:	4545 min <br />0.75 h <br /> minutes
Previous Transcript	Next Transcript

Myke Hurley: Hello and welcome to The Pen Addict podcast, a weekly show where we discuss pens, paper, and the analogue tools that we all love so dearly. My name is Myke Hurley, but I am joined by your host, as always, Mr. Brad Dowdy. Hello, Brad.

Brad Dowdy: Hey, Myke. How are you today?

Myke Hurley: Very well, sir. This episode is brought to you by Drafts by Agile Tortoise and Instacast by Vermilio. And we're going to be talking about those two fantastic sponsors a little bit later on. So, Brad, you teased last week that you were going to be having some epic haul delivered to you in Viking style on the backs of some sort of winged pen angels. I believe that's how you get your pen deliveries, right?

Brad Dowdy: Pretty much so, pretty much so.

Myke Hurley: It's different to us mere mortals.

Brad Dowdy: This delivery was actually, it actually was delivered specially. I came home and I missed the mail and actually had the little note that I had to go pick up the package at the post office since it was so large that they didn't want to leave it out. I think that's the first time that's happened.

Myke Hurley: Wow. So what did you get?

Notebooks

Brad Dowdy: Well, what made the package so large is I had some notebooks and things like that that we will certainly talk about later. But it made the size and weight of the package pretty heavy that I had to go sign for it upon delivery. But, you know, what made what I was so anxious to get was probably the smallest single item in that package, which is my Kaweco Lilliput extra fine nib fountain pen. And if you're not familiar with the Lilliput, you know, we've talked about my AL Sport, you know, the aluminum body hexagonal shape. We've talked about your Sport Classic, the plastic body hexagonal shape, you know, that that's, you know, compact pocket carry, you know, a nice compact build fountain pen. The Lilliput is maybe half that size of those pens and maybe a quarter of the weight. I mean, actually, I take that back of the plastic classic like you have. I think that pens lighter in weight overall. But in size and diameter, the Lilliput is even smaller. It's about like if you took out a Pilot Hitec C or a Uniball Sino DX, the barrel width is about that diameter. It's very, very narrow. I mean, the ink cartridge, I think, just slides in the barrel with not much play on either side, you know, maybe a couple millimeters on either side.

Myke Hurley: Is it using a standard sized ink cartridge?

Brad Dowdy: No, it uses the same cartridge as the other Kawecos, which is the short international cartridge. Uh-huh. So, yeah, the Kaweco cartridge that you have fits this Lilliput.

Myke Hurley: So, I assume it's like the size of the cartridge and nothing more, no extra space.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, like if I unscrew it, you know, I'll have a ruler in front of me. I mean, it's maybe a couple millimeters worth of play around the cartridge.

Myke Hurley: Because as we learned on last week's show, you can get another cartridge in, but it will get stuck in the Kaweco.

Brad Dowdy: I wonder if this one will fit one up there in the barrel. Don't do it. I don't think so.

Myke Hurley: What was funny, this is last week at the end of the show, I had to listen to Brad banging the end of his Kaweco against his desk trying to get the cartridge out. He was very scared.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, that kind of stuff annoys me. We talk about the stuff that it's the little things that get to me. I can't let that kind of thing go. It's like that thing's stuck in there. I'm getting it out. And, you know, even if I'm cutting it open and ruining my pen, I'm getting that thing out. But this Lilliput is fascinating.

Brad Dowdy: It's a fully aluminum barrel, so it is super, super lightweight. You know, I wouldn't recommend it to you personally because I know how you carry your pens. You know, you need that clip in there to keep it in your pocket, in your jacket pocket to keep it, you know, keep it safe and secure. There is no clip for this pen. I mean, it is a teeny tiny little package. But when you unscrew the cap, the cap's threaded and the cap posts on the back of the pen, it threads as well, which I never realized until I actually got the pen in my hand. And as many times as I looked at it online at JetPens, and I obviously didn't read the description because it's in there too, the butt end of the barrel is threaded. So I unthread the cap from the nib section, and then I thread it right on the back of the pen. And I think the full length is pretty comparable in length to the other Cuicos. You and I have the Classic and the AL Sport lengthwise.

Myke Hurley: So I can see the reason for that would be because if you capped the cap regularly, it would cover up too much so that it would be too small to fit in the hand, right?

Brad Dowdy: Right. So what happens...

Myke Hurley: They've got a picture on JetPens where there's a guy holding it in his hand, and it looks like it sits the same way that the regular Cuico, the Sport, sits, like with the same sort of length.

Brad Dowdy: Exactly.

Myke Hurley: In the hand.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. So what happens, like you say, there's two things that will happen if you don't have that threading on the back. One, it'll slide over the barrel too far. Or two, it'll just hang on the end of the barrel, and then that part's in the cusp of your hand, and it's moving all over the place. Right? It's not a solid snap into place. So the threading works perfectly. I thread it tight as if the pen was shut. Don't even know it's there. It's pretty fantastic. The real... Well, obviously, I wanted this pen really badly because I like the portability aspect of it, just like my AL Sport. That's the fountain pen I'll leave the house with. This might be the new one I'll leave the house with, but the secondary issue I wanted to... Why I wanted to get this pen was to try out the Cuico EF nib. Out of the three or four or five Cuicos I have, I have no EF nibs, and you know how much I like the EF nib. It is awesome. It's so good. I'm going to switch out. I have two AL Sports. I'm going to buy the EF nib replacements for them and swap out the EF nibs that are currently in there.

Myke Hurley: Oh, wow.

EF Nibs

Brad Dowdy: The EF nibs are fine. They're smooth. They write like a champ. The EF nib is where it's at for me. I love it. It's great right there.

Myke Hurley: I need you to do a comparison video for me.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, this pen... So I can see that. Yeah, this pen is tailor-made for a video, and I fully intend on doing that.

Myke Hurley: Because I'd like to see it up against other pens as well, so I can get a real good idea of the size of it too.

Brad Dowdy: That's right. I mean, this is a pen, if you didn't know what you were getting into and you ordered this without doing your homework, you would probably be shocked at how small this pen really is. I mean, you can see in the pictures on JetPens just with the penny up next to it. The penny looks pretty large next to it. But in use, it feels great. It's not too narrow. It's like holding... You know, a lot of fountain pens have a wider barrel just to hold all the parts it needs to function as a fountain pen. There's not a lot of narrow barrel fountain pens. So this is actually along the lines of a gel ink pen, like I was talking about, like a UniSino DX. I bet this is... You know, I haven't done any scientific measurements or anything, but I bet it's... Well, it's probably a little bit narrower, actually, now that I have one side-by-side. It's actually a lot narrower. It might be closer to the Hi-Tec C barrel width. It doesn't feel in the grip area like a mini pen or like it's too tiny. If you had large hands, I think it might be an issue. I don't have large hands. I mean, you know, just normal medium-sized hands.

Brad Dowdy: You're trying to go there. I'm not going to let you.

Brad Dowdy: But, you know, I do think if you had huge hands, this pen would probably... I would not recommend this pen. But it's really cool. I'm really happy with it. I'm going to start taking it out of the house when I go and use it for a few different things. I am going to have to be careful. It could probably get away from me if I'm not careful. It's that lightweight. Like if it's one of those pens I could leave in my pocket and, you know, not know it's there. When I took... Here I go again. When I took my pants off or my shorts, this pen could easily stay in the pocket. It is that lightweight. Whereas my AL Sport that I normally carry in my pants pocket, I would never leave that pen in there because it's pretty hefty. This pen is a completely different category weight-wise.

Myke Hurley: This is a shame because I've been looking while we've been talking to see if it's possible to get a clip of any kind and it isn't because that is a beautiful looking piece of equipment.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. It's just too narrow. It's a shame. And the other problem is the actual clip part would be too long for the pen. It would have... Do you know what I mean?

Myke Hurley: Yeah. It would be too long of a clip. It just makes it sound tight. I mean, it is tiny.

Brad Dowdy: But when you say stuff like that, it's... If you put a clip up towards the top of the cap, the actual clip part that hangs down might go past the barrel seam. I mean, the cap seam. Right? You know what I'm saying?

Myke Hurley: Yeah. I think I do really need to see some video of this so I can get a good... Because I don't think even the penny image doesn't really help put it into perspective for me. It should be up against other pens, really. I mean, that will help.

Brad Dowdy: Yep.

Myke Hurley: Because, you know, it does sound tiny but really interesting. I can see why you were so excited to get it.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. This is one of those things that's right up my alley. You know, for me, for what I use pens for, for what I want out of my pens, for the style, for the portability. For me, personally, this is a really, really good pen. And it is absolutely not for everybody. Anyway, you're going to have to give me a lot of information about you and what you're going to use a pen for before I would recommend this pen to someone.

Brad Dowdy: Just because, you know, I want to try to give people the best information possible. I don't want them to be disappointed when they get it and they're like, oh my gosh, it's smaller than my middle finger, you know. It's pretty tiny. But for me, we'll report back on this because I'm going to use the heck out of it. I've been really happy with it so far. And mostly because I like the EF nib. It's really good.

Myke Hurley: Is it maybe the nib that's winning out over the body or is it a combination of the whole package?

Brad Dowdy: No, it's a combination of the whole package. I do worry a little bit about losing it in my pocket. It's that lightweight. Like the AL Sport, I don't think I would ever lose that pen in my pocket. It's got a lot of heft to it. This is super, super lightweight. So I will do some video on this pen. Like I said, it's tailor-made for that. Just to do some body size comparisons with other Kawekos and other standard fountain pens. And then some nib comparisons between the EF and the F Kawekos. Cool. So that's my Lilyput.

Myke Hurley: Is it an ounce of note that you got?

Pen Covers

Brad Dowdy: I did. I got something that I've never ordered before and never really felt I had a need for. But there was a deal online for, it's called the Rickshaw Bag Works Folio. And it was a 24-hour deal. One of my pen friends in my Twitter feed posted it. And I was like, you know what? I've always heard about these Rickshaw bags. They make custom bags in San Francisco. They're a lot like if you're familiar with the brand Timbuk2 that makes messenger bags. Where they take fabrics and they'll custom make your fabrics into whatever bag style you want. So because of all that customization, they're a little bit expensive. Like just the folio, which is made for the large moleskin size. So what's that? That's like a 5x8. So it's made to cover that. Normally it's $50. And that's pretty steep for something that I didn't think I would necessarily use all that often. But they ran a 24-hour promo where you could get it for half off. So that was a deal that I couldn't pass up. And that was a couple weeks ago. And I picked out my colors and binding. And I can send you a link. They actually do a cool thing. When you place the order, they'll give you, they say, give us your Twitter handle. And when we finish making your bag, we'll take a picture and upload it in our Twitter feed. So I actually have a picture of mine that I can send you.

Myke Hurley: Oh, yeah. That's cool.

Brad Dowdy: So the only – right now it looks awesome. It's got a lot of – it's not just a cover that goes on top of a journal. It's got a lot of extra pockets. It's got a couple pin pockets. It's got an iPhone pocket, you know, business card holder.

Myke Hurley: Oh, really?

Brad Dowdy: It zips fully around. You know, I'll definitely be doing a review and some video on it.

Myke Hurley: Please.

Brad Dowdy: The only thing that caught me was – now, they said it was made for the large moleskin, right? And that's what they based the sizing dimensions off of. I didn't realize that a lot of the other notebooks that are similar in size to the large moleskin are actually larger. And they do not fit in this bag. Like a Rodeo web notebook or my Leuchtturm 1917. They're all about a half inch wider. And they do not fit in this. So I've actually broken down and purchased a large grid moleskin to use for this. So we'll see how that goes. I at least got – I got the red cover with the squared, large squared moleskin hardcover.

Myke Hurley: You went with a good color. I love the red ones.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. I at least wanted to get something different. So we'll see. There will be reviews forthcoming on the pin act of that. That was just – that's something – I've never used anything like this before. So – and I've always liked them, the way they looked, and the quality looks really nice. So I couldn't pass up a deal like that just to try it out. So that's kind of my – I was on vacation last week, and I came back to all this. So I was a pretty happy camper when I got back from vacation on Friday and Saturday to go pick up all this stuff from the post office.

Myke Hurley: It's always great to get a haul of pens.

Brad Dowdy: Yes, yes. And how about you? You were kind of quiet this week for a change. You need a break.

Myke Hurley: I'm probably not going to make any big purchases for a couple of weeks. I'm saving for a trip. Good. I want to give a little bit of just a tiny minute or two follow-up on last week. So I spoke a lot about the 1951 Tornado, the Retro 51 Tornado. Yeah, yeah. And the high-tech C-Colito. Mm-hmm. So I'm still using those. I've been using those two pens in combo all week throughout my day. I'm still using – in the evenings, I'm using my Kaweco. I'm using the Kaweco right now, actually. Mm-hmm. But the 51, I'm still in love with the 51. There's a couple of things, though. You know, it is falling victim to some ballpoint flaws. Like, it doesn't write up against the wall or something. Sure, sure. And, like, writing on a Post-it note that is stuck to a table just won't have it. There's got to be a little bit of padding to it, which isn't a deal-breaker. It's just something I noticed that I've run into.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, and that's issues with a lot of pens.

Myke Hurley: The C-Colito as well, like, one of the inks already seems to be running dry.

Brad Dowdy: Mm-hmm.

Myke Hurley: And I've barely used it.

Brad Dowdy: Like, it won't run out of the tip of the pen, out of the nib, or it's empty, going empty?

Myke Hurley: It feels like it's not running out of the nib very, very well.

Brad Dowdy: Mm-hmm. Okay. Yeah, that's different.

Myke Hurley: Yeah. I think that's just to say they are a lot finer, and I guess it is a lot more. There's a lot more going on in the pens, so you're probably going to run into some more snags. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. The 51 as well, I have to say, I mean, you know, when I exclaimed it was my favorite pen, I thought, you know, maybe it was just the honeymoon period. Right. But two weeks now I've had it, and I love it.

Brad Dowdy: That's great. I love it.

Myke Hurley: I love it. I love writing with it.

Pen Reviews

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, we got in a lot of trouble for that one, a lot of us. We got a lot of the enabler talk on Twitter for that pen.

Myke Hurley: I'm not concerned about that. I'm not concerned that people are going to say, oh, you shouldn't have made me buy this. This is crap, because this pen is so good. That's right. And I know that I'm about 90% sure that my next purchase is going to be the Fountain Pen Tornado.

Brad Dowdy: Oh, yeah. I'm dying to see that. That will be cool. I'm actually just a quick side note, real two-second side note. I'm actually going to my first ever pen show this weekend in Atlanta, if all things break correctly. And I'll see if I can run across one of those. And if I do, I might beat you to the punch.

Myke Hurley: Oh, I'll be upset.

Brad Dowdy: I'll put that on the watch list to see what I can find there. So maybe I can report back next episode how that goes. I've never been to a pen show before.

Myke Hurley: That's if you don't have to sell your body to get back from Atlanta.

Brad Dowdy: Oh, I'm going to have to take a loan for sure. Because this isn't like a gel ink pen show. I'm not going there to buy $4 pens. You've got to find some. So when is that? Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.

Myke Hurley: So this weekend?

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, 13th, 14th, and 15th. I think I'm going up on Sunday. That's the plan right now. So we'll see.

Myke Hurley: See, again, we had spoken again about doing the digital discussion for this week. But Brad only got his cosmonaut yesterday. So he wanted to do some real testing with it. But now you're doing this this weekend. That might take up a big episode on its own. We'll see.

Brad Dowdy: I forgot about that.

Myke Hurley: We're going to talk. So basically, we spoke about this a little bit, talking about using styluses on the iPad instead of pen and paper. So that's definitely going to be even next week or the week after, depending on how much news we have from the Atlanta pen show.

Brad Dowdy: So there you go. Right, right. This is the way I'm seeing the pen show. I'm either going to come back with nothing or I'm going to be broke. I don't think there's going to be a lot of in between.

Myke Hurley: Yeah, it's either going to be loads of stuff there that is of no interest to you or everything is of interest to you.

Brad Dowdy: Right, right.

Myke Hurley: Good luck.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, thanks. I need it. My wife is worried, put it that way. Is she going with you? No.

Myke Hurley: She would probably be in her best interest to do that.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, really.

Myke Hurley: So what else are we going to – what's sort of the topic this week?

Pencil Talk

Brad Dowdy: I want to cover some pencil talk. You know, I do get asked for recommendations from time to time for pencils, and I'm not a hardcore pencil user, but I do have some favorites that I'd like to talk about. So I think that's what we'll go with this week.

Myke Hurley: Cool. Just before we do that, so that's what we call a tease in the business. Let's talk about our first sponsor for this week, and it's Drafts by Agile Tortoise. Drafts has been getting a lot of really great press this week. I mean, I think it even got tweeted out by the iTunes App Store. Oh, wow. Yeah. You know, they have like an App Store Twitter account, and I think even they tweeted it out. It's been covered absolutely everywhere, so I'm sure you've heard about it by now. But if you've maybe seen the app Drafts fly by your Twitter stream or you've seen it in a – like someone's made a blog post or a review, take it from me. Take it from Brad. You need to get your hands on this application. It's absolutely fantastic. It's basically if you have some text and you want to do something with some texts, open Drafts. Basically, you know, you can put – say you want to write a tweet. So you've got some sort of funny tweet that you want to send out. So maybe it will take a little bit of work to refine the tweet. Maybe you want to come back to it in a day or two later. I know people that actually do this. So you can open up Drafts, chuck some tweets into Drafts, and then you can export it using the iOS 5 Twitter integration straight out to Twitter. You can – if you use Tweetbot, you can send it into Tweetbot if you prefer to do it that way. You can write out emails in Drafts, and the reason you do that is because it has Markdown support. So you can write in Markdown, check your Markdown preview to make sure that all your links and everything is all in the right place, and then you can email straight out, or you can copy the Markdown straight to the clipboard. It's an absolutely fantastic app. You can change some of the appearance settings. You can change – there's a bunch of fonts, so it uses the fonts that are built into iOS 5 and allows you to change those over. There's some color changes, text size changes, the whole lot. But it's a really, really great app, and believe it or not, all this functionality, Brad, for $0.99.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, when I saw what it – all the things you could do with it, I mean, I was a day one purchaser of it. I mean, for $0.99, it's a no-brainer. And, you know, it's funny you were telling the story about people writing their tweets down, you know, what they think is a funny tweet and working on it. That's actually what I did. The first thing I did with Drafts was, you know, I'm hilarious, right? So I'm sitting in there. I'm sitting in the carpool line, you know, waiting to pick up my daughter from school. And I was like, oh, I need to write – you know, some thought popped into my head, wrote it down in Drafts. It gives me the character count and the word count. And I wrote this idea down. And, you know, when I got home, I was like, let me finish this up. And I went and, you know, changed a couple words, and I sent it over to TweetBot just to see how that integration worked. And opened up TweetBot, hit send, and it was right out. It was really cool. So I think this is something I'll be using a lot.

Myke Hurley: And, you know, one of the reasons you might want to put faults and stuff into Drafts is because it opens super fast. Like, even if it's – even if you force quit the app, like it's not even in RAM anymore, if you just tap it from – just the keyboard comes up. As soon as you open the app and as soon as that keyboard animation is up, you're ready to go. There's no waiting around. Like, I am a fan of Simple Note for some, you know, for some text entry stuff. And they've just done a load of speed refinements, but it's still nowhere near as fast as Drafts for me. And I know that Greg, who's the developer at Agile Tortoise, he's working on putting loads more of those URL scheme type apps in. I mean, I know that OmniFocus support is coming with an update. So you'll be able to send things from Drafts straight into OmniFocus, which would be big for some people. So, yep, only 99 cents in the app store. It's available now. There's a link in the show notes that will take you straight to the app store so you can buy it. Don't delay. So, let's talk about some pencils.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. No, I want to play a game.

Myke Hurley: Okay.

Brad Dowdy: I want to play Guess Myke's Appearance Settings and Drafts.

Myke Hurley: All right, okay.

Brad Dowdy: I bet you're on Night.

Myke Hurley: Let me check. I know I am using... I want to check that it's called Night. No, I'm using Grayscale.

Brad Dowdy: Oh, I lose.

Myke Hurley: What are you using?

Brad Dowdy: I double lose because I use Grayscale too and I don't really want to be like you.

Myke Hurley: I'm going to have to change it now. What font? I'm using Fonbury.

Brad Dowdy: I'm using... Is it Cochin or Cochin?

Myke Hurley: Cochin? We sound terrible. We sound so uncultured, don't we?

Brad Dowdy: I know.

Myke Hurley: Yeah, no, I really like the Grayscale.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, no, I do too. That's my favorite. Anyway.

Myke Hurley: Night is too dark. It's too Batman for me.

Brad Dowdy: I just went with that because of your blog. So I thought, well, maybe he's in a theme here.

Myke Hurley: I'm not just all about dark colors. Okay. I have a lighter side. Although my lighter side is gray.

Myke Hurley: So can we get on to pencils now or do we like to guess some more colors?

Pencil Recommendations

Brad Dowdy: Yes. No, we can move on to pencils now. Okay. All right. So one of the topics that I get questions about from time to time on the Pen Addict blog is recommend me a pencil for this. You know, I do this type of work. I'm this type of student. And I'm not a pen user. I want to use, you know, a pencil or some other lead-based writing instrument. And I've never been a big pencil person myself. I've always had one, you know, something like a very fine .5 millimeter standard lead pencil. I never really gave thought into my mechanical pencil until I ran across the Uniball Kuro Toga.

Myke Hurley: Yep.

Brad Dowdy: And if you've spent any time on my blog, you know, I refer to it as the pencil by which all others are measured because it is so different and it is so far superior writing experience compared to any other mechanical pencil. There better be a pretty good reason why you're looking at a different mechanical pencil. And there's plenty of valid reasons. But for writing with a pencil, I cannot think of a better pencil than the Uniball Kuro Toga.

Myke Hurley: Do you have one of these, Myke? Yeah, I do. And I love it. And I totally agree with you 100%. It's the only pencil, in my opinion, worth using. And it's because of the – I mean, we spoke of – I think we spoke of it on the show before. But the Kuro Toga implements a system in which the lead turns every time you turn the paper down. So press it down on paper. So with most mechanical pencils, you will end up wearing away the lead. So it's a slant. So then the lead becomes very thick. So it starts off nice and fine. But the more you use it as you're wearing down the lead, it just becomes quite a thick line. But every time you press the Kuro Toga down on the paper, like the lead sort of rotates a little. So it keeps a consistent line thickness. Right.

Brad Dowdy: And it keeps the point sharp, the tip of the lead sharp. You can't really see it rotating. It's just so gradual. But it flat out works. I've tested it. You know, the biggest challenge with the Kuro Toga is learning not to spin the pencil in your hand when you're writing.

Myke Hurley: Yep.

Brad Dowdy: Right. Right. If we've all written with a mechanical pencil, when that lead gets dull on one side, what do you do? I mean, you rotate the pencil in your hand. So you're constantly making that circle. Well, the Kuro Toga does it for you. So you actually have to stop yourself. You're actually defeating the purpose if you twist the pencil in your hand. And one of the reviews I did, I forced myself to – I wrote a full page, like one sentence. I just repeated it over and over and over again across the entire page, forcing myself to learn how to write without rotating the pencil in my hand. And from letter one to the last letter on the page, the line looked exactly the same. And that's when I was sold. You know, I kind of ran it through the gauntlet there. And I was like, it works. I mean, there's nothing else you can say about this pen other than it works. And it does have a pretty cool design. You know, there's three different – no, four different models right now. There's a base plastic barrel model, which is actually very nice.

Myke Hurley: That's the one that I use.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, it's really cool. Actually, the plastic grip is smooth, but I find it kind of comfortable. It's kind of a neat-looking pencil, and the grip is pretty comfortable. The one I use is called the Kuro Toga Roulette, you know, because it spins around. Get it? Hilarious. But it has a knurled grip area and a little bit – I don't know, an upgraded barrel, if you will. Some more metal parts. You know, the top half is plastic, but the bottom half is metal and knurled grip. Then there's one called the high-grade, which is kind of that half plastic, half metal also, but with a smooth metal grip. And then they actually do a Kuro Toga Alpha Gel, which whenever you hear the Alpha Gel, that's always talking about the special grip that Uniball likes to promote. It's that super, super squishy grip. So, yeah. So, yeah. You know, if you're looking for a mechanical pencil for writing purposes, I wouldn't look any further than the Uni Kuro Toga. It's a top-notch pencil. I reviewed it when it first came out. I want to say like 2009-ish maybe. It might have even been earlier than that. And I haven't found a pencil that beats it yet as far as, you know, comparing it directly to another pencil. There hasn't been one that's beaten it yet. So, for general writing, the Kuro Toga is the way to go. Now, if you want to – if you're looking for a more specialty pencil or something different, you know, and something maybe a little more classic styled, the Rotring 600 is what I call – and actually what it's referred to, it's a drafting pencil. It's got a longer lead pipe with a little more clearance around the barrel. It's a heavier – it's a fully brass barrel pen. I think it's a brass – excuse me, pencil.

Brad Dowdy: It's metal from top to bottom, so it's got some heft to it. So, when you're doing technical drawings or drafting, you have a little more control over the tip of the lead. That's what the weight of a pen or pencil does. It helps give you more control when you're writing or drawing or sketching like that. And this – the Rotring 600 design is probably the best-looking pencil design ever, maybe. That's obviously an opinion. But whenever people see one of these or hold one of these, they're usually fascinated by it just because the engineering of the pencil design is brilliant. The weight is perfect. The balance is perfect.

Brad Dowdy: You know, I know you haven't had a chance to get a hold of one of these yet, Myke, but it's almost a piece of art.

Myke Hurley: I'm looking at images now, and it is a very, very handsome piece of equipment.

Brad Dowdy: This is a pencil that people have for decades, and that's no joke. And people swear by these, will only buy these. You know, you can buy replacement parts for them. I mean, it's not a cheap pen. I think it's like – excuse me, pencil. That's like $33. But for something that's going to last you 10 or more years, it's a pretty good investment, especially if you're into the technical side of things. I would recommend the Kuratoga if you're just doing straight writing, if you prefer to write with a pencil. But if you're doing any kind of sketching, drawing, engineering, architecture, that's where this Rotring 600 comes in. And I think I've pronounced it about six different ways so far. I don't know the correct pronunciation. Rotring.

Myke Hurley: Rotring.

Brad Dowdy: Rotring. I think it's actually Rotring.

Myke Hurley: Rotring is the way that I would say it.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. We'll get some listeners to email me and verify. But I think it's Rotring, and I just have a hard time not saying Rotring. So those two, that's the top of the list. That's your top tier pencil recommendations if you're looking to try something. If you want to try something different that doesn't look or feel like any of these other pencils, there are a couple that I like. One that's actually been around for 40 years now. I think it came out in 1971 when I was doing the research on this, when I reviewed it on the Pen Act. It's the Pentel Sharp Carry. Now what this pencil is, it's a capped mechanical pencil. So think of it as a pen where you uncap it, and you post the cap on the back of the pencil. And the lead advance mechanism works just like it would if you had the pencil uncapped. It looks like a pen, but it's a fantastic looking and feeling mechanical pencil. And a really unique design. It's not a design you see in a pencil very often. And that's another one that people have used for decades. It may not last as long as like a rotring because it's a plastic barrel. There is going to be some damage issues you could run across there. But as far as style and performance, it is an all-time classic. And the reviews for that pencil are off the charts if you ever go read reviews on it. And everyone loves it because it's really, really different. And it's a wonderful feeling pencil.

Brad Dowdy: Interesting looking. Yeah. I mean, have you ever seen anything like that? No. I mean, it's kind of different.

Brad Dowdy: And it's real shiny. And it looks really nice. It looks even better in person than it does in photographs. I'll have to say that's one of those that caught me off guard when I used it. I had low expectations going into it, and it actually knocked my socks off. It was so good. And one other one like that, which isn't quite expensive, but it's actually on the low end, is called the Pilot Delful, D-E-L-F-U-L. And the reason why I like that, it's kind of a good student pencil. A lot of students read the pen out and they ask for recommendations and things like that. The reason I like that one is because it's pretty inexpensive. It's one of the cheapest pencils in price that has a fully retractable lead pipe. So students are always concerned about throwing their pencils in the bag and the mechanical pencils and getting them bent at the tip or something like that. Because, you know, it's a really narrow and fragile area of the pencil. And the Delful allows you to retract it fully into the barrel. Now, there's plenty of other pencils that do that, but they're usually $30, $80 in the Rotering 800s case. But the Delful is like $6 or $7 and it's got cool colors. It's got a comfortable grip. That's another one that caught me by surprise. So I just want to throw those things out there for a few pencil recommendations.

Myke Hurley: It's funny, like I've been looking at Google Images as we go, like, so I can see what these look like. Because I'll do the full links for the listeners in the show notes to places to purchase. And your images keep popping up like in the first couple of images. Oh, that's funny. The first image on Google Images for the part of Delful was a pen addict. And you can tell which ones are yours because it's all on dome paper.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, yeah. Yeah, that's pretty funny. I'm going to have to look now.

Fountain Pens

Brad Dowdy: But, you know, one of my weak areas, like we've talked about fountain pens and fountain pen ink specifically, that, you know, I don't have a lot of experience with. Another area that is really popular that I do not have a lot of experience with is your traditional woodcase pencils. And, you know, your Ticonderogas or, you know, whatever you used growing up in school. Your number, you know, go to take your test, you need your number two pencil. Well, it turns out the people that are into woodcase pencils are as fanatical about that product as I am about certain pens. You know, and I've only had experience with a few. The one of them is the new remake of the Blackwing 602, which is a famous pencil going back decades and decades that went out of production. I won't profess to have all the dates right, but it went out of production. I want to say in the 90s, I could be wrong. And then a company called Cal Cedars came by and picked up that product and is now remaking them. I think the formula is a little bit different. The looks are a little bit different. But it's tried to keep this – it's tried to get it as close as possible to the original Blackwing 602 from Eberhard Faber. It was such a beloved pen that people are fanatical about it and, you know, you can look up – I read a blog called Blackwing Pages. And the guy that runs that blog, you think I'm nuts about pens? He is over the top about the Blackwing, sometimes a little too much so in his theories. But most of the time he's right on point. But there's a love for this pencil and the new Blackwing 602, which is the only thing that I've tried. I've never tried a woodcase pencil that has been that nice. It is – it's weird in a good way.

Brad Dowdy: A lot of woodcase pencils, when you write with them, you feel – you can feel the graphite, right? When you write, it's like almost – you can feel like the grit. This thing is so smooth. It's ridiculous. I don't even know how to describe it. It's like butter going across the page. It is strange in a good way. So that's just something I wanted to throw out there. I know there's a lot of Blackwing fans. And I think if you – I haven't looked on eBay in a while, but there's still some original Blackwing 602 pencils floating around. They go for a lot of money.

Myke Hurley: So the original maker was Iberha Faber. Right. And who makes them now?

Brad Dowdy: Cal Cedars. And they're branded as the Palomino Blackwing and the Palomino Blackwing 602.

Myke Hurley: Yeah, Palomino comes first.

Brad Dowdy: That's the Cal Cedars brand.

Myke Hurley: Yeah, I can see that now.

Brad Dowdy: So there's some visual differences. I think there's some formulatic differences in the lead. But I think they tried to get it as close as possible to the original, and I certainly can't speak on that. I've never used an original. But I will say that I've never used a woodcase pencil like the 602. It is way different than anything I've ever used and quite impressive.

Myke Hurley: The eraser is very interesting looking.

Brad Dowdy: The design is great. The functionality, in my opinion, is poor. When I reviewed the pencil, that was the one knock I had on it. I love the looks of it. It does not erase very well. I clean that up for our sponsors. Speaking of which, you want to get into our second one? Because I think that's about all the pencil talk I wanted to cover. I just want to kind of throw some things out there because I've been asked from time to time. And those are kind of my go-to pencils, the ones I keep around and keep handy. Cool.

Instacast

Myke Hurley: So our second sponsor this week is Instacast by Vermedio. So Instacast for iPhone is, in my opinion, the only way that you should be listening to this show. Of course, you can choose whatever way you like because, you know, we love you however you listen. But if you're listening to podcasts on your iPhone, Instacast is the best option to do that. It just feels like, I've said this on all the other shows pretty much this week, it feels like the natural way. It feels like the inbuilt way to listen to podcasts. You know, it's so much more full-featured than the iTunes functionality. You know, you don't have to plug in to your computer to sync your podcasts every day. All you do is just you open Instacast, pull to refresh, and it starts to download them all. You know, it starts to refresh all your subscriptions. And you can, even if you like, choose a setting to automatically download. So, you know, you will do your refresh, go about, you know, get yourself ready, go brush your teeth in the morning, come back, and all of your shows are ready for when you're ready to walk out the door, all downloaded and waited for you. You know, if you are switching from using podcasts in the built-in music player app, when you want to add your podcast initially, so you just press the little plus button on the bottom left-hand corner of the app, and one of the tabs there, because they have, like, their own charts, and you can search or paste in the RSS feed manually, but one of the tabs says music on it, and what it does is Instacast will search your music app on your iPhone or iPod Touch and will be able to replicate the existing subscriptions that you have. So you can, if you have, like, all, you know, you've got, like, the pen addict in there, the bro show in there, you know, twit and stuff like that, you've got those in there, it will automatically see them, and you can just subscribe right from in the app. So you won't be able to miss a beat, and you'll just be able to carry your subscriptions over without having to search for each one individually. It's an absolutely fantastic app. We love it. I've been using it since it came out, which was in, like, February of 2011, and I've not even considered switching to anything else. It is, in my opinion, the best and really the only way to listen to podcasts on iOS, and it completely changed the way that I listen to podcasts. You know, I'm much quicker to add a new one to my download queue because it's so easy to get them in, so easy to sync them and get them out. And, you know, if I'm on the road and there's a new episode, like if I'm on my way home from work and there's a new episode of a podcast I want to listen to, like, say, Dave and Aaron have released the latest episode of Homework, which is another show on the 70 Decibells Network, and, you know, I'm at work, and I want to have it for my commute home. I can just refresh and download over 3G if I want so I can have it right there ready to listen. So there you go.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, I have one comment to make on Instacast, and the best praise I can give it is home screen. That's where it lives, on my phone. It lives in my dock. Yeah, I mean, I'm a Patrick Rohn-style iPhone layout where I don't use the bottom row, so I'm even more limited on my home screen. So I only have three rows, and Instacast is, I think I got it probably last spring or so, and it's far and away one of the best apps I've ever used. It's super easy to use. You know, I just went on vacation. I made sure all my podcasts were synced before I went in the car because, you know, I wanted to shut out the wife and kids, you know, as much as possible. So I listened to my own music. Just kidding. And my own podcasts. And, you know, I put things on there that I thought my wife would like to listen to and things like that. So, you know, we just plug it into the car, let it rip on Instacast on, you know, on our trip, and I don't know, it's one of those apps I don't think I could live without because I listen to so many podcasts. Like, I don't listen to a lot of radio or a lot of music, and I certainly don't watch a lot of TV. So in my downtime, I'm listening to a lot of podcasts, and Instacast is the only thing I use. It's fantastic.

Myke Hurley: A real great driving feature is you can have it just automatically play through. So when it finishes one show, it will just go on to the next show in your download queue. So, like, you could be listening to a 70 decibel show, then a 5x5 show, then a Twitch show, like just whatever it is chronologically in order. It will just continue to play through. So you haven't even got to bother changing anything over. It's $1.99 in the App Store. If you're currently using the music app and iTunes for your podcasts, just trust me, try it out. I assure you, you will find a much better experience by using Instacast. In my opinion, the iTunes method has no benefit over the Instacast method at all. There's no benefit.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, and something Myke won't tell you, it works well on sports podcasts, too.

Myke Hurley: What? I specifically asked the developer to exclude sports podcasts. I think that's... I need to get back on that.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, I think that's... I think that's... I'm about half sports and about half tech and almost nothing else. So I just like to bust your chops because I know you're not a big sports guy.

Myke Hurley: Not at all. So anything else you want to add this week before we wrap up?

Brad Dowdy: Man, we've gone long. This might be our longest episode ever.

Myke Hurley: Yeah, it could be.

Brad Dowdy: So that's good. It's easy to talk about fun stuff. So no, I really don't have anything else except, you know, if y'all want to reach out to me, you can... The blog is at penaddict.com. And I'm on Twitter at dowdyism, D-O-W-D-Y-I-S-M. And you can also email me at thepenaddict at gmail.com. And where else can they get us, Myke?

Myke Hurley: You can go to 70decibels.com forward slash contact and select The Pen Addict from the drop down there and you can send us a message that way. And you can get me on Twitter. I'm imike, which is I-M-Y-K-E. Thank you, as always, for downloading, listening, and getting in touch. We love being able to talk to you about all of the pens that you find. And we don't mind if you need to call us names for making you spend a lot of money. We are enablers on The Pen Addict and you are all pen addicts with us.

Brad Dowdy: That's true.

Myke Hurley: Until next time, thank you very much, sir.

Brad Dowdy: All right, I will talk to you later. Thank you.

Myke Hurley: We will. Cheers.

Brad Dowdy: All right, bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye.