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The Pen Addict 727/transcript

2026-07-31T12:32:02Z

PencilBot: Initial transcript automated upload

{{Infobox podcast transcript
| name = The Pen Addict
| number = 727
| title = We’re Heading to Stationery Fest!
| date = July 29th, 2026
| hosts = [[Brad Dowdy]] 
[[Myke Hurley]]
| guests =
| link = [https://www.relay.fm/penaddict/727 Episode 727]
| audiolink = [https://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/mgln.ai/e/613/clrtpod.com/m/pscrb.fm/rss/p/traffic.libsyn.com/thepenaddict/The_Pen_Addict_727.mp3 Audio Episode 727]
| length = 51
}}

== Pen Addict Intro ==

'''Brad Dowdy:''' From Relay, this is The Pen Addict, episode 727. Today's show is brought to you by Collidercraft and Pen Chalet. My name is Myke Hurley, and I'm joined by Brad Dowdy. Hi, Brad. What's up, Myke Hurley? How are you? Very good. We're going to be... Actually, when this episode comes out, we're probably hanging out. So, that'll be fun. Getting ready for New York Stationery Fest.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah. Stationery Fest is going to be epic. This is going to be our preview episode. I think pretty much everything we're going to talk about this week is Stationery Fest. Yes. Planning, prep. There's a lot going on. Should we start there?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. So, I'm going to break the timeline. We're recording this in advance. We mentioned it in last week's episode. So, there will be things that we're saying which won't make any sense. So, I'll just say I was talking to Adina yesterday about Stationery Fest. And I was just like, just trying to explain to her a little bit about like, how different it is than the things that we've done in the past. And I'm getting that from seeing their Instagram, which I'll talk about in a little bit. They're just like posting products, like different kinds of products. So, the types of exhibitors that are going to be there. So, that'll be fun. I'm looking forward to it. So, yes. We're going to be at Stationery Fest. New York Stationery Fest is happening in Brooklyn from July the 30th to August the 1st in Brooklyn, New York. We're going to be hanging out the whole time pretty much, I expect. We'll be around the show multiple days, but we're doing a bunch of stuff too. I don't... I think they're all sold out ticket-wise, right? I think that happened quite a while ago.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah. So, that's always been one of the challenges. This is the second time they've done Stationery Fest. The first time, like it was like... They've tried to change a lot in the two years. And it's still just like overwhelming interest in it. So, like, yeah. Ticketing has been tough. Getting into classes has been tough for people. So, like I don't want to like sugarcoat that. Like it's become crazy popular in a way I don't think anyone expected.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah.

'''Myke Hurley:''' And it's super interesting. And it'll be good to like recap after we get back and see how it goes. Because, you know, they had a lot of challenges the last time. This is at a completely different event space than the previous time. So, like it's going to be hard to compare the two, but like they definitely had some challenges they had to work through. And then it started off this year again with like ticket availability right from the jump, like all the way back in February. But I believe if I've read the marketing correctly in some of the emails we get, they capped it at 10,000 tickets. And that was cut off like a month ago. So, it's insane to me to go to an event that has already like that type of scale like built into it, right? You've been to very busy D.C. and San Francisco shows. And they do multiple thousands of people through the gate. I don't know what this is going to be like scale and scope wise. So, it's going to be good to like keep some of these things in mind as we, when we do our recap. It's going to be, I'm expecting this to be very different even from the event I went to in 2024. So, a couple of links to get us started. If you go into the show notes, we'll have the link to stationaryfestival.com and their Instagram. I also put my Instagram in there because I'll be posting a lot during the show. So, y'all can follow me there if you don't already. And I'll try to do some live stuff, some posts, some Q&A stuff. It's going to be a busy, busy event in general. But Myke and I have some panels that we're going to be doing.

'''Myke Hurley:''' So, this space, like I've just looked at the pictures and then like the map. So, if you're going to stationary fest, go to the stationary festival website. They have maps you can download, like PDF maps that are fantastic and vendor lists and all these things. You might actually need a map to get around this space. So, Myke and I, each day of stationary fest, are going to be in the courtyard area once a day holding vendor panels. So, Thursday at 2 o'clock, and these are times from like an hour and a half panel. And these are free to attend for anyone coming to stationary fest. And you can swing by and come see. I don't know exactly how the space is going to be laid out. But it should be plenty of room for anyone. And so, like Thursday from 2 to 3.30, the topic that we'll be discussing is the stationary hobby over the last 10 years. And we're going to have Jenny Bick, who is a notebook maker. It's been in D.C. She's been doing this since like the 90s. So, she'll be great to talk to about how the hobbies change. We're going to have Tiki from Aura Stell, who just released their 2027 planner. And Myke, they are really always in the middle of any paper gate situation going on.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I remember we spoke about them as one of the makers trying to deal and was like dealing hard with the Tomorrow River situation. Exactly.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Exactly. So, like having Tiki there to discuss like the changes, like we don't even have to go 10 years. We can go like the past like five years with trying to make a planner business and having paper challenges. So, that's going to be a great topic for you and I to discuss. And then we'll also be joined by Ryan from Estabrook, who has seen a lot in the past decade or more of the stationary industry. So, you know, all of these events we have are going to be great conversations. Myke and I will have questions. We'll probably take questions from the audience and just, you know, we're going to have a topic. But we'll obviously talk about plenty of other things, right? We're going to have like a main topic to present with all of our guests. And it's going to be cool. So, that's just the Thursday. That's just the Thursday talk, Myke. Friday, I don't know. You might be pretty jazzed about this one. I know I'm jazzed about this one. Friday, 2 o'clock to 3.30, also in the courtyard. Designing a great stationary product. We might have opinions, Myke. So, we're going to be joined by Plotter. I'm not sure who the contacts are going to be for these yet. But I think it's going to be Takayuki-san from Plotter, who is the original Plotter designer. But we will find out there. We're going to have a Leuchterm on this panel, which you can bet there will be Dregorfeld questions. And we're going to have Tono and Limbs. I believe we're going to have one of the founders of Tono and Limbs, the ink brand, from there.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' That panel could be an accent extravaganza. Yeah.

== Translation Panels ==

'''Myke Hurley:''' So, I don't know if you know this. Because I haven't. I'm the conduit letting Myke know. Some of our panels will have translators, just for the record.

'''Adina:''' I've never dealt with that before. Okay. Cool. Cool.

'''Myke Hurley:''' So, I've done this before. I've done translation interviews the last time I was at Stationery Fest, which was epic. Wow. That would be a new one for me.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I'm excited about that.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah. Yeah. So, that should be fun.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I still stand by accent extravaganza. Totally.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Totally. So, we'll see. We'll see. But that's obviously going to be super interesting. from a modern system notebook maker, like Plotter, to a classic historical brand, like Leuchterm, that's been doing this for 100 years. Mm-hmm. And then, such a unique ink maker, like Tono and Lim's, who really leans into those storytelling aspects of making products. Yeah. This could be really, really fun. This could be really fun. Really fun to do. So, that's Friday at 2 o'clock in the courtyard. Then, Saturday, we're going every day, Myke. Saturday, 11 a.m. to 1230, we're going hobbyist to full-time stationery brand. I don't know. These, all of these, all of these themes for these panels are perfect for us. Good themes. Like, I love this. Yeah. Yeah. Hobbyist to full-time stationery brand. So, we're going to have Margaret from Once More With Love, who's a great stationery maker and designer. We're going to have Ben from Mayfair Pens, who, clarify, which I will clarify during this, Ben has not gone full-time. Okay. But he makes some of the most unique pens, and I definitely want you to see Ben's pens in person when we're at the show. So, I've known Ben for a while and makes wonderful pens. And then, I believe we're going to have Everyday Explorers, and I think we're going to have Christine, who is the founder of Everyday Explorers, who I've known for a few years and makes wonderful, wonderful stationery products. So, this is going to be an interesting conversation on someone who's turned a hobby into a full-time brand. And that's something that I think is always interesting, not just to me and you, Myke, but to a lot of our listeners. Yes. And this community is so creative and, you know, thinking about what people are thinking about making and turning that into, like, a full-time job. And I think it's going to be super interesting. All three of these panels. So, that's our panel schedule. One a day, Thursday, Friday, Saturday. And all this schedule can be found on stationeryfestival.com as well.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. So, if you are going to be at Stationery Fest and you want to see us, these are the times when you know you can find us. Yeah. Right? Like, because we're going to be at the show, but, like, it feels like it's so large. It may not. You may not be able to find us, even if you're trying. But these ones, so it's Thursday at 2 p.m., Friday at 2 p.m., and Saturday at 11 a.m. And they're in the courtyard area. Yeah. And I think I'd be... These are places you know we'll be there.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah. I think I'd be happy to say, like, after each show, we'd be happy to hang around for a while. Absolutely. Chat, meet anyone. Before is always difficult because you're getting set up and getting all that done. But, like, after any of those shows, we're going to be in that area. And that area is also going to be just, like, a common meetup area for the show itself. There's going to be other people, other meetups in the courtyard area. Yep. So, that'll be fun to hang out. Fun to hang out there. So, that's our official schedule, but that's just a small part of this event, Myke. So, in general, how hyped are you for this event?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Well, I'm very excited because, you know, as I mentioned before, this is the first pen or stationery show that I've been to since 2019. So, I've been waiting, you know? Oh, yeah. I'm coming out of retirement.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So, I'm very excited for just that, for being in that environment again because I love these environments. I'm even more excited about the unknown of this because I've never been to a stationery show before. And so, I feel like I've yet to understand fully the product offerings. So, like, I follow Stationery Fest on Instagram and they're resharing a lot of people who are preparing their products, like vendors. And the breadth of product is very interesting to me. Like, I saw yesterday someone making, like, a beautiful stationery-themed cardigan that they're selling at the show. No way. I think I want one. Right? Say it again?

'''Myke Hurley:''' I said right.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' That's, like, right up your alley. Yes. It's so, like, but there's loads of stuff. And I feel like I don't... And I also don't understand the scale, which I don't think you do either because I think the scale is bigger. Right? So, like, the scale of the space and how that's going to feel to move around in and how it's going to feel to shop in with all these thousands of people. I don't know what that's going to be like. And I'm excited about the unknown of it. I also bought a bigger second suitcase.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So. Yeah. I feel like I'm going to come home with a lot of stuff.

'''Myke Hurley:''' You're prepping in advance. So, yeah. I'm just traveling with some extra space, maybe, in the existing suitcase. And if something happens, it happens.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' There are some cases that we will take for the whole family. You know, we have, like, a big one and a kind of medium-sized one. And it's like, I don't think the medium-sized one is going to work.

'''Myke Hurley:''' So.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. Just double big. We're also just in New York in general. There's going to be a lot of, like, souvenir acquiring, I feel like. So, we're going to need a bigger boat.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yep. I'm kind of with you on that. The hype level is, like, off the charts. But in just a being there way. Like, you know, I know I'll shop. And I know I'll see all these vendors. And I know I'll get to see some friends. And I know I'll get to do these great interviews. And I know I'll get to walk around. And, you know, I know I'll get to, you know, share this with my wife. You know, who's never been, you know, to an event like this before. Like, she's going to be tripping out. It's going to be cool just to be there in that environment. The scale, I'll be most anxious to, like, kind of get a grasp on the first day. Just to, like, have that mental, like, visual of what's going on. And just kind of wrap my head around it. I think it's going to be pretty big relative to anything I've been to before. Like, I've been to, like, other bigger conventions and, like, crazy stuff like that. But, like, just from a stationary perspective, seeing stuff like this. I've seen, like, you mentioned Instagrams. Just some of the individual Instagrams, like, of brands that are going to be there. Talking about, like, their ticketing cues for the tables and stuff like that. It's going to be kind of wild. Oh, really? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like, it's going to be unlike some things that we've seen before. Like, I've seen that at the previous stationary fest.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I remember you mentioning that. I wasn't sure. I didn't know it was happening again. But, obviously, it's going to need to, isn't it?

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah. Yeah, like, cues within cues type of situation. Right. Fascinating. So, yeah. Like, which can be tough. Like, that's not, like, necessarily, like, a good thing. But, like, what they've done, like, from a ticketing perspective is had, like, blocks. Like, morning and afternoon blocks. So, it's not like, you know, they've sold all these tickets and everyone's just free to come in, you know, Friday morning at 10 a.m. Is that one of the changes from the first time? Yeah. They tried to do that a little bit the first time. But that is, they did it more dedicated options for that this time. So, seeing the space. The space looks kind of epic. Like, and seeing how it's all laid out and how it's all going to flow and work with the amount of people and the popularity of a lot of the vendors. It's going to be cool to see. So, I don't envy the team behind the scenes. They put in a lot of work. They did have so many volunteers last time. And I think they were still, like, short. So, I'm sure they've just, they've got, I bet they probably have a pretty good grasp on that. And it's hopefully going to run super well. And I look forward to it.

== Product Discussion ==

'''Brad Dowdy:''' All right. Let's take a break and we'll talk about some of the product stuff that we're most excited about. Yeah, yeah. This episode is brought to you by our friends over at ColliderCraft, a small maker creating playful and functional accessories for stationary enthusiasts. They design loads of their products in-house. They collaborate with 3D artists to curate and adapt designs specifically with pen and stationary lovers in mind. This includes pieces that feature their own original illustrations printed directly onto the finished printed products. They're also wanting to let you know about their newest product and thing that lots of people are excited about, the Build Your Own Washi Wallet. The Washi Wallet is a customizable pocket-sized storage system for washi tape samples. So, you can mix and match inserts to fill your collection in your own washi wallet and swap them out whenever you want. Every washi wallet includes a cutter. So, you can cut the washi with a straight or serrated edge. And you can keep your favorite tapes all organized whether you're using them at your desk, while you're journaling at a coffee shop, or heading to your next pen show. So, check out the Washi Wallet. But while you're there over at ColliderCraft, you're also going to find some fountain pen nib holders, ink vial holders, pen rests, desk accessories, charms, and other stationary-inspired accessories. As we've mentioned before, I'm a big fan of some of their clickers and fidget toys. They also have some, like, silent fidget toys, which I have as well, which are super helpful for, you know, if you're a podcaster.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' You can play with some of those, too. So, they've got tons of stuff over at ColliderCraft.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah, I was lucky. I got to build my own washi wallet when I was at the St. Louis Pen Show, like, a month ago. And it has been, like, a staple on my desk since then because I love using washi for various things. Like, in my notebooks, I use them when I do giveaways. You know, I'm always taping stuff, and I want to have, like, a fun washi to use. But, like, washi storage is always a challenge. You know, my washi rolls generally just kind of live in a bin altogether, and I'm kind of shuffling through there. I know, you know, what I want theme-wise or style-wise for my washi or a product I want to use, but then I got to go dig through and find it. Well, what I've done with the washi wallet is put some of my favorites on the individual cards, which, you know, and then I just keep those cards on my desk. And, like, the availability of all my washi in such a small, like, compact space saves me so much space, and then everything's there. Like, it's so cool. And it's fun to just build the washi wallet. It's like, oh, well, I have these washi rolls. I can just use the roll and just grab them whenever I want. Well, yeah, it's kind of fun to, like, pick out the cards and then run the tape around the cards to, you know, make a card that now has five rolls of washi on it. And it's just so much more portable, so much more usable, so much more fun. And I'm definitely going to bring at least one of my washi wallet cards, maybe a special one, to Stationery Fest. So you might have to come ask to see some of my washi.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' We have a special offer for Pen Addict listeners so you can build your own washi wallet. Go to KaleidocraftPrints.com slash Pen Addict to see an exclusive Pen Addict washi insert. Build your own washi wallet and explore everything else that they're making. There's a link in the show notes. And if you use the code Pen Addict to get that Pen Addict washi insert, you'll get it for free and 15% off your order. That is KaleidocraftPrints.com slash Pen Addict and the code Pen Addict to get your exclusive free washi wallet insert and an additional 15% off your order. Our thanks to KaleidocraftPrints for their support of this show and relay.

'''Myke Hurley:''' All right, Myke, we got a shout out of the week. Shout out of the week. Abby C., who we have shouted out here before. I've got to know Abby a little bit over the years from first meeting her back in San Francisco. She's going to be at Stationery Fest. I want to do a Stationery Fest related shout out. And she just posted her New York City journaling video. So travel journal ideas for your trip. I do like to make a travel journal when I travel. And Abby has amazing tips and tricks and just an awesome style and aesthetic. And y'all can see Abby there. She might be hanging out at the Everyday Explorers who do some of her prints. I know she's teaching classes. So she'll be around. And she's super nice, super sweet. So if you get to see Abby there, definitely say hi. And definitely go check out all of her videos and Instagram and all that stuff. She's great.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Very nice. Very nice. Yeah.

'''Myke Hurley:''' All right, Myke. So I wanted to pin us down a little bit. Okay. So I called this our top five things we want to see at Stationery Fest.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Okay.

'''Myke Hurley:''' And it didn't have to be like just a retailer. It could be anything.

'''Myke Hurley:''' And, you know, maybe we won't be limited to five. We might end up going like off the rails here as we normally do. But I especially kind of wanted to do this for you. I was curious what you had to say because I've done this before, even though it's going to be – I'm not – it's going to be very different this time. So I'm trying not to relate it. But I have seen some of these unique vendors here before. But I'm still like super, super anxious to see a few things. So what kind of things have you most excited just about being at Stationery Fest outside of like the work we're doing? Product, right? Like product-wise mostly. Or people, you know.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' The main thing that I want to leave Stationery Fest with is a commonplace book. So we spoke about this in the last couple of weeks. So I want to find a notebook of some description that feels like what I'm looking for for my commonplace book. And I don't know what that is yet. So this is why I'm looking forward to like picking up some stuff. I'm thinking maybe soft cover, maybe. I don't know. I need to feel it out. But so I'm looking forward to, you know, having the opportunity to see a lot of paper products, I feel like, in one spot. And so I'll be able to try and find something that feels good for that. Stickers. Yeah. I love stickers.

'''Myke Hurley:''' And I feel like I'm going to have the opportunity to acquire lots of stickers. Yeah. That's going to be a problem in the best way possible.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yep. So I'm very into that. I'll be on the lookout for some New York-related paraphernalia, of which I think there's going to be lots. Again, on their Instagram, they shared a creator who made a badge that said, I spent all my money at New York Stationery Fair, so just thought it was very funny. But just, I feel like there's going to be a lot of New York stuff, and so I think that would be fun. Yeah.

'''Myke Hurley:''' A lot of the artists will make like specific show, New York-related stuff, which I did pick up last time I was there. So that was fun.

== Brand Displays ==

'''Brad Dowdy:''' There are two brands that I want to see purely because I want to see how they set up their product, but that I also know may not be possible for me to see, and that is both Hobonichi and Plata.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. They're going to be so popular that I just don't even know if it's going to be realistic. Yeah. Right? But I'm intrigued to see how these two brands, which are very system brands, how they demonstrate their product. I'm just very intrigued to see what that looks like. Yeah. And I also wouldn't mind a full-size plotter, if I'm being honest. I have the little one, and I'm not sure what size full-size, but whether it's their A5 or their Bible size or whatever, but I would like to poke around with that because I think that their product is very interesting. Yeah. And there's a brand that I really want to see their products, but I'm trying to tell myself I will not buy one of their products, and that is Toyucacraft. We're going to need a bigger suitcase, Myke. This is why I just don't think it's going to be feasible, but I want to see their stuff because they just make the most beautiful things, and I definitely want one of their ways.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Put it this way. I had mine shipped from Japan just for these reasons, right? Yeah. I just bit the bullet. That might be what I end up doing, right? Like seeing them in person and then... I think I paid like $150 just for shipping, but it's like, how else am I going to get it home? Yeah. Like it's... But it's... So we need to see Toyucacraft and then like Hoponichi and Plotter like together. I would love to see you, what your thoughts are on these products and just kind of, you know, get your... I want to see like your initial like reactions and what your takes are on some of these. Because Plotter's really come out since the last time you've been to like a stationery show, so you haven't had the opportunity to have hands on. And Toyucacraft obviously has been around for a long time, but just not at pen shows before. And getting to see that stuff in person is like one of the cool reasons why people come to these events, you know, either a fountain pen show or a stationery show like this is to see things you haven't seen before or see things you've seen online, but actually get them in hand. Like we talk about that all the time, right? What's the difference between like an image online and seeing it in person? Like sometimes it can be drastic. So yeah, I'm excited to follow you around. Because you haven't done this in a while.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I do want my shopping companion.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah, yeah, yeah. So we'll figure that out to where at some point I need to follow Myke around and see how this goes. It's going to be... Actually, I should have put that down. I'm excited to follow Myke around.

'''Myke Hurley:''' This is going to be sick. The more I think about it, it's like Myke's mind is going to be blown. Yeah, I think so. So I put some things down. Some new to me, some I've seen before.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Hachimanjia was my biggest takeaway from the 2024 Stationery Fest. They're a retailer from Japan. But they have an inordinate amount of collaborative goods, right? Where they'll have a sailor pen that got made for them. They'll have inks that got made for them. I bought Life Notebooks. This is where I bought my very beloved Lilac A5 Life Notebook, right? And they just had... They kind of blew me away with their product selection. And I had never heard of them before 2024. And I actually hadn't heard of them until I got contacted. Someone wanted me to pick up a pen for them from them. And I was like, I have no idea what a Hachimanjia is. And it was one of their sailor exclusive pens. And it's gorgeous and beautiful. And then I went to pick up this pen for someone else. And then it just cost me so much more money. Because they did everything super unique. And it was just... I don't know. I was really kind of blown away with their offerings. Because it was very... It was a retailer. But it was very non-standard in what I had come to expect. And then just... It checked all my boxes. Like in their style and their product selection. And their collaborative stuff. So I definitely want to see what they have on offer this year. Um... Next up is Kobeha Kikaku Graffalo paper. So Graffalo paper is what you need to focus on here. And this is a Japanese paper brand that I have come to love over the past... When did I get my first Graffalo? Probably only like a year ago. It's unbelievable paper quality for fountain pens. Like one of the best I've used. And I've never seen them present at a show before. Like there's vendors that carry Graffalo paper. I have Graffalo paper that I've bought from vendors. But I've never seen them in particular at a show having their own booth. So I'm interested to see what else they have aside from like... You know, maybe they have different formats or different bindings. Or you know... Anything I've bought from them so far has been loose sheets. And things that go... They make paper that goes into the plotter. So it's in one of my plotters. Um... Very interested to stop by and talk with them. Um... Because that's a really, really good quality paper that I think is going to continue to gain popularity just because of their quality. And they actually... It's not necessarily like a printer that happens to have like a good paper. They're making like fountain pen paper on purpose, right? Yeah. So like it's a purposeful creation. Um... Next up for me is the Superior Labor. I'm already a super fan of their product.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' You have one of their pouches, right? One of the really beautiful pouches.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah. Yeah. Many actually have like maybe like five of their pouches.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I think you bought one at Yoseka, right?

'''Myke Hurley:''' I... No. I bought one when we went to Canada in Wonderpens. Oh, yes. So you were there for that. Yes. And that's still like sitting on my desk right now. And, you know, we'll probably make this trip. It was on that trip, but it wasn't in that location. Yep. Yep. Yep. Um... So I've never seen them in person, right? They have vendors that carry their products. So you can see things like I bought it at a store before, right? But I've never seen them displaying at a show. That table is probably going to be a problem for me. And I don't... The thing is I don't need anything. But what they offer is like checks all my boxes. Like that's my aesthetic. It's my style. Um... And they're very expensive. So I need to budget accordingly when you stop by the superior labor table. They also do classes where you can like make your own pouches and like design your own pouches. Like I'm not taking any classes. We don't have time. I'm not going to have time for that. Um... To do that. But I definitely want to stop by their table because I've never seen them in person at a show before.

== Who is Ming? ==

'''Myke Hurley:''' Next up is Who is Ming? And... They were at the last Stationery Fest. And I picked up a couple of items. One of my favorite buttons I've ever bought, Myke. Like it's just a button that I put on my stationary bag. And all it says is black coffee. And just like Ming's handwriting. It's just hilarious. Oh, I see one. I see one now that says... I'm just flipping through the site as I'm talking. They now have triple coffee. Yeah. Triple coffee, coffee, coffee, coffee, coffee, coffee, washi tape. It's just like the simplicity is just crazy. And I bought a few accessories. They had like some New York themes. They had like bagel keychains and hot dog keychains like themed that I bought last time for giveaways and stuff. So what I want to do this time is Ming will do caricatures. So I did... I was not familiar with their artwork or style. And I thought it was like super cool and bought some accessories. So I'm going to see if they're doing that this year where they basically... You queue up. They take a picture of you, like a selfie type of picture on a cell phone. And then you go away. And then they draw you in like this style of artwork. Like a very simple line drawing. And a lot of people... I want to do that this year. I didn't do it last time.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' That's cool. I want to do it too.

'''Myke Hurley:''' So I want to get my drawing done this year. I bet that line is mad. Yeah. That's something you want to do early. Yeah. And then get it checked off and then just queue up. Go do other things and come back later. Yeah. I love it. Yeah. I see that he's going to have New York travel and coffee like type of magazines and mugs. I see a bunch of stickers and stuff on the thing. So I just really enjoy this type of artwork. And I want to do something a little bit more this time instead of just grabbing that. But like the black coffee pen, it just goes with me everywhere. It's like one of my favorite things. It's just so simple and just so fun. Yep. And I don't know. I really appreciate it. And I actually get a lot of comments on it. It's just like, huh. It's like so simple and very cool. Last one is a company that like you, I just found it through Stationery Fest Instagram following them. So they shared a brand called Idea Switch. Never heard of them before. And they're another Japanese retailer who carries a lot of general stationery products, but also has a focus on local stationery. And what they're doing is they're going to bring some of that local stationery that they would carry. Oh, God. And curate in their shop.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' This is such a bad idea. I think I have to pull out.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah, right. So they're one of the posts. Once I saw this, I was like, you got to be kidding me. I was like, let me go see what type of brands they're bringing. Well, they're bringing a brand called Helico Fountain Pen. Let me read this description for you, Myke. Based in Kagawa, Japan, Helico has a workshop and an appointment only shop housed in a beautifully renovated vintage post office.

'''Adina:''' Oh, my God.

'''Myke Hurley:''' It's like, is this even real? Like, is this even real? Like, who is this? And then they make, like, small pocket pens. And, like, one of them is a rushi with, like, cherry blossoms around it. It's like, just get out of town. It's like, I don't get it, man. Like, there's not enough money to go to attend this event. I don't think. So, like, seeing a company like Idea Switch, who I've never heard of, and then they're going to bring their stuff. And also, like, a set of curated stuff from other Japanese makers who weren't able to make it to New York there. I mean, I just inject it all in my veins. I don't know what else. What am I supposed to do, Myke? Like, I don't understand what I'm supposed to do attending an event like this because it's going to be so unique and so fun for things like this. And, like, this is, like, just scratching the surface, right? This is, like, the very basics of, like, what Stationery Fest is. And, like, I remember talking about this experience last time, and it changed how it changed me from, it changed my perspective on just Stationery, Stationery business as a whole. And the things that are out there that I was, like, hadn't seen before and what I was missing and seeing the creativity and being in that, it really changed me and moved me. And, like, and I'm not even saying that in, like, a phony way. Like, it was, like, the last time I was here, it really, really changed a lot for me in how I think about Stationery usage myself and the creativity aspects and then all the amazing people that are in this world. And then I'm excited to see, to get you in there and see what you think about this and see what I think, you know, compared to the previous one. So it's, I'm really looking forward to it. Like, I'm, like, this stuff's going to keep me up at night in a positive way looking forward to it. Right? Like, so it's pretty vibey. Like, I'm ready. I'm not ready, but my wallet's definitely not ready, but I'm ready. So it's going to be fun. And, like, it's impossible. Like, that's why I limited this to five things. It's impossible. Like, there's so many people I want to see and things I want to share with Myke.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Like, there are five things and I don't even think I'm going to get to two of mine. Yeah, exactly. Like, I just don't think I'm going to be able to do it even if I want to.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Oh, you're going to get to two of them because I'm going to make it happen because, you know what, Myke? I know people. So, you know, I'm just going to play that card. Don't you know what I am?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I'm Brad Dowdy.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah. Like, we're going to find people. We're going to make it happen for you, Myke. I'm actually looking forward to being with you in this environment. Yes. And mostly, like, hanging with you and getting you involved in some of the things that I've seen over the past couple of years.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I look forward to being on hand to take pictures of you with people. You know, like, when people come up and they're like, oh, Brad Dowdy. And then they say to me, can you take a picture of us? And they're like, yep. You can do that.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' He's handler. Yeah. Yep. All right. I'm sure people listening to this, if they're not going to be in New York Station, you're first like, oh, man, I want to buy some pens. Well, let me tell you where you can go buy some pens. And that's over with our friends at Pen Chalet because they sell the product you're looking for. They have your favorite brands. They have your favorite product styles. Whether you were looking for a new rollerball or a fountain pen, maybe you want a bottle of ink. Maybe you are going to a pen show and you need a beautiful carrying case. Pen Chalet have got the products that you're looking for. They do the best prices you can get. Every couple of weeks, they're doing new sales specials as well as adding new types of product to the website as well. Pen Chalet have fast and reliable customer service. They sell internationally with great shipping rates and they offer free shipping on orders of over $100 in the U.S. So why don't you go to penchalet.com slash penaddict to get 10% off anything at Pen Chalet and to see some exclusive offers because you listen to this show.

== Leonardo Fountain Pen ==

'''Myke Hurley:''' They have a crazy new special edition that I'm kind of enamored with. So it's a Leonardo fountain pen.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Leonardo and wearing old collaborative box set exclusive to Pen Chalet. Wow. That's an amazing sentence just to say. But then you go look at this pen. So it's called Pixie and it's essentially Tinkerbell themed. This green material that Jonathan Brooks did for this is like...

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Oh, the collaborations continue.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah. Oh, yeah. This is X times X times X times X. So I don't know how many... I don't know what the official order of the X here, but a lot of X.

'''Myke Hurley:''' This green is unbelievably cool. So the green and gold of this pen like nailed it. And then you have like a wearing old Tinkerbell ink that they use. So it's really, really, really kind of fascinating to see. Dang, that looks fantastic. You know what? And the price is pretty... Like for this collaboration, that's pretty crazy. Yep. I know last week we talked about the Kavecos, the new Kavecos coming out. So you can get all those at Pen Chalet. They're going to have the new Lunar Sport colors, two new Lunar Sport colors. And the Marble Ocean, which is just wild. Like that's just a fascinating Kaveco Sport. They're going to have those there. And Myke, I don't know if I've become a Delta fanboy after I got the Tiger King of Pen, which I bought from Pen Chalet. They have the Delta DV Glow Up, which it's not as wild as the Tiger King of Pen until you look at the nib. And the nib has like this extra engraving and etching done on it. It's really wild. So it's the Delta DV Glow Up Auro fountain pen. And on top of that, on our special Pen Addicts top secret page, they have a deal on one of the Delta DV Original Midsize Starry Night Lemon Edition pens. I almost got this one. I mean, I was getting the Tiger King of Pen. This one tempted me just because of the beautiful materials and resin. So they got a lot of stuff going on at Pen Chalet right now.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' If you want to get your hands on some of these products, the special offers, and also the discount code that you need to save on anything over at Pen Chalet, just go to penchalet.com slash penaddict, and you'll be able to find them all there. Our thanks to Pen Chalet for their support of this show and Relay.

== New York City Trip ==

'''Myke Hurley:''' All right. I did want to do like one little diversion, if you'll allow me. You and I are bringing our families to New York City. My wife has never been to New York City. My daughter's never been. Your daughter's never been to New York City. Never been. She's never been. So separately, we're doing like touristy things. Yep. And is there any like one thing like you're super excited to do? Do I have to say one? Outside. You don't have to say one. We can do whatever you want. Like outside of Stationery Fest in the city, are you looking forward to anything? Because I'm really looking forward to spend some time with my wife in the city.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. So I'm looking forward to the same. Looking forward to food, right? Like New York feels like a good place to be doing this kind of travel that we're doing because, you know, we've not really done a trip like this before where it's just the three of us in like a completely new place. Like we traveled, but it was with family. So New York is great because like there's so much carry out food, you know, like pizza and stuff. So that will make that part very easy for us. But so yes, food in general always. Then I'm looking forward to going back to the Nintendo store. Oh, nice. That's always a good time. I enjoy the Nintendo store. Adina is going to be doing the NBC Studios tour. Nice. Which she's very excited about. It's a real shame that Saturday Night Live is not filming because that's why she's doing it. Adina just loves SNL. Yeah. And I actually ended up getting like a potential hookup for tickets to SNL, but it's not filming. The season's over. So that's going to have to come down the line. There is a family thing that we're doing that I'm very excited about. So there is this company called Camp and they do kind of like kids camp stuff in the city. They have like a store. They have rebuilt a life-size replica of the Bluey house. Oh, no. Yes. And so we're going to that. Hell yeah. And it includes like a dance party at the end with like people dressed as Bluey and Bingo. We're very excited about this. This is also our tester for can we go to Disneyland at some point this year? Because like how does Sophia deal with a huge Bluey and a huge Bingo? Right. Because she loves Bluey. It's the thing. Right. Bluey is a big mainstay in our house. And so it's going to be interesting to see how she interacts with this. But yeah, we're very excited for that. This company looks like they've really kind of gone the whole nine yards to create this experience for kids. So we're very excited about that too. That sounds cool. That's going to be epic.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah. I definitely want to see pictures from that. Yes. Oh, there'll be lots.

'''Myke Hurley:''' So we're going to do, we're not doing the 30 Rock Tour, but we're going to head to Top of the Rock and get the city visuals from the viewing deck on top. Definitely want to do that. I haven't done that. I haven't done like, you know, an Empire State Building or something. I've never either. Or they have another deck there that's pretty popular. The Iron Man, you know, the Marvel, you know, the Iron Man's office.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Oh, Avengers Tower?

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah. I didn't know that. That's cool. Yeah. So that's another like viewing deck there. But we're going to do that. I really, I've never walked the Brooklyn Bridge. So we're going to do that. Okay. I think that'll be fun. You know, we're going to take like a food and walking tour like around the High Line and Chelsea and Greenwich Village and that type of stuff. But really like a lot of food. Like we're going to be in Manhattan like three days. And like I have like 200 pens for like food, you know. It's like that's New York. Like that's just how it works. Yeah. Um, so yeah, we're just going to really like take in the city for a few days. Then we're going to, we're going to actually going to relocate to Brooklyn for Stationery Fest and stay over there. So we're going to do stuff in kind of both areas of town, like stay in Manhattan for a few days because my wife, like I said, my wife's never been to New York ever. And I've been to, you know, the city and Brooklyn and outlying areas. And then we're going to do, um, yeah, Brooklyn and really take Brooklyn in from like a visual perspective, you know, like across the river and, you know, maybe do some ferries and stuff like that. So it's going to be, I'm really, really looking forward to it. And that's like before we begin to Stationery Fest. So it's going to be really cool. So, um, kind of last little tidbit we can cover today. Are you bringing any Stationery? Like I, I'm going to pack a little bit of Stationery, but I was thinking like, you know, this isn't something you bring too much to because like it's all there. And like, you know, you're going to end up with stuff, but are you packing any stuff?

== Kuro Toga Wood ==

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Very small amount. I think, um, I'm going to be bringing, uh, a Kuro Toga dive.

'''Adina:''' Oh, yeah, you are.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' What's funny about that?

'''Adina:''' I don't know. I just love that product. It's so bad. It's good. What is bad about it? Like.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' No, not the dive. The wooden one. The wooden one. Okay. Sorry. Kuro Toga wood. Okay. Yeah. The Kuro Toga wood is what I'm bringing.

'''Adina:''' Yeah. You wrote down dive.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I wrote down dive, but I don't have one of those. Okay. I'm not interested in it. I don't like the way that pen looks. Okay. The wood. I'm bringing the wood. Elite. All right. You're saved. I deleted it already. And, uh, I'm bringing a Mark three just because I like those a lot. Um, I wasn't going to bring a fountain pen and then I was, so I'm packing this all in a Sinclair, by the way, the Rickshaw Sinclair, the orange one. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Um, and then as I, and I'm bringing my 1911 King of Pen Tangerine. That's a good one to bring. Yeah. That'll be fun. Fun pen. Yeah. I'm also going to throw a Uniball 1P in there because I'm just a big fan now and also a sidekick pocket. So that all fits real nice in that, in that orange Sinclair.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah. See, like, that's it. Like, I don't think you need to take much more than that. Right. Like for an event like this, I think like I'm trying to like pack small. Hopefully I'm going to have a, uh, a video out, uh, about some of the stuff I'm carrying along with you, Seiko, you Seiko vid to share some of this, but I'm the pouch I'm bringing. I might bring an empty Sinclair just for some storage, but, um, what I'm bringing, this is a newer superior labor product to me. It's just their basic pen pouch. It's like a very, it looks like a pencil pouch, right? It's just basic open, but it's small and compact. It looks like what people would consider a traditional pencil pouch. So it can hold like a lot of loose, like you're not going to put a lot of fountain pens in here, but it holds like lots of standard pens. So I'm going to bring like a Secure Pigment Micron, always travel with the Micron, um, Caran d'Ache fix pencil for my pencil. I, the biggest addition to like this type of carry, I'm bringing the Pentel multi eight color pencil, right? The eight color pencil that we've talked about a lot this year. That's a product that I really enjoy. And I think it's going to be really good for like any notes or travel or journaling I'm going to do. I think I'm going to bring, if they come in time, one of the new field notes, uh, additions, like the popsicle ones to be, you know how I, I've, I've talked about how I do my travel journaling in like a field notes. And I hadn't considered that for this, but I was like, you know, I'm going to have several days where I'm probably going to want that. So I'm, I think I've kind of like maybe changed my mind and I'm going to do like my travel journal in that. So I got my pencil for that. Um, Lloyd's term, Dreger fell ballpoint. I just want to bring like a traditional ballpoint pen and that's the one I'm bringing. I'm bringing the Uniball and not for my pen show pen. Yeah. Um, like I talked about last week, I need to go. So anyone can grab it from you if they need anyone can grab it and it's hopefully going to have blue ballpoint refill in it. Should be red. Um, it should be red, but it's not, it's not. Or pink. Uh, it's the inside of a hot dog. That could, that could work. Bringing it around everyone. I'm just trying to think, I don't think there's a, a refill that size in that color. So anyway, um, Uniball Zento signature with a Uniball one gel refill. We're not going to read litigate last week's episode. We could, if you got 10 more minutes, we could, I could go off the rails, but if, um, I'm happy to yell about that if you want. And then my one, again, like you, one fountain pen and I'm going to bring my, uh, Lamy Safari neon yellow. Like I talked last week about the new Meteora and Meteorite. I want to use the neon yellow, neon yellow with a black Lamy cartridge. And that's like one of my favorite travel products because I like bringing a fountain pen. I can pop a cartridge in it. I love using it. It's just great. I like, yeah, that's the fountain pen I'm bringing and that's it. Like literally all of this will fit in this pouch with room to spare. I'm probably going to, now that I saw your Sinclair mentioned, I think I'll bring an extra Sinclair, an empty Sinclair and just throw that in the suitcase. Cause there'll be other pens and stuff. I don't want something to put them in. I mean, or you know what? I might just buy something there. There's going to have plenty of opportunity for that, I believe.

'''Myke Hurley:''' So yeah, maybe I won't bring one. Maybe I'll just buy one there. So yeah, that's the only like little stationary kit. Oh, um, I take that back. Um, my plotters, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm going to get both of my plotters because I don't know. This is the thing that I don't know, Myke, you were talking about, you don't know if you're going to be able to get to plotter. You're going to be able to get to plotter to see and shop there. What I would like is some customization on my new plotter. Okay. Which I have on my old one, but I imagine like the ticketing and the system for that is, it's going to sell out.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' They do like full stamping and stuff.

'''Myke Hurley:''' No hand painting. Oh, it takes even longer. Yeah. So it's all done by hand. So they only do a few slots a day because of how detailed it is. Wow. So like I got my initials on one of mine and I would like to get something else on, um, my new one. So I'm going to bring both my plotters. So yeah. Yeah. They're good. Good luck. Okay. That's it.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' That's it. Which is a lot. We'll mention again, if you see us, please come and say hi. We'd love to say hi to you all if you're, uh, at New York station or first, if you're not going to be there, it doesn't matter. We'll be bringing all the goods. Um, hopefully no drama, uh, of, of our experiences, uh, New York stationery festival next week's episode. I am really hoping for it to go nice and smooth for everyone involved. Totally. It'll be a good time. But I know one way or another, it's going to be a good time. And I'm very, very much looking forward to seeing you, um, Mary Beth, and we're going to be hanging out and, uh, it's going to be good times. So if you want to check the show notes, you can find some links, especially for information about stationary festival, when our, um, panels are going to be and all that kind of stuff. So you can go check all that out in the show notes, which are in your podcast app or over at relay.fm slash pen addict slash seven to seven. Uh, thank you to Penn Chalet and Collidercraft for their support of this week's episode. If you want to find Brad online, you can go to penaddict.com, spoke design.com and at twitch.tv slash penaddict. You can find Brad on Instagram as well, um, as penaddict. Um, I'm, I'm Myke, I am Y K E. You can find me here at relay at the enthusiast.net and cortex brand.com. We'll be back next week until then say goodbye, Brad. Bye, Brad.

[[Category:Podcast Transcripts]]
[[Category:The Pen Addict Podcast Transcript]]

Stationery Wiki:Current TPA podcast

2026-07-31T12:25:55Z

PencilBot: Updating current podcast layout pointer to episode 727

{{Infobox current podcast
| name = The Pen Addict
| number = 727
| title = We’re Heading to Stationery Fest!
| date = July 29th, 2026
| hosts = [[Brad Dowdy]] 
[[Myke Hurley]]
| guests =
| link = [https://www.relay.fm/penaddict/727 Episode 727]
| audiolink = [https://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/mgln.ai/e/613/clrtpod.com/m/pscrb.fm/rss/p/traffic.libsyn.com/thepenaddict/The_Pen_Addict_727.mp3 Audio Episode 727]
| length = 51
}}

== Description ==

Brooklyn, we are in your house! Brad and Myke are headed to Stationery Fest, and take you through their prep, schedule, and planned shenanigans at what they hope is an epic event.

The Pen Addict 727

2026-07-31T12:25:45Z

PencilBot: Automated layout generation from RelayFM metadata for episode 727

{{Infobox podcast
| name = The Pen Addict
| number = 727
| title = We’re Heading to Stationery Fest!
| date = July 29th, 2026
| hosts = [[Brad Dowdy]] 
[[Myke Hurley]]
| guests =
| link = [https://www.relay.fm/penaddict/727 Episode 727]
| audiolink = [https://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/mgln.ai/e/613/clrtpod.com/m/pscrb.fm/rss/p/traffic.libsyn.com/thepenaddict/The_Pen_Addict_727.mp3 Audio Episode 727]
| length = 51
}}

== Description ==

Brooklyn, we are in your house! Brad and Myke are headed to Stationery Fest, and take you through their prep, schedule, and planned shenanigans at what they hope is an epic event. <ref>Description taken from the official Pen Addict podcast page https://www.relay.fm/penaddict/727</ref>

== Further Information ==

== Links & Show Notes ==

* [https://stationeryfestival.com/ Stationery Fest]
* [https://www.instagram.com/stationery.fest Stationery Fest – Instagram]
* [https://www.instagram.com/penaddict/ Pen Addict – Instagram]
* [https://www.instagram.com/stationery.fest/p/Da8wA7hk35b/ Our Stationery Fest Panel Schedule – Instagram]
* [https://stationeryfestival.com/updates/stationery-fest-marketplace-courtyard-map Stationery Fest 2026 | Marketplace and Courtyard Map — Stationery Fest]
* [https://kaleidocraftprints.com/products/washi-wallet-2 Washi Wallet: Portable Washi Tape Holder & Organizer – Kaleidocraft Prints]
* [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DicKpUqdKgA New York Travel Journal Tour 🗽 - Abbey Sy - YouTube]
* [https://hachimonjiya.com/en-us?srsltid=AfmBOoqEhR4kqENatE3NAw2s76WDI9h5j9Ei4eJWcVCZlMd1Xuyeud6D Hachimonjiya Online Store]
* [https://kobeha.com/keikaku/english/ Kobeha Keikaku]
* [https://nap-dog.com/en/pages/products The Superior Labor]
* [https://www.shop-whosming.com/ WHOSMiNG Shop]
* [https://www.instagram.com/idea_switch/ Idea_Switch – Instagram]
* [https://www.penchalet.com/fine_pens/fountain_pens/leonardo_x_wearingeul_pixie_box_set_ink_fountain_pens.html Leonardo Officina Italiana x Wearingeul Pixie Box Set – Pen Chalet]
* [https://www.penchalet.com/category.aspx?keyword=Delta+DV+Glow+Up+Oro Delta DV Glow Up Oro – Pen Chalet]
* [https://camp.com/new-york-city/blueys-house Bluey's House at CAMP New York City | Camp]

==References and Notes==

{{Reflist}}

[[Category:Podcast Episodes]]
[[Category:The Pen Addict Podcast]]

The Pen Addict 726/transcript

2026-07-27T06:35:29Z

PencilBot: Initial transcript automated upload

{{Infobox podcast transcript
| name = The Pen Addict
| number = 726
| title = Blue Refill Hotdog
| date = July 23rd, 2026
| hosts = [[Brad Dowdy]] 
[[Myke Hurley]]
| guests =
| link = [https://www.relay.fm/penaddict/726 Episode 726]
| audiolink = [https://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/mgln.ai/e/613/clrtpod.com/m/pscrb.fm/rss/p/traffic.libsyn.com/thepenaddict/The_Pen_Addict_726.mp3 Audio Episode 726]
| length = 61
}}

'''Myke Hurley:''' From Relay, this is The Pen Addict 726. Today's show is brought to you by ColliderCraft and Enigma Stationery. My name is Myke Hurley and I have the pleasure of being joined by Brad Dowdy. Hi Brad.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Wow, good morning Myke Hurley. Good afternoon. Happy time zone everyone.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Hello everybody. Yeah, we're recording a little bit early because we're double stacking today. I'm The Pen Addict. So next week's episode we're also recording right after this one, which is going to be our Stationery Fest preview. So I'll give you a reminder now that Brad and I will be at the New York Stationery Fest, which is happening on July 31st until August 2nd. I've done that wrong, haven't I? It's July 30th until August 1st. First time zones, you know, we're just saying a lot. So we're going to be there. We hope to see you. We've got a bunch of stuff going on that we're going to talk about on next week's episode, which will be a bit of a preview of Stationery Fest. But if you're going to be in the area or you're going to be in the show, please come and say hi if you see us.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Maybe we'll release that show early, like a day early. I think we will, yes. Something like that. Yeah, I think we will. Since our normal Thursday release days are when the show starts. Maybe we'll put it out there a day early. We'll put it out early. Yeah, we will. Yeah. Yeah, but we have this week's episode to get to, Myke. That's why we're here today. And I wanted to start out with some follow-up from our excellent conversation last week from the Top 10 Pens conversation. I love that this is still, like when we get these kind of little prompts in the Stationery community, they tend to like run on for like a month or two. And everyone kind of, you know, chimes in whenever they get. So we get a lot of much more content on this. And we got a lot of good feedback on our lists. And I went right into thinking about my list right after the show was over. I was pretty happy with the list. But I did kind of sit and go through things, like with a more fine-tooth comb afterwards. And I think I have one switch, one change. And I'm hesitating because it's like a change I definitely want to make. But it's like, can I have 11? And it's like, no, the list is 10. And it's like, I'm really good with 11, but I need to have 10. So out is the vanishing point, the Bungu Box Energia, the orange vanishing point. In its place is a pen that should have been in there from the jump, is my Stilo Art Kenpaku. So this is an Arushi fountain pen made by Stilo Art. It's an Arushi barrel. It originally fit a Pilot nib.

== Pen Finial ==

'''Brad Dowdy:''' And it's just got this gold leaf and this shimmer in the finial. And it's great. And then this is the pen I chose to have Annabelle's Harmonic nib from Opus Scenaris in. And this is an absolute must-have in the top 10. I don't know how I overlooked it in the beginning. Maybe because it's just like a one-off type of, you know, it's not like Pilot where I've got like 20 of them.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So, yeah, this is 100% in the list. The hardest part was figuring out which pen to remove. I took out the Energia vanishing point. The only other option really would be the 845 Vermillion. But I kept the Vermillion for now. It's such a good writing pen. So I still have these pens kind of separated out. And just thinking about this like even more since we did this episode. I don't know. I want to dig into this more. And did you have any? You're solid on your list, right?

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah. I took a look through and was like, what would I change? And the answer was like nothing. Like I look through like my – I have an Apple Note where I keep my pens and inks. And that's where I have all my best stuff, right? Like I have a bunch of pens that are not in that list. But they're obviously not going to be considered for the 10 spot, right? Right. And the only change that I could imagine making is just a different Pro Gear in the spot of the Orange Pro Gear. Just because I have so many beautiful ones. Sure. But then it really I'm just making a difference for like which style do I like the most. So I like putting the orange one in there because it has the personal story of being my first one. But, you know, like I could swap in like the Royal Purple one that I have or I could swap in Pink Love or, you know, any of those get on the given day might be the ones that I would prefer to have. But at that point, I'm just changing like for like really.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Exactly. Exactly. So this prompt made me think about doing some other lists related to this. Let's talk about the feedback we got on this. And then I want to hit like a few lists I might try to make that are somewhat related to this. So hit me with some feedback.

'''Myke Hurley:''' So Andrew wrote in and said, I tried the challenge and found it heartbreaking to go to below 15. It was an interesting and revelatory experience. I realized that over 20 years in the hobby, I've migrated from a focus solely on writing quality to something that also involves functional art. At least now I know which pen box I'd grab in case of evacuation.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, I think that the change part is one of the more interesting things. And that is actually something I want to explore with some other lists, like how of your taste change. You know, like Andrew saying, focus from writing quality. Like that's what kind of hooks you in the beginning. It hooked me is like, oh, I can write small with a fountain pen and I can make cool colors and have cool pens. Yeah, cool. And then now moving into functional art, I mean, the Stilo art opus and eras combination I have going here is exactly like that. And then like, you know, my pilot 912 has artwork on it and my Namiki has artwork. Like, and it doesn't have to have artwork on it to be an art piece, right? The design, the most basic Nakaya Piccolo, I think is like beautiful functional art. And it's just very simple.

'''Myke Hurley:''' There is like a diminishing returns at a certain point from function, right? Like when you get up to a certain level, as long as you're continuing to buy the products that are considered to be high quality, like because you can go into very high expense, but quality is not the mark. Yes. And like Montblancs are fantastic, but they're not priced based on their writing experience sometimes.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Right? Correct. And that's a question that like newcomers to the hobby always have.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Well, Cross might be actually a better example of what I'm trying to drive at because Montblancs are. But like Cross is way more overpriced than it is product quality from a writing experience. Yeah. Brands like that, the traditional graduation brands, which are technically not usually that good.

'''Myke Hurley:''' But once, if you're remaining within the kind of considered high quality, you're not buying for nib quality at that point. You're buying because this design is special in some way, you know?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Exactly. Exactly. And that, yeah, like I was saying, that's like always something to, it's a good explainer when people are getting into the hobby and trying to, the difference between a $20 pen, a $200 pen, and a $2,000 pen. Right? Like there's, you know, you're not gaining anything. You're not gaining much from $200 to $2,000. Right? Yeah. Technically, in the technical writing aspects. Right? You're gaining some, and there's obviously exceptions to that rule, but, you know, generally speaking. So, all right, what else we got?

== Nakaya Pens ==

'''Myke Hurley:''' Tomas wrote in and says, it occurs to me that Myke has two Platinums on his top 10 list, but does not yet have a Nakaya. Is it time? If he loves Platinums, I think Myke should at least have one.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I don't know, man. I don't know that that, I don't know that you would enjoy it, to be quite honest. It is one of the most unique feeling pens. It is feather light. Right? No matter the size and shape you get for a Nakaya. It actually kind of caught me off guard when I was buying my first one, and I had to decide whether I actually like that. And it turns out, like, if you've known the things I like in a pen, small, lightweight, controllable, it actually fits those things. But it is a very different feel in the hand, and it's honestly not for everybody for that. And that goes back to, like, the cost thing. You know, sometimes when you're getting into this hobby, you'll, like, pick up a Nakaya, and you'll go, it doesn't feel expensive. Right? Because it feels like air. And it's like, well, like, you know, this is different. Right? It's, you know, it took six months to, like, actually apply the lacquer to this. Like, you're paying for that, and you're paying for the nib, and you're paying for, like, the craftsmanship. And it just, it's a good one to make you think about people's expectations when they're buying a product. And just how it feels. So, isn't Nakaya for Myke? I'm not sure that it is, to be quite honest.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Well, I mean, every time I've used one, I've always been blown away by it. Like, I do find it to be an incredible experience. My problem, or, like, my hesitancy, is they seem like quite specific pens. Like, from model to model. Like, as you say, like, how it feels in the hand is very important. And because of that and the higher price, I'm kind of unwilling to buy one without touching it. And that's where we get into some complication.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Especially these. It's getting more and more difficult to have that opportunity as we go on. And you said the right word. I was thinking this word before you said it. It's an experiential pen, right? Like, and that experience isn't for everyone, right? It just does not work for some people. So, last one I'll grab. My friend Jason sent me his list, if I can only keep 10 pens. And this is a really good one. And one of the things I noticed about Jason's, and we'll have a link in the show note. He did a whole blog post on this. Number one, y'all might know Jason from being behind the Canalea table at many, many, many pen shows.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Canalea, Kilauea number one, Myke. That's one of the OG Canaleas.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I mean, you'd expect it though, right?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, 100%. And I think there's one other one on here. What I took from Jason's list is he has a lot of the writing experience stuff on here. Because a lot of the nibs are modified. Which I didn't, let's see, let me look at my, I have all my pens right here. Out of this one, I have the Opus Cenaris, which is a very specialty nib. And then I have a stack nib and a mini pen.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah, I have two modified nibs.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' And then everything else is stock, right? Where Jason's is at least half, if not more. You know, this one has an architect. This one has a Fude. You know, this one has a SIG.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I probably should think about when I was building my list, I didn't really go that route, right? I'm getting that customized feeling from say, like, I love the Pilot PO nib. That's on the list, right? It also happens to be in a really special pen barrel. So, I didn't do much, I didn't give much consideration to just the nib. So, I thought this was a good perspective to have. Like, he has a lot of specialty nibs in here. So, you said you had, like, two modified nibs. Like, why not one of them stacked? Yeah. So, but yeah, y'all keep the feedback coming. There's been a lot of other blog posts I've shared, whether it's in Refill, my Penatic members newsletter, or Misfill, the extra links I post on Sundays. Keep those links coming. Send them to me, hello at penatic.com. I love seeing them. And yeah, this is great. So, when I was auditing my list, I was like, well, one of my, it's not an issue, right? It's just that my taste turned out to be one, two, three, four. Well, it was five pilots before the vanishing point vanished from the list. Now it's four pilots. What would my list look like if I was limited to one per brand? So, I think that's the challenge I want to tackle next. Right. And see, I don't know, just to see how it plays out. Because some brands I have a lot of that, you know, I'm, you know, love the Japanese brands. Sailor, Pilot, Platinum. I love all these Maker Pins that I have. I love my Safaris. Um, so, but if I could only have one Pilot and one Sailor and one Platinum, one Nakaya, what would kind of fill in, what would backfill this list? You know, would it be something that I still have a bunch of, you know, different makes, different models? Would I go into something where I only have one of, but it's kind of special? Like, I have a Visconti Homo Sapiens Blizzard. Like, that's kind of the, I own more than one Visconti, but that's the only, like, fancy, you know, like, gold nib Visconti that I have. Does that one make the list? Um, you know, I came up with, also related to this, I started, I just ran a list looking at all my pens of what would I consider. And I came up with actually 12 more.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' But, how many of these would be unique? I mean, I think the Elbowed Pocket Master would be on here. It's a really cool pen. I have a Kaweco, um, with artwork on it. Um, Rose Art. Um, like, that would be the list. Um, one of my Canaleas would be on the list. So, I don't know. It's, it's a challenge. I kind of want to do the one, one per brand challenge. I want to tackle the Standard Pens one. Okay. Which I think would be really wild. Yeah. That would be wild. Because that's going to be a super personal, you're going to have so many pens on there that are just, like, one-offs. That just don't exist anymore. But I think that's how that list has to be, right? Like, an orange Cerakote Mark I. Like, I can put that on the list. That's not a pen anyone's going to have. Like, not, we're not putting a link in there for you to go buy that, necessarily. You know, I mean, they might still have it, or they might still do it. But you get my point. It's, this is going to be some. I'm not trying to do, like, um. You know, a Uniball Jetstream list. It would be more specially type pens. And then the last one I was asked to do.

== Non-Writing Stationery ==

'''Brad Dowdy:''' It will take a lot of thought. But it would be 10 non-writing instrument stationary items.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Hmm.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' And I don't even know how to define that. Does ink count? Does paper count?

'''Myke Hurley:''' I mean, I would say, yeah. Right?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. Yeah. Like, what are those items? That's a pretty big challenge. That's a very, very broad one that I would like to tackle. That seems difficult. Yeah. In a good way. Like, I could rip off 10 things right now. But I don't know that it would be accurate. But it seems pretty cool. Also, on this list that I was writing, I've included blue refill hot dog, Myke. So, that's just on the same piece of paper that I wrote all these down. So, just so you know, that's where my mind's at right now. In any way related to anything? No. Completely unrelated.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Blue refill hot dog.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. Oh, I know what it means. What does it mean? So, the hot dog pen, the Uniball Knot.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yep.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Orange pen. Yep. It uses Jetstream multi-pen refills. Yep. So, it ships with the black. And I'm going to take it to stationary effects next week. And I want a blue refill in it because blue ballpoints are my favorite. So, I need... I feel like you should get red. No. I hate red ballpoints. Yeah, but it's a hot dog. I agree.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Hot dog's not going to have blue inside.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, this one is though.

'''Myke Hurley:''' This one is.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' If I'm going to use it, it's going to have blue.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So, I need to go steal one, right? I don't have extra multi-pen refills, but I have plenty of Jetstream multi-pens. So, I wrote this note to go steal one out of the closet of Doom. But that's literally smack on the list of, hey, let's make all these great lists. Blue refill hot dog.

'''Myke Hurley:''' It's a list of things you need to do.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' That one doesn't need to be on this list. Top 10 modifications. Top 10 modifications. Number one, blue refill hot dog. So, yeah. That is on this list. So, whatever. Whatever I'm doing here. It's... None of us know, Myke. Not even myself.

== Collider Craft Sponsor ==

'''Myke Hurley:''' Brad, I'm excited about a new sponsor for the show. Let me tell you. Let me tell you. It's Collider Craft. A small maker creating playful and functional accessories for stationary enthusiasts. They design tons of their products in-house. And they collaborate with other 3D artists to curate and adapt designs specifically with pen and stationary lovers in mind. Including pieces that feature their own original illustrations that are printed directly onto a finished print. And they're excited to introduce their newest creation. The Build Your Own Washi Wallet. The Washi Wallet is a customizable pocket-sized storage system for washi tape samples. You can mix and match inserts to fit your own collection. Swap them whenever you want. Each washi wallet includes a cutter so you can cut the washi with a straight or serrated edge. And keep your favorite tapes organized whether you're at your desk, journaling at a coffee shop, or heading to your next pen show. So, check out the washi wallet. And while you're there, you're also going to find fountain pen holders, ink vial holders, pen rests, desks, accessories, charms, and other stationary-inspired accessories. Brad, I'm sure you have some stuff to say about ColliderCraft. Before that, I just want to do this real quick. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Let's go. This is, I think this was last year for the St. Jude fundraiser, ColliderCraft. Right. They gave away like these packs of 3D printed fidget toys that were themed around each of the podcast-a-thon hosts. And they also sent some to us. You got some too. And that is my, I would say, I was going to say my Pikachu Pokeball. And it's got like a keyboard switch inside to make it like a clicker. And when I'm not recording, that bad boy is just popping off, man. Yeah. Yeah.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I think anytime I've seen ColliderCraft at a couple shows, I always end up with a new clicker. There's like, I bought one in St. Louis. I bought like a little heart rainbow just to put on my bag for the stationary show, right? Just so I could clip it to my zipper and just have that little like clicky thing there. What I did at St. Louis is I also built a washi wallet, which I love this product because it allows me to have all my washi tape in a more contained, controlled area without having to carry around like 10 huge rolls of washi tape. I can have, let's see, I got this card has one, two, three, four, five. So I have five strips on this one card, one, two, three, four on this one because I have some wider washi tape. And I love the, I love that you can build it, right? So you can customize it to yourself, right? That's one of the cool things about ColliderCraft is you can kind of build your own. Like in the case of this washi wallet, I got to pick out the cover cards, right? So like the front and back cards, they're kind of similar. Um, then I got to pick out like the, uh, like the, they call it the screw unit. So I got like a rainbow one, but you could get like a black one or a purple one or all kinds of cool colors. And then I got the different card colors. So I had a purple one and a teal one. Then I got a pink checkerboard one. It's like sick. And it's like, I love keeping this on my desk. So I don't have to reach from like, I have like a bin of washi tape, right? And digging through these. I took my favorites out, put them on these cards and now I can carry them. One of the cool things is for travel and travel journaling. I might not take this entire washi wallet, but all I have to do is unscrew this and I can take one of the cards with five and just slide that in there. You'll never notice it. Right. So I can take, I could, or I could build a trip specific card, right? Like I have one card I haven't put washi on yet. Um, so I could do something for New York. If I wanted a more themed one, like I'm going to be journaling some in New York and having my notebook and have like a little sticker printer and doing some things like that. Um, I'm going to have one, at least one card of washi tape and you know, I can decide, do I want to theme this and have something very specific? Like I can just pop out of this washi wallet when I come home, I can just pop it back in and have the rest of them sitting here on my desk. So it's fantastic. And they made a special one, Myke.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah. So there is for, uh, for pen addict listeners, there is a pen addict specific, uh, washi wallet insert. I really want to recommend that people go, uh, click the link in the show notes and watch the video that collider craft makes that show you, shows you how this works. This is a, I think it's a very visual product. It's very clever, very, very beautiful too. But I think you have to go and look at it yourself to see exactly how it works and how much of a benefit it will be for you. Uh, but we have a special offer for listeners of this show. If you go to collidercraft, collidercraft, collidercraft, collidercraft, prince.com slash pen addict, the link is in the show notes, which is the way that I recommend that you go there. That is collidercraft, prince.com slash pen addict. You can see an exclusive pen addict washi insert, build your own washi wallet and explore everything else that they're making. And if you use the code pen addict, you will get that pen addict washi insert for free and 15% off your order. You're essentially stealing from them. So I recommend that you go to collidercraft, prince.com slash pen addict and use the code pen addict. You will get the free exclusive washi wallet insert and also 15% off. A thanks to collidercraft, prince for their support of this show.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I'm going to, I'm going to hold this for now, but you should know when you go to this page, there is a link on there for curated products for pen addicts. Um, I'm dying. It is so good. I love that stuff. Y'all got to go see everything on here, uh, on this link. And they have like all the, you know, like the, the clicker and the fidget toys and stuff that we were talking about as well. So awesome. Love it. All right. We got a shout out of the week. Myke, a non-stationary one, but I had to share this. I'm sharing this with everyone. I'm sure a lot of people have seen this. It's from break room chronicles. And if you're a certain age or from a certain like genre of music, I clicked on this link, Myke, and I knew exactly what it was. Me too. And I didn't have to rewatch the video, but it's basically these lunch ladies go through and do video. This is a thing. Like their channel is all of this, but this one, they did fire starter by the prodigy. Yeah. And just the freeze frame on the video before you even click, you're like, oh my God, this is amazing. This is one of the coolest things I've seen in a long time. And I just think everyone should go watch it.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I was very confused when I first opened this link though, bro. I'm not going to lie. I've not seen this Instagram account before. I understand it now, but I've not seen it before.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yes. It's amazing how good this is.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' And just, it's like, they do about a minute of it and you have to watch the whole, you're required to watch the whole thing because it's ridiculous. It's insanely well done. Like I was looking, like this one got like a million views and like their other ones have like, they're like popular. Like everything's like 40,000 views, 30,000 views. This one's had a million. So like a lot of people have seen this, but I couldn't pass this up.

'''Myke Hurley:''' It's a million likes.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' A million likes. Oh my God.

'''Myke Hurley:''' So that's probably like 10 million. Nine million views. No, wait.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Uh, 14 million views. Oh my God. Yeah. And that's just on Instagram. I'm sure the first time I saw it was a link from TikTok. So I'm sure it's, so this is just one of those that like, um, kind of like broke my brain in a good way. And I thought I would share it. It's really fun. Very fun. And funny. So, all right. What you got for me?

'''Myke Hurley:''' I have some, this is a very quick item that I, I wanted to mention one thing and ask one thing. The thing I want to mention is I'm, I am really enjoying the Uniball 1P.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Literally my show note pen today.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I am loving this pen and I can't exactly explain why, but I, I just keep grabbing it and I'm using it a lot. I had a question for you. I found a Uniball 1P on the journal shop and it's just the style of it is very fun. It's like clear and kind of like confetti. Right. This one says Zento. Now I'm sure we've spoken about this before. I'm convinced we've spoken about this before, but I struggled to keep the Uniball refills all right in my head. But why is this one a Zento one?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I hate this with every ounce of my soul. Okay. I have, I have riffed on this on the podcast.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I'm sure you have, Brad.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I'm absolutely sure you have. So the pen that you have and the pen that I'm currently using today, I didn't know this was going to be in the show notes. I'm using a 1P. Yep. With the Uniball 1 refill in it. So about a couple of months ago, they released a series. This 1P is killing it, right? Like you don't know why you like it, but you do. And same with me. Like I didn't, I didn't buy the 1P. So just for the record, the 1P is the short stubby, short stubby Uniball 1. It's funny looking. It's weird. But somehow it works. Like it's kind of perfect.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Isn't it also madness that they don't put P on the pen?

'''Myke Hurley:''' Like the pen, it just says Uniball 1. But there is already a product called the Uniball 1 and this isn't that? Yeah.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I can't, I have a full length one that I always forget the name on. It's a letter. It's like the R or the F or something like that. And I can't ever remember. The 1P I can remember because it's short. I don't know why that, why I can remember that. But anyway, back to the product you linked. So about two months ago, they did a release of the Uniball 1P barrel. This very popular barrel that you and I are using. They did some cool, they always do cool colors in this, like some swirls. This one they did like a translucent with confetti, like sparkles. And then they put a Zento refill in it.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So the problem I have and the rant that I went on is that Zento and 1 are ink formulations, not pen barrels, pen barrel designs or pen barrel shapes.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I remember you saying that. I am now transported back to when we had this conversation.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. So you can't call this the Uniball 1 with a Zento refill because the 1 is a refill, an ink formulation. Yeah. So this, and what they have on this label, so this label of this box says Uniball 1P at the bottom. Right under it says Uniball Zento. On the top left, it says Uniball Zento. But they're calling it the 1P. And these are ink formulations. This is like a legitimate issue. Like I would have lost my mind if I got overruled and said we're doing this because it defies all logic.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Because the Uniball 1 is the ink and then the P is the barrel that it's contained within. Correct.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' And the 1 ink is the saturated gel ink, right? The high color gel. And the Zento is the rollerball-ish gel ink. So they're two very different inks.

== Uniball Naming ==

'''Myke Hurley:''' So really, this should be called the Uniball Zento P, shouldn't it?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yes, that's correct. Yeah. Because this barrel design came out with the 1, but just make this the P barrel and have it the Uniball Zento P. Yeah. I would not even blink at that.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Why did, did they do this because the Zento is so meme-y or like, so like hype right now? 100%. Right, 100%. So now they want to put Zento into everything because they would immediately hype up the product. Yes.

'''Myke Hurley:''' All right. So, yeah. I have a huge problem with this. I bought this pen because I like the barrel. It's great. I'll be honest though, Brad. Like I also have a Zento. I can't really tell the difference between those two inks when I use them. The Zento, how do I say it?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' It's a very good ink, but it's not like as good as some of Uniball's gel inks. Right. It's, this is a whole, I think Uniball is going to be at Stationery Fest next week and hopefully.

'''Myke Hurley:''' You'll put someone in a headlock?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. Hopefully the, hopefully the boss is there that I know and I'm going to say, look, what is this, is the Zento formulation? Because I believe it's a rollerball ink and it might have some gel properties, right? It's a mixture. It's a mixture. But they, they don't ever say, like the Uniball one, they always call it a gel. Like it's very clear, but I've seen the Zento called multiple things and it's very strange. So I have a whole thing with this, but don't call it the Uniball one P with the Zento refill. Yeah. That's just wrong in so many ways.

'''Myke Hurley:''' But yeah, I, I mean, I'll just, I don't, I don't really feel much of a difference. But I am definitely not a gel ink savant like you. Yeah. Yeah. Why did you do this to me today?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' You didn't, you didn't know that I, that now you remember me. Now I remember.

== Lamy Safari ==

'''Myke Hurley:''' I still think I would have asked anyway, like even remembering, but I remember specifically having this conversation because I remember being confused because it hit me again with you saying the Uniball one is a refill and it's like, but it's also a pen. Like that was what my, my first thought was. And then it was like, oh, well actually no, this comes back to what I mentioned of the Uniball one. They're all called Uniball one, but then they have every model has a clarification, which I don't agree with anyway. Neither do I really think that you should, you should brand an entire pen line around the refill. Like, I'm just not sure that that is like what, what you think it is going to do for you. Hence the whole problem you're in now. Yeah. Yeah.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I, um, yeah, I, I have a huge issue with this.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Cause like now you have a popular pen shape and you have a popular refill. Well, if you didn't name the pen after the refill, you wouldn't have this problem, right?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yes. Welcome to my life. So to, to, to put a bow on this and make it even worse for you, my Uniball Zento signature, you know, the little magnetic one, you know, the, the popular, you know, unobtainium one that's available now. I use a Uniball one gel refill on that. So you're, you're part of the problem. Let's move on.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Um, I got the new Lamy Safaris that we talked about last week. I really, really, really wanted to get these in hand. So this is the meteorite and the Meteoro. We talked about them last week, so I'm not going to like belabor that too much, but it's basically the first time they've done like a tactile, uh, pattern on the pen barrel.

'''Myke Hurley:''' So this was a question that we had when we, was it last week that we spoke about this before? Okay. Last week. We were, I mentioned that and you were like, I'm not sure that it even is like engraved.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So I got them in hand. I got the, so the black one is called meteorite and the purple one's called Meteora. I still haven't seen the marketing on like the, the name story, right? Like I don't like, you know, like what's, what's the story behind the naming? I haven't found that yet. Um, it's lightly touched.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Okay.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' It's, I still, I'm going to call this a giyosh pattern because it's way more like that than any type of knurling because it's kind of flat and smooth. Right. So you can feel it, right? These are glossy safaris. So you have a shiny, smooth area next to the pattern and you can feel the pattern. It's tactile, but it's not sandpapery.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Um, if you run to the Lamy USA Instagram and they have a couple of posts up about this and the tagline is the one to shape your path. That's yeah.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I don't know what that means. Yeah. Miss me with that. Yeah. I, I, sure. Like if you're going to call it like these names at least require some type of story definition, I believe. Why we did meteorite and Meteora because no one uses Meteora in this kind of, in context. I don't know. I just give me a, just get, I don't need much, but like, Hey, this represents X.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah. And you know, I actually agree with you because it's like, you don't have to do this, right? If you don't want to, but they've done something and the thing they've done doesn't say anything. So maybe don't say anything or say something. The one to shape your path is like, is it the pathway of a meteor? Is that what they're saying? Like, I guess that's what they're saying, right? But like, I don't. We're going to die. No, no, no, no. But it doesn't make sense to me. I'm not. Yeah. Just, just explain it just a little.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I think it does require a little, I think we're owed a slight explanation. I don't need, like, you don't need to build a world for this product, but something. So the tactile bits, like, so it's basically half and half, right? So the, the safaris have like two flat sides and two like round sides. Yeah. So the flat sides have the, the pattern on it. So like, if you run your fingernail over it, like your nail doesn't get caught in the grooves. Does that make sense from a tactile perspective? But you feel it.

'''Myke Hurley:''' You can feel them, but you're not going to get, it's not deep.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' No, no.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Okay.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Which is great for the grip section. Yeah. Um, I think I wouldn't mind like a, like a heavily knurled grip section, but you kind of got to go all the way in. I don't know that I would like, so they, the pattern and the grip is just on like where your thumb and forefinger go. If you have a traditional grip, it's still glossy, like on the backside where like your middle finger would go for a traditional grip. Um, it feels good. Like totally good. Like I'm very, very glad that they did this. It's something a little bit different. Um, so I was trying to compare it to like what they've done this year, at least like the neon neon pink, you know, some of that. I prefer my, my neon yellow over both, both of these. Like the, the tactile stuff isn't moving me enough to say, Hey, this is the safari I want to use. I think it's, I mean, it's like a nine out of 10, like design wise. And I definitely stand by what I said last week. Now that I have them in hand, this black one is going to crush in person. This is going to be someone's first Lamy. This is going to be an, Oh, wow. I need that Lamy. When people see it in the store, maybe not if you're like a, a Lamy. Like super fan like me, like it's great. It's fine. It's, it's gorgeous. Like, like I said, it's like a nine out of 10.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I'm still using neon yellow. Like I'm, I'm not compelled to ink one of these up over my neon yellow one today. The purple color is fantastic. The purple is my favorite. The black is going to sell out. It's so good in person because of the shiny and the pattern. This, this, they, they, they nailed. They, they really did a good job on these. I just don't know from the Lamy Safari nerd level that I'm at. If they're moving the Safari needle forward, but this is already like my favorite pen to begin with. Right. So when I'm handling a Safari, like it's up a pretty, it's, it's already like such a high level for me. This still delivers that level. But I'm not like fawning over this. If that makes sense. Yeah. I'm very glad that they did this though. I want to see this. Like they did, they executed this very well. Good. And I think it's going to do very well. I don't know that I'm going to keep either one of these. If I do keep one, it'll be the purple. But I, like I said, I'm not compelled to ink this up and like get going on this. Right. Which the neon yellow I was because I liked the black trim and I threw a black ink cartridge in and that makes me happy.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Because ultimately they are just a dark purple and black.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Which they do a lot. Yeah. This is not a unique theme, broad picture theme. This is not unique for a lot of people.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Like an interesting gray color could have been more, more fun. Exactly. Yeah.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' One of my favorite ones is a gray, I have a gray Safari. Yeah. Like my favorite Safari is unfortunately right now. Out of my collection. So as much as I love the Safari, right, it's my, one of my top pens of all time. I think I have out of the regular Safari lineup and I'm counting like limited editions, like regular worldwide release lineup. So the white one with the red clip that we talked about last week. Yep. Love that. That's my favorite one. Neon yellow is getting up there. That's the one I'm using right now. Um, and then I have the Savannah and terracotta, the redos. They did three or four years ago of the original Lamy Safari colors, the orange and the green. I think they were called Safari and terracotta or Savannah and terracotta. And like, that's my Safari collection outside of the Atoya special editions, which that one I do have a problem with because they execute those really, really well, unique colors. So like, that's it for all the safaris that get released and all the praise I heap on them. That's all the ones that I've kept. I buy them all and I usually give them away because they're perfect for that. But, um, yeah, I don't know that I'm going to keep either of these like to the, because I have to use them, right? I'm not going to keep it just because I'm going to keep it if I want to use it. And I'm not sure either of these are going to make the cut, but that's also a much higher level than most people, um, given, given my love for the Safari. So it's good stuff. It's, they, they, they did a great job with these pens. I will say that.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Good. All right. This episode is brought to you by our friends over at Enigma Stationery. Enigma Stationery offers unique items made from in-house designs, along with tons of top brands and hard to find imports. Uh, Enigma Stationery always provide us with some fun stuff to talk about, uh, every few weeks, Brad. Um, obviously when I go to the pen ad page, there is various, uh, business frog. Sorry about that. Frog related, uh, things. Business frog washi tape, business frog vinyl stickers, you know, I mean, that's, that's an obvious. Brad, and I'm very excited to let you know about the business day planner sticker sheet now featuring business frog in meetings at the desk, uh, business frog in bed thinking about business. Uh, there's a lot going on here. I'm a big fan of this one.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I bought this one. Oh, did you? Yeah. There's business frog sitting in a chair of cash. I mean, he's obviously. It's like a throne of cash.

'''Myke Hurley:''' It's, that reminds me of, um, and I think what they're going for is Breaking Bad.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's, uh, it's, uh, it's, uh, it's like on one hand I feel bad. I was like so obsessed with this, but like, I can't help it. It really just, it just tickles me in the exact way that like, I want to have fun with my stationary. And I think that's what I think of when I think about Enigma. Like they do such a great job, like curating fun stationary. Yep. Right. You go there, you can't help but smile. Like as I'm, as I'm going through the Emma, as I'm looking at like business frog down at the bottom, it's got similar items and it's got these just wonderful like, um, dog stickers. So it's like, okay, you know, I, I need, I need this dog sticker. Cause it looks like my dog Toby. And then they have these just like completely on the opposite end of the spectrum. They have these wonderful pens that they've crafted with some of their materials with some just awesome makers. Like this, this, um, fizzy lemonade, like, like Mayfair pen. Like the materials are ridiculously good. Just such unique materials that they use in their collaborations. So like, you know, don't forget that they have like these, this fountain pen page with just beautiful, beautiful stuff on it. And, uh, Myke, they have your, they have Zento's here. I don't know if they have the one, the one P Zento yet, but like, that's the kind of, that's the kind of item that they carry. And, you know, lots of great inks, lots of great stationary items. Um, I, I just love what an Enigma stationary does. This is kind of like a, uh, like the, the perfect shop set up for me. Cause it's where I can go get my pens and inks and paper, but then I can add in all of this extra fun, which is a lot of what gets me going these days.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I'll ask you to express yourself. Yep. If you want $10 off on orders to $50 or more, go to enigmastationary.com slash pen addict and use the code TPA26 at checkout. That is enigmastationary.com slash pen addict with, uh, the code TPA26. You will get $10 off on orders of $50 or more. Our thanks to Enigma stationary for their support of this show and relay.

== New Releases ==

'''Brad Dowdy:''' All right. Can we talk about, uh, new releases, Myke? Please. Um, we're still, you know, probably for the next few months, we're still going to be hot and heavy with releases. And Kaweco just dropped their summer releases and like my inbox inbox blew up when I saw these. I was like, Whoa, this is cool. So they did three new sport releases, which this is my favorite model. Uh, just the plastic pocketable Kaweco sport. So two of them continue the kind of lunar, the moon series that they did, uh, last year where they did light green and shadow green of this, these iridescence. So these were in the lunar series this summer. They've added the light blue and shadow blue. So if you look at all these together, they all kind of relate. They all have this slight iridescence, maybe a hair translucent on the lighter ones. And last year's models, the green, the shadow green and light green. I joked as like, did they just make a bad batch and end up having to release two? Were they trying to go for shadow green and it came out light? So we'll do light green. And I say this, uh, knowing that like I do this too, right? You know, you make a bunch of product and it's like, it didn't come out, but now it's a new product. Um, the new two new colors, I think are both better than last year's colors. And I'll get yelled at for that. Um, because these were super popular, light green and shadow green. I am definitely more light blue and especially shadow blue. I think shadow blue is really getting into that oil slick.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah, oil and water is exactly what I was thinking. Yeah.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. And that, I think that's going to be a real standout. Now I want to see this in person, right? Because I think that's kind of what got me about last year's green ones. I think they showed even better in photography than in person, which you always like very colorful and iridescent types of colors. You kind of got to see them in person, uh, to see, see what you think about that. They're also, I think I saw, I don't have it on the, on the page, but I think they're bringing or restocking the Perkyo iridescent pearl, which was super popular last year. It was just kind of like a one-off. It was really good. I think they're actually going to restock that if I'm not mistaken from reading that. So those are great. But the real winner here in my book.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I found it on the website.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Okay. Yeah. I thought I saw that in passing. I was like, wait, are they doing, they're, they're just basically, um, making more of it, which is, it's great to see because that one, they sold that one out really fast and they don't do a lot of Perkyo stuff. And, uh, it's, it's legitimately good. Um, what the real winner is here, and this is the one I'm definitely getting is the marble ocean. So still a Kaweco sport, but this is their collection series, which is one of the, their limited edition series. I don't know what their schedule is for this. I don't think it's once a year. I think they do multiple. So it's a blue and green ocean swirl. It's gorgeous. It's got gold trim. Um, it's really beautiful. Um, and it's still like reasonably priced for these sports, right? It's going to be like a 30 low $30, which is great. It, which is great. And this is the limited edition one. Um, yeah, this is going to be a fun one. One of the things they did, um, is they've moved to a screw in nib unit, which their nibs have always been easy to swap. They're just kind of like friction fit, but they're now making a point to have, uh, and they're putting it in the marketing that they, these have screw in nib units. So they're even easier to swap.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I don't like friction, uh, for the unit so much for first growing.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I think a lot of people don't. And the screw in nib units are, are much, uh, easier for people to handle. Um, but yeah, this looks great. I'm this one. I'm less inclined to need to see in person. Like, I think it's just going to be really, really good. No matter what. I did see some videos of this. So you might actually want to see it in person because when you look at the pictures that we put in here, like we have a link into Stilo and Stile. They had the most pictures. I, Kaweco didn't have many pictures of this at all. Um, other than like the landing page. There's a lot of translucency in this barrel, which you cannot see, but I saw a video of this on YouTube and there's a lot of clear, uh, plastic in this barrel. So you will see some translucency through there. So, um, it's, these pictures make it look completely solid, right? Um, but there is some translucency from the other images I've seen, but I, I just think it's great. It looks great. So, um, not really a surprise there from Kaweco. They've been doing a really good job with these releases. What I was surprised about in this past week, Myke, I can't think if I've ever seen a pilot Metropolitan limited edition before.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' This pen has been out for, it's gotta be 10 years at least. And they always made bright and colorful releases.

'''Myke Hurley:''' And they would do the like animal print bands and stuff.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Animal print bands. In the beginning, they did some, um, geometric bands and they're just fun. Right. I mean, they always, from the beginning, you know, you could get bright purple and turquoise and blues and it, or blacks and silvers and some patterns. And then it just kind of existed. This is a product that just existed. You know, it started to get a little bit more expensive over time. And I don't know that it fell by the wayside compared to like the Kakuno or the Explorer, both of which are two other pilot entry level pens. But I feel seeing what this is, is called the pilot pen Itowin, which is a tea company, I believe. Yeah. Japanese tea company collaboration to where they're making themed pens related to, uh, the tea. And Japanese green tea. So like there's a, a brown and orange metropolitan. There's a green and lime green metropolitan. And there's a, like a lime green and kind of chrome or white, um, one. And I, they're gorgeous. Like I, it makes me wonder why they haven't done more of this because this is a really good platform pen. Like I say more so than the Kakuno because the Kunos are all just like translucent and they've done lots of colors and lots of fun things with the Kakuno with the nib designs and then the pastel colors. And they did some like opaque barrels.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I'm, I'm just curious now that I see this, I was like, man, they could have been doing this for a while because these look fantastic. And I'm not even a metropolitan fan. I don't own a single metropolitan. I never use this pen, but it's a very, very good pen. And then one I recommend a lot. Um, these are great. Like they're, and they're not complex.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Maybe this is the kind of thing that you do when, you know, some of the old products become more expensive to make. You can, you can make, you can focus maybe further down your market and try and pick up some sales that way. I mean, I'm just trying to think, oh, why would you do it now if you've never really done it before?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. So this looks like it's going to be a more limited type of situation. So the way I read this, and this is from the Paper Mouse shop on Instagram. So there is a brick and mortar stationery store, uh, will be one of the handful of stores in the U S to launch their limited edition, uh, Chenomagumi Metropolitan collection in person this October. So it doesn't sound like it's going to be a very broad release, but I think it's fantastic. Like it might even make me use a Metropolitan, I don't know, but they, they, they look great. And for Metropolitan fans, like you're, you're actually getting something new here, which I think is kind of cool.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I think it, that, that wording makes it sound like it might be relatively wide though, where it's like one of the few places to launch it in person would suggest to me there's multiple places launching it in person and they will sell it online. Yeah.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. But, and they said, and in the U S which also means to me that it's not limited to the U S that means I think this is going to be, I mean, this is a Japanese tea company, right? This is going to be probably a worldwide release. Yeah. Like, I think it'll be like limited, like it'll probably go away quickly, but I don't think it's going to be, I don't think you're going to struggle to buy it.

'''Myke Hurley:''' That is the point I'm making, but yes, it is obviously a limited time thing more than like an availability thing. I would feel like there's just a lot of qualifiers in that statement. There is, there is, there is.

== Lamy Safari ==

'''Brad Dowdy:''' All right. Last one is not a new release, but a new review I did because we talked about this product recently. I think a lot of people are very interested in the dominant industry, Kino stationary stuff. Yeah. Um, because there's one, it's interesting to see a company like dominant industry who's known for their ink products basically. And then ink accessories, right? Notebooks for, you know, ink washes and coloring different, all kinds of ink related items to make a fountain pen. So they made, this is the second one they've done. Um, which I love that the second one is called zero zero one, but you know, whatever.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Um, well the first one was number 14. Yeah. True.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' True. True.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So yeah. Okay. You do you, but this is when I was talking about Lamy before, like, just tell me a little bit about the story. This is a very storytelling, uh, pen, but it's, it's, I was about to say it's unique. I don't think it is unique. I think this is a style of pen we're seeing in the Instagram stationary world. And I'm not using that like pejoratively. I think this is a very visually appealing, you know, give me all the things with the pen. Like the pen is like very colorful, very well designed. It has a lot going. Every part of the pen has detail, right? The clip is overly detailed. The finials are overly detailed and it all works, right? This is normally not my style, but it kind of is at the same time because I like the cute, fun, pretty stuff too. This one gets right up to the edge for me. And the more I use it, the more I enjoy it because the actual writing experience is good. Um, it feels and is shaped like a Pelican, um, M2 or M4 series, right? The smaller size Pelicans, either the steel or the gold nib. This is a steel nib pen. The nib is excellent. Like one of my favorite out of the box steel nib experiences. It's, I got an extra fine steel nib. What's a little bit unique about this is it doesn't have a ton of tipping on there. And the tipping it does is, is, you know, managed very, very well. It's very consistent, extra fine, sharp line. And I really, really love the nib. No clue who makes the nib. It reminds me a little bit of like, uh, the Novelure nibs and just the style and the feel of the steel and the shape, like a stamped steel. Um, but it's great overall. Like I love everything about this pen. Is it going to be like, you know, my go-to or one of my favorites? Probably not, but what they've executed here is really good. They do tell a story, Myke. Like now I'm going to, um, you know, contradict what I was saying before about storytelling. Like give me a story. Um, this one's just out of thin air, right? Their story starts at Hotel Kino, a secluded retreat perched in the mountains of a far away peaceful island. Each release is created with a hotel visit in mind through each key number assigned to a pen. It's like, okay, it's like, it's too high concept. I'm never going to think about any of that. It's too high concept. Right? Like I got the key. I love vintage motel key chain, key chain shape. You know, the, the rounded diamond shape. I think that's one of the greatest designs ever made is the vintage hotel key chain. I'm literally never going to consider this storytelling once more in my entire life. Right. Right. But they did build this product this way from a marketing and Instagramable perspective. Right. And, and it crushes it. It's just, it's everything you want to see on like an Instagram marketing campaign. The good news is the pen is good. Right. So like, like I said, this one gets to the edge of everything I don't want, but they executed a good pen and it is very enjoyable to look at. It's enjoyable to hold. It's enjoyable to use. I shockingly like this pen a lot. It's not going to be, it's never going to make my top 10 pens, Myke, but shout out dominant. They, they did a good job. They did a, I credit where credit's due. So I'm very pleased there. I have no negatives about this, right? You either like the style or you don't, but like as a product, as a functional product, it's great.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah. It's great. So you referenced that you've thought that the first one, the number 14 was, was not like was too much that I actually prefer the visuals of that one. Even though they both look great, but I, the number 14 to me is, is nicer for my taste than the number one. Yeah. But I agree. Like the, having a concept is fine. This is too much concept. Like there's just too much concept with no grounding in reality. Right. So I think it's, it's a bit, it's a bit much like you can do everything they're doing, but you don't need to tell so much story. Like why, what, what, why are we in like in a hotel on an island close to a secluded town? You know what I mean? Like we don't, we don't need three things, you know? We can just have one of them. Like we don't need all of that. It's too much detail. Yeah. It's too much detail with no accompanying story. Right. It's not like they wrote like a manga or something, you know?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Right. Yeah. They did. There's not like a complete world build around here.

'''Myke Hurley:''' They're just like, you just got to buy into this. It's like, why? Like, why would I even buy into it? But anyway, as you say, none of that matters if the product's good though. And the product's good. Yes.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So what I want to see next is 014 and 001 released within like a month or two of each other, like really quickly. Okay. And they're the exact same pen except different colors, right? If they keep doing this and it's just color after color after color, it's going to die quickly. So like what other pen type or fountain pen style are they going to make? Because if the next one's purple and then the next one's orange and then the next one's green, it's like at some point like, you know, business frog wouldn't be happy. Like line go down, right? Line is not going to go up unless the, you know, next year we have some type of complimentary type of pen or product with this. So you can't just keep making the same color every time. That's this heavily like story told, right? Like I'm good with one. And then if they do something different, I'd be interested in trying that. But like, I don't need the purple one next, right? No.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I'm just, I'm trying to look up more on Kino stationary now.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' It's, it, it just really, it just appeared. It's like poof. Yeah. Right. And Dominant has like the design ability to do something cool like this, right? Their ink bottles have always been wonderful. And then they added in ink sampling accessories like the coloring books or the swatch cards or glass tools to help you with your ink. So they're very visually based and they make very, very good inks. So this was like, this was like a high risk thing for them and they did really, really well. Yeah. But it totally surprised me.

'''Myke Hurley:''' They didn't even seem to have like a web presence for it.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So I tried to find the link on the Dominant industry page for this and it's not there. So I, I was actually going to write a note in here that it doesn't exist in Dominant's page. So are they going to try to like standalone Kino as a sub brand? Yes. I don't think they, I don't, you think they will? I don't know.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Well, I mean, I don't know.

== Kino Stationery ==

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Because, well, it would just have to be Kino because stationary. So this stationary spelled S-T-A-Y because of the hotel situation, right? Yeah. Yeah. So the brand would have to be called Kino. Stationary is the product line, right?

'''Myke Hurley:''' Why?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Because at some point, I don't think the whole lineup can be related to the hotel. I think that is your product lineup. It could have 20 products under stationary.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah, but Kino is only Kino because it's a hotel key. True. Interesting.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So. This is great. This is a great meeting.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I actually think the product line is Kino and the brand is called Stay Doctionary. Hmm. Right? Might be right. And you know what? I have no idea because you know what? I don't think they do either. I just think it's like, here's the thing. But they're sitting there. We're going to put two puns in the product name.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' They're sitting there in the office doing what we're doing right now.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' And it's fascinating. This is why we like this stuff. Yeah. Honestly. Yes. This is why we like this stuff. Luckily for all of us, they executed.

'''Myke Hurley:''' It's what matters more than anything else. Yeah. Because if we liked their story but the product wasn't any good, then what's the point? Right.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Good times. If you want to get the links for this week's episode, they should be in your podcast app of choice, but you can also find them online at relay.fm slash penaddict slash 726. If you want to find us online, go to penaddict.com, spokedesign.com, and twitch.tv slash penaddict for Brad. You can go to theenthusiast.net, cortexbrad.com, and relay.fm for me. Thank you so much to Enigma Stationery and Kaleidocraft for their support of this week's episode. But most of all, thank you for listening. We'll be back next week. Until then, say goodbye, Brad. Goodbye, Brad.

[[Category:Podcast Transcripts]]
[[Category:The Pen Addict Podcast Transcript]]

Stationery Wiki:Current TPA podcast

2026-07-27T06:23:11Z

PencilBot: Updating current podcast layout pointer to episode 726

{{Infobox current podcast
| name = The Pen Addict
| number = 726
| title = Blue Refill Hotdog
| date = July 23rd, 2026
| hosts = [[Brad Dowdy]] 
[[Myke Hurley]]
| guests =
| link = [https://www.relay.fm/penaddict/726 Episode 726]
| audiolink = [https://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/mgln.ai/e/613/clrtpod.com/m/pscrb.fm/rss/p/traffic.libsyn.com/thepenaddict/The_Pen_Addict_726.mp3 Audio Episode 726]
| length = 61
}}

== Description ==

Top 10 Pen, Part Deux! Not really, but some slight adjustments were made, plus new Top 10 lists were considered. Brad also has the new LAMY Safaris in hand, and Kaweco is getting prepped for a big Summer.

The Pen Addict 726

2026-07-27T06:23:01Z

PencilBot: Automated layout generation from RelayFM metadata for episode 726

{{Infobox podcast
| name = The Pen Addict
| number = 726
| title = Blue Refill Hotdog
| date = July 23rd, 2026
| hosts = [[Brad Dowdy]] 
[[Myke Hurley]]
| guests =
| link = [https://www.relay.fm/penaddict/726 Episode 726]
| audiolink = [https://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/mgln.ai/e/613/clrtpod.com/m/pscrb.fm/rss/p/traffic.libsyn.com/thepenaddict/The_Pen_Addict_726.mp3 Audio Episode 726]
| length = 61
}}

== Description ==

Top 10 Pen, Part Deux! Not really, but some slight adjustments were made, plus new Top 10 lists were considered. Brad also has the new LAMY Safaris in hand, and Kaweco is getting prepped for a big Summer. <ref>Description taken from the official Pen Addict podcast page https://www.relay.fm/penaddict/726</ref>

== Further Information ==

== Links & Show Notes ==

* [https://stationeryfestival.com/ Stationery Fest]
* [https://www.spinthecompass.com/blog/if-i-can-only-keep-10-pens If I Can Only Keep 10 Pens — Spin the Compass]
* [https://kaleidocraftprints.com/products/washi-wallet-2?_pos=1&_sid=ff07172ce&_ss=r Washi Wallet: Portable Washi Tape Holder & Organizer – Kaleidocraft Prints]
* [https://www.instagram.com/p/DbEnOBFvza7/ Breakroom Chronicles – Instagram]
* [https://www.thejournalshop.com/products/uni-ball-one-p-zento-refill-set-g-irogami Uni-ball One P + ZENTO Refill Set — G Irogami Limited Edition]
* [https://www.penchalet.com/fine_pens/fountain_pens/lamy_special_edition_safari_fountain_pens.html Lamy Special Edition Safari Fountain Pens – Pen Chalet]
* [https://www.enigmastationery.com/product/a-bizness-day-planner-sticker-sheet/WP6K7DAREPZBZGQE7QUSZJF5?cs=true&cst=popular A Bizness Day Planner Sticker Sheet | Enigma Stationery]
* [https://www.enigmastationery.com/shop/robot-dance-battle/H7KUOULT5RISP5TRXEYXURYT Robot Dance Battle | Enigma Stationery]
* [https://www.enigmastationery.com/s/search?q=zento Zento | Enigma Stationery]
* [https://www.kaweco-pen.com/en/Series/LUNAR-SPORT/ ⁣Lunar Sport – Kaweco]
* [https://www.kaweco-pen.com/en/Kaweco-PERKEO-Fountain-Pen-Iridescent-Pearl/99000148/ Kaweco Perkeo Fountain Pen Iridescent Pearl – Kaweco]
* [https://www.kaweco-pen.com/en/Kaweco-COLLECTION-Fountain-Pen-Marble-Ocean/99000152/ ⁣Collection Fountain Marble Ocean – Kaweco]
* [https://www.stiloestile.com/en/fountain-pens/special-limited-edition/kaweco-sport-collection-fountain-pen-marble-ocean-2026-limited-edition Kaweco Sport Collection Marble Ocean | Stilo&Stile]
* [https://www.instagram.com/p/DbBNYxhjCLY/ Pilot Metropolitan Limited Edition – Instagram]
* [https://www.penaddict.com/blog/2026/7/20/dominant-industry-keyno-staytionery-fountain-pen-review Dominant Industry Keyno Stay.tionery Fountain Pen Review — The Pen Addict]

==References and Notes==

{{Reflist}}

[[Category:Podcast Episodes]]
[[Category:The Pen Addict Podcast]]

The Pen Addict 725/transcript

2026-07-21T05:12:36Z

PencilBot: Initial transcript automated upload

{{Infobox podcast transcript
| name = The Pen Addict
| number = 725
| title = I Will Admit When I'm Wrong But I'm Not
| date = July 16th, 2026
| hosts = [[Brad Dowdy]] 
[[Myke Hurley]]
| guests =
| link = [https://www.relay.fm/penaddict/725 Episode 725]
| audiolink = [https://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/mgln.ai/e/613/clrtpod.com/m/pscrb.fm/rss/p/traffic.libsyn.com/thepenaddict/The_Pen_Addict_725.mp3 Audio Episode 725]
| length = 67
}}

== The Pen Addict Podcast ==

'''Unknown Speaker:''' From Relay, this is The Pen Addict, episode 725. This show is brought to you by Squarespace and Pen Chalet. My name is Myke Hurley. I'm joined by Brad Dowdy. Hi, Brad. What's up, Myke Hurley? I have no idea what's going on. I literally don't know why I'm laughing. I don't know. Okay. Like, I couldn't even get through the intro. I'm just happy. I don't know. I did kind of, like, slow down in today's intro because I was transported back to a conversation I had with my barber on Tuesday. I got my fresh stationery fest cut. Yeah, I gotta do that. That's on my list. Yeah. We're looking all good from our stationery fest, unbelievably. And what is it? Because I'm thinking about when I'm leaving. It's two weeks. Yeah, it's two weeks. Two weeks from today. From the day this podcast goes out on a Thursday. The show starts on a Thursday. But we're both, we're gonna both be in town early. We hope to see you at New York Stationery Fest. We are gonna be there. We're gonna be doing stuff. That will be announced shortly, probably. Yeah. So you'll be able to come see us doing some kind of live panatic-y kind of things, I would say. Yeah. Live conversations. But we're also gonna be hanging out at New York Stationery Fest in Brooklyn from July 30th to August 1st. So I was getting my hair cut, just talking to my barber. I've known this guy for, like, 10 years now. He's a friend more than just someone who cuts my hair. And he said, you still doing that pan one?

'''Unknown Speaker:''' I don't know, yeah, man. Are you still that guy? It's like, yeah. It's like 700 episodes now. He's like, wow, there's not much to talk about every week. And, like, you wouldn't even believe it.

'''Unknown Speaker:''' That's the funniest thing is, like, everyone, like, all the years we've been doing this, if people are still, like, discovering it, they always have the, is there really that much to talk about? And I had the same question when we started, right? Yeah. You know, that's one of my famous replies was, is, you know, I think we have about 10 episodes. Like, I could probably figure out about 10 episodes. The great thing, Brad, is that the pans just keep coming, you know? They don't actually stop. They just keep happening. Who knew? Who knew? And it's like... Sometimes, Brad, they have an interesting color and shape.

== Uniball Pens ==

'''Unknown Speaker:''' I had to do it to him, Myke. Like, there's no way I wasn't gonna do this. And we're talking about the Uniball and not. I keep calling it a collaboration, even though I know it's an in-house thing, as you learned me. Have you not lived that one down yet? I feel okay about that one. I just missed it. Like, I admit my mistakes. Like, we're gonna talk about that here in a minute. And we have another follow-up, which I don't think it was a mistake. But still, we're gonna... Like, yeah, I'll admit my mistakes. I don't know. I just... Can we just run that one back? I admit my mistakes. I will admit my mistakes. We have some follow-up here where someone says I made a mistake. I didn't make a mistake. I'm not sure, Brad. I think that's an accurate statement. I feel like that's an accurate statement. But I like... I'll admit when I'm wrong, I'm just not wrong very much, Myke.

'''Unknown Speaker:''' I'll admit when I'm wrong, I just haven't had to do it. But the whole and not thing is still... I think it's one of those things where you make a mistake, like, on the initial, and then it's really difficult to get out of that. Yes. Like, routine, right? Yes. Like, that's happened to all of us in different types of things. And this happened to be a product thing that I'm totally misunderstood. And it's hard to get it out of my head that this is not an exterior collaboration. It's an interior. It's an in-house. It's a fashion brand, if you will. It's Uniball's fashion brand, is what I'm going to call it. So the and not pin, it's this carabiner-style lanyard type of pin, which we referred to a bunch last week, you know, when Myke was being right and I was being incorrect, which I'm fine to admit I was incorrect on that one, Myke. And also, before you say what you did to it, also I saw you had another Instagram post where you said that your family were grabbing the pin, like they were interested in it. So seriously, it was that day I had a lot of work to do, right? So after the podcast last week, I just took the pin and I clipped it to the button on my shirt. You know, it's like a button-up shirt. So I just kind of clip. It was a bad place to clip it, but that's all I had to clip it. I wanted it on my shirt and see how it went. So I went into like the shipping department. You know, I had Peninnoc stuff to ship. I had spoke products to ship. And if I needed to make a note, I just reached up and grabbed that damn pin. And I was like, I'm kind of glad it's here right now. And then I went back into the house.

== Check Signing ==

'''Unknown Speaker:''' And my wife needed me to like sign a check. She's like, where's your pin? And I'm like, bam. That's like, right. And she's like, because she saw me carrying it. And she came over and had me like endorse a check. And then later, my daughter came around. She's like, can I borrow that pin? Because they saw me just carrying it around. I was like, okay, I guess Uniball has a winner on their hand. I mean, neither one of them asked how much it was. So that's a problem, right? It's a $35 hot dog pin. So let's be clear on that part of it. But it was useful, right? And that's a big compliment to any product that you find it to be useful. So I'm going to bring this to Stationery Fest with me. I don't know if we'll have like lanyards. I'm going to guess I'm going to have like lanyards. But if not, I'll just clip it to something and I'll have it with me. And just see how I'll give it the big travel run, right? Like, you know, it's not something I'm going to be wearing through the airport. But at Stationery Fest, you know, it'll be nice to have handy. And because I'll have a notebook there to like take notes and I'll have plenty of other pens. Yeah. And but this one, it's just easy to reach up and grab the pen and jot your little note with a beautiful Jetstream 0.5 millimeter refill. And then just, yeah, just go to town. I might actually, now that I'm thinking about it, I might actually switch the refill around from black to blue. Because I love blue ballpoints. Blue ballpoints are my favorite. So see. But yeah. So then what I had to do to them, Myke, was like I had to put the mustard stripe on it, right? Like it was, there was no way that wasn't going to happen. And I have Uniball's Posca. I'm sure they're very thrilled that I used a Posca marker, which is one of their big, they are huge. Oh, you kept it in-house. I didn't know you kept it in-house. Yeah, I kept it in-house. Because that marker is perfect for this. It's almost like a paint type acrylic marker. Right. Right. So I put the hot dog, put the mustard stripe on it. And it kind of, it's even better. Like, I feel, I look at it, I'm like, nailed it. And like, yeah, we're good to go. So yeah, I keep carrying this pin around. I don't get it. It's horribly priced, but it's useful. And that's pretty high price, honestly. All right, we've got some follow-up from Julie about Commonplace Book. Yes, this is really great feedback. Julie says, the way you described Commonplace Notebooks in the recent episode of the podcast as an everything notebook. Let me stop you. You is me. Yeah, I know. Okay, I know you know, but I'm letting listeners know. She's talking to Brad directly. The saying is not at all my understanding of it. I have for years had an everything notebook going, and it is not a commonplace book. I have looked at starting a commonplace book, but it's not for me. The way I understand it, the commonplace book has ideas and quotes that come from outside of yourself or from other people. So it could be recipes you find or study notes for a special interest or quotes from others that you find inspiring or thought-provoking. It can be a really good study aid while you are studying a subject. But my everything notebook is mostly filled with my thoughts, including on pens and paper. Gratitude and reflections. In between these things, I may include a poem or a quote from a book, which I would consider a commonplace notebook kind of thing. But my everything notebook has so much more of me in it than a commonplace notebook has or should have. Yeah, this was really good detail to add when you're thinking about commonplace notebook. And I didn't think of it this way as the commonplace notebook should contain, if you're following like the strict instructions or the details definition of a commonplace book, it should come from outside of yourself. Bullet journal instead of Bujo, you know? Right, right. If we're really being systematized. Yeah. But to Julie's point, I feel like she's agreeing with me while disagreeing with me. I don't call mine a commonplace notebook for these reasons, right? I call it an everything notebook. I'm not saying this is my commonplace notebook, really. That's not how I'm trying to define it. I don't keep a commonplace notebook, right? Okay. I keep more of a notebook that anything can go in. And maybe it has some commonplace bits in it, like Julie's saying may include poems or quote from a book, which would consider a commonplace thing. So, but I think the point here I thought was good is that the commonplace book should come from outside of you. Yep. Where everything else is going to be like maybe more personal into that diary journal type of situation, which is definitely not what a commonplace book is for. So, I thought that was a good context to have on this. So, yeah. Great email from Julie. What Julie is saying is more what I want. So, my kind of- Do you want the definition of a commonplace book? Is that what you're wanting? Well, here's what I'll say. I mean, I don't think you can be as strict as the- So, like an everything notebook with the way that Julie described it is like it's your stuff and also some influences from outside. Where what I'm looking to do is influences outside plus my own thoughts. Right? Like I don't- I think it would be incredibly difficult to be like, I'm just going to write this quote down. I'm not going to give any context for why this is important to me or interesting to me, you know? But no, I want something which is more- I want to pay attention to and take note of things that I come across that are interesting to me. And I don't want to do it on one specific thing either. It's just like everything.

'''Unknown Speaker:''' But I will want to add in some of my own context as well. I think that would fall under like the commonplace definition, right? I think it would have to- You've brought it in- Yeah. Yeah. You've brought it in externally and here's what I think about this. Yeah. I think that's fair as opposed to, dear diary, my day sucked, right? Yeah. So, you know, that type of thing. So, yeah. I think you fall into like the pretty classic style of commonplace definition. So, but yeah. It's literally just use your stuff and however you want to use it and you don't have to be bound by, you know, strict definitions. So, but yeah. Everyone should write all the things down. Possibly with a new Lamy Safari, Michael Hurley. What are we doing? There's a new Lamy Safari? No, no, no, no. Wow. There's two. There's two? Or eight. If you count the ballpoint, rollerball, and pencil. I don't know, man. How about eight new Lamy Safari? I haven't found the exact reason we're going with Meteorite and Meteora. Like I don't have like the branding, you know, literature on why this is the names. The names are cool. Like I get it. Is this one of these things again where one store has it before Lamy's posted about it? Not much. This was like a secret drop and everyone kind of launched it at the same time. Well, not exactly. It was like this was a little bit different in that 50% of the stores launched it already. And then when I was bouncing around trying to find links, I was like, not everyone has this live yet, but like random places do have it live. So what this is, is actually a very unique Safari. And of course I'm thrilled it exists, but I also at the same time as like, man, they're spending, they got a lot going, they got a lot of sailor activity going on here, underlying things. But this pin in the Safari style, so these are glossy Safaris. So there's one that's black, all black. And then there's one that's like a deep, dark purple. So that's the Meteora is the very dark purple. And then these names are just going to drive me crazy. Meteorite is the all black one. Yeah. And Meteora is the purpley one. The idea or what they've done different with these is take in like half the barrel and put a pattern on them. Like a, um, I, when I first saw it, I thought it was like a guilloche type of pattern, right? Just that really subtle, like, um, basket weave type of pattern. Yeah. Some people have called it knurling because it kind of goes down into the grip section. It really wouldn't feel like knurling. It'll have a texture, right? But I wouldn't call it like a traditional knurl type of situation. But hallelujah, like do something different. And even though it's like your same old, you know, okay, it's a black Lamy Safari and blacked out trim and, you know, a purple Safari that I said, well, you know, why don't they just put out dark lilac number three ink? Because it's the same purple that they've been doing for a while, but they did something extra. And I at least appreciate that, right? Um, it still doesn't excuse them from the volume and the pace that they're on this year with their releases. Like the disco and rollerball were so good, but it's like, they didn't even have time to breathe. And then right before that was the neon yellow and neon pink is like these products don't have time to breathe before they're launching these new ones. So it's like, they're resetting the expectation of the customer by just dumping product. And this is, this didn't start this year. Like just to be clear, this started, um, like, uh, one to two years ago where they just were just popping things out. It's like, this should have been like the main special edition this year because they did something different other than color. They did texture, right? They did pattern. So individually, I love these pens. Like, of course I absolutely love these, but it's like, I don't even have my, um, so I bought the disco and the rollerball all stars. I haven't even inked that inked up that one yet. Right. And now there's this one. So it's kind of crazy to me, just the volume. It's like, we'll see. I don't, you know, who knows? Like I, I'm done giving them a pass for like the Mitsubishi transition. I think that's about time's up on that maybe at this year, but this is a lot, like this is a serious volume issue. And I don't, I don't know. Like I, I, it's like, I love to see it because this is my favorite pen and okay. Texture. Like that's a cool addition. Like they've never done that before. I'm like, yeah, this is fantastic, but man, it's a lot. It's just, it's maybe we're boarding on too much. And, um, the other issue is that they're just banger after banger. Like I want them all, but like, I can't use all these pens, right? Like I said, I haven't even inked up the, uh, the disco that I kept the green and pink all star. I haven't even inked it up. It's literally sitting on my desk ready to get used. And I was like, well, here comes two, two more. So, and again, like I mentioned, it's also, this is the full lineup. This is a full lineup product, ballpoint, pencil, and rollerball. So it's a lot. I also love it. What do you, just as a product and what they did to the pen with the texture, what do you think about the product? I think it's an interesting thing to try. I wonder, you know, if people find anything useful to it other than just look like, I wonder if it does actually have some kind of benefit, like grip, you know? It doesn't appear like it. No, I'm not really sure that it, how much of a difference that would make anyway. Yeah. Um, I appreciate them. I appreciate them doing something, you know, like it's like an interesting thing to do. Uh, in general, I don't have a problem with the amount of special editions that they're doing right now because it's kind of like a supply to demand thing. If they can keep doing them as long as people keep buying them, because if people keep buying them, they want them. It's like as simple as that, right? And I think that some brands have done this and they flew too close to the sun and then you see them kind of pull back. You know, I think like a Twisby, they don't do as many as they used to. Like, I feel like we were talking about new Twisbys all the time. Yeah. And that was just last year. Yeah. And so my expectation would be maybe Twisby went a little too ham on that one, but Lamy seemed to be able to do it. And I think it's because they have such a broad and deep distribution method. I agree. That like they can, they can sell online and what they don't sell online, they'll put in shops. Yep. Right. And so I just don't think it's an issue for them to flood the zone. Yeah, I agree because the meteorite, the all black, you put that in a shop, that's going to be your number one seller. Yeah, it's going to fly off the shelves. In the building, that will be your number one product. Yep. And because they are also the same price. These are not premiumly priced, right? They're the same price as like your red Safari or whatever, you know, or within a couple bucks. Like it's, it's not, they're not charging like $38 for this one, you know, where the normal, where it's sitting next to a red Safari. That's, you know, 24. They're charging the same, same price. So it's, it's going to absolutely crush in their brick and mortar type of boutiques. Um, yeah. And, you know, I, who knows? Like, yeah, it's interesting. Like they're such an interesting company. I think that's why I'm so fascinated with them. And this was even before the Mitsubishi acquisition. And now I just find them even more interesting in like how they, what their decision making process is like. Cause this is, it's, it's a lot, man. It's a lot. All right. This episode is brought to you by our friends over at Squarespace, the all in one website platform that is designed to help you stand out and succeed online. Whether you're just getting started or scaling a business, Squarespace will give you everything that you need to claim your domain, showcase your offerings of a professional website, grow your brand and get paid all in one place. With Squarespace, it's super easy to get started. You really have full control of what you want your website to look and feel like. And they give you all of the tools that you need to some really intuitive interfaces. And you can get to choose the way that you want to build your site. So you can make the most of their blueprint AI system. This is a website builder that lets you quickly and easily build a site bespoke to your business by inputting some information about your industry and goals. And it will help create the site for you. But you can use, and what I have always used and loved is Squarespace is professionally designed award-winning templates as a place to start. And then you can build out from there, change the layouts, change the colors, change the fonts. However you get started, you'll have beautiful design options with no experience required. And then when you have your site set up, you can get discovered fast of a suite of integrated SEO tools. Because why build this beautiful website if nobody's ever going to see it? So every Squarespace website is optimized to be indexed with method descriptions, an auto-generated sitemap, and more, so people can find your site through search engine results. Head to squarespace.com slash penaddict, and you can sign up for a free trial today. When you're ready to launch, use the offer code penaddict to save 10% of your first purchase of a website or domain. That is squarespace.com slash penaddict with the offer code penaddict. You'll get 10% of your first purchase, and you'll be showing your support for the show. Our thanks to Squarespace for their support of this show and all of Relay. All right, Myke, we got our shout-out of the week. Shout-out of the week. Maurice Moves. I think I've shouted out Maurice Moves before. This is a YouTube channel I watch. He mostly does travel and EDC type of stuff. And he's recently done a couple of new videos. He's like a huge traveler system person, right? Right, right, right. Traveler's Notebooks and Lamy Safari. So it's like you're speaking my language here. That's his two favorite things in the world is Traveler's Notebooks and Lamy Safari. But recently he did a post where he built an all-yellow kit. And he always includes notebooks and pens and stationary items. So I'm always interested in what stationary he picks. He has pretty good taste as far as this stuff goes. And he did a lot of different types of building EDC kits recently, probably since I've last shouted him out, where he would be in Jakarta and build a kit. And then he'd be in Tokyo and build an EDC kit with a notebook, a pouch, and a pen, and other things. So really cool channel if you haven't followed him yet. He does really good videos. And they're always super well-produced. And they're very tight. They look beautiful. Like 10-minute videos. Yeah. It's like 10-minute videos. And he gets in and goes and just runs the whole time. It's great. He does a really good job. So big fan of his videos. So you know what else I'm a big fan of, Myke? Tell me all about it. And we haven't talked about it in a while. The new Field Notes Summer Edition, Palettas. This is one of those releases that moves the needle for me. So much so that I've resubscribed. Wow. Okay. Yeah. Because this is a three-pack, aka nine notebook. They've gone hard on this one. They've gone hard on this one. And I always appreciate that. So we'll have a link in the show notes so you can go learn about everything they're doing for this set. Palettas is essentially like a Mexican fruit popsicle. Just a classic, classic treat, sweet treat, especially in the summer. And there's a big, you know, Chicago Mexican population that has kept this going. And they tell the story of, you know, like one of the shops in the area. And it's just really, really cool to see. The video, obviously, we have always talked about their videos. Their videos are cool. I was watching them make the popsicles. They have this really sick freezing machine. I was like, how does this thing work? I want to know more about this freezing machine. But the real reason I subscribed is because normally if I find an edition I like, I'll just grab a pack, right? And I don't really need to subscribe because then like the last two packs didn't really do anything for me. One of them was, I don't know if it was called Penny, the last one. And then the previous one with the sideways ones, like those were fine, like whatever. So I like to pick and choose my own. But there was no wrong selection in pack A, pack B, pack C. Each of them are all, you know, fruit based. And have these cool color textures on the covers. They have a dot grid that's like a yellow dot grid, which is one of my favorite like grid or dot grid markings is having the yellow like they did drink local. That was one of my favorite ones because it was a yellow. It was a yellow graph paper. This is a yellow dot. And I just couldn't be more into this just from in the colorfulness, the style of the story, like all of it. Like I'm they just drew me right back in. Myke, I don't know what you think about these.

'''Unknown Speaker:''' I like some of the designs. I don't like all of the designs. I think there's a few of them that they look like something's wrong with the paper. True. Yep. You're not wrong. Which kind of turns me off a little bit. But the there are a few of them that just look amazing. Like the green one, the blue one, like all of the real all of the solid color ones. I love. Yes. The ones where it's mixed in. It's a bit more hit and miss for me. I agree. I totally agree. But they did such a good job that there's like one or two in each pack that is really good. You can't just pick one. They must have used an excellent camera to take these photos. Yeah. Yeah. Scanned, I guess. Well, I don't know how they did it. Probably. Probably. Yeah, I don't know. Yeah. Probably good camera. Yeah. They're really cool. So, you know what? I don't have any business getting like nine, nine new field notes and notebooks. So, you know, I don't know what I'll do with all these, but I just really, I don't know. This one kind of like checked all my boxes for, you know, wanting a product. Like, plus I haven't bought any in a while. It's been like several editions since I've bought any. So, and since I couldn't decide, it was easier to just, you know, if I'm going to get three packs, you might as well do the sub because it would be, you know, like 45 bucks if I was just going to buy one of each of the packs. They're like 14.95 each. Right. For a three pack of each. Well, the sub was like 120 for the year and you get all three. So, and then, then get everything else that comes with the next one. So, I don't know. Big fan. We hadn't talked about them in a while. And I think this one's going to do like super, super well. The one, for me, the one miss on this is that there isn't like a box.

== Packaging Designs ==

'''Unknown Speaker:''' What do you mean? Oh, oh, like a packaging? Yeah. Yeah. Like, so, yeah. Drink Local, the Crop Edition, they all came in like a box, a special box. Do you remember this? Yeah. So, like Drink Local had like the six pack holder. Yeah. Like, like a little cardboard boxy type of thing. I think this is probably because there's nine notebooks instead of like six plus something. Right. And the Drink Locals had coasters. This would be cool if they came in like the, like the popsicle packaging. Yeah. Just the clear cellophane with like a logo on it. That'd be sick. Yeah. That's the one miss for me. And this is it. Yeah. It hasn't got like a thing to it, you know? Yeah. Yeah. So, I'm looking forward to these. It's going to be hard to know which one to pick. I'm probably going to go into. Also, there is, I've missed this. There is something. There is a transparent backing card for each. Oh, let's see here. Which looks like the packaging. Yeah, yeah, yeah. There we go. A Paletta. That looks nice. That's nice. I like that. I like that. So, yeah, that's like the classic popsicle logo. Like, if you're in the store, like, you go, you watch the video and you go in the store and it's like all postered up, right, from like all these like artwork and things like that. So, yeah, there you go. That's fun. The Paletta wrapper. That's fun. Perfect. Exactly what I was thinking. So, yeah. Good call. Good call out. Yeah. Looks great. So, I'm looking forward to getting these and maybe have to bring one to, they come in time to Stationery Fest. Yeah, I'd like to see it. Bring you one too. You can pick out a color. I'll bring you one because I'll have plenty. Just not green because that's going to be my first choice. Oh, the one thing I didn't mention, my favorite thing. No Tostecampo. The spelling, the use of language? Instead of field notes. Right. Yeah. That's like the whole thing. The whole thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I know, but I just wanted to mention. Okay. I wanted to mention. We did mention it. I just think it's, I love it. That's my favorite thing about it. Like, I think that is like, that's really awesome. Like, really great. And so, I wanted to just shout that out. Just be like, I just think that looks really fun. And so, yeah, that was something they didn't need to do for this edition. I feel like, but I'm pleased that they did. Yeah. They do a good job with that level of like decision making. Yeah. To just go all in on the details. Yeah. So, yeah. Really good. Really good. So, yeah. Looking forward to it.

'''Unknown Speaker:''' Am I looking forward to our assignment for this week, Myke? You made a promise. And we're delivering. Right.

== 10 Pin Challenge ==

'''Unknown Speaker:''' I made a promise that we would participate in the 10 pin challenge that's going around the stationary internet. And with the premise being to, oh, this is on Inky Imaginings. This is kind of the first, this is kind of the inspiration post. The title of the post is, if I could only keep 10 fountain pens. And I think this is really a fun exercise for someone like myself or you who has way more than 10 fountain pens. Looking at Inky Imaginings, they had around 76 pens. I probably have around double that at a minimum. So, I was like, could I do this? You know, my concept in my head was like, this is going to be pretty tough. Like, I could choose what I said last week. It's a lot easier for me to decide on two pens and get rid of everything else than it is 10 pens.

'''Unknown Speaker:''' And I stand by that because you can just have so many, so much more opportunity with 10 pens that it gets actually harder to fit 10 pens in there, where two, you have so restricted to it. I just kind of went for it and moved on. Right? 10? That's a challenge. So, I tasked you and I tasked me over the last week to come up with our list of 10 pens. So, we're going to go through it today. Right? So, just, I'll let you say how you put yours together. But mine was, I wanted to do it as authentic as possible. So, I just went from memory without looking first and said, out of the pens that I own, I just wrote them down without looking and going through like the pen drawers that I have to see. And I came up with like seven or eight, like pretty good. Like, I felt pretty good. And then like the bottom part of that list was like crazy, crazy tough. So, how did you come about your list? I did my first five just off the hip. Yep. And then the next five, I had to refer to a note that I keep. Totally. That was how it went from it. We're like, the first five is like, yep, no problem. And this is what we were talking about. You just mentioned it now. We were talking about it last week too, of like, a more restricted list is easier. Past that five, I had to really think about what I wanted to include and why I would include it. And there was one on here that I will get to where I had forgotten how much I love it. So, it's in the top ten. That's why this was a good exercise. Yeah. Right? Because of that exact reason. And like you, I think I hit the wall at six. Maybe five, maybe six. It was like really, really, really easy. And then I was like, oh, no. This is, now I have to like really decide because there's like 20 pins for five spots or something like that. And I don't know. Okay. So, how do you want to do this? Do you want me to just go list one, then you list one kind of thing? Yes. Okay. And again, these are minor in no particular order, but they are in the order that I thought about them. Right? Me too. I didn't re-rank this list. Yes. So, like. Yes. I agree with you. Yeah. So, like literally, probably like 90% of y'all could guess that I'm going to pick Pilot Murex first. Okay. Pilot Murex fine nib. If I was going to guess for you, I may have gone for like Custom 74, something like that, before I would have gone Murex. But I think that's a good call. Yeah. Yeah. What you got? You're not going to give anything on it. That's it. You're just going to say it. Okay. Well, I feel like that's the, my first two choices are pens I talk about constantly. Okay. So, you feel like you don't need to give much? The Murex is my one pen. It's my number one favorite pen. Yep. It's my, if I could only have one pen, like I'm going to pick that one. It has a fine nib. It's a steel nib. It's like, it was given to me. So, it's like, it was a gift. And then it ended up being like my favorite product. Yep. Just because of the style. It is a not for everybody pen. Yep. Because it is very thin and light, even though it's like an all metal pen, like it can kind of take a beating, but it, the grip is maybe a little bit slick, but the way it fits my hand and the way it writes is better than it. It's what I want. And just like a, just like a, a pure like technical product. It's like so good for how it's designed and then how it works on top of that. So, yeah, it's really good. Mine is the Platinum 3776 Galaxy Starlight. Yeah. If I could just have one pen, this pen has everything for me. Like. Including a story. Yeah. That's part of it. It has a big, totally. It has a big story. Like I bought it for myself for a reason, which is to celebrate relay turning five. I then took it home and the nib broke and it had to be sent to Japan and I lost access to the pen for months.

'''Unknown Speaker:''' Then that came back to me. I used it. It's beautiful. You've got a big chip out of it because I love it so much. I use it so much. Now it has a stacked nib from CY, which is just unbelievable. And so like that pen is just like, it ticks absolutely every box for me. So I adore it. Such a good one. That's a classic. I love it. All right. My second choice is a Lamy Safari. Specifically the white one with the red clip and I have a black extra fine nib on it. This is might be my most used pen. Like when I don't know what pen to ink up, I grab this one. Like this pen like travels with me. I'm obviously a huge Safari fan. And there's something about the feel of a Safari that takes me to places. Like it's a very personal thing, right? It just, even more so than the Murex. There's something about the feel of a Safari in my hand and using it that like I wish everyone had a stationary product. They felt that way about the way I feel about the Safari. I wish everyone had a product that makes them, you know, have this like really good sensation of like, man, this is really perfect for me and just like a beautiful object. And like it doesn't, you know, the Safaris are inexpensive. Like you don't have to have an expensive pen to have something that is just absolutely amazing for you. And this is my favorite, favorite Safari. This is why I buy all the Safaris, but I don't keep all the Safaris because I know which one's my favorite and no one has beaten this one in many years. Does that one have a red finial? Yes. I found one on eBay. It was kind of a special edition. Yeah. They just launched it like a one-off. Like I remember when I bought it, it was just like one fall, like in the fall, they just did, okay, we're going to do this white one with a red clip and a red finial. And that's just, it's just, there was no, it wasn't like a full release where they did rollerball, pencil, ballpoint type of thing. It was just like, yeah, we're going to do this one. I was like, that's mine. That's, that's the one I use the most. Like, it did come with a silver nib. I do have a black nib in mind. I prefer it with the black nib. Yeah. I found one to put in the show notes. Okay. And it's on eBay for $118. Really? Yeah. Wow. Yeah. Gold. Gold mine there. Yeah. This is just a, this is about three or four years old. Like I've never, like, I don't review many safaris these days. Cause right. It's just a color change. Maybe I'll review the, the new one with the, with the tactile stuff on it. But like, yeah, that's why I don't, you could probably, it's probably in my Instagram somewhere, but it would be hard to find. It's, it's my favorite. I carry it more than any pen that I own outside of maybe like a spoke roadie. Like this is, this is only a fountain pen list for the, for the record. So this is probably a bit late to be saying this, but I have linked, I'm putting links to all of these in the show notes. So spoilers, I guess. Okay. Spoilers. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I just figured people will want to see some of these pens. And so I'm finding, I'm finding. I guess I, but I guess I could have given you links or I can give you links. I don't want you to give me links. Cause then I would have, I have time while you're talking to Google. Okay. I already got all of my links. So true. True. True. True. Yeah. Myke and I did not share our list with each other ahead of time. So I don't have, I don't know what Myke's going to say. I know one pen Myke's going to say, uh, I could probably guess like, one or two more, but like, all right. Uh, you're up. You probably know what this one's going to be. Pilot M90. Yeah. That was the one that would, I would have guessed that first. On any given day, the, the, the galaxy starlight and 90 will swap. Right. Like they will move around and it's similar. Like, you know, mine was, was given to me by a friend. Uh, no, I bought one. I think, I don't remember, but I bought one from a friend. So I have two. Right. I have my first one. I got it so long ago. I don't remember how I came through it anymore. Yeah. Yeah. Um, but it is.

== Pilot Pen ==

'''Unknown Speaker:''' There is like, it is an S tier pen. If only no other pen was in that tier. Like I just, I, I cannot believe that pilot do not make a product like this today. Cause it is just as good as a pen. It is like the essence of a fountain pen. It is pure. It's the nib is the grip. It is as simple as that. And there is no change. I mean, it's what I like about the M90 over the Murex is the M90 is just plain. That's it. Like, and that's what I love about it. It is just the most simple. Right. And it's also tiny, which I do actually quite like about this pen. And I do post it. It's like the only pen. Yeah. I will post because it's so light that it doesn't make a difference. And it makes it really nice to hold. Like the M90 to me is like, it is just like the most special pen that you could want in your life. Yeah. I think that totally fair. Yeah. It's such a unique, fun pen. Um, and to your point, it's between the Murex and the M90, probably the M90 or, or the Mew, what it, what it originally came from. That should be the one that they should have an active product on over the Murex. Right. That should be like, they should remake that again. Yeah. Right. Over, over the, the M90 over the Murex for like a product that pilots should like reintroduce for sure. For sure. Um, all right. Next one. Uh, Namiki Yukari Milky Way. We've gone from like the least expensive pen to my most expensive pen. This is my Arushi lacquered, rotten, sparkly. This is my, uh, version of what your, your platinum 3776 is. You know, the, the, the show pen, the star, the, the beautiful artwork, just the, the stunning writing. Uh, it just has a stock fine nib, which I prefer. Uh, like I'm just keeping it that way. And it's just really, really an amazing, this is one of those, there's a couple of pens on here that I spent like a year or two deciding on. Right. Trying to, because it's a huge expense. Right. Um, and then I'm, I'm so happy that I did just like pony up and have my one, like, I don't need another one. Like, this is not, I don't know. All of a sudden need like the full collection of these. Like I have my one and I'm so happy with it. I'll never need another one again. And, you know, a pen of this like price point, but it's just such a joy to write with because it has a, um, it's a small pen. It's a number 10 size nib for pilot, which is on the smaller side, but it has like a brass undersleeve. So it has a, the proper amount of weight to it. So it's just a wonderful writing pen. I think it's kind of like, like if I could just pick one pen to write with all day long, it would probably be this one over like the Murex. It is such a stunner. Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's a good looking pen. It's, it's my kind of pen. It's got like rotten planets and like gold dust, like galaxy. I don't know. It's good. It's good. So I'm on the, uh, I'm looking this up and I'm on Iguana cell. Yeah. Looking at this product and I've got a picture of the box. It looks like it comes with a CD. Uh, mine didn't. Let me look at this picture. I saw your thing. This is a CD case. So they give you some like accompanying music. Oh, that's hilarious. Yeah. No, I, I got that box and I have the ink. It comes with like the classic Namiki ink pot, right? The really distinct looking ink pot. I don't recall ever seeing a CD. In case you need to update the driver for your fountain pen. I guess. I need to go, uh, like go into the box and see if it's like under like the padding. Cause this, this is like one of those products that comes in like a shoe box, you know, it's like a serious, serious box, um, that I'll never use again. So it's just stashed in the closet. Um, yeah, we need to, we need to find, we need to know if you've been missing out on like an auditory experience. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. All right. I'll do my, that's my homework is to find the Namiki CD. My number three is the sailor 1911 King of Pan Royal Tangerine. Yeah. Let's go. Goat. Yeah. It is a goat. It is a goat. Do you have just a stock nib on that one? Like just medium or broad? Uh, I don't remember whether it's medium or broad. Um, it's probably broad because why not for a pen like that? Yeah. Um, I love the King of Pen idea. I find it to be incredible and ridiculous. And this one is like a big, beautiful orange baton. Like this pen is huge and is loud. The Royal Tangerine color is one of the great acrylic colors. Like, yes, it is. I have the little one too. So I have this, the, the standard and the King of Pen and I just, I adore it. I bought this at one of the Atlanta pen shows and, uh, like I, I beeline for it. This time they had a blue and an orange at out at the same time. Do you remember that? Yes. And I, I knew I wanted this orange and, uh, went for it and been super happy with it. And I, I use this pen a lot, uh, cause it's just, it's just feels such a, like a pure experience. Yeah. That's a great one. That's a classic one. Um, and you're, you're not wrong about the color. One of the best just for like a basic solid color pen. It's just so good. It's really good. Say I honestly, sailor does that as does that better than anyone. You're solid acrylics. Just what do you think is, is probably like a very simple color. Like, I don't know something about the way they execute it. It, they, they look good.

'''Unknown Speaker:''' Speaking of King of Pens, Myke, we're going with my fourth choice. Sailor King of Pens, Sky. So this was my first King of Pens. This was an experience pen. Uh, you know, like it was a whole, you know, thinking about this for a long time to, to spend this amount of money at the time. Um, which is outrageous at the time. I think it was six, six, five, 80 or six 60. There was, there was a time where they were, they were more reasonable than they are now. So yeah. Um, just a fantastic, this is my favorite King of Pens shape. This is the Pro Gear shape. So Myke's is the 1911 shape with the rounded torpedo style. Mine is the flat ends of the Pro Gear style. And, you know, I remember writing this review that you're going to have linked in the show notes saying like, there's no way I could recommend anyone ever buy this pen. Right. But when you use it, it's either going to just be like fascinating to use for you or just going to like, yeah, I don't get it. And like, that's totally fair. This is not a pen for everybody. Um, which is, makes it great to be on this list because it's a pen for me and it's just a fun color. It's a fun story about getting this one. And I've had several other King of Pens over the years. This is the one I always go back to. It's my favorite.

== Nib Design ==

'''Unknown Speaker:''' Yes. So that was the one. That was the one that I uncapped in Atlanta and burst out laughing. Yeah. Because it's ridiculous. Just the nib. Just the nib. I'm keeping the sailor train going with my number four, which is the Sailor Pro Gear Japan Blue fountain pen. Oh, that's so good. I forgot about that one. Yeah. This is an old timer. Every time I think about that one. From Wancho, they still sell it. Yeah. Yeah. This is the hammered, hammered steel. Yeah. Steel. Yeah. This one's so good because it's so different for Sailor. Yeah. And I actually don't know why they didn't do a little bit more of this because they executed this one super well, right? It's such a weird pen too because it is the kind of size of a regular Pro Gear, but it uses the nib of a slim. Because I think it is essentially a slim, but they have to wrap the metal around the body, which makes it kind of like the size of a Pro Gear. But then the cap has no clip for this reason too. So just like the profile of the pen is very different. And it actually ends up being a little longer than even the regular Pro Gear. It's like all around a strange construction, you know, like it's like abnormal, but it just feels so good to hold. Like the weight is excellent. It is a special, special pen. It feels like something special too when you use it. It's also, I think the cap is friction fit as well. Yeah. Very interesting pen. A lot of times when Sailor experiments with shapes, they kind of don't really nail it, but they totally nailed this one. Yeah. Right. Like this one came out like super, super good. I love that pen. Yeah. All right. Next up, we're in round five here. I have a Nakaya appearance, Myke. Nakaya. Oh, wow. I have a surname I haven't heard in a long time. Yep. Yep. Nakaya, portable writer, Aotamanuri with a fine cursive italic nib. This is actually, so we're five into this. This is the first one that I have that has a modified nib. So there's, we'll go over this at the end. There's a couple of themes in my list that I'm finding. Did you say this is the Aotamanuri? Yes. So I have a review of this one on the blog. That's what I found. It's black, black with a green trim. The kind of green one. Yeah. Yeah. This one, this was my first Nakaya. This is the one that took me, I wrote the whole story in the review about, it probably took me about two years to come to a decision on this pen. Wow. That review's from 2015. Yep. Wow. Wow. That's crazy. Wow. This pen holds up like over time. It is. Again, I said this about a lot of these pens. It's just such an enjoyable writing experience to hold. The Nakayas are so different in the feel of any other pen on this list. Yeah. And that they're airy. Like they don't look like they would be, but you pick them up and they're very like a featherweight type of pen based on how they're made with the ebonite and the Arushi coating. And then just the level of craftsmanship, like nothing about this pen screams, look at me. Right. But then you pick it up and it just kind of like, this is different. Right. It's a very different experience to use in Nakaya, especially like a very simple one like this one. And also looking at the, you know, the color and design of this one, you kind of get lost in it. Yeah. Which is really special because you can kind of, it looks like there's a depth to it, which is made up by the fact that it's got this kind of like green, just like in there. It's really good. Yep. So that's, yeah, that's definitely my favorite, favorite Nakaya. My first and favorite, kind of, it's interesting now that I think about it, the King of Pen, I've had a lot of King of Pens. My favorite is still the first one that I bought. I've had several Nakayas. My favorite is still the first one that I bought, which is, now that I'm saying it, all this out loud. It's kind of interesting. I'm sure there's something about first loves in there, but. Probably. I'm going to draw the line. Oh, speaking of which, that's another. Oh man. I'm making a list of what I didn't put on there. That's. Did you just put the pink love down? Yeah. That's on the, that's on the didn't make it list. Spoilers. I really struggled. It didn't make it, but I was like, I looked at that many times before. Yeah. Yeah. Because that was one of those pens that I went on like a great hunt for over time. Yeah. It's not the right size. We'll get to, well, next week we're going to cover some of the ones that didn't make it, but like that's on the list for sure. All right. My number five, the Canalea Haleakala Silhouette. Yeah. Oh man. I struggled. I struggled. Yeah. Speaking of the list. This, this. We're getting to the tough zone here. Like I, you know, I obviously I've spoken many times about my love of Canalea pens, but this one, the yellow, gray and black with the rose gold medallion, like it is just mesmerizing. Um, I adore this pen. I, I've always loved this design. Um, this also has two stories to it. One, this was the one that, um, I bought at DC pen show and the model I picked out was the model that had been photographed for Pen World magazine. Oh, I forgot about that. That's right. So just a good eye. The other, um, my wife and I, we went on our honeymoon to Maui and we stayed kind of like in the shade of Haleakala. So it has that like special thing, uh, for me too. Um, yeah, I, I adore it. I love Canalea pens and I don't know if they, they do a lot of incredible work, right? We talk about it every few months for me. I'm not sure the level top this one, like for what, how much I love this design. It is an all timer. Yeah. And the best pens have stories too, right? Exactly. This one's loaded with loaded with story, which is, is great. Yep. All right. Uh, number six for me, we're going to write back. Before you go to number six, why don't we, why don't we tell people we didn't go buy some pens? Oh yeah. Good call. This episode is brought to you by our friends over at Pen Chalet who sell authentic, amazing roller balls and fountain pens, ballpoints, mechanical pencils, and so much more. They have your favorite brands and they're adding new products all the time. So you can always find new products from new brands and, uh, new products from existing brands at the best prices around. Every couple of weeks, you're going to see new sales. You're going to see new stuff being added to Pen Chalets. You can always check back in. They do fast and reliable customer service. And they also, as well as pens, they have accessories. They have inks, they have pen holders, they have pen cases, and so much more. So Pen Chalet do international shipping with the best shipping rates they can find. And they do free shipping on orders over a hundred dollars in the U S Pen Chalet has low prices on high quality pens and offers a 100% satisfaction guarantee. You can go to penchalet.com slash pen addict. That's P E N C H A L E T.com slash pen addict. And that is where you can get a code to save 10% on anything over at Pen Chalet. Brad, what on Pen Chalet is, uh, is interesting to you right now. I think the biggest thing for everyone to check out is the, uh, Kuyoku Haku cases. Okay. So I started seeing these coming out last year, started making, uh, the rounds at pen shows, this brand. And I ended up picking up one and I'm just kind of enamored with it. It's a Japanese fabric case with beautiful patterns and they have lots of different styles with them. So you can get like a three slot case. You can get a 10 pin case. I think there's a two, yeah, there's a four pin pouch, um, five slot cases. So lots of different, uh, layouts with really, really cool fabrics. So I love seeing these. I actually need to review mine because I am really enjoying it. Um, so much, so highly recommend, uh, those. Also, I don't think we talked about this. I'm looking, I've definitely seen it and mentioned it before, but, uh, the Diplomat Arrow Rome Flame fountain pens. I don't even know if I'm saying that right. Do you know what the word R-H-O-M-B means? Rome Flame. But it's a beautiful, uh, I don't know if that's the, um, if that's the geometric design on here, but it's a really unique arrow and we love the arrow here as just a really fun, great pin. And this one has this unique gradient on there and this pattern. I don't know. It's really, really wild. Um, I'm trying to see it written down. Romb? Romb? Yeah. Romb. Romb. Yeah. So I don't know if that has to do with the pattern on there. I haven't learned about, uh, the bold geometric texture of the arrow romb and the remarkable hammer. Yeah. I thought that was going to give me something there, but it says it's a romb, a romb pattern. It's inspired by the form of a Zeppelin. Yeah. I mean, that's the classic arrow look is the Zeppelin look, but it's kind of, uh, this one has a little bit, it's a little bit more, uh, like a boxy shape. It's got some, I don't know. I like how it's laid out as opposed to like some of the, like the more traditional. It means a rhombohedral crystal. Okay. So yeah, it's like a pattern, right? Yeah. I guess like rhombus. Yeah. So it's like a square pattern. It's beautiful. It's, uh, I really, really like how this looks. And, you know, if you buy any pen or purchase, um, if you go over to the, um, the pen attic page. Oh, I just lost the link. There it is. Uh, you go over to the pen attic page, you get the free, uh, diplomat ink bottle. So the Keno stationary, Oh, Oh, one serenity, uh, fountain pen ink. You can add that. It looks like you can add that with, uh, with your purchase. You can get like a free bottle of diplomat ink, which is, I mean, excuse me, a dominant industry ink, um, which is just wonderful. Some of my favorite ink. Um, I bought this pen, the Keno stationary, Oh, one serenity fountain pen, which we talked about like a week or two ago. So, um, really enjoying that pen. They have those at, at penchalet.com. And if you want, uh, to get the ink, go over and check out the pen attic page and, uh, use, use our code to get this, uh, bottle of ink with your purchase. That is P E N C H A L E T.com slash pen addict. Our thanks to penchalet for the support of this show and relay. All right. I'm back to the Nakaya again, Myke. Number six, um, when you're doing this list, like you're thinking about this list, once you say one Nakaya, at least to me, you know, we're going right to another one. I got to have both of these because they're both very different. The Nakaya Piccolo and Kikyo blue. It's very different to the one I just mentioned, the portable in shape and size. It has a clip. It has an extra fine stock nib, and it's just a beautiful, solid color Nakaya, which I love. So what's the name of that one? And what blue? Kikyo K I K Y O. And it's a Piccolo P I C C O L O. Um, just a gorgeous, uh, deep blue. Very nice. So, yeah. All right. What you got? All right. So my next one for number six is the Platinum 3776. Nice love hand. Yeah. I had a 3776 challenge. I mean, I have two on my list. I know. I have a spoiler alert. I have zero, but I think it's like the first one off, which we'll talk about next week. We'll I'll save you. Um, I think my first off the list is going to be a 3776. So we'll, we'll hold that thought. I just, I love the color. Um, I love the rose gold and the purple. Uh, and I love that they were doing new things of this, right? Like they, they were trying some new stuff. Um, when this, when these ones were around, right? They're actually trying some colors and that was, I thought it was a really nice change. And I like the, the kind of the differences between the two of the 3776 is that I've got. Yes. And they went in with the rose gold on the Levant, like everything about that pen. They nailed. Yep. At the time. Like it was super unique. It was great. All right. Next pen is my most recent acquisition on this list, which I just bought last year's DC pen show, the pilot custom 845 in Vermillion. Um, surprise entrant, but I think it's a pen. I couldn't live without it's a bigger pilot, but it has this red Arushi finish and it has a fine nib stuck, fine nib. Um, it's just kind of a, this is, this is a writer's pen, right? This is a classic. This is a classic. Yeah. This is a do the work pen. Right. And, um, but something about it is, is just so cool that like it's, it's gotta be on the list. Like, I don't think I could leave this one off.

== Sailor Pro Gear ==

'''Unknown Speaker:''' All right. Speaking of that, actually, my next one perfectly comes, uh, along with this. It is the sailor pro gear in orange. Is this translucent? Nope. Solid. Nice. Okay. With the black finial. Yep. Yes. The classic. The classic. That is very similar to the Vermillion in classicness, right? Yes. You, you see it and you know that like, this is, this is of a time and it's of a quality and then it's just like, it's almost a standard, but it's got that unique flair, just like the Vermillion. But also it was my first pro gear, my first sailor. This pen meant a lot to me. Um, you know, I, I first chose one of the first Atlanta pen show. You showed me this and I was like, well, I have to get one of these. And I don't remember when it was that I acquired it. I don't think it was at that pen show. Um, but I was like, oh, this is special. Like, I like the way this looks. I like the way this feels. And at the time was like great value for money, you know? Yeah, exactly. I don't know that it is anymore. Uh, but I think it's just hard to tell, but I've got mine. I'm looking at it right here. This is just from the silver furniture to the black finials, the all orange body and cap. Like it is a classic. Classic. Um, I've gone with a classic pen for number eight, but a very rare and unique finish. So it's a pilot vanishing point is actually making my list, but it's the Energia model. My E N E R G I A orange. Uh, it's a Bungu box special edition. It's glorious. It's like a marbled orange. It's very loud in the best way possible. I feel like I had to have a vanishing point on this, this list because I love it. That pen so much and it's always a joy to use. This is my favorite one. I had a couple of choices here for vanishing point, but I think this one's really, really the standout here. So it has a fine nib, um, great retractable fountain pen, really unique special edition. Um, that kind of like screams Brad. Like this is, this is a very Brad pen. Uh, I have found a link on the pen addict where there is an image of this, but it is not about that. So you can just scroll right down to the bottom and you'll find it was going Kimberly posts about that. Yeah. There's only a hundred of those. Yeah. I think in the wild. So it's one of those. You can see it by scrolling to the very bottom. It was a Bungu box. Yeah. It's a Bungu box. They did two colors. They did silver trim and gold trim. And I have the silver trim one. I think they did like a hundred of each. Yeah. That's it. One, two. Yeah. It's the one kind of in the center. Fourth from the left. So we're on number eight now. Uh, that was number eight. Yeah. Mine is the Jonathan Brooks custom Arushi sailor pro gear. King of pen. Yep. I say absolutely sick. I cannot find any photos of this one. Uh, I've known I've taken them somewhere. I'll try and dig some out for later. Um, but there's, we all bought a king of pen at a really good price. I, it was just like a clear one with, with, uh, dark finials. You found it like it was, I don't remember where we got it from, but they were a good price. Yeah. And was it just me and you that did this? Uh, I didn't, I didn't get it. You, I think you're the only one that got it at Rushi. I think I did something else. Okay. So I then gave it to Jonathan Brooks and he heavily customized it and I didn't, I gave him no direction. I was like, do what you want. And he kind of Rushi lacquered it to like a translucent brown and then added this like gold honeycomb pattern all the way around. It's so good. It's a stunner. Um, so super, super good. All right. Number nine on my list is the sailor pro gear mini Mekon. It's the little short one in orange, another Bungu box special edition, which I didn't realize that I was doing that very repeatedly here. But what's unique about this one, I have a CY stack nib on this one that he made. Um, and it's kind of glorious. Like I wanted, not only do I love the, the small sailor pro gear minis, I also love the way this stack nib doesn't overwhelm a very, very small pen. And the main writing shape of the stack nib is a fine point. And then you can flip it over and get the wide width. It's everything that I would want in a stack nib in a pen that is just glorious. It's the, the tangerine edition of the mini Mekon. Mekon being tangerine, I believe in Japanese. So it was a really cool special edition. They did love it. I'm going to give you a Bungu box now too. This is the one that I mentioned that I added to my list and was very happy to do so. This is the Bungu box pro gear Ibisu. Oh yeah. Which is the gold and black, the gold body black cap. And the grip section is the metal grip section. Correct. And this also has another story. See, a lot of my pens have stories. So this was one that I bought from, I think it was a listener. Okay. And they were going to ship it to me in Las Vegas when we was there on vacation and it got lost. And then arrived at the hotel after I left and I had to work with the hotel to then get it shipped to me at home. Wow. So that pen nearly got lost to the world, but that is a amazing pen. By the way, for these two, I've put in, it's really hard to find Bungu box pens. Yeah. Yeah. They have a page called the history of Bungu box original fountain pen. So you can kind of scroll through and look, you have all of them on this list. So people can go and look through this. Actually, it's a fun thing to look through. I'm happy that they have this because they're so limited that they fall off the internet. But now they are keeping a history of their own, which I'm pleased about. I have history with that pen too. I am an owner of that pen. It's one of the few that we have duplicated. And that's the one that I have dropped on the floor. And given the metal section, it just darts right into the floor. And now it has a posting nib. Speaking of which, number 10 on my list. I almost forgot this when I first went through the nib. Excuse me. I did forget this. I had to go and went. This was my first one where I went, OMG. Why wasn't this like in the first two or three pens? I thought the Pilot 912 PO nib. And also this one has the Macchie artwork on the outside of it that we got from Myke Masayama's friend. This is like one of my favorite pens. Yeah. Like this didn't come up when I was thinking about the pens. And this is like one of my top, top few pens that I use. So that's 100% on the list for me. So that rounds out. That rounds out my 10. And then, man, the list next week is going to be interesting. The list of stuff I have. So what's your last one? My last one is the Bunglebox Pro Gear 4B. Oh, yeah. Jeez. What a good pen. So this is the pen where they, it's essentially clear, but with a pinstripe that runs around it. This pen is just another just killer. That's a stunner. Yeah. Also a metal grip. And it has a B. Although it's actually more like a wasp, but don't worry about it. Yeah. Because the ink was Bungu Box Blue Black. So 4Bs was the theme there, which was great. I love that theme. It's very, very good. Very, very good. This was a lot of fun. But next week, we need to talk about it. I want to go another hour. Yeah. We don't want to have it. But next week, we are going to touch on some pens that we love that did not make this list. Yeah. Because it got a bit brutal down there towards the end. I feel pretty good. Like about my list. I don't know that I would change anything, honestly. I feel good about what we'll say. I say that now, but I don't want to commit to it. Because I might change my mind as I go through everything. But I feel pretty good about it. Yeah. Yeah. If you want to find links to these pens, I've done my best. You can go to relay.fm slash penaddict slash 725, or you can find the links in your show notes as well. If you want to find Brad online, go to penaddict.com and spokedesign.com and twitch.tv slash penaddict. You can find me here at relay.fm, theenthusiast.net, and at cortexbrand.com. Thanks to Squarespace and Penn Chalet for the support of this week's episode. But most of all, thank you for listening. We'll be back next week. Until then, say goodbye, Brad. Bye, Brad.

[[Category:Podcast Transcripts]]
[[Category:The Pen Addict Podcast Transcript]]

Stationery Wiki:Current TPA podcast

2026-07-21T04:50:54Z

PencilBot: Updating current podcast layout pointer to episode 725

{{Infobox current podcast
| name = The Pen Addict
| number = 725
| title = I Will Admit When I'm Wrong But I'm Not
| date = July 16th, 2026
| hosts = [[Brad Dowdy]] 
[[Myke Hurley]]
| guests =
| link = [https://www.relay.fm/penaddict/725 Episode 725]
| audiolink = [https://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/mgln.ai/e/613/clrtpod.com/m/pscrb.fm/rss/p/traffic.libsyn.com/thepenaddict/The_Pen_Addict_725.mp3 Audio Episode 725]
| length = 67
}}

== Description ==

Brad and Myke took the 10 Fountain Pen Challenge this week, so tune in to hear what they would keep, and how difficult this proved to be! They also discuss ANOTHER LAMY Safari release, and stunning ne Field Notes.

The Pen Addict 725

2026-07-21T04:50:44Z

PencilBot: Automated layout generation from RelayFM metadata for episode 725

{{Infobox podcast
| name = The Pen Addict
| number = 725
| title = I Will Admit When I'm Wrong But I'm Not
| date = July 16th, 2026
| hosts = [[Brad Dowdy]] 
[[Myke Hurley]]
| guests =
| link = [https://www.relay.fm/penaddict/725 Episode 725]
| audiolink = [https://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/mgln.ai/e/613/clrtpod.com/m/pscrb.fm/rss/p/traffic.libsyn.com/thepenaddict/The_Pen_Addict_725.mp3 Audio Episode 725]
| length = 67
}}

== Description ==

Brad and Myke took the 10 Fountain Pen Challenge this week, so tune in to hear what they would keep, and how difficult this proved to be! They also discuss ANOTHER LAMY Safari release, and stunning ne Field Notes. <ref>Description taken from the official Pen Addict podcast page https://www.relay.fm/penaddict/725</ref>

== Further Information ==

== Links & Show Notes ==

* [https://stationeryfestival.com/ Stationery Fest]
* [https://www.instagram.com/p/Da2o-UyOR-i/ Brad's 🌭 – Instagram]
* [https://www.penchalet.com/fine_pens/fountain_pens/lamy_special_edition_safari_fountain_pens.html Lamy Meteorite and Meteora – Pen Chalet]
* [https://www.youtube.com/@MauriceMoves Maurice Moves - YouTube]
* [https://fieldnotesbrand.com/products/paletas Field Notes | Paletas]
* [https://inkyimaginings.com/2026/06/28/if-i-could-only-keep-10-fountain-pens/ If I Could Only Keep 10 Fountain Pens… – Inky Imaginings]
* [https://www.penaddict.com/blog/2013/1/28/my-fountain-pen-education-the-pilot-murex My Fountain Pen Education: The Pilot Murex — The Pen Addict]
* [http://www.gourmetpens.com/2021/08/platinum-3776-urushi-raden-galaxy.html Gourmet Pens: Platinum #3776 Urushi Raden Galaxy Starlight Fountain Pen]
* [https://tokyostationpens.wordpress.com/2021/01/24/the-anatomy-of-a-stacked-nib/ The Anatomy of a Stacked Nib – Tokyo Station Pens]
* [https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/174467860547 Lamy Safari White Red Clip Fountain Pen | eBay]
* [https://www.penaddict.com/blog/2013/1/30/my-fountain-pen-education-the-pilot-m90-limited-edition My Fountain Pen Education: The Pilot M90 Limited Edition — The Pen Addict]
* [https://www.iguanasell.co.uk/products/namiki-yukari-milky-way-fountain-pen-urushi-lacquer-gold-fn-20m-ram?srsltid=AfmBOorEee6OCZRKydZkGHZJ10bGEoJ324YUEZfHVf2jzCatRhh_eVw0 Namiki Yukari Milky Way]
* [https://fpquest.wordpress.com/2020/05/06/this-just-in-sailor-king-of-pen-royal-tangerine/ Sailor King of Pen Royal Tangerine | Fountain Pen Quest]
* [https://www.penaddict.com/blog/2020/10/5/sailor-pro-gear-king-of-pen-fountain-pen-review Sailor Pro Gear King of Pen Fountain Pen Review — The Pen Addict]
* [https://www.wancherpen.com/products/professional-gear-japan-blue?variant=29528392761388 Japan Blue Fountain Pen | Wancher]
* [https://www.penaddict.com/blog/2015/2/6/nakaya-portable-cigar-ao-tamenuri-fountain-pen-review Nakaya Portable Cigar Ao-tamenuri Fountain Pen Review — The Pen Addict]
* [https://kanileapenco.com/haleakala-silhouette-fountain-pen/ Haleakala Silhouette Fountain Pen - Kanilea Pen Co.]
* [https://www.penchalet.com/kyokuhaku/ Kyoku haku | Pen Chalet]
* [https://www.penchalet.com/pen_accessories/pen_carrying_cases/kyokuhaku/ Kyoku haku Pen Carrying Cases Accessories – Pen Chalet]
* [https://www.penchalet.com/fine_pens/fountain_pens/diplomat_aero_rhomb_flame_fountain_pens.html Diplomat Aero Rhomb Flame Fountain Pens – Pen Chalet]
* [https://www.nakaya.org/en/products/info/36512/ NAKAYA Cigar Piccolo Kikyo]
* [https://www.penchalet.com/blog/introducing-the-platinum-3776-nice-lavende-fountain-pen/?srsltid=AfmBOorLGyeKGUm9TXt0Nof0d2F6VofUW2VYW4fAlZPZQq2_LvC_o6o7 Platinum 3776 Nice Lavende - Pen Chalet]
* [https://www.stiloestile.com/en/fountain-pens/pilot-custom-845-urushi-fountain-pen-vermilion-red-ebonite Pilot Custom 845 Urushi Fountain Pen Vermilion Red Ebonite]
* [https://clickypost.com/blog/2014/8/7/sailor-pro-gear-colors-series-orange-m-nib Sailor Pro Gear - Orange — The Clicky Post]
* [https://www.penaddict.com/blog/2023/4/28/pilot-vanishing-pointcapless-fountain-pens-a-quick-comparison Pilot Vanishing Point/Capless Fountain Pens - A Quick Comparison — The Pen Addict]
* [https://bungubox.shop/pages/originalfountainpenhistory?srsltid=AfmBOoqFkt2-VmkzUx2dfee9eahMZ18YmV8Z0sJoM8YTGjqSplq5zTE7 History of BUNGUBOX Original Fountain Pen]
* [https://www.gentlemanstationer.com/blog/2020/7/15/pen-review-pilot-custom-heritage-912-with-po-nib Pen Review: Pilot Custom Heritage 912 with PO Nib — The Gentleman Stationer]

==References and Notes==

{{Reflist}}

[[Category:Podcast Episodes]]
[[Category:The Pen Addict Podcast]]

The Pen Addict 724/transcript

2026-07-10T03:28:48Z

PencilBot: Initial transcript automated upload

{{Infobox podcast transcript
| name = The Pen Addict
| number = 724
| title = Hotdog on a Ring
| date = July 9th, 2026
| hosts = [[Brad Dowdy]] 
[[Myke Hurley]]
| guests =
| link = [https://www.relay.fm/penaddict/724 Episode 724]
| audiolink = [https://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/mgln.ai/e/613/clrtpod.com/m/pscrb.fm/rss/p/traffic.libsyn.com/thepenaddict/The_Pen_Addict_724.mp3 Audio Episode 724]
| length = 65
}}

'''Myke Hurley:''' From Relay, this is The Pen Addict, episode 724. Today's show is brought to you by Squarespace and Enigma Stationery. My name is Myke Hurley. I'm joined by Brad Dowdy. Hi, Brad.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Hello, Myke Hurley. How are you doing today?

'''Myke Hurley:''' I'm good, man. I'm very good. I'm excited for today's show. There's a lot of stuff going on in today's show.

== Product Focus ==

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, very product-focused. I like talking about products, right? Even some that are not in hand yet, some that are freshly tested. So yeah, it's a very, very product-focused show. I was excited putting this together, honestly, because there's a lot of cool stuff to talk about. Should we get right into it? Yes. Let's do a follow-up product conversation. Last week, I talked about the Sailor K. Saraw, their erasable competitor to the Pilot Friction. And I got my review up on the blog. So I went through my initial thoughts on the podcast last week. And nothing really changed from that conversation. If you listened to last week's podcast, pretty much everything in that article was just an elaboration. On the points I was discussing during the podcast. One thing that we kind of landed on in the post-show last week is where this product sits in the hierarchy of the Plus companies, which we didn't mention during the show. And I tried to put that a little bit into the article. So Plus owns Sailor, the pen company. But Plus has also acquired Pentel. So we talked about how some of the shapes and designs of this are Pentel based on the K-Sara. The grip section is a Pentel Energel grip section. The refill is a Pentel Energel shape. Why didn't Plus release the K-Sara as a Pentel product? And that's kind of what we were discussing post-show last week. And I was really wracking my brain on that. And that seems like a better fit unless Sailor's standard pens are bigger in Japan than Pentel standard pens. I would find that hard to believe, quite honestly. Sailor's never had a home run standard pen like the Pentel has had an Energel. That's a home run product, right? Pentel's mechanical pencils are home run products. Like these are products that you just pick up and they're fantastic. Why wasn't the K-Sara under the Pentel brand, given that these are essentially the same company under the same umbrella, right? Obviously, they're operating separately, but there's clearly some cross-pollination with the parts of this pen. I don't know. It doesn't change the fact that it's not a good product. But I don't know. I would like Pentel to go up against Pilot in this as opposed to Sailor. It's very, very confusing.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' The long and the short of it is it's actually really bad. This is a bad writing experience, right? But I hope they stick with it. Like friction. Like the friction was not good when it started. And it's improved to where the friction is at the point where it's just a good pen, whether it erases or not, right? And that's always the caveat with erasable gel ink pens is it might erase, but it might not be enjoyable to actually write with, right? So you never get the chance to get to the erasing part because it's just a poor experience. That's where the case arise now. The friction, you can just use it as your gel ink pen, whether you need it to erase or not. It's just a good pen. So anyway, that's my follow-up on that.

'''Myke Hurley:''' My feeling on like, you know, why does it sit where it sits? I just bet this was being worked on by Sailor before the Pentel thing happened. And then the Sailor team just wouldn't let go of it. That's what I would assume happened. Probably. This feels like a corporate like team issue because it doesn't make any sense. This product doesn't look like a Sailor product. It doesn't act like a Sailor product. It doesn't make any sense to be a Sailor product. Yeah. Now Sailor does make sense. But like especially when they have Pentel sitting right there, you know?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yes. Sailor does make your standard on the shelf gel pens, right? They've never been good, but they exist, right? So there is a lineup of, you know, your $2 and $3 gel ink pens and some things like that. They've just never been, they've never been worth more than a quick peek at when the competition is just dunking on you left and right with their products, right? So yeah. But there was obviously at some point there had to be some cross-pollination because it's literally a Pentel part in this pen, which is funny. Instead of going all the way. So I did some more writing samples you can see in there. It's just super railroady. It's just a bad, bad experience and gunky and messy, unenjoyable pen. And, you know, that's just, that's just it. I just wait and we'll, we'll see. We'll see if they try to go. And I said all this, I didn't even get into the design. Like they, they really did a poor job with the eraser. I didn't even want to belabor that point. It was just like, well.

'''Myke Hurley:''' The pen is just ugly anyway. It just looks like a, it looks like a, like a knockoff Sharpie.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. It looks like a knockoff Sharpie. That's exactly what it looks like. So anyway, that's our follow-up. We said a lot of what we had to say. We did mention those little extra confusions. We were, we were thinking about last week, a post-show that I didn't get to. But anyway, do you think someday, Myke, we'll see the Kailer, Sailor K. Saraw in the 2026 or in the ISOT Awards winners category? Do you think the Sailor K. Saraw ever has a chance?

'''Myke Hurley:''' I'm going to be honest with you, Brad. I don't remember exactly what the ISOT Awards award specifically. Yeah. International stationery something, something.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Sure. Like I don't, I didn't even look. I just know, I just know the ISOT, the ISOT stationery awards. So sure. Yeah.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I mean, I think it's, I think it's possible, you know, anything's possible, Brad.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. Good for you. Good for you.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. You may be anything's possible because they do have, I'm wondering, I'm looking at this list here. We're going to go over a few of these products because I'm, of course, have a huge interest in this. I was trying to see if any of these products were like an update of like a classic product. And I'd say most of these are new. Most of these are newer. So the stationery of the year was announced by the ISOT organization, whatever that means. Roll your own acronym there, I guess. And so I've seen some, you know, Instagrams and some articles come out on the products. And I always like to take a look at the products. So they have basically a grand prize winner and then they have different like subcategories of small winners. So it is the spiral note basic from Morimont. So what this is, I think I got my first one, first samples of these from Morimont. It has to be two years ago when they were first coming to the American market. And what Morimont did was made like a school notebook with their high quality paper in it, right? It's just your regular metal spiral bound notebook that like some of them are like four and five dollars that contain like some of the best paper you'll ever use in your life. So it's... I'm still trying to figure out why they... This is a product I would pick to win. I'm surprised it won like looking at the rest of the like category winners here, like the specialty products. This is the most standard basic product. And I kind of love it.

'''Myke Hurley:''' And there's nothing. Like it does nothing for me. So I don't understand it because like...

'''Brad Dowdy:''' It's almost like a price point winner, right? This is like the best bang for your buck product. But there's... Yeah, it literally is basic. And the pictures that they use...

'''Myke Hurley:''' There's no innovation in this product. Not that there should have to be. But that's why I find it odd to win an award like this. Maybe I don't understand what the Stationery of the Year awards is like, you know. Okay. Yeah, that's a good way to put it. Four categories. Functionality, design, sustainability, and trend. Grand Prix and excellent award products. They're like one product from each of the... One product from those categories will be chosen as the Grand Prix winner. So, you know, it won probably one of the categories, right? And then they just thought it was the best of all of them.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, which is crazy. Like what would it be? This may... Sustainable? I don't know. It like checks all the boxes for functionality, sustainable design, and trend. Yeah.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Look, this is like a 10 out of 10 notebook. I just... It's a little bit odd. I'm still like scratching my head. It's like I love this notebook so much. I literally have a stack of them around. I've got some in use. I've done lots of reviews using this paper because it's so good. A little bit of a surprise. Surprise winner. I mean, good for them. Like I'm excited for them. But yeah, I'm still trying to wrap my head around this. Yeah. But long story short, you people listening should try the Morrowind Spiral Note Basic. I've recommended this notebook a lot over the years. Like I'm pretty sure I got these in 2024. That's the other thing that I'm trying to think about.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I've got the acronym. I know what ISOT stands for and you would never get this. Okay. So ISOT, right? It stands for International Stationary and Office Products Fair Tokyo.

'''Myke Hurley:''' There's a lot of actual letters in there, Brad.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' A lot of... What's the whole acronym if you used every one of them?

'''Myke Hurley:''' ISOPFT would be the full. Okay. It's the International Stationary and Office Products Fair of Tokyo. So that is what the event is. And this event has awards. This is similar. Like the London Stationary Fair has an awards ceremony. Our friend of the show, we keep mentioning Tessa, won Retailer of the Year last year. Like in the most recent one.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. And this is also not fully related into the Red Dot Awards, which is more designery and more pay-to-submit-based type of thing. Like, you know, that's a pretty common setup for some of the awards. Yeah. These might be two. Like I didn't totally look at this. But this is directly stationary, like the Japanese stationary awards. So Mormon Notebook.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I'm still shaking my head. Like, cool. I guess. Cool. It's amazing. But I don't get it. So let's get into some of the other products. And you'll see, like, some of the – these are more like, okay, these are new innovations. They could be good. They could be bad. But they're at least, like, a new product. Like, a couple of them are, like, really dumb ideas. But whatever. We'll see. So a couple I wanted to mention. The Carl Refill Maker 3.5. Myke, this link has been a nightmare for, like, two days now. I'm not getting proper resolution for the link. So your mileage may vary. It looks like it's working for you. It is. But what this is – so if you take, like, what we know as our plotter systems now in the U.S., what the system Techo was in Japan that this came from, the plotter systems, and that is still super popular over there, is basically a six-hole punch type of notebook. And you could buy – and there's other varieties. There's a five-hole size and different things.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' You can buy pre-punched paper or you can get something like the Carl Refill Maker and punch your own, which is what I do. I don't have the Carl Refill Maker. But, yes, like, since I like plotters and since I like a lot of different paper, I am going to buy a hole punch that allows me to put in bank paper or Tomoe River paper or Kanopas paper. So – and this one is – it's got a lot of little, I don't know, creative bits to make you, you know, get the right size paper and do different things with what you need. So I can see this being a super useful item, especially in the Japanese market, where this type of ring binder system, Techo, is very, very popular.

'''Myke Hurley:''' It's just the best brand name. Carl. Carl? Carl. Carl. Yeah, Carl Rules. This is great. Carl. It's good. I have a Carl. I have a Carl hole punch.

== Sun Star Scissors ==

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yep. This is my grand prize award winner, Myke, the Sun Star – all right, I'm going to go with this. Stickle? Yeah. What are we – stickle? Stickle?

'''Myke Hurley:''' Stickyle?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Stickyle. Stickyle. Stickyle. It's stick. Y-L-E. All right.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Straight up, this thing is a shank, right?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Okay. Sure. Right? I mean, it's not that sharp on the end. It's less sharp than a traditional pair of scissors. The other – the metal cutter one is more of a shank in this list, which we're not going to cover, but there's a different one here. Y'all can go see on the list.

'''Myke Hurley:''' It's not a shank. I mean, Brad, there's like –

'''Brad Dowdy:''' This is more of a medical device than a shank. Yeah.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Or a shiv, maybe, is the phrase I'm looking for. Those are the same things. You shank someone with a shiv, I think.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I mean, visually, when it's closed, it looks very stabby.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Because also, to get the blades out to cut, and they're very rounded for obvious reasons, you push them out, right? Like – Yeah, yeah. Like, ah. That's how I imagine it.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I think you probably have to make those sound effects when you do it, which is why it should have won. So, what this is, and why I think this should be the winner, is because of the context of the stationary world that we're in right now. It's very, like, journaling-focused products.

'''Myke Hurley:''' This is also just a very clever design.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yes. So, what it is, is you have your traditional sticker – excuse me, scissor blades, but the tips of the scissors are converted into a tweezer shape. So, they, like, are – like, the blades kind of end and then shift into a tweezer blade that allows you to do picking up of stickers and stamps and washi on the front end without cutting things with the sticker. So, it's like a two-in-one, and then it's retractable, essentially.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I didn't even notice the little picky-up part, but I thought the smart part of it was the retractable. You know, like, the blades fully retract. And to me, that was clever, right? Like, seeing that, I was like, oh, that's a very nice design. And then, yeah.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, other companies have done that. I'm sure. Other companies have done those blades. I like this.

'''Myke Hurley:''' This is like, you know, obviously, this starts with how do you not make it so dangerous? You round the edges. Or what if there's no blade at the front? And then it's like, well, what if there's no blade at the front? And you end up getting to this point of like, yeah, it's very clever, nice little design, nice product, bunch of different colors. I genuinely think, I think we often do a good job of being able to try and translate visuals to audio, you know, like for the show. But I think in this scenario, not possible to do that. You have to go and take a look at it. I just got a little bit distracted that Sunstar, the company that owns this, that makes this product. It's owned by Bandai Namco?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I think I did know that. Yeah. Because they've done some. They've done some collaborations that I've seen in the past. Nothing ever too interesting, right? Right. Like, I feel like they're leaving a lot on the table. Bandai Namco is a video game company.

'''Myke Hurley:''' They're responsible for Pac-Man, but they also have a vast array of products of their own, and they also publish games too. That is incredibly strange.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yep. Do you think they can lean into that a little bit more?

'''Myke Hurley:''' Oh, they've got some bluey stationery, not related to Bandai Namco in any way, but I just went to their product, and they make bluey stickers and stuff for Japan.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. Sunstar is pretty popular. I've used and reviewed some of their pen cases before. I will 100% get this pair of scissors. Yeah. It's just a neat little thing. Yeah.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I'm looking through their products page here, and there's a lot of collaborations with different brands, but I'm not seeing any Bandai Namco products. Yeah. That's wild.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' It's caught me. I swear in the past, I've been caught by like one or two things, but in a very simplistic way. Yeah. Not like heavily character-based.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I'm sure they do the occasional Pac-Man thing, but I just feel like they should have a whole line of Bandai Namco. Totally. Like, you know. Mm-hmm. That's incredibly strange to me.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Cool website, though. Yeah. Yeah.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Very cool. All right. Next one that I wanted to mention is something we talked about. I don't know if you'll remember this. It was just kind of like an in-passing thing. I've talked about it somewhere, whether it was here or on stream or wherever. It's the Secura Ball Sign, which is their gel ink pen. And this is called the ID Single. And what this is, and actually, I think this came up on another awards thing, Myke. It's a set of six pens with a gradient range of just black inks. Yes, we've spoken about this. Yeah. This is not original at all.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Well, I'm looking at their page. They're like a blue, green, purple, but they're still black?

== Black Plus Inks ==

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yes. They're black. Right. They're black plus, which we've talked about this for years. A lot of companies have done black plus color inks, either gel or ballpoint inks. But the theory here is the marketing, right? It's like you buy this one set and you have this range and it goes from black to gray, then black to blue, then black to green, and on and on and on. They're really cool, but it's more the marketing that's a little bit of a weird thing. But I love the concept of your black plus inks, right? These are my favorite colors of inks, like the blue-black looks amazing and the purple-black looks amazing. So maybe I'll try these. If these see some increased popularity and become more widely available, maybe I'll grab a set.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I consider myself a grown-up in general, and I think that I try to keep my humor relatively highbrow. Sure. I just can't get over bull sign. Yeah, it's a rough one. I can't get over it, man. Every time I see it, it makes me chuckle.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I mean, it is in the ball-knock zone. Ball-knock zone.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Ball sign. It must just be something about the word ball when talking about pens that I just can't get over. Yeah. It's obviously ballpoint. I have no problem with ballpoint. Yeah. But ball-knock zone, that's the best one. Ball sign, also funny. Sorry.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' And why are we doing the ID with the lowercase i and the uppercase d and the whole thing there? Yeah. All right. Last one I want to talk about, Myke.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' How many of the Sonic Digitox, the routine time locker, do you think get broken on a daily basis?

'''Myke Hurley:''' I think this is a very clever... I like this product. Answer the question.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Answer my question.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I mean, don't you just have... Okay. Explain what it is, because otherwise there's no context for why I'm answering this question.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' It's basically like a pencil box for your desk, but it contains your phone, your mobile phone, and it's a timed locker for you to put away your phone on the desk. You lock away your phone in this device, this little plastic-looking pencil box thing, and then it only comes back out when the timer's up. Like, I'll break this within like a day.

'''Myke Hurley:''' See, Brad, I feel like, you know, in general, you are a young man at heart, right? Like, I feel like you stay down with the youth. I feel like you're missing the youth on this one, my friend. This is like... There are so many apps and services now that do these things, and they're very popular with young people.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. Give me a brick. I'll take the brick. I don't want the phone to go away. I like this, though. I like this. It's an add-on. It's a storage locker. Like, I actively want...

'''Myke Hurley:''' You can see it's like the lady, she's doing her studying. It's in front of her. It's a clock. She's like, you know, I've only got to study for X amount of time more, and then I can go back on Instagram or whatever. Yeah. I actively want to fight this problem. I know. It's odd. You really feel... You got some feelings about this one.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Like, I guess my feeling is like, do you... Like, can you not control yourself enough to where you need to lock the phone?

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yes. I know. Why do many of these things exist? I know.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' There's a whole market. I know. You're not wrong. Give me a brick. I'll buy a brick before I buy a locker for my phone. I'm 100% throwing this across the room.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah. You get a little hammer to smash it open with. You can sell that as an add-on. Good.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Cool. Honestly, pretty cool. Pretty cool concept.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I like it.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So, yeah. Those are the ones I wanted to talk about. There's more on this page. I should go look at it. Like, the parallelogram eraser. Like, that's not a thing. Like, don't do this. There's like a lot of different eraser designs. It's basic. The color-changing memo pad in here. I was like, oh, cool. What is this? Well, it's not a color-changing memo pad. It's a cover for your memo pad block that has different colors, and it has a translucent sheet on the top. So, when you tear away one color, like it's yellow on the top, and you tear that away, then it's blue underneath. It's like, okay. Like, is this winning? Is this what winning looks like, Myke? I don't know. So, anyway, it's always fun to go through these lists. Yes. Because then you have a time locker for your phone, and just randomly-

'''Myke Hurley:''' You never know what you're going to find.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' It is for the kids, Myke. It is for the kids. So, wow. Good stuff, I-S-A-O-F-T.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I-S-O-F-P-T.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Okay. Good job with the awards.

'''Myke Hurley:''' This episode is brought to you by Squarespace, the all-in-one website platform that is designed to help you stand out and succeed online. Whether you're just getting started or scaling an existing business, Squarespace will give you everything you need to claim your domain, showcase your offerings of a professional website, grow your brand, and get paid all in one place. It's so easy to get started with Squarespace. I really love their website building tools. I love that you can go through their templates. You can choose what you're looking for. You know, like the kind of business you have. You're like, oh, I want a website like this, and I have a bunch of templates for it, and they fill that information out for you. You can also now kind of just tell them. You just type what you're looking for, and it will make recommendations thanks to their Blueprint system. But I love then how customizable everything is with Squarespace, that you can go in, choose your fonts, choose your colors, make your layout look exactly the way that you want with no coding experience needed. This is why I've been coming to them for years and years and years. They also help you make smarter business decisions because they have an analytics system that's built right in. So you can keep track of the stats that matter with Squarespace with their intuitive built-in analytics tools that make it super easy for you to review website traffic, learn where to focus engagement, and track revenue from bookings, invoices, or product sales. I've also been really impressed with their email marketing tools. So something I think is very cool, you can have like a blog at Squarespace, and you can write up your posts. It's very easy to do. But then you could also send them out to your email subscribers if you wanted to as well. You can set up pages. You can collect email addresses, collect information, and you can send those out. And it's a really nice feature as well of Squarespace with one of the many, many features that they have available. Go and check it out for yourself by going to squarespace.com slash penaddict and sign up for a free trial. When you're ready to launch, use the offer code penaddict. You'll get 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain, and you'll be showing your support for the show. That is squarespace.com slash penaddict with the offer code penaddict for 10% off your first purchase. A thanks to Squarespace for their support of this show and all of Relay.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' All right, Myke, we got our shout-out of the week. Shout-out of the week. Extra Fine Writing, which I believe has been in the shout-outs of the week before. But I wanted to bring this up because they did a review or they did a post on this ink syringe cleaning filling system that I can vouch for. And I think everyone should consider this product. They're now available on Goldspot and things like that. Back in the day when these first came out, they were really expensive and they weren't as easy to clean. But now you can get these little syringe-based, not as medically inclined syringes. Like I use syringes all the time. Blunt-nose syringes to ink pens, to clean pens, to flush ink out of pens. You can get like a three-pack of these for like six bucks. And it's not the craziest.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' It's pretty wild in relation to like your other cleaning tools, but it's a really good product. So I just wanted to shout this out for anyone who does a lot of inking and cleaning of pens to have this syringe-based, this spring-based syringe. It like works really, really well. And just go read Extra Fine Writing in general. They do some of the most hilarious like stationary writing around. So go check them out.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Nice.

== First Look Products ==

'''Brad Dowdy:''' All right. I got a few first look products I wanted to drop in here real quick. These are probably like pre-review thoughts. All of them have literally been in my hands. Some of them about less than 24 hours. Some a little bit longer than that. The first one is one we mentioned. The Uniball.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Is it called And Not? Are we going to do this right now? It's And Not. Yeah. I don't know what else you'd call it.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Like I don't think you would call it like Ampersand Not.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' No, I'm not thinking of that. I'm thinking of how you connect the words Uniball and Not. Yeah. Or is it Uniball and And Not? No.

'''Myke Hurley:''' It's a product.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Is it Uniball X and Not?

'''Myke Hurley:''' Don't do that to me. Because it's not, right? Like it's just, you don't call it. It's And Not. Yeah, but you don't have any problems saying Jetstream. You know, like what is this? Is it Uniball plus Jetstream? Oh, I can't get my head around it. You know, it's just And Not. It's just a sub-brand.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So did Uniball and And Not do a collaboration?

'''Myke Hurley:''' No, And Not is a Uniball line, isn't it?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' No. And Not's a brand. Like Blue Bottle Coffee.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Okay, well then I misunderstood from what you did.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, no, no, no.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Okay, then I understand the confusion.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Now Brad's a problem.

'''Myke Hurley:''' No, no, I get it now. Because it's two companies. I thought that this was just a brand like Jetstream.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' No, oh, no. Oh, okay, I see. No, no, no, no. No, this is a literal, this is an outside the building collaboration. Which they do pretty infrequently. Yeah. I'm just saying, listen, And Not is the problem. It's their fault for making a name like that. Like I get the name, but then when you start mixing, like this is what this podcast is about. We care more about the nomenclature than the product. So let's talk about the product. Okay. This is, the reason why this came up on my radar is because Uniball doesn't do this a lot. They've done a couple, they did one a couple years ago with a furniture maker where they made a wood grip, Jetstream multi-pin barrel grips. They're fantastic. I forget the name of the brand, Sergeant McKay. But anyway, they don't do this a lot.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I just wanted to say for the, because I went and checked, right? So Jacob says, quoting, the first release from Uniball's new lifestyle-focused sub-brand, And Not. Really? So I think you've got this wrong, Brad. I'm sorry to say, because also if you Google Ant Not, nothing comes up except for Uniball.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Really? Okay. I'm very wrong then. Yeah. Shout out Jacob. I guess I just overlooked it. Shout out me. Well, I mean, you're- Shout out me in this scenario. No, let's say Brad apologizes. Yeah.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I was wrong. But also, no, shout out Myke for doing the work beforehand, right? Yeah, I'm trying to avoid- I would have just let you go if I wouldn't have done all my research, you know? I'm clearly, I'm clearly working around- Brad, I'm doing my own research now. This is a problem. Uh-oh, uh-oh. I'm doing-

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Well, good.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Brad, I'm just asking the questions, all right? Yeah. I'm doing my own research.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So, gosh. This is going to be interesting then, okay? This- Then I'm actually going to go harder at this pen than I was before.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Uh-oh.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' If this is an in-house sub-brand, is that what we want to call it then?

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah. Whatever you would call Jetstream.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Okay.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Huh. Interesting. Okay.

== Fashion-Forward Stationery ==

'''Myke Hurley:''' They're just creating a new brand where the products are more fashion-forward, it would appear to me.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Okay. So, that's where the stationary challenges come in, right? Yeah. So, what this is, we're finally getting there five minutes later. It's an attachable pen designed to be like a portable attached to like a bag, a backpack, a pocket, a lanyard type of thing. It's a pen with a sleeve. This is not a unique concept, right? It's a pen with a sleeve that has like an attachment point, either, you know, a carabiner, in this case, a little loop, um, loop with, um, like an attachment, uh, clicker on there. You can just, you know, bend it in and click, clip it to something. But what they've done is really- Uniball is definitely into the, the chunky, their chunky phase of pens where they're making like the Uniball 1P. Didn't you get that one from Tesla's shop? Did you get the 1P, the short one?

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah. Little guy.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Uh, yeah. So it's short and chunky, right? This is, this is that type of product in what's supposed to be like a backpacking or portable type of pen. And I have a lot of questions on like this, the design philosophy here. One, it's big, right? When I first saw this, I thought it was going to be smaller, like half the size, like just in depth and diameter and dimensions, right? Shrink this down by half. Because this is not a subtle product, right? So this is, when I think of this type of product, I want it to be a little bit more subtle because I'm attaching it to something. I'm, you know, packing it in something. I'm attaching it to my lanyard. This is going to be bigger than like your lanyard badge. It's like, so I have the orange one. Um, you know, and I, I apologize for the visual. It's like a hot dog on a ring, right? It's very large.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' And it stands out so much that it kind of gets in the way of what it's trying to accomplish, I think. And that's where I feel like it's right there that it could have been like 50% smaller and would have been an even better product. I'm saying all this in that I'm actually coming around to enjoying this product. It's hard to get over the size. The ring is super big.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Then this is all attached. The barrel is ultra light. So it's a weird feel. So like the ring is heavy and the barrel is light. So it's not like, uh, there's no density to the barrel, either the sleeve or the pin body itself. And then the pin body, the pin attaches, it's got a magnet on the tip. The magnet's really nice. I don't think it's the pin's going to fall out because this is designed to be carried externally. Generally speaking, like you can hook it to the internals of a bag and be fine. But this is generally designed to attach to something like this would be a great like retail worker pin, right? Or trade show pin.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah. On the American website, they show it like attached to like a waiter's apron.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. Yeah. So like, I'm going to take this to stationary fest when we go in a couple of weeks because I want to continue to test it before like I review it more. But if they're going to make, they've tried to like stylize it so they could charge you $35 for it, right? When it's supposed to just be like this functional item. And I don't know. It's a, so I got mine from a friend that was traveling back from Japan. They picked it up in Narita airport and it still had the yen price sticker on it. When you look at the yen cost, I don't have it right in front of me. But when I did that conversion, it was more of a $22 pin. Like if you did it, if you bought it in Japan, that's like your, your yen to US dollar translation. 35 is a lot because if you go back to the apron picture, this is only a quick jotting pen barrel. When you pull it from its sheath, it's short, right? Even for my small, medium sized hands, you want the pen to be a quarter inch to a half inch longer to do any type of long-term writing other than just, hey, let me take your order. Or, hey, I'm at a trade show. Let me get your information type of pen. But I guess if you're just marketing as that, I think it works. I'm just very, very flummoxed on this whole design. Like I want to, I want to see the design conversation behind this pen. Like I want to see what the, I do too. And I was giving it a really hard time at first. The more I actually use it and play with it, the more I'm coming around to it. I do think it's a little expensive for what it is.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Sure. I think they've gone for a bold design because it's to be worn. Yes. So it's making a statement. Where if they made something super thin, like it just, it wouldn't be making the same statement. Where this is a big bold color and, you know, like I think it's making a, it's making itself known.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. So Chris is bringing up in the chat a point I made when I was, I unboxed this yesterday on stream and was just having all these thoughts out loud. Why would I pay for the $35 for this as opposed to buying a 1P and clipping it to my shirt for $3.50?

'''Myke Hurley:''' Because you can't hang it. Like that's the reason. I can't.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' It's just not about a carabiner. I'm literally hanging it to my shirt via the clip.

'''Myke Hurley:''' But it doesn't have a carabiner.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Like I know that that's not the answer you're looking for, but that is the answer. Then I think they designed this improperly. Why? It's, it's way too large, right? This is like, if you're, if you're a retail worker, this is going to get in the way because of its size.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah. Yeah. I, I, I think this was more designed to be hung on bags.

== Influencer Pens ==

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I think this is designed to be like an influencer pen, right? Well, yeah. Which we're going to get to in a minute. Yeah. Yeah. Which I'm good.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Like that's not a looks.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yes. That's not a knock. Like I'm into this.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I just, I like, I want to know the design brief on this one because if and not is going to be a sub brand, then yeah, I'm all in on this and they're just going to lean into this style and yes, I'm here for it. I want that.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I think everything you need to know is in the phrase, this is a lifestyle brand.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Okay.

'''Myke Hurley:''' So now like typical pen usability, just forget about it. Gone out the window because it's not what this is about.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I think that's fair. I think you're right. Myke was right. I like this pen. That's what I'm trying to like in the end, the more I've used, I've literally haven't put this down for like a day and I was like, I'm going to, I'm going to hate this. This is weird. I don't like the design to now it's like, well, why do I keep reaching for it, Myke? And why do I keep trying to figure it out? And why am I trying to find things to clip it to? And why am I deciding, you know, where I'm going to take it?

'''Myke Hurley:''' And I actually think the 1P is a very good like analog to this product. It should not look like this or feel like this to hold the 1P. Like it doesn't make any sense, really. Like, but it works. And I keep grabbing it and I enjoy it because it's weird. Yes. And I think this is a similar product in that regard. Like they've made it bold and bright and inviting. It's got a big chunky clip on it. They didn't need to make the clip so chunky, but they did. They didn't need to attach the pen to the clip with material like woven fabric. It could be in other ways. But they've wanted to make this pen easy and fun to grab and also to make a statement. And I think they've achieved it. I like it.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I like it too. So I'm going to keep carrying it. Maybe it's a pen show pen and like I can attach it to things.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Attach it to your like body cross bag or something, you know?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, exactly. That's what I was playing with yesterday. Yeah. My new bag that I got for the strip though, like this is a complete digression. It doesn't have like any external strap points. So I was trying to attach it to a zipper. So it might be internal. Yeah, cut a hole in the bag. That's what I'll do. So anywho, last thing, just the writing experience. When you talk about the 1P, the 1P is about three quarters of an inch longer. Yeah. So everything about the 1P works, which is why I feel a little bit let down about the little shorty.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I don't think I would like to use this for how short it is.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Unless you're just going to like jot something, which is fine. Yeah. You know, maybe when we do our interviews and Yoseka, this is my note taking pen.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Or like what's going to happen is you'll be wearing and I'll just keep grabbing it from you. That'll be fine. Just like take it from you all the time. You're like, let me just write something down and then just put it back.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' All right. So apparently my homework is to learn more about and not.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Clearly. Yeah.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I'll shoot Jacob a message because I just completely. I would like to thank Jacob. I was thinking about it too much.

'''Myke Hurley:''' You know, I watched the video when I was on my way to the office this morning and I'm really pleased that I did. Yeah.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' We have a link in the show notes for everyone. Jacob does a great job. He just got the multi-pen Zento signature. So I haven't watched that video yet. So look forward to that soon. So. All right. I knew I'd have a lot of nonsense to say. Like I really didn't say anything about this pen. And other than like I'm I've I've already run the gamut in like the first 24 hours of my thoughts on this pen. And in the end, I've come around to like I think I like it.

'''Myke Hurley:''' So one pen that almost no one has heard of. Sorry, I have to interrupt you just one second and then we'll carry on. You just say about the Zento thing, like just like the views on that video are way higher than a lot of his recent videos. It's like, oh, yeah, it's just like proving the Zento hype. It's just in pure numbers.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Totally. That's totally probably go back and look at his first Zento. If you're on his video page, go back and see like the original Zento review and just 1.1 million views. Yeah, that's insane. Right. That compared to unbelievable. Wow. So like this. So like the and not. How many views does that have? No way it has 10,000 yet.

'''Myke Hurley:''' It's new, but the and not video has.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Makes a lot of videos, huh? He does that one. I don't. Oh, I'm looking at. I'm looking at popular. 4,500.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yep. It's crazy. The Zento is crazy.

'''Myke Hurley:''' His three most popular videos are Zento videos.

== Uniball Pens ==

'''Brad Dowdy:''' It's insane. It is absolutely insane. Like what has happened? Like that's an entire podcast. Yeah. It just, it makes no sense to me. But shout out Uniball. That gives them the opportunity to make these and not products, right? Yep. I like that. If that's what the Zento's bringing me, bring it on.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Shout out Jacob too.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. Shout out Jacob. He's done a great job with the video. He's like, I like that he's leaned into the short video format. He does an exceptional job. Yes. As opposed to like the podcasting and the blog posts. He's really good at the short video format. Like these are all like three and five minute videos. They're beautiful. He's so good. So good. All right. This is Japan related, Myke. Okay. A friend of the show, Josh, lives in Japan as a, he makes his own pens. It's called Matome Collection. He has sent in feedback on different things in the past for the show. That's always been very helpful. And he wanted to send me one of his pens and he did. So this is, Matome Collection is the name of the company. And the model of the pen that he sent me is Ikimashio. And it's a kind of a long, short pen, right? It's like a Kaweco sport in that it's short when it's capped, but it's full size, you know, when you post it. And it's so interestingly done. So think of him as just like, like the traditional makers that we talk about in the U.S. making, you know, acrylic pens, ebonite pens. He's a small maker making his own materials and turning his own pens. So what kind of enamored me about this is not just the shape of this pen, which I'll get into. It's called a pocket pen, but it's, you know, obviously full size when you write with it. It's tiny. Is that he did something. And if you look at the pictures on the Ikimashio pocket pen, you can't even see it on the barrel unless you look really closely. The back end of the barrel has like a half depth threading for the cap to post securely on the back. And it, I, I'm like, it works so well. Like you don't have these big chunky threads to attach the pen on the back of the pen, but it's this subtle look. And it kind of fits with the aesthetic of the pen because like there's some translucency in the barrel. You can see some other threading. And I don't know, it's just very smooth, but tactile. It's very interesting in how it works and it works super well. It attaches just like instantly. You don't have to mess or fidget with it. And then the one he sent me, again, I got this sent for free. So, you know, take my, take my words for, for what they are. But the material that he used, let me pull up the link here.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' For this particular model that I have. And I think the, he did a series called Craft Indigo. So there's a black one and a blue one. And he basically uses, there's this indigo dye that he's able to acquire from a manufacturer there. And then hand grinds the dye and makes them into these acrylics. And so you're having some of this, you know, historic Japanese indigo material used for the coloration of this. And you can actually see some of the pigments still in it, right? It's pretty hard to see. You have to look really closely. But you can see a dot or a spec every now and then. And it's a, that's a feature, right? I think it's cool because, I mean, I'm very much into like the Japanese aesthetic and the Japanese history and things like that. So I've just, I've used this pen for a few days. It's really good. I just, I just wanted to give a shout out, you know, to Josh for sending me this pen. And I'm very happy with it. You're going to be seeing this pen a lot. And I will definitely do a review on this because I think it's unique. It's unique in shape and material and story. And that's the things that I like about products. That's kind of like the Uniball and not, right? Shape, material, story. Yeah. All kinds of different things. That's what gets me. Yep. So last one. I just unboxed this yesterday and I've been, this is a very, going from these first two pens to this pens is kind of like whiplash a little bit. This is the Kino Stay.Chenary 001 Serenity Fountain Pen. Is that how you should say it, Myke? Why are we doing this?

'''Myke Hurley:''' Can you stay, can you stay, can you stay, can you?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Why are we doing it? Why am I this, why am I, why am I this way? Why am I this way, Myke? I have nothing on this one. This is just not great. Like, help me help you, dominant industry. So this is a dominant industry product. So we know dominant industry from their inks and their ink products. Um, and they've decided to make some pens to go along with this, but they've, again, like Uniball previously, Kino is their pen brand, I'm guessing. Right. Dominant industry is the ink, but that's who makes the Kino Stay.Chenary, uh, pen series. So this is the second one. I bought the second one. There's a, um, there's one that's a kind of a pink, um, themed. And this is very, uh, speaking of influencer pens, this is an influencer pen, right? It's, it's detailed to the hilt in the aesthetically visual pleasing, depending on your style way. Right. It's a very, you know, lots of little details in the cap and the finial and the clip and the cap bands. And everything is, has a little bit of extra everywhere across the product. So I've been wanting one to try just to see, is it a good product? Because these days it's at a decent price point. They're like 120 bucks. So, and they're going to be seen a lot because of their visual appeal.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So I always feel like my job is to say, is this a good pen? Right. Regardless of whether you like the style or not, you might love it. You might hate it. But if you're interested in it, is it good? So like the jury's still out, right? I've literally had it for a day. So I can't tell you that. I can say it's been great so far. Right. I got an extra fine steel nib. The steel nib is glorious. The extra fine is like very extra fine. So it's like, that's all I need to make me happy. It is to have like a really killer extra fine nib on there. And this one does. So to be determined as I use it, but this is just one of these in this grouping of products that is kind of like at my forefront of using, testing, thinking about, learning about, and sharing with y'all. So this is, I like talking about the things that are just landing on my desk because I try not to just go jump right into a review. Like I just got this pen. And I'm not going to have a review out by next week. I want to keep using it and carrying it. Like that's what, with all these pens and products, try to use them for a little bit and see if I'm missing something. But my first thoughts are good. I haven't really seen, I've seen a lot of people talking about these. I haven't seen a lot of like particular reviews on these, even though this is the second, the second one out. So I think, yeah, pretty good. Like I, for like what they're doing, like I get it. Like it's very, like the packaging mic is like super detailed. Like it comes with like, you know, those, the classic motel key chain, like the diamond shape. Like, you know what I'm talking about. It's not a diamond, but you know what I'm talking about. Like it comes with one of those. It's got like room number zero zero one on it. Myke, you know, I should hook that key chain to my uni and not.

'''Myke Hurley:''' There you go.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. That'll fit there. All right.

'''Myke Hurley:''' You just make it a collection of brands that confuse and upset you.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. I'm not upset. I was confused there.

'''Myke Hurley:''' You're not happy about the names of either of them.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I mean, let's be honest. Stay.Shenary. That's a crime. Way worse than and not.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I think and not is fine. Kenyo Stay.Shenary.001 Serenity is not, that's just not happening for me. I'm afraid.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So now I have to go learn why it's named this way because I clearly screwed up the and not thing. Yeah.

'''Myke Hurley:''' There's a reason. You just need to find it investigative reporting style.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. You know me.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Can you do that for us?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. I'll work on that. Thank you. I'll work on that. So, yeah. So all these pins, I'm pretty excited about like thinking about and using and eventually we'll do some reviews and we'll do a follow-up once I post these reviews. But like all three of these products I'm going to review at some point in, you know, in the coming months. So it's nice to have really interesting stuff across your desk, which is really not a problem around here. Speaking of interesting stuff, Myke. Yes.

== Enigma Stationery ==

'''Myke Hurley:''' This episode is brought to you by our friends over at Enigma Stationery who offer unique items made from in-house designs along with top brands and hard-to-find imports. Now, I'm sure that Brad is taking himself over to enigmastationery.com right now to see what is catching his eye. Brad, what is even new in or popular over at Enigma that you're excited about right now?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So I feel like my thumb is very much on the scale of the Pen Addict Featured Items page. Yes. It's very Business Frog related. Yes. Which, if you're not familiar, if you're just starting to listen to us now, you need to go get into the world of Business Frog. Absolutely. I'm a huge fan. Yep. Huge fan of Business Frog. But since I've talked about them so much, I want to talk about a couple of other things that they did put on their featured items. Anderillium inks, we don't talk about them enough. They have a great Luna Mothgreen ink over there amongst many other inks over at Enigma Stationery. So Anderillium does a really, really great job with their inks. And they have different kind of theme series, right? So this one's like moths and butterflies and things like that. So go check those out. They got these beautiful new Midori diaries that I haven't seen. The Midori B6. This is actually kind of going to relate to something we're going to touch on here in a minute.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Midori makes some of the best quality products. Like just from a paper perspective. And then they lean into the aesthetic pleasing. This book would go with the Kino Stationery number 001 like perfectly. The design and the aesthetic. It's kind of like I should probably get it just for that pen. It's kind of perfect for that. And then they have a whole bunch of other diaries. People should look into like the Midori three-year diaries that they have or the five years. I've been using a five-year Hobonichi for a long time. I'm in the midst of year four of that. This is a really great product. And I see they have a bunch of different three-year and five-year. Oh, God. There's a 10-year one? Wow.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Oh, my God.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I haven't seen the 10-year one. No. Well, I'm going to turn mine into like a nine- or 10-year diary. We'll talk about that maybe in another year when I'm finished the fifth year.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I think starting at 10 years is too much. Like for your first one or whatever. Yeah. It's too much. It's daunting.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. Just honestly, I do just three years over and over again. Just do a stack of three years. Do three years, get a new three-year. Like I like to change it up from time to time. And even though I haven't changed up my five-year diary, I think I'm going to keep it going.

'''Myke Hurley:''' The three-year, I'm all about it. The 10-year, no thanks. It's too big for me.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yep. And five's not bad. I've actually seen some of the fives in person. They're not bad.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I have a couple of the three years. They're beautiful. I really like the design that they do on them too. Because they have a lot of nice colors now as well, which is good.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yep. Last thing you can get over to Enigma Stationery, which I'm going to have to order soon because I just got the Lamy All-Star, the Disco and Rollerball, you know, the very colorful ones. I got some of the ballpoint ones. But like I have to have the M17 Jetstream ballpoint refill, which is not easy to get. Enigma Stationery has those in stock. They're not cheap, but man, are they worth it. So like that's a huge, huge selling point to me. So that's going to be the next thing I order from Enigma. You get that in .5? From Enigma. They just have seven. They have .5 and .7. Do they have .5? Okay. Yeah. I have the .5 right now, so I will get .5. I need to get like one or two more of those. Probably one more. We'll see. One or two more. Like I said, they're very expensive, but man, are they worth it. They're just a fantastic, fantastic refill. So yeah, over at Enigma Stationery, where I'm going to use the discount code. Myke, you can't stop me.

'''Myke Hurley:''' You can get $10 off on orders of $50 or more just by going to enigmastationery.com slash penaddict and using the code TPA26 at checkout now. That is enigmastationery.com slash penaddict to get $10 off on orders of $50 or more with the code TPA26. Our thanks to Enigma Stationery for the support of this show and relay.

== Commonplace Books ==

'''Brad Dowdy:''' You snuck a topic in here on me, Myke, and I think it's a great topic because it's something I literally think about all the time.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Okay. Well, I was listening to a podcast, Restless History, and they were talking about Thomas Jefferson. And in it, they referenced Jefferson's commonplace book. Okay. And just as like that, he kept commonplace books and he would write down quotes and things that he found interesting. And I remember me and you have spoken about this before. I don't remember how you came across this, but I know it was a thing we were talking about. And I was thinking, you know, I think I might quite enjoy this. It's like a kind of like a scrapbooky journal kind of vibe, right? Which is what I get from a commonplace book, the idea of it, right? That you're just, you're writing or sticking in things that you find interesting, inspiring, or just fun or whatever. So I wanted to ask you about if you're still doing this and what you're using and what goes in it.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Okay. So I do not currently have one, but we'll, so pin that and we'll get back to that. But I have recently finished one and I've done several others to what I call my everything notebook. Cause I don't like the commonplace just never sticks with me. So I call it my everything notebook. Like I, and with the, with the quote, everything goes in here, right? There's no limits to what goes in there. Right. And that's always been kind of a restrictive diary thing for me. Like diary, talk about my day, right? Is that all that's allowed to go in here? And, you know, well, what if I have to your point, what if I have this sticker that came with this order and this pen? And can I put that somewhere and then talk about that pen, you know, for a second, all these things would go into my everything notebook. So I finished it. I've done the notebooks that I've completed have been in this style to where they don't have a rule of, okay, I'm going to go write my morning pages today. And then at night I'm going to reflect. And then, you know, I'm going to have a separate place for like my gratitude and have like all these rules and restrictions. The commonplace book in my mind is your everything notebook. Everything goes in here. So I have been successful filling notebooks this way. And I currently don't have one active. And I've been thinking about that to where I'm wanting to start another one or something related to that. I haven't yet. So this is an interesting topic that you bring up because this is always like at the forefront of my mind trying to think about how I use things. So my favorite types of notebook to use for an everything notebook are generally A5 sized. Yeah. But like half thickness, like your 80 to 100 page A5s as opposed to say your Leuchtturm 198 pager. Because I like to fill notebooks. And you can trick yourself by using a smaller notebook, right? A smaller or thinner notebook. Guess what? You fill them faster if you use it. And I would rather have a stack of smaller filled notebooks as opposed to one notebook that I'm trudging through. That's, to be honest, like sometimes they've taken me like two years to fill, right? So my, I think everyone should do something like this to have a place where you're free to do anything, which is what the commonplace is. Write down the quotes. Like I copy a lot of quotes. I copy a lot of music lyrics. I get a lot of stickers, a lot of stamps. And all these things can collectively go in one fun space. And that's my everything notebook. I have the B5 Slim or the B6 Slim, the Pen Addict Midori notebook. I'm debating on starting one of those for, you know, for my next commonplace book. I generally would like a little bit wider format for this style of notebook. Just because I ended up, I ended up using lots of ephemera in there, like cut up, cut up receipts, right? Yeah. Business cards. Like if we go to a stationary fest and I'll put like business cards from that trip in these notebooks. So that notebook might be a little bit small for that. I generally prefer an A5 format, but a generally thinner notebook. So I'm in that debate zone of where I have a lot of active notebooks. Do I need one more? And right now it's been no, but I've got some thoughts. So we might actually circle back on this in a month or two and see what I've done on this. So like we can revisit this for sure. What about you?

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah. See, I think I like the idea of it, but I don't. And I'm trying to work out like what kind of notebook I would want. And I gravitate towards something A5 style, kind of like a maybe like Leuchtermy, you know? Mm-hmm. It's like a thing that I think I would be, would work for me. Like I don't want it to be too thick. So I want it to be a pain to carry around if I want to carry it around. I want the paper to be robust enough, you know? But it feels good to write on, but Tomoe is not going to work here for me. No. You know, something like that. Because as you said, like I might want to stick things in. And it's like I need something a bit more durable. Yeah. But yeah, I need to find, maybe this can be like a thing for me to find at Stationery Fest. Okay. Find it. That actually will be good. Yeah. You can see a bunch of stuff, take a look at a bunch of stuff, and then maybe we can follow up on it after Stationery Fest, but we'll make that a challenge. Okay. Let's find me a commonplace book.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I like that. I like that. I think I have one that I'm thinking about using one or two. I got to decide. So, last little tidbit on this. It's really difficult. Like, my benefit, the thing I see as a pro about a commonplace book can be a con for some people in that there are no rules. Yeah. Right?

'''Myke Hurley:''' But that's what I'm gravitating towards. Yeah. You know, my journal is very specific for what I want to do with it. And what I'm looking for is something that is not that, you know?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Right. Yeah. So, like, it's a mindset. It's a very different mindset in using this notebooks. And it works for me because I'm not restricted by, okay, here's, you know, July 9th's page. Yeah. What do I do? That intimidates me to, like, I can't, it's unusable for how I think. Right? Yep. But if I have a blank page and anything can go there, I've allowed myself to have that freedom. Yep. But it doesn't work for everyone. We all have our own things that we need, like, when we're doing this type of journaling and things like that. So, keep that in mind. Sometimes it's hard to have a notebook, a blank notebook with no rules and say, go. I'm okay with it.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So, one last thing. I did want to drop this on you this week. Also, I wasn't prepared either. Yep. This is a homework assignment. Okay. And listeners, feel free to play along. You can send them in to us. I think it might be hard for us to read this because it's a big, big challenge. So, I noticed this article on the Well-Appointed Desk in the past couple weeks, if I could only keep 10 fountain pens. 10 fountain pens article. And that article came from, their articles came from Inky Imaginings, if I could only keep 10 fountain pens article, at the end of June. And you and I recently got some feedback, listener question, saying that you only need three pens. And I argued, my argument was, well, I think I could do it with two.

== Fountain Pen Selection ==

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I think picking 10 pens is harder than picking two pens.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah, probably.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So, I wanted to give us time. I want to do this experiment.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' This is fountain pens, though, right? This is fountain pens only. So, I'm not counting standard pens. Okay, let's do fountain pens only. If I could only keep 10 fountain pens is the impetus of the article. Okay. What would they be? So, next week, that's our homework assignment. Okay. To name 10 pens. Unranked, yeah. Unranked is fine. I don't have, need a one through 10.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Okay. No, I like it.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. It's, I honestly, I think I could do two pens easier than 10. Two pens, I'd just pick, like, two great pens and just be done. Like, I already know what they are.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah, it's like, to me, I'm already, I have, like, five in my head. But then five to 10 feels hard.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, 10 is a legit problem.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' To where you're drawing the line. And then, 10 pens allows you to cover bases. But then there has to be a line drawn. And I'm interested to see where that is on this. So, like, I can, like you who are saying, I could probably come up with the first three to five pretty quickly. And then it's going to be a battle. So, I think this will be a fun. If y'all want to play along, like I said, I don't know that we could read all of these. If you do happen to play along and send this in, it would take a long time to read, like, full lists of 10 and thoughts behind them. But I would still love to read them. You know, maybe I could share them on the blog or something like that. But, so, anyway, Myke, how can they get in touch with us?

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah, so, you've got two ways, really. If you want to do it with no commentary, go to penaddictfeedback.com because we have a limit on the amount of characters. That's true, true. So, but that's for a good reason. If you want to do a lot of commentary, you can write to hello at penaddict.com via email. That's where you can put your rationale. If you want to find Brad online, he's over at penaddict.com, spokedesign.com, and you can find him streaming three times a week at twitch.tv slash penaddict. You find me here on Relay, at theenthusiast.net, and at cortexbrand.com as well. I want to thank Enigma Stationery and Squarespace for the support of this episode. They're continued support, in fact. And I want to thank you for listening. Until next time, say goodbye, Brad. Goodbye, Brad.

[[Category:Podcast Transcripts]]
[[Category:The Pen Addict Podcast Transcript]]

Stationery Wiki:Current TPA podcast

2026-07-10T03:19:09Z

PencilBot: Updating current podcast layout pointer to episode 724

{{Infobox current podcast
| name = The Pen Addict
| number = 724
| title = Hotdog on a Ring
| date = July 9th, 2026
| hosts = [[Brad Dowdy]] 
[[Myke Hurley]]
| guests =
| link = [https://www.relay.fm/penaddict/724 Episode 724]
| audiolink = [https://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/mgln.ai/e/613/clrtpod.com/m/pscrb.fm/rss/p/traffic.libsyn.com/thepenaddict/The_Pen_Addict_724.mp3 Audio Episode 724]
| length = 65
}}

== Description ==

Brad has many new products to discuss this week, including the uniball &knot pen that has him thoroughly confused.

The Pen Addict 724

2026-07-10T03:18:59Z

PencilBot: Automated layout generation from RelayFM metadata for episode 724

{{Infobox podcast
| name = The Pen Addict
| number = 724
| title = Hotdog on a Ring
| date = July 9th, 2026
| hosts = [[Brad Dowdy]] 
[[Myke Hurley]]
| guests =
| link = [https://www.relay.fm/penaddict/724 Episode 724]
| audiolink = [https://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/mgln.ai/e/613/clrtpod.com/m/pscrb.fm/rss/p/traffic.libsyn.com/thepenaddict/The_Pen_Addict_724.mp3 Audio Episode 724]
| length = 65
}}

== Description ==

Brad has many new products to discuss this week, including the uniball &knot pen that has him thoroughly confused. <ref>Description taken from the official Pen Addict podcast page https://www.relay.fm/penaddict/724</ref>

== Further Information ==

== Links & Show Notes ==

* [https://www.penaddict.com/blog/2026/7/6/sailor-que-ser-erasable-gel-ink-pen-review Sailor Que Será Erasable Gel Ink Pen Review — The Pen Addict]
* [https://www.lifestyle-expo.jp/summer/en-gb/about/isot/award/winning-products.html ISOT Award-Winning Products]
* [https://www.e-maruman.co.jp/lp/spiralnote/ Maruman Spiral Note]
* [https://carl-officeproducts.com/products/refill-maker-3-5-rm-6535/ Refill Maker - CARL]
* [https://www.sun-star-st.jp/items/251105051920/ Sun-Star Stickyle]
* [https://www.craypas.co.jp/products/feature/ballsignid/index.html Ballsign iD Single]
* [https://www.sonic-s.co.jp/product/dg-2618 Sonic Digi-tox The Routine Time Locker]
* [https://extrafinewriting.substack.com/p/this-is-the-best-fountain-pen-accessory This is the best fountain pen accessory AND it only costs $1 – Extra Fine Writing]
* [https://www.mpuni.co.jp/products/ballpoint_pens/ballpoint/andknot/jetstream_inside.html Uniball &knot Ballpoint Point]
* [https://www.unibrands.co/products/uniball%E2%84%A2-knot-ballpoint-pen?variant=43548203647182 uniball™ &knot with Jetstream SXR-80-05 Ink, Ballpoint Pen]
* [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zd0FXy9xitc Perfect Travel Pen or Pricey Novelty? Uniball's new &knot - fudefan - YouTube]
* [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Egz5sbTgu_U The Most Hyped Pen in Japan Just Got a Multi-Pen Upgrade - fudefan - YouTube]
* [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a9uq2BTAJSA The Zento Signature Craze: First Look at Uniball's Highly Sought-After New Rollerball - fudefan - YouTube]
* [https://www.matome-collection.com/ Matome Collection]
* [https://www.matome-collection.com/shop/p/3gy5rf4atg0n1uimzb63ybt4baw50a Ikimasho - Craft Indigo — Matome Collection]
* [https://www.penchalet.com/fine_pens/fountain_pens/keyno_001_serenity_fountain_pens.html Keyno Stay.tionery 001 Serenity Fountain Pens]
* [https://www.enigmastationery.com/shop/journals-diaries/6YZ3TYRP3NDLO23U4HBRU6S2?page=1&limit=60&sort_by=category_order&sort_order=asc Journals & Diaries | Enigma Stationery]
* [https://www.enigmastationery.com/product/lamy-m17-jetstream-ballpoint-pen-refill-ef-0-5-mm-black/WK4WAE3PLRJQMB442IYP6AR7 LAMY M17 Jetstream Ballpoint Pen Refill - EF (0.5 mm) - Black | Enigma Stationery]
* [https://inkyimaginings.com/2026/06/28/if-i-could-only-keep-10-fountain-pens/ If I Could Only Keep 10 Fountain Pens… – Inky Imaginings]
* [https://www.wellappointeddesk.com/2026/07/if-i-could-only-keep-10-fountain-pens/ If I Could Only Keep 10 Fountain Pens… – The Well-Appointed Desk]
* [https://www.wellappointeddesk.com/2026/07/if-i-could-only-keep-10-fountain-pens-2/ If I could only keep 10 fountain pens – The Well-Appointed Desk]

==References and Notes==

{{Reflist}}

[[Category:Podcast Episodes]]
[[Category:The Pen Addict Podcast]]

The Pen Addict 723/transcript

2026-07-03T12:05:29Z

PencilBot: Initial transcript automated upload

{{Infobox podcast transcript
| name = The Pen Addict
| number = 723
| title = I Bet the Paper Is Terrible
| date = July 2nd, 2026
| hosts = [[Brad Dowdy]] 
[[Myke Hurley]]
| guests =
| link = [https://www.relay.fm/penaddict/723 Episode 723]
| audiolink = [https://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/mgln.ai/e/613/clrtpod.com/m/pscrb.fm/rss/p/traffic.libsyn.com/thepenaddict/The_Pen_Addict_723.mp3 Audio Episode 723]
| length = 48
}}

'''Myke Hurley:''' From Relay, this is The Pen Addict, episode 723. Today's show is brought to you by Pen Chalet and Factor. My name is Myke Hurley. I'm joined by Brad Dowdy. Hi, Brad.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' What's up, Myke Hurley? How are you? I'm good, man. Very good. Good. Good. I'm very good, too, man. I just got back from the St. Louis Pen Show this past weekend, so we're going to talk about that today. So you have arrived. I have. Sure. Yeah. Is that a word? Is that a French word? It sounds French. I'm going to say it like that, right? Have you had your coffee today, Myke? Just. It hasn't quite kicked in. No, maybe not. Maybe not. We'll see how we are by the end of the episode. Stay tuned for the end of this episode. We'll see. But last week, I had the lovely Anna Reinert on the show to preview the St. Louis Pen Show. So it might be funny if you haven't listened to that episode to go back and hear the preview of what we're going to talk about today. But really, we spent like a good half of the show just talking about other things, talking about stationary products. So you should go check out episode 722 from last week.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I assume everybody listens to every episode, you know?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Sure. As they should, right? We're going to start taking like attendance. Like, you know, did you listen? And we'll have a little sheet. Jeremy. Julie.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Jay Quillen.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So yeah, go listen to that episode, you know, so you can check off the box on your attendance sheet. And let's get into this week's episode, which is my recap of said St. Louis Pen Show. It was fantastic. Just like straight from the jump.

== Pen Show Vibes ==

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I'm a big vibes guy, right? Just you want to feel good in an area where you go, Pen Show or not, right? You know, whether you're doing any travel or you're doing anything. You know, I just want to like, I want to feel like comfortable, not anxious. I'm a very anxious person. Chill, relaxed. Everything's available. You know, people are there for questions and you can get them answered. The hotel is comfortable. Things like that. Good area. So St. Louis Pen Show was great for that aspect. So the hotel was awesome. It's in this, I know nothing about St. Louis, right? As a city, but apparently like it's a pretty traditional large American city in that it's very sprawly, right? Like it's not all self-contained into like one small downtown area and everything's there. So this was more out a little bit, not really a suburb, but like outside of the normal show, the flow of the city, right? The show was out a little bit further, but it was only like 20 minutes from the airport, which is great. That's a good amount of time. The area where it's in is called Westport. It's a Sheraton, but there's literally two Sheratons there, which I'm sure causes lots of problems. So there's one-on-one. So like if you take just like a big outdoor mall type area, for lack of a better term, even though it's kind of what it is. On like the south side, there's a Sheraton. And then on the north side is the Sheraton Chalet, right? And I'm sure that just constantly gets messed up. We were in the Chalet, Myke. Yep. I did not know this going in. I didn't really look at the hotel. It's themed. It's Chalet themed, right? So this is like a European mountain ski resort Chalet in the middle of St. Louis. They kind of pulled it off. I mean, despite the heat, it was definitely not cool, but it wasn't bad. St. Louis was funny. They were very much complaining about the heat and it was like 10 degrees cooler than I ever get at home. So I was like, oh, this is great. I'm loving this. So the whole Chalet themed area, there are lots of bars and restaurants around. It was kind of a mall on the other side. That was, you know, just kind of only restaurants left in the mall. Not a lot of retail kind of a thing, but it was just comfortable, comfortable to get around. And that was nice because when I go to shows, I'm usually pretty busy, even if I'm not working a show like a table. I'm just around and doing things at the show, which we'll get into later. This way I could just like walk across the courtyard area there and there was restaurants and bars and food. So I could get lunch and dinner like very easily if I wasn't doing it at the show.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' The layout of the show floor was kind of amazing. I really liked it. I called it like a T-shaped, right, with a long entryway. But it was wide with a lot of tables in there. Then that pours into like the larger ballroom. Kimberly, who writes for the Pennant, calls it a lollipop shape. So you get the gist there. But the hallway to get in was very, very wide and filled with vendors. And then into the big ballroom. It was just spaced out so well. And it was very busy, but it never felt like you had to wait in line to just walk down like an aisle there. So the spacing was great. The lighting was great. So it was very good. Vendor variety was awesome. Had pretty much anything and everything you wanted to see. The only exception to that being nib grinders. There was not enough. There was only two. And only one, Kirk Spear, was kind of taking like advanced bookings, I think. And then the others were the Kennedys from Indie Penn Dance who were just doing like a live list that day. So whatever they could get to during the day.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Is there like a vendor table to nib grinder ratio? Like some kind of formula?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' There has to be. Yeah. Like to do some kind of like attendance or like, yeah, like volume of tables or volume of vendors to get. Like they could have used two more, I think. And they would have been busy the whole time. There is a tipping point, no pun intended, to where you don't ever want the nib grinders to not have work. Right? You don't. That's. So their income. I'm totally sidebarring here. Nib grinder's income is fixed. Right? It's a time-based money. You know, it's like a calculation. Right? Right. How many nibs can I grind in the seven hours that the show is open today? It's not like a retailer who is open-ended. Right? It could go really bad or it could go really good. Nib grinders, there's a maximum that they can make. Right? So you actually want them to stay very busy, you know, for the most part the whole time. You don't want them sitting around for two or three hours on a Friday afternoon not doing anything because they're just going to get soaked at the end of the day. So that's a little bit tougher. Where Kirk's a little bit different. Kirk has also a retail setup, Kirk Spear, Pen Realm. So it's a little bit of both for him. So anyway, there was definitely like we could have used one or two more for sure.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' The class schedule was insanely packed. So if you were someone who was spending at least a full day there, you could squeeze in a class or two. Or if you were spending multiple days there like I was, you could squeeze in more. One of the interesting things, which I didn't even know until days later, is they had a class scheduled for Thursday evening when people were arriving to the show and vendors were arriving to the show. And it was a journaling class. And they said it went extremely well for people traveling. And like some vendors got to take a class if they wanted to, right? Which they normally wouldn't on a Friday, Saturday, Sunday. So there was actually a Thursday evening journaling class that apparently went really well. And I was like, oh, that's a neat concept to like think about that. Like you're thinking about taking care of, you know, your attendees and vendors and having like one little extra thing. It's like you don't want three or four classes on a Thursday night. But to have one, to have something for people to do who, like me, I got there. I was probably there by two o'clock Thursday. I didn't realize they had this class. I might have taken it. And I was just kind of mingling, hanging out, doing things. I might have taken that class if I had thought about looking. Sorry, consider it. Yeah, that was neat. The entire staff and setup of the organization, the St. Louis Pen Show, was top notch.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' They provided breakfast and lunch every day for vendors, which is crazy. They had a dessert party one night. They had the room that they had like lunch in. You could just go and hang out in and grab a drink. They had another vendor space closer to the show floor to where, you know, you could go grab coffee or water and snacks and things for vendors. They super, super take care of the vendors. They always had volunteers running around to like table sit. Like if you're a solo vendor, right, it's hard to get away from your table. So volunteers were always roaming around to, you know, you could go to the restroom, go grab some food, something like that. So it just like flowed very well. Registration was good. You know, everything was good. Back to the classes, they were pretty much running all day, Friday and Saturday, and then some of Sunday as well. Okay. So like you had good variety of classes you could take. Like the hangout areas at the bar was great. It was, again, a chalet bar, Myke. You know, very, you know, had the wooden arches above, you know, look like a hunting lodge type of situation.

'''Myke Hurley:''' It's nice. I mean, I did see some pictures that you posted in your refill newsletter. And I was taken aback, but like I enjoyed looking at a hotel that didn't just look like every other hotel. Right. Like especially for like a pen show, they feel like they're in pretty standard hotel hotels. You know what I mean? Like it's just like this just looks like a hotel, which is fine, but it's nicer if it's themed.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. And it was just nice to walk around the area. Like being like in that environment was like just kind of nice. Like it just worked. Like it was it wasn't overbearing. Right. It wasn't like you're like in a Disney resort where everything is like done to the nines. Like verily dear sir. Yeah.

'''Myke Hurley:''' What was I like for lunch?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, exactly. So but it was just very comfortable. And I keep saying that, but that's important to me. Right. There was just no stress involved whatsoever in this show or the event or the area. It was great. Good. Except the hotel shuttle that the hotel shuttle was whack. So they're like I said, they're only about 20 minutes from the airport and they have like two running shuttles. And like so I arrived from Atlanta. Flight was easy. Go out. You go to the location where the shuttle where you're supposed to be picked up by the shuttle. And then you just watch the shuttle do a drive by from like three lanes over. Never even tried to stop. And I was like, well, I guess we'll just get an Uber from here. And, you know, you can miss me with with waiting for your hotel shuttle. So that was kind of lame. But otherwise, the hotel was great. Yeah. My room was cool. I really liked my room. It was kind of redone. I think part of the hotel was not refurbished yet, but still like nice. And then I was in like a, you know, a year or two, you know, from refurbishing. Yeah. It was good. I gave a talk on. I hesitate to call it a talk, but we chatted. We had a Q&A. We had a Q&A. Gave a chat. But I didn't over try to overthink going into it, like to have totally have a plan. But I was assisted at this Q&A by my friend Andy Kuhn, who is a frequent questioner of mine. He's always sending me emails with like lots of questions like, what do I think about this? What do I think about that? He's been on friend of the show where we've turned the tables and he's interviewed me. So it was nice to have him kind of as like the moderator and the guide through the event. So we started out with a couple of questions. He, you know, hit me with some, you know, important questions to get me riled up. Like what city, if I could move anywhere in the U.S. to a city that had a stationary shop, what city would I move to? And I'm like sitting here in front of like a St. Louis crowd and it was like, you're really going to make me say Chicago in front of all these people, aren't you? So I did. So that got us off to a good start. So, you know, questions like that. There was a lot of questions asked to me, which was great. There was a good participation. And it's really, we just sat there for like an hour and just talked, told stories. And, you know, people were asking different questions. You know, we had a great question from the crowd, like one of them asked, like, hey, my favorite ink, Sailor Ink Studio 350 just got discontinued. What do I do? Do I hoard it? And y'all know my stance on this. This is one of my great learnings over all the years is you don't hoard limited edition fountain pen inks because they will make it again.

'''Myke Hurley:''' You just move on. Or you will find something. And you just move on, right? Like for the time being.

== Fountain Pen Ink ==

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, you find your next favorite fountain pen ink. And instead of going to buy three or four bottles of that. I've lived that experience. So that was a great question. And, you know, so we had a lot of things. We had the first question, Myke. We might actually get to this later in the show. Very first question was, I'm going to London soon. What stationary shop should I hit up? So I actually had an answer to that, right? So that was cool. And I honestly don't think they knew that I had been to London. I think this was like, I think they said, you know, I'm kind of a new to all this. And it was fun. It was just a really fun. We had a great, great talk. So that was pretty much the vibes and feel portion of the event. And it was all just kind of great. Like really just like very tiny, minor things like the hotel shuttles, like whatever. You know, I'll deal with that. Everything else, it was perfect. I did take a class. I took Anna's Gamify Your Life class, which is very fun. So I'm going to be looking at that. I have a, there's like a little zine that came with it, kind of like your workbook and your dice. And you can, you know, set up a lot of different things with that. That's something I need to work on. I'm actually fidgeting with the dice today. I got orange dice, Myke. They're very nice. Shopping wise, I bought myself one pen and then I picked up just some other random stuff.

'''Myke Hurley:''' How about before we talk about the products that you bought? We take a quick break and give people a place to go buy products of their own. Look at you. And then we can talk about what you bought. So let's talk about- It's literally a chalet. There you go. Oh my gosh. Yes. We've been talking about a pen show in a chalet. But if you considered an actual pen chalet instead, our friends over at Pen Chalet, they sell the products that you're looking for from the brands that you love. And maybe even a brand you don't know you're going to love yet because Pen Chalet is always adding new products to their site. So you can always go online, find the best deals around and see new stuff. Pen Chalet, they sell pens. They sell mechanical pencils. They sell, you know, everything you could wish, but also accessories. Whether you want to get a carrying case, maybe for the next pen show that you're going to, or you want to get some ink, some refills, some converters. It doesn't matter what you're looking for. Pen Chalet have got it. They sell international with great shipping rates. And if you're in the US, you get free shipping on orders over $100. Pen Chalet has low prices and high quality pens with a 100% satisfaction guarantee. So go to penchalet.com slash penaddict and you'll get 10% off anything at Pen Chalet. And to see some exclusive offers because you listen to this show.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' All right, Myke, we got some cool stuff over at Pen Chalet. I'm looking at the homepage. I'm kind of fascinated with the new Pilot 2026 Vanishing Point Limited Edition. This came out. I mean, it's not out yet. This is like the pre-sale, right? So they have a new Limited Edition Vanishing Point for the North American market, which they do every year. This one's called Golden Journey. And you know I'm not a big gold trim fan. But they did this one in a very unique way.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' What's the style of art? Kintsuji is where, you know, like if you have a cracked pottery, right? And then you seal it up with like, say, like a gold, you know, like filling the cracks. That's what the pen looks like. The pen is like the Kintsuji design. It's like the gold cracks through a navy barrel and then like a gold trim pen. It's fantastic looking. So this is the 2026 Limited Edition or the Vanishing Point. Pen Chalet also has in... I saw this at the St. Louis Pen Show and I was kind of fascinated by it. So they have the new Navalure Fireworks Fountain Pen. So it's the shape of the Nautilus, but it's an aluminum barrel. So like my Plonjour, if you recall that pen, was a hefty titanium barrel pen. This is the same style, but it's an aluminum pen. It's lightweight. I almost bought this at the St. Louis Pen Show because it's just kind of got like a splatter ink. Like ink splats over like a navy blue barrel, like blue and, excuse me, yellow, red, orange. You know, it's called Fireworks for that reason. Looks like a fireworks explosion. I really, really like that one. Then you have the Bennu Peach Blossom and White Lily with the painted barrels on the Bennus. These are just fantastic. And I think this is the Talisman model, which is one of the models that I really, really like. Between the Talisman and Euphoria, they're both the longer, very fun shaped pen. And this is Peach Blossom is a cotton peach resin enhanced with subtle gold shimmer and a gentle pink color shifting glow. I'm kind of fascinated by this. And White Lily is sky blue resin transitioning into soft blue green tones. They look spectacular. So they have the hand painted. Last one. And I still haven't gotten one of these pens yet. And I'm curious if anyone listening has. So Dominant Industry is making pens under the Kino Stationery name. And they've come out with like two or three models so far. This is the 001 Serenity Edition, which looked really cool. It's coming out here in like the next month or so. But I think they're doing just the right amount of extra detail where they're having like the acrylic barrel and then some good like cap work and band work and clip work to add in some, you know, more than basic details. And they're always like a pretty good price. They seem like a pretty good price. So I think it's pretty cool. So lots of good stuff over at Penn Chalet, especially a lot of new stuff. Yes. Which is pretty cool this time of year. So, yeah, head over to PennChalet.com.

== Pen Chalet Discount ==

'''Myke Hurley:''' So don't forget, when you go there, go to PennChalet.com slash PennAddict. So you'll get the 10% code that you need to save on anything at Penn Chalet as well as checking out any special deals that they have for you because you listen to this show. A thanks to Penn Chalet for the support of this show and Relay.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Okay. I bought a pen not available at Penn Chalet. Otherwise, I would have bought it from Penn Chalet. But I've been looking at D Squared Arts pens for the past couple years because I've had a couple friends here in the community showing me these really unique pens made by Daryl at D Squared, who takes the acrylic pen material. And actually, mostly he pours the material himself. I think most of this is hand-poured by him. And then he hand-turns the pens, which is a normal thing for a lot of acrylic or other types of pen makers, wood pen makers. But then adds in different shape and subtle lines and notches and different finials. It's a very tactile pen. It's hard to – this is one of the hardest pens to explain or styles of pens because, one, he has like 20 different models. And, two, he just does them all by hand, adds in this – like the type of turning he does is – you know, couldn't be replicated by a machine necessarily. I'm sure it could. But you know what I mean. Yeah. It's definitely like a hand – With great difficult turned up. Yes. So what I bought, it's called the Tordray. And this is actually one of the more simple ones. But Tordray is twist in French. And he uses a lot of French names. In the product naming. So this one – Very French show today. So – yeah, very French show today. So this one, if you take – if you're looking – and I'm trying to describe this to people who can't see this. If you took a standard acrylic pen and held it in the center, that piece is cylindrical, okay? But then as you go to the right towards the end of the pen or you go to the left towards the cap of the pen, it has a slight rotation. And then it ends up being almost like a rectangle towards the end. But a very, like, rounded, smooth rectangle. So there is a twist. If you can imagine, if you took an acrylic pen and held it in your hand and then turned your left hand and right hand opposite of each other, just like a quarter turn, that's the twist, if that makes sense. And it just feels so cool to hold. And that's the thing with these pens. This is a tactile pen experience. So getting to shop there in person at Daryl's table, you go through all of these different shapes that he comes up with and see which one feels the best to you, right? Because, like, you might not like the shape that I got with the twist, the tordre. And you might prefer something with, like, he'll do some, like, grooves through the barrel, which is a very fun shape. And then, you know, a finial could have, like, a very more of a tactile finish. So, like, when you're holding the pen, you can feel, like, a roughness on there that's purposely built. So, again, it's a super, super hard pen to describe, but it's when you're there and checking out all these pens, you're going, oh, yeah, this is really cool. I'm going to come away with one of these, and how do I choose which one's mine? I literally, I don't know, out of the 20 or 30 different pens there, like, I handled them all trying to figure out which is the best, and you end up gravitating to, like, one or two, and then you figure it out. So, yeah, they're literally like sculpture in a pen. And, you know, I've gotten to test these out for a couple years, so I was finally excited to get to pick one out in person myself. So, I got that. Mine's a yellow and blue color, acrylic. It's very, very shiny and very bright. It looks really, really neat.

'''Myke Hurley:''' This was the glow-in-the-dark one?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' This one is not. So, I put a link in the show notes. Mine looks like it could glow-in-the-dark. There's not a lot of inks to this shape pen. So, I found one that I could put. And if you look, if you scroll down, and I'm talking to you, Myke, you scroll down, you see kind of the capped version of the pen. It doesn't look like a cylinder, right? Okay. So, you can see kind of the twist to where there's, like, a block rectangle on each end, but they're kind of, like, counter to each other, right? So, it's super subtle that you don't really see in all the pens. And if you scroll to the bottom of that page, you can see some of the other shapes that he does.

'''Myke Hurley:''' That this shape, that kind of, like, this kind of, like, flowing shape reminds me of, like, a Newton pen. Yes. There were some Newton pens from back in the day that had this kind of profile to them.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. I'll be corrected if I'm wrong when I say this, but I think him, I think he worked with Sean a lot when he was starting out. They're both from the same area. Yeah. Sean Newton. That would make sense. So, that did not surprise me. But, yeah, it's really unique, really fun product that's, like, different than, you know, anything else I have. So, they're just a really, really cool shape. So, that was my pen. I also bought a nib holder from Derek, from Daryl at D Squared. It's called a Seahorse. I'll have to take a picture of that. I didn't find a link of that. But, as you can imagine, it's got, like, a Seahorse-esque shape. Just a very subtle nib holder shape that really just kind of locks into my hand, and it's a really beautiful pink. So, I still owe lots of pictures from this show if I was more prepared and less busy. I would have had pictures up to put in these links of my exact products. But, they're very cool. I'll have more coming soon.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Aside from all the other stationary accessories and notebooks and inks and stickers, I picked up a ton of stuff. You know, at the show. Or, like, review or just for fun. I ran into, like, one of the stupidest purchases I've ever made, Myke. Okay. And I'm pretty happy about it. I was just walking by a table, and it was just, like, an individual seller. Like, a personal collection type of vendor, right? Okay. Not a retailer or anything like that. And they just had, like, two tables worth of pens. And then they had, like, a table worth of notebooks. And I saw this notebook with this wild pattern on it. And I was like, oh, that pattern is sick. What is this? And I picked it up. And I was like, oh, this is a Gucci notebook. So, I am now the proud owner of a Gucci red and blue geometric notebook. What is the story of this? I don't know. I don't know. I would say incredible looking notebook. It's rad, right? Like, I couldn't, like, the best thing we could find is, like, it came out in 2018. Okay. And it's Gucci, and the logo art is insane. And you found a link on a resale website. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I might have overpaid a little bit. Okay. I thought in my head, the problem is when you see something like this.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Oh, there are a logo on every page?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Every page. Sick. Yes. That's what I was going to comment.

'''Myke Hurley:''' That's what sealed it. For the Gucci logo, I want to see it all the time.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Literally every page front and back has an alternating red G or blue G.

'''Myke Hurley:''' You're going to be ready for next season when the Gucci Formula One team.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' That's right. Ooh, maybe it's my F1 notebook. Maybe it is. Maybe it is. So, I don't know what I'm going to do with this. I have no clue what I'm going to do with this. But I couldn't leave it on the table. And it was very expensive. But, like, as I do, I was like, oh, like, in my head, if they say it's this price, like, that's too much. If they say it's this price, it's probably okay. And it was, like, it was $150. Like, I'll tell you. Like, it was $150. And I was happy to pay it. I would do it. It looks like you can get them for, like, $130 or something like that.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I would do it. I would pay $150.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' It's really insanely well made, obviously. I have no clue what the paper quality is going to be like once I use it. And I'm pretty stoked about this. This is definitely a highlight of the show for me. That is a good find. Yeah. Because that's the point that I'm at now, right? Like, I don't need another pilot or sailor or platinum. You know, I could add another one. You know, I don't need, you know, certain things. But, like, that leaves room for this. You definitely don't need another notebook, do you? I don't. Right.

'''Myke Hurley:''' So, if you're gonna, it needs to be a Gucci notebook. Yeah. I mean, have you seen this notebook? It's amazing, Brad. I'm very jealous of this, actually. That's a statement notebook right there. It's so ridiculous. I bet the paper's terrible.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I bet it. It kind of feels like it's just gonna be, like, copy or paper. There's no way this is gonna be fountain pen. It's not what it's about. Yeah. But, yeah, it's, I don't know. It's good. Now, on to the coffee shop, Brad. That's a conversation. I've never done anything like that before, where it's just, like, something, like, really stupidly ridiculous. And I did. So, yeah. That was it. So, overall, just had a big W at the St. Louis pen show winning. I got some fun stuff. I have so much stuff to go through. But those were my main acquisitions. The D-squared art pen and the Gucci notebook was one and two in my heart there from the show. But I got so much other stuff. So, we'll go through that as the time goes on. I'll have some reviews. I'll have some giveaways. All kinds of stuff from the show. Only my second show of the year, which is a good lead-in to my third show of the year coming up at the end of this month. Right, Myke?

== New York Stationery Show ==

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah, I thought we should probably do a better job of reminding people about this and that we're going to be there, which is the New York Stationery Fest, which is happening on... What are the actual dates of the festival? July 30th to August 1st, 2026.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' It's a Thursday start. Thursday, Friday, Saturday. Thursday, Friday, Saturday. Thursday and Friday being the two big days.

'''Myke Hurley:''' In Brooklyn, New York City. Yep. We will be there all three days for significant portions of the day. We're going to be participating in some events that will be announced at some point, I suppose. Yep. But we're going to be there, but we'll also be hanging out and we'll be going around the show floor. The show... I say the show floor, the show warehouse. Yeah, it's huge. I'm so excited for this because I don't really know what to expect from a stationery festival. Like, I loved hearing you and Anna talk about it last week, but this has got me really jazzed. Like, I'm kind of... I've got the same level of excitement that I had for, like, the first Atlanta trip of, like, oh, I'm going to go. I'm going to buy some stuff I've never seen before and I'm going to have a great time. So, I'm really looking forward to this. We're both going to be there. And so, if you're considering it, come down. If you're going to be in town, you're going to be going to the show, come and find us and say hi. You can find out more at stationaryfestival.com, which is an incredible URL that they have. And I've also put a link in the show notes, too. But it will be cool to see Pan Addict listeners spending time at the New York Stationery Festival later on this year.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' We'll talk about it more in, like, a creepy show. Later on this month. Later on this month. Yeah, it's, like, three weeks away, like, four weeks away until we travel. So, we'll talk about it more in the lead up. We'll do maybe a preview show. We actually need to, you and I need to talk about our schedule around then. So, we do have three time slots booked each day. I'm going to hold off until, like, the last episode before we go to... Because all that stuff can move. But we'll be doing, like, interviews and conversations with people that y'all will be able to come see. It's all free. We have a space dedicated at the show. It'll be an afternoon time slot. At least that's what they are right now. So, yeah. We'll have more details on that coming soon. I'm looking forward to it. Yeah. I think your socks are going to be properly knocked off.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I can't wait, man.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. It should be good. Bring an extra bag.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Well, I mean, you just went shopping. I did. At your own stationery fest.

== Tessa's Store ==

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yes. So, a couple of weekends ago, I took a trip to Tessa's new store in South London, the stationery. It's a beautiful space that Tessa has got built out. And so, good to go in. The shop was hustling and bustling. Oh, good. I get the impression that it's been like that. I think it's so good to Tessa's like it's been busy all the time, like busier than she expected it would be, which is wonderful. I hope for her sake that it quietens down to a point which is like manageable. But she seems very excited about it. And yeah. So, if you're in London or planning to be in London, this is a great visit. It's on a really nice little high street that's got a couple of coffee shops, a bakery, a couple of pubs. So, you could actually like go to Tessa's store and then spend time in the area. Like you could have lunch or whatever. Oh, that sounds perfect. It's a nice little high street that she's on in a place called Forest Hill in South London. Because it's out of the way. You would not be in this area. It's not very far from Central, but like you wouldn't be there. But this, you know, she's not like the only store on this high street. So, when you're in the area, there's lots of cool stuff. Yeah, there's things that you can do. But yeah, it's a lovely little shop. And I picked up a selection of Uniball products that I was interested in. So, I got a Uniball Zento and a Uniball One. Okay. I don't like the Zento, Brad.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So, let's specify which model you got. You got the basic like $3. Yeah, it's just like a kind of dusty pink. The standard. Yeah. Yeah. Standard barrel, Uniball Zento. What don't you like about it? The ink, the flow, the feel.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I think it's the flow. I think the flow is the issue. The feel is fine. You know, it's a 0.38. So, it is, you know. Okay. I'm aware of the fact that this is not what I would necessarily want thickness wise. Right? Sure. But I found the flow to be inconsistent. Okay. Where I also got the Uniball One, which is the little chubby guy, which I... Yeah. Very strange form factor. Like, I'm not sure how it feels in my hand, if I'm being honest. Like, it's weird. But I like it. I also like the kind of wavy, recycled plastic look that it has. Yeah. You know, that kind of marbled look. Yeah. I much prefer the Uniball One to the Zento from like the refill perspective.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' The ink perspective. Yeah. What size and color of the one did you get? The ink. It's 0.38 black. Okay. 0.38 black. The 0.38 black one is kind of my favorite, one of my favorite gel inks right now.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' It's... Because it's much, much darker. Right? It's a very dark ink. Mm-hmm. And I find it smoother than the Zento. The Zento is just average. Right? The Zento is like a good rollerball. Like the Pilot Precise V5. One of the best pens ever made. Like the Zento is like that. Right? But it's just... It's not as good as Uniball's gels. I don't think.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I'm hyped to be on belief. Like I know there's different barrel styles. But I don't think I understand it now.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Well, I have... If it tells you anything, in my fancy Zento barrel, the signature, I have a one refill in it.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah. I would do that.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. So they're swappable that way. Interesting feedback from you. Like that's good feedback to have. Because like, yeah, the Zento is perfectly fine. Right? Yeah. Like I think the .38, I use it on occasion. I keep one at the desk because I keep, you know, always wanting to test these things. The Zento gels are just better. And I'm including the One in that. Now, the One does have its own challenges. I don't praise the One universally like I do the Zento because I think the color gels in the One are very inconsistent. I bought a part of the colors.

'''Myke Hurley:''' And I do like them because they're fun colors. The color is great. Yeah. They're not as good as just the regular black. Yes.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yes. That's where I'm at with the One ink formulation. So, yeah. I would agree with that. So, yeah. Interesting feedback on the Zento and the One from you. I'm glad you got to try those because they are, the One is pretty different, I'd say, than the Signo. I can't. You mean Zento when you keep saying Signo? No. No? I keep saying Signo because the Signo is the best gel Uniball lineup.

== Signo Pens ==

'''Myke Hurley:''' Okay. Yeah. I mean, that's the classic. I used the Signo forever.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yes. So, I still think the Signo has the best color gel inks. I think the Uniball One black is very, very good and maybe better than its Signo counterparts. And then I classify the Zento completely differently. As like a different ink formulation. Right? I don't think it's a gel ink. It's like a gel rollerball hybrid. And I still am unclear on that. And it's good. Like 0% wrong with anything about the Zento. It's just not as good as like a Signo gel or a One black gel. And they've never done more colors with the Zento yet, which I think is kind of telling. They're leaning into all the barrels and styles of the Zento. So, I want to see once they do start doing colors, then maybe we can have a different conversation on that.

'''Myke Hurley:''' This episode is brought to you by Factor. It's been a long day and then hunger strikes. There might be something healthy in the fridge that you could be making, but you want a good meal and you want it fast. Eating healthily isn't always a willpower problem. It's a setup problem, which is exactly what Factor is here to solve. With Factor, you can hit your nutrition goals this season without the planning, grocery runs or cooking. Factor has meals built around your goals, whether that's weight loss, overall nutrition, more protein or GLP-1 support. And for strength and workout recovery, check out Factor's Muscle Pro collection. Factor meals are fresh, never frozen. There are over 100 rotating weekly meals, including globally inspired flavors like Mediterranean and Asian. So, there's always something new to look forward to. So, already in just two minutes, Factor shops, preps, cooks and delivers straight to your door so you have more time for everything you love this spring. Brad, have you been enjoying Factor recently?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I have been. And what Factor solves for me is the I don't want to deal with it problem. I don't want to deal with cooking lunch in the middle of the day when I'm busy and doing things. And I can just knock it out with Factor and have like an awesome meal that makes the rest of the family jealous. I was like, what did you have for lunch? It's like, oh, I had a ham sandwich. What did you have for lunch? Oh, I had salmon and rice and like zucchini. And it was fantastic. It's like, what are you doing? It's like, well, I got these factors and you can't have them. So, yeah, they're spectacular. I've told you every time I say it is like you have to hide the factors in this household because they're so good and they're so unique and they're easy. They're just easy. I walk to the fridge, grab it, poke a few holes in it, put it in the microwave, two minutes, bam, amazing food. So, yeah, I'm a huge Factor fan and it's about time to get that next order in for me. So I should have hopefully something coming soon here.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Head to factomeals.com slash penaddict50off and use the code penaddict50off to get 50% off and free daily greens per box with new subscription only while supplies last until September 27th, 2026. See the website for more details, which is factomeals.com slash penaddict50off and use the code penaddict50off. Our thanks to Factor for the support of this show and Relay.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' All right, Myke, we got our shout out of the week. Shout out of the week. Julia here. One of my favorite people on the internet has recently, and a multi-time shout out of the week participant, has recently written an article for the Penaddict on their 2026 Dutch Pen Show experience. What a fantastic article. It was so good. Like, I wanted to be there. Like, the event looks awesome. The town looks awesome. The area looks awesome. So maybe that's where you and I meet next year. Like, we're meeting in Brooklyn this year. Maybe we meet in Utrecht, the Netherlands next year. This is in Utrecht?

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah. Oh, my God. All right. So I was going to make a joke. Wow. Hello. Hello. There is a museum in Utrecht, which is the Apple Museum. Okay. And I'm going to go to it at some point as part of the new podcast. Right. They have an incredible collection of stuff. Okay. So I don't know. We do all of that. I don't know what to say.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Well, turns out. That's so funny. That's so funny.

'''Myke Hurley:''' When is it?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. Like, usually the first weekend in June. Okay. Literally, like, a June 1st type of situation. Could be the worst time of year for me. Yeah. It's WWDC. So let's say I'm not doing that. You never know, Myke. You never know. You never know, Brad. You never know. I don't know. Yeah. So anyway, go check out this article. I thought it was fantastic. Really good. Really cool looking show. Everyone that's been to the Dutch Pen Show in the past says, I need to get there. And, like, this doesn't help. This definitely doesn't help. This looks amazing. So, and I put a link in the show notes. There's also, Julia did a video recap on her YouTube page. So read the article, watch the video, and start making plans, I guess, to attend in a future year. Because it looks ideal. Some of the vendors there, like, you know, that haven't really traveled to the U.S. or somewhere that I can go see them. And I was fascinated by so many of them. Really, really cool stuff. So, all right. Lastly, let's end on a bad note, Myke. What's in the show? Which is a good note for me. Okay. Like, you know, when you get to talk bad about products, that's always good. Because people say, I don't talk enough. I don't talk about bad products enough. Well, let me tell y'all. The Sailor KSARRA erasable pen is horrible, and you shouldn't buy it. How's that for? How's that? It's a legitimately bad product. So, the sales pitch of the KSARRA is, it's an erasable gel ink pen that is a Pilot Friction competitor. We did this when they launched. We covered, like, what the KSARRA is. It's goal to erase the gel ink on the page. They've met that goal. Okay. So, you put the ink on the page. The eraser erases it from the page. That part is good. It works. Where it fails is that the ink is so bad, you don't actually want to write with it. So, it's not a good pen experience, regardless of whether the ink is erasable or not. So, you don't actually get to the benefit of this pen's existence because the ink formulation is so bad, you actually don't want to write with it. So, it's a 0.8 millimeter. So, I got sent a black and a red. And, as we talked about, Pentel is under the same plus umbrella now as Sailor. So, it has this inner gel style front end grip section and refill shape. And, the ink is very, it just kind of railroads from the jump. The ink tip is very messy. And, it just becomes a mess. And, then one of the interesting things that you see with this is, have you ever written on a whiteboard with a whiteboard marker? And, then you have the words that you've written and then you can write over with a whiteboard marker and it erases that? Yes. This wipe, it wipes away itself on paper. Interesting. And, it's bad. It's a bad feel and I don't like it. So, I can't even get to the erasing being good. Which, it's good. Right? It's a completely different thing. It's not a heat sensitive erasing. It's a rubberized ink. And, I'm going to say, I just did a little scribble here. I'm going to send this to you while we're chatting. And, like, I wasn't even watching what I was doing. Right? I wasn't trying to make a point here. I was just, like, scribbling while I was talking. Let me see how fast I can send this over to Myke. Because, it's a perfect example of what I was talking about. And, I'll do it later.

== Writing Products ==

'''Brad Dowdy:''' You know, for, like, Instagram or whatever. I'm going to review these very soon. Because, they are actually very poor. And, I want to kind of, like, put that out there.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So, let's see. But, as I was doing this. Here, I'm going to take this picture. Hang on. Okay. Let's see here. Can we get this for Myke? So, you can see what I'm talking about. And, I just did this. I'm going to send it to Myke. It is on the way in Slack. And, I wasn't even looking. I was just writing lines. I was doing lines while we were talking, Myke.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' It doesn't work. It's not a writing product. Because of how.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah, it doesn't look good, does it?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. And, that's just me, like, doing straight lines on the page.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I mean, it's just the rail. The rail. Is it railroading?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. Mm-hmm. Yeah. It's, yeah. Like, you want it to work. Like, you want it to work.

'''Myke Hurley:''' It looks like the words that you've written down. Uh-huh. It looks wet.

== Erasable Ink ==

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So, the ink.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' It's essentially a rubberized ink, for lack of a better term. Yeah. Okay. And, that's how they're getting their version of erasable gel. Okay. So, they're saying, we have a different ink formulation. To where the ink. You can erase. I can erase this with my finger. If I started rubbing my finger over this, it would basically pull up the ink. Because of that formulation.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' It erases well. Like, it's no problem with that. But, like, I'm never going to get to that point. Because it's just a bad writing product. So, I'll have a lot to say on this. I'm going to do a review. And, I really appreciate being sent these. Just because I haven't gotten any yet.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. I, it's. I hope that they continue doing something. Like, the friction was not a great product when it launched. I tried the very first frictions. Their ink formulation was so faint and light. It wasn't great. And, then they improved on it. So, maybe we can hold out a little bit of hope that the K-Sara. Because, I think this should be a product. Right? But, they've got to figure something out. The ink formulation works for erasing. But, it doesn't work for writing. And, I think that's backwards. Right? And, if you want to sell a product. It's got to be good writing for me. To allow me to even get to the erasing. So, I think that's where we're at with the K-Sara right now. So, hopefully, they can do something. Because, what happens when you see the ink like this. It starts gumming up the tip as well. Like, it gets messy and gunky. It's just a very... I'm extremely unimpressed with version 1 of this product.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' And, I hope they can refine it. Because, I think this product should exist. Right? That's one of my favorite things about Stationery. It's like, they've got something here. Their erasing product works. But, the ink does not. So, you can't even get to, like, the good stuff. Because, it's just not fun to use.

'''Myke Hurley:''' If you would like to get the show notes, the links to all the things that we've discussed today. It's very easy to do that. It should be in your podcast app of choice. Or, you can go on over to relay.fm. I would like to thank our sponsors for this week's episode again. That is Penn, Chalet, and Factor. If you want to find Brad online, go to penaddict.com. You can go to spokedesign.com. And twitch.tv slash penaddict. You can find me here on relay. And at theenthusiast.net. And cortexbrand.com. We'll be back next week. Until then, say goodbye, Brad. Goodbye, Brad. Goodbye, Brad. Goodbye, Brad.

[[Category:Podcast Transcripts]]
[[Category:The Pen Addict Podcast Transcript]]

Stationery Wiki:Current TPA podcast

2026-07-03T11:58:11Z

PencilBot: Updating current podcast layout pointer to episode 723

{{Infobox current podcast
| name = The Pen Addict
| number = 723
| title = I Bet the Paper Is Terrible
| date = July 2nd, 2026
| hosts = [[Brad Dowdy]] 
[[Myke Hurley]]
| guests =
| link = [https://www.relay.fm/penaddict/723 Episode 723]
| audiolink = [https://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/mgln.ai/e/613/clrtpod.com/m/pscrb.fm/rss/p/traffic.libsyn.com/thepenaddict/The_Pen_Addict_723.mp3 Audio Episode 723]
| length = 48
}}

== Description ==

Brad is back from the St. Louis Pen Show with many tales to tell. Also pens, and quite the interesting notebook. And Myke joins the Zento club!

The Pen Addict 723

2026-07-03T11:58:00Z

PencilBot: Automated layout generation from RelayFM metadata for episode 723

{{Infobox podcast
| name = The Pen Addict
| number = 723
| title = I Bet the Paper Is Terrible
| date = July 2nd, 2026
| hosts = [[Brad Dowdy]] 
[[Myke Hurley]]
| guests =
| link = [https://www.relay.fm/penaddict/723 Episode 723]
| audiolink = [https://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/mgln.ai/e/613/clrtpod.com/m/pscrb.fm/rss/p/traffic.libsyn.com/thepenaddict/The_Pen_Addict_723.mp3 Audio Episode 723]
| length = 48
}}

== Description ==

Brad is back from the St. Louis Pen Show with many tales to tell. Also pens, and quite the interesting notebook. And Myke joins the Zento club! <ref>Description taken from the official Pen Addict podcast page https://www.relay.fm/penaddict/723</ref>

== Further Information ==

== Links & Show Notes ==

* [https://www.stlpenshow.com/ St. Louis Pen Show 2026]
* [https://www.instagram.com/penaddict/p/DaBfTPrOTMx/ King Brad – Instagram]
* [https://www.penchalet.com/fine_pens/fountain_pens/pilot_2026_le_vanishing_point_golden_journey_fountain_pens.html Pilot 2026 Limited Edition Vanishing Point Golden Journe Fountain Pens – Pen Chalet]
* [https://www.penchalet.com/fine_pens/fountain_pens/nahvalur_narwhal_fireworks_fountain_pens.html Nahvalur (Narwhal) Fireworks Fountain Pens – Pen Chalet]
* [https://www.penchalet.com/fine_pens/fountain_pens/benu_hand_painted_talisman_fountain_pens.html Benu Hand Painted Talisman Fountain Pens – Pen Chalet]
* [https://www.penchalet.com/fine_pens/fountain_pens/keyno_001_serenity_fountain_pens.html Keyno Stay.tionery 001 Serenity Fountain Pens – Pen Chalet]
* [https://dsquaredarts.com/ D² Arts]
* [https://d-squared-arts.myshopify.com/products/tordre-yellow-blue-fountain-pens Tordre - Yellow Blue Fountain Pens – D Squared Arts]
* [https://poshmark.com/listing/NWT-GUCCI-Red-and-Blue-Geometric-Notebook-695ca4caed788d1fc2454e2c Nwt Gucci Red And Blue Geometric Notebook | Poshmark]
* [https://stationeryfestival.com/ New York Stationery Fest]
* [https://the-stationer.co.uk/ The Stationer]
* [https://www.penaddict.com/blog/2026/6/30/2026-dutch-pen-show-recap 2026 Dutch Pen Show Recap — The Pen Addict]
* [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IiEtIfyjC1I My ✨ Most Intentional ✨ Pen Show Haul Yet? • First Dutch Pen Show Experience - YouTube]
* [https://yosekastationery.com/products/sailor-que-sera-ballpoint-pen-0-8mm Sailor Que Será Ballpoint Pen - 0.8mm – Yoseka Stationery]

==References and Notes==

{{Reflist}}

[[Category:Podcast Episodes]]
[[Category:The Pen Addict Podcast]]

The Pen Addict 722/transcript

2026-06-25T14:13:53Z

PencilBot: Initial transcript automated upload

{{Infobox podcast transcript
| name = The Pen Addict
| number = 722
| title = St. Louis Pen Show Preview, Featuring Ana Reinert!
| date = June 25th, 2026
| hosts = [[Brad Dowdy]] 
[[Myke Hurley]]
| guests = [[Ana Reinert]]
| link = [https://www.relay.fm/penaddict/722 Episode 722]
| audiolink = [https://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/mgln.ai/e/613/clrtpod.com/m/pscrb.fm/rss/p/traffic.libsyn.com/thepenaddict/penaddict722.mp3 Audio Episode 722]
| length = 62
}}

'''Brad Dowdy:''' From Relay, this is The Pen Addict podcast episode number 722. This week's episode is sponsored by our friends over at Enigma Stationery and Squarespace. I'm your host, Brad Dowdy. While Myke is away again, just kidding, Myke, I know, it's my fault this time. I had to bring in the world's most frequent guest to The Pen Addict podcast. Maybe does that mean, God, am I going to say it, the world's best guest? Anna Reinhart. Thank you. Anna Reinhart, how are you doing?

'''Ana Reinhart:''' Hi, how are you? I'm doing well. Scrambling, as always. But hi, hi everybody.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yes, we're going to talk about scrambling. The impetus of this episode was kind of the scramble you're on so far this year. So I want to talk about that a lot. So, but it's kind of perfect timing because it's, as we record this, it's going to be St. Louis Pen Show Week. We're going to be together at that event here this weekend, this upcoming weekend. As you're listening to the podcast on Thursday, we will both probably be there around that time or that evening.

'''Ana Reinhart:''' Hopefully nothing goes wrong. We will both be there. Like fingers crossed.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, it's always a fun, stormy season in that part of the world around this time of year. Yeah, no kidding. We're getting it too. Not like y'all, but woof, woof. So we're going to talk about the St. Louis Pen Show specifically towards the end of this show because I've never been and you've been how many times?

'''Ana Reinhart:''' I don't know. A bunch.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' A bunch because it's pretty close. It's a drive for you.

'''Ana Reinhart:''' Yeah, it's just on the other side of the state.

== Pen Shows ==

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. Yeah. So you've been there a bunch. So I'm going to get advice from a pro and y'all are going to get to ride along with me as I ask Ana some questions. But you've been, speaking of pro, you've been on the pro tour so far, the pro pen show tour in 2026 so far. I just did the count. So once St. Louis happens, that'll be five shows in six months. And that's honestly, as someone who's done that, that is a lot, right? It's less than say like a retailer who does this full time for a living and hits all the shows, right? They've probably done, they'll probably do eight in this span or maybe something like that. But that's a lot. So how are you doing so far?

'''Ana Reinhart:''' Well, okay. Fingers crossed. I have not gotten the crud at any of the shows. I have managed to avoid that. So like fingers crossed St. Louis is not a crud capital.

'''Ana Reinhart:''' Everybody wash your hands. Use hand sanitizer, please. Because in two weeks after that, I go to Portland. Oh, okay. Yeah. But yeah, it's a lot. The next couple of months for me is going to be worse because we're getting into DC, San Francisco, Dallas. Like these are shows that kind of, they roll one right after the other and there's only two or three weeks. I've had about a month or so, a little bit more than a month in between the last show that I attended and this one, which really helped because there was a stretch there where it was like every three or four weeks. And just getting back into the swing of things at home after doing a show because we get there a day before, working a show, you get there a day before and then you do all the setup and then you're there on the show floor from the minute the show opens to the minute the show closes. And then have to do the tear down and then drive back. And I know a lot of people travel and they drive, but they have the luxury of like middle of the afternoon going and taking a nap or sitting down and having some coffee or sitting in a class and not having to teach it. So yeah, it can be really, and I'm an introvert and I work from home by myself all day long. So I like, it's the extremes. I go from absolute solitude to like all the people. And then it takes me a little while of like, I'd like a sensory deprivation tank, please.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' For sure. We just, we need one installed at the, at the hotel and during the show you can, you can go jump in there for like an hour.

'''Ana Reinhart:''' Absolutely. But yeah, it's been interesting to go to all these different shows because each of them does have a different personality and a different experience. Some of the shows are newer than others. Like I did the Chicago stationary fest this year and then turned around and like three weeks later did the Chicago pen show, which was held at a new to me venue. Although they had been in that same space now for two years. Um, and so it was interesting to see the difference because the stationary fest was held, um, more in the Chicago city proper where the Chicago pen show was held out in the suburbs. But, um, it was just surprising. Both of those shows has, have changed in the years that I have attended them. This was only in the second year for Chicago stationary fest. Um, but I had visited the Chicago pen show for many years and it was interesting to see how much it has changed since it's relocated. I think the new location was really good for them. Um, and they're moving to a different hotel, but in the same area for next year because they really outgrew the space already. Already. Wow. Already. Yeah. Um, the nice thing about where the show was held this year was that it was very close to like a big shopping center mall area with a lot of restaurants and places people could shop if they wanted to like get off the show floor and go do something else. Um, but, uh, I laugh because it's the mall I went to in my childhood. So it's, it was the, the location of the Chicago pen show was, uh, literally, uh, five minutes from where I grew up, um, out in the suburbs of Chicago. So, uh, that was very peculiar. Um, my dad had just recently relocated like further out into the X burbs. Um, otherwise I probably would have just stayed at my dad's house for the weekend. Um, but, uh, yeah, so I did actually get to visit with my dad while I was there, which was nice. Um, but yeah, so it's been interesting to, to go to these shows. Some of them, I go as a vendor for myself and some of them, I help other people. Mostly this year I've been working with the drum goals. Um, and so it's.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Is that what you did at Chicago or did you do? Chicago? I was solo.

'''Ana Reinhart:''' 100% solo. I went all by myself. Um, I didn't have anybody watching my table while I taught classes. So I had to put a cover over and bail out. I mean. Oh, I have a question about that later. Yeah, for sure. Um, my friend Jacqueline who, uh, does Kaleido Craft, um, was nearby. So she could kind of tell people like, oh, she'll be back. She's just teaching a class. She didn't just like bail out or anything.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. So, but you brought up two good shows that I want to talk about. And a couple of weeks ago on this show, I had, uh, Tony Palumbo from Feed Your Creativity. And we're talking about the differences in say like the stationary fest type of events. Like she had been to Little Craft Fest and then the Florida stationary, uh, fest. And then like the regular traditional pin shows, you know, like your Chicago's and LA's and things like that. Between like the Chicago stationary fest and Chicago pin show, I was just curious your thoughts. I'm not going to ask you to compare and contrast them. They're like, they're very different events, but like, what did you get from like the vibe of each? Because they both looked while we're all in the same space, we'd all fit somewhere in this Venn diagram together. I think like stationary fest look like big and fun and awesome and a certain type of crowd and a certain type of vendor. And then the Chicago pin show also looked big and fun and awesome with a completely different style of vendor. But we are able to get to see this kind of overlap. I don't know what, what are your, just kind of your general thoughts on like those two types of events, especially only three weeks apart.

'''Ana Reinhart:''' Yeah.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Like in, in Chicago, but I mean, I know they can handle that.

'''Ana Reinhart:''' Yeah. Um, what I find interesting is that you're right. There is a sort of Venn diagram between stationary, stationary people with air quotes, pen people with air quotes, and then like journaling people with air quotes, you know, like, or planner people. Like, cause there's planner events too, which are also very. And you like, they're unusual for people who attend pen shows because they tend to be more activity based. Um, the stationary fest this year, they did go to just a strictly marketplace environment as opposed to the previous year where they tried to add in classes and meetups and things like that. And they kind of tried to pull it back a little bit because of the, some of the feedback that they got. And, but the crowd is different. One of the things I think is a big, the big thing that I noticed is because a lot of stationary events focus a lot on the smaller priced items, the lower priced items, stickers, washi tape, um, kind of tchotchkes kind of thing. I do think that, um, like the, like the, like you got to move a lot of product if you're, if that's what you're selling as opposed to pen shows where you're talking about items that can be, you know, two zeros, three zeros, four zero prices, um, where a lot of the vendors can come sell two or three pens and clear their costs for the trip. Uh, you got to sell a lot of rolls, uh, you got to sell a lot of rolls, washi tape, you know, and a lot. Uh, so it was interesting to see like sort of how vendors reacted because I, I've been seeing a lot of the same vendors at different stationary events. So we've all kind of become friends. Uh, so we do sort of talk shop in the background about like, how did we do, are you selling well? Are you not selling well? Um, a lot of the people that I saw at Chicago stationary fest in 2025, I also saw at little craft fest. And then again, at Chicago stationary fest or some of them I saw in, in San Francisco and, and other venues like pen related venues, but it is interesting. I think just, you know, people who come to pen shows are like, wow, there's no paper here. Um, people who go to stationary events are like, Hey, there's no pens here. So there is a need, I think to find a middle ground where there's a, an assortment of pens, ink, paper, stationary stickers, washi tape, you know, fun toy kind of thing like our play toys. Um, but I do think that it helps to create like a really well-rounded event when you have a little bit of all of that. And I think that that was what Chicago pen show did. And we joked because a lot of the sticker washi type of stuff all went to the basement. We were all downstairs. We were in the dungeon and people came down and they were like, this is what I've been looking for. You know, so it's like, it was the kind of thing where it was like the big show floor was all the pen vendors and the nib grinders and some of the retailers who are like pen shops that brought the pens and the ink and the paper. Um, but they were like, you know, people wanted to have, you know, buy a few rolls of washi tape, buy some sticker sheets, that kind of thing to add into sort of their purchases for the weekend. Um, and so I thought it was interesting. We, we did end up getting, because we're more, a lot of us are newer vendors. Compared with like people who've been doing the pen show in Chicago for years as, you know, uh, vintage pen dealers, that kind of thing. So we all got like the last room available.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. Uh, not next year. You'll be, you'll be thrown into the big room. Everyone's in one big room next year. Yeah. Yeah. So that'll be interesting. Yeah. So I think the shows that are doing it the best, well, I should say the shows that I'm enjoying the most as someone who goes to mostly pen shows are the ones who are starting to see more of an integration into just having the traditional weight would call stationary vendors, like your, your stickers, washi stamps, all that kind of stuff. And it's pretty clear. There's a market for that. Um, from what I see and you know, the bigger shows, your San Fran's DC Chicago's are able to handle kind of this, you know, having these extra, maybe more vendor tables that they've had in the past. Um, and having to fit some of these things in. But I think it's just such a better offering and such a more unique experience for an attendee, even if you're not interested in that stuff. Like it's interesting to see the creativity, at least like, I guess I am speaking for myself here because I'm just very interested in what people do and what people make. But like, I'm interested in the creativity, even if maybe I'm not shopping for a pen, I want to see what the makers are doing. And are they doing anything interesting with shapes or materials or metal work? You know, I want to see, you know, a sticker maker, how they're handled. They're handling their sticker sheets versus their individual stickers. And I don't know, as someone who's in this business, it's always interesting to me just to have that wide variety of options, as opposed to going from pen table to pen table to pen table. Like I'm good with like one pass around, like the pens, just because I've been doing it a while. Like I know what I want or what I need. And it's like, okay, well, give me something else. And I'm super happy to kind of see all of this, um, bit of diversity in, in types of vintage. Vendors at the more traditional pen shows. And I only think it's going to continue as you kind of alluded to. You're kind of this conduit a little bit between two worlds. Like you'll see people at, um, you know, like a little craft fest or something that I've never been a vendor that it's never been to a pen show, but they would fit right in. Right. They just don't have that familiarity or, you know, that knowledge. Knowledge. And then like someone like you can say, Oh yeah, like the show might be good for someone who sells the things you do. And I love seeing that.

'''Ana Reinhart:''' And I'm seeing more and more of the crossover, like the vendor that was next to me in, uh, Chicago stationary fest, um, was somebody who did stickers and washi tape and things like that, but was getting into fountain pens and was able to work an arrangement with Esther Brooke to eventually come out with her own exclusive pen. I'm not naming names cause I don't want to get anybody in trouble, but, um, you know, so it's that thing where it's like where I'm seeing the crossover between the markets where people who were just sort of, uh, you know, pen, you know, like a gel pen station, like where we started. Let's be honest, Brad, we all started there, you know, where we had just had gel pens. We had, you know, stuff we found at the office supply store, but we, we wanted our notebooks to look pretty. We wanted to have nice stuff in them. And so it's, that's happening now. I think in the, what's kind of quote unquote, the stationary community, they're discovering things like, uh, travelers notebooks, which have lovely paper. And all of a sudden they're like, Oh, a fountain pen would be nice. You know? So it's like, we're starting to like blend all of that. And I think that it's time to stop having the division between like stationary people and pen people. And there are, you know, I mean, there are things, different things that they're interested in and how they're looking at these events. But I think that there's room at most of these events for everyone.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Totally. Totally. That's like my favorite thing right now going to, to pen shows is seeing like so many new, new faces and new products. And, uh, yeah, I just love that, that, that whole crossover. It's really just, you know, one big space we're all playing in, you know, we're just all doing our different things, but bringing them together is great.

'''Ana Reinhart:''' Going back like about 10 years when you and I first started going to pen shows, like, did you think that we would ever be at this point where you're like, I'm so excited to see all these new people. Like when we went, we were the youngest people there. Yeah. And there was not real warmth initially to us coming into this community that had been built. And now to see this whole array of new interest and people taking it in different directions and exploring. I, I, I'm delighted with it. I think it's great.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. Yeah. I'll never forget. Like we have so many stories we could tell, but just a real, a real short one that, you know, being pulled aside more than like a decade ago and being asked like, what is going on here with like the, the crowd that people, we would bring to these shows and people not understanding that. And now like seeing it now, it's like, it's not really a, what is going on here moment, but it's, it's a great moment to where we're just, just have all this availability to us and just the creativity. I don't know. I'm just a huge, huge fan of what I see at a lot of these shows now. So I'm also a huge fan on, of what I see over at Enigma stationery, who is the perfect sponsor for this conversation that we're just having, because they have everything. They have all your stationery. They have a lot of pens. So this week's pen addict podcast is brought to you by our friends over at Enigma stationery. They offer unique items made from in-house designs, along with top brands and hard to find imports. So I always look through their, through their site before our ad read, they kind of give us free run on, Hey, y'all talk about whatever y'all want to talk about, whatever catches your eye. And the last time, just a couple of weeks ago, I was mentioning, and this might be something that you're familiar with. So I was mentioning these, uh, Sukoneko Memento Dew Drop dye ink pads. So there's these ink pads and I was mentioning them to Tony who was on the, uh, on the show. She goes, Oh, those are my favorite. Those are the best ink pads. And I've been getting into stamps a little bit, but I don't have like a go-to, uh, stamp pad. And she's like, Oh, these are my favorite. And now I go over to Enigma site and I see, okay, all of them are on low stock now. So they must be pretty good. They must be pretty good. Uh, so I, I love seeing that. And then they also have, you know, a bunch of pens, um, all types of pens you can get. And I, I just have to give them a shout out. This is a, not a difficult, not an easy product to recommend because of the price point, but the Lamy M17 Jetstream ballpoint refill makes a difference. It's an expensive refill and I love it. It's one of my favorite refills. It's $15 just for the refill. I'll be straight up because you can't really get it in the States. Right. And you know, but by the time you import it and get it in and a retailer has to sell it, that's pretty much what I've paid for mine whenever I've gotten them, but they are so good and they have them in stock at Enigma. And honestly, if you have a Lamy ballpoint pen that has the M16 refill, you will change everything about that pen by putting in the M17 with the Jetstream ink. So that's one of those great things that, um, the acquisition of Mitsubishi has done. Um, they also have a bunch of field notes. They have a bunch of wax seals and stamps. They have a bunch of business frog. You know, I'm not going to get through an episode without mentioning my friend business frog. Um, I'm looking at these stamps now that the individual stamps, like the coffee cup stamps. And, um, you know, like I said, I'm getting into this, this kind of thing, pencil stamps. So I've ordered a few of those and I'll probably be ordering more. So if you want $10 off on your orders of $50 or more, go over to enigmastationary.com slash pen addict and use TPA26 at checkout. Now that's enigmastationary.com slash pen addict to get $10 off on orders of $50 or more with code TPA26. Our thanks to enigmastationary for their support of this show and all of relay. All right. Speaking of stuff, it's time to talk stuff. Okay. Um, I have some questions you you've been doing. I mean, you've always done a great job on the blog, but you're kind of crushing it right now. You and Laura and whoever else you got writing to writing for you these days. I'm loving everything. Um, you're putting out. I was like, Oh yes, I want to read about this. And Oh yes, I've been meaning to read, learn about this. And Oh yes. So over and over and over again. So recently you did a post, uh, that said called my top five stationary favorites for 2026 so far. And I was wondering if we could just touch on that for a second. Sure. Sure. So there's a couple of products I wanted to call out and we'll save the one. I want to talk about the

'''Ana Reinhart:''' longest for last. Okay. But let's start with the Sola pouch. Okay. The Sula and Sula. Yeah. I was, I was literally going to ask you, did I pronounce it correctly? Um, why are these so popular? They're everywhere. They are everywhere. They are super, super duper handy. They are beautifully crafted. And the husband and wife team that, um, run this company are the nicest people I have ever met. So there's a lot of reasons to support Sula. Um, they use YKK zippers. Um, everything is really beautifully manufactured, great quality. Um, there's a bazillion pockets. I mean, like you can't go wrong with a bazillion pockets. Um, somebody I saw compared them with the, there's another case that's similar in that A5 size that comes from Japan. And I cannot think of the name right now. I mean, there's a list, but you know what I'm talking about. It's very, the hit lab. Yeah. Maybe it's the lead time or something like that. Um, but I saw somebody compare and cause they had one of those and then they got a Sula and they're like, oh my gosh, I like the Sula so much better because it's sturdier. So once it's filled, it will actually stand up on its little tiny end. Yeah. On your desk where the other ones flop over and kind of, you have to use them laying down. And I was like, well, there is a, I mean like right there. So you can kind of use it as like a portable office. Um, and I always think of like the Sula pouch as being like a bag in a bag. Like I, because all the pockets are on the outside, it's the kind of thing where you fill it with everything that you're going to be using while you're traveling or at the office or at the coffee shop. And then you drop that into your tote bag or your, your backpack or whatever. And then when you get there, you just pull that out and you have everything accessible. Your pens are on the outside. You've got your pockets filled with other things. And then the internal compartment is large enough to hold an A5. So you can actually just stick your notebook in there. But if you fill your Sula as full as I fill mine, there's no room and you have to put your notebook somewhere else.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. I am known for having design opinions, but I think if you're making like a pouch style in the stationary realm, starting with, hey, let me make a silhouette where the A5 can go in the middle and then build around that, you end up with kind of a perfect size bag. Bag because then you can segment it properly to hold smaller things. But while you're fitting like your biggest stuff, whether you ever use an A5 or not, it's the right size for the stuff. Yeah. And it's doesn't get too big, but it gets like very like conveniently full. Like it just fits the right amount of stuff.

'''Ana Reinhart:''' It does. And it does force you because it's pretty slender. It does force you to sort of limit yourself because you cannot put everything in it.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. Which is why I like their pouch as opposed like they have the bigger totes and then like you're just asking me for me to put like a 20 pound weight in there.

'''Ana Reinhart:''' Absolutely. And also it goes back to like the bag is great if you're basically just going back and forth in your vehicle to coffee shop or a meetup or something. But if you are in any other situation, the idea of having like pens on the outside of your bag, even if they're just gel pens and highlighters and that those types of pens, the idea that they're on the outside, like they're going to catch on things. Like that's not, it doesn't, it's not compatible with my lifestyle.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Sure.

'''Ana Reinhart:''' So the pouch works better because I can put it inside of particular, like the big joke is that if you have a Trader Joe's near you and you get one of those mini totes, the Sula pouch fits perfectly in a mini tote. Just saying, $3 solution to a $50 problem.

== Mechanical Pencil ==

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I know, exactly. All right, this next product, I was shocked to read about. This did not make your list, but I would argue that it should and you might actually capitulate and have an addendum. The Leuchtturm Dreggerfell Mechanical Pencil.

'''Ana Reinhart:''' I love that thing. You know what? I think I wrote the review for the mechanical pencil after I did this post.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Okay. So it came after. Maybe that's what it is. That is one of the best products on the market. And I still, I've done a whole review. We have the exact same color. We have good taste.

'''Ana Reinhart:''' Yes, we do. I saw your review.

== Mechanical Pencil ==

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. I still think about why I like that product so much. It's hard to put into words. It's just right for me. Like it just works. It's small. It's sturdy. The twist mechanism is different for like mechanical pencils, right? To have that little twist, which some people might not like. I am still just completely flummoxed why I adore it so much. And I don't know. It's just good. It's great.

'''Ana Reinhart:''' I legitimately did not think anyone could improve upon the Caran Dosh mechanical pencil, like that 849 style. I know it's not an 849. It's, they call it something else, but it's an 849. But to, and that is what I think it is. It is like a modernization, contemporary redesign of that same classic, you know, soft hex shape. They're playing with materials and colors. And this goes back to the manufacturers who are experimenting with like finishes and colors in ways, you know. And, and Caran Dosh has always done it. They've put metallics and sparkles. They've put gradients. They've done all these kinds of things. So they've, they've done it. But I think that like charm is just doing it in a different way and being very competitive about it. I think if that's the kind of tool you're looking for.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' It's crazy cool. And like, you know, it's a bit of an outlier. It's not for everyone, but I think it would be like a real treat yourself, like type of product, like just to have fun with and have around. And I've ended up using that thing so, so much. And I already, I already love the, the pen, which I literally just compared to the 849 ballpoint. They're so similar in size and just like why they exist. And I don't know, super fan, super fan. Last product I want to hit from you real quick is the one I'm the most curious about. And that's the Mark Inc. Mark's Inc. Notebooks. Mark's Edit. Mark's Edit. Yes. Notebooks. Yes. Tell me about these because I've gotten to test them out from Pilot. So Pilot bought Mark's like three years ago at this point and really hasn't done anything yet. Yes. Allegedly it's coming. You probably know more than I do.

'''Ana Reinhart:''' I don't. I wish I did.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah.

'''Ana Reinhart:''' But yeah, that's.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' But the paper's pretty unique and like getting to test them, I'm like, huh, that's pretty good. And I love the format. The format's small. Again, back to the Leuchtturm, the Dreggerfeld. They're small pens, small pencils, right? I like them. These are, generally speaking, smaller size notebooks, but the paper is just kind of awesome.

'''Ana Reinhart:''' Yeah, it really is. And it very much competes in the same category with papers like Tomoe River and Cosmo Era Light and things like that. If you are looking for a thin, lightweight paper that is really good with fountain pens, Mark's Edit is probably the, probably tops my list at this point. I did, I laugh because I just did a review last Friday, I think, of six Japanese paper notebooks and did not actually compare them to the Mark's Edit. So I'm going to have to go back and like side by side those at some point. But it's very, I mean, it is comparable. It is, they come in like a B7 slim size, a B6, an A5. They have a couple different formats that are in terms of like how they're covering them. But I really like the ones that just have the plain cardboard cover and then you can get a plastic like over cover to put on them that have like a zipper on the side to like, so you can stick stuff in the cover and that kind of thing. But, but, and those, the covers come in different, like the plastic covers come in different colors. The, the plastic covers, like there's a clear one so you can actually just see the, the, the sort of chipboard cover. But they have over 300 pages in them and they're like the size of a Midori, like in terms of thickness because it's that really thin light paper that like very similar to like a 52 GSM kind of thing. Um, they have the really, really light, um, graph grid, like Stology. So, and I'm a huge fan of Stology. So I'm like, if you can up, cause sometimes Stology isn't great with some fountain pens or inks. Um, so it's like, if you can up the game there with the paper and then still have that really light grid where like when you lift the paper up, you almost can't see the printing on there. Um, but when you're looking at a whole stack of it, because the paper is fairly translucent, you see the grid really nicely. I'm like, there's just like, they can't do wrong. And I've been carrying one around as a like everyday notebook, the little B7 size. It's been banging around in my house, my bag for almost a year and it looks brand new.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. I keep waiting for these just like continue to just like blow up cause they've been around for a while. Mark's has been around for a while. I've reviewed Mark's products years ago, not the notebooks. Um, but we've reviewed some older models, but they've changed the paper here in the last couple of years. And, um, I think they're pretty great.

'''Ana Reinhart:''' Yeah. I do think that Mark's as a company has a couple different paper stocks. So this Mark's edit specifically is they're more fountain pen friendly. So it's, it is one of those things to be, make sure you are getting it from a retailer or a vendor like myself.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So with that, is that the edit?

'''Ana Reinhart:''' The edit line, I believe is there the same way that like some people have talked about some of the other companies where they have like their, the, uh, somebody mentioned in my review, the, uh, Kukuyo, um, Sentry notebook. And I think they're not a notebook has the paper that they use in the, um, their Techo, the Jibo and Techo.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Oh, sure.

'''Ana Reinhart:''' But it's not the paper that they use in the business Techo. That's different. And I was like, oh my gosh, I did not realize. And they're like, they like the paper that's in the business Techo better because it's a little bit thicker than what's in the Jibo and Techo. So.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Gotcha. Gotcha. If you were curious. Always something. Always something. So, yeah.

'''Ana Reinhart:''' And we're so, we're all so picky. We're so picky.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I was like, why is this different? I was like, well, let me ask the company.

'''Ana Reinhart:''' I will be bringing the edits to this St. Louis show. So.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Okay, cool. Well, I will get some there and, um, we'll get some, I want to, I want to test out the new ones. Anyway, another reason for me to bring a suitcase, which we discussed in the pre-show.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Brad trying to be stubborn over here. Stubborn and trying to like be, uh, use common sense going to Penn Show. That's just a mistake. Just, just go wing it. All right. Um, we're going to talk about, we're going to talk about St. Louis Penn Show. Yeah.

== Pentel Multi 8 ==

'''Ana Reinhart:''' It's my turn to ask you about your choices.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' All right. All right.

'''Ana Reinhart:''' So you mentioned them. I'm laughing because you and I, we just write the same freaking reviews, but the, the Pentel Multi 8.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah.

'''Ana Reinhart:''' It's kind of freaking amazing, right?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' It's a problem, right? It should not be good. It should be a bad product. Um, and I held off on years because I was just convinced there's no way this is good. Not only no way is there, is this good. It's like 20 to $30, depending on which, which one you wanted. Um.

'''Ana Reinhart:''' For people not to know, the Pentel Multi 8 is a multi-colored pencil, like mechanical pencil, and it has eight different colors and it holds the, like, the 1.1 millimeter leads. Yeah.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. Okay. It's, um, it's so useful. And it works. Number one, it works, right? It has to do that first because it's a kind of a complicated, complicated, uh, pencil, right? In the mechanism. It's just a little bit, you know, there's a lot going on with this, which. And it's chunky. Adds to the cost. Yeah. And it's chunky, but I do like the taper. Or, but how they executed it to where, and you don't know this until I got it. I didn't realize that the full lead piece drops into the bottom. So it remains straight when it comes out of the pen tip or the pencil tip in this case. Where traditionally multi-pens, they have to work around like a nose cone to just kind of squirrel out. And if companies aren't careful, you can get an angle out the tip. Um, all the good ones do it right. And it's, they make it straight, but just the way that pencil works fascinates me. And oh, by the way, it's like crazy useful for like notes. Like I'm not going to like color a bunch of pages. Like I did for the review. Like I colored a full page. Cause I wanted to see like, how long are these cores going to last? And are the colors like moderately rich enough to like hang with the standalone? Like it's never going to beat a singular standalone in color performance, right? For most companies, but it got most of the way there and the quality and portability of it and the usefulness of it. Uh, you know, consider me a fan. I was, I was surprised with that one.

'''Ana Reinhart:''' Me too. Me too. Okay. So what else have you got on your list?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I capitulated just straight from the jump. I just wanted to put on here, look, I've been team Safari my entire life and Anna being the main cheerleader for team all-star team Safari got wax this year. Like there's no two ways about it. Team all-star brought the a game. Lamy Lamy brought like a B plus game. They're fine. Like I really love the neon yellow. That's the pen I've been using the most probably like in the last month, the Safari neon yellow, the all-stars are better this year by a pretty good margin. So I just wanted to give you credit for constantly, uh, having team all-stars back. And while I, while I sit over here and pout with team Safari, I was like, y'all have disco and roller skate and I, and I have a improperly capitalized neon yellow pen. Well, what are you doing to me?

'''Ana Reinhart:''' When they released the, the, um, the disco one, I must've gotten half a dozen text messages and emails of like, they made your pen. Yeah. It is my shade of lime green with a, with a translucent pink grip section. And I was like, I know, I know they made my pen. I really don't need another Lamy, but yeah, they made my pen. So I'll probably pick one up at some point, but yeah, they did.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Same here. I haven't yet. I don't, I don't have an all-star that I use. I have a ballpoint like, but I don't have a all-star fountain pen that I ever use. I don't own one that I use. I think I have one that I reviewed way back in the day. Um, I will get one of these to, to use. Like I use my Safaris, which is pretty regularly.

'''Ana Reinhart:''' I can definitely see you with the roller skate one. That is very, yeah.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I think that'd be the one. I think that'd be the one for sure. Um, the other few, uh, I just real quick on these, I was just kind of going back. I was like, Oh, what would I pick? Um, and my, my idea was, like I said, new to us products, right? It didn't necessarily have to be launched in 2026. Like the multi gate's been out for who knows how long. Um, the Visconti Mirage mythos lineup of pens is crazy good. Like kind of a surprise. Again, I love being surprised by products. Um, you can't help being in the position that I'm in or you're in to have some preconceived notions about products. And sometimes like, I'll just make a jump on one that I think like looks good and figure out, does it work good for me? And, uh, this one kind of does all the things. I just love looking at it and holding it and using it. And the performance is great. So, um, that's been a good one. Colorverse Erebus crater is such a weird ink color that it's hard to explain and how different it looks on different papers. And it's definitely been kind of my ink of the year so far, just in, I want to use it. I want to put it, I want to ink it up, uh, and lots of different things. I don't actually have it inked up right now, but it's, it's been fun. And then lastly, this is, uh, April from, uh, design fill slash the penguins post fault. She got me onto the Midori carton opener and I kind of haven't shut up about it yet.

'''Ana Reinhart:''' Really?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Cause I didn't know it existed. I didn't know this was a thing. It's super, super good quality for, for what it does. It's really, really small. Um, and I open a lot of boxes. I might need one of these. What I'm figuring out is that it's great for boxes, but I'm using it for like washi tape and cutting some of my pages just on my desk. Cause it's just a little bitty ceramic blade in there. Oh, nice. Um, so I've been kind of like trimming things at my desk cause we all have just ephemera everywhere. And I, I'm actually going to get a second one for my shipping department just so I can have that. So anyway, those are kind of, you know, my kind of quick thinking, uh, products of the year so far, but I unfortunately had to give a shout out to team all star along the way. So it's okay.

'''Ana Reinhart:''' I forgive you though.

== Lamy Safari Releases ==

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Now it's, Hey, it's not the first time. I can't remember the last time that it happened. It's happened recently where Safari had some pretty bad releases and team all star like brought the, brought their game. Uh, this has been the best year, uh, for team all star. And we're not even talking about flamingo and pine, which were also just like fantastic releases earlier this year. So, all right. Well, I want to talk about the St. Louis pen show. So let's get to that next, but not before we hear from our good friends over at Squarespace. So this episode of the pen act is brought to you by Squarespace. Squarespace is the all in one website platform designed to help you stand out and succeed online. Whether you're just starting out or scaling your business, Squarespace gives you everything you need to claim your domain, showcase your offerings with a professional website, grow your brand and get paid all in one place. So I've been using Squarespace for, I don't know, between 10 and 15 years. One of these years I'll actually do the math and figure out how long it is, but it's been forever. It's just so easy for me to use. It allows me to just, you know, put up my posts, add the images and go. I can schedule anything I need. I can adjust everything I need. It's just super easy, super flexible. And I just love like the easy things. Like I don't ever have to worry about, you know, SEO and writing toward writing a certain way because Squarespace's tools just allow for that. Like I'll put a little description in the image and then Squarespace kind of handles everything else. And, you know, nobody wants to build a beautiful website only for zero people to see it. That's why every Squarespace website is optimized to be indexed with meta descriptions, auto-generated sitemap, and more. So more people find your site through search engine results. And then you can offer your services and get paid from consultations to events and experiences. You can showcase your offerings with a customizable website designed to attract clients and grow your business. Think built-in appointment scheduling, email marketing tools, and more. Plus everything cohesive with on-brand invoices and get paid easily with online payments. I also use them for my online shop, which works very, very well for me. So head over to squarespace.com slash pen addict for a free trial. And when you're ready to launch, use the offer code pen addict to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. That's squarespace.com slash pen addict offer code pen addict to get 10% off your first purchase and to show your support for the pen act. Our thanks to Squarespace for their support of the show and all of relay. And this show is about to be on the road at the St. Louis pen show. Not technically, not doing a podcast there.

'''Ana Reinhart:''' No, we should have organized that.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I know, I know. I am doing a talk. You're doing classes. So we actually kind of have a lot to talk about. We do. So you're going to be a vendor there, yes? Yes. So the well-appointed desk will be there. What are you bringing? Like literally all of it?

'''Ana Reinhart:''' As much as I can fit into our little tiny vehicle. So yes, I will be bringing the marks at it. I will be bringing all of my clear stamps, stickers, washi tape. We will be bringing a selection of products, of course, letterpress products. We'll be bringing an assortment of other items that I have featured on the website on my shop. Some of it is harder to travel with. I would really like to bring the Archer and Olive notebooks. But the way that they package them so beautifully, they're in presentation boxes that have shrink wrap on them, that in order for anyone to purchase them in an event, I would have to disassemble them. And so then they've been touched by other people. And so I don't know that I'm going to bring the Archer and Olive. If someone wants me to bring something specific, let me know and I will pack it. And, you know, we can work stuff out when we get there. But yeah, those are the ones things that's a little bit harder to travel with because they're packaged for online sales, not for retail sales.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So my question from earlier in the show, and you've kind of mentioned we, are you going to have help at your table?

'''Ana Reinhart:''' Oh, yes, I am. So I am teaching four classes and one workshop or one seminar. So it basically meant I was going to be away from the table for like four hours every day.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah.

'''Ana Reinhart:''' And I finally was just like, Bob, you're going to have to come. He's like, okay. So anyone who has ever met my husband, he's never met a stranger. He loves everyone. He will be there to help you with your purchases when I am not available. And he will talk your ear off. So you can tell him to shut your pie hole. I got shopping to do. But he will. He's yeah. So everybody's excited to see him. He does not go to a lot of shows because he is sort of peripherally interested in pens, but not like the rest of us.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So, yeah, I think the last time I got to hang out with Bob was probably like in Little Rock, like pre COVID times. Like it's been probably like five, six years since I got to see him. So I look forward to that. That's good. I'm glad you have help because all these classes, Anna, tell me about them. Like I am like, look, I am so impressed with what you do for this.

'''Ana Reinhart:''' Thank you.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I love your classes. So I've taken the sigils class. We're going to have a link in the show notes to all of Anna's classes. And I'm doing the Gamify Your Life class this time. I've done the sigils class before. I would do the Carve Your Own Rubber Stamps class, but I'm not going to be there on Sunday this year. And then I'm forgetting like maybe one of the most fun is the mini junk journal. So give everyone a little bit of an idea if they've number one or just really in general, if they've never been to a class at a pen show. Like what can they generally expect? Because you put a lot into these classes. I do.

'''Ana Reinhart:''' So specifically for my classes, I hope that I have described in my descriptions on in the shop where you can register for classes fairly detailed because each of them is very different. The sigils class is very much a it's they're all hands on. They're all like you get there's an activity sort of involved. Gamify is probably the least hands on. It's a little bit more discussion because it's I think a lot of people leave the Gamify and have to sort of process how they can put some of these gamification techniques into their journaling or their planning or their sort of life organizing. It's and it's interesting. I've had people do the Gamify class who have come in like moms with like teenage or college age kids who they think, you know, already like gaming and and game activities so that maybe this will help them to be to stay better organized to using some of these tactics. And then I've also had other people who've taken the class and then are like, I have to buy an extra copy of the zine to give to friends, spouse, etc. Because they're like, this will very much help them out. But yeah, so the Gamify is probably the most sort of lecture bring paper to write notes.

'''Ana Reinhart:''' Ask a bunch of questions. The sigils one you do actually most people leave class with at least one sigil created sometimes more. The carve your own rubber stamps comes with a whole kit to carve your own rubber stamp in class. But then you have materials that you can take home with you so that you can keep making your own stamps, which I guess I'm hoping I put myself out of business, like make your own stamps. And then the new class, this will be the first time I'm teaching it, which is the junk journal class, is a combination of very simple bookbinding techniques and junk journaling. So it's going to touch a little on both topics. I know there's another instructor who's teaching a bookbinding class, but mine is definitely more of a do what you want, bring what you want, kind of walk away from it. You'll have a book that you can use at the end of the class. And then how you want to use it is 100% up to the people who take the class. So that's what I've got. And then I'm doing a seminar on fountain pens for lefties, which I do at a lot of shows. It's like a free seminar that I laugh because they're like, how much time do you need? And I'm like, five minutes. And they're like, what are you talking about? And I'm like, because I don't think there should be any rules, but I help a lot of people who are concerned that like lefties can't do this or they should only have this kind of thing. And so I just kind of, I myth bust.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. No, I think that's great. Like, you know, whenever Myke and you are on, it's one of the few times I've outnumbered with lefties and righties on the show. So it's great. I love you always talking about that because it's nothing to be scared about. Like if you're a left-hander and using fountain pens, like maybe some thoughtfulness. Just think about like how you're going about things. But like, that's about it.

'''Ana Reinhart:''' Yeah. And what I've discovered over the years is that oftentimes the issues that lefties have are the same issues righties have with fountain pens in just in different ways. Like we come at them from a slightly different angle, literally.

'''Ana Reinhart:''' Yeah. So tell me about your big speaking engagement.

== Speaking Engagement ==

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. So they just asked me, you know, I finally, so it's a whole thing. If you're a longtime listener to the Panatic podcast that I can't ever make the St. Louis pen show because it's usually right on my wife's birthday. And we usually take a family vacation on her birthday in the summer. So every year it is lined up exactly where I cannot take it. Except this year, the calendar shifted a little bit for her work schedule and being able to take some time off. And I was like, all of a sudden we weren't taking off her birthday week. And I was like, I guess I know what I'm doing. So I finally get to come to the St. Louis pen show. And, you know, I don't necessarily like teach any classes. Like maybe if I ever thought one day of something I'd enjoy teaching, I'd do it. But they just said, well, can we do just like a Q&A session? And I was like, yeah, I'm open to like whatever y'all want to do. And, you know, I like talking. I like talking about pens. And so Saturday afternoon, it's a free talk. It's called A Conversation with Brad Dowdy, the pen addict, which sounds like I should wear like a suit or something. Like I'm just to tell y'all, I'll be in shorts the entire weekend.

'''Ana Reinhart:''' At least wear close-toed shoes. Okay, man?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, yeah, yeah. I do. I wear sneakers. You know, I like my sneaker game. But yeah, no, it's really going to be a chill kind of Q&A session. Um, it's going to be, um, moderated by my, uh, friend Andy Kuhn, who is local there. And, you know, he and I, uh, he's, he's done some, um, some podcast stuff with me. Some like, he always comes up with questions trying to stump me. Not on, not like in a trivia kind of way, but like in a, like, what do you think about this? And why are you wrong kind of way? And having to defend these positions.

'''Ana Reinhart:''' Well, the, the funny thing is that they reached out to me and said, can we move one of your classes back by half an hour? Because they are concerned that you won't be finished in time.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, take that.

'''Ana Reinhart:''' And I, and I was like, you know, I have absolutely no problem with kicking Brad out. And, and I don't think that they realized that we have met each other, that we know each other. And so I was like very flip and they're like, thank you for being so accommodating. And I'm like, oh, just you wait. Yeah.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. And also I won't stop talking unless they actually do kick me.

'''Ana Reinhart:''' Oh, I will kick you out. I think it's actually your, uh, your presentation is right before my lefties. So there might not be any lefties.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I see that. Yes. So I end at three lefties at three 30.

'''Ana Reinhart:''' So it was supposed to be at three 15 and they pushed me back by 15 minutes. And I was like, I have no problem kicking Brad out. You just watch me.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' There'll be no one there and I'll have no one to talk to and you can start early. So there we go. Probably. Well, and there'll be, and there'll be one sad little,

'''Ana Reinhart:''' little lefty who comes.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I'll ask you actually, that's what it'll just be. It'll just me learning how to write left-handed, which I did have to do for like. Oh, that's right. I forgot about that. Yeah.

'''Ana Reinhart:''' You don't recommend it. Do you?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I don't actually, uh, it was not as bad. My handwriting wasn't as bad as I thought. Um, but yeah, I was happy to be, to be done with that. So, um, turns out when you have to write with the hand, you're not used to writing in your entire life. Pencils are a really good choice because they kind of just like break into the shape of that you're writing in. And then it's like, oh, that actually works. So anyway, I digress. Um, St. Louis pen show overall. What can we expect? It's a good, like, what would you compare it to? Good midsize show, like bigger than like an Atlanta type of show, which I'm just referencing my own personal.

'''Ana Reinhart:''' I would say it's similar. I think, um, I think they have a larger main ballroom. Uh, so, and I don't think that they've done like a lot of offshoot rooms. I think they just have a really big main ballroom. So it is consistent in size to Atlanta in terms of, I think the overall number of vendors, maybe they have a few more. One of the things that we had noticed over the last couple of years was that there were a lot, there were a lot of vendors for what should be considered sort of a midsize show. So there are lots of shopping opportunities. And if you have not been to a show, honestly, St. Louis is one that I would recommend for people because it's not as crowded as some of the like DC, San Francisco type of shows that can be very overwhelming. This one, there's more room to move. There's more room to get around. And you're getting a lot of the same vendors that hit both coasts because it's in the middle of the country. So people can come from either side.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So, yeah. Is there any St. Louis food I need to be sure to check out while I'm there? I don't know. I haven't, I haven't, I don't have the lay of the land or anything I should for sure get. Like if we're going to Kansas City, you get barbecue, right? Right. What do you get in Cincinnati? You're getting chili. What do you get in Chicago?

'''Ana Reinhart:''' Oh, God.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Cincinnati chili. Chicago, you're getting the dog. What do you, what do you get in St. Louis? I don't know. I'm going to get St. Louis in my, in my email after this.

'''Ana Reinhart:''' Oh, yeah, you are. Um, St. Louis is really well known for, um, doing like a very, uh, cracker crust pizza.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Okay. I think I may have heard of this. Yeah.

'''Ana Reinhart:''' Um, and I do think there's some places nearby that do that. Um, they are also.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Does it have like cheddar cheese on it or something like that?

'''Ana Reinhart:''' I think they can. I've never had it with cheddar cheese, but it's like really cracker thin crust, which I actually approve of. Um, they also do, what are those? Like the, is it called the butter cake, butter something? Yeah. Yes. Which is very popular. It came from there. And it's funny because, um, in Kansas city at the, when I used to work at Hallmark, they used to make it in the cafeteria and I didn't realize it was actually like imported from St. Louis. This like, um, some kind of, I forget what it's called, but like, it's like a, it's, it's almost like a blondie brownie kind of thing. Okay. But very dense and very buttery, quite delicious, really bad for you. Um, and I joke because there is, um, I'm a vegan. Uh, so there's not a ton of things that I can eat these days, uh, nearby, but, uh, my favorite restaurant in the whole world is 10 minutes away from the St. Louis venue. So I go to St. Louis entirely so that I can eat like a pig for three days. Um, because this it's, um, it's called like. Bombay fast food or something. It's in a, it's a hole in the wall. It's Indian, uh, cuisine. Uh, but they also do non-dairy milkshakes. Mm. And I drink my weight and they are so good. And they do like, they even do some that are like, you know, they do traditional flavors like chocolate, strawberry, that kind of thing. But they also do one that's like rose and basil or something. It's amazing. Oh, wow. So yeah, like very unusual. I dragged so many people there and apparently I'm dragging so many people there again this time. Um, if you're, if you're familiar with an online website called, uh, that's, uh, like for vegetarian and vegan foodies called happy cow. All of the reviews for that restaurant are me.

'''Ana Reinhart:''' I, every time I go, I take tons of pictures and I post them. Um, cause there's not, I don't have a lot of, I don't go out to eat a lot. So I get real excited and get to go there. Um, but yeah, it's a nice little place.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' That's awesome. That's awesome. I'm super looking forward to it. Uh, I like going to shows I haven't been to before. Um, one of the things I do is I always go through the vendor list. I'm not going to shout out vendors cause I'll, I'll leave someone out.

'''Ana Reinhart:''' You'll have to take a full page ad out in variety tomorrow, just like the Oscars.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I know. Um, but that's something, even if you can't go to a pen show and you hear us talking about pen shows, you can pop on the vendors list and you can learn about like some new people. Like I go, I go through it mostly to see who don't I know on this list. Right. So I kind of have an idea of when I go to the show and there's, there's plenty, um, here at St. Louis. Um, all right. Anything else on St. Louis? I think I'm going to wrap it up with a, um, kind of a pen show ask TPA question. That's kind of, uh, related to us talking about pen shows. I thought I'd squeeze it in there. Is that, that okay by you?

'''Ana Reinhart:''' Yeah, absolutely. Hit it.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' All right. Hunter asks. First, I started listening to the podcast a few months ago and really enjoy it. Thank you, Hunter. I appreciate that. Myke always cuts those parts out. He's just like, yeah, I appreciate that. But like, let me just, let me just cut to the chase. I was like, no, I want to hear it. I want to hear it, Myke.

'''Ana Reinhart:''' He's not going to like this episode because I'm on it. It's fine.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' He said, in the recent episode, you talked a lot about the upcoming DC pen show. I live about 10 minutes away from the venue and plan to attend. This will be my first show and I'd appreciate advice on which days to attend. I'd love to attend all three days, but I have small kids and I realistically only have time to attend one, maybe two days. Is it better to go on Friday when it opens or wait for one of the weekend days? Thanks for all your help. And I hope to see you there. So I wanted to ask this question in this particular episode, because one of what you said about the St. Louis pen show and being a great show for like newcomers and people to attend. But if you're local to something like DC, you're going to go to DC and that's a different animal. And you answer this question a little bit differently, I think. So what do you think? Advice for a hunter. Let's pick one day or like one slot, like a morning or afternoon. When would you tell hunter to go?

'''Ana Reinhart:''' I think if you are new. So like we have always said in the past that Fridays were the day that we recommended because they weren't as busy, but Fridays have become consistently more and more busy. So I would say if Friday is the most convenient day for you to go, I would wait and go later in the day, like go come around one o'clock, like after lunch. Because there's the fervor right at nine o'clock or whatever of people wanting to get whatever that limited edition thing is, the, you know, getting their times in with nib grinders, like those types of things that make that very early Friday a little bit hectic and a little bit crazy that I would recommend if you can only come on Friday, come later in the afternoon. I realize it doesn't give you as much time, but if you do that on Friday and you decide, you know what, I do need to come back, then I would say come back on Sunday.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' This is why I asked this question and I didn't prep you for it. Our brains are wired identically because like this is a very particular question that I would answer differently for a different show. But to answer direct to like Hunter's like expected experience to not have a lot of time, have kids, I would not go on a Friday morning and I would go Friday afternoon or Sunday and I would skip Saturday completely. Yes, yes, absolutely. So that's funny. We have the exact same answer. And I think that's like for Hunter's question, I feel pretty good about that answer. And we both said the same.

'''Ana Reinhart:''' Yeah. And it's, if your concern is the amount of time that you have and the amount of potential overwhelm, if you are somebody who is ready to be elbow to elbow and just go with the flow and just experience it and very much look forward to that sort of like party environment, then jump feet first in on a Friday morning. But I think if what you're expecting is to be like, I'm not sure what I'm looking at. I'm a little nervous about like, I don't want to touch anything I'm not supposed to or like crowds overwhelming, which a remarkable number of pen people are introverts and a little bit, you know, little neuro spicy. So that can often be really hard. So that's where we're like Friday afternoon, things start to slow down a little and quiet down. And Sunday, first thing Sunday mornings, because people who have three day passes usually sleep in, maybe don't come down right away. Um, that, you know, so that that gives you some opportunities to sort of wander around.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yep. And, and Saturday, uh, never, there's really never a slow window on Saturday. Not even, they're usually like having to kick people out. Like I would say like, like from four to five on Saturday, but I think back and it really doesn't slow down that much. It's that it wouldn't be worth you trying to squeeze in time on Saturday.

== DC Pen Show ==

'''Ana Reinhart:''' So are you going to DC this year?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I am not going to DC this year.

'''Ana Reinhart:''' San Francisco.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I don't know. Okay. I'm rethinking. I'm not booked for San Francisco. I was not planning on it. Uh, I was waiting for some other things to come through. Those things have come through and now I kind of have a gap there in a San Francisco sized gap in my calendar. That's at an interesting time. So I'm going to start thinking about that. So right now, after this, after St. Louis, I have stationary fest in Brooklyn at the end of July. And then I have our St. Jude stuff in Memphis at the end of September. And then I have Tokyo at the end of October. So I could squeeze something maybe late August, early September, which means San Francisco or Orlando, but that's just a lot.

'''Ana Reinhart:''' Yeah, that is a lot. And honestly, I mean, I think that that's one of the things that has come up with vendors, with people who are sort of on the periphery of vendors like ourselves. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Um, that we're, it's getting to the point where it is a lot physically, emotionally, financially to go to all of these events. And we have to start being a little bit more pick and choose. I mean, you know, even with vendors who are driving to these events and bringing all their stuff, like with the cost of gas is very much influencing some of their decisions on this. Um, you know, I, I always laugh. There's always somebody who'll come up and be like, can you cut me a deal? Can you cut me a deal? I'm like, do you know how much it costs us to get all this stuff a year? Like, you don't have to pay shipping, but you're going to have to pay full price.

== Pen Shows ==

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So yeah, that was my, my impetus this year. This is only my second show this year on purpose, knowing that I'm going to Japan at the end of the year. Like I can't do all the things. No, no. That's a lot. Leading into that. So probably not San Francisco, but I actually do have like almost two months where I could fit like one thing in. So it might be easier to just drive to Orlando, um, which is like a couple of weeks after.

'''Ana Reinhart:''' It has not gotten as much press coverage and, you know, sort of amongst our community. So it might be worth doing Orlando.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' It's a super, super solid show. I've been twice and they do a great job. I actually really much, very much enjoy that show. So I very much enjoy having you on this show and I will very much enjoy seeing you in person.

'''Ana Reinhart:''' This is going to have been the longest that you and I get to talk.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah.

'''Ana Reinhart:''' This is how it always works. We'll get to say hi at the shows and maybe have a cocktail in the evening. But like, yeah.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I'll talk to Bob way more than I talk to you. Yeah. Well, he's a chatty Kathy. He's a chatty Kathy. All right. If you want to find me and Ana this weekend, after you've listened to this episode, we'll be at the St. Louis Penn Show. So come by, say hi. Don't be scared to say hi. We don't bite. Just each other. Yeah. Yeah. Just each other. We're as shy as all of y'all. So we enjoy hearing from you. So we'll see y'all there. Again, Ana, thank you. I'll have all the links to everything we talked about in the show notes for everyone to check out. And unless there's anything else you have this week, I think that's a wrap for me. You can find everything I have over at PennAddict.com. You can find Ana at TheWellAppointedDesk.com and all links there within. So until St. Louis, say goodbye, Ana.

'''Ana Reinhart:''' Say goodbye, Ana. Say goodbye, Ana.

[[Category:Podcast Transcripts]]
[[Category:The Pen Addict Podcast Transcript]]

Stationery Wiki:Current TPA podcast

2026-06-25T14:06:25Z

PencilBot: Updating current podcast layout pointer to episode 722

{{Infobox current podcast
| name = The Pen Addict
| number = 722
| title = St. Louis Pen Show Preview, Featuring Ana Reinert!
| date = June 25th, 2026
| hosts = [[Brad Dowdy]] 
[[Myke Hurley]]
| guests = [[Ana Reinert]]
| link = [https://www.relay.fm/penaddict/722 Episode 722]
| audiolink = [https://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/mgln.ai/e/613/clrtpod.com/m/pscrb.fm/rss/p/traffic.libsyn.com/thepenaddict/penaddict722.mp3 Audio Episode 722]
| length = 62
}}

== Description ==

It’s St. Louis Pen Show time! Brad is on the way, and he brings on St. Louis Show expert Ana Reinert, from The Well-Appointed Desk, to discuss what to expect.

The Pen Addict 722

2026-06-25T14:06:15Z

PencilBot: Automated layout generation from RelayFM metadata for episode 722

{{Infobox podcast
| name = The Pen Addict
| number = 722
| title = St. Louis Pen Show Preview, Featuring Ana Reinert!
| date = June 25th, 2026
| hosts = [[Brad Dowdy]] 
[[Myke Hurley]]
| guests = [[Ana Reinert]]
| link = [https://www.relay.fm/penaddict/722 Episode 722]
| audiolink = [https://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/mgln.ai/e/613/clrtpod.com/m/pscrb.fm/rss/p/traffic.libsyn.com/thepenaddict/penaddict722.mp3 Audio Episode 722]
| length = 62
}}

== Description ==

It’s St. Louis Pen Show time! Brad is on the way, and he brings on St. Louis Show expert Ana Reinert, from The Well-Appointed Desk, to discuss what to expect. <ref>Description taken from the official Pen Addict podcast page https://www.relay.fm/penaddict/722</ref>

== Further Information ==

== Links & Show Notes ==

* [https://www.wellappointeddesk.com The Well-Appointed Desk]
* [https://wellappointeddesk.bigcartel.com The Well-Appointed Desk Shop]
* [https://www.wellappointeddesk.com/2026/06/my-top-5-stationery-favorites-for-2026-so-far/ Top 5 Stationery Favorites For 2026]
* [https://www.wellappointeddesk.com/2026/06/customizing-a-soolla-pouch/ Soola pouch]
* [https://www.wellappointeddesk.com/2026/05/pencil-review-leuchtturm1917-drehgriffel-mechanical-pencil-dusty-rose/ Pencil Review: LEUCHTTURM1917 Drehgriffel Mechanical Pencil (Dusty Rose)]
* [https://www.wellappointeddesk.com/2025/10/notebook-review-marks-inc-edit-b7-grid-notebook-320pp/ Notebook Review: Mark’s Inc. EDiT B7 Grid Notebook]
* [https://www.penaddict.com/blog/2026/6/8/pentel-multi-8-lead-holder-review Pentel Multi 8]
* [https://www.penaddict.com/blog/2026/5/20/visconti-mirage-mythos-persephone-fountain-pen-review Visconti Mirage Mythos Persephone]
* [https://www.penaddict.com/blog/2026/5/11/colorverse-erebus-crater-ink-review Colorverse Erebus Crater]
* [https://www.jetpens.com/Midori-Carton-Openers/ct/6977 Midori Carton Opener]
* [https://www.stlpenshow.com St. Louis Pen Show]
* [https://wellappointeddesk.bigcartel.com/category/pen-show-workshops Ana's Classes]
* [https://www.stlpenshow.com/2026-vendors Vendor List]

==References and Notes==

{{Reflist}}

[[Category:Podcast Episodes]]
[[Category:The Pen Addict Podcast]]

The Pen Addict 97/transcript

2026-06-23T16:02:20Z

PencilBot: fixed spelling

{{Infobox podcast transcript
| name = The Pen Addict
| number = 97
| title = I Don't Want My Pens To Touch!
| date = March 11th, 2014
| hosts = [[Brad Dowdy]] 
[[Myke Hurley]]
| guests =
| link = [https://www.relay.fm/penaddict/97 Episode 97]
| audiolink = [https://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/traffic.libsyn.com/thepenaddict/penaddict-097.mp3 Audio Episode 97]
| length = 55
}}

'''Myke Hurley:''' Hello and welcome to episode 97 of The Pen Addict podcast on 5x5. The Pen Addict is a weekly show where we discuss pens, paper, and the analogue tools that we love ever so dearly. My name is Myke Hurley and I am joined by a man whose wife once misunderstood a holiday of a lifetime because he was talking about zebras and safaris, Mr. Brad Dowdy.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' That was a little stretch right there, but that was pretty good.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Oh no, they're getting like, you know, when I say it's like bottom of the barrel time, like I've really, you know, we are so there, it's, you know.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' You've hit it, you've hit the bottom. But hey, that's pretty good, you know, like on episode 30 or so, that would have brought the house down.

'''Myke Hurley:''' That's a good point, actually.

'''Myke Hurley:''' But that's cool. Set the bar too high. I peaked too soon.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I know, I know, I know. But still, well, well done, sir. So how are all things pen and paper and analog-y this week?

== Nock Cases ==

'''Myke Hurley:''' So, sad because I haven't received my Nock cases.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Man, man. So have you tracked them? That's probably a fruitless endeavor for you to even bother with.

'''Myke Hurley:''' The only tracks going out of the US.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. So, yeah, that's right. So, yeah, I think pretty much, it's weird, I've been following some of the tracking.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' And whether it's going to Canada or going over to Europe, seems like it goes through Miami. So, our pen cases, as one of my Canadian friends has said, our pen cases get nice and tan before hitting the rest of the world.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Oh, they only left Miami on the 8th. Oh, no wonder I haven't got them yet. Yeah. Wow, that took a long time to get to Miami.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I think they show up there, then they hang out there for a while and work on their tans. So, yeah, I think that's the theory.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Wait, it left Macon on the 4th. Well, the electronic shipping information received on the 2nd, left Macon on the 4th, got to Miami on the 7th, left Miami on the 8th.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Hmm, interesting.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Oh, no, wait. No, it didn't. It left on the 9th. So, no wonder I haven't got it yet.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, so maybe by next week.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Maybe by next week. I hope so. But some good news, and I'm not going to spoil this. This will also be a point for next week, too. I made a purchase.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Ooh. Is that all we're getting? That's all you're getting.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Man. Or maybe, to give a hint, I won an item.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Really? Mm-hmm.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Interesting. Interesting. So, yeah, I don't know anything about this. So, I guess we'll wait until next week to figure that out. So, well, cool. Well, last week, we had our friend Andy Wellfle from Woodclinch on to talk about pencils. And I don't know what your inbox or Twitter feed looked like, but we got so much positive feedback off of that episode. So, it was really cool to see that we did something a little bit different for the podcast. And Andy was such a pro. He did a good job.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Great guest. Excellent. Yeah. Excellent guest.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. He wanted to make sure I got one correction out there, though, because I did get a few specific emails pertaining to a misspeak that he had when we were talking about the lead hardness and the lead grades and how the actual lead in the pencil is manufactured. He said that the graphite was mixed with wax. And I got a couple of emails going, oh, what is he talking about? It's not mixed with wax. How dare he? Yeah. It's mixed with clay.

'''Myke Hurley:''' That guy, he was a good guest, but he's never coming back on the show again.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' No.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Andy, you have been struck.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So, he got, as I get stuck all the time with my old Pilot 51 that I used to keep getting reamed over that I could never get out of my head, Andy, got mixed up in that he wanted to say that the graphite is actually mixed with clay. And when the clay content in the graphite makes the lead and the clay content is higher, it gives a waxier feel. So, Andy certainly knows that. So, stand down, pitchfork and torch-bearing internetters.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Well, personally, Brad, the lead that I have in the pencils here that I have is mixed with wax and it gives a clay-like feel. So, you know, I wonder what people think of that.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. And you know what? People really like those yikes pencils that you and him were talking about and I still never heard of those things.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I think that they may have just been UK-based.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. But that really struck a chord with people, too.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah. But if you were a child of, like, the 90s, these things mean something to you if you're UK-based. They had, like, a massive, like, you know, loads and loads of different styles. Really cool. Yeah.

== Podcast Launch ==

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. So, I think Andy thought the podcast went so well last week. He put his big boy pants on and he's going to launch a podcast of his own.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Ripping us off, Brad. Huh? He's ripping us off.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I know. I know. We're going to have to throw down. It's going to be like Anchorman. You know, we're going to break out the, we're going to, Britt killed somebody with a trident.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Well, you know, if it comes to fighting with stationary, we're going to definitely win because pens are, you know, they're mightier. And pencils, you know. Yeah. Pencils snap. And, you know.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. There's no doubt. But they have, between Andy and Johnny from the pencil revolution and Tim from what was formerly the Daily Carrier and is now the writing arsenal, which we'll talk about that later, too. Um, they, the three of them are joining together and making the Erasable podcast, which is a great name. And they're going to make a podcast about pencils. So, I'm excited to see what those guys come up with because they're all really smart and knowledgeable and have combined for years and years and years of experience.

'''Myke Hurley:''' No, I'm, I'm really actually genuinely excited about this.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I am, too. I am, too. So, we'll, we'll throw all our support behind them. And, um, I think they let the cat out of the bag a little bit early. And, um, because they don't, they don't have anything live yet. And, um.

'''Myke Hurley:''' They have super cool podcast artwork.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, it is. It looks great. Like. I don't know who did that.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I want to know who did that. So, if one of you guys can tell me who did that, I want to know because I want something.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I don't know if it's, I don't know if it's the same guy that did Andy's, uh, Andy did that, that pencil, uh, vector set. I forget the name of it. We'll have to link it. I don't know if we linked it previously a couple weeks ago or not, but we'll link it. There's a guy that Andy, um, worked with to create this pencil vector set that you see on their Twitter page.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Oh, I guess it's those, isn't it?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. So, I wonder if it's the same guy put together the icon, um, or the, the show artwork. Cause it's spectacular. Um, they did a really good job. So, hopefully their show is as good as their artwork. And I'm, I'm sure it will be. And we throw our full support behind these guys at the Erasable Podcast. So, go follow them on Twitter. We'll have the link in the show notes, but they're at Erasable Podcast on Twitter. Um, they don't have a show live yet, but, um, but now that the cat's really out of the bag, the pressure's on guys. So, you better deliver.

'''Myke Hurley:''' They have a website, which is Erasable.us. Or Erasable.us, which is, again, quite funny.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Mm-hmm.

'''Myke Hurley:''' It's a good name. It's a very good name. Good domain. Good artwork. Basically, 95% of the podcast done. I know.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I know. Now just, uh, now just deliver. Make it, make it listenable.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I think, I think that there should be a, like a rivalry.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Mm-hmm.

'''Myke Hurley:''' You know? Okay. Between, yeah. Between the pen show and the pencil show.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Okay.

'''Myke Hurley:''' And I think, you know, we'll see how that goes. I mean, episode 100. But, you know, guys, you can feel free to try and, uh, show us what's what, I guess.

== Bring It On Movie ==

'''Brad Dowdy:''' That's right. That's right. It's gonna be like, uh, did you ever see that movie Bring It On?

'''Myke Hurley:''' The cheerleading movie.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Just double checking that we're talking about the same movie. No, I haven't. I haven't seen the cheerleading movie. And do not, for a second, try to, to blame this on your children.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' No, I, no. This was out before I had kids. I love that movie. Okay. At least the first one. It was all downhill after the first one.

'''Myke Hurley:''' So you've seen more than one of, one cheerleading movie.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' How, how could, well, no. Well, there was Bring It On 2, then like all these other shoot-offs. I never saw any of the other ones. Oh, yeah. Okay. You can't really go wrong with Kirsten Dunst and Elijah Dusku.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Don't try and make it about the ladies now, buddy. All right? I'm on to you. I understand that you love cheerleading movies. Brad cheerleaded Doughty. Yeah. Does they know you?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' No, there's a new podcast.

'''Myke Hurley:''' The cheerleading movie cast.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Hey, do you see what, um, do you see what the Office Supply Geek did to me yesterday?

'''Myke Hurley:''' I don't think so. I don't know.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Click on that link in the show notes. You haven't seen this, really?

'''Myke Hurley:''' No.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' All right. Hit it. Okay.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Okay. Let me take a look. It's loading.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Oh, my God.

'''Myke Hurley:''' What? Oh. Is that not the most awesome thing ever? Yes.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So, in the show notes, you'll go find this link because it's too long for us to, uh, for you to, um, for us to say it on the air. But needless to say, when you get to this point in the podcast, go straight to the show notes at 5x5.tv slash penaddict slash 97 and hit this link and you are in for quite a treat. Um, basically, I, I won't, uh, give it all the way away, but, um, Brian has made a modification to one of our, um, our Knock Co. Hightower pen and notebook case. And, um, it's pretty impressive.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I hope this comes to standard or like at least an option in further, in further Knock cases. I'm pretty sure that it would not take a lot to convince Jeffrey to make that happen.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Oh, my God. No. Yeah. I'm surprised. This looks like something that Jeff would, uh, come up with on his own. There's no doubt. So.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah. Yeah. Jeffrey, I would, I would very much, uh, I would very much pay extra. Um, to have, to have this built in. And I really, I don't want to spoil it. You have to kind of go and see it.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. Yeah. You can't really talk about it. It's, it's not too much to talk about. It's more of a, it's more of a visual.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yep.

== TWSBI Facebook ==

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So, um, I was stumbling through, as I do, um, Twizby's Facebook page, because I'm pretty sure they just troll us. It's like just a big troll page with all their new stuff that they put on. But they had a pretty funny post I ran across last night. Um, it's about a pin case. And all the, all it says, it's, it says, do you like this type of pin case? And it's basically a small skinny leather pouch with just a zipper top. So there's, it's just a pouch and it's really about maybe two or three pins tall. It's a very skinny, long, skinny pouch. It says, do you like this type of pin case? I have two, can put four pins into it. I found it very easy for me to use. I'm thinking to make Twizby case like this, like or no like. So I don't know how many comments were on this thing, but the prevailing thought when talking about fountain pens, since Twizby's a fountain pen brand in this case is three out of four people said, sure, the case looks fine, but I don't want my pins to touch. For a lot of reasons. And I mean, it's just like, just everything, everything down. Not if the pins would be touching. Yes, the pins will touch. Um, I don't mind pins that touch. And it's just on and on. And finally, what made me put this in there about halfway down, he goes, okay, I see a lot of no likes and then about 30 more comments later, um, Twizby goes, okay, thanks you all got the idea. It was just on and on and on. It just incessantly, I, we don't want our pins to touch. And, um, I, that just brought me back to when we were designing knock. And I think that's probably the first thing that I told Jeff, right, is we're making these cases and none of the pins can touch. Why?

'''Myke Hurley:''' Why Brad? So I just don't want mine to knock together. No pun intended.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. Well, that's what they, that's what they will do. I mean, in any open style pouch case.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So, I mean, that's what they're talking about. You know, everyone wants to keep, you want, with fountain pens, it seems to matter more. It does matter more. Um, because you've, most people have paid more for that pen and they want to keep it, you know, a little bit nicer and not get all scratched up and dinged up. That's why, like, we sell a little zip pouch case, but that's really made for, you know, like your high tech C's or your Sharpies or your Secure Pigro Microns. You know, you just put a bunch in there. And those pins, I don't care about touching, right? You know, the, the disposable, replaceable type of pins, you know, Uniball, Sino DXs, all of those type of things. But my fountain pens, I want some separation and segregation in them. You know, I don't want them to touch. And, you know, that's just from a scratching perspective. You know, a lot of these fountain pens have, um, very high attention, attention to details on, you know, things like the clip and, you know, different chrome bits. And you just don't want these things getting scratched up. So when people are buying more expensive pens, um, which fountain pens fall into that category, people just don't want to carry them around in an open case where they're just banging around on each other all day. So I, the more I read the comments on that post, the more I just started laughing because this is the, like the exact thought process I had when we were, Jeff and I sat down for the very first time. There was a, it was a pretty short list of things that we had to have and then that couldn't happen. And, you know, one of the things that couldn't happen was, all right, these pens can't touch. So that's why there's, you know, dedicated pockets and, you know, some cases have flaps. So when you fold the pen case over on top of each other, the clips aren't hitting and things like that. So it was, uh, it was really funny to see that, um, on Twisby's page and just the, the reaction was so strong that it actually made him say, okay, I've got it. Y'all can stop now. We're not going to do it.

'''Myke Hurley:''' It's like the Twisby page, the Twisby Facebook page continues to be a source of intrigue for me because it's like now it's written, like probably sometimes, but I'm noticing like it's been written in the first person, like Twisby is this one guy or girl.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. I think it actually is. I don't, I don't know the, the lineage of the Twisby Facebook page, but there is one guy who's kind of the face of the public facing Twisby, if you will, his name is Speedy. Speedy. Okay. Yeah. Speedy. He's like the son of the founder. And then like the, he's like the, he's based in the U S he's kind of like the U S distribution point. And so I think he does all the marketing and stuff too. So it's kind of like, it's coming from him.

'''Myke Hurley:''' But it's like, he's saying like he's going to make it.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Right. And you know what? He might. I mean, seriously, that's, that's kind of the way they roll. I mean, it's a very family based organization from what I gather and different things I've read, I've read. So, you know, they've got a, what's that?

'''Myke Hurley:''' So I wish Speedy good luck.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. No, he's awesome. He's the one that keeps posting these tease pictures on here. Like, did we even talk about this wood one a couple of weeks ago when we're, I don't think that one was up on the, on the page when we were talking about it a couple of weeks ago when we're talking about the aluminum piston filler 580 and things like that. And they're working on a way to make the TWSBI classic post and things. So anyway, it's, they should just call it the TWSBI prototype page because that's pretty much what it is.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah. Nothing wrong with that, but that is what it is.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' It is what it is. So that was pretty funny. In sadder Pen news, which, eh, it's, it's more kind of a meh than sad, but, and I didn't catch this until someone sent me the link a couple of weeks ago or a week and a half ago that Staples is about to close 225 US stores. And, you know, reading the article, it's not really a surprise that this is, this consolidation's happening in this office supply store space. You know, they're all feeling the wrath of Amazon pretty much online and Staples is wanting to focus more online. And this doesn't really relate to Pen's because it's just, you know, Pen's doesn't drive any business to those stores. And, you know, they're not made to, you know, I'm sure they're getting, you know, more killed on the, the, the PC business, you know, falling off a cliff and things like that. And they're trying to move more to just online shopping. But I thought it was interesting just because, you know, that's kind of the gateway drug though for, you know, the pen, pencil, paper, office supply junkies, right? But, you know, before we had this internet that we all love so much, you know, this is some of the places we would go, you know, Staples, Office Max, Office Depot, all those places to just kind of find some new pens and find something different and better. And that's certainly where I found some of my, you know, first pens that I really enjoyed the most. And, you know, I'm sad for any business to, to be hurting and have to close stores, but you see it in places like Best Buy too, where they just have these massive square footage stores that they just don't need. You know, they can't fill the stores up anymore because the products aren't selling and they can get those things, you know, people, people are shopping online more now. And I think that, I guess that's what Staples are moving to. So, I mean, it kind of stinks that, you know, people won't have these options, but I don't know. I guess you can kind of see the writing on the wall for a long time as far as these big, big box retailers go.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yep. Same with all of them.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. Yeah. Do you, do Staples, Office Max or Office Depot have any UK presence?

'''Myke Hurley:''' We have Staples, but not in big numbers. They're like huge outlet stores and we don't have many of them. Gotcha. We have a, a, a high street stationer. We have a couple, one called Ryman and one called WH Smith, but Ryman is just office supplies. Um, and that, that seems to be doing relatively well.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Okay. Interesting. So yeah, I mean.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Oh, this reminded me, I meant to bring this up last week. In the mall, which is attached to where I work. So I work in, um, the new financial district in London and there's multiple skyscrapers, but there's a mall underneath all the skyscrapers. Does that building a Moleskine shop?

== Moleskine Stores ==

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Really? Like a dedicated Moleskine shop?

'''Myke Hurley:''' Moleskine branded. It's just Moleskine products.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Interesting. I mean, over the, since of the, in the time that I've done the blog, um, so I guess starting in about 2007, I, Moleskine has really morphed from a notebook company for the most part to a lifestyle accessories brand where they're just branching out into so many different categories. Um, you know, along with notebooks, they want to, you know, they're made, you know, um, carrying cases and just other things, lots of other business related items, you know, to where you could stock your whole desk with, you know, Moleskine items. Um, it, it's, I think they had some changeover and someone, our listeners will know better than I do. I'm just going off of memory. I think they had some like hierarchy changeover back in the past several years, some new leadership at the top. And they've really just kind of pushed this whole lifestyle thing. And it's almost like they've gotten away from their core a little bit. So it'll be interesting to see how, you know, what's, what all's carried in that shop. I bet it's pretty cool. They always have Moleskine. One of the things I've always been impressed with, if, if nothing else is their design aesthetic. I think they, they do a good job designing products. Um, they just tend to be overpriced and not as high quality as other things you can get. Um, but they've got that brand name they're pushing, right? So they, they can sell a lot on name alone. So I guess that's why we're seeing something like that. So I'll be anxious to see, um, when it opens, it will be, uh, um, a good place to get pen refills. Hopefully that's one of the best products they make.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Well, like the wrap, like, cause it's the stores being, like, you know, it's being getting ready to be opened and they have like a wrap around the windows, you know? And, um, it's got notebooks and stuff, but it's also got like bags and stuff on it, but like outlines, just like silhouettes of them, you know? So, uh, that kind of gives it, I think an idea is the type of thing that they're looking to create.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. Yeah. And it'll, it'll be cool. Cause maybe they'll have like all the special editions in one place, you know, like how they do the star Wars and the Hobbit and, and all those different little Lego ones. That'll be cool. So maybe they'll have some neat things like that, that they'll carry that you'll be able to see. And I never used this product, but I, one of the most interesting products they've made in the past, in past several years is the Evernote notebook and that integration, how they've tried to push that a little bit. Um, I don't know that that's doing well for them or I don't, I don't know whether it is or isn't, but, um, it, it was cool to see them do something like that. So hopefully there's going to be more of that, uh, to come, uh, with Moleskine. I don't follow them too closely as a brand, honestly. Um, just because I don't use hardly any Moleskine products except some of their pens. So.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I think, um, where I work, it's, it's perfect.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Oh, totally.

'''Myke Hurley:''' It's like, you know, it's, it's perfect. They've, they have picked the exact place.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Oh, I imagine they will, they will do pretty well. Yeah. Just for that location and for, you know, it's become pretty much a household name. Obviously not as, not as in ingrained into people's life, but it's getting there. People understand, you know, if they don't know anything about paper, they probably at least know what a Moleskine looks like.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' You know, they'll say any little black notebook. Oh, is that a, is that a Moleskine? Oh, I've heard of that. You know, they've, they've kind of getting, getting to that point of recognition. So.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I think like it's got that sort of Kleenex nature to it. You know, where they, people call books that have those sort of faux leather, hard bound, you know, look to them. Oh, they're Moleskines.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yep. It's definitely crossed over into a generic catch all term. Mm-hmm. Yep. Yep. Well, cool. Well, I got a few other things I want to talk about. And I get a little game I want to play with you real quick. So why don't you talk about our good friends at Squarespace?

'''Myke Hurley:''' We're going to play a game. Yeah. I didn't know we were playing a game.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I know. It's a game show.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Good. I love game shows. So let's take a quick moment to thank Squarespace. As Brad mentioned, they are the all-in-one platform that makes it fast and easy to create your own website. For a free trial and 10% off, go to squarespace.com and use the offer code Tallyho3. Squarespace are making sure that they always do amazing work to make sure that their platform is up to date. This means that they're always implementing new features. They're always revising and adding new designs. And they're making sure that their support is strengthened and even greater all the time. When talking about their designs and their templates, they have absolutely fantastic ones that you can get started with. They also have tons of style options that you can adjust so you can really tweak and craft and create and craft or creaft as I was going to call it. Everything. Your own space on the internet. Everything is drag and drop on Squarespace's platform. So it's super easy to add content from your desktop. And you can easily rearrange elements of content within the page or drag and drop. And you can see exactly how this is going to look before publishing it live. You basically, you create your web page in your web page. It's kind of cool. Squarespace makes sure that your site looks fantastic on any device because they all feature their, every template, every Squarespace website features its own unique mobile design. You can easily connect all of your favorite web and social services. So you can push content in and pull content out of them and display them to your world out there. You know, if you want to tweet a link to every post that you put on your blog, very, very easy to do that built in. Squarespace also has their e-commerce platform, Squarespace Commerce. So you can set up and shop and sell things in just minutes. And that is how we've spoken before. Our Brad is going to be setting up his shop and his store for Knock as well as having their website there. They will be using Squarespace for that. It's super easy to use Squarespace as a whole. But if you need any help, they have over 70 dedicated employees that are on their customer care team based in New York City. They're available for live chat during the week and have super fast email support throughout the day and night. Now, guys and girls, this is your last chance. If you would love to get a job over at Squarespace, well, you can do that. They're looking to hire over 30 engineers and designers by March 15th. You really don't have long now. So if you want to be in for a chance to go for a job at Squarespace, you can go to beapartofit.squarespace.com. You'll find out more. And if you are considered for an interview, if you fill out an application for them, if you put them on your short list or somewhere you want to work, they'll take you out to New York for the weekend and they'll pay for everything. They'll put you up in lovely accommodation and they'll let you explore the sites. So you should definitely go and do that if you're interested in joining the fantastic Squarespace team. If I was a designer or a developer, then I would have rushed at it already. As I said earlier, you can try out Squarespace for free. No credit card required to do this. And if you decide to purchase, it starts at just $8 a month and includes a domain name for free if you sign up for a year. Make sure that you get 10% off and support this show by using the offer code TALLYHO3. That's T-A-L-L-Y-H-O and the number three. So thank you so much to Squarespace for their support to 5x5 and The Pen Addict.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' One quick word on their support. That it's never failed to be exceptional.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' They're always quick to respond, quick to look at errors or any issues that you have or even just basic general questions. But if I run into something that's more of a bug-related issue as opposed to just a general question, they are quick to escalate, which I really appreciate. You get that first-level support that they go in and look at the problems and they're like, oh yeah, I see what you're talking about. It looks like an issue. You know what? I'm going to go ahead and escalate this to the next group that needs to look at this and they're going to get back in touch with you. They're going to dig into it a little more. So I always appreciate knowing that that escalation is going on and they let you know that as opposed to just letting your support ticket float out there and never, never land until someone decides to touch it and get working on it. So I always appreciate that about them. And that's been consistent since day one. Their support is always excellent. Now, our pen blog of the week is actually a Squarespace blog for a change. I don't know the way I've even done one yet. Not that it matters, but it was interesting because our blog of the week is called The Writing Arsenal. And if no one has ever heard of that blog, it's kind of like last week's pen blog of the week. The Pessimistic Petit is a newly renamed, rebranded blog. Well, The Writing Arsenal is a newly renamed, rebranded blog. I don't know if this is a trick just to get listed as the pen blog of the week on the Pen Addict Podcast. But this was the previously mentioned Tim, Tim Wassum, I believe is how you say his last name. I'm not sure. I'm taking a shot at that. But it was called The Daily Carry. Now, a lot of you are probably familiar with that and have read it before. So he's rebranded and he's getting ready to join the Erasable Podcast. But Tim does, it's a newer blog and right from the jump, I could tell that he was going to do an awesome job and he really has. He's in-depth reviews, great photography, great product selection. He loves him some pencils too, so he's going to be perfect for the Erasable. But he's gotten into lots of pens, lots of fountain pens, really just kind of all over the topic and does a super, super good job at reviewing and has a great blog to read and I enjoy it very much. So y'all go check out Tim's blog. If you previously followed The Daily Carry, it is now The Writing Arsenal. And he's got a whole blog post explaining why I switched the name and URL and all that fun stuff. So you might need to update your feed readers to the latest and greatest. But thanks for being awesome, Tim, and keep up the good work.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Woohoo! Woo!

== Notebook Selection ==

'''Brad Dowdy:''' All right, you want to play a game real quick? Of course. So I've held this email a couple weeks just because I thought it was pretty neat. And it relates to a lot of things we talk about all the time. But this is a guy going on a trip. So let's talk about this. This is an email from Grum. He says, I'm about to journey on a world trip, one that will cost less than $50 a day. So you can imagine that I'll have very minimal luggage. Since I'm a pen nerd, I want to bring everything with me. But of course, that'll be a stupid idea. So here's my question. If you decided to travel the world, what would you carry with you to satisfy the pen addiction? This goes for pens as well as a sort of stationery. He says, for me, it's my Midori Traveler's Journal and fistful of banded Apple notebooks as well as a space pen. I'll miss my collection of fountain pens. But that would be silly to bring with me, especially when they have a habit of popping on planes. Plus carrying nice pens will just tempt fate and I'll either lose or break them on day one. Cheers. So you're going around the world. Let's say you're gone for six months, Myke. All right. And this is a one backpack trip. And, you know, you're going, you're going, you know, just kind of more bouncing, you know, maybe couch surfing, you know, hostel to hostel or, you know, just jumping on the train and finding that next destination. But, you know, you have to carry some pen and paper with you, right? Because that's just what you do on these kind of trips. You know, you're logging, you know, you're spending some time journaling. You need something to write with. You know, maybe you're sketching, you know, some of the fancy places that you're visiting or, you know, you're taking down some phone numbers or some email addresses for those, you know, Swedish girls you met in Ibiza, you know. Sure. As I do. Yeah, as you do. As one does. So what are you bringing that fits into this mold here?

'''Myke Hurley:''' Well, the obvious things are a handful of field notes, notebooks for me, I think, for sure, especially on a trip like that. I would definitely take a Fisher Space Pen because I thought you should have something pocketable and something that can be used on all occasions. And in all scenarios, you want to have something like that. And then I wouldn't take any fountain pens.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I feel like fountain pens would be a bad idea because you'd also need ink to fill them. You kind of don't want to carry ink around. So, I mean, you know, so I can have the good time feel of pens that I enjoy, I probably would take a Retro 51, right? Because I feel like that's going to last me some time, refill in there, you know, for when I want to do some long writing, if I want to do any or some, like, writing for fun, as opposed to writing for, like, utility or whatever. Then that's probably what I would take. So, a stack full of field notes, a Retro 51, and a Fisher Space Pen.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Cool. I think that's a good mix for me.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, I've been hesitant to, like, do the pocketable thing like field notes, but I think that would be useful.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Because, you know, if you're out and about, you know, sightseeing during the day, you don't want to carry around the larger items. You know, like, I think a Rodeo Webby, you know, something with a more hardbound style with a harder back to, you know, where you can write on your knees or, you know, have a little bit of structure writing, but it's still not overly big. That would kind of be the thing that I would lean to. But I could see the portability aspect is not so great for just, like, the during the day stuff. So, maybe a field notes would be good for that. So, maybe I'd carry both of those, actually, which wouldn't be overly big, but maybe pushing it a little bit with the larger notebook. But I think I just want something more durable with a harder bound cover. And I'm actually, I'll probably take a few Secura Pigma Microns. It's not the most, necessarily the most durable pen in the world. I'd take maybe two or three of them. And, I don't know, that's just a good all-around pen for me. I see the, I mean, the space pen is kind of a no-brainer. But just kind of give me that good combination of a good quality pen with something I also enjoy writing with. So, I don't know, that would be what I would take. And, you know, I wouldn't be, you know, worried about losing those pens. Definitely wouldn't take a fountain pen for an extended, you know, six-month backpacking-type trip. So, let us know what you would take, you know, if you could take, you know, one notebook or maybe one or two notebooks and, you know, a single pen or one or two pens. You know, nothing, you know, kind of limit yourself to what you can fit in a backpack easily. And what makes the cut if you're going on a jaunt for a few months? And, I don't know, I thought it was an interesting question. We've covered, we've talked about this type of thing before. But, you know, never in this exact question. But I thought it was a neat question. Plus, maybe I'm just jealous. You know, I want to get on a plane and a train with a backpack and a journal and live that life. It's always a cool dream that a lot of us have. So, thanks for the question, Grum. I definitely appreciate it.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So, maybe one of the notebooks that would make the cut, Myke, is one I reviewed yesterday on the blog. I don't know if you've seen, I don't know if you've read my blog, Myke. Sorry, what is your blog? Yeah, it's called Pen Addict. It's at, you can find it, thepenaddict.com.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I thought it was Pen-A-Dict. Oh, I've been reading it wrong.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Penaddict.com, where I review Moleskines.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I remember you talking about this book.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, so I stumbled across that, the Johns, J-A-W-N-S brand notebook on Instagram. And I thought it was cool. Reached out to one of the guys that makes them. His name's Daniel. And said, hey, this is a pretty neat product. And he said, yeah, I'll send you one once we start production for you to check out. So, he did. And this is a really neat notebook. And I think it's actually perfect for travel. So, that's why I wanted to play that little game. Because I don't know that this notebook is necessarily like, it's not even like a Field Notes competitor type notebook. I don't think it's really even in the same category. Because I see this notebook. Basically what it is, it's, think of it around a standard Field Notes size. It's not those exact dimensions, but it's a little bit different. It's like 3 by 6 by 5. So, it's a little shorter in the length. But around the same width. And it's got an extra durable cover. It's got the Yupo paper, 80 pound cover. Which the Yupo is the, kind of like the plastic type paper. And it's just on the cover of the Johns. So, that makes it tear proof. Makes it waterproof. So, this is a very durable cover that can take a beating. And what Johns has done with the cover is they put in, on the front inside cover, there's two card slots. Inside the back, inside the back cover, there's a full length pocket for larger papers. And inside the back cover, like in between, like the inner and outer binding of the cover, is a wallet slot. So, this could be, this is a great travel book. Or like I said, like an urban warrior. You're almost like you, Myke, where, you know, if you're riding the train a lot, where you don't have to necessarily, you know, take your wallet every day. Or, you know, someone that's making a day trip or traveling. They can put a few of their most important items, you know, like identification and, you know, insurance or whatever notification cards they need in here. They can put some bills in the back slot and have, you know, 40 pages of paper to write their notes on. It's kind of an all-in-one wallet slash notebook. But it's really, it's well-made. The footprint of it, if you will, is really small, which I like, even with, you know, a couple of cards and some bills in there. Now, I will say it is designed for the U.S. dollar bill dimensions. It doesn't have, like, the depth necessary to carry some of the foreign denominations outside of maybe the inside back pocket. But I like what they've done here with the Johns. I like the attention to detail that they've put in it. I mentioned in the review that it's not a cheap notebook. It's $12 for a single notebook. But it's something that kind of fits a specific need for specific individuals. You know, it's not going to be my everyday daily back pocket journal like a Field Notes or a Doan paper book would be. But it's going to be a very useful product for when I need something this specific, if that makes sense.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So I like what they've done here. This is their first crack at it, their first product. There's going to be more to come. You know, I'd like to see some with darker covers. And I think those are going to be coming down the line as opposed to the all-white. And pretty much everything is going to be made. They're made in St. Louis, Missouri. And everything is going to be made in kind of small batches. So, like, this white one is going to have a 250-unit run. And that's it. And they're just going to keep making more. So they'll have different ones to come out. So take a look and see if this is a fit for you. I thought it was an interesting enough product to kind of give its own standalone review for, you know, as opposed to a standard memo book. So it's pretty cool. Do you think you would use something like this, Myke? Do you see a fit ever for this?

'''Myke Hurley:''' It looks nice. I don't think it's for me. Yeah. There's something just about, like, the pockets and, like, the card slots and stuff. I don't think I'd use them. And I kind of am not a massive fan of the way that that paper is printed.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Oh, the triangle grid.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. See, I like that. But I've always been into the weird and interesting grid patterns. It's funny. You know, once I started writing on it, I don't even notice things like that. I just I I like the subtle backgrounds like that. But I can see. And, you know, I don't know if in the future they'll have, you know, the the triangle grids kind of their thing. But I don't know if they'll have other options down the line. And I didn't ask specifically about that. But, yeah, I could see where some people wouldn't like that for sure. For sure.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' But it's it's pretty cool. And I like it. And, you know, like I said, I'm not going to use this every day. But the more I played around with it and, you know, tried different things with it, the more I really liked it and can see the utility of it. So it was very cool. So thank you, Daniel and John's for for sending this out to me. This neat little notebook.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Do you know the where the name comes from?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, it is the I'm going to mess it up if I don't look at it. It's the Journal of All Things Written, Needed and Sketched.

'''Myke Hurley:''' So it should be.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So it's an acronym.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Jo-a-ant. Yeah.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Jo-a-tho-wings-a-wanza. Yeah. Journal for All Things Written, Needed and Sketched. John's.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Jo-a-tho-an-t-w-n-a-s.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Okay.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Speaking of Jo-a-tho-an-d-n-a-n-a-s, the Rotor Foden, Tasha and Glider people reached out to me this week on my email. It was pretty funny. They're like, hey, we heard you reviewed our product or something, but I can't find it on your blog. I was like, oh, yeah, because we talked about it on the podcast.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Oh, really?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Here's the link. Yeah. So they said, so I said, yeah, here's the link. And they replied back. It's like, okay, cool. I'll go listen to it. I like how you put that on them that they were like super excited.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Hey, you.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Hey, how you doing? Yeah, they did. That's how they wrote it. But, you know, lots of exclamation points and interesting formatting. They're going to think that you're me. I know. So, I know. That's a bad thing. I don't want that to happen. No.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Hello, Rotor Foden people.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Use it every day. Yep.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' One more quick thing, and then we'll call it a show. But I mentioned last week that I got a new pen. And when we did our wish list items for 2014 back in January, you know, I had two pens top that list that I really wanted to get this year. One was a Nakaya of some type. You know, I don't know the specific model.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' And that's still at the top of the list. And the second item on my list was an Edison Menlo, which Brian Gray at Edison came out with a pen last year with a pump filling system. Similar to, like, your Vacumatic mic, where it's got, you know, the screw off. They call it the blind cap on the end of the pen. And you screw that off, and it reveals, like, a pump system, right, to fill your pen. You dip the nib in the ink, and you pump it several times, and it sucks ink into the pen. And I thought this is a great design. No one really makes things like that anymore. So Brian kind of engineered his own solution to that and made a pen line at Edison called the Menlo. And I was like, I got to get one of these. One, because I think just the general, the design of the pen in general is a really good-looking pen. And I've become a huge fan of Edison, obviously, over these past years. So I talked to Brian really probably early in January, probably not too long after that episode. So I said, hey, I'm thinking about a Menlo. And the Menlo is pretty much all custom-made by Brian. There's not a production line like the Beaumont. Like, you can't just go to Anderson Pens and pick up a Menlo necessarily. It's a custom-made pen, so you work with Brian directly. You tell him kind of what you're looking for in materials and look and design of the pen. So I wanted to do something, you know, kind of different. And I was asking him about a few different specs and said, hey, can we do this for a Menlo? So I sent him that email with what I was doing. He came back. He's like, yeah, we can totally do that. No problem at all. You know, let me know when you're ready to discuss it further. You know, I'll work up a price invoice for you, and we'll get it going. So I was like, cool. So now I kind of got an idea. The idea in my head, I can get what I want. And, you know, I already know the price generally. And so I just left it there. And, you know, knowing that later this year I'm going to come around to it and order that pen. So a week ago, or about a week and a half ago, I'm up in Atlanta working with Jeff. And he hands me an envelope with a piece of paper. Well, you know, a sealed envelope, obviously, with a letter in it. And then the outside of it says, don't open this until I tell you to. I'm like, hmm, okay. So he gave you it? Yes. No, so he gave me this letter.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah. And on the outside of the letter, it says, don't open this until I tell you to. Yeah. I love this guy. Yeah. So I said, I actually asked him.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I said, so what do we, so do we have like a safe word? Am I waiting for like the safe, so what is our safe word? Onions? So I'm just waiting for you to say onions, then I can open this. And so I just took it home with me. And, you know, I'm true to my word. I just put it in my backpack and forgot about it.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So like two days later or the next day, I'm going out and I get my mailboxes stuffed full of products. I've been on a run recently with all kinds of stuff I've been buying, stuff I'm testing out. So I had like three packages in the mailbox that day and one of them is from Edison Pen Company. And it's definitely a pen. I mean, it's the square box. There's no doubt that there's a pen inside this box. I'm like, I didn't order anything from Edison. You know, so maybe Brian wants me to, maybe he's sending me something to test out. I don't know. Maybe Brian has a question for me, wants me to, you know, see if I like this. I don't know, whatever. I'm running through all these things. I'm like, but I'm pretty sure I did not order a pen from Edison. So I go in, open the box, and in the paperwork that comes with the box, like the first sheet, there's like three or four sheets of paper, you know, with the packing list and just the notes on it. And the first sheet that you open up, it says, open the letter.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I'm like, oh, damn, he didn't.

== Jeffrey Special Pen ==

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So this is, I think before I even open the pen, I go get the letter, open it up, and Jeff has written me this, you know, I'll keep that between me and Jeff, but he's written me a great letter about, you know, working together and starting this company and, you know, you know, being able to, you know, really bring our dreams, you know, to life and, you know, appreciating my support and all this, just this really great letter. Oh, that guy. Then I opened the box, and it's the Menlo design that I've asked Brian about back a couple months ago. So Jeff had worked up this idea to get me a Menlo, reached out to Brian. Brian says, hey, you know, I got this email from Brad a few months ago, and then they collaborated, or as I told them individually, that they co-conspired to make this pen for me and sent it to me. And that's the story of how I got my Edison Menlo. And it's a really special pen, special story from a special guy. So thank you, Jeff. And thank you, Brian, for being complicit in this endeavor, because y'all are some sneaky bastages.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' But it was really special, and there's no doubt that this is far and away my favorite pen that I may ever own, because it has more meaning to it than just a pen.

'''Myke Hurley:''' That's so nice. I love the story.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I wanted to tell that story. So aside, you know, there's... Aside from this, I hate the pen. No, no. I was going to say, there's nothing I can review about this pen that's going to top what the pen actually means to me, you know, on a personal level. And I think that's really what it's all about. And, you know, it doesn't hurt that the pen is flat out amazingly awesome. And there will be a full review forthcoming. And it can...

'''Myke Hurley:''' I think I want one of these. I mean, obviously, I would love a Jeffrey Special, but we don't all get those. But I'm looking at it. And I mean, I love the designs of the Edison stuff, you know, like I love all the swirly acrylic and all that, you know.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, so on my design, I was asking Brian, I was like, hey, you know, I like the demonstrator, you know, the clear acrylic type pen. So I said, you know, I want something with like a, maybe a red cap and, you know, a blue barrel and, you know, a clear section or something like that. Just something, you know, I like the red, white, and blue. Like, you know, I like the TWSBI rock. I just like how those look. It's something that appeals to me. So this is a pen that is totally me, right? I mean, some people will probably look at this pen and think it's just ugly as sin. And I think it's the most beautiful pen I've ever seen because it encompasses me, you know. It's the colors that I wanted, the design that I wanted. And it's mine. I mean, it was made for me. I'm the only one that's going to have it.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' And it's just really special. And it's an amazing pen just on its own. I mean, it's going to be a favorite regardless of all the additional meaning behind it. But I actually call it the Menlo 3D. By the way it looks with the red and blue, it looks like the old 3D glasses. So it's pretty cool.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Now you just made my, like, decision in getting one of these even more difficult because now I need to think, what's the mic version of this?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yep. Yeah. So, yeah, you'll get lost for hours going through the Edison, like, materials archive. Like, all the materials you can pick out.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Where is that?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' There's some cool stuff. He has a link to a Smug Mug gallery. Oh, yeah. If you go to, like, the Menlo product page, you can click on a gallery. But you can really get any material in any pen that he's ever done. And, I mean, he's got hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of pages of materials, of pens that he's made. And you can pick and choose. You get it made for yourself, so.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I feel like I need an Obi-Wan Kenobi to help me in this.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Mm-hmm.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Obi-Wan Pen Nobi.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yep.

'''Myke Hurley:''' That's what I need.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' There you go. That would have been a better title than the earlier one.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I knew you were going to say that and I hate you.

'''Myke Hurley:''' All right. Well, that's a wrap, sir. I know what kind of thing I want now. What? I want, like, that sort of, you know, that, like, style that he does, that, like, acrylic with, like, all the waves. I want, but I want it to, like, lava.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah.

'''Myke Hurley:''' You know, like, black and orange and red. Yep.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' He's done something similar. I'll have to see if I can find you the links. Yeah. And find something close. Cool.

'''Myke Hurley:''' That's why I like the look of. Mm-hmm. Because I found one that's kind of similar, but it's white and not black. Gotcha. So, if you find that, please send it to me.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' You got it. And, yeah, you're going to spend hours looking through that stuff because I know I will. I've done that on more than one occasion.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Okay. Well, okay. Well, I'm interested to see your actual review of it as well. Giant. Yeah. For as much as is possible, just review the pen.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Oh, totally. Yeah. No, it's, there's no doubt because he actually got me a, he had Brian grind down a nib for me too. It's a steel nib and it's with a 0.5 millimeter stub nib. So, that's on there. So, it's great. It's, it's, so far, the early returns are, if this was the only fountain pen I had, I would be happy.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Wow.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So, that says a lot about.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah. Yeah. I really want this pen.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' How this pen fits and feels and writes and is functional. So, yeah.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah, I think I want one. I think I want one a lot. I've been thinking as well, like, I want to get another pen and I want it to be a 1.5.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Mm-hmm.

== TWSBI ==

'''Myke Hurley:''' Just to try that. But, I'll probably just wait and get a Twisbee and, like, a new Twisbee or whatever and get a 1.5. Cool. Whenever that will be. Okay. So, if you want to catch up with us online, there's a few ways you can do that. You can get us on Twitter. I am at imike, I-M-Y-K-E, and Brad is at dowdyism, D-O-W-D-Y-I-S-M. Brad also writes over at penaddict.com. Pen-ad-e-ked, depending on, you know, the way that you come across it.

'''Myke Hurley:''' If you want to catch up with the show notes for today's episode, go to 5x5.tv slash penaddict slash 97. We're nearly at the special episode 100, which is getting bigger and bigger and bigger every day.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' It's pretty crazy, yeah.

'''Myke Hurley:''' It's getting pretty insane. I don't know what we're going to do.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' All this stuff.

'''Myke Hurley:''' So, yeah, look out for that in a couple of weeks' time. Episode 100, very, very excited. I want to thank you all for listening to this week's episode of the penaddict, as always. And thank you, Brad, for being here. Until next time, say goodbye, Bradley.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Goodbye, Bradley. Bye.

[[Category:Podcast Transcripts]]
[[Category:The Pen Addict Podcast Transcript]]

The Pen Addict 93/transcript

2026-06-23T16:02:10Z

PencilBot: fixed spelling

{{Infobox podcast transcript
| name = The Pen Addict
| number = 93
| title = Never Say Never
| date = February 12th, 2014
| hosts = [[Brad Dowdy]] 
[[Myke Hurley]]
| guests =
| link = [https://www.relay.fm/penaddict/93 Episode 93]
| audiolink = [https://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/traffic.libsyn.com/thepenaddict/penaddict-093.mp3 Audio Episode 93]
| length = 65
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'''Myke Hurley:''' Hello and welcome to episode 93 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 today by the Lieutenant of Lamy, Mr. Brad Dowdy.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Awesome. How are you, sir?

'''Myke Hurley:''' Good. I kind of feel like I've besmirched my country, though. Why? Well, we say Lieutenant. Ah. Spelled exactly the same. Mm-hmm. I can pronounce Lieutenant instead of Lieutenant.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Now, that I've never heard. There you go.

'''Myke Hurley:''' So, if you watch some old British war movies or, actually, any British war movie or whatever, you'll notice it, but you might miss it. But, yeah, we say Lieutenant. Okay. Spelled the same. That one I do not understand, but...

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Well, I salute you for that. Thank you.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' You surviving over there in London, in the UK? Yeah.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah. Yeah, we're all good. There's nothing wrong here.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. We're... I don't know. We're getting... We're digging out the trenches again, getting ready for another storm here in the U.S. southeast. I don't know what's going on with the weather, but...

'''Myke Hurley:''' Well, I say that there are a lot of floods in the UK, but... Oh, I saw some pictures. Yeah. Yeah.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' It's not really happening in London. Your castle is getting flooded.

'''Myke Hurley:''' That's just a moat.

== Shipping Updates ==

'''Brad Dowdy:''' All right. So, we got a good episode today. My kind of episode where we just kind of go over everything. Everything is fair game. And since we had a quick turnaround from last week's episode and I didn't have time to fully formulate a new topic for today, we got all kinds of Twitter questions, which our Twitter followers are just, I don't know, off the charts awesome. So, we got all kinds of good stuff to touch on for topics later in this episode. But I got a couple updates I want to give, if that's good by you. Yeah. Go for it. Yeah. So, it's been a while since I've given a Nock co-update on the podcast. And I've just put out a backer update yesterday. Or was that this morning? I lose track.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I think it was this morning.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Okay.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' About where we're at as far as manufacturing and shipping goes. And we're getting there. I mean, the stock room is loaded to the hilt with cases. So, I'm going to ship out. I put a link in the show notes for anyone who hasn't seen the update yet because some people do miss them. You can go over there and see kind of where we're at on shipping. I've got several different levels I'm going to try to get out this week. Weather depending. It looks like the weather's turning for the worst. So, hopefully, I can get them out by the end of the week. But if not, it'll be shortly thereafter. And then, you know, the manufacturing side of it, it's going good. So, we're just going to keep plugging away. And hopefully, we'll get all this done this month and shipped out either by the end of the month or, I don't know, maybe right in the beginning of March. But it's looking pretty good. We have lots of cases just sitting here ready for the rest of the orders to be made. So, you know, like all the cases level and the mass storage level, you know, I might have three or four of each person's order ready to go. I just got to wait for the rest. So, that's where we're at on that.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Where's mine?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' You know, it's funny. I was working. Jeff and I were working this weekend. And I was up in Atlanta helping out. And he said, he gave me a couple extra ones that were just kind of one-off. And he goes, what cases does Myke have for his order? I was like, I don't know. I haven't looked specifically. He goes, we should get his together and go ahead and send them to him. I was like, I'm not going to do that. I'm not going to play any favorites.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah, see, I wonder if people think, I have not received a case. Not one.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' If I send Myke's case, who backed all the cases level, who's, you know, those are the people that have paid the most and are going to have to wait the longest. And we're like the hugest supporters and everyone's getting theirs last.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah, I can see why. I can see why Jeffrey said it. And I'm, you know, I'm thankful that he's thinking of me. But I agree with you. I would have told you not to do that.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, I was like, man, I'll get killed if I make a special package and send his up early.

'''Myke Hurley:''' It would be so unfair to everybody else. Yeah.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. But like out of all the stock that I have, you know, I could probably put, I could probably piece together a handful of the all my cases orders. But, you know, it's just, it's hard until you get like every single case done to actually go in and package all of those orders because they're so random in what every color of every style that everyone picked. Right. It's not, it's not consistent across everything. So it's hard to, it's hard to manage. And so that's, that's unfortunately going to be one of the last things to ship just because, you know, like I say, like in my, in my update, like I've got the orange, you know, I've got the mandarin mango sassafras is ready in the midnight foliage high towers. Well, I don't just have those ready for those shipments. I have all of those ready for the people who ordered those for the, all the cases level. So, you know, I'll ship out 50 of them and then I have another 200 of them sitting here waiting to be compiled into all the case, the, all the cases order. So that's kind of how it works.

'''Myke Hurley:''' So, um, it's an interesting kind of, uh, I'm going to use the word dichotomy, but I don't know if it's the correct word, but I like the sound of it in this sentence. Um, the, the people that gave you the most money are waiting the longest. Like it's just an interesting sort of like predicament to find yourself in. Did you anticipate this? Did this thought cross your mind? Um, when you were, when you were doing it, when you were putting it up?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' It did not cross our mind.

'''Myke Hurley:''' And that's one of our, that's one of the learns, I guess, that you've had.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. That's a huge learn. That's, I don't want to say regret. It's not a regret, but it's definitely not how we plan things in the beginning. Definitely not. It's not how we saw things playing out, put it that way. And so it's kind of put us in a weird spot for that to where I feel like super guilty about that. That's, that's like been my biggest regret so far that we've had to push off our biggest supporters to the very end. So we've, Jeff and I have already talked about it. We're going to do, I mean, we've been, you know, we try to be as open as possible throughout this whole experience. And it's been a massive learning experience and there's definitely been some mistakes along the way. And we're, we're talking about, we're definitely going to have a, a big post dissecting what we've learned, um, that we can hopefully help out, you know, other people looking to, to do, um, you know, a Kickstarter project like this and just kind of lay out the nuts and bolts of the, you know, the things that we did wrong and the things that we did right and the things we do differently. So yeah, it's, it's been a massive learning experience. And fortunately, you know, everyone, our, our backers have been awesome and understanding about, you know, the delays and, and things like that. So, I mean, fortunately, I mean, we're in this predicament because it was very successful, right? So, you know, we're just, we're just trying to, uh, learn from that and, you know, continue to do a good job making these cases and, and get these all out to everybody and, um, you know, and take what we've learned and, and move it forward into the, um, into the other products and, and everything else that we're going to be doing in the future. So it's, it's, it's been a challenge, but it's been, it's been really good, um, from a, from a learning perspective. So it's, and there's definitely some things we would have done differently.

'''Myke Hurley:''' When's this, when's the general store opening?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' It should be in March. I don't have an exact date, probably tour. It's, it's not going to open obviously until we get everyone shipped. Right. And I mean, that would just be suicide pretty much. Um, so we're looking at March, probably in the middle to late March. Um, and it's, I mean, it's essentially ready to roll. We haven't been working on it too much. We've been working on other things, but you know, we've kind of got, um, we, we've worked on the site on and off and ready to turn it on. Um, whenever we just don't know what the inventory is going to be like when we are, when we do go live with it, but it'll be in March. Um, because we will be, we should be fully done with all the Kickstarter stuff. Um, everything shipped out. Um, obviously the earlier, the better, but, um, I don't see any reason why it won't be in March to get that turned up. So everyone's been asking about that too, because we're going to have some, um, you know, not just the cases that were available in Kickstarter, but we've got some new products we're going to work on, um, some new colorways for the cases, case designs we've already made and, um, some completely, completely new products. Um, one of which we, we, uh, we dropped a sneak peek of, um, this week. You happen to catch that?

'''Myke Hurley:''' Sure did.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So what do you think?

'''Myke Hurley:''' I'm very interested.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. So what we did, so back in, so our Kickstarter ended like October 30th, I think. So pretty much all of November, we're just sitting around waiting for all the Kickstarter machinations in the background to, to finish up, right? You got to wait weeks to get the money transferred and we got to wait weeks to, you know, order products and I mean, order our materials and then get in, get in. So we had, we had several weeks or almost a month of downtime after the Kickstarter ended before we really started hardcore manufacturing. So we came up with a few ideas that we worked on during that time. And this is kind of the, uh, culmination of a couple ideas we had. Um, we wanted to carry some other things besides, um, pen cases. So we came up with an index card design that we really liked. Um, I'm a huge index card fan. Uh, Jeff uses them at work constantly. Um, I know a lot of people are index cards fans and it's always been hard to find a good quality index card. I felt that worked with a lot of, a lot of different pens. Um, so we wanted to make, if you kind of go at it from the perspective of making a fountain pen friendly index card, it's going to work with pretty much all pens. And, um, you know, we worked with a printer and, and found the right paper and the route, the right, uh, printing ink, um, to make our dot dash index cards. And, um, we're going to be excited to, to release those on the world in March. And since we, uh, we didn't want to just stop there with the index cards. We worked with our friend, uh, Myke Dudek of, uh, the Clicky Post. So the dude and, and Jeff and I brainstormed some ideas to hold these index cards. And, um, we have a link to the picture in the show notes. I posted it on the NotCo Instagram. It's called the, uh, Idea Doc. And what it is, it's basically a note card holder, an index card holder. It holds, uh, like up to a pack of 50 and kind of a back slot on the, on the, um, on the wooden block. And then it has a slot in the front for like your current active card, if you will. I know a lot of people keep to-do lists and, and daily notes and checklists on index cards. And this gives them a slot to, uh, put that card kind of front and center. And then behind that card, there's like a little groove cut out for a pen to lay across. So it's a nice little, um, desk accessory that works good for, uh, index cards. And we're really, really happy with how this turned out from, uh, Mr. Dudek.

'''Myke Hurley:''' And who's making the index cards?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Um, a local printer to us here in Atlanta.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Good stuff. So you've, you've had a hand in the paper selection and things like that.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Oh, yeah. I mean, we, we tried all kinds of the samples, different kinds of printing ink, um, you know, all kinds of stuff. So, yeah, well, we had, we handled the whole process with the, with the printer. We picked out everything and, and did the design ourselves and the, and the, um, you know, the cover design and, and things like that. So you have the design and paper and everything. It's everything we've been fully, fully engaged with, with getting these made. And, uh, I'm really, really happy with how they turned out. They, um, they work really, really well.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Looks exciting. God, you guys are so busy.

== New Products ==

'''Brad Dowdy:''' We are, man. It's, uh, just wait till March. I mean, we're excited. We want to get this, this Kickstarter fulfilled. Um, you know, that's obviously our primary goal. And, um, get everyone, you know, everyone's cases in their hands and everyone excited about their cases. Cause the feedback continues to be really positive on what we have sent out. Um, and, um, you know, then after that, after Kickstarter is done, it's going to be not a very different notco, but there's just going to be more different stuff. If you will. I mean, it's, it's going to be, I mean, this is, you know, Jeff and I are taking this business, you know, as very seriously. I mean, this is something we want to do and something we want to do full time. So we're trying to make, uh, make decisions to lead us down that path. So, you know, hopefully everyone likes what they see and, uh, we'll continue to check us out.

'''Myke Hurley:''' In March, let me, without giving too much away, do you have any other products or are these kind of just the new products that you're launching along with the cases and notco store?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Um, we'll have some more products. Um, I don't want to say what they are yet, but, um, we'll definitely have some more products. Boy, oh boy.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Building an empire over there, you two.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' We're trying. We're trying. I mean, we want to, we want to make this thing work. I mean, you know, it's, uh, it's, it's a dream of both of ours and we appreciate all the support that everyone's given us so far. And, uh, you know, we, um, we've been getting a lot of, uh, good feedback and want to, uh, continue making good products for everyone. And, and, um, that, that's the plan.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I have another question for you. Sure. Um, so obviously the, the Kickstarter dates have slipped right past where you, you wanted them to. Yes. I know you wanted to have everything out in January. Um, and that's taken a little bit longer because you've had to build like a, actually a huge inventory, like thousands. You had to fulfill over 2000 orders. Right. Meaning, you know, how many cases in total are you making, by the way? Do you know?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I don't have the exact number. It's around 6,000 or so.

'''Myke Hurley:''' So you've had to make 6,000 products, which is ridiculous. Um, in a, in a few months. Right. Basically. Right. Right. Um, and it's, it's just like one guy most of the time. Yeah. Yeah. Most of the time. Yeah. Um, so I can see that's how you're in this shape. If you're all going to start selling things from a storefront, you kind of can't leave people waiting for this amount of time. So how are you tackling that?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Right. It, it'll be a little bit different once we get to that point. We'll be able to plan out what we offer better and be able to space that out on our own timeframe.

== Store Updates ==

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So, you know, we'll, we don't want to have a bunch of, you know, sold out or out of stock for any extended period of time. Um, so we'll be able to, we'll be able to manufacture enough products for a store easier than we will to manufacture for this Kickstarter. I don't know if I can explain that in, you know, black and white. Um, but yeah, I mean, it, it, it's hard to explain, but it's going to be a totally different kind of workflow for us, if you will, from the store perspective than it is from the Kickstarter perspective. So we, we talk about that a lot and how we're going to, you know, manage the store and the inventory and things like that. And we're both pretty convinced that it's going to be very different and, and should be easier than what we've done so far, as far as getting all the Kickstarter fulfilled. So we don't think, we don't think that's going to be an issue.

'''Myke Hurley:''' And then you have a total land rush again.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, I know. Right. I know. So you never know. I mean, people have been, people have been clamoring for us to get that store open. And then, you know, that's just, we're just not going to do that until that would, that would be a bad move to open that up before, um, Kickstarter's fulfilled. I mean, there's really no point in doing that. So we have, uh, goals to meet for all our Kickstarter backers. And then, um, once that's done, we'll go from there.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Do we have any follow-up before we, um, go into the main topics today?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. Just one thing on the EDC show last week, which we got a lot of good feedback on that show. Um, everyone seemed to like that show pretty well. And, uh, I appreciate all the feedback we got on that. And one very good point that LA Ward made on Twitter, and I totally whiffed on this, um, during the EDC show, is women and purse carry pins. I mean, that's something I usually, I've actually mentioned several times when I've reviewed pins on my blog that, you know, it's going to be, you know, good for, good for a purse or a pocketbook, something like that. And she just wanted to make the point that, you know, hey, ladies are here too. You know, we need something that's going to fit good in the purse, um, because our pants, our pants pockets are useless. She says, lady pants pockets are useless, which I thought was good.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah, I'm sure.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So, I mean, you know, we, a lot of, but a lot of the same pins still fit the bill. Um, like, a Fisher Space pin is going to be awesome for a purse. You know, just that, or even if you're just carrying your pocketbook, um, and just need something to, to slip in there that's real small and sleek. So, something like the Fisher Space pin, but really a lot of the pins are going to, um, are going to work the same way for, um, women who have to carry it in a purse or something to that effect. But I am sorry I whiffed on that. And as soon as she said it, I was like, oh yeah, I meant to say something about that and I forgot. So, thank you for bringing that back up. But, um, I think that's all the, the episode follow-up I got. Did you have anything?

'''Myke Hurley:''' Uh, my, uh, new ink came in, but I haven't really got much to say just yet. Okay. So, this is the Hiroshizuku Chikurin.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' What color is that? Is that the green? Yeah.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Okay, cool. I'm not convinced on it yet, so I need to, I need to keep using it a little bit more, I think, and kind of just get used to it a bit. Um, and then I might have more to say about it afterwards. Awesome.

'''Myke Hurley:''' So, yeah, I'll, I'll, I'll, I'll come back maybe in the next couple of weeks, I'll come back with a little bit more on that, I think.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Okay. That'll be good. I'll, I'll be, I'll, uh, have some more inks to talk about by then, too.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Cool. Should we take a break? Think I'll sponsor? Yes. Some new stuff, I've got some exciting stuff today about Squarespace. Cool. New stuff to talk about. So, this episode is brought to you by the fine folks over at Squarespace. They are the all-in-one platform that make it fast and easy to create your own website. For a free trial and 10% off, go to squarespace.com and use the offer code TALLYHO2. So, Squarespace are always doing great work to make sure their platform is up to date with new features, designs, and more support. They have beautiful templates that you can get started with and tons of style options that you can adjust, tweak, and really craft and create your own space online. Everything on Squarespace is drag and drop, so it's easy to add content from your desktop and even arrange elements of content within a page. Squarespace makes sure that your site automatically looks great on every device because they make sure that every Squarespace template, their professionally designed, beautiful templates, have their own unique mobile design. You can easily connect to Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Instagram, and Google, and many more web and social services to sort of farm data and content out to those services and also bring data and content in. Squarespace also has an e-commerce platform called Squarespace Commerce, so if you want to set up a shop and sell things, you can do that too in just a few minutes. Squarespace is really easy to use, but if you need any help, they have over 70 dedicated employees on their customer care team based in New York City. They're available for live chat during the week and have super fast email support throughout the day and night. And listen up, all you Squarespace fans, as I'm sure you are out there. Now's the time, and your time has come. You can now apply to be a part of the Squarespace team. Squarespace is looking to hire 30 engineers and designers by March 15th. This means they're inviting potential candidates, which could be you, and their spouses to be New Yorkers for a weekend completely on them. So if you want to hang out with our friends over at Squarespace, then go check out beapartofit.squarespace.com to learn more. They'll fly you out if you're a potential candidate. You can enjoy New York and go and meet with a Squarespace team. So go take a look at that at beapartofit.squarespace.com. As I said earlier, you can try Squarespace for free, no credit card required. And if you decide to purchase, it starts at just $8 a month and includes a domain name if you sign up for a year. Make sure that you get 10% off and support this show by using the offer code TallyHo2. So thank you to Squarespace for supporting 5x5 and The Pen Addict.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Do you see what our friend Myke Dudek did? Speaking of the dude making the awesome blocks for us. Do you see what he did like a week or two ago? This is a further Squarespace pimp job.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I'm not sure. Maybe.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So I put a link in the show notes just now. It reminded me. He did a full iOS post through the Squarespace app. The pictures, the blog posts, the editing, everything through their blog app, which it's really nice. They've finally gotten that solid where it needs to be. Yeah, it's right on the money. So I thought that was cool of him to do. And, you know, that's something I ought to try out because I'm on my phone constantly.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Man, this is good. He took the photos of his iPhone?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. It's 100% iPhone post.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Man, there's some good photos.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' He's a good photographer to begin with. God, why is that guy so talented?

'''Myke Hurley:''' It's kind of not fair on everybody else.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. You know? I know. It's not fair. You got to stop being so good.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah. God, dude. He's going to go on the bad list, I think.

== Custom Pens ==

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I know. I know. Now, you want to see some other good photography and some lustworthy pins. Our pin blog of the week is Write to Me Often. So this is a blog I've only been following maybe a year, maybe not too much longer than that. And it's a girl named Zanyab. And she is Turkish. And the blog is she actually does a great job of making it accessible to everyone. She writes her blog posts in Turkish. And then I guess she just translates them herself or rewrites them completely in English. So there's basically two phases to each blog post she does. She's got a killer collection of pins. And not only has she been doing a bunch of awesome reviews for all of her fountain pins, she started into, in the past month or two, starting to do some kind of fountain pen tips. You know? Like she's doing a series on pen cleaning here recently. She's like on her third post for pen cleaning. But yeah. You want to be jealous of someone's photography and someone's pins. Go take a look at what she's doing. So, you know, that's a blog you guys should definitely, definitely be checking out. So we'll have that in the show notes if you're not familiar with this blog. Add it to your RSS reader. Add it to your bookmarks. Do something. Because she actually posts quite often. I mean, several, several posts a week. Very in-depth. Very beautiful. All kinds of pins that I just lust over and some great reviews. So definitely check out. Write to me often.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I like the backgrounds that she picks.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. It's all different. That's one thing, you know, I want to work on. Sometimes I get stuck in ruts because I'm so, you know, photo averse, I guess, that, you know, sometimes I get stuck and I need to change it up more. It would probably, you know, suit the blog better to have it mixed up quite often like she does. She does a great job.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' All right. So like we mentioned before, we didn't have a specific topic. So we reached out to our Twitter friends who within like five minutes gave me just like, I don't know, every question under the sun that was like every question was awesome. Like there was no like throwaway questions. Like every one I had to write down and I don't know if I'll get to all of them on this episode or not. But, you know, one of them we already handled talking about the NotCo idea doc we're doing for the index cards. You know, right after I opened up the floor for questions, Toffer said, talk about that damned idea cube that you won't let me give you money for yet. Mostly talk about how I can give you money for one. I know he's an index card fan. So hopefully we answered his question already. But a few of the topics were kind of pertinent to some things I've been working on recently.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' And just Davey B, who does, who is another pen blog we'll probably feature as a pen blog of the week, one of these days, he asks, custom grind fountain pen nibs, are they worth it? So this is a discussion, I think, more than just a one-off topic. And, you know, it may be something we have to revisit down the line. So the basic answer, I think, is yes, they're worth it. And the reason why is the reason why it's the same answer that people like to ask, why fountain pens? Just in the generic sense, as opposed to, you know, a gel ink pen or a ballpoint. Why fountain pens? And the answer to that, I think, is customization. I think the amount of customization you can do with fountain pens is endless. You know, I don't want to say that gel ink pens or ballpoint pens have been solved because they haven't. There's still new things coming out. But there seems to be a limit. There's only X amount of stuff you can do with a gel ink pen. You know, get it in a few tip sizes, get it in a few different colors. Then maybe, you know, in a couple years, they'll come out with a different barrel. You can put the same refill in.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Fountain pens aren't like that because of the, number one, just the range of inks you can put in.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Number two, the modifications you can do to the pens you already have. So this is where the custom grinding comes in. And to me, it's worth it because I have very specific things I like when I'm writing. I like two things. I like either a very, very fine line or I like a very blocky squared off line, like from a stub nib. So I have certain pens that I like, you know, whether I like, you know, if I like their barrel type or they're comfortable to hold, you know, they're great looking and it's a pen I want to use. But I may not necessarily like the nib that much. Well, I can get someone to fix that for me or not fix. Fix isn't the right word, but I can get someone to improve that experience for me. You know, take a pen I already like and make it even better for me personally. And that's what it boils down to. The custom grind thing is a total, totally, you know, personal thing. It's not something I recommend people just doing, you know, randomly. You know, just, you know, if there's a reason that you want a pen and a specific nib to write a certain way, then yeah, that's something you should look into.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I don't think everyone needs to do it. I mean, there's certainly a lot of, there's certainly not a lot of need for that. But if you're obsessive like me and I want certain things to write certain ways or feel certain ways, then it's something you should look into. And you can take a pen that you have that, you know, may not be, you may love how the pen looks and how the pen feels, but you don't love with how, you're not in love with how it writes. You know, for probably around $30, that's just a ballpark, what seems to be kind of a general fee for a lot of these guys that do nib work. You can completely change how that pen writes and change what you think about that pen. And so, are they worth it? To me, they are. But it's a very personal thing.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So, you know, that's something I think we'll continue to explore, Myke, on the podcast and on the blog. Because, you know, a lot of people haven't had the opportunity to do that.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Well, I haven't. I haven't done it yet.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Right.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Because I've yet to find, for me, I haven't found a justification, in all honesty. Like, I don't feel like I've purchased a pen that was expensive enough that I loved so much and didn't love the nib on enough that I wanted to change it. Right. You know? Yeah.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. And, I mean, that's totally valid. I mean, and that's how it should be. I mean, and a lot of people will say, well, I bought a pen for this reason and, you know, there's no need to change it. And that's, I mean, geez, that's completely valid. But, you know, if you want to, you know, kind of try some different things and, you know, see what other options are out there for nibs, for me, it's been absolutely worth it. And, you know, I've, I mean, it's really a small majority of my, a small number of my pens that I've had worked on. It's just a handful of pens. So, it's not like every pen that I get gets sent out for work. Actually, most of them don't. And, you know, a lot of times I will buy a pen specifically that I know is not the perfect nib for me. And with the intent to have it transformed into something else that I know is perfect. Like I just got a Pilot Custom Heritage 92. This is one I bought back in December. I bought a bold nib with the intent to make it into like a fine cursive italic nib. So, I purchased it with the intent of having it modified before I even inked it up for the first time. So, I bought it with a bold nib. So, when I sent it to Myke Masayama, I knew. I mean, I never even inked it up when I got the pen. I bought it. It arrived. Didn't ink it up. Packaged it up. And sent it to Masayama. Said, hey, here's what I want. And I just got it back yesterday. And it's really nice. So, I'll have more on that later. So, that's one thing. That's one option that I knew ahead of time that I wanted. Right? So, I planned on that. Now, the second thing, you know, I got a Lamy Studio, which I reviewed on Monday. So, I got that from JetPens. And I got an EF nib. It's a 14-karat gold nib. I didn't like how the nib rode. It was way too wide for an EF nib. I mean, it wrote like a bold nib. And I didn't like it. So, I knew. Well, that's a different scenario. This pen, I wanted fixed, basically. I wasn't going to use it in its current state. So, I sent it off to Sean Newton, who I wrote about in the blog. And asked him to turn it into like somewhere around a Japanese fine nib. So, that completely changed that pen for me. Right? Because it was a pen I was barely going to use before. And now, it's turned into a pen that's awesome. So, those are the type of things you have to consider.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Maybe part of it for me is that I don't have somebody that I know to do this. Like, you know, you have Masuyama, who you know is a good guy for this stuff. But I haven't. Just, I mean, I haven't looked. But I've, you know, I don't know the names of anyone. Yep. And that's. Because I would, you know, I would want to send it in the UK, obviously.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, for sure. And that's a big thing. You know, people doing it for the first time. They definitely want to have, you know, someone vouch for whoever's doing the work. Right? Someone with a good reputation. Some experience doing it. Someone that, you know, other people have used. And you can see what the work's like. And I think that's a lot of it. And, you know, I didn't. The first time I had any nib work done was at the pen show last year. The Atlanta pen show. So getting to do that in person for the first time that I had anything done was very helpful for any future, you know, any future work I've had done to where I've mailed off to certain people. And I would definitely recommend that if, you know, if you have the opportunity. Not everyone has the opportunity. But there's lots of people who do nib work. And you can get lots of good recommendations online, like on Fountain Pen Network and things like that, just to see, you know, who's doing good work for this style of nib that you want. So that's, I don't know. I feel like that's just barely scratching the surface of the topic. And we'll put a link in the show notes. It's Ivan from Inktronics just put a post up yesterday, as a matter of fact, called the DIY Dibmeister Part 1. So a lot of I haven't done this yet. And I don't see me doing it. But you never know. I've learned to never say never.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yes.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Especially on this show. But a lot of people do their own nib work, smoothing and adjustments. And this Ivan started a post to do a series on how he does some of this nib work himself.

'''Myke Hurley:''' So I can't imagine anything more terrifying.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I can't either. I don't want to put that on myself. I don't trust myself that much to be able to do that. But check that out because that's, and I just saved another post, I don't know, right before we started the podcast. Another blogger was doing some DIY nib work out there today. I'll put that. I've got it saved off for Inklinks this weekend. I don't have the link right in front of me. But, yeah, this is a popular thing because a lot of fountain pen stores sell, you know, little kits for you to at least do some smoothing and some cleaning. Maybe not some hardcore reshaping of nibs, but just some basic work. So, anyway.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' The next question is from Brian Schenker. And this one comes up a lot.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Gold versus steel nibs. Major difference. And are there circumstances to choose one over the other?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I still, to this day, even though I've been using fountain pens, I'm, in the grand scheme, I'm not very experienced with fountain pens. But I definitely feel like I'm still not able to completely articulate why you should choose gold or steel. So, from my experience, I've found there's not that much difference depending on the pen. Like, with gold nibs, you'll get a little bit more flexibility in, like, the full-size nibs.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' That's kind of about it. I mean, if you have a good quality steel nib, it's going to write just as well as a good quality gold nib. You know, when people ask me this question, I always send them the same link. And it's from Brian Gray at Edison Pen. And he has a post called In Praise of Steel Nibs. And it's worth reading. So, we'll put that in the show notes. And what Brian's saying is, you know, this is a guy who is in the fountain pen business. And, you know, he puts down the points of why you should choose steel or why you should choose gold. And, you know, he doesn't necessarily see lots of reasons to choose gold nibs.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' You know, he goes into a broader explanation in this article. And everyone should definitely read this. But just in my experience, I don't necessarily pick up a pen.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I don't choose a pen based on whether it's a gold or steel nib. I choose a pen based on whether it writes well, whether that nib writes well. Like, I would just as soon use, you know, a TWSBI EF steel nib as my Pelican gold nib. Because I like how they both write. I mean, there's no – I don't see that there's a huge benefit to having that gold nib necessarily.

== Gold Nibs ==

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Do you have any comments on this, Myke? Do you have any – do you actually have many gold nibs? I know you're –

'''Myke Hurley:''' I have one.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Mont Blanc, right?

'''Myke Hurley:''' Oh, I have my Mont Blanc, but that needs to be repaired. Yeah, right. Do you know what? That could be a good idea for me. I'll tell you what I'll do. When I find someone or if someone is able to recommend somebody good in the UK for nib shaping and basically – well, basically restoration shaping. That's what I kind of need. I'll send that off. Because I've mentioned this many times on the show back in the early days. I have a Mont Blanc, which was bought for me as a present. It was before I really knew a lot about fountain pens, so I never really cleaned it. Well, I never cleaned it. And one day I dropped it and it kind of bent the nib. But it was an excellent nib. I loved it. Absolutely loved that pen. So I would like to have that restored because also it was a gift. It was a gift for my 21st birthday. Right. So I would like to have it repaired or just restored. And I would prefer to have it worked on than to just buy a new Mont Blanc nib because ideally I would like to keep the same nib that I bought.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Right. I could maybe have it because it was a broad, so maybe I could have it made into a medium now or something. Yeah.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Where was I going with that? Oh, and I also have my Pelican, which is a gold nib.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Oh, that's right. You bought an extra nib for that, right?

'''Myke Hurley:''' And that is excellent. I don't know if it's the Pelican or the nib, right? Right. Sorry, I don't know if it's the Pelican nib because it's gold. Right. But it's just excellent. Yeah.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' It's just all around good product to begin with. Yeah. So I'm probably not an authoritative nib. I know. There's not as huge differences, you might think, between gold and steel nibs, in my opinion. You know, a little bit added flex in the gold because it's a softer material.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Maybe marginally smoother, but, I mean, you can get some awfully smooth steel nibs. I don't know that, you know, yeah, I don't know that it makes a massive, massive difference. I mean, there's obviously going to be situations where, you know, one will clearly win out over the other. But I think as a whole, I think you'll be just as happy with steel as a gold nib. So, yeah. But definitely check out this article from Brian Gray. I need to keep that thing hot linked, as many people ask me that, as many times as I've sent that article out. So it's a good article.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Thomas Hall, my enabler extraordinaire, sent a very good question.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' He said, if starting over, which pins would you buy and why? So, like, if you have what you have now and just kind of wipe the slate clean and started from the beginning, which pins would you buy probably sooner than the other ones? You know, which pins have kind of been a phenomenon, I guess, if you will, that you found out later in the game? And for me, it's probably, I really like my Edison pins, where in the beginning I was hesitant to purchase them.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I wasn't sure if they were for me, and I wasn't sure if the value was there because they're not exactly cheap. I'm really happy with the Edison Beaumont and Edison Perlet that I have.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So those I would definitely, definitely get in on earlier than I did the first time around. And both of those are steel nib pins, by the way, which write wonderfully. So, yeah, those, I mean, gosh, I'm really happy with all the pins I have. So I can't necessarily, you know, say, you know, what I would hold off on, what I wouldn't. Because I've been, you know, I think I've been diligent in my purchasing, Myke. And that's one of the big things. I try not to just jump into it and just start going crazy. I try to be diligent. I try to learn something. I've been fortunate enough to be able to try things before I buy, which is a huge deal. So, you know, so yeah, if I had to start over, I'd probably buy an Edison pin earlier than I did. I was pretty hesitant at first. Is there anything for you on that category?

'''Myke Hurley:''' I think that there's a few things that I wouldn't have bought, you know. Sure. Probably the main one for me being the Vanishing Point, which originally I thought was a great idea. But in hindsight, it actually wasn't for me. I would probably go with like the Pelican and a Twisby of some description. I'm not sure what model I would go for. But I would, yeah, I'd probably go for a Twisby too.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, I think that's a good point about the Pelican. They're kind of in the same boat as the Edison where there's a little bit of premium on it because of what it is. So maybe that puts people off at the beginning where they think they can get, you know, buy two pins for the price of one. But that one is really awesome. And that's something, you know, I'd look at. Now on your Vanishing Point question, we have another question from Sebastian Morissette. He says, I would love to love my Pilot Vanishing Point, but it cannot seem to grow on me.

'''Myke Hurley:''' It's just uncomfortable. Yeah. And I wonder if Sebastian finds the same thing. Like, so when I was showing my lady friend my pen collection, she really liked the Vanishing Point. But it reminded me of how I felt about it when I first got it. I loved it. Because in those short sort of bursts, it's excellent. But it's over a long period of time, I find it uncomfortable. You don't have this problem, do you?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I am still all in on the Vanishing Point. It's one of my favorites. Yeah. No problem for me.

'''Myke Hurley:''' So it might just be me, you know?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' No, no, no. I mean, I think it's not a pin for everybody. That's why from the beginning, I always said how much I love that pin. But I was always very cautious on recommending it blindly, right? That's a pin that, you know, people needed to try and see if, you know, even they could write with it with the clip placement and things like that. It's not a pin for everybody for sure.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Could you use it all day, every day?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Oh, yeah. No doubt.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Crazy, man. I don't understand you sometimes.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' No, I love that pin. It suits me perfectly. The retractable mechanism, the grip doesn't bother me at all. I don't even notice it's there. The nib is awesome. Yeah, no. That's an all-timer for me. I always have mine inked up.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yep, love that pin. So, but, you know, again, not every pin is going to fit everyone's needs. So, Thomas asked another question on this same general topic. If your house caught on fire, what pins are you grabbing?

== Favorite Pens ==

'''Brad Dowdy:''' What pin can't you live without? The house is on fire. You can pick two. Go.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Retro... Hang on a second. Hang on a second. Is this assuming that I can't just buy them again?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, like you have... Yeah.

'''Myke Hurley:''' This is assuming that these pins cannot be repurchased, right?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Well, that they mean something to you, you know? What's the most meaningful pins that you're going to grab when you... Oh, right, yeah, I didn't think of it that way. Leave the house. It's like, you know, I... Like, you don't want to be without these pins, even though maybe you can... I don't think either of us have a pin that's not purchasable.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So, it's pretty much kind of like your favorite pins or...

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah, so again...

'''Brad Dowdy:''' But you have to limit it, right? I mean, two pins.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I mean, that's been boring. I'd definitely go to Pelican again. Yeah. And then maybe... Then it would have to be the Rotaring Lava Fountain pen. Oh, that's a good one. Because I can't just buy that again.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, I didn't consider that one. That's a good one. Mine's the Pilot Murex, which actually Thomas gave me. So, that pen's got a lot of meaning to me. Plus, it's not... I mean, I could buy one on eBay, but it's not exactly easy to get like the Rotaring.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' And then probably the Pilot Custom Heritage 912 with the P.O. nib, just because I like it so much. That's one of my favorite writing pens. So... We got a question here from Pensomnia, which I don't have an answer for. But it's very pertinent to some of the pictures I've seen on Twitter here recently. How to properly carry pens and inks in frigid weather. I mean, my answer is don't.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah, my general rule of thumb with these sort of questions is, if you're asking this question, don't do it. Yeah. So, how do I carry a fountain pen on a plane? Don't. Like, you know, how do I carry a fountain pen in a desert? Just don't do it. Find something else. If you have to, if you really have to, remove all ink. Yeah. So, basically, you're taking this from one place to another where you can re-ink it. So, I wouldn't take any pen that was filled with an ink bottle.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Unless there's going to be an ink bottle waiting for me at my destination. Right.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Because that's the, all the images we've been seeing here on Twitter have been pretty much ink bottle explosions from the freezing weather.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' You know, boxes landing on people's doorsteps. And it's just looked like, you know, someone took a shotgun to the box. They've all exploded.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' And, yeah, I don't have a great answer. But my answer is don't. Like you said, if you have to ask, don't.

'''Myke Hurley:''' It just, to me, seems, I don't know. Like, it just seems.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' It's not worth the risk.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah, that's what I'm looking for. Yeah. It feels like you could just carry something that's maybe not your favorite pen, but it's something along the lines of a Fisher Space pen. Yep, don't fight it. Which are built for this sort of thing.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Right. Don't fight it. Yeah. It'll be warm soon enough. And then you can get back to your awesome pens.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah, like, is this one trip or whatever worth destroying one of your favorite pens? Yep. If the answer is yes, then go for it.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Or your shirt or your pants or your luggage. Exactly.

== Ink Preferences ==

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Now for Ink Myke, this is from Ken Landwear. Do you look for anything specific when it comes to ink or refills? Do you have a favorite brand?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I'm exploring this category more this year. Previously, when I first started really getting into fountain pen inks, maybe a year, year and a half ago, I just looked for a good color that I liked and that it wasn't going to destroy my pen. That was my original thoughts. Well, now that I've learned, well, with decent, you know, respectable fountain pen hygiene, there's very few inks that are going to destroy my pen. Like, I was real tentative at first. Like, is this ink okay to put in my pen? Is this ink okay to put in my pen? Now that I've gotten over that and understand that, you know, it's really not as much the ink as much as it is me taking care of the pens and ink, you know, cleaning them and doing the proper fountain pen hygiene. I've really opened up to the inks I like. One thing I do like, to be more specific for Kim's question, is I do like a lubricated ink. I don't like necessarily dry inks that come out very dry, especially when I'm using my extra fine nibs. You know, I need some of that lubrication on the nib to help it glide across the page a little bit more. So I don't like necessarily like dry inks in that aspect. Secondly, I do like a shaded ink. I like to see that color differentiation in the lines. And so as far as favorite brands go, I mean, there's several. I obviously like the Palo de Roshizuku. I like Roar and Klingner. I've become a big fan of a lot of their inks. And Diamine are some of the most well-behaved inks I've used as far as just cleaning and all-around good performance. It's good dry time, good, they clean up good out of the pens, and they look good on the page. So that's kind of my, that's kind of my tips for that. Do you have anything for that, Myke?

'''Myke Hurley:''' Dry time is massively important for me. So I'm not really that willing to just kind of jump in and buy bottles of ink, you know, if I'm not comfortable with the dry time. And also for me, I like vibrant colors. I like fun colors. I don't really like blue and black, like just standard blue and black or blue-black. Like I like a really, like, you know, from the inks that I've spoken about on the show in the past, I like to have quite bright colors.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, and actually I think I'm coming around to that more. There was a time where I would load out five or six pens and it'd all be some variation of blue-black. And that's not a lie. I would have every pen filled with a different blue-black ink.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' To now where I've, if I have five or six pens inked up, they're usually pretty good variants. I might have two blue-blacks, but maybe even just one these days, which is a big change for me. So that's why my ink exploration has gotten, has gotten, the net's been casted wider on a lot of ink. So that's cool. So Anna Elizabeth wants to know if my kids are pen addicts yet. They are. If they see me doing anything with pens, they're like, ooh, can we do pens? That's what they say. Can we do pens today? Can we do pens today? And the answer is usually always yes. And now they see me using fountain pens. So now they want, they say, can we do pens today? I was like, yeah, we can do pens. Can we use your fountain pens? Because I'm like, hmm.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, I think I've got something y'all can use. And they're like, yay. So yeah, they're totally, totally pen addicts. 100% completely pen addicts.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Uncle Larry wants to know if there are any changes to the top five list coming up. And the answer is yes. I realized the other day, number one, I don't have a multi-pen list on there, which I plan on changing. And number two, it just needs, it's been, at worst, I like to do it, you know, every three or four months updated. I don't want to update it every month. That's a little bit much. But it's been October since I've done an update. So I need to go through, you know, probably in the next few weeks and check out and see if there's anything I need to change. There might be a little bit of change on the fountain pen list. And I'm going to add the multi-pen list. And if anyone out there sees anything that I don't have on the top five list page, let me know. And I will see what I can do.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So I will add any lists that I think are relevant and definitely want to hear them. And he also wants to know, are you still using any of the Kickstarter pens on a regular basis? How about you, Myke? What Kickstarter pens are you using on a regular basis?

'''Myke Hurley:''' I use the Agioto still. Do you remember that?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I was going to ask you specifically about that, actually. Yeah. So I definitely remember that. That was the one I was most curious about for you.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I keep it in my desk. Like on my desk. It's in one of my, one of my, one of my sort of, I have it in my groove, actually, from Dudek. I use that quite a lot.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I mean, it kind of doesn't count, but I've been happily using the Karis Customs ink.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah, they're the ones I guess I use the most. I don't have as many Kickstarter pens. But I do use the Agioto frequently.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. So me, it's still the Render K. The orange one, you'll actually see in the, in the photograph that I used for the, the knock idea doc. Man, that sounds cool. The knock idea doc.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I love the design of all the Karis Customs pens, but I still, I mean, I found some refills that are kind of cool, but they're nowhere near what I like to get out of a pen, which is why I'm excited for the ink anyway, because it's my style of pen. Right. Also, because I'll be able to put Retro 51. Because the reason that I love the Agioto so much is because it's a really nice, comfortable body that a Retro 51 refill fits in. So the, what I'm looking forward to the ink is I've got one of the ballpoint ones and I'll be able to put a Retro 51 refill in it.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Oh, cool. That's a good idea. That was why I did it. Oh, nice. That's a very good idea. That was why I got two of them.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. So I, I think the two that I really carry is obviously the Render K that I said, and then I've been carrying the, the tactile turn mover, which I've been really happy with and I've backed and it just funded yesterday. So those, those will be getting made. So I'll have another one coming from that, but those are the, those are the two, the Render K has stuck with me for the longest by far. Um, still my favorite, um, because I'm, I used to high tech C refill and I just, I just love the look. That's just, it's just a really great pen. Um, it's, it's perfect for me. So I really, really enjoy it.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Um, Myke Dudek wants to know what is your favorite hot sauce while riding with pens?

'''Myke Hurley:''' I not a hundred percent sure I understand the question.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. I don't want to answer this incorrectly. So we're going to need some clarification, uh, dude.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I have no idea if that's a literal question or a joke question.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Either way. I like it. This is one I like, and this is one I'm going to circle back on because I didn't have time, but Chris Pantoja beat cat on Twitter. What about the craziest Japanese pen commercials? They are out there. Some of these I've seen are awesome. I'm going to have to put together a list of these. I will go through that. I just didn't have time to put that together. It's going to take some research, research, but there are some amazing commercials. Um, and it's been a long time since I've linked to any of them, um, or talked about any of them on the, on the podcast. Um, but we've had some links in the past and I'll try to put something together.

== Letter Writing ==

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So Eric Govro says it's February. Inco, Rhimo and correspondence in general. So he's asking, are we letter writers, Myke? Are you a letter writer?

'''Myke Hurley:''' I'm about to start writing letters.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Mm-hmm. Now, are you doing it because of the letter writing month? No. Or are you just trying to do, just trying to do something a little bit different?

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah. I want to just try that out a little bit, play around a little bit more with that sort of stuff.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. I'm totally on board with the, uh, Inco, Rhimo. I just haven't had the time to commit to that. So maybe next year I might get into that. It's where you write a letter a day in February and, you know, there's a whole, whole group of people, you know, you can get all kinds of addresses and send out these letters and you'll get letters back and things like that. It's a cool idea. It's good ways to use your, um, pens and stationery, um, for, for letter writing. Um, so I haven't, I've, I've been on the receiving end of some letters. Um, some people wanted to send me some letters and, and Myke some letters. So, um, but, uh, maybe next year I might actually participate. So this was a good, this is a good question. And, and we got, we have a lot more questions. I'm going to, I'll work on some of these for another podcast, but this one I wanted to get to because I think it's important. Since you've gotten into fountain pens, have any of your previous favorite micro gel pens been completely dropped from rotation? So the short answer is no. Um, my favorite micro gel pens are the Pilot Hi-Tech C and the Uniball Sino DX. I always have those with me at all times and I use them frequently. Um, so they don't get dropped at all. Um, that said, I, I obviously use them less. I mean, I only, I only write with one hand. I don't know about you, Myke. Do you write two handed?

'''Myke Hurley:''' Sometimes four.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Four handed? Okay. So I can only use one pen at a time. So yeah, they've gone down the list of usage, but dropped completely. Not at all because I like them too much. They provide something different that a fountain pen can't, um, can't provide. And I get, I get huge enjoyment from writing with these pens. Um, that's what, you know, got me into this pen blogging thing to, to begin with was these micro gel ink pens. And, um, I, they will never not be in my rotation. Do they get used less? Yeah, they do because I've only got so many hours at a day, but they are always with me. Um, those are the two primary ones. Um, far and away my favorite. Um, how about you, Myke? Have you seen like your, you were never a micro gel guy to begin with, but just in general, have you noticed, you know, pens you've used in the past getting put to the wayside if using fountain pens?

'''Myke Hurley:''' If you're playing bingo, I've given you multiple opportunities this week, but I mean, I don't use the retro 51 anymore. Like I have, I used to use that every single day. Like I don't, I don't really use those anymore. Right. Um, I tend to just use fountain pens unless I'm grabbing something in a pinch, you know? So I'll grab something out of like the, out of the groove or whatever and use that. So that might be like, uh, the autographic liner or the secure a big more micron or something like that. I've been thinking recently that maybe I should try some gel pens again. Okay. But I don't know what to go for really. So micro is not, I still don't think I'm going to be a micro gel person.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Sure. No, that's understandable. But I mean, if I, if I went in my backpack right now, I have a retro 51. I have an auto graphic liner. I have a Uniball Sino DX. I have a high tech C. I have a secure pigment micron. Did I say that already?

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah. No, no, I did. Yeah.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So those are, I mean, those are stalwarts. I mean, those are not going anywhere for me. Yeah. They get used less, but I couldn't live without them. I use them for different things and I get complete enjoyment out of writing with, you know, a $2 micron as much as I get with a $200 sailor. So it just, it just depends. So there's a bunch of questions that I didn't get to today. I'm going to save all these off and maybe we'll cover them next week or I'll mix them in or I'll get back to everyone on Twitter because there's some good questions. There's actually some questions I want to expand on and, you know, I'm definitely going to do a, I got some questions about pen shows and we're going to do a full pen show episode as I get closer to going to the Atlanta pen show this year. So maybe in a few weeks we'll do a pen show episode, you know, with my wish list. And there were some questions we got, I got about vintage pens and things like that. So we'll cover all that when I do a pen show episode here in a few weeks. So that will be, that will be good. But everyone else whose questions aren't here, thank y'all so much for sending these and I will definitely answer all of these other questions. Just, we could keep going for another hour probably with all the questions I got, which is what's so amazing about our listeners. But I wanted to wrap it up on one final question, Myke. You ready?

'''Myke Hurley:''' Mm-hmm.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' What pen would you use to sign a birth certificate?

'''Myke Hurley:''' Visionaire.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Absolutely. I mean, that's... That's what it was made for. This is from our friend, informal scribble, Mr. Stuart Haisley. I mean, there's no doubt we would use the Visionaire, Stuart. I can't believe you would even ask that question.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I mean, that's what it's made for. This is the whole purpose. Yeah. How is that even a question? So, all right, Myke. I think that's a wrap.

'''Myke Hurley:''' We've mentioned show notes a few times in this week's episode. If you want to find them, go to 5x5.tv slash penaddict slash 93.

'''Myke Hurley:''' In all honesty, I'll buy something for the occasion.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' That's a good move. And I'll answer that. I'll answer this, honestly, because I've actually had two kids. My wife's had two kids. Yeah, what did you use? I've had to sign birth certificates. Didn't even cross my mind. I was a little preoccupied.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Even you, I still would have... Even in that instance, I still would have expected you to pick something. Like weeks in advance, you know?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I know, I know. Didn't even cross my mind either time. You used like a biro or something. Yeah. I mean, whatever the nurse handed me or whatever. So, yeah. Hopefully she had good taste. Probably not.

'''Myke Hurley:''' If you want to catch us online, there's a couple of ways to do that. You can read Brad's stuff over at penaddict.com. And he's at dowdyism on Twitter. That's D-O-W-D-Y-I-S-M. And I am iMike. I-M-Y-K-E. That's it for this week's episode of The Pen Addict. Thank you so much for listening. Until next time, say goodbye, Brad.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Goodbye, Brad. Bye. Bye. Bye.

[[Category:Podcast Transcripts]]
[[Category:The Pen Addict Podcast Transcript]]

The Pen Addict 89/transcript

2026-06-23T16:02:00Z

PencilBot: fixed spelling

{{Infobox podcast transcript
| name = The Pen Addict
| number = 89
| title = I'm The Best At The Worst
| date = January 15th, 2014
| hosts = [[Brad Dowdy]] 
[[Myke Hurley]]
| guests =
| link = [https://www.relay.fm/penaddict/89 Episode 89]
| audiolink = [https://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/traffic.libsyn.com/thepenaddict/penaddict-089.mp3 Audio Episode 89]
| length = 59
}}

== Pen Addict Podcast ==

'''Myke Hurley:''' Hello and welcome to episode 89 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 the ayatollah of Hiroshizuku, Mr. Brad Dowdy.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I like it. How's it going, Myke? Good, man. Very, very well. How are you? Good, good. I like you. I think that's a good one there because you have serious competition with the main man, Keegan, from One Star Leather because I purchased a wallet from him. And again, I got another little special introduction on my envelope and this time I am the best Disney princess.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Well, you see, where I agree that that's awesome, that's not stationery related.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I know, I know. But the ayatollah of Hiroshizuku, I am totally down with.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I mean, to save follow-up, I am perfectly aware that that is not meant to be alliteration, it is merely assonance. I know the ayatollah is not spelt with an I.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yes, yes. I just want to save myself. It was well done. And we have another intro. It's become a thing when we get further down the list here. But we got a lot of follow-up items. So I say we get right into it today, man.

'''Myke Hurley:''' If you heard a bang, that was my iPad falling from my desk to some boxes below. Wow. Did it survive? Everything's okay. Everyone's okay.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Okay, good.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Everyone is well. Good. All right. And I missed what you said, because I turned around just in time and saw it crash to the ground.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' No, I was saying we got lots of good stuff to talk about today, so we should probably get into it. Because, yeah, I want to hear about this TWSBI customer service that you have received since our last episode.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah, so last week I mentioned that I'd contacted TWSBI to ask them for a new cap for my ROC. And it has arrived, Brad.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I'm stunned.

'''Myke Hurley:''' It arrived like three days ago.

'''Myke Hurley:''' And it's an ROC cap. They didn't send me like a blue or a red cap. It's a TWSBI 540 ROC placement cap.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, it's got the band at the bottom of the cap. It's got the little special ROC designation, right?

== TWSBI Cap ==

'''Myke Hurley:''' Mm-hmm. And it has the sun logo on the top.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Wow. Where did it ship from? I'm curious. From? California or from Taiwan?

'''Myke Hurley:''' It came from Asia. I feel really bad because I can't remember where.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' No, that's fine. I was just more of a curiosity for my part.

'''Myke Hurley:''' It's from wherever TWSBI are based. Because I don't want to say because I feel like if I say like China and I'm wrong, then I feel like I'm just being journalistic or whatever.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' No, no, no. I just think one of the – I didn't mean to put you on the spot, but I know one of the guys, Speedy from TWSBI, works out of California a lot. But I think the main shop is in China or Taiwan. I don't even know exactly sure. So I was curious if it shipped from like California area or from the Asia area. But the Asia area. I'm pretty impressed they still have some of these caps.

'''Myke Hurley:''' That's what I don't understand. I guess they just have replacement parts. I guess they just have replacement parts. I just guess that they're there for these sort of scenarios.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' That's a smart thing, I guess, yeah. I mean to have that back stock for a certain amount of time until it's gone way past when they're being sold. I mean these haven't been sold for a couple of – two or three years now, I'm guessing. So is it like good as new? It's good as new. That's so cool. So they – and that was fast too. I mean like ridiculously fast.

'''Myke Hurley:''' It was like three or four days or something silly like that.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Good on them.

'''Myke Hurley:''' So congratulations. I mean if you needed yet another reason to purchase TWSBI products, their customer service is now that reason.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. Well, we're going to give you even more reasons right now.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah, what – you need to tell me about this because I – as is usual with the TWSBI Facebook page, I don't really understand what's happening.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I think that's a fair sentiment and I will agree with you on that. On the TWSBI Facebook page, I don't know what's happening most of the time either because they post a lot of prototype stuff. They say, hey, we're working on this. We might do it. We might not. So I don't know how many things are real, how many things are not, how many things are going to go in production. And if they do go in production, it might be a year from when they post a picture on there. But they've posted one of the coolest things I've seen from them in a long time. And I'm a huge TWSBI fan, so I think everything is pretty cool. But this kind of takes the cake. It's the 580, you know, the 580, Diamond 580 with aluminum piston and section, colored aluminum piston and section parts. And it looks amazing. It's the clear demonstrator barrel with, and the aluminum is colored in blue, green, orange, purple, and red. And I think it looks outstanding.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I mean, I, it's like I want one of these yesterday and they may not, they may not even manufacture it, right? It's really hard to tell.

'''Myke Hurley:''' You don't know any more then?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I don't know any more. I mean, and they're not, I mean, and they'll, they'll come out and say, I don't know. I don't know what we're going to do. Yeah. Cause actually the, the capture on the photo is we've been testing the aluminum piston mechanism for years. I don't even remember when we started. Now it's final done. The turning mechanism is very smooth. Most of all, I'm happy with the result of the pin in original aluminum color. So what does that mean?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Are you going to make it or not? I don't know. But they've shown off things like, you know, way back. I don't even, I couldn't even find the dates if I wanted to probably, but the rose gold 580 that they just launched what a month or two ago. I mean, that's been on their Facebook page for ages. The classics been on their Facebook page for ages. So they just kind of use their Facebook page as this testing bed to get feedback on what the prototypes look like, I think. And of course, every time they do that, everyone just like rages for them because they all look so good and everyone wants them. I mean, there's this, there's this white Delrin looking pin further down the page back from November that I've never even seen before. Never even heard before. And it's got this cool filling mechanism and this cool translucency in it. So I don't know what to make of it, but I wanted to post it out there because it's awesome looking. And you know what I feel about the 580 in general. As a matter of fact, I was using it last night. And every time I use it, I always very much enjoy it, especially last night when I shot ink across the meeting table in a meeting I was at my day job or night job. As you will, my 580 made a mess on the table. I don't know how. I've still yet to figure that one out.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' But that was fun. And I don't, I don't think anyone, anyone caught me last night, but I think I accidentally flicked the pin somehow and I shot ink about two feet across the table. I had to mop it up when I was done. Anyway, I digress. But I will, I want this aluminum piston, TWSBI.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah, I want, I want them bad. Like I saw them and I was like, oh yeah.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yes. Make it happen, TWSBI. Make it happen. So that's a, that's a temptation right there. So I'd be curious to see because that will probably be a little bit more than, I'm guessing probably be a little bit more than the standard 580. But I bet it's still probably like, I don't know, they have the, they do a good job of keeping it all in the reasonable price range. It seems like maybe like a 70, $75 pin, something like that. Maybe. Who knows? I'm just pure speculation on my part, but probably a little more than the regular 580, just for the parts and the added cost of the parts. But man, I gotta get that. Yeah. So what else you got?

'''Myke Hurley:''' Where else are we in that document?

== Ogami Notebooks ==

'''Brad Dowdy:''' What's Ogami notebooks. I know a little bit about this, but you've been kind of driving this one here.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yes. So we had, so yeah, what do you know about these things?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' It's stone paper, right? That's all I remember.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yes. So we had a listener contact us, Alexander Putz, got in contact to say that he'd found these really interesting notebooks and that he wanted to send them to us. So basically what we've got is, so I have them here, Brad, and I'm putting yours in the post. Because I told him to send them both to me and then I would send yours on to you.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Right. That's what he told me he was going to do. Because he's in Europe somewhere, right? Yeah.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Because I said, you know, let's save you some money rather than, you know, his books. Right. So I'll read from the back. Ogami uses Repap, I don't really know what that means, in all the product lines. Oh, here we go. Repap is made up of 80% calcium carbonate and a small percentage, 20% from non-toxin resins. The calcium carbonate present in Repap comes from limestone recovered from caves and used in the creating Repap, a resistant and durable as well as waterproof paper. A paper that is also soft, smooth and bright white. One of the strangest notebook products I've ever received. So we have, I have a couple of different sizes and I've got the smaller size, the pocket size. Um, like this is like a field note size one. Okay.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Okay. So they don't feel like stone. I would hope not. But they feel like stone.

'''Myke Hurley:''' So it feels like paper, but you know how like that feeling you get when you rub stones together? Mm-hmm. And, oh, actually no. Hmm. You've been to the beach, right? Have you ever been to a pebble beach? No. So we get these a lot in the UK. And there's a really interesting thing. When stones get wet, um, they, they, they give off this like strange feeling like a, like there's a film covering the stone. Mm-hmm. And this obviously is the breakdown of sand and stuff. Right. It kind of feels like that a little bit. Like the paper is kind of, it's smooth, but there's a definite texture that you can't put your finger on. It's like a rough texture. Um, and when you sort of using the pages, they rub together in a strange way. Like there's an awful lot of resistance between the pages. Okay. Huh. And what you're left with is a paper that feels like it's glossy, but isn't shiny.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Okay. Which is really strange. So it has the feeling of like magazine paper, but it doesn't shine. Okay.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Interesting. Yeah. Because the, the thing that threw me off the most about it was not the stone in the makeup of the paper, but that it's waterproof on top of that.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah. I haven't tested the waterproofness of it.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' That just, that seems like, I don't know. Interesting. There's a lot, a lot going on there because I've had a, a guest review of stone paper on the pen addict before. And, um, I've never actually tried it myself, but you know, stone paper has been around for a few years now is when I started seeing it. Um, and there's some interesting, the guy that did the review on my blog is for the Oxford stone paper notebook. Um, I don't know if it talks about, yeah, it talks about it being strong, durable, and waterproof. That's interesting. That's interesting. And he also lifted on fire. It's kind of a fireproof. Why don't you try that real quick?

'''Myke Hurley:''' Nope.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' No. Okay.

'''Myke Hurley:''' This reminds me of the expedition edition.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. And it's tear proof as well. So that's interesting. So how does it handle? Yeah. How does it feel when you write on it?

'''Myke Hurley:''' So it doesn't tear like I'm trying to tear it right now. And so, well, it does if you get it right, you know, but it's that it doesn't rip like you have to like really sort of go for it to tear it. Right. Um, it's really interesting. Interesting. Like, interesting to the point where I'm like, hmm. Okay. Hmm. So basically I wrote down my notes whilst writing on the paper itself. So I will write, I will read to you what I was writing down. Slow drying time. Not incredibly slow, but slow, as you'd expect. It leaves an interesting line on the page. Um, and what I meant by that is like the way that pens feel on this paper is interesting. And the way that the ink dries is unlike other pens. So when I was writing with fountain pens, I was writing with a Pelican, my Pelican. And the way that it dries, it doesn't look like the way it dries in other paper. It's like, it's kind of like drawn on it and it just stays there. It doesn't get absorbed.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Hmm. Yeah. I can see that, I guess, happening because that's how the expedition paper was, right? It would never.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah. It's super. No, no, no. I don't mean it's not drying. When it dries, it's like, it's like, it doesn't look like any ink has been absorbed. It looks like it's just dried in place. Gotcha. But it's dry.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Oh yeah. That's weird.

'''Myke Hurley:''' You know, obviously it's not, you know, it's absorbed by the paper in as such that, you know, there's not ink or words all over the place. But when it dries, there's no feathering, nothing. You just write on it and it dries. Hmm. So it's like kind of writing with a permanent marker on plastic.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I gotcha. It doesn't get absorbed. It just will stay there. The ink drying is good, all things considered. Like for time, to be honest. It doesn't dry instantly, but it dries pretty quickly. But the way it looks is incredible. Fountain pens, it feels like you're writing on glass. It's amazing. So smooth. And I've never had the Retro 51 perform so well. Really? It's like a different pen. That's crazy. The Autographic liner really doesn't work.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, I could kind of see that.

'''Myke Hurley:''' To the point where I wrote on this yesterday, still smudges.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Oh my goodness.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' But the fountain pens don't.

'''Myke Hurley:''' You have to really go at it. I mean, after a certain amount of time. You have to really go at it. So I can go to my ink yesterday and really rub it and it will smudge, the fountain pen ink. But the Autographic liner, if I just touch it, the ink comes off. It's a mess. Interesting. So that's, you know, that's not ideal. But just don't write under the Autographic liner. Like if I really sort of rub on this, the ink will smudge. But it kind of will do that with paper as well, like for fountain pen ink. If you really, you know, it's going to do something weird anyway.

== Notebooks ==

'''Myke Hurley:''' Basically, I recommend this. I think this is a really cool, different and interesting product. And the paper is good. It's good quality. They're nicely made notebooks. They've got a nice little character to them. There's a bunch of different sizes. I'm definitely going to use it more. I think it would be a really interesting sort of just ink testing notebook. Because it will produce such peculiar results.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, I like that there's a pocket size one too. So that's pretty neat. So I look forward to testing it out.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I'm going to get them in the post to you today. Yeah, no hurry. So thank you, Alexander.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, thanks, Alexander.

'''Myke Hurley:''' So that's sitting in my groove from Mr. Dudak.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Awesome. So how was your penmanship in there? Because we got a nice email from a listener talking about penmanship. So how's your penmanship working these days? Same. Same? Yeah, I know, right? Same as it always was. Yeah, like it changes a lot. So we got an email from Josh. And the subject is Myke's left-handed problem. So this is a really interesting email. They caught me off guard. I didn't know what to think about this.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I don't. I'm just going to. I can't actually know. You say read it first. Yeah. Yeah.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I'm not going to read the whole thing, but I'm going to read the nuts and bolts here. And I'm especially going to read the beginning. It says, to the man who takes his power from the mighty mythology of the heavens, Brad Orr, the pen god. How did I do? Very good, actually. It says, I've been listening to your podcast with great enthusiasm during the past few months. I can't believe how ignorant I was to the wide world of writing utensils outside of the big ballpoints, which I used to so thoughtlessly buy and lose in bulk. I was particularly interested in your evolution into fountain pens. Like Myke, I'm a lefty. I struggle to write with my now beloved pilot Prera and my divergent left-handed oddness. But I've recently overcome this problem. I write with my right hand.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So let's stop right there. What were your thoughts when you read that? When I got there, I was like, I can't wait to read the rest of this email because this is insane.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I have a fundamental problem with it.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Like, I just... It's just unnatural. Whoa. You know... Like a nature fundamental problem with it? Well, it's very 1840s. Like you're going against the laws of nature kind of thing?

'''Myke Hurley:''' It just feels like a... Right. You know, it's just like kids being forced to write with their right hand. You know, it's just... It feels very... Sure. Sure. I don't like it.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So let me read this next little bit and then we'll talk about it some more. It says... Yeah. It says, The solution of mine is not for the faint of heart, but nor is it as difficult as you may assume. Writing with my right hand is merely taking consistent and dedicated practice. I write just one page each day. In the beginning, I was not able to complete the full page in my allotted practice time, but I've been able to increase my writing speed significantly in the past four months. I'm down to about 20 minutes per page now and my handwriting, while still somewhat slow, is much better than I can scrawl with my left hand. So it's interesting on a lot of accounts, right? So your issue, and I'm totally with you on that as a... Yeah, because I... You know, it used to be kind of a stigma, right? To write with your left hand so people would force people to change. But, I mean, he's obviously doing this on his own and it seems to be working for him. So, I don't know, is this something you'd even consider or it's just not... There's no reason to ever even go there.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I'm proud of being left-handed.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Like, I don't want to change it. I don't feel like I need to be fixed. And I don't feel like maybe that this, you know, this is what is being... That Josh is saying this of me. Or of himself, even. No, no. But I don't feel like the way to fix my penmanship is to force myself to be right-handed.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So, I think the most important thing he said here, honestly, and when I get questions about penmanship, this is what I say regardless of what hand you are.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' It takes consistent and dedicated practice to change your penmanship.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So, it's very possible he could have done this with his left hand. I don't know if he tried. Maybe he did. But... And I wrote some notes actually last night just to kind of thinking about a new blog post just about penmanship. Because people ask me how I get my penmanship. And it's strictly a practice thing and an evolution of a lot of repetitive action. I mean, there's no simple way to make it better. And my handwriting, and I've said this several times, my handwriting right now is infinitely worse than it was 10 or 15 years ago. Because I don't practice anymore. It's all about speed now. And that leads to a little bit of, you know, poor handwriting. So, I'm working on some notes to write up a post just about handwriting in general and how to learn to write better. Not that I have all the answers, but just kind of how I evolved into the handwriting that I have now. How, when it was good, why I think it's bad now, and how you can change things. But it's legitimately, it just comes down to, Josh said it best, consistent and dedicated practice. I mean, 20 minutes, 20 minutes a page.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' You know, if you can spend that every day for the past, like he said, the past four months. He's been doing that. I promise you, no matter what hand you use, your handwriting is going to be better. It's just the way it goes, right?

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah. But, do you know what? I'm not interested in changing my penmanship.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I like the way I write. I do too. And trust me, it is not bad. We just like to give you a hard time. It just kind of became a thing, and I'm never going to let it go.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Well, good. Good for you, Myke. Own it, baby.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Thanks, Papa.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I'm not going to go tie your left hand behind your back and make you walk around town all day just using your right hand.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' It's very Shakespearean.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' All right.

== Pentel Pens ==

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I got another email just about a new product that Pentel is coming out with several years ago. And I used to get emails on this from time to time. They had a mechanical pencil that was 0.2 millimeters. And that's, like, ridiculous for a pencil lead.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Humans.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, I've used as much as I like fine tip pens, and I've used 0.3 millimeter mechanical pencil leads. 0.3 millimeter is too fine.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Sorry.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Sorry. I translated the page.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' It's great, isn't it?

'''Myke Hurley:''' Can I read this to you?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I was actually going to put something in the show notes about the translation, but yeah, I didn't. I'm glad you're enjoying it. But we have this link to the show notes, and I just wanted to mention this. It's called the Pentel Orens, I believe is how you pronounce it, O-R-E-N-Z. Pentel is the only one that I knew of that used to have a 0.2 millimeter lead mechanical pencil, and I never got one. Jet pens stopped carrying them. You could never find it. I could never find one. I just wanted one to see what it's like. 0.3 is too fine for me. Obviously, 0.2 would be as well, but just to have something that fine would be fun to play around with. And they stopped making them several years ago, despite the fact that they still manufacture 0.2 millimeter lead. The pencils aren't easy to find, and now they're coming out with a new 0.2 millimeter pencil. So for anyone who's interested in that, and I know a few people are based on some of the emails I've gotten in the past, I don't know when or where you'll be able to get these, but it looks like they're going to make it a more, it's not completely a, it's not a totally drafting engineering style pencil. It looks like more of a mainstream design. So I'm guessing we might see these at places like JetPens and other retailers and things like that in the coming months or years, depending on how long it takes people to get on board. But it's a new product for 2014, and I thought it was a cool link. You can get lost in some of these Japanese pen pages, huh?

'''Myke Hurley:''' 2014 mechanical pencil that is not broken core marvelously. Even ultrafine 0.2 Urenzo will be released from the sun. That was the part that I saw. It is the extra lead sharp microfiber that can be used. So Urenzo. Oh, man. It just doesn't. It just doesn't. You cannot do direct translation of languages that use a different syntax. It's just not.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. But that release from the sun part was killing me last night when I saw this.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I don't even know what that could have come from. Why did it?

'''Myke Hurley:''' Very quick. I want to give one last piece of follow-up.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, I'm going to let you take this one.

== Ink Nibs ==

'''Myke Hurley:''' So this is from Karis Customs. They did a survey of the backers of the ink project as to whether they were going to do medium or fine nib. They originally offered a medium nib, and lots of people wanted them to do a fine nib. Now, they were only going to make one nib size for the ink. They wanted to not have to complicate things any further. So basically, they put out this survey, and they put out an update, which I'll put in the show notes. Show notes are at 5x5.tv slash penaddict slash 89. And basically, from the survey, they had people answering fine nib outnumbered those answering medium nib as the nib they wanted 4 to 1. So they're going now with a fine nib for the ink. They've changed the original specifications of the pen, and it's going to be a fine nib now. Now, as they've mentioned, some people now no longer want to have the pen, so they can, I guess, cancel. But I just wanted to throw my hat into the ring on this. It's a bit strange, obviously, to change something halfway through the campaign. 68 hours to go, by the way, nearly at $90,000.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I guess for anybody that's listening to the show and is a bit unsure of this, over the weekend, I was playing around with my Retro 51 Tornado fountain pen, which has the same nib. And I've mentioned that I'd used the nib before. That's the pen that has it. It's a Schmidt medium nib. For me now, that nib is not usable. It's too wet.

'''Myke Hurley:''' It gives far too much ink on the medium for me. So I personally am happy with the fine. I'm going to assume that the fine nib will be closer to a more standard German medium than this. Brad, do you have an ink?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I do. I do.

'''Myke Hurley:''' And that's the medium nib. And what do you think? Do you think that, I mean, I'm putting you on the spot, but do you think that they've maybe made the right decision going with a fine nib?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I do. And, I mean, but, you know, it's personal preference. But for me, obviously, I would prefer the fine nib over the medium nib.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' The medium nib was pretty wet and pretty wide line, so I'd be anxious to see what the fine does. I didn't realize it when I answered the survey, and maybe that's my ignorance and my just rushing through it real quick. I didn't realize that they were going to change what it shipped with based on the results. And only go with the one nib. You know, I thought there might be, let's see how many people want fine and how many want medium, and we'll do both. I didn't know one was going to be cut off, you know, kind of based on the results of the survey. So it was an interesting decision.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yep.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' You know, the justification is that, you know, if we ordered all these nib sizes and let everyone pick, it would delay our shipping and manufacturing time. Because we'd have to treat every order as a custom order instead of making, you know, one set of pins using the same nib for every pin that we make. We'd have to spend extra time sorting out, okay, does Myke want this? Does Brad want this? Does Bob want this? Does Jane want this? And that takes extra time. And that's what we're going through with Nock. And we, I mean, it's a different, completely different set of parameters on there. And we're, that's just exactly how we needed to set ours up. But on Dan and Kara's Customs case, I can see why they would want to do it that way. And they're going to offer the other nibs available for sale after Kickstarter. So, that's good if people want to swap it out. And, you know, these days, I can understand why some people would have a problem with it. There's no doubt. But these days, now that I feel like I've gotten a pretty good grasp on fountain pens, I'm not so worried about nibs as much because I know I can switch them. And I know I can do things that, you know, maybe not everyone who's buying their first fountain pen understands that they can do. But, you know, people, the argument would be, well, I shouldn't have to do anything. And I can see that argument too. So, anyway.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So, there you go.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I just wanted to throw my hat into the ring because people know that I'm a medium aficionado. And the medium that I have is closer to a bold, really, in some of the stuff that I've used. So, I think people, if you've backed the project and you're unsure, I would say go for it still. And I'm sure that, you know, it'll be simple enough to get a replacement nib for a reasonable cost. But I think people will be happy with it.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. And these nibs aren't going to cost very much, the replacement nibs, I'm guessing. No.

'''Myke Hurley:''' So, you can find them, you know. Righty-ho then, Shell. We take a quick break. And I have rearranged the order of the next batch of topics because I have something that I want to talk about which might take a little bit of time. And just in case it takes too long.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' That's good because, yeah, these other topics can be held until next week if we run out of time or such.

'''Myke Hurley:''' So, yeah, totally fine. Because I really want to get the ball rolling on this thing today. Okay. It's part of my New Year's resolution. I like it. So, this episode is brought to you, of course, by the fine folks over at Squarespace. They are the all-in-one platform that makes it fast and easy to create your own website. For a free trial and 10% off, go to squarespace.com and use the code, the offer code, Tallyho1. Squarespace is constantly updating their platform with new features, designs, and more support. They have fantastic-looking templates for you to get started with and tons of style options for you to adjust so you can really create your own space online. Squarespace takes care of hosting, SEO, and even makes sure that your site automatically looks fantastic on any device. It's incredibly easy to use, but if you need any help, over 70 Squarespace employees are on their customer care team, which are based in New York City. Squarespace truly cares about design, and it really shows throughout their whole site, which are always updating with fun at new branding. That has won numerous design awards, as well as just their templates and everything else that they do winning awards, because they are amazing. They have two brand new iOS apps for Squarespace customers. Squarespace Blog, which lets you easily draft, post, schedule, and review posts to manage and monitor your comments to your blog. And also, Squarespace Blog is fully integrated with Layout Engine, allowing you to easily format text, markdown, and tap and drag images within your post. And they also have Squarespace metrics, which allows you to monitor website analytics, like KPIs and page views, unique visitors, and it gives you projections and charts for your websites. These are all at your fingertips. These are just some of the amazing features that Squarespace have to offer. I've been using them for a long time, as has Brad. I haven't got enough good things to say about Squarespace. Big fan. They've been around for 10 years now. These guys really know what they're doing. I want you to go and try them out for yourself, because I know that you'll be hooked when you do. Go over to squarespace.com, sign up for a free trial. There's no credit card required to do this, and if you decide to purchase it, plan to start at just $8 a month and include a free domain name if you sign up for a year. And make sure that you get 10% off and support the show by using the offer code TALLYHO1. That's T-A-L-L-Y-H-O-1. Thank you so much to Squarespace for supporting 5x5 and The Pen Addict.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Two quick things on that. Please.

== Layout Engine 2 ==

'''Brad Dowdy:''' One, they introduced Layout Engine 2, what, about two weeks ago now? Actually... Something like that.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I think it rolled out slowly, but it kind of... So maybe not everyone has it. Yeah, they have it now. Everybody has it now as of last week.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Okay, so I've had it for a couple weeks, and it's really nice. They've done a good job. I was a little bit confused at first on how to use it, because it was funny. They rolled it out like I got mine before they even launched the blog post on their site.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah, see, I didn't have it until the blog post went live.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yes, I had it like a week before that. So I was a little bit confused. I couldn't figure out exactly how to do stuff. In the end, I think it works better for me than how it was set up before. You can manipulate things a little bit better. So that's worked out well. And secondly, the iOS app, oh, man, it totally works. The previous app in Squarespace knew this, and they would have no problem admitting that it was literally garbage. It was unusable. It just flat out did not work. This new app, I'm actually able to edit and mark down links, which I wasn't before, and save them on the fly on my phone. Like if someone says, hey, I've got a typo, or hey, my links, I had some bad formatting, some self-inflicted bad formatting and some links like a week ago. And I was able to fix them on my phone in about a minute. And before on the app, I would never have been able to get that working without a huge amount of frustration. And I was actually nervous going in. I was like, all right, I'm going to test this thing out and see if it works. And it was kind of like an aha moment. It just worked, and it was awesome. So hallelujah to those iOS apps actually being able to work now.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah, when they upgraded to their version 6, the apps had some problems. Yep. But they pushed some updates out, which fixed a bunch of stuff, but they decided they needed to go back to basics of it again, which they've done. Yep.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' And it just works now, and it's actually a useful tool instead of exercise in frustration.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Also, it's also more in that it's like a useful tool as opposed to just the only option you have when on the go. Yeah. So instead of the iPhone app being just like, oh, this is all I can do, it's now like actually this is just generally good to use.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, no, I could actually write a full blog post in there if I was comfortable doing so without hesitation, where before you had no shot of accomplishing something like that. And now it's really great.

'''Myke Hurley:''' So one of my resolutions, my main pen resolution of the year is to help someone in my life find the perfect pen for them. And I have somebody in mind that I'm trying to get this through with. So over the weekend, I took a selection of pens, a selection of fountain pens for this person to try out. And I took notes. Now, what I'm going to do is I'm just going to run through, Brad, the pens that I was able to get, that we were able to try out together. And then run through some sort of overall comments. Okay. Because I need help. Okay. To find this pen. So I need the pen addict listeners to be as awesome as they are and help me on this treasure hunt. Maybe you will just be able to give me the answer. We'll see. So the pens that we tried out were a Kaweco Sport Mini. Sorry, Medium, I meant to say. A Kaweco Sport Medium Nib. A Vanishing Point Medium Nib. The Parker Vacumatic. In whatever size nib that is. Nobody knows. An Edison Perlette. The TWSBI 540 ROC, which is a fine nib. The TWSBI 540 in a medium nib. The TWSBI Mini Stub Nib. The Platinum. Because I just figured why not.

'''Myke Hurley:''' The Pilot Metropolitan. I'm going to put links to all these in the show notes, by the way. In case anybody's new to these. Pilot Metropolitan only comes in a medium nib. The TWSBI 1010. The TWSBI 1010. The TWSBI 1010. Which is why I was using it. A Pilot Pereira in medium nib. An AG Spalding pen in medium nib. The Lamy AL Sport in medium nib. That's the list of pens.

== TWSBI Mini ==

'''Myke Hurley:''' Okay. So, basically, the favourites out of this were, for a nib, the TWSBI Mini. Because of the stub. Which, okay, yeah, that had the stub nib. Because it's interesting. That's what I was told. But the overall favourite pen, to which I have now given this person, they now have this pen, because I don't use it, was the Pilot Metropolitan. Now, when I go through my summary of what they're looking for, it will maybe help explain that a bit. A sleek, simple design. Not clear plastic. Can be plastic, but not clear plastic. Doesn't want to... It's not intended to look like plastic. Mm-hmm.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Medium nib. Stub preferred.

'''Myke Hurley:''' From all the nib sizes that we've got to try out, it was clearly going to be either a medium or the stub, because it was interesting. Must be light. Smooth to write. She's very perceptive of how a line is drawn. Any of my pens that I consider to be slightly rough, considering my stringent... The way that we are as pen addicts, she picked that up 100%. She's like, don't like it. So, for example, the Prera, she couldn't stand it. She could not stand it. She hated it. Also, didn't like the design of the Prera, but loved the cap thing, actually, because it's so amazing.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Must have good ink flow, and must be full size, not mini. Otherwise, the Twisby mini would have been what she would have wanted, because even though it's clear plastic, she loves the design of it, but doesn't like that it's mini. It's a mini pen.

'''Myke Hurley:''' So that's it. I mean, overall, she actually doesn't... The obvious one would have been a Twisby, right? But she doesn't like... 580. Yeah, but she doesn't like the overall style of the Twisby.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Mm-hmm.

'''Myke Hurley:''' So that would have been the easy one, right? Because I could have got a stub nib, no problem, job done. Right. But the overall design of the larger Twisby's, she doesn't like, which is interesting. But there are some differences between the minis and the full size and the way that they look.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I mean, it's an option, but it's kind of... It doesn't fit the... Because I don't think that Twisby's are really sleek or simple. They're quite big and bulky.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Right, they are. Yeah. Actually, I've had someone emailing me in the past couple weeks. You know, they definitely... They kind of went through a list like this. You know, I need this, I need this. And one of the high... You know, they were, one, concerned about price. And then, two, you know, they said they had bigger hands, so they needed a larger pen. So I pointed out the 580. And they're like, oh, my gosh, that's exactly what I need. Because it's a little bit larger pen compared to... You put that side by side to the Pereira, and you realize how small the Pereira actually is.

'''Myke Hurley:''' So, you know, it's clear to me the type of thing that she's looking for. I mean, I feel like I can see that, you know? Mm-hmm.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Mm-hmm.

'''Myke Hurley:''' And she's in love with the Metropolitan, which is funny to me, because it proves what we were talking about many, many moons ago, about the fact that it was such a fantastic pen. But I just didn't really... I just wasn't blown away by it. But I guess for somebody who's not as fanatical and obsessed as we are, it just didn't have all the other things that I like. It wasn't interesting enough to me, that sort of stuff. I had it in gold, which I wasn't happy with. But it was, you know, as I said, I wasn't surprised by it. It performed perfectly well.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I remember saying that at the time.

'''Myke Hurley:''' So this is where we are. I mean, kind of the Metropolitan would be... We'll be fine and we'll do the job. But I really want to find something different for her.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' What did she think about the Perlet? Because that's got the most different... Well, besides the Vanishing Point, that's got one of the most unique barrel... Yeah, so... ...feels, I guess, than most of everything else on this list.

== Edison Perlet ==

'''Myke Hurley:''' Oh, do you know what she picked up? Which is amazing, I thought, because it's something that I noticed but never really paid attention to. The Edison Perlet sounds interesting when you write.

'''Myke Hurley:''' And it's true. I never... And I could hear it, but I never really noticed it. The nib on the paper... Yeah, I know exactly what you're talking about. ...has a really amazing sound. She thought it was weighted really well and liked it a lot and liked the barrel construction, but did not like the pattern.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Sure. That's... Because it's... I mean, it's a smaller pen. I mean, it's the... It's not necessarily a mini pen, but it's definitely not what I would consider a full-size pen.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' But that barrel style and material, I think, is really nice. And there's bigger options, like in those Edisons. They're not exactly cheap, obviously. But something like an Edison Beaumont might be something to consider because it comes in the solid materials. It's full-sized. It's lightweight. You can get a stub nib.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' That's one of the first things, depending on her feeling of the acrylic barrel of the Perlet, that, you know, the Beaumonts come in similarly nice materials. And for a full-size pen, it's awfully light, but it's extremely comfortable to write with. And you have that nib variety. Now, out of that list, it's probably the most expensive pen on that list.

'''Myke Hurley:''' So my caveat is I don't want it to be too expensive because I'm going to buy this pen. And if she doesn't like it, I'm kind of screwed. Because then I, you know, I haven't got a price limit. I guess under $100, I think, is probably where I want to go with this. I don't want to go much higher than that, or really any higher than that. If it's more than $50, it makes it, you know.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Right. Okay. So, no, that's a good thing to know. I mean, if it's the right pen.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I mean, the other thing is if I don't have one of them and it's a nice pen, then, hey, I've got another pen for my collection. Right. Right. But I would prefer for it not to cost too much more. Yeah.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' No, no, that's fair.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Another one I'm thinking of is, and I don't have one of these, and I keep going back and forth on whether I like it or not. I have a hard time getting past the gold nib, just because I prefer the silver or rhodium-plated nibs, is the TWSBI micarta. That's a pen that's always fascinated me. It's a different material.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I don't know if that would be her style, but it's under $100. It's full-sized and very lightweight because of the materials it's made with, and it comes in a range of nib sizes. I think it's like $80 or $90.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah, I don't think she's going to like that because it's kind of like snake skinny looking. Yeah. It's really weird.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Actually, the listeners can totally correct me on this, and I don't want to give out misinformation, but I think micarta is like some type of cotton filament type of pen, the way it's made or wrapped. I could be wrong, and I'm not looking at it. I wasn't prepared to do the research on that. So that makes it a lot more lightweight pen, Myke, than like a solid plastic pen. But it's totally full size. I mean, it's full barrel width, full length, everything. And it's cool looking. I've held one, and I would buy one if it didn't have the gold nib. So maybe that's something I've got to look at, find another replacement for. But that's always been kind of in the back of my mind is a pen that I would like and would want to try.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' What else? What else?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, this is a good exercise, actually. Because this is what my email inbox is like. Yeah, I know. So it's good. No, it's fun. It's fun to try to, you know, people give you a list of, you know, this is exactly what I'm looking for when people are looking for recommendations. You know, she's obviously, she's very precise in what she wants, and that's good. Like I wrote down, I was writing all this down, as you're saying, you know, we want a pen that's sleek and simple, non-demonstrator, with a medium or greater or a stub nib. It's lightweight. lightweight. It's smooth with a good flow. It's full-sized, and it's under $100. Yeah, that is a great decent list.

'''Myke Hurley:''' And I guess the real benefit that she's had that other people don't get is somebody to sit down with her with a whole selection of different types of pen and be like, right, try this now, try this now. And then I can make sense in our speak of the things that she's going through when she's trying them out, you know. And I can ask her questions that will give me those answers, like, how do you feel of the weight of this pen, you know, because then they can tell me a little bit about the types of materials that she wants to use.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I mean, she seems, as I said, she's very happy with the Metropolitan, which led me down the pilot route. But I kind of now want to find her a stub nib.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. I mean, you can get – it's not hard – excuse me. It's hard to find, but you can get pilot – the Prera comes with a calligraphy nib that you can get.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I think all those are clear-barreled, the ones that come with the nib, but you can buy a nib and swap it out into a – you know, if she likes the Prera barrel.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah, she doesn't like it.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, too small.

'''Myke Hurley:''' She just doesn't like the way it looks, which I was surprised about. She just didn't like it.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. So we'll put some more thinking into this, and we'll get some feedback from the listeners, too. And I'll put some more thought into it. I'm thinking Twisby micarta right now, but, you know, being put on the spot, I might be thinking of not being – I might be overlooking something that's right in front of my face. But I'm trying to think. Like, the $50, let's say like $60 to $100 range in pens has always been a challenging range, I've felt. There's very few things that just nail it that are worth it in that price range. It's like you can get a better value in the $50 to $60 range or below, and then you've got to go to like $125 to $150 to kind of see a real difference there. I've always felt that that range in the middle is a little bit more challenging. Sure. For me.

'''Myke Hurley:''' One thing that I am willing to do, like, for example, you mentioned like the Prera has like a calligraphy nib. If we can find a pen body that matches and a nib that I need to get from another pen, I'm willing to Frankenstein this thing. Sure. You know, and get together the right thing.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Mm-hmm. You know? So I think I've got enough to work off of, so I'll see if I can come up with something else. And I think we can figure this out. This is what makes it fun.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah. It's like a treasure hunt. I feel like I've personally gone as far as I can go. So like I've been looking around and I'm struggling now to come up with much more than what I have. Right. Because I seem to keep finding myself, like leading myself down paths which have no clear end. Like, you know, I'm like, right, okay, she likes this. Let me look at this then. I'm like, great. This is the perfect pen. Right. Cannot get a stub nib for it. This company doesn't make stub nibs for as much as I can find. So then, you know, you end up running round and round and round again.

'''Myke Hurley:''' The Metropolitan, I mean, it surprised me that people seem to love that thing so much.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Oh, man. It's unstoppable. It really is. Everyone loves that pen. And I can see why. I mean, for the price, it's amazing.

'''Myke Hurley:''' But there's just a part of me that's like, I just wanted to have something better. I know. I know. I would be disappointed in myself if the best that I could source would be the Pilot Metropolitan. As great a pen as it is, just because the thing is made of plastic and it's like just a standard run-of-the-mill fountain pen.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. Well, just remember, as the great Stephen Patrick Morrissey said, these things take time. So we're going to have to, you know, maybe the Metropolitan is the thing for now. Yeah. Oh, it is. It's working fine. Yeah. Then eventually, there's going to be something that clicks and they're going to say, I need this. Or, you know, I'm looking for something a little bit different. Or, you know, there's always that gateway drug.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah. Yeah.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' And, you know, there's no, you don't have to rush it. You know, you know how long it took me to get into fountain pens.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' And, you know, some of the things that I found in the beginning that I thought were like the ultimate pen ever and, you know, don't use anymore. You know, things like that. So, you know, it doesn't have to be force fed. So if the Metropolitan is the one, there's no really argument with that. And you know what? What you can do is you can buy a Pilot Plumix. It's P-L-U-M-I-X. We can put a link in the show notes. It's less than $10. It's got the calligraphy nib. And you can put that right on the Metropolitan. Huh.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Boom.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Well, look at you. Mm-hmm. That could be it. Yep. Hmm. Well, well, well. Before we wrap this topic up. So I've forgotten about this. So prior to me going through this, I was sent by this person a list of designs that she thought was interesting. It's quite funny, the stuff that she's picking out. So simple, sophisticated pens.

== Quaker Pen ==

'''Myke Hurley:''' And what she sent me was the Quaker. Mm-hmm. Right? So that style. She doesn't like the cap, but she likes the whole thing that is simple. Right. And matte plastic. She likes them more. Then shiny plastic. Hence the Metropolitan, right? Mm-hmm. She then sent me some other pen I've never seen in my life, so I will forget about that. It's labeled Pocket Founding Pen. She was on Pinterest, basically. Gotcha. Then she said something funky. She likes funky. Mm-hmm. And so she sent me a link to the Pelican Twist.

'''Myke Hurley:''' You familiar with this?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' No. Yeah.

'''Myke Hurley:''' It's a very strange-looking pen. It's one of those learn-to-write fountain pens.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' That's kind of what I was thinking it was, but I can't picture it.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yep. I'll put it in the show notes. But this thing is like $10.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Mm-hmm.

'''Myke Hurley:''' It's exactly like that one that you were showing me last week, or showing us. Like, this show is just me and you.

'''Myke Hurley:''' This is just our conversation. What was the name of that one that we were looking at? I don't even remember. Do you remember? It was like the colorful one with the smiley face on it. Oh, oh, oh, yeah. The Kakuno. The Kakuno, yeah. Love that. Yeah. So that was one thing that I forgot to mention. Likes quite funky designs as well. Okay. Gotcha. Just because I don't have anything like that.

'''Myke Hurley:''' What else do we have here? Maybe something girly and charming. Do you know what she sent me? What? A Nakaya. Oh, gosh.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah, dream on. You can carry on down that little route. Oof. And she said, and I also like nibs like this that are beautiful to look at. Do you know what she sent me?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Mont Blanc.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Pelican M1000.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Oh, Lord. Yeah, that's a similar looking nib. That's huge. Beautiful, beautiful nib. Yep. Crazy.

'''Myke Hurley:''' That's good.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' That's good. She knows what she likes.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah, that's more around design. Clearly, she's picking good stuff. Yep. That's funny. So, yeah, I'm probably going to get this Plumix. Let's see if it's on Colt pens because I'll just throw that in a cart along with this Pelican thing. Yep. So I can see what she thinks of those.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Plumix.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, the nibs are really easy to change.

'''Myke Hurley:''' No, it's not on Colt pens.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' And you can get some funky Metropolitan barrels now, too. They've come out with more than the gold, silver, and black. Yeah, they're not. They've come out with white and purple and patterns and things like that.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah, well. Maybe that's the ticket. They're not that exciting, though. They just changed the...

'''Brad Dowdy:''' No, no, no. Not for me. I'm just saying they just have more... A wider range now than the ones that when they first came out with. That might be Upper Alley.

'''Myke Hurley:''' So I can get... If I grab the...

== Nib Swapping ==

'''Myke Hurley:''' Plumix, I can remove that nib, put it on the Metropolitan. Yes. Cool.

'''Myke Hurley:''' It's a shame Colt pens don't seem to carry it, which is a shame.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' You should be able to find it somewhere. It's... I mean, it's one of those pens that, for a time, it was on the shelves in the US at, like, Target, you know, just like a big box retailer. So it's a somewhat common-ish pen, but I don't know. I don't know how often... I don't know if they're still manufacturing as many as they used to when they came out a few years ago.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' But if not, you know, I can come up with one for you.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Are there any other Pilot pens that carry that nib that you're aware of?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' No. No. I mean, just the Prera, which you're going to have to spend too much just for the nib.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah. Yeah, I'm not going to spend 43 pounds on it.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So what Pilot does, there's two pens that are bought by people like me who like to change nibs around for use in other pens, like the Prera. It's the Pilot Penmanship, because you can get the EF steel nib, which doesn't come in the Prera or the Cocuno, and the Pilot Plumix, which has the calligraphy nib, which doesn't come in those.

'''Myke Hurley:''' So... Why didn't they just offer the nib?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I don't know. I don't know. But both of those pens are under $10. Like, I bought like three or four penmanships. I think they were like $8.50 each at JetPens. Oh. Just for the nibs. I mean, I don't even use the pen. I just take the nibs off and put them in my Preras or whatever else fits.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I'm going to assume that the Pilot Parallel does not have a removable nib. No.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Damn it.

'''Myke Hurley:''' This is a 1.5 millimeter.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, but it's a completely... It's 90. It's a pure calligraphy nib. It's a very squared off, rough edge nib. It's not a stub nib. It's got a little bit of that roll on the corners.

'''Myke Hurley:''' You really do know everything. No. Gosh. You do. I've thrown these random Pilot throwaway pens at you. You're like, oh yeah, well no, this one has this. I think I do this show with the right person.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Good. We should keep doing it.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Oh yeah?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. Huh. I think it's got staying power. This baby's got legs. Yeah. We should look into that.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Speaking of legs, I need to run.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Let's wrap this bad boy up. Dear Lord, that was maybe one of the worst. I'm good. I'm the best at the worst. I will tell you that right now. That's an interesting way to look at it. Mm-hmm.

'''Myke Hurley:''' All right. Well, it's been a pleasure talking to you today, sir. Thank you very much for your assistance.

'''Myke Hurley:''' We'll be back next week with another episode. If you'd like to find the show notes and links and contact information for me and Brad, go to 5x5.tv slash penaddict slash 89. I am Myke Curley. I am at iMike. I am Y-K-E. Brad is at Dowdyism, D-O-W-D-Y-I-S-M. And he writes at ThePenAddict or PenAddict.com. I want them both. Because I made you. Thanks so much for listening. And we'll be back next week. Bye-bye. Bye. Bye. Bye.

[[Category:Podcast Transcripts]]
[[Category:The Pen Addict Podcast Transcript]]

The Pen Addict 80/transcript

2026-06-23T16:01:50Z

PencilBot: fixed spelling

{{Infobox podcast transcript
| name = The Pen Addict
| number = 80
| title = It's A Scandal
| date = November 12th, 2013
| hosts = [[Brad Dowdy]] 
[[Myke Hurley]]
| guests = [[Ana Reinert]]
| link = [https://www.relay.fm/penaddict/80 Episode 80]
| audiolink = [https://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/traffic.libsyn.com/thepenaddict/penaddict-080.mp3 Audio Episode 80]
| length = 57
}}

'''Myke Hurley:''' Hello and welcome to episode 80 of The Pen Addict on 5x5, a 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 the crown prince of the sewing machine, Mr. Brad Dowdy.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' That's right, I've got a new venture ahead of me. I'm going to be a master seamster, like my partner Jeffrey at Nock. So yes, I'm getting some work done behind the machine this weekend. It was pretty cool. We had a good time working on the cases this weekend, so it's going well.

'''Myke Hurley:''' So excited.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I know, I know. They're looking good too. They're looking real good. And I still didn't even come home with a sample for myself. We're just trying to get it done.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I can't believe that. Were you just not doing anything all day?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' No, no, no. We made lots of cases. I don't need one yet.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Customers come first, don't they, Brad? The customer comes first.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' That's right, that's right. So I'm still using my phase one prototype.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So yeah, it's going real good.

'''Myke Hurley:''' We've got a crazy show coming up today. Loads of little stuff.

== Counterfeiting ==

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Loads of little stuff. And it's actually a bunch of stuff that right after our episode ended last week, I feel like I've been hanging on to a lot of these topics towards the end of last week. But they're still pertinent today, of course. It was just lots of things I wanted to talk about. And I don't know, it may not even be like a normal episode for us, but I guess it kind of is. We just talk about anything that comes across our screens. And unfortunately, we'll start it out with the, I won't say bad news, but a little questionable topic that we've covered here before, the Visionaire pin on Kickstarter. Myke, just for, I didn't check with you beforehand. Were you still a backer of this project?

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah, yeah, I'm all in on it. Just simply because of, as I mentioned before, for people that have, I'll throw into the show notes maybe some of the episodes where we gave a little backstory on this.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, yeah. So definitely check those out. And I was going to mention that in the, I don't have the episodes in front of me, but they're actually in the, we talk about it like a couple weeks in a row and just talk about, I had a lot of concerns about the origins of the pen design, feeling that it was, you know, probably a very inexpensively made Chinese pen that you could get for just a few dollars. And it blew up on Kickstarter. I think he's selling them for $37 each. There would, I felt that there wasn't anything original in the design that it was just pulled pretty much off the shelf of a Chinese manufacturer. And absolutely nothing inherently wrong with that, except that you're overpaying by about $30 for this pen. That was my, that's pretty much the complaint in a nutshell.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So, you know, we address those things. We talked about a lot of those things and, you know, we discussed how the pen you're going to get is probably going to be just fine. It's just that the, it's kind of, I felt that it went against, you know, the spirit of Kickstarter and that it's really not any type of new design. And it's basically just a reseller of an existing, you know, mass market Chinese fountain pen.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So we left it at that, you know, a couple months ago. Well, now it's come out that on Alibaba.com, which is, it's a huge website. You can find anything on there that the Visionaire, I mean, it's not called the Visionaire, but the exact Visionaire pen is showing up on there for purchase from different Chinese manufacturers. And you can get them for as cheap as a dollar. So that was brought up to Morgan, who is the founder of the Visionaire Kickstarter project, the creator. And as Morgan is wanting to do in my dealings with him in the past and his public answers, he talks a lot without answering any questions. And I thought it was pretty telling this time that there were a couple points, you know, I wanted to point out that he, in his response, number one, he didn't deny that that was the Visionaire pen at all. I thought that was very telling, that he never said, that's not this pen, here's why. You know, he said, his answer was, and which was the obvious answer, and the answer that I knew was going to come was, well, they knocked me off. They took my design, and now they're selling it, you know. This Chinese manufacturer is selling it, and they stole my design.

'''Myke Hurley:''' And is he saying this in the comments? Is that where?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. Yeah, he's got a comment. I think I'll link to that specific comment.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So basically, he was saying how he can't, you know, prevent other people from counterfeiting his design, blah, blah, blah, and he can't afford to, you know, to go after him and things like that, which, that's the obvious answer, right? I mean, that's the answer that I expected. Of course, that's what happened, Morgan. They stole your design, and now they're selling it as a $1 pen.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' What, $1? Yeah.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Well, actually, $0.85 if you get, you know, the right quantity.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Oh, what's going on? So. How, like, convinced are you, though?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' That it's the same pen? Yeah. 99%.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Hmm.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I want you to look. I put in a new link. So, okay, so what happened was this came out, and everyone was linking to this page on Alibaba showing this pen, and this manufacturer offering up this pen, the exact pen, you know, in black and the chrome and everything like that. Well, yesterday, that link went down, which is interesting.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' What does that say? Huh?

'''Myke Hurley:''' What does that say?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' What does what say?

'''Myke Hurley:''' The fact that the link went down. Like, on what side is that?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' It was the link that everyone was passing around that was involved in the project saying, hey, this is the, this is the Visionaire, this is the Visionaire. Well, now that link's gone. So, yeah, I think it's, I don't think it was a fluke, put it that way.

'''Myke Hurley:''' But if, if he, if it is the same pen, and Morgan doesn't have the rights to own it, then how, like, how could he have it taken down? Like, what I'm trying to say is.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Dealing with the manufacturer, he's like, look, you guys are looking bad. You guys are making me look bad. He could pay them, he could pay them so much more money to take that down. Like, one of the things that bothers me about his Kickstarter project is he keeps finding all this extra money to do these other special things like packaging and a different converter and new ink cartridges.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Have you, I mean, this sounds so bad. Maybe I shouldn't say this, but I'm going to anyway. Have you seen what they look like, these extra things that he's doing? Yeah, no, yeah. You look, I mean, none of the, all the design is, is terrible.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Well, no, I mean, well, part of it is, number one, he's saying, look, I'm putting all this money back in to the project. Well, that's because he has about a dollar per pen in there and he's made, you know, like, that leaves him lots of extra money. And the extra add-ons, like, someone made a comment in the comment saying, oh, he's upgraded the packaging and he's given us extra ink cartridges. And he redid the converter. Like, if you added up the cost for all three things, all three of those things, it's probably less than a dollar to get those and mass produced total.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Okay, so, but the Alibaba page has been pulled down, so I can't see it. So, that was pulled down.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So, now people have found it. You know, I took screenshots of it the other day because I anticipated that would happen. So, I linked to the screenshots of it I took. But you don't even have to anymore because there's a – I couldn't find the cash copy of it. Someone's found that. And now someone says if you just go over to Alibaba and search LY120, it just – it's everywhere.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So, that link I put in, I want you to look at that link.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Okay, it's in Italian, which is interesting.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. Well, not even that link. Skip that one.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Oh, skip the cash one.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, because it's a lot huger page and shows lots of extra things. Go to the one I put in as LY120, and you tell me what you think of that pen and compare it to the Visionaire.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So.

== Visionaire Pen ==

'''Myke Hurley:''' Okay, let me open up the Visionaire page for comparison.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So, I'll continue to talk while you look. You know, there's – Morgan, we talked about it. I did text and email Morgan because I have talked to him before. He's never responded. It's not surprising. And he has been – the entire time of this Kickstarter project, I don't know that he's answered a direct question with a direct answer.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Oh, dear.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Oh.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Should I be higher than 99%?

'''Myke Hurley:''' It's extremely similar, isn't it? Yeah.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Oh, for God's sake. This is really bad. Like, if this is true –

'''Myke Hurley:''' Okay, so he's got pictures of people in a factory making them. Mm-hmm. Which kind of makes sense, wouldn't it?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. Well, just like – he's got pictures of him in the factory. He flew over to the factory.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah, I mean, it's – This looks – So, how much are they selling for? Because they've not got – oh, yeah, 85 cents.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Wait. If there's 85 cents four-piece, I assume it means 85 cents each if you buy four. I think so. I hope – I really hope so. Because if it's 85 cents for four of them – because they've got – they're showing like a bunch of pens on the page. Right. And one of them is a fountain pen, which looks exceedingly similar. Like, really, really, really similar.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. I think it's beyond similar. I mean, I think it's dead on. Like, we found – when we were looking at it before, we found some that we thought were close. But we never – I knew we never found the exact one. This is the exact one. I'm fairly confident in saying that.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I mean, do you remember when we were talking before about we were using and trying to avoid the word scam? Yeah. Because you're still getting the money.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Mm-hmm.

== Kickstarter Scam ==

'''Myke Hurley:''' This seems like a scam.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I hate that word. Because, yes, you are getting – you are buying a product and receiving a product. But the markup is incredible.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Right. Right. I mean, no wonder he's been able to fly over there to the factory. And, you know, it's – he's put on a hell of a show. And we said it from the beginning. This guy is a marketing master.

'''Myke Hurley:''' So, the thing – have people, like, compared the nib and stuff? Because I can't – I'm struggling to see that.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. They don't have a dead-on shot of the nib that I can tell.

'''Myke Hurley:''' From the Alibaba page.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. Let me see. I don't know if I can get a bigger picture. Or I haven't looked enough to see if I can get a bigger picture of the shape of the – you know, the design on the nib.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Well, I mean, all it says is just a radium point. Like, it's not, you know –

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Right. Yeah. It's a totally generic nib. I mean, and Morgan's admitted that. But I don't know that I have seen a big enough blown-up picture to see if it's, like, the exact same nib. I'm wagering it is. I mean, it looks like it's got the same, like, 45-degree angle notch line.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' You know, it's just got, like, a single line, like, kind of like a V-shape going towards the opening in the middle of the nib kind of thing.

'''Myke Hurley:''' In fairness, the PDF that you provide, which is in the show notes that people can download, does have a lot more detail in the images. Yeah. Which are definitely – these images are definitely more damning, even more so. Yeah. Oh, Brad, what have I done? I mean, in all fairness, I would have canceled this. If me and you had just had this conversation, I would have just canceled this. But I simply need to receive this now. Yeah. For the reason of the fact that we have discussed it.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Well, and yeah, yeah. And that's cool. And what we said the first couple times we talked about it is you're probably going to get just the perfectly fine functional pen. You know? You may not have a problem with the pen. You may love the pen. It may write amazingly. It may be one of your favorite pens. You know? You just overpaid by $30, right? Or more.

'''Myke Hurley:''' This company – I mean, you've probably seen this – can make a million of these a month.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah.

'''Myke Hurley:''' So he should have them all done pretty soon.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. Yeah. No doubt.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I can't believe this. I mean, until now, people that have – you know, I've basically put in the show notes, which you can find at 5by5.tv slash penaddict slash 80. I've put in the three episodes where we spoke about it. And I think people that have listened to these or will go back and listen will see that I had tried to, like, just, you know, say, oh, you're being – you know, you're overreacting, basically, was my feeling on this. Was like, you know, this could be anything. But this – I mean, this can't look any more similar.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Right. And the thing I worry about is the backers who have bought this for their – this is their first Kickstarter pen experience and things like that. And there's a lot of – I don't know. There's two clear sides reading the comments in the Visionaire Kickstarter page. There's ones that are blindly following everything Morgan says and believe him 100%. And then there's the other side that says this is clearly questionable and it doesn't – nothing about this adds up whatsoever. So –

'''Myke Hurley:''' Well, how can I get one of those?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I'm sure we can just order from Alibaba, I guess. I think – I don't know if there was a couple people might have mentioned that they might be ordering them.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Can you buy – can you buy –

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Delivery, 20, 25 days. I don't know what the minimum order is.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah. See what I mean? That's –

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Oh, minimum order on this one page we're looking at is 1,000.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Okay. So that's not going to work. Yeah. I don't want 1,000 of them. I mean, I could quite clearly easily afford it if they're 85 cents a piece. Right. But I don't want 1,000 of them.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Well, it looks like you just need to start a Kickstarter project.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' And, you know, when you get the pen, just sketch out some designs with this great pen that you designed.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Well, I think I could probably start like an Indiegogo to raise $850 to disprove this thing.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. Yeah. But Myke, they knocked him off.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Oh, I see what you're saying. I thought you were giving another revelation. Yeah. I mean, the factory that he seems to have gone to.

== Visionaire Pens ==

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Right. Yeah. They tooled up to make these thousands of pens to knock off the Visionaire. Right.

'''Myke Hurley:''' It certainly seemed that way.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Mm-hmm.

'''Myke Hurley:''' What is this, man?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' When they can make 10,000 of these pens a week. Yeah. They knocked him off. Right.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I'm now looking through the backup pages to see if I can find any images of the factory.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. That's on there. He's got a... It's in the updates.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah. That's where I'm looking. But...

'''Brad Dowdy:''' It's update... Damn.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' It's in here because I just saw it earlier today.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I mean, I can see it now. But, I mean, it doesn't give anything away except for the fact that he's in a Chinese factory making some pens himself. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Which... Those images were a little strange to me anyway because it made it look like it was just a...

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Oh, I thought it was a huge mistake.

'''Myke Hurley:''' It just looked like an assembly line. Yep. Which is totally not what I want. Like, one of the images, there's like just a bucket of clips. Yep. Just a bucket of them. And I'm like, um... Clearly more than 5,000 there. Yeah. Why?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I thought it was a huge mistake to post all these pictures from the factory.

'''Myke Hurley:''' You say he's a master of marketing. I don't think he is. I don't know why you think that.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Well, the origination when he was doing his video and everything and got everyone drinking Kool-Aid. Well, because I could read the responses. I didn't... It wasn't believable to me, but reading the responses of people just going, Oh my God, this is the best thing ever.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah, it doesn't make sense to me. It doesn't make... It really doesn't make sense how he raised this much money. I know.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Well... I have not. I don't know. I don't know how he did it.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' All right. Yeah. So, anyway. It doesn't look like this is over, unfortunately. I was hoping we wouldn't have to talk about it again, but...

'''Myke Hurley:''' It's a scandal.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' It's a scandal. Yeah. This is funny. In the big picture, if you think about it, we're like having conniptions over Kickstarter fountain pen projects. Who would ever thought, Myke? Who would ever thought we'd be in episode 80 of the Pen Addict podcast?

'''Myke Hurley:''' I know. Well, it's like a chilling effect, though.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I just think it just gives lots of things a bad... Yeah. It leaves a bad taste in my mouth. And hopefully, you know, people that are getting into this for the first time buying... There's so many people listed that they're buying... This is the first fountain pen they've ever bought, and yada, yada, yada. I'm just hoping...

'''Myke Hurley:''' Because pens and paper are a staple of Kickstarter. Like, they are now. You know, it's a great place for that type of stuff.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Right.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I really don't want that... I really don't want this to catch fire in the mainstream. Right. Which it very easily could. Right. Because, you know, sites like, you know, like the Next Web, TechCrunch, would cover this if it turned out that... This was true. Right. Like, this is a story for them. Guy raises $380,000 on Kickstarter for a product that costs him $2,000 to make. Like, to make enough shipped. Right. Because he only has to fulfill 5,000 of these. And we've just found out you can get 1,000 of them for $850. So, that is an incredible amount of money. Hang on. Yep. So, 850 times by 5. It's $4,250.

'''Myke Hurley:''' So, he's made, what, $300 and something thousand dollars of this?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, was it 326? 324.

'''Myke Hurley:''' So, before taxes, $320,000.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Well, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey. He's putting a lot back into the packaging. Oh, yeah. No, you're right. And extra ink cartridges and the converter.

'''Myke Hurley:''' What is going on?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' And he flew over to the factory. So, these are expenses, Myke.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah. I can see where the 320 went. Yeah. I mean, he probably needs to buy some more drawing and dipping ink for his pen anyway. Right. Yeah.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' That was so funny. Someone mentioned that. That was funny.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Oh, dear.

== Business Success ==

'''Brad Dowdy:''' All right. Should we talk about something that's going to make us a little bit more happy? Please do. Please do.

'''Myke Hurley:''' This episode is brought to you by the fine folks over at Squarespace.com. They are the only one platform that make it fast and easy to create your own professional website, your online portfolio. For a free trial and 10% off your first purchase, go to Squarespace.com and use the offer code Tallyho11. There is no show that I do on this network that shows the versatility of Squarespace like the pen addict does. Because what you've got with us, with me and Brad, is two people that not only use Squarespace for our personal sites. So I have MikeHurley.net. Brad has the pen addict. So he has penaddict.com over there. But as well as that, Brad also has KnockCo, which we've mentioned before. You all know about this. It's not only the website and blog for his Kickstarter company. Well, his company that started for a Kickstarter, which is KnockCo. But it's also going to be a place that he's going to be selling all of his products through in the future. And both of us are able to put these sites online because of Squarespace. It's absolutely fantastic. The versatility of the platform and how easy things are made for you to be able to use about how powerful they are is unmatched. They have beautiful templates. They're award-winning and look absolutely fantastic. They have 24-7 customer support. It starts at just $8 a month, including a free domain name if you sign up for a year. You can integrate commerce with Squarespace Commerce. They have responsive design built right in. Everything is drag and drop. You just drag and drop around the pages to add content. And you've got rock-solid hosting. It looks fantastic on the front, fantastic on the back. I love it. Squarespace is awesome. I think you should try them out. I have no idea why you wouldn't have done it by now. You must be crazy because Squarespace is awesome. And let me tell you how you can be less crazy and go sign up for a Squarespace account. Go start a free trial. No credit card needed to do that. You can go and start building either your new web project or revamp your current web project over at Squarespace. And when you decide to sign up, don't forget to use the code TALLYHO11. That's T-A-L-L-Y-H-O-1-1. It's going to get you 10% off your first purchase. It will also be showing your support for The Pen Addict and all of 5x5. That is Squarespace. They give you everything that you need to create an exceptional website.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Excellent, sir. An excellent job by Squarespace. Indeedy. All right. So on a changing the topic completely, but still a little bit of a, I don't want to say a downer topic, but I think there's some positivity to come out of it. There was an article I got sent a bunch of times last week on NPR. There was a radio spot, and then they have the article online. The title of the article is No Room for Erasers as Technology Deletes Pen Businesses. That's such a Debbie Downer title.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I mean, I instantly don't believe it.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I know. I know. And it was a little bit of a really dramatic title. And you listen to the story. The audio is 3 minutes and 49 seconds. But they actually cover, it's pretty much the transcript in the written part of the audio. So if you don't want to listen to the audio, just read the written part. But basically they're pointing out that the old school brick and mortar pen shops are going away. And I don't think that's news to anyone who's a regular fountain pen purchaser. There was news a few months ago where Art Brown in New York, which is one of the oldest stores around, it shut down, and this article is about Daly's pen shop in Milwaukee. And they point out how business has dropped 50% because of all this new technology and smartphones and everything like that. I mean, it's nothing new or novel to anyone who's done this. But it was interesting to hear. They talked to the owner of Daly's pen shop. And my biggest question when they talked about it or talked to him was, well, how does the online business make up for any of this? And they just kind of glossed over it. And they said that it – because I've ordered from Daly's online. And they have a really good stock. I think I ordered my Retro 51.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' What was the one with the knock? I always forget the name of that one.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Oh, I don't know.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, whatever. You all know which one I'm talking about if you listen to the show. We had this conversation on Twitter a few weeks ago.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah, I remember a few weeks ago we were trying to have this conversation on Twitter between a bunch of us and came to the conclusion that Retro 51 have terrible naming.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, maybe so. Anyway, Daly's has kind of a really good online business. And that wasn't – they weren't talking to this at all. They're just talking about how his brick-and-mortar business is down 50% and he's had to move locations into a smaller location.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' But it – I mean there's validity to the overall point. But I think this is just like lots of businesses that – this is never going to become an obsolete business. It's just the business model is going to have to change.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Well, yeah, that's just like all business these days.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Right, right. So I didn't think this was like a super dramatic thing. I mean I think Daly's is going to continue to be in business in some way, shape, or form. Hopefully. Gosh, I hope so because, I mean it's a well-known name in the fountain pen industry, in the fountain pen business. But, yeah, it was just bemoaning the fact of the traditional brick-and-mortar is going in that you can't walk in and speak to someone and maybe necessarily handle the goods or have that conversation with someone about pens and things like that. So anyway, I thought it was a good article. If anyone hasn't seen it, it's definitely worth checking out, worth listening to. I don't – I disagree with the premise behind the title of the article because I think pen business is doing pretty well. Is it as high as it was in its peak when there was no online and there was no smartphones? Well, of course not. But there's companies that are handling that in different ways now. And I think a lot of them would agree that business has been as strong as ever if you talk to a lot of our favorite vendors online like JetPens, Goulet Pens, Cult Pens, all of these people. I think they're probably – and I certainly don't know, but I would wager that they're doing pretty good. You can just kind of tell from anecdotal information. You can just pick up on it that things are going pretty good in the pen industry. I think it's just a different business model.

'''Myke Hurley:''' It's totally because of us.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Oh, it's absolutely. We're going to lay claim to all that.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, to all the – yeah, I better not say that. I'm going to get some nasty grams.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I've become that guy now. I'm like the bitter old man guy. You said this and you shouldn't say that. Do you get those sort of emails? Sure. Yeah, I do. Most of them are – none of them are mean or anything, but it's just like – I have lots of conversations. I just – I tell people like it is, and that's it.

'''Myke Hurley:''' But flying in the face of this.

== Anderson Pens ==

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yes. This has me excited beyond belief, and it's the complete antithesis of what we just talked about. Our friends Brian and Lisa Anderson from Anderson Pens are opening a brick-and-mortar store.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah, they are.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So what does that tell you about what they believe this business – what you can do in this business? They're moving from online to brick-and-mortar. I mean, obviously, the online component stays. Brian and Lisa are the busiest people in show business. I do not know how they do it. They travel the entire fountain pen show circuit all across the country from their home in Wisconsin, drive to all of these shows. I mean, drive from Wisconsin to Miami, which is just – I don't want to ever make that drive in my life. And this is what they do. Like every month, sometimes twice a month, they're traveling somewhere across the country to go to a pen show. Brian still keeps his full-time job somehow. They're opening a brick-and-mortar pen store in Appleton, Wisconsin, and they're just killing it. I mean, they are – we'll link to the show notes of their progress of their working on the space, and they've been doing some more updates. It looks like a cool space, and I could not be happier for two of the nicest people you will ever meet in your life. And I'm so excited. Like I would give anything to like fly up there for their opening day. Just that's how much I believe in them. That's how much I support them, and that's how much I want this to succeed for them. And I think it will, knowing them, the way those two work, and the way they treat people, and the way they act with customers and the whole – the fountain pen community as a whole. I can't say enough nice things about them. And I'm jealous. I'm excited. And I'm thrilled, and I wish them all the best luck. So I don't know how this topic superimposed with our last topic, what are you to believe, right?

'''Myke Hurley:''' And they also have a podcast, which I'll put in the show notes. Yeah. The Anderson guys. Another thing that they do.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah.

'''Myke Hurley:''' They have a podcast too.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' They have a podcast, and hopefully I will get Brian and or Lisa on here one day. I think that would be –

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yes.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' That would be excellent. I would love that. They are good people. They are just – they're the best, and I wish them all the luck with this retail store. And I think it's just going to be cool. I mean, they know this business. They have an understanding of what needs to be done to take care of their customers, and I think this will be just nothing but a success. So hopefully NPR, if you're paying attention, maybe you can go up there and see why this is not the end of the writing industry as we know it. What?

'''Myke Hurley:''' There's a title in there, but it's maybe too long. Not the end of the writing industry as we know it. So I have a request to the listeners of the show. All right. So I bought a new iPad today.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Nice. A new iPad mini with the retina display. And I want a case for a pen addict.

'''Myke Hurley:''' So basically, I want one of those – I think they're called folio cases, like where it opens up.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, I think that's a good term for it.

'''Myke Hurley:''' So it's like a book, and it opens up. And then I have my iPad mini on one side, preferably the right side actually for me, but whatever. It doesn't matter. I could probably turn it upside down. Oh, that's true. I could probably turn it upside down though. Actually, no. I would probably need it to be on the right-hand side. And then ideally, I would like to be able to insert or like tuck in a field notes book in there.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Really, I would like to be able to put my field notes in there in some way. Even if it's just one, right? Because it probably only fit one in there, to be honest.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah, probably just one. So maybe it slides in, you know, like you could tuck in the side, like how I was talking about with the One Star Leather item from last week. Oh, bit of follow-up on that. Keegan from One Star Leather said that, I mean, this was, I should have asked him, he will make the pen loops larger if you need them. Oh, good. So if you were holding off last week because of what I was saying about, you know, I couldn't get some of my favorite pens in there. If you just tell him you need the pen loop to be larger, maybe give him some dimensions if possible, he can do that.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Oh, that's great.

'''Myke Hurley:''' So he emailed me to let me know. Well, he apologized, which I thought was ridiculous, but he did that anyway because he's a nice guy. But I just thought that just popped in my head then. But yeah, so basically I would like that, you know, so to be able to tuck a field notes in and maybe have like a pen loop as well. So basically, I mean, if you've seen something that isn't exactly like what I described, that has, you know, some sort of cool notebook integration with a case, that's kind of what I'm looking for.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' It sounds like you need a custom NotCo pen case.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I did think of you actually, but I was thinking instead, I was like, maybe I could just get Brad to do it. But then I thought that it might take a lot more work because you have to have some sort of mechanism for keeping the iPad in place.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, we totally plan on doing things like this. We just, you know, not in the timely fashion that you would need it.

'''Myke Hurley:''' No, I mean, if you can, that'd be great.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, these types of products are on our radar, and we've had some, you know, initial discussions like about what we need and things like that. So anyone who says, I wish I had a case for this, shoot us an email. And these are the type of things that we want to work on and the type of things that we're actually set up to do.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Because there's just little things about that, like securing the iPad into the case. That has to be flawless. Yep. Because if you don't do that and then I open it and my iPad falls onto the ground and smashes, I'm going to be very upset at Brad Dowdy. Yep. So, you know. So, yeah. If you've seen anything, guys, if you've come across anything, send me on Twitter. I'm at imike, I-M-Y-K-E. I would love to hear about it. And then I'll probably end up buying 40 of them and talking about them.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Have you ever looked at the Dodo cases? I have. I don't know if they're set up this way. That's my only guess off the top of my head to look at.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah, I don't really like that this is a book thing.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, it's a different style. I'll give you that.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I'm not really a... I mean...

'''Brad Dowdy:''' You don't really need that. You just need something with the iPad and then have a little bit of additional storage for your field notes.

'''Myke Hurley:''' In all honesty, this is, like, pretty much exactly what I need. But it's not a field notes. It's, like, their own notebook.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Mm-hmm.

'''Myke Hurley:''' So, I mean, that is something, right? So there's one. Yeah. But ideally... Because then you end up playing the refills, right? And it's just...

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. Oh, yeah. No. I don't like... I don't... Yeah.

== Field Notes ==

'''Myke Hurley:''' Ideally, like, what I'm looking for is to be able to use my field notes. Like, that is number one, in all honesty. Because then I can just... Then they're independent. I want the two things to be independent of each other. Okay. So the field notes in the iPad are still independent. So if I want to take the field notes out and put it in my pocket, because then it becomes my notebook.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Right.

'''Myke Hurley:''' But, I mean, sure, that is an option. Yeah.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' They actually do a quite nice-looking one. I think our listeners will come up with something.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah. I was going to talk about this on another show that I do called The Prompt, which is more Apple-focused. But it hit me that our listeners on this show might actually come up with better options for me, simply because this is our realm, because I want these very specific things. But I'm going to start a document in our Google Drive, so I'll start putting those in there. Cool. So we can keep track, and then we can... Hopefully that can be a segment on a later episode.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, that would be good. I think that would be useful.

'''Myke Hurley:''' So talking about segments, we have another sponsor, but it's a little bit different. So what I'm going to do first is I'm going to give our listeners what our sponsor has provided us. But then we're going to talk about it, and I'm going to set that up in a moment. So also sponsoring this episode, we are very pleased to have Doxy. Now, this is just released. The Doxy Flip is a new kind of scanner, not for going paperless, but for capturing your creativity in history anywhere. So Doxy, with the Doxy Flip, is a retake on the traditional flatbed scanners of the past with two twists. It's tiny. It's really small. It's about the size of a book, and it's battery-powered, so you can take it anywhere. And also, the Doxy Flip flips over to allow you to capture old photo albums, books, and pocket notebooks. So the transparent scanning window underneath the scanner, so you can see right through. So you can open up the flatbed, and you can see right through to see what you're scanning, so you can easily line it up and capture your photos or your notes. The Doxy Flip is perfect for field notes and Moleskine notebooks, index cards, and everything you thought you couldn't scan with a traditional sheet-fed scanner. Because Doxy, traditionally, they do like the sheet-fed stuff, so you put paper through, and it goes through, it scans it. The Doxy Flip is now available for $149 from getdoxy.com. And while supplies last, you can buy from Doxy directly at getdoxy.com. You're going to get a free, limited-edition Doxy Field Notes notebook with a textured French £80 cream quart-tone cover. So that's what Doxy have given us. So go to getdoxy.com. It's $149, but they also ship all over the world, and they have different partners. You can buy from Amazon in the UK, for example. So if you're interested, like I'm sure you will be, go to getdoxy.com, but obviously you get that. Doxy Field Notes that we spoke about last week on the show.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Now, the reason I say this is very different is, first off, thank you so much to Doxy for sponsoring. You should definitely go and check this out. And now I want to tell you a little bit about why. So we don't typically do this, but this product is the type of thing that me and Brad would talk about. And we were absolutely thrilled when Doxy sponsored, and they were also kind enough to send both me and Brad a Doxy Flip. So we both have one. Brad actually wrote a review about his on the Pan Addict. So I'm going to put that in the show notes too, so you can go and read Brad's thoughts about the Flip. But I want to give some of my own personal experiences some of the things that I like about the product too. But, you know, I just wanted to make sure that people knew that. I mean, that was what the sponsor had given us to talk about, which is all excellent stuff. And it really sort of sums up the product. But we do both have them, and now I've used them personally. So I wanted to talk about it on the show.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Awesome. So, yeah, I want to hear. You read my thoughts about it, and I did some test scans and, you know, kind of ran it through the gamut. But went through most of the features and things like that. So, you know, some people have probably read my review, and I'll talk about it some more. But I kind of want to get your opinion, because you and I have not talked about it one-on-one since you've received yours.

'''Myke Hurley:''' So one of my favorite things about it, like I was really surprised that it was actually independent of a computer, like I was expecting the idea to plug it in. Mm-hmm. Because I received the flip without really knowing anything about it.

'''Myke Hurley:''' So that was really cool, the fact that it was just independent. I think my favorite thing about it is there's a little screen on the device that you use to, like, do settings and stuff. That's what I thought it was for. I just thought, like, you would... So you can change the DPI, for example. Like, I think it's, like, is it 300 and 600? That's right. So I changed mine to 600 DPI, because why not? Yeah. But when it's scanning, it updates with a little preview image on the screen. It's like a tiny little screen. It's maybe, like, a 3-inch screen. Oh, no. No, 1.5-inch. Sorry, 1.5-inch screen.

'''Myke Hurley:''' So it's like a tiny little 1.5-inch screen, and it, like, just updates with the image. So as it's scanning my field notes, because obviously that's what I'm using it for. I'm now scanning all my field notes notebooks in. And it's scanning them, and so I know I'm getting it right. I just thought it was just cool. And it just gives you this preview. I'd like that. That was one of my other things. It's really, really light. Like, super light. Like, I can't believe how light it is. Because the way I was doing it, like, I was sort of, like, just holding it in one hand, like, holding it closed, so the notebook didn't slide out or whatever. So I was just holding it. That was cool. The image quality on the 600 DPI is just insane. Like, it scans it, like, to the images, and you can create PDFs out of it.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I love that you can, so you scan all of the images in. It took me about 10 minutes to do an entire field notes. Yeah, that sounds about right. Each side.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Then you plug it into your computer. I'll talk about that in a second. And you open the Doxy software, and it shows all the scans, and you can highlight them all, and then make them, they've got a button that says staple, and it puts them together into a stack. So it puts it into one document, so it's like stapling the one book together. And then you can upload it to Dropbox and Evernote, and, like, loads of other services. But that's where I'm putting it. So I'm putting it into Evernote. I'm putting it into Dropbox. Which is just, that's exactly what I want. So, like, I've done it now with one notebook that I have, which is for, like, important ideas. And I'm going to start now, every time I finish a field notes, I'm just, it's going to be part of my process. We'll be scanning it in, and then filing it. And then it's, like, it's just available. And I can use stuff like Evernote, and, like, maybe some other, like, OCR reading apps or whatever, to make it searchable, which is, I mean, if I can get that, like, I was thinking about maybe, like, coupling it with a more advanced application, because everybody knows how terrible my handwriting is. So I'm looking at other stuff to, like, maybe to do a better job than Evernote has been doing for me. Because if I can get that searchable, that will blow it out of the water. I mean, I know you would have no problem with it, but the way that I write, it is actually bad, and it's not very clear. So Evernote's not doing a great job of finding it. So that's just awesome that you can do that. And you can save them as PDFs to those services. The way that you get... So basically, everything gets saved onto an SD card on the device. And then I can just pop the SD card out and put it right into my MacBook. But something that I really liked is that they ship with a USB adapter in the box. So you can get this little USB adapter, and you can plug an SD card into it. So you don't need to have an SD card reader. That's why that was really cool, because... And then there's no cables. So you emphasize just like crazy, like cable trailing all over the place.

'''Myke Hurley:''' They were my experiences. I mean, I'm really, really happy. Like, it's filled a part of my paper workflow, notebook life, that was missing. So I think we've spoken about this a bit in the past.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, definitely. I mean, I think it kind of completes that circle, right? To where, you know, we've got to ask for practically this whole run of podcasts. What do you do with your notebooks when you're done? Well, now we doxy flip them. Mm-hmm. So, I mean, you know, I'll echo pretty much everything what you said. You know, all those features are great. The things that impressed me the most were the size of the Doxy Flip. I mean, it is... It's so small and lightweight and easy to use. I mean, I was just sitting at my desk and just, you know, goofing off. I had the best time just... Every time I'd scan a page of my notebook, I'd be like, oh, this is great. And, you know, and then by the time you get it, you know, pop the SD card in my laptop and use the staple feature to just put my notebook together. I was like, oh, this is great. It just... There's other ways to do these things that in the end game gets you to the same place. But this is so much easier and so much straightforward than, you know, taking pictures and, you know, with a camera or an iPhone and editing in different ways and moving everything around. This really streamlines the entire process. Like you said, you did a whole book in about 10 minutes, you know, give you a few more minutes to, you know, just to maybe edit them if you need to and then staple it and ship it off to Evernote or Dropbox and your notebook's there. I mean, in, you know, 15 minutes process, you know, you have this notebook saved digitally and searchably depending on the services that you use. And it just really rounded out, you know, my entire workflow for notebooks. So I've gone back and started scanning some of my other books now that I've had in the past. I used to, Myke, back when I started The Pen Addict and all these other... We're going through all these pen reviews and things like that. I used to throw my field notes away. I would fill one up. I would rip it up and throw it in the trash. And now I just regret that. And, you know, so I don't have as many saved as I should with old information. And, you know, this is something that just really fulfills a need for me. And it is so cool and easy to use. And just the size of it, it just works. And it gets it all done very simply and very easily. I'm ecstatic with mine.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I just, you know, it's just I now have a way to digitize my notebooks without either getting a huge scanner or, like, taking my notebooks apart. Because that was the other way, right? It was to get, like, a traditional Doxy, pulling the staples out and then feeding them through page by page. And I wouldn't want to do that. Plus, as well, like, it would be all out of order. Right.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, I wouldn't, like, I wouldn't, I would have never done that. I don't like tearing, you know, my books apart to capture them. I wouldn't have done that.

'''Myke Hurley:''' This is probably a very narrow, like, a very niche thing here. But if you are a person like me and haven't thought of this. So I had, I have, I tend to keep two notebooks with me at a time. As I mentioned before, I have my sort of, my daily field notes and my projects field notes. Sometimes I forget to take them both with me. And I've had to make notes in the daily field notes. And I've ripped the pages out and slid them into the project notebook. I was able to scan those individual pages together and add them to the stack and staple them all together. So it makes one consistent book. So if you took notes across different books and you needed to relate those projects together, you could scan each individual page and turn it into one document.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' That's exactly what I did. Oh, really? Yeah, I have a group of sketches for product sketches for Nock. Well, those end up in different notebooks over time. So I ended up gathering all those up, scanning them, and then stapled them together as their one, you know, and collected them all together into one, you know, stapled file in the Doxy Flip. That's exactly what I did.

'''Myke Hurley:''' So, yeah, perfect. Thank you. Look, thank you to them for sponsoring and for being very kind to send us the scanners. Very, very happy with it. And it's something that I would definitely buy. Yeah, totally. And if you are interested in this, you should do it. So go to getdoxy.com. That's the website, right? I've just said that. Getdoxy.com. And you can either buy one directly or find out about them. And if you like the product, why don't you let them know you heard about it here. Tweet at them. They're at Doxy, which is D-O-X-I-E.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' And they're very responsive, too. They're pretty active on their social media, and they always have a good time.

'''Myke Hurley:''' And if you want one of these special edition field notes, well, that's where you've got to go.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yep. And they're 48 pages, by the way. I butchered that last week.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah, you did, didn't you?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' You did. I'm a Moran.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Mm-hmm. So talking about that. Mm-hmm.

== Pitch Black Notebooks ==

'''Myke Hurley:''' That. What's that? Is the Pitch Black. Oh, nice. So I had my two packs come in. It's just like the perfect book, really. I mean, it's exactly what we wanted. It's a really nice black cover.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Very dark and mysterious. Dotted grid, black staples.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yes.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah. I need a whole box of just black staples. It feels like for a... This feels almost too good for a standard edition.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Hmm.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Interesting. You know, like... Well, definitely. I mean... It just feels like this could have been a, like, Colors edition maybe like a year ago or something. You know, before they started being, like, really adventurous with them. Yeah. And it would have sold out in no one's business.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yep. It would have, for sure.

'''Myke Hurley:''' And I agree. If you let a press... I reckon the only reason they have not let a press this cover... Well, probably two reasons. One is the cost, but also because then this and Raven's Wing would be indistinguishable.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yep.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' For sure. For sure. For sure. For sure. Well, good. I will get mine soon, hopefully, and we'll test them out. Stuff. I want to end this show on a very positive note. There's a couple of things that Myke and I want to point out that deserve your eyeballs and your clicks and your love. And the first of them is Cult Pens is doing a Pens for Kids promotion. And in the past, I've worked with Pens for Kids, and I've kind of stopped for reasons unknown even to me. And I want to get back into it. So Cult Pens reached out to us, said they're doing this Pens for Kids promotion. And it's an awesome thing that they're doing where they're allowing you to order a pack of pens for 1 pound 50 cents.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Pens.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Pens. Yes. 1 pound 50 is what I should say, right? Yep. Yeah. 1 pound 50 where you can order... What is this? Is this a 10 pack of pens? Yeah. It's a 10 pack of pens. You just order it through Cult Pens. You can order it individually. Just order the pens. You can order it. You can add it into your cart as just an add-on if you're buying other pens. And for every box of 10 pens that you order, Cult Pens will match another 10 pens. And then they ship this all to the Pens for Kids group, who is basically what they do is they package up and then they ship or sometimes even bring these pens to children in need in Africa. It's been a very good experience the times that I've worked with them. And I'm glad Cult Pens is getting involved in this. And, you know, I've already ordered just some pens on my own. I didn't order, like, any stuff for myself. I just went to the Pens for Kids page, put in the quantity that I want, added it to the basket and bought them. So they'll be, you know, I've donated to this cause. And, you know, if y'all get a chance and if you order from Cult Pens, think about adding one to your order. And, you know, Cult Pens will match that. And, you know, they'll ship a big, big batch of pens off to Pens for Kids and help these kids that need these writing utensils.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Seems like a no-brainer to me. Look, the amount of money that we spend on this stuff, if you're at Cult Pens, just add a box to your car. It's £1.50. I'm going to buy a couple now, I think.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. Yeah, I bought some on Monday and they sent me a nice note. And it's easy. Like, if you're in the U.S., there's a, you know, it goes through the process. Just for anyone who had questions about it, it goes through the process and it puts a shipping charge, like you're ordering the pens. But the charge doesn't go through. They back it out and they send you an email saying, hey, you know, we appreciate your order. We backed out the shipping charge. Here's the final cost just for the cost of the pens. And we really appreciate your support. So that's how it works when I ordered mine yesterday. So it's a very, very cool idea. And good luck to Cult Pens. And hopefully this will be a recurring thing. So this will be good.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yep.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' The second thing is with the huge, huge catastrophic storm that hit the Philippines. I know I've got a lot of readers from that area. I follow a lot of people in that area of the world that got devastated in this storm. And one of the best people online in the pen community is a woman by the name of Lee Reyes. Y'all probably heard me talk about her because I rave about her pen collection and her artwork and her drawing and everything all the time. She's got an awesome pen collection. And she is in the Philippines. She's in Manila. Luckily for her, she was, you know, spared the brunt of the storm. But being in the Philippines, she wanted to do something to help support all the people who were displaced and all the devastation that took place because of the hurricane. So what she's doing is she is starting on her blog. She's doing Pins for Aid, a charity auction to raise money for Typhoon Haiyan victims. So she started putting out some of her collection on her site where she's going to sell some of these pens, sell some pens. And I think 100% of the selling price goes to the Philippine Red Cross. Wow. So y'all need to check this out. I've already put in some bids. I've got an outbid. I'll have to see if I need to need to up it. But she's got two out there that are live now. And I think there's going to be more coming. So one pens, let's see, what's this one? An early, more safety with a flexible fine nibs already at $200. And the one I bid on was a Platinum Shoji, which is already at $325. So, you know, this is something that, you know, affects us all when this type of devastation happens. So if you're looking for a good way to help with the cause, check out Lee's site. And we'll have all the links in the show notes. And she's doing an awesome thing, basically putting her collection up, some parts of her collection and donating all the funds to the Philippine Red Cross relief effort. So that is wonderful. And I told her I would, she didn't ask me to put this on here, but it was a no-brainer that I was going to do it.

'''Myke Hurley:''' It's like a perfect twofer.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yep. Yep. So check those things out. It's things, as our friend Patrick Rohn says, things we believe in. And we want to support those things. So I think that's it for us, mate.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Sounds good to me, sir. All right. So if you'd like to get in touch with us, there's a few ways that you can do that. You can go and you can go to penaddict.com. That's where you're going to find Brad. And he is at Dowdy, D-O-W-D-Y on Twitter. And I am iMike, I-M-Y-K-E. And other than that, Brad, I think that we will be back next week.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' We certainly will.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Brilliant. Thanks so much for listening to episode 80 of the Pen Addict. Or if you need the show notes, that's 5x5.tv slash penaddict slash 8-0. Until then, say goodbye, Brad.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Goodbye, Brad.

[[Category:Podcast Transcripts]]
[[Category:The Pen Addict Podcast Transcript]]

The Pen Addict 78/transcript

2026-06-23T16:01:40Z

PencilBot: fixed spelling

{{Infobox podcast transcript
| name = The Pen Addict
| number = 78
| title = Roll Your Sleeves Up, Dowdy
| date = October 29th, 2013
| hosts = [[Brad Dowdy]] 
[[Myke Hurley]]
| guests = [[Jeffrey Bruckwicki]]
| link = [https://www.relay.fm/penaddict/78 Episode 78]
| audiolink = [https://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/traffic.libsyn.com/thepenaddict/penaddict-078.mp3 Audio Episode 78]
| length = 46
}}

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Hello and welcome to episode 78 of The Pen Addict podcast on 5x5. The Pen Addict is a weekly show where we discuss pens, paper, and the analogue tools that we love so dearly. My name is Michael Hurley. Today, I am joined by two beautiful men today. That is, of course, Mr. Brad Dowdy. Hello, Brad. Hey, Myke. How's it going? And I am joined by the one and only Jeff Bruckwicky. Bruckwicky? Bruckwicky? Hi, Jeff. Now, there's a very specific reason for that music, as we are in the final countdown.

'''Jeffrey Bruckwicki:''' Yes, sir. We're excited.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So as we are recording, we're recording a little bit early today, so hopefully we can get this show out in time for people to hear it. We are 17 hours away from Knock Co. being funded and completing the Kickstarter, so I would like to take this opportunity, while I have you two beautiful, very successful gentlemen on the other end of the phone, to congratulate you for your incredible, incredible performance.

'''Jeffrey Bruckwicki:''' Well, thanks. I mean, it's, I can't believe it's about to end. That's kind of sad. Yeah. I think when it started, I was like, man, 30 days is going to take forever.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah.

'''Jeffrey Bruckwicki:''' And then the next thing you know, you know, I'm looking a couple of days ago and it's like, the thing switches to hours, I think, when there's about two days left. Yeah. And I was like, why does this say 41? I was like, oh, that's hours. And that's when, like, it kind of gets real all of a sudden again.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Do you have that thing yet where it says what percentage you are? Does that come at the end?

'''Jeffrey Bruckwicki:''' No, we've got it. I'll get it for you.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I think we're at like 1,400% or something.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Why not? Why not a four-digit percentage number?

'''Jeffrey Bruckwicki:''' Yeah. 1,483%.

== Kickstarter Campaign ==

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Right. So as we speak, you have 1,945 backers who have pledged a total of $74,171 against the goal of $5,000. Now, we want to talk about this today. Of course we do. But we do have one little item of follow-ups, also Kickstarter related. So last week's episode, we spoke about the draft notebook, which is the notebook that you scan and send it off and it's in the cloud. And one of the things that me and Brad spoke about was the fact that it seemed strange to us that you couldn't just do one at a time if you wanted to. Well, in an update to the draft Kickstarter page, they have announced a new funding level. So for $25, you can get one notebook and you can just do it whenever you want, send it back whenever you want. And that's that kind of thing. It's not like a monthly thingamabobber.

'''Jeffrey Bruckwicki:''' Yeah. So John and Marshall reached out to us on Twitter after the episode last week. It was actually pretty quick. It was like we had barely posted. I didn't know anyone had time to listen to it. And the two guys we talked about somehow found it and were hitting us up on Twitter. Super nice guys.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Maybe they're as nice as they are. Maybe they're somehow involved in the NSA.

'''Jeffrey Bruckwicki:''' Yeah, exactly. Exactly. I'm being monitored for sure. There's no doubt for my relationship with Jeffrey Brook Whitney. Yep.

'''Jeffrey Bruckwicki:''' But yeah, they reached out to us and just understood our concerns. And you know one thing I missed last week, Myke, and I don't know how I missed this. So when you send your notebook back to get scanned in, it's essentially destroyed. You don't get your notebook back.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Oh.

'''Jeffrey Bruckwicki:''' So I didn't put that together last week until I was reading on notebook stories. Nifty did a little more in-depth conversation about it. And that's when I realized that – I mean that kind of makes sense because they're going to have to rip it apart to scan it in. And they're not going to send it back to you because that's more shipping cost. So you're going to have this notebook that you've put your handiwork in with pen or pencil and just pouring your thoughts into it. And it's going to go get digitized, but that notebook is going to go away. Right? So the notebook will be essentially destroyed, but that brings about the other part of security. Like I write things in my notebook like that me and Jeff are working on like prototype type stuff. Like and I don't want necessarily that stuff being shared, so that wouldn't be something I put in here. So maybe if you're just like a straight-up artist or something, this would look good. But then your original artwork is also going to get damaged.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I guess it depends. I mean really. I don't know if I really opened that many notebooks after I finished with them.

'''Jeffrey Bruckwicki:''' I know. I know. It's just there's lots of things to think about in what should be a pretty straightforward, simple project. And that's really – looks really well done and really nicely set up. There's kind of a lot of what-ifs and can I wrap my head around what's actually happening here and things like that. But I mean I still think it looks good. I just – I don't think it's for me. But I mean I think some people would find this useful.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I would. I would actually use it.

'''Jeffrey Bruckwicki:''' Yeah.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I would – if this was like – if I was able to back it in the UK, then I would actually do it. Yeah. It's just enough for me to think that it's something that I would want, you know, just to be able to take notes about stuff and just have them scanned and that would be very useful. Just to have it all searchable, like computer searchable, that would be really interesting to me.

'''Jeffrey Bruckwicki:''' Yeah. I'll still think about it because the three-month subscription level is only $29. I mean that's totally fair.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah.

'''Jeffrey Bruckwicki:''' I mean I would do it. I would do it. But yeah.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So good luck to them. And I hope that they are as successful as you, Super Megasars.

'''Jeffrey Bruckwicki:''' Yeah. They've got a little ways to go. But they can maybe make it. We'll see. It'll be close, I think. I think they've just got to, you know, convince a few people of a few things and they'll be rolling. But yeah. It'll be close. So I'll think about it. I might just do it to do it and see what the whole process is like.

'''Myke Hurley:''' And they'll send you a book.

'''Jeffrey Bruckwicki:''' Yeah. You can just do it yourself. That's right. You can have one of my months.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I'll tell you what I'm going to do in the future. I'm just going to mail all of my field notes to Jeff and then he can just like write them out on like to the computer for me.

'''Myke Hurley:''' That'll be great. Yeah. And I'll do the same thing that I do with my notebooks and forget them somewhere and then my wife will throw them out.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' That'll be perfect. That sounds like a very similar system.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah.

'''Jeffrey Bruckwicki:''' And you can get some really cool sketches of me in Jeff's notebooks.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So I want to, obviously we're going to talk about the Kickstarter and where you guys are now and sort of, you know, what's next now that we've had the 30 days. So I figure maybe we should thank Squarespace now and then we can have a clear run through to the end. Does that sound good? Seems like a natural break point in the show. Yeah. I think that's fine. So these fine gentlemen, they are users and supporters of Squarespace. Let me tell you who Squarespace are. They are the all-in-one platform that makes it fast and easy to create your own professional website or online portfolio. For a free trial of Squarespace and 10% off, go to squarespace.com and use the offer code TallyHo10. So Squarespace do awesome stuff. If you're looking to create a site for you, maybe you want your own blog, like I have MikeHurley.net there and Brad has ThePenAddict.com there as well. Is it PenAddict or ThePenAddict? I always forget.

'''Jeffrey Bruckwicki:''' How many times have we gone over this? Not enough times, clearly. Yeah. So it's PenAddict.com, but you yelled at me for months. You need to go by the domain, ThePenAddict.com and redirect it, which I finally did.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, which I was happy that you did that. So we have our own personal blog.

'''Jeffrey Bruckwicki:''' ThePenAddict.com and sent me to hover.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' That's some real cross-promotion right there. So yeah, we got that. So if you want to set up a blog there, you can do that. Maybe you're a business. You can set up your business site there or an artist. You want a portfolio. Or maybe you want to sell something online. Well, you can do that too with Squarespace Commerce, which allows you to sell physical and digital goods. These fine gentlemen that are with me today, they are setting up the KnockCo website there. It's knockco.com. You can find the blog and all that stuff. And that's also where you will be able to go after the Kickstarter campaign is all squared up and buy their wonderful products and projects. Let me tell you why. Let me tell you why I believe that these gentlemen chose this. It's because Squarespace have fantastic features, really easy to build pages with Squarespace. Everything's WYSIWYG, so what you do, what you see is what you get. So as you're dragging sliders around the page, it's automatically updating for you in front of your very eyes. You want to change colors and fonts, and it all updates so you can see exactly how any changes you want to make are going to look. But they have beautiful, award-winning templates that you can build your site from. It's so easy to use, but they have a 24-hour, 7-day-a-week support team. Brad has contacted them during his insane work hours in the middle of the night, and they've been there right for him. So they're awesome with that. It's definitely the truth. We know that much. I mean, I'm in the other side of the globe to Squarespace, and they can respond to me whenever I need them to. Squarespace plans start at just $8 a month. They include a free domain name if you sign up for a year. I want you to go and try them out, and I'm sure that you're going to fall in love. So go to squarespace.com, sign up for free trials, no credit card needed. When you decide to sign up and purchase an account with them, you'll get 10% off if you use the offer code Tallyho10. That's T-A-L-L-Y-H-O-1-0. Thanks so much to Squarespace for the support of Panaddict and all the 5x5. They give you everything that you need to create an exceptional website. So you two are in the tail end of the roller coaster. You are pulling back into the station to be helped out with a carriage by an attendant. I believe that's an apt metaphor. The project has had an incredible start, like a really incredible start, and you've been building really strongly up to this point now where you are. Has anything changed in the last day or so? I know that a lot of projects, they see an uptick again. Are you guys experiencing that yet?

'''Jeffrey Bruckwicki:''' Yeah, yeah, it has been. I think the first week, week and a half, was pretty rapidly in an upward angle. There was lots of backers each day, and then for a two-week period in the middle, it kind of slowed down some to where it was just very steady every day, just a small amount every day. It was almost the same for about two weeks straight. And then starting about two, three days ago, we started to see an uptick again. And so I thought we'd finish around 65 or 70, the way things were tracking. But that last little uptick is the truth. Dan Bishop from Kara's Customs told me this would happen, and that's exactly what's happened. So we're getting these last-minute backers and everyone coming to the site and getting a definite increase in pledges. So it's been awesome. It's been awesome to see.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So is the excitement maintaining, or is it just norm now? It's like, oh, these people just keep buying our products.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Jeff, how does that feel for you?

'''Myke Hurley:''' For me, I don't know, to be honest. It's one of those things where, and like Brad and I have spoke about it some, and it's like, oh, we're so close to 75. I know that we're at 74 and we wanted $5,000, but it's like, can somebody just give me a little extra money? Come on. Yeah. I know you have it. But it's been really exciting, just the whole process. And the first day was the most mind-blowing day I think I've had in a really long time. Just seeing it go from zero to 5,000 in the first hour and then 20,000 by the end of that day. Nothing could have happened unless everybody pulled out that would have made this any type of failure to us.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So obviously I've spoken to Brad about this some, but what was that first day like for you? I mean, going into it, Brad's this crazy internet guy, and he's got these lofty dreams of being able to make $5,000. Did you think he was crazy?

'''Myke Hurley:''' No, because we met face-to-face for the first time two months before we launched the product, almost to the day. That was it. The first day we met in person, we decided that we would move forward with it, that it was a good idea. And I think by the end of two weeks or so, we had all the numbers crunched, and we knew that it would be a viable product to sell. And because of his internet reach, and yours as well, Myke, we really knew that we could get at least five grand. That was the hope, at least, because that would give us everything we needed to continue with the business.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Go on, Brad.

'''Myke Hurley:''' No, I don't know. I didn't think that – I wasn't afraid of $5,000. We were talking about $7,000 or $8,000 initially, and that was a little more scary to me, I think. And I know now it seems minute, but at the time, it's like, you know, it's twice as much almost.

== Funding Goal ==

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So how did it feel when you sort of blew through that in the first hour? How did that feel?

'''Myke Hurley:''' It was surprising. It was stressful as well, because it's like, oh, we plan to do $5,000. And it was, you know, this many cases estimated out to, and we've now gotten to four times that. And it's – I don't know. It was very stressful. I think that was it.

'''Jeffrey Bruckwicki:''' It's funny. The conversations we had about just setting our goal were long and intense and, like, very – like, we were sweating our goal. We knew it wasn't going to be less than $5,000. But we were talking about putting it at $7,000 or $8,000. We thought it would be crazy to go to, like, $10,000. We're like, what if it doesn't fund? You know, like, we at least want to fund to, you know, to make these machines – to buy these machines so we can, you know, open our shop. So we, like, really sweated those few thousand dollars between, like, $5,000 and $8,000 to put in our goal. And then when it blew by it so fast, it was like, what's happening here? And when is it going to stop? And it did start to freak us out, like, the first couple days. We were really – I mean, we were – I mean, I was stressed. I know Jeff was stressed. But it wasn't necessarily in a bad way. It was just like, okay, we need to kind of reboot and recalibrate what our expectations are and look at preparing to fulfill a little bit differently than we were before. So by the time we were about a week into it, maybe a week and a half, I think Jeff and I had talked so much and we had kind of redone some things on the back end that we felt, okay, these are the – you know, if this keeps going, these are the big numbers that we can handle, you know, at these levels like 50,000 or went to 100,000, whatever. We're trying to plan ahead and once we realized that we could do that and handle that no problem, I think our stress level went way down.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So I've just gone to the NockCO website to put it into the show notes, which you can find at 5by5.tv slash penaddict slash 78. And I see that you put the final countdown on the – Yeah, you didn't know that?

'''Jeffrey Bruckwicki:''' I figured that's why you did it.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' No, I just did it.

'''Jeffrey Bruckwicki:''' No, that's awesome. I did that this morning. I had to put that out there because Jeff had done it like – when we were getting ready to launch, before we were live, Jeff had tweeted out that video. So I put it in there at the end here, you know, as we're winding down. I figured you'd just seen that off of there.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' No, I just – we're like one mind, the three of us. It's kind of scary.

'''Myke Hurley:''' It is the universal song of success. I want to write the universal song of success.

'''Jeffrey Bruckwicki:''' I know. Well, that thing's got – that video has 52 million views. Wow.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' It's probably just for people doing things like what I just did.

== Rickrolling ==

'''Jeffrey Bruckwicki:''' I know. It's basically like getting rickrolled.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So, Jeff, tell me, have you started production?

'''Myke Hurley:''' I have. We're – I started cutting them out and seeing – because how we're cutting, we're using a CNC machine. So you build out the cut sheet on a table digitally. And so we've been kind of playing around with how many cases we can fit per table and how does that relay to time and all of these things. So we've got almost 60 merry apples done in the blue jay. And then we're working on some brass towns for the early birds so we can get that fulfillment out quickly.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Look at you. So tell me – I mean, obviously, you've been doing this stuff for a long time.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' How are these cases coming together? Like, are you happy with the original designs? Like, are they coming together really well for you? Are you finding any difficult points?

'''Myke Hurley:''' They're not difficult. I mean, we're working with a different machine than I've ever worked with before with the bar tacker. Yeah. We've already acquired that one. And we acquired one other machine just like with our own funds that's just going to do the binding. So we're set up a little more efficiently.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah.

'''Myke Hurley:''' But the bar tacker is the real oddball. There's so many adjustments on it. I've had the – we've got this repairman in Georgia. He's been a repairman for 50 years. And I've been having conversations with him for the last week just learning this machine and trying to tweak it so if it breaks, I can fix it on the fly and we don't have to, you know, be down for days or weeks or anything.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So I guess, you know, the best thing for you to do is to do all of that now, right?

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah, absolutely. I mean, the goal is to be prepared for, you know, in 17 hours or whatever after we get the surveys back, we're ready to go. We just have our cut list and we do it. So obviously –

'''Jeffrey Bruckwicki:''' Go on, Brent. That was – I was going to say that was one of the coolest things about working with Jeff because I don't know anything about the manufacturing side and he's got this down to a T. He's like, I really want to get this bar tacker machine. I'm like, okay, that's great. You know, it's going to give us this stitch and, you know, we're going to be able to do this. And, you know, it's going to be exactly what we need. He said, but what I really want to do is I want to get it early because I need to understand this machine and if it breaks, you know, I need to know how to fix it so I'm not having to call someone out to repair. And, you know, that's stuff that I wouldn't have considered on the front end and he says stuff like that. I'm like, oh, man, I'm glad I'm working with this guy because he's got his stuff together. It's like I wouldn't even consider that.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So you guys are really kind of like the perfect partnership for this because you've got Brad, obviously you've got the expertise in this very specific field. And then Jeff, you have the ability to actually make the stuff like without each other. You know, it would I wonder if if you could have made if you could have done this.

'''Jeffrey Bruckwicki:''' I'm not I'm not sure we could have.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I don't I don't think that I could have.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Well, I was going to say I definitely know Brad couldn't. But, you know, because because he, you know, he can't. So, yeah, not yet.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Oh, we will be. Don't you worry about that.

'''Jeffrey Bruckwicki:''' Yeah. He keeps threatening to get me behind the machine. I don't we're going to see how well that's going to work out for him.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Well, yeah, you have a few thousand of these things to make.

'''Jeffrey Bruckwicki:''' Mr. Dowdy, so you better roll your sleeves up. Yeah. So whoever gets crooked binding, you know, those are ones together.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Not of course that won't happen.

'''Jeffrey Bruckwicki:''' That will never happen. That will never happen. You know, I like I wouldn't. Yeah. Jeff knows how particular I am. And Jeff's the same way. And we look at things and we're like, oh, no, no, no. This isn't this doesn't leave the house. We'll just have to give that. My kids have a good stack going of some prototypes that, you know, we're we're not made for primetime yet. So, yeah, we won't send anything out. That's just right on the money.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' The kids are doing the stress testing.

'''Jeffrey Bruckwicki:''' They are. Especially my daughter. She keeps asking for more. She like fills one up. I need another one. I'm like, I don't have any more.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I bet she's just filling them up with your pens as well because they're like a never ending collection.

'''Jeffrey Bruckwicki:''' They are. They they she does know which ones are mine and she goes and gets them and fills up her pen case. Yeah, that's hilarious. So.

== Production Timeline ==

'''Brad Dowdy:''' When are we thinking that the first products are going to be going out of the door? I mean, I know it's really early. I mean, I know it's kind of that question like you're not you've not even received a penny and you won't maybe for a little while to go. Yeah. I mean, I don't know. A couple of weeks, a couple of months. I don't know what the time period is. I know that we've spoken about it's like a nebulous time period. Yeah. Yeah. But when do you think you're going to be in a position that you'll be able to start sending stuff out?

'''Jeffrey Bruckwicki:''' So there's kind of two phases. The first phase being really small that we have a 20. Excuse me. A 200 count Brasstown early bird backer.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Better just be 100.

'''Jeffrey Bruckwicki:''' Scroll down. Scroll down. Uh oh. Where is it? 100. 100. 100. You just can't trust this guy for anything. I know. I know. I was pushing. I remember I was pushing for 200 and we're like. Maybe not so much. Because you never know how that, you know, how the manufacturing is going to go. And so we gave those a December 2013 estimated delivery. That's going to be a non-issue. I think we'll ship those in November.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah.

'''Jeffrey Bruckwicki:''' Probably before Thanksgiving.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah. Just, you know, because of how this goes and because of the quantities that we are ending up having to do, there's some delays and things like that with getting the pieces for the cases. Like, you know, the zipper and things like that. We have to order such a quantity to fulfill these that they have to make the zipper for us.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Right.

'''Myke Hurley:''' And that's something that we just didn't even imagine. It's YKK. You know, it's one of the largest zipper manufacturers in the world, if not the largest. And they have to make, you know, this amount of zipper just for us. And it's going to be, you know, a week or two for them to complete that.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Right. But you're still thinking that January, but like by January, we'll be. Oh, yeah.

'''Jeffrey Bruckwicki:''' Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But that's why we wanted to get started early so we can get past these things like the zipper. You know, as soon as if we waited till the money comes in and then we call YKK and they say we don't have that stock. We're going to have to make it. Well, then I've waited two weeks for the money and then I'm waiting two more weeks for YKK. And that's killing me. So that's why we wanted to go ahead and get everything rolling. And so we might have zippers before I even get money from Kickstarter, you know, to apply to that, to that cost.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So I think on the behalf of the backers of which I am one, I want to thank you guys for actually doing that because you didn't have to do that. And you could kind of just be like, sorry, guys, this is what happens. But instead, you've you've put your money where your pencil cases are.

'''Jeffrey Bruckwicki:''' Yeah. I mean, it's important. It's important to us. We want to not just make a great product. You know, we want to give everyone a good experience, you know, working with us, you know, as not co because you're building a customer base.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Right.

'''Jeffrey Bruckwicki:''' And yeah, this is going to be a sustainable business. I mean, like I've said it a dozen times on this on this show. This isn't just a Kickstarter company. Right. I mean, we're we're so excited for the next phase already. And actually, Jeff was Jeff brought me prototypes today for new products that, you know, we're looking to launch next year. So we're already starting down that path. So we we have to nail this delivery and this fulfillment for this Kickstarter project. And we're doing everything we can to do that.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I mean, you know, talking about the shipping, you do have one really like important order to fulfill that. Right. There's like there's one that has to go, I think, to the night kingdom that apparently is quite important. Yeah.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I think my buddy up in Rippin ordered something. I think.

'''Jeffrey Bruckwicki:''' Yeah. I mean, yeah, that guy. I thought you were talking about the queen.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Well, I mean, yeah, if she ordered something. Just looking at the page as well. I see somebody bought dinner with you.

'''Jeffrey Bruckwicki:''' Yeah. Yeah. We'll see how that works out.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So, I mean, it all kicks. I mean, we kind of joked about that. I know. And somebody's actually done it. Yeah.

'''Jeffrey Bruckwicki:''' With you guys. Huh? Who wants to eat dinner with you guys? I know, right? I mean, have you seen us? It's a shame, really.

'''Jeffrey Bruckwicki:''' Maybe we'll just do a Skype dinner. Perfect. We'll like send out an order with like white tablecloth and candles and wine. And we'll just set up a Skype session.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' The custom pen case, though, man. That's going to be cool.

'''Jeffrey Bruckwicki:''' That would be cool. And man, the designs we have in our head, too, are just mind boggling. So, yeah. Looking good. Looking good.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Come on. Tell me something. What are you guys working on next? What are we going to get after the pen cases? Come on.

'''Jeffrey Bruckwicki:''' You're putting me on the spot there.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I am. I don't want to say. Jeff's holding a knife to you right now, isn't he?

'''Jeffrey Bruckwicki:''' No, no. But, I mean, I think he's on the same page as me. You don't want to say it if it's not going to come true.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' You don't need to say it. You can just hint.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Okay. Let me ask this then. Are you looking at products outside of other pen storage facilities?

== Sleeping Bags ==

'''Jeffrey Bruckwicki:''' Yes. Okay. And that's exactly how I was going to answer it. There will be products besides pen cases.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Are you going to make... That was... You have one question.

'''Jeffrey Bruckwicki:''' A sleeping bag. Yeah. I'm going to make the... What's the one Polar makes?

'''Myke Hurley:''' Oh, the nap. Yeah.

'''Jeffrey Bruckwicki:''' It's like a jacket, but it's a sleeping bag. It's like a full-length sleeping bag, but you walk around in it. Yeah. That's what we're going to make next.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' It's going to be a human case instead of a pen case. I like the sound of this. This is all really great stuff.

'''Jeffrey Bruckwicki:''' Yeah. And they'll modify from one person to two people with the zippers. You can just attach the two sides.

'''Myke Hurley:''' You can also crush it down into a pen case.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So, do you have any sense for international orders? Like, have there been lots of international orders? Do you know that?

'''Jeffrey Bruckwicki:''' Yeah. I would say lots, yeah. Really? I don't have a breakdown. It's a large number.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah. At least, I mean, I would say over 25% just based on the customers that we've spoken with, like through the Kickstarter page or through email or something like that. A lot of that's been international.

'''Jeffrey Bruckwicki:''' Yeah. If I had to guess, I was thinking about 25%.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Does that make you think any differently? Like when you're pimping the made in America stuff? Does that make you think any differently? I mean, it probably shouldn't, but I just wonder.

'''Jeffrey Bruckwicki:''' No, no. It makes us excited.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah.

'''Jeffrey Bruckwicki:''' To get that exposure.

'''Jeffrey Bruckwicki:''' I mean, you know, we've talked to a lot of people in the UK, a lot of people in Germany.

'''Jeffrey Bruckwicki:''' Spain and France, I think, seem to be the main, where the main orders were coming from. And it's quite a lot.

== International Orders ==

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I'll be interested to find out the person is the furthest away. You know? Yeah, that's a good question. I wonder what country would be the furthest country that you have to ship to.

'''Jeffrey Bruckwicki:''' Yeah. I know we've had some India. Yeah. That's cool.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Singapore was like the most obscure one that I've seen. That's incredible, right?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' All the way out in Singapore.

'''Jeffrey Bruckwicki:''' Mm-hmm. Yep. That's going to be cool.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I hope that person's listening right now.

'''Jeffrey Bruckwicki:''' I hope so.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I hope so.

'''Jeffrey Bruckwicki:''' You know, that's... It's going to be cool to be able to ship these all over the world and get the feedback from different people using them from different things and, you know, help us learn how to, you know, continue to make even better products. I mean, it can only be good.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So, let's look at a little bit about the future business model of your company. So, we have a Kickstarter project which has given you initial funding to set up the company to get some of the tools that you need also to build a customer base. And then, as we've mentioned before, you're then going to have like an ongoing store, which will be at notco.com. But then, when you're launching new products, do you think that you will launch them directly? Do you think you might go down the Kickstarter route again?

'''Jeffrey Bruckwicki:''' No, I think we're going to launch directly.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Oh, that's quite interesting to me. What if you went with something really sort of out there?

'''Jeffrey Bruckwicki:''' Yeah. I think we would consider Kickstarter for a large project if we needed specific machinery tooling. If we were trying to accomplish something very specific or very large, it wouldn't – I don't think you're going to see pen cases from us on Kickstarter again. But you could see something different. I mean, I don't know. I don't – there's no product in my head that I'm thinking of. I'm not, you know, being coy. I'm just saying that this could be another Kickstarter project.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' What about if you wanted to make a pen, right? Oh, sure. You know, you would need new tools to actually do that.

'''Jeffrey Bruckwicki:''' Yeah, yeah. Oh, I'm not opposed to going back to Kickstarter for different types of funding. But I think in general, when we launch new products, they're going to be through the online store.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I don't actually think it would be possible for you to make a pen. I feel like you wouldn't be able to settle with yourself on that.

'''Jeffrey Bruckwicki:''' Yeah, I think that's what's prevented me from doing that for so long. And you and I have talked for years about, you know, me starting something. And I think my hesitancy before was always that I didn't want to do a pen for kind of that reason. It was like, well, how am I going to, you know, design this? Or am I ever going to be happy with it?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' It would have to be the perfect pen, wouldn't it? In theory, you know, because of the type of person that you are. Right. You would need to, it wouldn't be allowed to have a floor.

'''Jeffrey Bruckwicki:''' Right. That would probably keep me up at night a lot. That would be difficult. Which is why I never did it, which is why it took so long to just find the right, the thing that I felt was right. And the, you know, the business partner that I felt was right to work with.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Because I guess with what you guys are making now, it's easier to make a product that is without flaws. I imagine just because the intricacies of a pen and the variables that are there are extremely high. But with great materials put together in a really great way, I assume it's probably a bit easier to nail what you guys are doing. You can please correct me if I'm wrong.

'''Myke Hurley:''' No, and I think being able to control the manufacturing gives us a huge amount of leeway as well. We're not ordering, you know, a thousand in each color and each type from some factory, you know. And each case is a living thing, if you will, you know. Like if 20 people have a complaint about the high tower, then we might be able to alter something small in that. And it'll be a different usability within that case. And with a pen or something like that, I don't think you can do that as easily. You can't have 100 versions of the same pen because we obviously can't manufacture it ourselves. It'd be through a third party and it would be very tricky. And he always has different favorite pens too.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, that's the thing, right? That would make it quite difficult. You know, you've just mentioned something there, Jeff, which is such an obvious point, but it's only really just occurred to me now. What kind of makes the Kickstarter that you two are doing different to many Kickstarters of this type is the people that are making it are the ones that are, the guys that are actually putting it together are the ones that are putting up the page. Quite frequently, with many of these projects, not all, but many, you will see a, I don't know, what are they called the project owners? Is that the right term? They will have contractors that make the stuff for them. Let's look at the Visionaire, for example. The Visionaire compared to the RenderK. So at Karis Customs, they make their stuff themselves. At Visionaire, we have absolutely no idea what he's doing. Right. And, you know, and so that's quite interesting to me that you guys are actually building this stuff. That's cool. That's really cool. Because I think it's quite rare even with this. Because you have to have the experience, which doesn't, you know, not everybody has. Especially people that are interested in Kickstarter because they tend to be a more techie bunch.

'''Jeffrey Bruckwicki:''' Mm-hmm. I mean, I think that was important to us from the get-go just for our future business growth. We, Jeff and I, want to have that flexibility that you can only get when you're the one with your hands on the product. You know, we're going to be touching all these products ourselves. The stitches that go, you know, on these cases are, you know, being laid down by Jeff's hands. And that's important to us because, you know, like Jeff was alluding to, we can adjust on the fly if needed to from a manufacturing perspective. But what's important to me is to have that, I don't know, fast turnaround for future projects to where I could sketch up a prototype. And in a week, Jeff's got something cut and stitched in my hands. And we can say, oh, this is crap. Or, oh, this might be interesting. And I think that's the only, not the only way for us to go forward, but I think that's the best way in our situation for what we're trying to accomplish. You know, not to be, we don't want to be like a, like a pen case mill that's just going to make generic, you know, two or three products over and over again. And we want to make unique stuff constantly. So, you know, having that, that hands-on manufacturing, I think for us is the only way to go.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I'm pleased.

'''Jeffrey Bruckwicki:''' So are we.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So we're now at 1,947 backers. That's 74,271. So one of the interesting things that you've got as opposed to backers is, you know, people can raise their pledges. So for anybody listening to this, what would be the reason in your mind, Brad, for somebody, you know, who's maybe at the $30 level to maybe bump up to one of the other project levels, like the pledging levels?

'''Jeffrey Bruckwicki:''' I think there's such a, there's a variance in the products, a variety of uses for the products. Just Jeff coming over to the house today, I've showed him what I've used my chimney top for. I don't even use it for pens, but I use it for pen-related things. I have all my spare nibs in one of our chimney top cases, and it's totally the perfect case. And then, you know, I have something completely on the opposite side of the thing in the Brasstown with the rollout tongue where I can protect the nice pens that I want. But then I've got that little extra pouch where I can throw in like a phone cable and a pocket knife that, you know, I carry around with me. There's so many different uses for each of these cases. And heck, there's probably uses we haven't even thought of yet that someone, I know as soon as we sent out these prototypes, people were doing things that we hadn't even considered with them. You know, like Ed Jelly, you know, had one of the lookout, the three-pin holsters and the way he was attaching his notebooks to it. I was like, we didn't even consider that. And, you know, that's kind of a nice little thing. And then that gives us, you know, ideas for future projects that, you know, hey, let's sketch something out around this and things like that. So I think there's a lot of flexibility in all of the products to where you can really kind of make them fit what you need to happen with the cases.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' It's such a shame that my prototype got lost in the post.

'''Jeffrey Bruckwicki:''' That's crazy, isn't it?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' It's so sad that that happened.

'''Jeffrey Bruckwicki:''' Well, you know how many more prototypes you have than me? None? Zero, zero.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Send them all out.

'''Jeffrey Bruckwicki:''' Yeah.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' But I bet you've got products now, though.

== Brasstown Pens ==

'''Jeffrey Bruckwicki:''' No, I don't. I've got an old, I'm using a Brasstown. That's not even our final version because we changed it from the one that I'm using. I guess the chimney tops I have are about the final ones.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' It starts to unravel already.

'''Jeffrey Bruckwicki:''' Mm-hmm. So, yeah, we, no, we've, we'll have some more coming soon. So, but yeah, I don't have a lot of, you and I have the same amount of actual prototypes.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah, it's just the new one that no one else has seen. That's what I carry every day. Yeah. Because nobody else can see it or have it in their hands right now. So, it's the only way that I'm able to use one of our cases. Yep.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Okay. So, gentlemen, is there anything else that you would like to add? I mean, I want to make sure that people hear this before the project is over. So, Jeff, I mean, have you got anything you want to add to the listeners, to the backers? Because I'm sure a lot of our listeners will actually be backers of the project.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I just want to thank everyone for their support thus far. I mean, it's been great the response that we have gotten, especially on Twitter and everybody like dealing with my Pog stuff and stupidity.

'''Myke Hurley:''' And then just, you know, a lot of people have sent really kind words about what's to come in the future and them still supporting us. And we really don't want to let anybody down with what we're going to do coming up. And I don't know. I guess it's just one big thanks. And I also wanted to ask, do you write down your Squarespace ad scripts?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Okay. So, this is an inside thing. I have a script that is set. Got it. It is a set script. But that's the same script every week, which I do not read. I will use it for talking points and refer to it. But more often than not, I mean, I know that script so well. I actually know the features. Well, I know the features of Squarespace so well now that I can just talk to you about it. And every ad is, I try and make every ad different.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Right. So, what you're saying is you're a real pro.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Well, you know.

'''Myke Hurley:''' He is a pro.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Come on. Of course I'm a pro.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Come on in, Dowdy. What have you got? What do you want to say?

'''Jeffrey Bruckwicki:''' I echo a lot of Jeff's sentiments. The support we have received has been, I guess, mind-blowing. Life-changing. It could be. This community that we're all a part of, if you're listening to this podcast or reading the Pen Addict blog has been one of the most important things in my life just from, you know, meeting people and meeting like-minded people and just the support that everyone's given has been amazing. So, I just wanted to thank everyone. And I really wanted to thank Jeff, too, because without him, you know, I wouldn't be doing this. I can promise you that. I couldn't imagine just having a better partner and doing this. And it's, we're just scratching the surface, I'm pretty sure. It's the way I feel right now with all the support we've gotten and with the plans that we have. I think the best is yet to come. And that's no exaggeration.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So, obviously, as I assumed from you two lovely gentlemen, that you are very, you are very, very kind and nice to the people. Of course, you are. And you're very humble. So, I'm going to step in now and say, listen up, you lot. You only have a few hours left to get involved in this. If for any insane reason you have not backed this project, then you need to do it now. You need to buck your ideas up, pull your socks up, and go to knockco.com. You'll find the links to the Kickstarter there. Go and back the project that these fine gentlemen are doing, because not only will it give you that warm, fuzzy feeling inside, you will receive a beautifully crafted, handmade product at the end to keep your lovely pens safe and secure. And if you are one of the amazing people that have already backed the project, find a way to give these guys more money. Just do it. You know, it's not hard. Just go back to the Kickstarter page and, you know, just maybe bump up a bit. And if you're at the top, then okay, you're okay. Maybe set up another Kickstarter account and do another one.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So, gentlemen, is that the good place for people to go? Knockco.com. N-O-C-K-C-O.com. That's where they can find the links to everything they're going to need, right?

'''Jeffrey Bruckwicki:''' Yep. All the links are there. Links to the Kickstarter are there. Make sure if you are a Kickstarter backer or even not, or even just interested in the company, follow our Instagram feed, because Jeff puts a lot of the production photos on there as things are, you know, progressing along. So that's been a fun feed to watch. And I try to share out some of those images as often as I can, so people can actually see their cases being made. So that's pretty cool. So, yeah, that's the best place to go. You can get all the information about Knockco.

'''Myke Hurley:''' There's going to be a lot more coming up soon, because I think next week is the day that I have decided to just start working eight hours a day on cases.

'''Jeffrey Bruckwicki:''' Wow. Yep. So you'll see lots of action here coming up as soon as this project ends.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Follow that Instagram. Get all those great pictures. Yeah, I think that's good. I mean, also as well, people, I've made sure the links to this stuff are in the show notes, which again are at 5x5.tv slash penaddict slash 78. If you want to catch up with Brad, then please do so by going to penaddict.com, or he is at Dowdyism, D-O-W-D-Y-I-S-M. Jeffrey, do you use Twitter enough that you would like people to contact you personally, or should they just go through the Knockco Twitter?

'''Myke Hurley:''' If it's during regular business hours, I will be manning the Knockco handle, which is nothing but fun.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' It's all pogs and fun times.

'''Myke Hurley:''' All pogs and fun times, and trying to get you to play rock, paper, scissors through pictures. Yes, one day, one day.

'''Jeffrey Bruckwicki:''' We do like to keep it fun.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yes. Is that all, gentlemen?

'''Jeffrey Bruckwicki:''' I think so, and I think we want to thank you, Myke, because you've been a huge supporter. I mean, I know you and I are friends, and we've known each other for quite a while, but you don't have to do the things that you do, and I appreciate all the support that you've given us, and that is noticed, and we really appreciate it.

== Pen Addict Podcasts ==

'''Myke Hurley:''' I actually started going back and listening to the early versions of Pen Addict podcasts, probably when they were still on 70 decibels, and I have found that you were then where I am now with pens. Yes. I never had a pen case, really, until a year ago or whatever when we first sent one to Brad, so it's a new-growing experience, and it's cool to go back and listen to those in the archive to kind of live those same experiences with you.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yes, that's a good point, I think, for people that are jumping onto the show, and we try and mention this. I had an interest in pens, but I wasn't very knowledgeable in them, and over the time, over the 78 episodes that we've done, my interest and knowledge has wrapped up. So if you're coming in now and you're like, I don't know what to do, go back to number one, because really, I mean, obviously we do talk about some newsworthy items that are happening, you know, Kickstarter projects or whatever, but all of those projects are now, like, available to buy and stuff, so you can do that, but you will learn with us, and you will see how, like, for example, I mean, I take, I personally feel like I take credit for introducing Brad to a love of fountain pens. I'm just going to say that I forced him into that, and then he took it and ran with it, and now I'm learning from him again, which I kind of don't understand how that happened, but it did. So yeah, you should go back and do that, but thank you guys. I mean, I wouldn't do any of this if I didn't believe in the product, and I think, and I cannot wait to get my hands on this stuff. Congratulations. Seriously, just massive congratulations for what you've achieved. I can't wait to see what number this finishes up on. I'm very confident you're going to break that. I was going to say we, it's not we, it's you guys, we're going to break that 75,000 mark, so we're all along with you in spirit.

'''Jeffrey Bruckwicki:''' Right. That's right. This is everyone's project. So we appreciate all the support, and we love all the feedback. So we feel like this is a project for everyone, and everyone can be

'''Brad Dowdy:''' involved in it with us. Can't believe it actually happened. I can't believe it's happened. We're there. You've done it. I know. I know. All right. So we'll be back next week, and I'm sure that we'll have something else to say about next week. Jeffrey, it was great to talk to you on the show. Thank you

'''Myke Hurley:''' for joining me today. As well. Thanks for having me. Thank Brad for having me over and letting me be a part of this amazing, amazing project and see what's coming up next. Awesome stuff. Thank you

'''Brad Dowdy:''' for listening. I'm iMike, by the way, on Twitter. I am YKE. We'll be back next week. Thanks, Brad.

'''Jeffrey Bruckwicki:''' All right, man. Thanks. Bye-bye. Bye.

[[Category:Podcast Transcripts]]
[[Category:The Pen Addict Podcast Transcript]]

The Pen Addict 73/transcript

2026-06-23T16:01:23Z

PencilBot: fixed spelling

{{Infobox podcast transcript
| name = The Pen Addict
| number = 73
| title = Polar Beer
| date = September 26th, 2013
| hosts = [[Brad Dowdy]] 
[[Myke Hurley]]
| guests =
| link = [https://www.relay.fm/penaddict/73 Episode 73]
| audiolink = [https://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/traffic.libsyn.com/thepenaddict/penaddict-073.mp3 Audio Episode 73]
| length = 58
}}

'''Myke Hurley:''' Hello and welcome to episode 73 of The Pen Addict podcast on 5x5, your weekly dose of pens, paper, and the analogue tools that we love so dearly. My name is Myke Hurley and I am joined by the most limited of all editions, Mr. Brad Dowdy.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yes, I like it. How are you? Good, sir. How are you?

'''Myke Hurley:''' I'm very well, mate. Very well indeed.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Good. Are you rested and recuperated?

'''Myke Hurley:''' Pretty much. Pretty much.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So you've had a big trip in the past week, world travelling Myke Hurley.

== Portland ==

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yep, went out to Portland. Had a great time.

'''Myke Hurley:''' How's that flight like? It took 12 hours in total because you can't get a direct flight to Portland, so I had to go through Canada. I went through Canada.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' You said hi to Jim Dalrymple. A different part of Canada.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Cool, cool. So you went to the XOXO Fest.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Mm-hmm.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' And there was lots of interesting goings on there. And, you know, I became familiar with the XOXO Fest last year because our friends at Field Notes contributed or had available some neat field notes, neat extra field notes. It's the famed purple field notes edition at the 2012 XOXO Fest. And I noticed on the docket this year, Mr. Kudel and Draplin were also in attendance this year. Did you have any field notes love this year at XOXO? Oh, baby.

== Field Notes ==

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Fuchsia.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Fuchsia. Fuchsia. Bright. I've seen some pictures. I've seen some pictures. Is it as bright in person as the pictures have shown?

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yep. I am, as we speak, uploading an image to my Squarespace page. Okay.

'''Myke Hurley:''' So everyone will be able to see what these look like. So that will be in the show notes, which you can find at 5x5.tv slash panaddict slash 73. You'll find a link to my field notes page and it'll be right down the bottom. They are a nice, bright sort of fuchsia pink this time. I like it. Yeah, and I've got, I have a set for you.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Oh, yes. Thank you, sir.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Which I will be sending. And I picked up a set for two more people who asked me in advance of me going. And then I have two sets left for myself and I gave one set to my lady friend because she said, I want some of those field notes things that you've got. So I thought this would be perfect. So I've given a set of these. They also had a, like a draplin stand. I didn't actually get to meet the man himself. Which was a shame because I did really want to, but he didn't seem to be around whenever I was there. Right. Or if he was there, he was like, there was a huge cure on the table. So I didn't want to go up and bug him whilst he was actually trying to sell some stuff. Exactly. But I bought the amazing draplin spaceship t-shirt. The spaceship t-shirt. How good looking is that? Oh, I love that.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' It's spectacular, isn't it?

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah, I really love that. So I've actually got a picture of that on my Instagram. So I'll put that in the show notes. And I bought a sticker of that as well. Okay, cool. Put that on my laptop.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I keep debating. I need to go to the draplin site, to the DDC merch shop online and pick up a couple things myself.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah, I think you should. I didn't even know that they did, that he had an online site. Yep. Sure does. So yeah, you should definitely pick up the space shuttle thing if you can. I recommend it. It's one of my favorite t-shirts that I own now. And I also bought a steno pad, the Field Notes steno pad. I've not opened it yet, but I figured while I'm here, let's buy a piece of Field Notes goodness.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Might as well.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah, I thought, why not? You know?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I love the dimensions of the steno book. I'm a big fan of the steno.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah, I didn't know how big it actually was. It's a good size.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, five by eight-ish or so. I'm not sure the exact dimensions, something like that.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah. That sounds about right.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Mm-hmm.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I also caught up with Mr. Kudal.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Mm-hmm.

'''Myke Hurley:''' We spent some time, just like a few minutes together. We were talking because he was there for a couple of the days of the conference. And we had a good chat. And somebody came over and they asked if he had told me the new edition. And I categorically said that I did not want to know. That's right. But Jim told me that I will find out. I would have... He told me, you'll find out on Tuesday.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Nice. And he was right. I didn't want... I honestly didn't want to know. I assumed that he probably had some of them with him. But I didn't want to... I didn't want to spoil it for myself.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, exactly. And I think that's a good idea. And I think that's a good idea. And we're definitely going to talk about that. That surprise. But I don't want to get there yet, almost. Okay. So did Jim talk at the event or anything? No, no. He was just in attendance. He was just there. Yeah.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Cool. And did Draplin do a talk or no?

'''Myke Hurley:''' Nope. He just had a table. They have like a thing called the Unmarket. Which is where sort of independent sellers, they sell stuff. And he has an office in Portland. Right.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, that's his home base.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Which is literally down the street. Like you can see it from the place called the YU Contemporary. Which is where the conference was held. So, you know, it makes perfect sense. Hence why they get the Field Notes editions made.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Cool.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Because he's a local.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So I was going through the XOXO Fest. You know, watching the tweets and the tags and the Instagramming. And I ran... I didn't look at... I didn't notice the speaker list. It's like the full speaker list. Did you get to go to some of the... See some of the speakers and things? I was at every single talk, yeah.

== Molly Crabapple ==

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Oh, good. So you got to see... Did you get to see one Miss Molly Crabapple?

'''Myke Hurley:''' I did, yeah.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I'm a huge Molly Crabapple fan. I don't know if you know this. I don't know if I've talked to her about her on the show. But I like her artwork and her writing online. She does lots of different things. And she's done some cool Kickstarter projects in the past that I've supported. And I've talked to her online through email when I was at JetPens and some things like that. About some pen stuff and things like that. So I have a huge crush on Molly Crabapple. I should have told you that before to make sure you attended the Molly Crabapple session. So hopefully that was cool. And she talked about some of her things.

'''Myke Hurley:''' It was one of the most peculiar.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' That doesn't surprise me. She's an interesting girl. Yeah, it was... I mean, she's... Yeah, it was... She does things from just crazy artwork to these Dr. Sketchy's conferences to... She was recently at Guantanamo Bay for Vice doing an article about that. So she's all over the place doing lots of different things.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I'm looking... I'll leave it at that. I'll look for the video when they come out. They do release the videos eventually for the XOXO Fest, right? Yeah, they will be.

'''Myke Hurley:''' They will be releasing the videos.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Okay. So I'll look forward to checking that out. I'm glad you found it interesting. Now my interest has peaked to see.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah, it was definitely an interesting one. To say the least.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Nice. Nice. All right. Well, we got lots of good things to talk about today. And I know one of them we wanted to get to is that new Field Notes release. I got lots to say about that guy. I got them in about 10 minutes ago. I went to the mailbox before we started this show. So they are in hand. So do you want to take care of our first sponsor? Then we'll get into the nuts and bolts.

'''Myke Hurley:''' That sounds like a great idea, sir. An absolute great idea indeed. So, of course, this episode is brought to you by the fine folks over at Squarespace.com. This is where you can go to get everything you need. It's the all-in-one platform for creating your own space online. They make it fast and easy to build your own website or online portfolio. Maybe you want a site for your business. Maybe you want somewhere to sell something. Well, Squarespace have got all of that in hand. Sign up for a free trial and get 20% off during September by going to Squarespace.com and using the offer code Tallyho9. Squarespace are always doing great work. Great work. I love the stuff that they do. As we're talking, I'm adding very simply a new image to my Field Notes page on my Squarespace site. And I'm just dragging and dropping it around the page and just very easily resizing it. I needed to rotate the image. So once it was uploaded into one of the image blocks in their drag-and-drop platform in their page-building tools, I was able to just go straight in and edit the image and rotate it from all within the browser. It's all within Squarespace's tools. They have an Aviary plug-in, so they use the fine folks over at Aviary. They use their photo editing tools, and that's built right into Squarespace. It's just one of the many features that they have built in. And on the front end, so for people to see, they have a choice. We have 20 highly customizable templates. They're really beautiful. They've won numerous design awards for these templates. If you need any help at all at Squarespace, it's so easy to use. But if you get stuck with anything, they have 24-hour, 7-day-a-week support, as well as a bunch of knowledge-based articles and tutorials and all that fun stuff on their website, too. And every Squarespace site features a unique mobile experience. It's going to match the overall style of your website, so your content is going to look great on every device, every single time. Squarespace plans start at just $8 a month and include a free domain name if you sign up for a year. I want you to go and start your free trial now. No credit card needed, and you can start building your website. When you decide to sign up for Squarespace, make sure that you use the offer code TALLYHO9. That's going to get you 20% off in the month of September. You've only got a few days left to go on that special offer. And you'll also be helping to show your support for the pen addict. We want to thank Squarespace for their support of the show. So thanks to them and the support of all of 5x5. So that's Squarespace, everything that you need to create an exceptional website.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Awesome. Thank you, Squarespace.

'''Myke Hurley:''' There was one more thing that I meant to mention about the show.

'''Myke Hurley:''' So I met a listener of the show at a 5x5 meetup. Oh, cool. So he came up to me, he had, believe it or not, he had a 70 decibels t-shirt on. Nice. How awesome was that? Yeah, it was pretty sweet. Jason, I believe his name was. I feel terrible for, I'm pretty sure it was, I feel like I say these things, right? And I don't want to get them wrong. You know what I'm like with this sort of stuff. So I'm trying to check now, frantically. Frantically.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Because I'm sure, because when, I hate this stuff. You know what I'm like with this stuff.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Way to go. I know.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I'm going to, I'm looking.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I'm looking. I'm looking. I'm the same way when I pull something off of Twitter. I always end up forgetting or end up saying, trying to determine whether to say their Twitter name or their real name or whatever, and I end up butchering both.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yes, I was, I was right, I believe. It's Jason P. Becker. He's at Jason P. Becker on Twitter. So if it wasn't Jason, although I'm sure it was Jason, this person, Jason has got a free plug. But no, I am 100% sure now. Because I had an image, we took a photo together of him wearing his 70 decibels t-shirt, which was potentially the best thing that happened. I'm going to put that picture in the show notes too, actually, so people can see a very happy me with Jason and his 70 decibels t-shirt on.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' All right, so you mentioned something in the show notes before we get on to the new field notes about Retro 51 at XOXO?

'''Myke Hurley:''' Ah, yes.

== Field Notes ==

'''Myke Hurley:''' So my buddy Chase, who shared a room with me and Matt, Mr. Chase Reeves, I can't remember how we got onto it, but we were just talking about pens and stuff, and I was telling him the stories of the Retro 51 and how great it was. And when we were sitting in one of the talks one day, he was like, let me use this fancy pen of yours. So he used it, and he said, oh my God, I love this. So I gave him one of mine. Nice. I thought that was a nice, you know, he was very kind to us in the week and helped us have a great time, showed us around the city and stuff. So I wanted to pay him back by giving away a pen from my collection to him, and I thought that was a nice gesture. I've never done that for somebody before.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So yeah, don't you love doing that, though, to be able to share that with someone else that, you know, it's kind of, you know, give them something that's nice like that, and it kind of surprises them. And, you know, here, just keep it, you know, it's yours.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Exactly.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Sharing the love. I like it.

'''Myke Hurley:''' But I've said to him, you can't lose it.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' That's great. Yeah, I love giving away, you know, the products that I like and things like that. So to kind of make someone's day and, or, you know, give them something, you know, people, you know, that are picking up this show for the first time, which we're getting tons of new listeners. We get that all the time now on Twitter. To be able to share just the products that we love with people that, you know, we're just kind of getting into this to kind of give them that push to say, hey, there's really some better things out there. And there's some neat stuff going on in this little realm of ours. It's fun to see, you know, how happy they get and how much they enjoy things like that. So that's awesome. Good job by you, mate.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Thank you, sir.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' All right. So while I guess this happened while you were at XOXO, did the new Field Notes actually launch while you were gone? No, I was home. You were home when it came out. It came out on when? Tuesday. Wednesday? Tuesday. Tuesday. So you were already back. So yeah. So the new Field Notes, the fall 2013 edition came out and it's called the Drink Local Edition and it's pretty amazing. I gotta say.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Oh boy, yeah. Yeah. They did a great job.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. When I first saw this, one of my biggest enjoyments about Field Notes, some of my favorite products in the past have always been the multicolored notebooks, like the one three-pack with three different colors or the six-pack in the past with the National Crop Edition where it was six different color notebooks. And this one, the Drink Local Edition is kind of sort of similar to the National Crop even though it doesn't come in a six-pack. It's called the Drink Local Edition. Even though it's billed as a six-pack for the beers. There are six different colored notebooks. There's a three-pack of Drink Local Lager editions and a three-pack of Drink Local Ales editions. And each of them has a different color cover. Let's see. Let's see. The ales have Stout, which is dark brown, black. Amber Ale, which is warm red. And India Pale Ale, which is rusty orange. And lager features the Pilsner, which is the gold one. Bach, which is the brown one. And the pale lager, which is the pale yellow. And again, they kind of nailed my two favorite things that I've always liked about Field Notes. One is the different colored three-packs, each book being a different color. And two is the different colored grid line. Instead of the standard brown, which actually would have matched on this one pretty well, they went ahead and changed it. What are they calling the color of the grid here? They had a name for it.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Hefeisen. Hefeisen. It's Hefeisen. Yellow-orange graph grid. Yeah. Hefeisen.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Hefeisen.

== Kaweco Pens ==

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. Speaking of my bad German, I got corrected on the Kaweco. It's actually, as you can imagine, Kaweco.

'''Myke Hurley:''' No way.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Oh, well, we have to.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' It's got the very V German W. Kaweco.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So, yeah, work on that. Work on that. There'll be a test next episode.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Kaweco. Okay.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' That's hard to say, isn't it?

'''Myke Hurley:''' Kaweco. Well, it is now that we've been calling it, you know. I know.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' But I forgot who sent me the email, but thank you for doing that. It was enlightening.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So, what do you think about this edition?

'''Myke Hurley:''' Oh, I can't wait.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' What are your initial thoughts? You don't have it yet, right? It's not in hand?

'''Myke Hurley:''' No, I will probably have mine before next week's episode. I can't wait to get my hands on it, man. So, it looks so exciting. And you've got the little six-pack thing. I've actually bought another set of each.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Because I know I'm going to love it. And I'm only got one set of each, you know. So, but you have yours. I do. So, you can just go ahead and tell me about it. Because I'm really interested in the covers. Okay.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. And I am, too. So, I haven't. I waited to open it until we got on here. Oh, wow.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah.

== Subscription Pack ==

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So, my subscription pack came with. I got the pencil and the ballpoint pen and the band of rubber. Which has got a permanent place on eBay, apparently, for $2.99. If you're ever interested.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Oh, wow.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' That annoys me so bad. Sorry.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' But I did get the six-pack holder. Which is really cool. It's like if you've ever had the old subscription editions. Where they've done like the insert for like sharpening the carpenter's pencil. Or, you know, the little calendar inserts. It's that same heavy cardboard. And they have the instructions on building the little six-pack holder. Which I thought was a great idea to do it. So, each three-pack. So, I have a three-pack of loggers. And a three-pack of ales. And each of those comes with its own coaster, too. We didn't mention that. So, like the loggers three-pack. On the back of it. This is inside. This isn't loose in the packaging. This is shrink-wrapped inside the belly band of the three-pack. Oh, awesome. The loggers has its loggers-specific coaster. And then the ales has the ales-specific coaster. So, the loggers is a little bit lighter yellow with a little bit different glass on it. And then the ales is a little bit orange. It kind of has orange writing in the ales glass on it. So, let me open up. What are we going to open here? I'll open up the loggers edition here real quick. Because what they did this time, they did a little different finish on the cover. Are they saying it's a plastic? It's not a plastic cover. Right.

'''Myke Hurley:''' So, what we've got is feature heavyweight new page sterling premium 120 covers with a soft touch varnish, giving them a soft, almost rubbery feel. And the logo is varnished with a contrasting gloss. And each book is colored to represent a different brew. So, have a brief history of each style of beer on the back cover. Yeah.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. So, the cover's thick. Thicker than, you know, just the basic covers, the basic memo book covers. But most of the colors editions have had some kind of thicker cover than just the regular craft paper. The finish feels great. It's that satiny finish. Like, I did a review today of the Rodia R Premium notebooks. And it's got the same satiny finish cover. I did make a comment on that, how it's prone to getting fingerprints on it. And this is the same kind of finish, although, you know, it's not getting fingerprints on it as I'm messing around with it. But I like the thickness and I like the feel of it. I want to like the durability aspect of it, honestly. I think it's going to be real good.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' The graph line, the grid line is awesome. This makes a huge difference for me. I mean, I ordered some extras as well. And this could be, like, my go-to edition for, you know, regular use. Like, I've always said, one of the reasons the grass-stained green has always been my number one favorite is because it uses the green line for the grid. And this yellow-orange grid is killer. They did a really good job with this. All the inside covers are, let's see, is it all of them? Yeah, all the inside covers are black, which is kind of cool.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Oh.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' It really sets it off well. So the inside is black with white text.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' You know, it's got all the great practical applications and things like that.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Let's see. The practical applications. Dive-iest dives. I like that. Breweries visited. Barrel count.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah, I'm sure it's all beer-related, right?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' It is. It is. Designated driver rotations.

'''Myke Hurley:''' And then the back, this is cool.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' On the back, it has the Drink Local Lagers logo on there, which is the same that's on the coaster. And then it says, like on the Pilsner book, it goes through the Pilsner description. And then on the Bach book, it goes through the Bach description. And the Pale Lager, the same thing. It lists some of the specs and some of the origination of that type of beer. They kind of boggle my mind with everything that they do for each of these editions and are still charging us the same price. Should I say that out loud?

'''Myke Hurley:''' No, I agree with you. It's insane, right? How they manage to do this stuff all the time.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yes, so for the same price that we've always paid, we get all these extras, all this additional. I know this costs more money to do all this stuff and to add in the coasters and to add in the six-pack holder. Then when you add in all that stuff, the shipping costs more because now the package is bigger to hold all this stuff. And we're paying the same old price.

'''Myke Hurley:''' So to go through our usual, they did a 30,000 print run of each. So 30,000 ales and 30,000 lagers bring it to 60,000 total books on the print run.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yes.

'''Myke Hurley:''' So that's large.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Is that right? Yeah, I'm looking at it now. That is large. Yeah.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, 30, 30. And it's actually 120,000 when you count retail, right? People get that mixed up.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Oh, really?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So you take the print run. There's a colors edition print run. I didn't know that. Which is what's listed here. Yeah, we've talked about this before. Oh. Because if you get it from retail, the back of them say retail edition.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Oh, yeah.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Like this one says limited edition of 60,000. Now if you buy it from like Jetpens or Goulet or local store, it'll say retail edition of 60,000.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Comprende?

'''Myke Hurley:''' Comprende.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. So yes.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I was about to say something on that. I can't remember now. But yeah. Oh, I know what I was going to say. America is the beautiful edition still not sold out.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Oh, really? Yeah.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. Because I was looking with this to go verify the numbers, the print run. Yeah. It's still available on the limited edition run still available. Which that was a 45,000 run, I believe.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' But yeah, this is going to do well. I imagine this one will sell out. Heck, I might just buy them all because I really love this edition. And this one, I mean, I know it's the newness of it and that makes me say something like this. But I might like this better than Night Sky for me personally.

== Field Notes Notebooks ==

'''Brad Dowdy:''' That might be blasphemous. But it may just be the newness of it. You know, that it's, oh, hey, new shiny thing. But just from a use perspective, I love this edition because I love the grid line, the orange, yellow grid line. That really makes a difference for me. And I'm a huge, huge fan of that. So this, I might, we'll see. I mean, time will tell. I mean, it's too early. But that's what I'm feeling so far. But I will, I'm willing to admit that it might just be the newness factor that's got me all pumped up about it. But right now, I think I will personally like it better than Night Sky. Although I think in the end, I think most people would, in the grand scheme of things like that, it's hard to miss that black cover of the Night Sky. They did a really good job on that.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah, but when I saw these ones, I thought, well, this could be my favorite. So we'll see.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. Yeah, we'll see. As I get used in them and see, I will see. I have a feeling that there's a chance I'm going to, this one's going to rank pretty high, I think, in my rankings. And did you watch the 30-second spot online? You know how they usually do a film or whatever?

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yep, I did.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' For each edition. This one, they did a 30-second spot, which is kind of like a beer commercial. And for those who haven't heard Jim Kudol talk, that's him doing the voiceover for the commercial. It's pretty hilarious. And it's not meant to be. It's like a dead serious commercial. But you can tell Jim's like, he's doing like his commercial voice. Yeah. For like a fancy beer commercial. Yeah, it's interesting. I cracked up.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I liked it a lot. I like that they did that as a commercial instead of just like their usual like abstract video that they do.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, it fits in with the whole theme. I mean, it's like perfect. And the six-pack and the coasters. I actually, I ordered a couple extra notebooks as well. And I went ahead and ordered coasters because I'm actually, I'm a coaster guy to begin with. I use coasters. So, you know, I've got, I've got a drink here as we're podcasting sitting on a coaster. And, you know, I have a coaster at work. I don't know. I don't know why coasters are just a thing for me. So, I ordered extra coasters too. So, you can not only just order the extra three packs of the books. You have to order the ales separately from the loggers, right? You get a three-pack of ales or a three-pack of loggers or one of each. And then you can get a coaster set. The coaster set, you get four coasters, two ales, two loggers. And that's only $3.95. So, as always, Field Notes is doing it right.

'''Myke Hurley:''' That's how they do.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yep. So, I'm excited for you to get yours in. I'm interested to see what you think about this. And I'm interested to start getting them in the rotation and see how the covers hold up. I think they're going to do pretty well. But we'll see.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Anything else?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I mostly enjoy the, no, no. I was just going to say I mostly enjoy the grid lines. That's going to be a huge deal for me. So, yeah. No, that's all on that front. So, I think general consensus was this was a hit.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Good stuff.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' In the Field Notes realm.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' And, honestly, how could it not be? Even people that say, I actually, when it came out, I was like, ooh, I wonder if some people who, you know, don't drink or whatever are going to take offense to this. And they're like, most of the comments I was reading was, I don't drink, but this is fantastic looking. And, you know, I'm all over it.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah, they still look good whether you're a drinker or not.

== Montegrappa Pens ==

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yep. Yep. So, I found some new stuff this week that I thought you might like, Myke. Cool. One of the things, I just happened to see it, Gold Spot pens, they carry a lot of different fountain pen lines that I'm not normally familiar with. And I either caught it on their blog or email or something like that that for a pen brand called Montegrappa, an Italian pen brand. And they do, they make some, I've never used one. They make some regular edition pens. All their pens are really good looking. And then they do some special edition pens based on people or time of year or whatever. And I got an email or I saw it on the blog post. They're doing this Montegrappa skull pen for Halloween. And I just thought that looks super cool. I think I tweeted out about it. It's about a $300 pen, but it's all black. It's got skulls all over it. The cap might be a little much for me. I don't know if I'll get it, but I thought it was really neat looking.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' And so I was checking this out and I was talking about it. And then someone tweeted me, was like, well, have you seen the Montegrappa Batman limited edition? And I was like, oh, mercy. I was like, now I remember when that came out. It was probably last year or something. And I'd totally forgotten about it. And I was like, I got to show this to Myke. So have you looked at this Batman pen? I'm looking at it right now. It is nuts. Don't look at the price. I just did. So the skull pen that I was looking at that I thought was pretty cool. I don't know if I'll order that or not. It's borderline. The cap might be a little much to me. The cap's got a single gigantic skull. And the skull looks like he's got like a little shiny rhinestone tooth or something like that. That might be a little much. I like the barrel with all the mini skulls wrapped around. This Batman pen is stunning. Every bit of it. But the difference between the skull pen and the Batman pen is about $2,800. The Batman pen retails for like $3,300.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Oh, no. So it's about $3,000 difference. Yeah.

'''Myke Hurley:''' But if you pay $5,695, you can get a watch and cufflinks too.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Ooh. Now that's got you written all over it. Yep. So we'll have all this in the show notes. You have to check out this Batman pen. It's actually quite impressive. I don't think it's tacky or gaudy or something like that. I mean it's obviously monstrously expensive and I would never even consider. But I'm enjoying looking at it and I love the design of it.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah, I think it looks awesome.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. And like the bats that they have all of the bat symbols that they have all over the barrel, they like they fill in. It's not like consistent around the barrel. Like the back of them, there's just a few and it kind of grows into a bunch around the front side of the barrel. And it's got a really interesting clip on it. I don't know if that's a Batarang clip.

'''Myke Hurley:''' It kind of looks like it.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah.

'''Myke Hurley:''' But they've done their best. Like, you know.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. So I wanted to put this in there for people who haven't seen it. Go check out this link in the show notes. You will. I was impressed. So hopefully you will be too. It's pretty stunning. And I remember when that came out and I just I think I just blew it off. And because it was so expensive. I don't even remember looking at it. But now that I look at it, I'm pretty impressed by it.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I wish I had that sort of money laying around. Yeah.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' See, I don't know that I would even spend it then. I mean, if you spent that kind of money on a pen, would you use it?

'''Myke Hurley:''' If I could spend that sort of money on a pen, then it wouldn't make a difference. Because it would be like buying a $200 pen.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, I guess so. That's true. Like if it was now, like me or you buying this pen, like spending all this money on the pen, I don't know that I could use it. But I guess if you're in the world where you're spending that much on a pen, I guess it would probably be a good point.

'''Myke Hurley:''' But if I was to buy it now, you know, like with the money that I have, I would like just only ever use it at home. And I would empty it all the, you know, I'd empty the ink every time.

'''Myke Hurley:''' You know, I would use it very, very rarely.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Right, right, right. Yeah, I'm with you on that. I don't even know that I'd ink it up. I don't know. I'd be hard pressed. So anyway, so that's not the only interesting pen I found this week. Have you seen, did you get as many tweets and emails as I got about the polar pen on Kickstarter?

'''Myke Hurley:''' I got a few people contact me just to say, you know, look how expensive this thing is, look how well it's doing, that sort of thing. I got an email actually about it. Yeah, I got an email too. I think it's the most successful pen Kickstarter of all time now.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, suck it, Visionaire. Yeah. That lasted all of about a week. This is gone berserk. It's at 421,000. It's in Canadian dollars, but that's practically a one-to-one exchange rate with U.S. dollars. So it's right around that same. And that's only in 10 days. I think this was a 30-day. Oh, no, it's been more. It started on September 10th. So it's been a 45-day.

'''Myke Hurley:''' No, it's 36 days is their funding period.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Okay. So it's been alive for about 15 days, and it's already at $421,000. 7,318 backers. I'm shocked at the quantity of backers that they have and how many they've sold. It's pretty stunning. It's a really unique concept. What it is, it's basically a pin that's built off of a magnet set. Is that the best way to put it?

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' It's hard to explain without going to look at it, but it's basically like the magnets build the barrel of the pin, and you're able to use it as a stylus. You're able to use different pin refills in it based on the amount of magnets you buy. I hope I'm doing this justice. I haven't totally done all my research on it. Just looking at it for me personally, I have zero interest in this pin, but it looks pretty cool. I'm not going to back this pin. I just don't think I would ever use it. What do you think, Myke? Yeah.

'''Myke Hurley:''' It also looks cool. I'm watching the video now, and he's doing a bunch of fun things and cool things with it, but I'm like, this is not at all what I want or need in a pen. Right. Okay. Oh, great. Look, you just made a circle out of it. I mean, okay. That's fine. This is an interesting project, but there's nothing about this. Nothing about this is the reason that I buy pens.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Right. That's why I'm shocked at the money so far. It's pretty crazy.

'''Myke Hurley:''' If you think about it, that makes sense because all of the reasons that we buy pens are not any of the reasons that regular people buy pens. Yeah, I guess that's true. If it makes nearly half a million dollars, it will make over half a million dollars. It could make a million dollars. Mm-hmm.

'''Myke Hurley:''' That's what you would want. You would want something that is so out of the ordinary.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I don't think this could work like this. I can't imagine it working very well. I'm looking at it, right, and these are tiny modular magnets. What happens if you grip the pen too hard? Do they all dislodge? Right.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Do they adjust side to side as you're writing? Is that what you mean?

'''Myke Hurley:''' I would feel like it would be moving around. Mm-hmm. Like the barrel would be contorting as I'm writing. Not a lot because obviously the pen refill runs through the middle of it, but I just can't imagine it working. I don't know. I mean, I'm watching the video as we speak and it looks like a lot of fun, but that's not what I do here. I actually don't think it looks very good.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. Have you ever heard of Buckyballs?

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah, I have some.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So it's very similar to this. That's what it reminds me of. Buckyballs, which are just like the magnet balls. It's like a desk toy where you can just build different shapes with the magnets. And then they ended up getting pulled off the market. But like the U.S. government or whichever, I don't know, whichever business unit monitors this kind of stuff ended up pulling those off the market because they said that they were a danger to children, even though they weren't marketed to children. I mean, I'm totally on Buckyballs' side of this thing. It's kind of ridiculous that they got yanked off the market. But this is the same kind of thing, you know, where those magnets are small enough. And the theory is someone, you know, a kid puts those magnets in his mouth and those magnets stick on the insides of their bodies and do bad things. So that's all I can think about with this thing is that it's very similar to Buckyballs. And, you know, it's probably the same type of market that's buying this pen, right?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Anyone who bought the Buckyballs would be totally into this. And the Buckyballs blew up. I mean, they sold hundreds of millions of dollars worth of those things.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So it's pretty interesting.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' And I don't know what happened on this Kickstarter page, but it's already lost like $25,000 while I'm looking at it.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I was just about to say that to you.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' It went from $421 to $395.

'''Myke Hurley:''' So what has happened there?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I have no clue. It's like it auto-refreshed.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah. It just did that for me. Oh, man. That's so annoying. I wish I knew how many backers there were beforehand.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I said it on the thing. So right now there's $7167. So we'll just have to listen back to see what I said previously.

'''Myke Hurley:''' So the listeners know.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. So I said how many backers there were just a minute ago.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I was just about to say. I was like, hang on. That's changed. Now I've gone down to $395,000. This is where you find out that I had $20,000 behind this thing. And then you turn me off.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' That would be awesome.

'''Myke Hurley:''' That's so weird.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. So anyway, we'll keep watching this. And I'm interested to see how high it goes. But it's not a pen for me. But all I can say is hopefully all the people buying this pen need a pen case. That's all I can say. Huh.

'''Myke Hurley:''' How close.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' We'll close. We'll talk about that at the end. All right. We'll save that to the end. You will be surprised in a good way.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I just did a search. And you didn't show up.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Oh, please. You would know if it was live. I don't know. Probably because I would be in the hospital with like a heart attack or something from stress.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' But yeah, we'll talk about it at the end. And we got a couple other quick topics that I want to get to. And then we'll talk about the Nock launch time. So why don't we get into our last sponsor. And we'll knock out a couple other things. And we'll call it a day.

== Shutterstock ==

'''Myke Hurley:''' Sounds like fun to me. So I'm going to take a quick moment to thank Shutterstock.com. This is where you're going to find over 20 million stock photos, vectors, illustrations, and video clips. Start searching at Shutterstock.com to find the perfect image for your website, ad, publication, or any other creative project. Shutterstock.com gives you a global image collection to find images from across the world to suit your project. Choose between image packs and monthly subscription packages. Whatever fits your needs, you never have to compromise. If you need just one image for your blog or mock-up, you can do that too. Every time you visit Shutterstock, you're going to find something new since they add 10,000 new images every single day. And it's more affordable than you think with no extra charge for large files. Just download any image in any size and pay only one price. They don't nickel and dime you for high-resolution images at Shutterstock. If you need them, just take them. You can easily curate and share pictures via lightboxes, so you can choose your favorite pictures or videos and add them to your own lightbox gallery as you search. And they also have an iPad app if you want to do this too. They also have a huge library of vectors, icons, infographic templates, and video clips, not just images, should you need any of those. And if you need help over at Shutterstock.com, you can get an account rep dedicated to you who can answer any questions. They also have 24-hour support during the week. Go sign up for a free browse account now by going to Shutterstock.com. No credit card needed. And when you find the images you like and decide to purchase, use the offer code PENS9 and you're going to get 25% off any package. Thanks so much to Shutterstock for their support of The Pen Addict and all of 5x5s.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' All right, so I went and searched logger on Shutterstock.com this time. So I don't know why this became a thing, but it's kind of fun to do.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I was going to ask what you searched.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, so I'm looking at all the loggers, and it's pretty cool. We got 23,484 results for loggers. It's really cool. The resolution on these pictures is pretty amazing. If you're putting together anything, any kind of anything online, you know, related to, I don't know, not just beer, but gosh, any topic you can imagine has got so much stock imagery on here. It's amazing. Yep. And the vector images on the beer ones are really cool, too. You love the vectors. It's got some neat stuff. You love them, yeah. I love that kind of artwork. Like our compatriot, Joy Raphael, he does the, what is he doing, the logo a day, or I don't know what he calls it, logo, year of logos or something like that. Like I love just those tiny vector images. I don't know why that type of artwork fascinates me, so.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Anywho, speaking of fascinating, I got a magical tweet earlier this week, and I say magical. It was forwarded to me by a follower, Keith Keitover on Twitter, at Keith Keitover, sent me a tweet from David Blaine, the magician. You're familiar with David Blaine?

'''Myke Hurley:''' Of course I am, yeah.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I guess, yeah, I'm sure most people have heard of David Blaine. So David Blaine on Twitter just posted a tweet that said, favorite pin, and put out a picture of it. And I was shocked. And, you know, I probably wouldn't have received it if it was just some silly ballpoint. But he's got a Secura Pigra Micron, the 005 size, which is the tiniest micron. And he's riding on an ace of spades, you know, I guess for, you know, one of his card tricks. And he's got an Einstein quote on there. Reality is merely an illusion. And I thought that was pretty cool.

'''Myke Hurley:''' That's so strange to me. There's nothing about this tweet or image that is normal to me in any way.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I agree. And that's all he says. I mean, it says, it says, favorite pin. Boom. There's the picture.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Well, this dude is far from a normal gentleman, though, isn't he, really?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Right. He's very, very strange. He's a very peculiar fellow. I actually find him hard to watch. I can't watch any of his magic stuff. But, I mean, I understand who he is and what he does. But I can't watch him. It's a little much for me.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' But I thought that was a cool picture that if you didn't see it, I thought it would be worth including in the show notes just for y'all to check out because it's kind of interesting. I was very, very surprised at the pin choice. And that's cool because that's a great pin. But for him to take the time to put favorite pin out there, I thought that was pretty neat.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' We're infiltrating Myke.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I'm already lost in the next link.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Okay. Well, let's get to it.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I have many problems in my life. Purchasing problems. Pins being the primary one.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Probably my second biggest problem area for spending too much money in things that, of course, I need them, Myke. But, you know, maybe you don't necessarily need them. But it's backpacks and bags. And my favorite paper designer, Mr. Chad Doan, combined with my favorite bag designer and Topo Designs to make a Topo Designs plus Doan paper mountain briefcase. So it's a collaboration between Topo and Doan.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Topo has a mountain briefcase design already. And you can buy it in different colors. But this one that they collaborated with Chad Doan on is very different than any of the other ones. And there was no way I was not ordering this. And I got it in yesterday. It came really quick. It just went for sale on the 23rd. I already got it in. I ordered it the 23rd and got it in yesterday. And it's spectacular. I'm in love with it already. I loaded it up last night, got everything set up how I wanted to. It holds everything I need. I'm mostly using it for work. So it's got my work laptop and notebooks and pens and field notes and headphones and five-hour energy drinks and gum and all kinds of stuff in there. All the stuff that I normally carry for work fits in there easy. What's cool about what I'm loving so far about this is you can carry it three different ways. By the way, it's designed. It's made. It's got handles on the top, like a double handle, so it can be carried briefcase style. It's got a shoulder strap, so it can be carried over the shoulder, like messenger style. And then it's got two tuck-away backpack straps on the backside, so it can be carried backpack style. It's pretty awesome. I love the versatility of it. I'm going to carry it probably briefcase style or backpack style. I've taken off the messenger bag strap for now.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I'll probably carry it one of those two ways. I just love the look and feel. I was actually worried that my wife would give me a lot of grief about it. She stopped giving me grief about pens. She's finally on board with all the pens that I buy. She's like, oh, that's nice, and ignores me. So I had this sitting in a chair last night, and she goes, ooh, is that your new backpack? She said, that's really nice. And I said, huh?

'''Myke Hurley:''' What's happened here?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. I was like, are you okay? What's wrong with you? So she actually made a comment, and it unsolicited. Like, I get it in, and I just start using it. I don't even show her. I'm not even like, hey, look what I got. Because usually she'd be like, oh, my gosh, another backpack, just what you need. But she actually made a comment. She's like, wow, that's really nice. You know, just unsolicited for me sitting in the chair. So, yeah, I'm really happy with it. I'm looking forward to using it. It's going to be my primary everyday bag. And it's beautiful. It's just the right size for everything, and it looks great. So job well done, Topo and Chad down.

'''Myke Hurley:''' It's a shame they don't ship to the UK. I say it's a shame. It's probably for the best.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. I mean, I could always ship you one.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Well, I'm thinking that, you know, I probably know a guy who's going to design backpacks of his own at some point. Yes. Yes, yes, yes.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Definitely. Definitely on the radar. And this is expensive. I mean, it's not a cheap bag. It's $170.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' But, you know, I think the regular, I haven't looked, I don't have the Topo design up, but I think their standard ones are like around $140 or $150 anyway for the Mountain Briefcase. So, and the regular ones don't have the leather that this one has on it and the other detailing that the collaboration has. So, it's probably the most I've ever paid for a bag or a backpack, something like that. So, anyway, it's pretty awesome. I'm going to, for paying that much, I better use the heck out of it. And it looks like I will. It's got everything I'm looking for in a bag or a backpack. And it's going to be great. I'm excited about it. So, speaking of bags, we have a launch date, mate.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Okay.

== Knock Co. ==

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So, you've been following along. All the readers have been following our, the creation of Knock Co., the pen case company I'm working on with my friend Jeffrey. And we've been spending, I don't know, the last couple of weeks almost twiddling our thumbs just because it takes a long time for everything to get approved. Like, our work is done as far as getting everything made and set and pictures taken and descriptions written and everything. So, to get ready for this Kickstarter launch and we have to wait for Kickstarter to approve and banks to approve and everything to get all synced up. So, everything's on the same page and everything's ready to go for launch date. And I submitted the final Kickstarter project last Sunday for approval. They came back, I think on Tuesday. Came back on Tuesday, said, hey, we need to see some additional things in the project. So, I finished that up last night, resubmitted, and we got their approval today. So, we are officially approved by Kickstarter. So, now what that means is we are ready to launch when we are ready. And Jeff and I are more than ready. So, even though we got the, we got it today, we got approved. So, this is a go. It's going to be a Kickstarter campaign. It's not live today. It's not going to be live tomorrow. Ah! Ah! We don't want to, we don't want to go on a Friday. No. I think that's a bad idea. So, we're going to go on a Monday. We're going to turn it up. We're going to turn it up Monday.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Oh, my God.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yep. I'm excited. Yeah. I'm excited, too. I'm nervous.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. I don't know if I'm, I don't know which I'm more of, more nervous or more excited. I'm pretty excited. I think I'm more excited than I am nervous. So, we're going to go live Monday. I don't have an exact time yet. We're still sorting out that details. But it'll be, you know, morning East Coast time. Before lunch, East Coast time. So, that's kind of the plan right now. And we'll have more details over the weekend. And we'll send out, we'll send out a mail with the final link and everything for everyone who signed up to be notified when the project launches. But, yeah. It looks like Monday's a go.

'''Myke Hurley:''' So, I wonder what we'll talk about on Tuesday.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. I don't know. It might not be that because I might be like passed out, fainted, like, you know, when we haven't sold any.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I hope and I really hope that we come to Tuesday's show and you've been funded.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I hope so, too. I hope so, too. We'll see. There's a shot. Our goal is, I think, very achievable. Okay. So, I hope so. But, yeah. That's the big news. We're finally ready. Everyone's been patient. And, you know, some things are out of our control. And we finally got everything, all the I's dotted and the T's crossed. And now it's in our hands to push the button to make it live. So, we're going to do that on Monday. So, keep an eye out.

'''Myke Hurley:''' How long is the campaign?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' 30 days. Okay.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Wow.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yep.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I can't believe it. It feels like only, like, days ago that you guys started working on this.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Despite how slow the last couple of weeks have been, in general, it's gone by exceptionally fast. And that's, you know, all credit to Jeffrey for getting, you know, all these samples made. I mean, we went through so many tiers of prototypes to get the final ones made. And, you know, he's been working his butt off to get all this stuff done. And getting it all organized. And, you know, and us working together to get all the Kickstarter and all the back-end stuff that you got to get done, too, at the same time. So, we're finally ready for it to launch. And it has gone, in the grand scheme of things, it's gone by super fast. I mean, we've, not to pat ourselves on the back, but I think we've done a good job at getting, going from point A to launch date in a pretty straight line. So, and hopefully it becomes successful. We're counting on it. You know, I think this is going to be a good thing. And, you know, hopefully it'll go well. And then the future will be so bright, you will have to wear shades.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Okay, now, listeners. Now, he won't say this to you, but I will. So, this is what you need to do. On Monday, well, first off, make sure you're following at NockCo on Twitter. N-O-C-K-C-O. Or, Brad, at Dowdyism, D-O-W-D-Y-I-S-M. Make sure you're following him. On Monday, all of you have but one job. You watch Twitter for the announcement.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Actually, I'm going to give you two jobs. Three jobs. I'll just give them three. You have three jobs. You have but three jobs. You watch Twitter for the announcement. This is where you will go. You will follow those two accounts and you will watch. As soon as Brad says that the page is live, you go and you back. You back as much money as you can. And then you share it with your friends. And you will make me proud.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I appreciate you saying that. And you're right. I wouldn't say that. Because. You know how I am.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I know our listeners and our listeners to this show. They love you. They also love fine products. And. I want to come on to this show on Tuesday. And you have met your goal. And the people. That should be able to help you do that. At least. Are the listeners to this show. Yep. At first. So I think that the listeners to this show. Should show how much of a pen addict they are. And make sure that they back. Before the show on Tuesday. Remember you still then have 30 days to pay. Or whatever. No money leaves your account. Until the funding date.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Back. And then. We can come on to the show on Tuesday. And not only can we talk about the process of it. And how the launch has gone. But we can also. Talk about the future of NotCo. Because they will know that it's safe. So. Make that happen. Listeners to this show. And you will make me and Brad. Very very happy.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Well I appreciate you saying that. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. And I think we'll have. You know. There's several different products. We're launching with. So hopefully. People will enjoy them. People will think they're good looking. And functional. And see something that's a good fit. For their ever growing pen and paper collection. And yeah. We look forward to. For a good launch. Next week. So. We're excited.

'''Myke Hurley:''' And with that. I am iMike. I am YKE. I will of course be tweeting about. Brad's. Kickstarter project. But you know. Follow him. At Dowdyism. On Twitter. And you will see everything that you need to see. And thank you so much for listening to this week's episode of the show. If you want to go and get the show notes for this week. Go to 5x5.tv. Slash penaddict. Slash 73. Until next week Brad. Are we done?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' We are done sir.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Good luck.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Thank you.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Godspeed.

'''Myke Hurley:''' And we'll be back next week. Thanks so much.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Alright. Bye bye.

[[Category:Podcast Transcripts]]
[[Category:The Pen Addict Podcast Transcript]]

The Pen Addict 71/transcript

2026-06-23T16:01:13Z

PencilBot: fixed spelling

{{Infobox podcast transcript
| name = The Pen Addict
| number = 71
| title = Sharpening Rainbows
| date = September 14th, 2013
| hosts = [[Brad Dowdy]] 
[[Myke Hurley]]
| guests = [[Ana Reinert]]
| link = [https://www.relay.fm/penaddict/71 Episode 71]
| audiolink = [https://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/traffic.libsyn.com/thepenaddict/penaddict-071.mp3 Audio Episode 71]
| length = 66
}}

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Hello, and welcome to The Pen Addict podcast on the 5x5 Network. I am your host, Brad Dowdy. You'll notice I'm not the British-speaking guy. He is not with us this week. I have a wonderful special guest. And I figured since I'm always the one getting nicknames, I needed to come up with a nickname for her on this. And I'm going to go with the Queen of Green, Miss Anna Reinert from the Well-Appointed Desk. How are you, Anna?

'''Ana Reinert:''' Just fine. Thank you very much. Thanks for my nickname.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' You got it. You got it. So we'll have to, our friend Kanuni Renishan, she keeps track of all of Myke's intro, so we'll see if she'll add in my intro as a special edition for you.

'''Ana Reinert:''' I'd feel very special.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' And you are the Queen of Green, by the way. Everything green, olive green, lime green, anything green.

'''Ana Reinert:''' Kind of ends up in my world.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Well, good. I appreciate you filling in this week. We had a last-minute scheduling snafu with Myke and myself had dueling scheduling conflicts. So I'm glad you were able to jump on and save me this week. I really appreciate it.

'''Ana Reinert:''' Anytime. Not a problem.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' All right. So we talked a little bit getting ready for this episode, and we got a long list of topics. And I think it's going to be good, because I know we've been, Myke and I have been doing a bunch of interviews recently with, you know, Brian from Bullet Journal and Brian from Field Notes. And, you know, I think it's time to get back to the basics, back to the pen and pencil and paper nerdery that we're known for and that everyone likes to hear and wants to hear about some of these topics. So what do you think about that?

'''Ana Reinert:''' I think that sounds like a great idea.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' All right. Cool. Well, we've got one of the first things I wanted to talk about is something that I swear to myself all the time. And when I do posts about it, I always get myself in trouble saying I'm going to do more with it. But that's just pencils, just basic pencils. You know, when I've reviewed the Black Wings before, I said, okay, I'm going to start using this all the time. And I don't. But it's a huge, huge topic, just like pens are, you know. And you and I are kind of, I'd say we mostly do pens, but I know you review pencils and more accessories, you know, than I do.

'''Ana Reinert:''' But it's true. There's, I do remember that you said you were going to do more with pencils. I know. Just for the record, I did notice.

== Pencil Portability ==

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I know. I know. You know what my challenge is that? And I'm going to get a sidetracked right off the gate. My challenge is the portability of them. I think I just need to take some to my office because that's where I use my pens the most. I need to take some of these pencils and leave them there because carrying them back and forth in a pen case, that drives me crazy because I don't like, you know, I want to use the wood case pencils, you know, not the mechanical pencils. And just carrying them around in a bag all the time. I don't have a bag dedicated to get graphite all over everything. And I'm picky that way.

'''Ana Reinert:''' The first thing I would say is there are some companies that make the little tip, the little metal caps that you can put on the tips to keep the points from getting damaged, which is a very nice addition.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. Someone sent me a couple of those. My friend Topher on, or Topher, actually, as he says on Twitter, he sent me a couple of the plastic tip ones. So I got to look into those metal ones.

'''Ana Reinert:''' Yeah. And both of them, I mean, they work fine. The metal ones, I think, are more durable and will withstand getting sort of chucked around in a bag. The plastic ones are nice, too, though, because you can see which pencil is the sharpest.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. So one of our tasks for this new pen case company I'm coming up with with my partner, Jeffrey, we're going to work on a pencil case design to hopefully solve the problems that I'm having.

'''Ana Reinert:''' But that's still curious to see that.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. Yeah. We'll need some help getting that design off the ground. So I'm sure I'll have some questions for you. But our friend Johnny Gamber at Pencil Revolution had a great article in The Atlantic. It was about a week ago. I guess you and I had both linked to it. And, you know, pencils are a huge deal for so many people. And just like pens, there's this huge, I mean, once you start going down that track, I mean, it's the same rabbit hole that you get stuck in with pens and ink and paper and everything else. And, you know, this article, we'll have it in the show notes. Y'all can find the show notes at 5by5.tv forward slash penaddict forward slash 71. This is episode 71. We're recording. We'll have this link. And you can check out the article in The Atlantic because it's great. And Johnny's knowledge on pencils is just phenomenal. It really is. And I know you've contributed there in the past. And I know you're a huge pencil person. So what do you use for pencils? What are some of your favorites? Or how do you use pencils in your day-to-day work?

'''Ana Reinert:''' Well, the nice thing with pencils is that they're not very expensive. Even a box of Palomino Black Wings, you can get a dozen for $20. So I don't feel so bad with pencils of leaving them at my desk or leaving them in the pen cup that sits on the corner of your desk. If someone walks off with a pencil, I'm not devastated. I would not put a vintage Blackwing, but I don't have one. But, you know, anything else. I mean, even, you know, yeah, like I said, even the Palomino Black Wings or pencils like that, they're, I mean, they're under a dollar. I mean, that's about what a pen, like a, you know, a G2 or something would cost that you don't mind leaving on your desk. So I have a, I keep a huge jar of pencils on my desk at work. And it also means I have something that I can grab right away and just, you know, if the one is not sharp enough for me, I just pull a different one out. But, yeah, no, I have, I did a post a couple months ago about my three favorite pencil brand, pencil brands. And it was the Palomino Blackwing 602, the Mitsubishi Tombow 8900, and the Faber-Castell Grip pencils, which are the, they were, originally you could only get them as metallic silver with little black dots. It's one of the triangular shaped pencils.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, yeah, I've seen those. Those are cool looking.

'''Ana Reinert:''' I, they're super awesome. The only time that I've ever had problems with them is do not leave them in your car if it's hot because those little rubber dots melt. But, but otherwise, I mean, as just the size fits really nicely in your hand, it's one of those pencils that doesn't actually have an eraser on the end. So the weight is pretty light, pretty evenly distributed. And actually, I think Pencil Talk, the blog Pencil Talk this week had an article that Faber-Castell is now doing them in new colors. They're calling them sparkle and they're all in like metallic gold, copper, and a more of a graphite, metallic graphite color. Oh, that's awesome. So with silver dots on it instead of the black.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' See, I could get in trouble shopping like this because I want to try out so many of these things. I got to, I got to make that commitment though. Those, the, uh, what the Tombow, one of these Tombows, I guess was recommended to me. The one that was recommended to me was the Tombow Mono 100, which seems to be awfully super expensive. Like I'm just looking at jet pins and they're $28 for 12 and come in every lead grade imaginable. I haven't used those. But that was when I was doing the Blackwing post. Um, I think the, one of the basic Palomino's, the, the orange one, I forget which, um, model it is. I'll find that in the show notes. I think it's got a specific name. Um, that one was recommended. And then the Tombow Mono was highly recommended to me. And it's hard just like with, with pens, you know, you think, you know, finding a pilot high-tech C with, you know, three or four tip sizes is difficult. Well, you know, I'm staring at what, you know, 20 different lead hardnesses on here. Do you have a, do you have a go-to lead?

'''Ana Reinert:''' Well, um, an HB is about what people think of as a number two.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Mm-hmm.

'''Ana Reinert:''' So if you start off sort of in, HB is kind of the middle range. Um, the 2B, 3B, 6B. The B means soft. Mm-hmm. Don't ask me. Um, and anything like 2H, 4H, 8H. Those are, H is for hard. So if you just know that H means hard and B means the other thing. Yeah, exactly. And, you know, so if it's your sort of first 4A, if you aim right in there for the HB, which is sort of the middle ground pencil, and try that first. See how you like it. If it's not dark enough, then go into the B. Like, try a 2B pencil or something. If it's too dark and smudgy for you, move into the H. I have a feeling you would like something in, like, the 2H, 3H that would be a little bit harder. And the lead would be, doesn't wear down as fast. Mm-hmm. And then it goes down much lighter. It's a harder pencil, especially if you have a heavy hand. Yeah. Or if you're doing just more writing, then, I mean, you're not taking any of those scantronic tests where you need the HB. Right, right.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' And I've looked at, like, the lead hardness maps where they show all the shades. And, you know, I think I'd be somewhere around the middle and, like you say, probably a little bit more on the H side where it's a little bit more firmer. The lead's going to be a little bit lighter color, which I'd actually prefer the darkness of the B side of the scale. But I think I would be more happy with just over on the H side of the scale for the hardness and firmness of the lead. So that's something I need to check into.

'''Ana Reinert:''' And it can also depend on the manufacturer. Sure. You know, I mean, in the same way that a fine nib fountain pen from one manufacturer isn't necessarily as fine as another manufacturer. You know, they use the same terms, luckily, across the world. But, yeah, there's still some little differences depending on how they blend their graphite. So some write a little scratchier. Some write a little smoother. Some a little bit softer. It just – and it's, again, you know, start with – maybe don't start with the $28 per dozen. Yeah. Try something a little bit less expensive. Actually, I don't think the Faber-Castell's are – the Grip series are super expensive. And I do think that probably on Amazon or other places you could probably find like a pack of three. And sometimes they'll offer them like as a drawing pack where you'll get a couple different grades. So you can try out a few and see which ones you like.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Oh, no, that's a good idea. I can get behind that. So I want to hear some recommendations from anyone who's listening. Shoot me an email or, you know, get in contact via the blog. And I'll have all that information at the end and it'll be in the show notes. But I like dark – a dark, firm lead. So something probably on the H side of the scale. And if there's any brands that skew darker as opposed to lighter and still retain that firmness, I'd love to know if you listeners have a favorite brand that I can check out in that 2H, 3H range, something like that. I think that would be something kind of where I want to start off with.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I did try a random Uni Mitsubishi at one point that was way down the B scale. And it was just – the darkness was great, but it was just way too soft for me. Because unlike you, I mean, I'm mostly writing where you're writing, but then you're also sketching and doing some design work and things like that. So you kind of have that – you know, you want that range where for me I just want, you know, something good to write with.

'''Ana Reinert:''' Yeah, absolutely. And even – I mean, even for what I do, most of my sketching is more just – I mean, right now I've been working on, like, iPhone apps. So I'm drawing – I'm drawing a square and then I'm drawing squares inside of squares. Like, there's not a lot of shading or highlighting or anything like that. It's pretty much draw a square, draw another square, write a line, draw another square. This is going to be an icon later.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, exactly.

'''Ana Reinert:''' Yeah, so a little bit harder works well for me. I tend to go right at the – usually anywhere between a 2H and an HB. I do run a little bit on the harder side too.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Gotcha. Gotcha. All right, cool. Well, one other new topic I want to get to that we have not discussed on the podcast. I don't think you and I have discussed it either, but I know we've probably been – we're probably – we're on the same email list, I'm pretty sure. There's some new notebook projects that have launched, one on Kickstarter, one on Indiegogo. So let's tackle the monsieur. That's what I'm going to – how did I do?

'''Ana Reinert:''' Okay. Pretty good.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, I think that's what –

'''Ana Reinert:''' My French isn't much better than yours, so –

== Monsieur Notebook ==

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I'm going to go monsieur notebook. This is a cool notebook. It's actually been around for a while and anyone who's read pen and paper and stationery blogs for any length of time, I'm sure, has heard of the monsieur notebook. Because they launched – what are they? They're an Australian company, I think.

'''Ana Reinert:''' I thought they were English, but don't hold me to it.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, and I'll check on that.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' But they launched several years ago and they had a lot of reviews out at the time and got a lot of good feedback. I've never used one, but you did a review of one of their notebooks. I guess this was – Back in – 2011?

'''Ana Reinert:''' Mm-hmm. Yep.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, so what they've done – I think the reason they have gone to Indiegogo now is I think wherever they're from, their distributorship was limited.

== Notebook Options ==

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I believe is how this worked. So now they were able to get – they're ready to branch out, basically. I think they were – go ahead.

'''Ana Reinert:''' Oh, they're – yeah, I think they're looking to expand. And I think part of the problem was that, yeah, they didn't have the capacity to support sort of getting into a lot of new markets. So I think they really want to get into the U.S. market and have enough product that they could send – that they could distribute to retailers in the U.S. and in some other countries. And so they're trying to get the money together to sort of branch out and become more available all over the world. Because right now I think you can order online and I think you can order through, you know, at a few shops like in the U.K. and Europe. But I don't – they just don't have that sort of brand presence. I think they're hoping that by generating some revenue up front that they'll be able to move into, you know, more competitive with brands like Moleskine.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, exactly. And you're right. They're based in London. So I was wrong about that. I don't know where I got Australia from. Maybe that was one of their main distributorships, and now they're trying to reach out to more across the globe. And what they do is they do – it's a standard – I don't know, standard, what, 8.5 by 5.5 notebook. I'm not looking at the dimensions. But their thing is they make a leather cover on the outside that's real leather. It's very nice, and they're able to do it at a very good price. You know, the prices are pretty good. How was your – I know it's been a couple years, but how was your experience back when you first reviewed the product? I mean, I know they probably made some changes since then, since it's been a couple years.

'''Ana Reinert:''' Yeah, they have added a lot of options now. I think when I reviewed it, it was like you could get a lined notebook or you could get a blank. And now they also have – they've added the dot grid, the grid, and I think like a sketchbook-grade paper. They've kind of improved some of the paper qualities. And so I don't feel like I can really say a whole lot. The quality of the overall production was really nice. The covers really look like tanned leather, so they come already with a little bit of character to them. Each one will look a little bit different. Everything was put together really nicely. The covers were a little bit softer because I think it's just the leather, and then they glue the end papers to the book so that it has a bit of that sort of like slightly softer cover. It's not like a hard cover that's then been wrapped in a thin layer of leather or leatherette. It's actually a thick piece of leather, which is nice.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, I like the style of that a lot. I don't necessarily need like a hardbound book for my notebook. I want it to have that pliability like this leather has.

'''Ana Reinert:''' And so the test that I did, I had a lined and I had a blank. They sent me an A5 and an A6, which is basically like a 5x7 and a 3.5x5 size. You know, like the pocket size, 4x6 and 5.5x8. And no sooner did I take the sort of brown, beautiful brown one out that my husband said, oh, that's really nice. And so I never saw that one again. And he doesn't usually sort of take claim on anything. He usually looks at me like, really, you need another notebook? But that was the one that he ran off with.

'''Ana Reinert:''' But yeah, so I mean, it was, you know, it definitely had a look and a feel that that appealed to people who even weren't big notebook collecting geeks like ourselves. Right. But yeah, I do think they and I know that they're listing on their website now that they're carrying paper that they feel like is more suitable for like fountain pens and stuff. So I am really looking forward to having a chance of trying some more of their products.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, I definitely want to check them out. I'm not a backer. I'll probably just wait till after the funding completes. I don't know. I might jump in and get one, maybe get a graph one. They only have a $5,000 goal. They got 45 days left and they're almost halfway there so far. And, you know, the notebooks start at $20 for the pocket notebook and $25 for the medium size, which is totally reasonable for something like this. And you get your choice of paper. And actually, I think you get your choice of leather color, too, the way they set it up. So it looks really good. I'm starting to see some reviews. I'm a little bit concerned.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I don't. It's kind of like a restaurant, a new restaurant that's open for the first time, you know. I'll go there the first time. I don't have high expectations, you know, because they're kind of new. And, you know, if they do something bad, I'm willing to give them a second chance. You know, I'm not going to make a judgment on that. But one of the first reviews I've seen about this product, it did not look good. And it's on verticalpaper.net. And I'll have the link in the show notes. But the binding, I'm really concerned about the binding a little bit. So I'm anxious to see some other people get reviews. I know there's probably going to be some more review samples coming out. But it was just kind of coming apart, if you will, around the binding section, the binding and the gluing. It did not look right. So I'm not going to make a judgment call just on one review. But it didn't look so hot. I'm going to have to admit.

'''Ana Reinert:''' That's too bad. From the other side of it is that if the prices stay consistent with what they have on here at $20 for an A6 and $25 for an A5, that's right in line with Moleskine. So if they're offering better paper and real leather covers, and I think that, you know, the binding's not perfect or the, you know, the bookmark isn't, the bookmark ribbon isn't perfect. I'm like, competitively speaking, if it's better paper and better materials overall, and I have to hit it with a little bit of glue, I might, I'd be willing to do that. I'm with you. And buying a Moleskine, which I already know has mediocre paper at best.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Right. And one of the things I've learned, and we're going to touch on this later, is once I got into fountain pens, I learned that if I receive a product and it's not perfect, it's okay. And I can usually work with it and make it better. You know, like a fountain pen, if I have a nib that wasn't to my liking, you know, I can do some things to it. And we're hopefully going to get to this, this bit a little bit later. We'll tease that. But yeah, this, this review is a little bit concerning to me. Plus it had some watermarking on the paper where you could see it on every page. Oh. That's, you know, I'm going to chalk this up to maybe it's a prototype or a sample or something, because that would be not so hot if every page had a paper brand watermark on it.

'''Ana Reinert:''' Oh, yeah.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' That moves around, you know.

'''Ana Reinert:''' Oh, yeah.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' In random spots. So we'll see. We'll see. Like I said, it's the first review I've seen on the new product. So hopefully some more will start coming in and I'm anxious to see. So we'll have this link in the, in the show notes for everyone to check out. But yeah, they got a couple months to go and I mean, I hope they do great because it's a good looking product and it seems fairly priced and they've put a lot into the design of it as far as, you know, the options that are available. So it looks, looks pretty cool. Now on the, on the competing front over on Kickstarter, and I'm sure you've got these emails and got the heads up on this. There's a new notebook product called Baron Fig.

'''Ana Reinert:''' I did hear about that.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. And it, it looks pretty cool. It's, it's kind of like, I guess it's a cloth bound, cloth bound hardcover.

== Cloth Binding ==

'''Ana Reinert:''' Yeah. It looks like book binders fabric on the exterior.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. Like I, me personally, I prefer that style as opposed to leather, but it's still, it's still no matter what's on the outside, it really matters what's on the inside to me. Right. I mean, if it, if it doesn't work for the pins I'm using, you know, it doesn't matter if, if the paper's bad, how, how cool the cover is.

'''Ana Reinert:''' Yeah. Yeah. The one, the, my one feeling about the fabric cover, which is, it's really, it's very, you know, aesthetically appealing, but how, how well does it wear? Because to your point about the, um, the Manchur notebook, uh, falling, you know, like not being glued properly. If this cover starts to get damaged or thread worn or before you're halfway through the book, that was my thing is I just like, it's this pale gray, it's going to get grubby with fingerprints and coffee stains. And I was like, and not in a good way.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. And once it, once a cloth bound starts to go, there's no stopping it.

'''Ana Reinert:''' But yeah. Yeah. So that was the only thing that I sort of was like, it just, and I, I've taken some book binding and this is sort of like the first thing that they teach you is to cloth bind a book. And it's like, it's pretty, but.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Maybe not the most functional.

'''Ana Reinert:''' Not the most functional. And you know, and the fact that it is cloth bound and they're right now, they're really only offering it with one color. This sort of light gray was a little bit disappointing as well.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. So they, and they're just offering that one cover and they're offering a blank dot grid or ruled, uh, notebooks. Um, and I don't know if they're, they're already up to $70,000 on a $15,000 goal on Kickstarter and they got 20 days to go. So I don't know if it's the, uh, the marketing aspect or if it's the Kickstarter thing, but, um, it looks really good. I'm not.

'''Ana Reinert:''' It does. I mean, it's, it's pretty.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. I'm not a backer of this either. I, I've got so many notebooks. I, you know, I'll back, I'll back pens left and right, but I've got stacks of notebooks still in, in, in, under wraps right now. I figure I can wait till afterwards and, uh, pick up one whenever I need one right now. I'm just so buried in note and paper. Sure.

'''Ana Reinert:''' I haven't seen actual photographs of what their dot grid in their lined paper looks like. And for me, that's also a, a huge sort of make or break point. If the, like on a dot grid or on a lined paper, if the lines are too thick or too dark, that it starts to, I mean, it starts to limit the, the kinds of inks that you can use. But, you know, if it's like hard black lines that are a point wide or bigger, like you, you have to use a 1.1 millimeter.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Right.

'''Ana Reinert:''' You know, with jet black ink in order for it not to be sort of obscured by the lines or the dots.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. I think that's a great point. I think in their images, they use blank for everything. I watched the video once and now I don't recall if they showed dot or lined in them. I'm kind of thinking they didn't.

'''Ana Reinert:''' I don't think they did either.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' And all the image pictures use blank. So, yeah, that's something that I do like to see, especially, you know, even though they're not offering it, just the grid, the graph paper that I like so much. It's the exact same thing. If the line's too dark or just too overbearing, it becomes, becomes useless.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Who did that? What's the name of the brand that, in Barnes and Noble, the eco-friendly brand? Ecosystems? Yeah. I can't use, their grids are so dark. It's unusable.

'''Ana Reinert:''' Yeah, their lined paper is the same way. And because I tend to favor blank books anyway, partially because it just eliminates that whole problem altogether. If I get a blank, I'm guaranteed to use it because nobody's put horrible lines on it. But, yeah, it was the same thing. The first ecosystem book that I bought was a blank one. And I'm like, oh, I like, I enjoy the bright white paper. It's much better quality than a Moleskine and widely available. And then I said, well, I like this one so much I'll pick up, I think I picked up one of the grid ones. And it was so bad. I'm like, can I take this back?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I know. It was really bad. I didn't, I didn't use them. I think I gave them to my kids to, you know, to color in.

'''Ana Reinert:''' Yeah. They colored in the squares.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yep. Exactly. Exactly. All right. So, yeah, Kickstarter, Kickstarter, Indiegogo, everything's, everything's hopping right now for, for stationary products.

'''Ana Reinert:''' I have one more Kickstarter and I'm not sure if you saw it or not, but it was the Rainbow Pencils.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Oh yeah. That's pretty cool.

'''Ana Reinert:''' Now, I have. And I, I recognize the, the guy who is doing this Kickstarter. He's done some other projects. He did some of the like thumbtacks that was like, it looked like a little, it looked like a little Pinocchio, wooden Pinocchio that you would then stick into your pin board.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Okay, cool.

'''Ana Reinert:''' So that was stuff that he's done. So he's, he's got some, I mean, and from the standpoint of like, he's got some clout, he's done some other stuff. So I'm kind of, it's a pencil that when you sharpen it, it makes a little rainbow. So it's probably not the world's best pencil, but it's really fun. And it's one of the projects that I think I might end up backing.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. I haven't backed this yet, but, and even though I don't use pencils a lot, it's, it's almost too cool to pass up. This is, this is something neat and it's, you know, kind of off, off the reservation a little bit with you, if you will, other than, you know, a notebook or, you know, some other pens and things. It's just something a little bit different, a little bit unique. You know, if nothing else, you know, my, my daughter would love these and heck I would use them and I'd just sit here and sharpen them. I'd probably go through a whole pencil just to sharpen a rainbow.

'''Ana Reinert:''' Sharpen a rainbow. Yeah, no, they're just, I mean, I think it's, it's, it's very clever. It's very, they're very elegant. And I think, yeah, totally for your average pencil pen geek, this would be the perfect gift, you know, something that, that you wouldn't find anywhere else.

== Kickstarter ==

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I'm so glad you brought this one up because I forgot about that. Awesome. Yep. All right. Well, let me, I think we've got our Kickstarter covered. Let me play the role of Myke Hurley. And we've got, we've got two sponsors today, Anna. And our first sponsor is our friends at Squarespace. This episode is brought to you by Squarespace, the all-in-one platform that makes it easy to create your own website during the month of September only. They're giving you 20% off and a free trial, which is awesome that they've been to only doing 10%. So 20% is twice as good. At least go to squarespace.com. Use the offer code Tallyho nine. Squarespace is constantly updating their platform with new features, new designs, and more support. They have beautiful designs for you to start with and tons of style options for you to adjust so you can really create your own space online. Squarespace takes care of hosting SEO and even make sure your site automatically looks great on any device. It's incredibly easy to use, but if you want some help, Squarespace has an amazing support team that works 24 hours, seven days a week. And I have the proof of that because I do all my work at three o'clock in the morning. While you're there, make sure you go check out their new homepage too. It's got awesome videos that are so beautiful that show how Squarespace fits everyone differently. Make sure you click the little arrows on the sides to check out all the cool videos. Squarespace is always updating their site with fun new branding that you can't help but be inspired by. As we said earlier, you can try Squarespace for free, no credit card required. And if you decide to purchase, it starts at just $8 a month and includes a domain name if you sign up for a year. And make sure to get 20% off this month and support the show by using the offer code Tallyho9. So go check out Squarespace, everything you need to create an exceptional website. So thank you, Squarespace. I'm a very happy customer.

'''Ana Reinert:''' It's just not as much fun when you say Tallyho.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I know, gosh. I know that everyone's going to be disappointed. They might actually listen to the Squarespace ad because they're like, hey, that British guy is not reading it this time. Maybe he's going to say something different.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' But it's awesome. Squarespace does a great job. I lean on them hard when I'm going through blogs and setting up my other website and things like that. So they're very, very responsive to any issues and questions I run across. So thank you, Squarespace, for continuing to sponsor our show and our network.

'''Ana Reinert:''' Are they doing your new blog for Nock?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' They are. And that's a whole other thing. They have the commerce platform. So we started on there. And right now, we just have the blog turned on, basically, and just like an about page. But behind the scenes, we're working on the whole commerce piece, which is fully a Squarespace product. It's completely integrated. So we're building the shop behind the scenes. And it integrates with the payment processor and everything and handles the inventory. So once I get that up and rolling, we're going to talk about how we'd set that up. But it's really simple. I mean, it's just like building the blog and all the commerce stuff's built in there for you. So it's great. Very happy with it.

'''Ana Reinert:''' That's awesome.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yep.

'''Ana Reinert:''' So do you have any... I'm going to interview you for a second.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Okay, cool.

'''Ana Reinert:''' So are you planning on doing a Kickstarter for Nock?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yes, we're definitely doing a Kickstarter. Kickstarter.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' We're so close to launching, it's driving both Jeff and I crazy. Because we've built all these prototypes.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' We've got, you know, the product names. And, you know, we started building the Kickstarter page for all the rewards. That's all. All that's filled in. So now we've actually haven't been doing as much this last week because we're just waiting for... We got in tags, you know, little branding tags for our final samples. We got the fabric in for our final samples. And we got the thread in for our final samples. All of that just came in in the past day. So Jeff's going to work on building the final samples. We got to make those. We got to take the photography for those samples. Our video's done. It's edited. It's in the can.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So once we get all that done, which is really not that much, we'll be able to send it to Kickstarter for approval. And if we don't launch by the end of next week, it'll be the following week, I'm thinking.

'''Ana Reinert:''' So before October.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Before October.

'''Ana Reinert:''' Very exciting.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Which has been our goal. Our goal all along has been September. And it looks like we're going to meet it. So we just got to tie up a few loose ends and get these final, you know, kind of production level samples done so we can take the photography. And then we'll release it and let everyone know. And I think we'll be good to go.

'''Ana Reinert:''' Well, I know. I know. I'm excited to see the Kickstarter and all the final samples. So I'm sure everyone else is, too.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Well, good. Good. And we're going to hopefully have enough product samples to get some out for review as well. So I will definitely be in touch.

'''Ana Reinert:''' I hope I make your review list.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I know. I know. Oh, my goodness. All right. So one of the things that you brought up and I thought was a really interesting question was about discontinued items and how to handle it when one of your favorite products gets canned, basically. And the company is no longer making it. And you're kind of stuck either using, you know, a paper system or a calendar system or a pen or a pencil that's been one of your favorites. And now all of a sudden you can't get it. And how do you handle it? So what's the problem you've had? You've had a problem recently.

'''Ana Reinert:''' I actually had two.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Uh-oh.

== Planners ==

'''Ana Reinert:''' Two problems. The first one was it's getting, you know, towards fourth quarter of 2013. So I've started, I've already started thinking about planners for 2014. And I know there's a lot of people who've been asking about sort of academic planners and everything. This whole year I've been using the paper blanks planner. It's like about an A5 size. So about five by seven, seven by nine, something like that. And it's, they call it the verso format. So on one side of the page, and it's very similar, I think, to how Moleskine lays out some of theirs, where on one side of the page is slots for every day of the week. And then on the opposite side of the page, it's just lined paper. So you can use it for just general notes. So it's perfect for a work environment where you may be taking your planner in with you to a meeting. You've just got space right there to write notes or, you know, lists of phone calls you need to make or anything like that. Well, they leased their 2014 line and I didn't see the verso format because I was just going to order another one. I liked it so much. I was just going to order another one and I couldn't find it. And so I finally emailed the company and they said, we are not selling that particular model in the U.S. this year.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Oh, no.

'''Ana Reinert:''' And I'm like, am I going to have to like go to Canada? What's the deal? So now I'm going to have to either pick a different format or I'll have to branch out and try a different company. And Poppin has been very nice to me and their planners seem fairly comparable in terms of sort of the layout and what they include. And the paper stock is pretty good. I like the paper in the paper blanks. It's not, I wouldn't say that it is exactly fountain pen perfect, but it's a lot better than a lot of other stocks that I've used. So I might go with a Poppin. I don't know. But yeah, basically I've been crying and kicking my feet. So that's how I'm solving my problem.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Excuse me. You've been pouting.

'''Ana Reinert:''' I have been pouting. And then the other thing that came up, and this is totally left field, but there's a company called Borden and Riley that make marker paper, which we use at work for pointed pen lettering. So it's bleed proof. It's, you know, it's all this, it's perfect if you're using like a flexible nib pen and, you know, big gobbing bottles of black ink. And they discontinued their layout, their rough marker paper. Oh, wow. And I mean, like even the people, like I went, we have our own supply library. I went up and I'm like, where's the paper? And they're like, it's been discontinued. And I'm like, what are you doing about it? So they actually, I guess Borden and Riley had another paper that they recommended. And they sent a sample sheet to Hallmark to try out. And they called me. They're like, do you want to come up and try it out and let us know what you think of it? And it's okay. It's not the same. Not the same. So that's the one where it's like, I, you know, at this point, we're just going to start looking for other brands who make, but not many people, like marker paper used to be used when people used to do like sort of mock-ups for advertising with colored markers. Like, which this goes way back.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Right.

'''Ana Reinert:''' And so it's, it doesn't have as much use. It's really like weird people like us who do lettering on paper. Yeah.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' And it's like bigger and portable and more sturdy to, you know, take it around from place

'''Ana Reinert:''' to place and get people to look at it. Well, it's just a pad of paper and we, basically we use this paper. It's bright white and then we'll scan it in for, um, to then end up on greeting cards, basically. And I mean, we've got a staff of people who do this and we're all crying about this stupid paper.

'''Ana Reinert:''' So, but yeah, so it's, you know, I mean, I think there are things that we, you know, as paper geeks, pen geeks, you know, you use it and it may not be the most popular one. And I know it's, have you had stuff like this happen?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' There, I was trying to think back when you, when you mentioned that, I was like, oh, that's such a good topic. Let me think of what I've like really missed out on. And I was like, I can't think of anything except for one that I still get emails on. Um, Pentel makes a graph gear line of pencils. That's extremely popular. Um, it's kind of like a designer engineering type of pencil. And at one point they made a comparable graph gear ballpoint, um, with a 0.5 millimeter tip for the ballpoint. And the graph gear pencil line is so popular and people swear by it. And then they just up and stopped making the ballpoint. And I got more emails on this and I ended up, I had one left. I think I, I don't ever know that I had more than one anyway. And this has been years now. This is like three years ago, maybe four years ago. And I had a guy email me and he was like, you know, I'm desperate to find this pen. You know, my, you know, my father is an engineer. He uses the pencils and I can't find the pen anymore. And, you know, can you tell me where I can get it? So I sent him my pen and I've missed it ever since. It was an awesome, awesome pen. It's just a really well-made, um, ballpoint pen that no one has been able to make something comparable to. I mean, and not, not even close. Um, I've probably got an old review on the blog I can, I can put up. But if you look at the graph gear pencil, which is still made, it's, it looks identical to that. Um, and it's with just a, a super fine ballpoint ballpointing cartridge. And I just love how those pencils look. And I really wish the ballpoint was still made. Um, the only other one is it goes way, way, way back. And this is probably the single most emailed pen I get about where can I find this pen? Do they still make it anymore? It's called the, um, the Pilot Explorer. It's this old, I guess it was popular late eighties, mid nineties. I don't even know if they made it in the two thousands, but it was way ahead of its time in barrel design and fineness of tip. And I've got, you know, people always tell me we've, they've been showing up a lot here recently, like in Finland or Denmark or somewhere. I get these emails. Hey, look what I found in the store. And I was like, Oh, you gotta be kidding me. I didn't know they still made them. And then I'll like try to track down the distributor. And I was like, yeah, we don't have any more of those. That was it. It's like, man, y'all are killing me. But I, those are the two pens that I wish were still being made that I would use, um, religiously. The, um, the graph gear ballpoint and the Pilot Explorer are both, uh, just kind of some classic design pens that there's really nothing close to be those being made right now. Yeah. Yeah. Well, back on your, on your planner topic. Um, I'm not a planner person at all. I can't tell you the last time I've used it. It just doesn't, it just doesn't really work for me. I think I would like the style that you're talking about, the Verso style, where it's got the, the calendar on one side and then just essentially, you know, line page on the other side. But I've been sucked in, I guess, to, to the planner world. And I've, I've ordered a planner for 2014 and I sent you, I sent you the link in the Skype. Okay. I don't know if you got it there, but it's the Hobonichi Teco.

'''Ana Reinert:''' I think I've heard about these. Yeah.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So it's made, I found out when I did the Tomoe River paper review that this planner uses that paper.

'''Ana Reinert:''' Oh yes. I have seen those.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. So I ordered one up. Um, they, they don't ship till like October or something. So I'll be sure to do a review when they come. But you know, it's, it's good for me one, because it's gridded. It's a graph paper design. Um, and it's a page a day, but the page is essentially blank. Um, it's just one big grid with like a 12 in the middle, kind of denoting the, the mid day, I guess, if you will. Oh, cool. Um, and that's pretty much it. Um, you know, it's got some other small little features, you know, of course, day date and, you know, it's got a little quote on it, but generally the whole middle of the page is blank just for that day. So it, it lends itself a lot more to, like you said, if you're taking your planner into a meeting, you can write down notes as a par, as opposed to, you know, pick up, you know, milk and bread and things. It's, it's a little more functional in that aspect, which is something that I like. I like, I don't like to be tied down to a system very well. Like we did the bullet journal last week and that's actually working pretty well for me because it's pretty simple and straightforward. Any larger, more defined system is going to be tough for me. So I'll be talking about that more here in a couple months once it, once it comes in, but yeah, I'm, uh, I'm getting into getting into the world of planners.

'''Ana Reinert:''' Well, and I actually use mine as a planner and also as a reminder. So a lot of times at the end of the week, I'll go back and put in any important things that might've happened that might not have been captured. So things like if I, if we went to a movie or if we went out for dinner with friends, that's sort of the last minute thing, I'll go back and add those in so that a year from now I could, I could theoretically pull that back out. And it, it would double as a diary to a certain extent of like, what did we do? Where did we go? You know, friends were in town that weekend, stuff that might not necessarily end up in your planner. Um, and so I keep track of things like that as well. So I kind of, I'll, at the end of the week, you know, before I start Monday of the following week, I'll go in and like add in things that I might've done over the weekend that wouldn't normally capture.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Cool. That's great. I think that's a good idea. Yeah. And I actually need to do more stuff like that. I, I, I've started, you know, as my kids are getting older, I've started to, you know, realize that, Hey, I want to remember this, you know, later. So that's good. That's good. Well, I want to talk, we alluded to a topic that I want to cover about, um, when products aren't working that I want you to get into. But first I want to do our second sponsor and that is shutterstock.com. Um, what shutterstock is, is it's where you'll find over 20 million stock photos, vectors, illustrations, and video clips. Start your search at shutterstock.com to find that perfect image for your website, ad publication, or any other creative project. Shutterstock.com gives you a global image collection to find images from across the world to suit your project. Choose between image packs and monthly subscription packages. Choose whatever fits your need and never have to compromise. If you need just one image for your blog or mock-up, you can do that too. Every time you visit shutterstock, you'll find something new since they add 10,000 new images every day, every day, 10,000 new images. That's crazy. And it's more affordable than you think with no extra charge for large files. Just download any image in any size and pay only one price. They don't nickel and dime you for high resolution images. If you need them, take them. Easily curate and share pictures via light boxes. You can choose your favorite pictures or videos and add them to your own light box gallery as you search. You can also use their iPad app to do this. There's something called enhanced license access. If you like an image and want to run it on print or swag for your trade shows, they can get you enhanced license for any image. They also have a huge library of vectors, icons, infographic templates, and video clips should you need any of those. If you need any help at shutterstock.com, you get an account rep dedicated to you who will answer any questions. They also have 24-hour support during the week. Sign up for a free browse account or go to shutterstock.com. No credit card needed. When you find the images you like and decide to purchase, use offer code PENS9, that's P-E-N-S-9, the number nine, and get 25% off any package. So thank you, shutterstock.com. And usually when Myke is doing that read, I'm always on shutterstock.com and I'm typing in funky stuff. So let's type in rainbow pencil.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Let's see what we're doing.

'''Ana Reinert:''' Let's find anything good.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Oh my goodness. Yeah. So I got for rainbow pencil, stock photos, illustrations, and vector art, I got 22,459 results. And let me tell you, every single one of them on this page that came is some type of rainbow pencil, like drawings and, you know, just really, really cool colors everywhere. So gosh, they have everything. So yeah, if you're putting together a blog or a service and need some stock images, this is the place to go. It looks like they've got everything. So thank you, shutterstock.com for sponsoring us. That's awesome. All right. So not everything in the world of pens and papers, you know, always comes out smelling roses. We have problems with pens. You know, I've talked about my Lamy 2000 that I dealt with for about a year until I got it fixed. And, you know, sometimes you get faulty items out of the package and you ran into something here recently. So why don't you tell that story real quick?

'''Ana Reinert:''' I had for several years, I think I saw on your blog at some point, you had gotten a Kaweco Lilliput and I said, I will own that pen one day. Yeah. Awesome pen. And so I finally was at a spot where I could, you know, it's not a super expensive pen. It's about $55 or something, but a little bit further out of my, you know, that's right at the top of my, what I've normally spent on fountain pens. Um, so I finally scraped the change together, bought it, was so excited. It got, it got here. I took it out of the package and I've had Kawecos before and they've always just written like a dream as soon as I take them out of the package. So, I mean, I think I was even sitting in my car, threw the cartridge in there, gave it a couple of shakes, put it on paper. Nothing happened. I'm like, oh, maybe it's a cruddy cartridge. Maybe it's, you know, maybe it's cause I'm trying to write in 90 degree heat in my car, whatever. So I get home, I get out nice paper. I'm, you know, trying to prime it, trying to get it going. Nothing.

'''Ana Reinert:''' It's scritchy, scratchy. I'm getting like tiny little bits of ink. It's just, it's not, it's just, and I'm like, this is not right. This is not right. And then, and so I asked a couple other people to try it. Cause again, I thought, well, maybe it's the left-handed thing. And all the time thinking Kawecos work great for lefties. You can write upside down. They work, they work at just about any angle. They're very forgiving in that way. And so even going through this whole thing, I'm thinking, this is stupid. I should, there's obviously something wrong with this pen. And then I thought, well, maybe I'm just, I don't know. So, so pass it around for a while, had other people use it and they're like, it's okay. It's kind of scratchy. And I'm like, okay, it's not me. There's something wrong with this pen.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. Cause Kawecos are not scratchy pens.

'''Ana Reinert:''' They are not scratchy pens. And, but had I been a brand new fountain pen user and that was the first pen I purchased, I would have been like fountain pens stink. I don't want these. They're terrible. So, I mean, I'm glad that it wasn't my first experience. And it's certainly even at $55, it's a, it's a budget fountain pen. So my instinct is that quality control at that level is not as, you know, is not as efficient. They're not as, they don't maybe look at every single pen kind of thing.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, maybe not as thorough.

'''Ana Reinert:''' Not as thorough. So, but I, I bought it from jet pens and I emailed them and I said, what's my next step? What do I do? Should I contact Kaweco? Do you guys handle this? And jet pens being the awesome company that they are said, nope, don't worry about it. We will take care of everything. We'll get, make sure you get one that works. So they sent me another one and I took it out of the package and I'm like, please work. Please work.

'''Ana Reinert:''' And, um, I did exactly the same thing. I popped in the, cause I was like, I'm not going to try crazy ink. I'm not going to use anything. I'm just going to use the cartridge that comes with it. So I stuck that little blue cartridge in there, gave it a couple of shakes, put it on paper. And I'm like, works like a charm. I was right. It was not the pen. It was not the company. It was just one pen that wasn't, didn't work.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' See, I worry about that. The, the point you made about, you know, you and I and all the other bloggers in our realm, you know, we talked to a lot of people that are just getting started and they're always looking for information, which is why they've reached out to us and, you know, help me get started. Help me find, you know, what do I want, you know, where the burden's on us to tell them, you know, sometimes what to buy. And, you know, it's, it's hard to know that exact, exact thing to tell them. And then when you get that second phase of like, well, what if they get something that's really not working well for them? And it's just like a, something wrong, physically wrong with the pen that you and I would notice, but they don't know. And they start, you know, giving you grief about it. I mean, fortunately that hasn't happened, but that's something I worry about, right? Because you don't want to recommend something junky to someone, but I'm totally glad the Kaweco thing worked out for you. Did they send you a whole new pen or just the nib unit?

'''Ana Reinert:''' No, they sent me a whole new pen. Great. They, I think what JetPens did was actually just contacted Kaweco directly and said, you sent us a faulty pen, send us a new one. And so they got a new one in and they sell out at JetPens the, cause I got the extra fine nib and the silver. And I was, I wanted the silver one so bad cause it matches my pocket knife.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I saw that picture.

'''Ana Reinert:''' There's this, they're the same size. It was like, it has to be the brushed silver one.

'''Ana Reinert:''' But yeah, so there were several, I mean, and luckily it wasn't like I was waiting for my first fountain pen or anything because it was several weeks to sort of, I ordered the first one. It didn't work. I messed around with it for a week before I contacted JetPens and said, yes, there's definitely something wrong with this. You know, I'd filled it with a couple of different inks, making sure it wasn't that I was using a bad ink or anything. And so then of course, when I contacted JetPens, they're like, well, we're sold out, you know, or we would have just sent you one, what we had in stock. And so then there was another wait. So it was a good three or four weeks and I was so excited. I'm so glad I didn't say anything on the blog. Like I'm going to write a review next week on this pen because it didn't, you know, like I would have been so felt like I'd let people down because it was several weeks before I could finally write the review and not write the review of this pen sucks. It's terrible. It didn't write because I knew that that wasn't what it was. Right. I knew. And, and if I had a second one and I had the same problem, then I would have felt comfortable writing a review that says, this is not a good pen. It didn't work. But I knew that that wasn't what was going on here.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. And having used, you know, uh, Kawecos like you do and like I do those, like the nibs are on those pens are fantastic. And, you know, hopefully, you know, maybe it, it, it just was a faulty pen, like you said, and all the rest are good. And fortunately, knock on wood, I haven't had that, that much of a problem. I definitely hadn't had a problem with the Kawecos. The one, the biggest one I've had a problem with was the Lamy 2000. And I should have like you, I should have done something earlier, except I was too, I don't know if naive is the word, but I was just really getting started. It's like, I don't know what to do or how to handle this, but I know something's a little bit off here. And, um, fortunately, you know, as I got, I had asked a few questions on forums and tried to figure out some things to do. And fortunately, you know, I waited around long enough. I just took it to, um, someone, a nibmeister to take a look at the nib and it's fixed and it's working perfectly. Now it was a nib alignment issue and you do your research online and you find that, you know, the Lamy 2000 line doesn't have the greatest quality control and things like that. So, you know, it's, it's, I guess it just comes with the territory sometimes. And fortunately we're in this situation now where if we, we've got enough experience to where we know if something's wrong, we're able to, to nail it down quickly. But I do worry sometimes for those just getting started that they, uh, that they will freak out, um, a little bit and it might be unwarranted and we just might need to get a different pen in their hands and everything will be fine.

== Fountain Pens ==

'''Ana Reinert:''' So, but I do think I, my, my instinct, if I were to at this point, give advice to somebody buying their first pen, what your first fountain pen to definitely buy it from a reputable vendor, buy it from somebody that, that has gotten good feedback places like Goulet and Jet Pens and, um, Colt Pens. And if you get it and it doesn't write, call them, email them and say, is there something I'm not doing? I'm not sure. I mean, like, don't risk looking like an idiot, um, on the offhand chance that you end up, you know, waiting too long and you've exceeded their, you know, whatever their return policy is. Because at a certain point, if it's not writing for you, send it back, have them send you another one, you know, or at least get your money back and say, okay, maybe I need to wait until I can go to a pen show and try pens or, you know, a pen shop where I can actually walk in the door and use it first before I buy it. So, but that, yeah, that's the biggest thing. I wouldn't buy it on Amazon or eBay or something if you're, if this is your first foray.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yep. I think that's great advice. I think that's perfect. All right. So we got a, we have a few more topics that I reached out on Twitter when, um, um, I booked you on the podcast and said, Hey, anything, you know, you guys want to know from me or from Anna, um, she's going to be on the podcast and, uh, we'll do these kind of rapid fire stuff. Cause we got some good, um, good, good Twitter questions. And I thought this first one was perfect. It's from, uh, at Janice Marie. And she said, um, she said, Anna is the perfect person to talk about desk accessories with when you're in, where, when you're in cubicle hell, what makes your life better? And I know you, you, you're a, you're a desk gear aficionado, um, looking at all, you like all the retro stuff, you know, you like looking at other desks and things like that. So how can we make cubicle hell better, Anna?

'''Ana Reinert:''' Well, uh, my very first advice is if there's an aesthetic that you like that your beige cubicle or your gray desk doesn't have going on, bring it in from home, you know, go hit the places that, you know, in my case I do, I hit a lot of antique malls and vintage places and the plastic swing line stapler went away and the vintage, you know, shiny silver stapler came in, you know, and, um, you know, put pictures or calendar that appeal to you, hang it on your wall or your cube. I mean, those are, those are the first things is like, if they, if they give you ugly office supplies, bring stuff from home, bring the stuff that you like. Don't, you know, we bring our own pens because we don't like the ones that they have in the supply closet. Um, but places that have good options are places like, you know, I mean like poppin has color coordinated. If you want all green, you can go to poppin. Um, you know, and, um, I did find like one of the places that I didn't expect to find really good selection of kind of fun, different office supplies was the, it's actually a shop that sells clothes, but it's called mod cloth and they have a whole section on

'''Brad Dowdy:''' office supplies. Oh, that's cool. Yeah. I'll check that out. Yeah. I can't, I don't have my desk like fully decorated out, but I'm trying to think, I don't think there's one thing on the desk that isn't mine except for like the phone. You know, I think I've brought in everything, every, you know, every piece of hardware that I use, every piece of decoration that I use, you know, pictures, you know, drawings from my kids and pens. And I mean, even down to like my mouse pad and stuff is like something that I've brought in, you know, that it makes me feel more comfortable at work and things like that. And so I think that's, that's the key is, you know, hopefully you're a company. Hopefully your company lets you for one, bring in your stuff and, um, two, you know, make it your own and, uh, don't worry about other people making fun of you because, uh, cause they don't have a clue. They're the ones with the cluttered filled paper, high desk and the, the big pens. And, you know,

'''Ana Reinert:''' there is a guy at Hallmark who actually brought in wood flooring and put it under his desk so that it didn't, it wasn't on the sort of psychedelic gray spiral carpeting that we have. And I mean, I walked by his cubicle and I'm like, really? You brought in wood floor? Okay. Whatever floats your boat. But I mean, it is. And I mean, Hallmark is, I mean, we're notorious. Like we hang stuff from the ceilings. Um, at my, I'm actually like outposted right now, but over my regular desk is a giant, um, Chinese paper, uh, parasol. That's cool. Which I hang over the fluorescent lights because really who wants to look at popcorn ceiling and fluorescent tubes? Gosh, I know. Um, but I mean, like every, like everybody at Hallmark, there's, you know, people make those big tissue puffs and hang them up and there's all cut. There's, I mean, you know, people bringing those cutouts of, of, uh, you know, from the movie theater of their favorite, you know, character actor. I mean, there's, there must be a half a dozen Chewbaccas in various places and the characters from Twilight and, you know, but we're all, we all decorate our space and make it our own. And I think most offices, you might not be able to hang things from the ceiling or, you know, put a giant Chewbacca, but you know, I mean, you can bring a calendar and hang it on that has, you know, beautiful pictures of travel destinations or, you know, the kinds of things that just make the space feel a little bit better. But I will have a post up on my site sometime by this weekend of some visuals of some cool desk accessories for the cubicle pound.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Oh, that's awesome. Awesome. I look forward to that. All right, let's handle one more. And then, uh, I think we gotta, we gotta wrap this, but this was a good question. Um, from Vaughn Johnson. He said, how much time each week do the two of you spend with your blogs? How big of a time commitment is required? Do you want to take that one first? I want to hear what you have to say. It takes a lot of time. I don't know that I've timed it per week. Um, I tend to do everything in big batches. Um, and then have things ready to post at later dates, but per week, if I average it out, it's gotta be

'''Ana Reinert:''' seven, eight hours a week easily. Okay. I'm cause I'm, I'm right in the same in the, about the same space. I think I actually spend a little bit more time, but I do post a little bit more frequently than you do. Right. Yeah. Um, but I estimated that I spend at least, I mean, if I just count like prepping posts and looking for information or doing written reviews and photographing and processing the photos and all of that kind of stuff, um, each post is a minimum usually of an hour. Right. Give or take depending. I mean, I do some that are a little bit faster, but I do batch process a lot of stuff like that, where if, if it's a, if it's not time related or it's not a brand new product that I want to make sure gets up as soon as possible for people. If it's something I found, that's a vintage thing. I sort of will queue those up for later in the week. Yeah. Um, but yeah, I'm somewhere between eight to 12 hours a week.

== Morning Glory Pen ==

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. I'd say that's probably right. Like I, like the review I did today for the morning glory, which I wanted to get out fast cause I didn't have a lot of time with it before it launched at jet pins. I probably did that one from start to finish, including photography and editing and writing, um, and probably like an hour, but that's like a dedicated hour and it might even take a little bit longer. It's, it just doesn't go that fast. And that was a short review. Um, when I did the Lamy 2000 a few weeks ago, just the written part of that one, I think probably took me at least two hours and that doesn't include any photography, any handwritten samples, any editing, any photography editing. So, I mean, I could have spent, you know, three or more hours just on one review. Um, so if you do that multiple times a week, it's, yeah, I'm looking at probably I'd say eight hours and that's probably conservative. It's probably eight to 10. It takes, it takes a lot of time to, to keep a consistent, uh, consistent blog up. So.

'''Ana Reinert:''' Mm-hmm. And that's not counting the time that you spend double checking to see if you've got Twitter questions or any of that and checking your email, reading through, like I get emails from a lot of, I mean, like if I add it all together, like it's, it's a, it's a part-time job.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, it is no doubt. And you know, that includes, you know, podcast prep for me and recording and, and all that stuff too. So that's, yeah, it, it's, it's not an hour or two a week. It's a, it's a, it's a good chunk. And that's after, you know, both of us, you know, work full-time and, you know, have other responsibilities too, but, um, we do it because we love it and it's fun. It's a great community, community to be a part of. And, um, it, it's thriving and, and, uh, it's such a positive place to be that I'm glad to do it and, uh, wouldn't want to do it, uh, any other way. I love doing it.

'''Ana Reinert:''' I do too. I do have days though, when it does, it's, I got a lot of commitments.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, I know. I'm getting, I'm getting to the point now. I'm not going to lie to you where I've almost forgotten to make a post. I'll be like, Oh, I didn't do a post where I used to never be like that at all. I'd have them loaded out. And now I've been so busy. Like I'll get, you know, uh, the night before, you know, the next morning that I wanted to post like a few hours before I'm like, Oh my gosh, I didn't do a post for tomorrow. Do I have anything to give away? Cause that won't

'''Ana Reinert:''' take me very long. And I, I have a tendency to accumulate till the weekend and then I'll do like, I'll spend like an all day on Saturday doing nothing, but just testing like a lot of stuff. Like I have a couple products that I haven't had time to test, to figure out like, and I mean, some cases you test something and you're like, this isn't, it's not even worth reviewing. Like, I don't even want to talk about this.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I know I've gone through like the whole thing and gone, Oh, forget it.

'''Ana Reinert:''' Yeah. Forget it. I'm not telling anybody, I'm not going to, I'm not going to say terrible things about this product, but I've, I took an hour and a half testing and making sure it wasn't just me. It really is a crappy product, you know? And ultimately then there's other things that are good products that I want to give them their just do and give them time and not just whip something out because I'm trying to hit a deadline. So some stuff sits for a while.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Exactly. Exactly. But I do the same thing. I, on the weekends I'll spend, you know, three or four hour chunks just doing a bunch of stuff in one shot.

'''Ana Reinert:''' Yeah.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Well, good. Well, I think let's, I think let's wrap it up for today. We got, we could go on and on and on. That's why I like having you on here so much. And like I say, I always say we need to do it more frequently and we really do. So I really, really appreciate you coming on today and joining me on the show. So why don't you tell, I know you're, the blog for everyone is at wellappointeddesk.com. So tell everyone where you're at on Twitter or how they can, how you like to be reached.

'''Ana Reinert:''' You can reach me on Twitter at wellapptdesk.com. And I'm also on app.net at ANA.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Awesome. And you can find me at penaddict.com. I'm on Twitter at dowdyism, D-O-W-D-Y-I-S-M. I'm on app.net at dowdy, D-O-W-D-Y. And if you need to contact me, there's a contact link at the top of my website. And it was fun as always, Ana. I really appreciate it. And you take care.

'''Ana Reinert:''' Thank you. Thanks so much for having me on the show.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' You got it. I'll talk to you soon.

'''Ana Reinert:''' Okay.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye.

'''Ana Reinert:''' Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye.

[[Category:Podcast Transcripts]]
[[Category:The Pen Addict Podcast Transcript]]

The Pen Addict 69/transcript

2026-06-23T16:01:03Z

PencilBot: fixed spelling

{{Infobox podcast transcript
| name = The Pen Addict
| number = 69
| title = Give ‘em Hell Bryan Bedell!
| date = August 27th, 2013
| hosts = [[Brad Dowdy]] 
[[Myke Hurley]]
| guests = [[Bryan Bedell]]
| link = [https://www.relay.fm/penaddict/69 Episode 69]
| audiolink = [https://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/traffic.libsyn.com/thepenaddict/penaddict-069.mp3 Audio Episode 69]
| length = 53
}}

'''Myke Hurley:''' Hello and welcome to episode 69 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 today by a man who is surely hand-stitched by a master craftsman. It's Mr. Brad Dowdy.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Putting it all together. I like that, Myke. I appreciate it. How are you, sir?

'''Myke Hurley:''' I'm very well. That was me harkening back to your product announcement last week.

== Nock Pen Cases ==

'''Brad Dowdy:''' That's right. That's right. We've got the Nock pen cases coming out hopefully in about a month or so, and things are progressing along nicely. We did our Kickstarter video this weekend, so hopefully we can share that with you guys soon. And yeah, it's going really, really well.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Very, very excited. But equally excited for today's episode.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, speaking of excited, I'm really excited about today's episode. We have a really special guest on the podcast today, Mr. Brian Bedell from Field Notes. How's it going, Brian? Hey, guys. We really appreciate you. Yeah, we appreciate you coming on. I know we've talked several times over email and, you know, trying to find the right time to get it. And, you know, I know we've talked in the past and you're like, oh, you know, this edition's getting ready to wrap up. And it's like our, you know, super, super busy time. So let's do it when it's a little bit down time. So hopefully we've got you at a good time in between cycles here.

'''Bryan Bedell:''' Yeah, we're, you know, we're gearing up for fall and that's all in production now. So we're sort of just like waiting for the storm.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Awesome, awesome. Well, we're going to get into all things Field Notes today and hear about, you know, what you do at Field Notes. And we've got a bunch of readers questions, but I did want to follow up on one item real quick, which is also Field Notes related that we've talked about a lot over the past year of podcasts. And that's, you know, the whole collector aspect of Field Notes. And right now, pretty much the rarest regular colors edition Field Notes has been put out on the eBay auction site. And the Butcher Blue three-pack is out and available for everyone to see. I don't know if you've seen it yet, Brian. Yeah. I don't know if you keep track of that stuff at all, but it's... Yes, I'm watching it. Yeah. So it went out on Sunday and it shot up to like 200-something already. I guess it's $260 right now. And I put out a post this morning trying to get everyone to guess and see what it was going to go for because, you know, I have no interest in paying that kind of money. But what do you think something like that's going to go for?

'''Bryan Bedell:''' Oh, geez. I don't know. I mean, there's five days left, I think, in the auction. And usually the real-game work kind of starts at the end. So, yeah, I don't have any idea. It's amazing. It blows our mind here that anyone would spend that much money. I know. You could print your own, not to give anyone any ideas for the money we're getting into. You could get your own custom notebooks made.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So we did. We're going to talk about that whole, you know, how it became to be a collector's thing. But I just find it fascinating that, you know, this is kind of like the Holy Grail three-pack. Yeah.

'''Bryan Bedell:''' I mean, those are, you know, like, yeah, I listened last week. Jim said those are the rarest. I mean, as he said, we printed them both at the same time, and the quantities are the same. So, you know, on paper, orange and blue are both pretty much the same. But like Jim said, the blue ones just, you know, we kind of oversold them and ran out of them immediately. And so, you know, we don't even have any here in the office. I think maybe Aaron has one or two packs. But, yeah, those are the hard ones to find for sure.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah. We spoke about it a little last week as well on this show. And I made a prediction that I can't remember, but I think it was $500 is what I expected. If not, do expect that to go for minimum, I think. Like, I just, if the fact that we're, like, 24 hours into the bidding and we're, like, half that price, I don't think it's unexpected to really hit that level. Which would be crazy. I can see that.

'''Bryan Bedell:''' I almost hope it's not because that's just bizarre to me. But, yeah, judging by the past, that seems like it could happen, yeah.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, I told my friend Tana on Twitter, and she's part of the Field Notes group. She's one of the biggest collectors out there. She pinned me down to a number this morning. I said 388.50. I just, if this thing goes over 400, I would be, that's just crazy to me.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah, I agree. I'm telling you, Brad, 500, man. It's going for 500.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Well, most of the guesses so far in the contest are, yeah, definitely closer to the 500 range than I was.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Just the last point on why I think that amount. These are so rare. This is probably the last chance anyone will have, like, for it to get this far along, in my opinion. I can't imagine that there are going to be any other Butcher Boo three packs sealed.

'''Bryan Bedell:''' If it sells for 500, you'll see more.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, I was going to say the same thing. There will be a couple of guest appearances. That's a good point.

'''Myke Hurley:''' But if you're a collector, can you take that risk? Like, if someone really wants to finish that collection.

'''Bryan Bedell:''' Yeah, I don't know. I mean, there's people, I mean, you know, the collector, you know, the Field Nuts group, and these people watching us on eBay are a small fraction of our audience, you know, as great as they are and as much, you know, as much as they do for us. There's a lot of people that just have no idea any of this is happening. And once that word gets out, I think you'll start seeing a few more. A few more showing up on, you know, it's people that have them around. You know, our friends from way back have them. You know, we send a lot out as gifts and stuff. You'll start seeing more, I think, if word gets out at once sold for 500 bucks. Yeah. There's plenty of people that would be willing to part with them for that, I bet.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, and that's what happened with this guy that's putting them all up. He's had everything since the beginning, and he just, like, he's like, I didn't know this was a thing. So, and, you know, I'm not as attached or psychotic as most people. So, let me go ahead and cash these in.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So, Myke, you had something else you wanted to follow up on real quick?

== Visionaire Kickstarter ==

'''Myke Hurley:''' Just very quickly, I mean, just to continue the ongoing topic, ongoing topic number two. I've paid for my Visionaire, so the Visionaire Kickstarter has now ended. Did it fund? Just about. So, I'm bringing it up now. Well, the final goal, well, the final score is $324,393.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Pledged against the $15,000 goal for the Visionaire. I have paid for mine, and we'll be expecting it before the end of the year. So, we will be able to revisit that topic at a much later date. I can't wait. Maybe I'll have to send it to you, you know, that's what I'm thinking. Like, I will use it. Yeah, actually, I would like to try it. And then send it to you. And then I'll give my opinion, and you can give your opinion. And then I can decide if I need you to send it back or not.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I feel like that's only fair with the way that it's gone, so we'll probably have to do that. Okay, yeah, that sounds like a good idea. Then you can review it. Yep.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' And I might have some, there might be some other people that got in on it too that might be easier for me to get it from. But yeah, we'll figure something out, and I will definitely get my hands on one.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I bet you don't get a review version.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' No. No. Probably not. I'm guessing not.

'''Myke Hurley:''' We should jump into the real topic for today. But I think before we do that, shall I pay our bills, and then we'll jump in?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Sounds like a plan.

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'''Brad Dowdy:''' Awesome.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Away we go, Mr. Dowdy.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' All right, so Brian, when Myke and I, we were talking, I guess, a couple weeks ago, we knew we were going to have you on. I guess we had you scheduled. And I started talking to Myke, I think it was probably after last week's podcast. I said, you know, what's Brian, what is Brian's job title at Koodle or at Field Notes? Is he the project manager? Is he the art director? We were bouncing things back and forth. And I was like, you know what? As many times I've talked to Brian, I don't know the exact job title. Or maybe you're just the jack of all trades. What's the official on the paperwork job title for you?

'''Bryan Bedell:''' I don't actually have one. I don't think we, I mean, there's at Field Notes here, you know, Koodle Partners, which is the parent company, which is mostly what we do as Field Notes now. There's only seven people here in the Chicago office plus Aaron in Portland. So I do a little bit of everything. But I come from a design background. I guess, you know, art director was, you know, we used to be an advertising agency and I was an art director at the ad agency.

'''Bryan Bedell:''' And, you know, most of what I do is related to the, you know, art direction and photography. I do all the product shots.

'''Bryan Bedell:''' You know, I help Steve with the videos and, you know, and then do a lot of the design on the books. And, you know, or if Aaron and Jim do the kind of basic design, I'm usually the guy going through and cleaning them up and, you know, getting everything ready for print and nailing everything down and, you know, going to the press checks and stuff like that. So, you know, mostly art related. But then I also, you know, I take orders on the phone. I help pack boxes sometimes. I take out the trash. We all do a little bit of everything here.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' That's awesome. That sounds like a great setup. And I still didn't know that you were only looking at, you know, seven employees. That's just fascinating. The way y'all have grown since this whole thing started to be able to keep it, you know, manageable. That's just kind of a testament to how you guys do business. That's pretty impressive. Lean and mean. Yeah. That's the way to do it. So we're not too far off from the next fall edition. Do y'all have a release date for that? I mean, I know that's probably, you know, getting ramped up here and about ready to go.

'''Bryan Bedell:''' Yeah. We're looking at, you know, real soon. I don't know. Do you guys come out? Well, you guys come out pretty quickly after you record, right? Yeah.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' This will be out today. Yeah. It'll be out tonight. Yeah.

'''Bryan Bedell:''' Oh, okay. Yeah. So we're hoping within a couple weeks. Everything's looking pretty good. There's a couple snags that haven't happened, but we're worried about them. So we don't want to promise anything. But I'd say we're hoping like about two weeks from now. We're looking probably mid, late September.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Cool. Yeah. It's awesome.

'''Bryan Bedell:''' Yeah. Early to mid September, hopefully. But we're almost into September. Yeah. So maybe like the second.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Well, I don't want to, I'm obviously not going to ask you about anything about the edition because I like to keep that secret. Just like Myke was saying, you know, I don't want to know beforehand. It's become a thing. Yeah. That's it. I was like, I want to be surprised like everyone else.

== Field Nuts Group ==

'''Bryan Bedell:''' Yeah. I was joking with, oh, dang, what's his name? Todd, who runs the Field Nuts group. And I told him next time someone asks, I'm just going to tell them and ruin it for everyone and see it.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I would be so upset, I think. I know. I would like that. How do you like that? Yeah.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah. Where I kind of want to know, I don't want to know at the same time.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. So we don't want to ruin anything. We don't want to know. And I want to keep it that way. But I do want to know kind of, and I think I got a few questions about this from the listeners. How does the process of deciding what's coming up next or I guess the roadmap for, you know, down the line, how does the idea come about? And how do you say, this is the one we're going with for, you know, for this quarter? You know, we are going to do, I mean, do we all sit around a table and just start throwing out ideas? Y'all have, has this one been sitting around for a year that y'all have been waiting to do this one in autumn? Tell me a little bit about how the Colors Edition process works.

'''Bryan Bedell:''' All right. Yeah. The, generally, we don't have a lot of meetings or anything. It was funny because Aaron was actually passing through town last week and we all sat down in the conference room and he actually, actually hooked up his computer to the projector. And that was, I think, the very first time we've ever done that. So, you know, we have the next, the next few additions are a little more planned out than usual, but who knows if we'll stick with that. In general, I mean, we've got, you know, Aaron and Jim talk on the phone and then I talk with both of them on email and we've got, we usually have kind of three or four ideas going.

'''Bryan Bedell:''' And I mean, it's, it's kind of different every time. Sometimes we have a real good idea what we want going into it, you know, and we get a good start on it and we get three quarters of the way finished with it and change our mind and start out another one.

'''Bryan Bedell:''' Expedition, for instance, was meant to be the fall edition last year and we had them just about, I think they were on press. We were having a little bit of, you know, every time we do this, we do something different. So there's always, you know, some glitch. So, but it wasn't terrible and we could have made fall with those. And then we suddenly decided, let's save these for winter and do another one. So like traveling salesman was one where, where it just happened really fast. You know, we kind of decided, you know, with the very minimum time that, you know, let's, let's do something new. We'd been eyeing just sort of that color paper thinking that would be nice. I don't know. I think we just kind of started doing some research and ordered some old ledgers on eBay to look at and get some ideas and put that one together really, really quickly. And then there was nothing too bizarre about the printing of that one. So we were able to print it pretty efficiently. You know, whereas other ones like the one we're doing now is one we've been kicking around for a couple of years and we're finally doing it. There's a couple, you know, that even longer, like almost since we've been doing colors, we've had a few ideas and we have a couple of those actually in the queue now for, you know, actual dates set for those. But it's a little different every time. Sometimes it's just Aaron sends something over and says, how's this look? And we're like, yeah, let's go with it. But other times maybe Jim or I kind of have an idea and we all play with it and see what comes out of it. But it's, you know, between, usually it's kind of between the three of us is where the idea comes from. And, you know, yeah, either, you know, usually Aaron kind of throws together kind of the basic idea and then I kind of go in and work out some of the details and get the exact colors nailed down and the, you know, pick out papers and do some ink tests and things like that and do sort of more of the production end of it.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' That's fascinating about the traveling salesman that it came together, you know, kind of quickly. Yeah, I know that's popular.

'''Bryan Bedell:''' Yeah, that was a favorite of a lot of people. Yeah. And, yeah, I mean, there's, you know, there's other ones, you know, it's like anything. There's, you know, certain things you think are just, you know, you're so behind the idea and maybe they don't come out as great as you thought they would. And other things you kind of throw together and they're great. But it goes the other way, too. There's some we've rushed out that weren't that great. So, yeah, it's, you know, and it's, that's really the most fun thing about all of this is getting to try so many different, you know, printing techniques, working with different printers, trying different paper companies and paper types, you know, and all those kind of printing effects and things we can do. So, so it's, you know, that's kind of a lot of the fun, but also a lot of the challenge because, you know, every time we try to kind of push our limits a little and try something new and it's, it's hard to top ourselves every time.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' That's, that's exactly what I was about to say. The way y'all have stepped up your game, if you will, like when you do something like the night sky edition, where, you know, if you're just looking at it, you know, from, from the front and you see, okay, you know, the, everyone loves the black, of course. And, you know, it looks great. Then all of a sudden, if you're not familiar with field notes and you flip it over and you see the type of printing you've done on the back and then you've done, you know, three different, three different back covers, you know, with the, you know, with the stamping on there. I mean, that's like, I mean, that's really impressive to me considering, you know, what, what we're, what you were starting with, with just, you know, just say like a basic color cover, like a butcher orange or butcher blue. And now we're doing all this. I mean, that transformation has been really impressive over the years.

'''Bryan Bedell:''' Yeah. That's a good one. I mean, as far as the process, you know, I think that was one where we, Jim had kind of been talking about the idea for a while. I think it was kind of originally his idea just to do stars of some sort. And then that was one where, you know, I like, we all knew, we all knew Raven's Wing was super popular and, you know, black was good to go with. And then that was one where I sort of maybe had more to do with the design than usual. So I was really happy that it came out well. Cause I, after, you know, after Jim's kind of original idea, I kind of nailed down the design on that one and I was really excited about it. So I was glad to hear everyone liked it so much.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Well, then I should tell you, Brian, that that's my favorite edition of all time.

'''Bryan Bedell:''' Oh, thanks a lot.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I just, I am in love with that, with the, with the, like the hologram foil on the back. I just think that it's, it's one of those things that when it, when it arrived, I was like, oh, cause you can't really see it in the photos very well. Like it's, it doesn't show, but it's when you get it and it's, and it reminds me of like, from when I was a kid playing Pokemon trading cards, right? Like that hologram, you know, that's what I, that's one of the things that I love about it. And I love that they're all different and I'm happy that I've got a few, a few packs here. Cause I started my subscription, I think an edition before. So I'm pleased because now I have a couple, a couple of packs of my favorite.

'''Bryan Bedell:''' But those are still, I think a lot of retailers probably still have those. I don't think those are getting too rare yet. I mean, you know, we, we, we, you know, a lot of retailers bought a lot of those. So there should still be some out there. Those shouldn't be too hard to find. I might have to buy myself some more. Yeah, the funny, the hollow, I should, I, I keep thinking like, should I say things or not? But I'll say those, the, the night sky, the, the holograms were originally, and this is another thing we've been talking about forever. We're supposed to be glow in the dark. And we worked really hard trying to figure that out. We did, worked with several different screen printers and use different kinds of inks and tried a lot of different things. And we just could not get any sort of, you know, glow in the dark that we were happy with. So, so the, the holographic foil was kind of, you know, we got closer and closer to the date and had to make some kind of decision. And we tried that out and thought that looked great. So.

== Favorite Editions ==

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, it looks fantastic. It really does. So speaking of favorite additions, what's been your favorite or what's your favorite or what was your favorite to work on? Do you know, just putting together the whole project, you know, you put a lot into, this isn't just printing notebooks. I mean, you guys put in serious amounts of time and, you know, a lot of the products have accompanying videos, which I know take a lot of production. Then you have, you know, extra add-ons like stickers or pins, you know, that there's thought and design going into. So what's been your favorite, like as a whole project to work on and put out and share with everyone?

'''Bryan Bedell:''' Oh, you know, this, the night sky was definitely one that going out to Great Basin to shoot that video was probably one of the greatest experiences of my life. Like I just, you know, staying up all night. I mean, if anyone ever has a chance to go out somewhere like that, where it's just no light, you know, no light pollution, no moon, and you can just look up and, you know, two nights in a row, we sat out and looked up in the stars and it never got boring. You would just sit there and just keep seeing new things and see like, you know, you notice things like stars have different colors and, you know, it was just, you know, you start getting loopy around four in the morning or whatever, but it was just, it was just such a good experience out being out in the middle of nowhere with no phone service for two days, like just sitting in the desert and staring in the sky. So that, as far as, you know, as far as videos, that and Fire Spotter was fun. Steve and I drove up to Wisconsin and camped out and then there was that old fire tower we shot and Steve was actually afraid to climb to the top. So I got to do all the video.

'''Bryan Bedell:''' Yeah. But again, like I just said, it was, you know, we were, you know, we kind of were watching trying to make sure we'd be there when the trees look good and we just nailed it. We got two perfect days there and the trees were beautiful. And again, I could have sat on that fire tower and just stared out, you know, you could see for miles, just all the colors and I could have just sat there for hours and hours. So those are two of my favorite videos. As far as books, yeah, Night Sky, I like a lot. The Old Raven's Wing was probably my favorite before that, just because I really liked that duplex paper and, you know, I'm a photographer too, so I like the black paper. Just kind of, you know, looked nice in my camera bag.

'''Bryan Bedell:''' Traveling Salesman, I liked a lot. Yeah, I mean, that one came out well, especially I like that, like, you know, the ledger paper was really neat in that. I like doing different things like that. You know, I know some subscribers are like, oh, that's not really useful to me. But I figure, you know, we like mixing things up. And if there's one out of, you know, if you're a subscriber and there's one out of four you don't love, hopefully you love one of the other ones to make up enough for it. We always say, if you don't like it, you know, send it back and we'll send you two crafts to replace it. And no one's taken us up on that yet. So no one's disliked an addition too much, I guess.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Wow, that's pretty cool.

'''Bryan Bedell:''' But yeah, I'm trying to think. I mean, you know, all the, I mean, I like working with, you know, working with letterpress and the foil stamping and stuff, you know, we get to kind of work with some different printers when we do some interesting things like that. So, so that's fun.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So when you're, when you're walking around the office, which one are you, which one, what are you carrying around with you? Do you use just the basic craft memo walking around or using something else?

'''Bryan Bedell:''' Yeah, I usually, yeah. You know, I kind of just go through, you know, whatever's sitting there. I'll just grab, you know, we, it's, you know, there's a bunch of the latest editions usually sitting around opened up. So I'll grab one of those. I don't, I usually do carry one with me. Honestly, I'm not, I use the Steno more than anything, like on my desk. I use, I go through those like every, you know, once every couple of weeks, I'll have to start a new one. So, you know, product wise, that's the one I really, you know, use the most. But, but yeah, I've always got, you know, and the other thing is the Space Pen, which like once I, I think I'd been talking about doing that for a while. And then when we did the, when we did the night sky, it kind of made sense to do it then. But I had been carrying a Space Pen for a while and I just love having one of those in my pocket all the time. Like it's just, you know, the small bullet pen. It's just so convenient. And, you know, if you got that in your field notes in your pocket, you're ready to go.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' You're still, you're still rocking the Space Pen, Myke?

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yep. It's, it's what's clipped to the front of my field notes that I keep in my pocket every day.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' That's awesome. All right. So I want to talk about a little bit of the, the nerdery aspect. And that kind of leads into some of the readers, readers questions that we have. We get, I get a lot of questions in writing the blog and reviewing different pens. You know, how does, how do certain pens work, you know, on different types of paper and, you know, field notes obviously being one of those. And now since the focus of my blog hasn't changed, but I've been getting a lot into, a lot more into fountain pens. And they have, of course, different ink properties and, you know, different types of paper work better with different inks. So a lot of the questions I get are, you know, which fountain pens and which inks work the best with the field notes and which field notes edition is best for fountain pens and things like that. So do you, I know for a while there, the paper was pretty much the same. It was the standard, just the standard 50 pound stock white paper. And then y'all started to play with the paper weight, paper densities a little bit more here recently. Do you have any considerations to how people are using them or to what type of paper you're going to use? Or are you just really trying to fit it into what your, I guess, what your idea of this, the memo book should be for this release?

'''Bryan Bedell:''' Yeah, I think, you know, we usually stick, you know, we have a good number of fountain pen fans that use, you know, use the standard crafts and we want to take that into account. But on the other hand, like we don't, you know, like, you know, we have a lot of different, you know, there's sort of sub sort of markets, you know, there's kind of the outdoorsy people and there's the, you know, coffee shop people. And we try not to focus too much on any one group, you know, and make our decisions just based on them just because we know if there's one edition that's not perfect for them, you know, they'll find other ones that work and we, you know, might, you know, find some new people that like the new edition. You know, so yeah, we take, you know, we take all the different groups and all our different kinds of customers into account. But generally we stick, we stick with that Finch opaque for the interior paper just because everyone seems pretty happy with that. And if we step away from that, we don't want to get too different. We used the green, what was it, Mohawk, I think, for the, for the salesman and then the America the Beautiful, which, you know, I love that one too. I know a lot of people, there were a lot of the fans on FieldNet said it wasn't their favorite, but that was another one I was real involved with and I really liked how that one came out. But yeah, we used a different paper in that one, which was also, it was a Finch, but just a slightly different line and a little heavier. But anyway, I think in general we're going to stick with that Finch and then, you know, just on certain editions where we really need something different, we'll try something else.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, I can admit that I was one of the America is Beautiful's, not one of my favorite editions. Yeah. I can admit that to you, but I'm actually, that's the one I'm using now and I actually enjoy writing on the paper a lot. Yeah, that paper. I'm using fountain pens with it. It's really, really exceptional paper. I like it.

'''Bryan Bedell:''' Yeah. Yeah, I don't, you know, we don't. We don't test, you know, obviously with like Expedition we did and, you know, we try out a few pens on a new paper just to see how it works, but we don't have like a big collection to try stuff out on. You know, I have like one fountain pen and I'll try it out, but, you know, I just, I'm just using like regular Waterman ink and.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Well, if you ever need someone to test, yeah.

'''Bryan Bedell:''' Well, we always see, yeah, I mean, people, people have sent us, you know, like a whole book full of different inks and things. So we have that to look at too. Yeah.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' You know, the. I'm sorry. Level. No, I was just going to say the level of geekiness that I get into. I can't imagine like some of the stuff you get in the mail saying, OK, here's what I think. Here's what I. Here's my. Here's all my ink tests. Here's what you need to do. And I can't imagine some of that. It's probably pretty intense.

'''Bryan Bedell:''' Yeah, we get we get a lot of ideas for editions and it's funny because almost all of them are things we've talked about, which is kind of. Yeah. So a lot of times I won't even write back because I don't want someone thinking that like we got the idea for something from them because I remember we did the ask me anything. There were some people throughout some ideas there on field nuts and, you know, there were definitely some things we'd thought of and talked about. So, yeah, you know, it's like I think it's which is good. You know, it's a good sign. I think we're kind of in sync with what people want and expect from us. So that's good.

== Limited Editions ==

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So one of my my questions that I've had and one and it kind of goes around one of my favorite books that you've ever produced in the day game edition, y'all did a dot paper, did a dot paper and the white the white cover with the with the red with the red print. That's my that's one of my single favorite memo books that y'all have done. And I got I have this question and everyone has had this question. And I bet I got this five or six times when is when is there going to be a dot grid stock field notes edition?

'''Bryan Bedell:''' Yeah, we keep talking. That's yeah, something we talk about. I don't know. It's the problem with that is when we do that, then what do we do with the mix three pack? We can't do that.

'''Bryan Bedell:''' Mix four pack. Yeah, we do. It does come up a lot.

'''Bryan Bedell:''' Yeah, I don't know. We might break down and do it. We kind of do with with the craft editions. We generally do one big printing and try to time it. So we kind of do one big printing a year. You know, so we kind of a year's worth of stock after that. So it wouldn't be until, you know, it looks like we've you know, our current stock of craft is going to go for, you know, at least a few more months. So probably, you know, when that next big printing comes up, we'll think about it again.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' But OK, I don't want to put you in the spot.

'''Bryan Bedell:''' Oh, no, no, no. Yeah, it's definitely something we've talked about. And we've done a lot of a lot of those customs or a lot of the limited editions have had dot grid to those. So there's a lot of dot grids out there.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. And like you say, you know, a lot of these questions, this is something, you know, you've probably had on the ledger for years. It's like, you know, we've got one of these days we're going to one of these days we're going to do this. Yeah. Yeah. I just know that the dot grid seems to be getting more and more popular. And I've just been really been enjoying those. So then you did the, you know, with the night sky, you actually changed that up even more with the pattern you used there. So it's cool to see you guys doing that and just kind of mixing things up a little bit. I think it keeps it interesting for everybody.

'''Bryan Bedell:''' Well, the expedition has dot grid, too, and that's always available. So there's that. That's true. Very true. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We got stuff in the works and that could happen pretty soon. Cool. Cool.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Now, one of the additions that I've enjoyed that weren't colors, they weren't color subscription additions, but they're not stock additions, but they came through you guys. Y'all have done like the neon summer additions a couple of times. You did the ice pops one and then you did just, what's the neon summer camp? Was it summer camp? Yeah. Summer camp and ice pop, right. Yeah. So how do y'all decide to just kind of mix that in?

'''Bryan Bedell:''' Because I guess those were, well, those were both for J.Crew for Crew Cuts, which is their kid's store. Okay. I knew those. So they pretty much, yeah, they pretty much spec'd what they wanted. You know, those were kind of a custom job. And then we ended up, generally we wouldn't sell those to the shop, but I think what happened for whatever reason, I think maybe we printed more than they needed. And did I lose you guys again? Nope. We're here. Oh, I'm sorry. I think, you know, I think maybe we overprinted it and, you know, asked them if it was all right if we sold some. And we, yeah, we never sold a whole lot of those out of our shop. That was just sort of something we had a couple of boxes left and we had it in the shop for a while.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Gotcha. That's right. I remember now the ice pops.

'''Bryan Bedell:''' Yeah, those were, yeah, those were Crew Cut additions.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. Okay. The ice pops did go like straight to J.Crew. I do remember that. And then I saw, I guess I got confused when the summer camp went through, y'all went through the shop. So. Yeah. Gotcha. Gotcha. All right. So let me go through some of the reader's questions we've got. We've got a bunch here. It says, oh, I want to know when Brian will create his own limited field notes edition like Draplin did. Call it the Bedell series or something. We want a Brian edition. So does Aaron leave y'all any of the DDC editions around? And do you have any Brian special editions floating around the shop? I really like that orange on orange one Aaron did.

'''Bryan Bedell:''' We, you know, we printed that out of here. He does, he does a few customs himself where he used to, you know, like go go a few or he gets, you know, some stuff printed up or stamps it himself. So he's got a few, like when we went, we were just at that outdoor retailer show and there were a few, we saw a few around there that I'd never even seen before because he had made them up or, you know, or especially, you know, going way back to the first couple of years, he would print stuff on his own up there. But, but yeah, I don't know. Aaron, Aaron's, Aaron's a bigger character than I am. I don't know if I'm, I don't know if I'm ready for my spinoff yet.

'''Bryan Bedell:''' I don't know if I'm ready for, what is it? What was Rota? What is the numbered Bedell edition? Yeah. I don't know. I have, I was, we used to do that, the Lair Tennis on kudal.com, which was sort of a Photoshop designer battle where we'd send files back and forth between two designers. And that's actually how we met Aaron, I think. But I would shoot, we would shoot a video every week to flip the coin to see who went first. And I was always the referee in the videos. So I've, I've actually been recognized on the street as the ref a couple of times,

'''Brad Dowdy:''' which is, which is about all the celebrity I need. Yeah. That was a good series. I enjoyed, I enjoyed, always enjoyed watching those. Those are cool. So that, that was from Sparky from the, the field notes group. And we got a lot of questions from them.

'''Bryan Bedell:''' Yeah.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I think I saw that on field notes.

'''Bryan Bedell:''' I think he's the only person who wants that. Maybe, maybe. Maybe I'll just make one and send it to him.

== Field Notes Production ==

'''Brad Dowdy:''' There you go. There you go. So next we had Eric from Twitter. He asked, how do you determine how many field notes packs to print per new release? Is it a guess? Do you have a formula? How are, because y'all, obviously, as business has grown, you've steadily ramped up. And, you know, how do you, how do you manage that number to where it's, it's the right number for you guys? Have you figured, have you figured that out? Is it a, is it a mad scientist formula? Are you just kind of winging it?

'''Bryan Bedell:''' Yeah.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' That's, that's another thing.

'''Bryan Bedell:''' I mean, that's probably one of the big things we kind of bicker about in the office before it comes out is figuring out the quantity. I mean, yeah, obviously we've gotten bigger and bigger. We know, you know, we know how many subscribers we have each time and we know, you know, usually we can kind of get an idea, you know, what the retail sales are going to be, you know, to shops that sell it. And, you know, sometimes if we have a really good feeling, we think it's just going to be a real popular edition, we'll up it a little bit. Or, you know, but we, you know, we like to keep it where we're not going to have, you know, stock for too long. You know, we like to sell out one before the next one comes out just to kind of keep things easier on our end as far as stocking and inventory and everything. You know, and, you know, obviously we like to make it, you know, if it, you know, it's limited. So we want to have, you know, a little bit of a little bit of an element of you got to move and get one before they're gone. Yeah, that's exactly right. So, yeah, it's, you know, it's usually just a, you know, pretty well educated guess. Just experience. Yeah. Yeah.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' You know, based on subscribers and retail sales and stuff like that. Yeah. You talked earlier, like when you were talking about printing the Night Sky edition that you, you know, you worked with a bunch of printers and you couldn't get the, like the glow in the dark aspect, right? So, you know, you switched to the holographic stamp. Do you do, do you do, I guess, a lot of testing? Like if you have an idea and you take it to the printer and get it done. Right. Are you going through different tests? You know, are you carrying it or are you using it to try to figure out is this going to work or do you know pretty immediately? I guess I'm, I guess I'm asking, is there any kind of process to like, you know, what if you printed out the holographic stamp and then two weeks later, you know, they're worn off or whatever. Do you do any kind of testing on that?

'''Bryan Bedell:''' Sometimes. What we generally do is do an ink test on the paper where they can, it's called a drawdown where they just take the various inks. And sometimes, you know, we're not really sure exactly what color is going to work best. So we'll get a couple, you know, where they just kind of smear ink across the page, you know, like, you know, which simulates the actual printing process. So you can see the, you know, the color of the ink and there's transparency and the paper comes through. So you really know exactly what color you didn't get when you go on press. So we, you know, for most colors, yeah, especially if it's, you know, like a metallic or on a dark paper or something, we'll do that for sure. Just to make sure that's going to work okay. As far as paper, I usually, you know, usually, you know, the paper is going to be okay. There's a few, like this current one that's coming out next. I've had one in my, you know, I've had just the cover paper folded in half in my back pocket for like a month now just to see how it's letting hold up and it's been doing okay. Okay, cool. You know, but just, yeah, different, you know, different printing techniques and finishes and varnishes. We're, you know, there's been several times where we're like, oh, I'm not sure, you know, I sure hope this works and just, you know, flying by the seat of our pants hoping it works out okay. And usually it does. With the, you know, with the colors, we know it's a limited edition. And even if, you know, worse comes to worse and something doesn't work out great, you know, then it's at least just for that edition. And, you know, I think, you know, like as you've seen, we've kind of things that work better and we felt more comfortable with going into bigger production, like red blooded, you know, we knew, you know, once we were comfortable with that process and comfortable with the printer, we knew we could kind of mass produce those a little more. You know, we've gone into doing things like that. But yeah, I mean, you know, we kind of consider to some degree that the colors editions are kind of our testing ground to try stuff out, you know, and then some of the more successful stuff we can use for the regular editions later.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, I love that y'all did the, ended up doing the red blooded edition. The letter, for some reason, just for me personally, the letterpress editions have always been my favorites. I don't know why. I guess that aesthetic just appeals to me personally. But yeah, I'm a big fan of it. But yeah, like Grass Dane, Grass Dane Green is my number one favorite of all time. I love, love that edition. You know, too bad there's not, not more of those around. I'd love to, I could use that one in for the rest of my life and die happy. I would be good. But I love the letterpress style. So I was glad. So now I use the red blooded as, you know, my, my stock edition, you know, as if I'm just using, you know, the basic notebooks instead of the craft. So I like that a lot. Um, this was an interesting question and it must not have came up at the time it happened. But, um, Mikey from Twitter, he said, did Brian have any issues with packet of sunshine with shipping seeds across borders?

'''Bryan Bedell:''' Yeah, we, um, I'm trying to remember if we actually thought of that beforehand. I think not. I think it was kind of a matter of, we got all the seeds and we were starting to pack things and we were ready to go. And then it sort of occurred to us, oh crap, we can't ship seeds across borders. And so we kind of sat down and talked about it. And if I remember correctly, the decision was like, no one's ever going to notice these in a million years. Let's just throw them in there. Because I think we, I mean, we did, right? I don't know if you guys know for sure. It's been kind of a while now, but I'm pretty sure we just went ahead and shipped them.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. I didn't hear anything at the time and I never considered that until he just mentioned that. I was like, oh, that's a great question because.

'''Bryan Bedell:''' Yeah. It was something that we didn't think of early enough, but then it sort of occurred to us before anything happened. And then I think we just kind of went ahead and shipped them and nothing happened. No one said anything. So we might've started some pandemic or something.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' It might be more of an issue now with, you know, 45,000 additions instead of whatever that one was. Yeah. That was a pretty small addition. 7,000 or 10,000. Yeah. It probably wasn't as noticeable. But yeah, that's crazy.

'''Bryan Bedell:''' I'm looking at that. That was only 4,000 three packs. Yeah. So that wasn't that many.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. So you got away with it. So now Tana, who Tana Mitchell from the Facebook group, you've probably talked to her several times as well. She's everyone calls her the she's pretty much the field notes ninja. She has pretty much everything. She collects like no one's business. She had a great question and you probably saw it on there. She says, Brad, will you inquire if Brian and Jim hate purple as much as Aaron does?

'''Bryan Bedell:''' I don't hate purple. What was we were just talking about teal and I hate teal. If it was up to me, we'd never do teal. But who knows? We beat Aaron down until we got purple. So maybe they'll beat me down until they get teal. But yeah, I don't. Yeah. I mean, the purple ones were cool. I don't have a problem with that. We've had like even Aaron's wife. Aaron mentioned the other day his wife was saying, you know, why can't you do some that are just downright girly? And I'm all for that. But I don't know. It's going to take some convincing Jim, I think, and Aaron to do the all pink. Well, we did the pink. We did the pink ones for I should probably not talk about private ones we did. But we did do some private pink ones. And well, the purple ones were private, too. Those weren't.

== Field Notes Editions ==

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Those were our friends. Yeah. The purple one. Those those are actually pretty visible. If you don't have to. Yeah, they got around. I'll talk about them real quick. Yeah, the XOXO Fest from last year were the purple ones. So these aren't these aren't stock editions or colors editions. But, you know, I guess people have seen enough of them in the pink capsule editions from this year that, you know, all the collectors are gaga over the pink. And, you know, I like I do like those. I like those because they have the letterpress cover, too.

'''Bryan Bedell:''' I mean, with all this with all this, the custom editions, you know, I know this is just something to kind of clear things up. Like we we get a lot of calls of people asking for them. And I know like a lot of people are calling like, you know, they're finding out who is at the conference calling them. We can't. I mean, we're doing those as a job for someone else, you know, and obviously it's our product. And, you know, we only work with people that, you know, we want to see our name on the book with and everything. But but, you know, we just we keep a few of those for ourselves here, you know, just for the archives. But, you know, that's like, you know, that's kind of a contract with that other company. And we can't, you know, we can't sell those or give those away. Those are it's up to them to do with them what they want to do.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. Good. I'm glad you said that, actually. So in case anyone had any designs on calling Field Notes office asking for the all these weird one off offshoots that they're seeing, these are not the production line stuff. And Field Notes does not have these. These are going through special special contracts with these vendors for promotional items and things like that. So.

'''Bryan Bedell:''' Yeah, we don't make any of that stuff to sell. It's all it's all. You know, I don't think any of the contract jobs we've really done have been for sale. They've all been either, you know, to give away at a company just for people to use at work or, you know, for attendees at a conference or, you know, we've had some schools do them or, you know, charities or things like that. So, yeah, we don't generally produce things aside from like the J. Crew editions, you know, things like that. We don't generally do things for sale.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Sure. What's from the collector aspect? And this may not be a question for everyone, but just are you involved with doing the these projects for these customers?

'''Bryan Bedell:''' Oh, yeah. Yeah.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. So you're you're involved in in all of that, too. So what for just for the collectors only, do you have an edition that you've done that's been for one of these companies that you thought was was really neat and that you enjoyed? Like, I don't own it, but I always thought the Levi's edition was great with the red, white and blue and those covers. I just thought that was a really pretty, really good looking edition. Do you have any any favor just kind of kind of from those kind of from those offshoot for different companies? Yeah.

'''Bryan Bedell:''' Like I like I said, I can't even talk about a lot of those because we just for some I don't want to punish the people who put them out by having thousands of people call them. But the Levi's are definitely I mean, you know, Levi's where I think they, you know, they gave those away in stores for a while. And those were definitely, you know, the red, white and blue with the silver type that really looked nice. I think we've redone a couple of the I think that we did that. Well, no, that wasn't exactly tradesman. But, you know, we've picked up sort of the same look of those for a couple other ones we've done since. I'm trying to think of other customs. I mean, we've done a lot of the customs we do are just sort of what we do is we print blank. We print covers and inside papers and don't assemble them. And then we can go back and print a logo on the back of the blank covers. So for the smaller runs of customs, you know, like our custom order started to a thousand pieces. And we, you know, we do a lot of those just for, you know, business or whatever. And, you know, we just print that black logo on the back and then have them bound. So, you know, most of those are just craft with the black on the back and then we will do kind of maybe once a year we'll do a big run of another colored paper. So I think we've done like blue and some blue ones and some, I know that the web stock ones that were on the Field Nuts group the other day, I can mention those because those were there. Those were on, you know, like a light green paper. And we, you know, we did a lot of other customs on that same paper for a while. But generally the ones we do for, you know, the custom order ones we do are on that paper. But we've, if we do a bigger one, I'm trying to think of like ones that I could even talk about that are interesting. I mean, Levi's, you know, and then the J.Crew ones, the, whatchamacallit, Mongolian version was definitely one of my favorites. That was super fun. So we had to work with the translator and have them go through and it was all like printing terminology to get translated. So I had to work closely with them to kind of explain what we meant, you know, when you say something like, you know, you know, a lot of the printing terms were confusing to them. So that was really fun, like working out that and finding, you know, that Mongolian fonts just slightly different than, you know, Russian Cyrillic. So we'd actually buy Mongolian Futura and, you know, typeset all that. So that was definitely one of my, one of my favorites.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. Now that, that one is awesome. That's, that's the one I wanted for my collection. Like I don't get too much in the offshoots. Like if they're easy for me to come by, you know, whatever, I'll get them. But that one, I really wanted the Renegade Pencils one. Yeah. I just, cause I just thought that was a really cool, cool design. Y'all did a great job on that one. I love, love that addition. I have one single one that will just sit there and look pretty.

'''Bryan Bedell:''' Yeah. That was one of my favorites that wasn't, you know, it wasn't, well, we did actually sell those on the site, but it was a charity kind of thing and not really one of our products. So that was definitely up there. Yeah.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' That's, that's really cool. Well, I got one more question. I'm going to put you on the spot and then we'll, we'll get you out of here, but I'm going to put you on the spot a little bit here. What is your least favorite colors edition?

'''Bryan Bedell:''' Colors edition. Wait a minute. I got them up here. Let me scroll through and take a look.

== Dry Transfer ==

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Cause I've got one, Myke.

'''Bryan Bedell:''' I don't know if you have one, but, um, uh, you know, another one of my favorites dry transfer was one of my favorites for sure too. That was a lot of fun to put together. And I, you know, just looking at them, it's like, it's like your kids. How do you decide which one you hit the most? I know. Oh, um, you know what? I'm not, I'm not a baseball fan at all. So day game. I like, I mean, I like the way they looked and Kevin's book is incredible. I mean, I'm from Pittsburgh and I was, you know, a pirate's man growing up and Clemente is awesome. So I can't say anything. That book is incredible and it was really fun to work on that, but on their own, the notebooks, you know, don't, don't, don't wow me too much.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Um, I actually came around, I agree with you on that one. I wasn't a huge fan of it at first. And then for some reason that, that white red just grabbed it.

'''Bryan Bedell:''' I do like, yeah. I mean, I like foil stamping, so I don't know. And then like, you know, Expedition is awesome, but I don't use those day to day, you know. I mean, that one was fun to do too. Yeah. I don't know. I guess that or look at other ones like Packet of Sunshine outside of the packaging and everything just on their own. The notebooks aren't that amazing, but you know, that was early on. And, you know, that envelope was a cool, you know, that was all together. It was a cool package, but.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So my, my least favorite one, um, and it's relative, like you're saying, Brian, it's, it's, you know, they're all, they're all awesome. They're all great. They're all terrible. But my least favorite one was, my least favorite was, uh, the balsam fur. I don't know that. I think the color didn't grab me. Um, you know, y'all were sending the balsam, whose idea was to send the balsam fur branches in the, in the envelope. That was a pretty crazy, pretty crazy thing. So yeah.

'''Bryan Bedell:''' Those, yeah, those from the perspective.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I've never, just never used that addition as much as like I've used all the other ones, I guess.

'''Bryan Bedell:''' From the perspective of like the Christmassy angle, they're not that good, but I always just, I saw those kind of, if you, you know, if you take it away from the packaging again, I see those as looking kind of like army Jeep, you know, you got your army color with like kind of the gloss white and that was the first foil stamp we did. So I like those.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah.

'''Bryan Bedell:''' Yeah.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Did you, did you have one Myke that you, that you're not a huge fan of?

'''Myke Hurley:''' Um, yeah, I think that, that I will receive hate mail. I have a specific reason where I really like the look and feel of traveling salesman. Um, the way that the paper is printed doesn't really work for me. Yeah. Just because it's like the ledger. Sure. So like, um, you've then got like the two sort of margins on either side and I don't really do anything that I need to use those for. So then if I'm writing within the margins, I don't really get a lot of space, you know, that's, that's for me. But I mean, cause it's like, you know, I think about expedition edition where I can't, where I wouldn't really use those every day because you kind of need to use the right sort of pen for it, even though I do use a space pen. So maybe I should actually try it out, but I actually really loved those because of the character that they have, like this indestructible paper. I just think that that's really cool. So like, I really liked the way that the traveling salesman look, but in the same way as Brad, they would be the ones that I would be least likely to use because, because of the way the paper is laid out. But I like the way that they look and I like the thinking that goes behind them.

'''Bryan Bedell:''' For me, I think someone mentioned this on the Ask Me Anything. And for me with traveling salesman, I look at those and the inside paper was so much thicker and the outside, you know, all the paper was real thick. And because of the thickness of the book, even though the logo is centered on the paper, because of the curvature of the book, it's like kind of knocked off center. So I look at those and that drives me nuts.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Oh yeah, I did see that. I did see that. Yeah.

'''Bryan Bedell:''' And I've noticed, yeah, I think, you know, some were worse than others, but I think, you know, that's just, that's kind of, that's really, I think the only, you know, kind of production glitch we've had that kind of went through, you know, and it's not like, you know, it's not terrible or anything. Actually, if you look back at some of the early ones that we had, because it's, you know, it's weird. You can center things perfectly. And then once it's printed, depending on the thickness of the paper. So we've had to be real careful about, you know, just adjusting the logo and hoping it's, you know, for the curvature of the paper when we know we're using thicker paper or something. Or, you know, the belly bands, like on America the Beautiful, you know, those America Beautiful ones were so thick we had to actually, I can't remember if we reprinted the belly bands or if we maybe just had to redo them before they went on press or something, but they were just, you know, not lining up right because of the thickness of the paper. So there's usually some glitch there waiting for us.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Well, that's one thing I've noticed is those, if there has been glitches or anything, they never make it out into the wild. Y'all's production process is, even from the beginning, y'all've got it down to a science pretty well. It's an awesome product y'all are putting out. And I know so many people are excited about it and look forward to all the stuff that's coming in the future.

'''Bryan Bedell:''' Yeah, it's great. I mean, it's, like I've said, one of the best things about working here is just having that, you know, do making something, having something you can, you know, put all your work into and then just seeing that box of them come and holding it in your hand is just so rewarding. There's so many people that, you know, just push numbers around or, you know, do jobs that, you know, are important. But just to, for me, you know, that's always what I've liked about being a designer is having like a product I can see and hold and remember.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Well, that's awesome. I think we will leave it at that. That's a great sentiment to end this on. Brian, we really, really appreciate you coming on. And we're going to have to do this again sometime, you know. Sure, yeah. That's my pleasure. There's always something going on in the Field Notes world and we're glad you were able to join us and talk about it a little bit. We really appreciate it. Happy to be here, guys.

'''Bryan Bedell:''' Thanks.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, thanks, buddy. Well, thanks, Brian. And Myke, do you have anything else? No, I think that's about it. All right.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Do you want to tell everyone where you can get the show notes?

'''Myke Hurley:''' Of course. They can go to 5by5.tv slash panaddict slash 69 for the show notes for this week's episode. You can see what Brad does on the internet by going to panaddict.com.

'''Myke Hurley:''' And he's also online. He's at dowdyism, D-O-W-D-Y-I-S-M on Twitter. I am imike, I-M-Y-K-E. And thanks again to Brian and thank you all for listening. And until next time, bye-bye.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Bye.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Bye. Bye.

[[Category:Podcast Transcripts]]
[[Category:The Pen Addict Podcast Transcript]]

The Pen Addict 68/transcript

2026-06-23T16:00:53Z

PencilBot: fixed spelling

{{Infobox podcast transcript
| name = The Pen Addict
| number = 68
| title = It Is Tuesday And We Are Listening
| date = August 20th, 2013
| hosts = [[Brad Dowdy]] 
[[Myke Hurley]]
| guests =
| link = [https://www.relay.fm/penaddict/68 Episode 68]
| audiolink = [https://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/traffic.libsyn.com/thepenaddict/penaddict-068.mp3 Audio Episode 68]
| length = 50
}}

'''Myke Hurley:''' Hello and welcome to The Pen Addict podcast on 5x5. This is episode 68. The Pen Addict is a 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 today by the Henry Ford of Pen Manufacture. You can have any of these cases, as long as they're green. It's Mr. Brad Dowdy.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' That's awesome. Getting in on the front end, you know. Starting a revolution like Mr. Ford, right?

== Field Notes News ==

'''Myke Hurley:''' So we have a mountain of follow-up today, but to tease the main topic of the episode, Brad has announced that he is going to be starting to manufacture some pen-related products. That's all we're going to say. It's something that is actually happening. It's not a joke, in case you've missed it. There might be some of you that might have missed the post that he put on his blog, which will, of course, be in the show notes at 5x5.tv slash penaddict slash 68. The post is in there where Brad announces this. But yes, Mr. Dowdy is going to change the pen industry.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I don't know if I'll go that far.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I have, though. Now you can't take it back. So we'll talk about that a little later on in the show today.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Okay. Yes, we will. We will definitely cover that. It's been a busy day.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Very excited. Very excited.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yes, I am too. But, you know, I wanted to kick this show off with a little bit, you know, kind of take it down a notch and we'll kind of get some mood lighting, you know, light some candles, turn off the lights. And we got a little poetry to go through, Myke.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I wonder where you were going with that, Brad. I'm not going to lie.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I was going in the wrapped up in the moleskin. The moleskin bed again. Yeah, I think so. Yeah. All right. So we got a we got a reader mail that had had a little poetry in it that I had I had to I had to read this. So as soon as I read it, I just started. I loved it so much. So let me read this for you real quick. So is the mood set, Myke? You good?

'''Myke Hurley:''' The mood is set.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' All right. Paralyzed by ink, the endless affection, now a confession. We are sick and incredible dorks. Workstations adorned with field notes of dreams and progress. Scribbling in a perpetual state of giddiness. It is Tuesday and we are listening. That is amazing.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Wow.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' That nailed it. Nailed it. That is the pen addict. Who sent this in? Nailed it. A reader named Andy. He said, hey, Brad, figured I would write something meaningful, meaningful and attach a photograph of what Myke and yourself are responsible for. He sent a big old like a pen pen cup full of just really cool pens. I'll send you the link and and you can see the image. And he says you're more than welcome to include any part of this email for the pen addict content. Have a fantastic show. So I thought that was really cool. So that was as soon as I read that, I emailed him right back. Said this is fantastic. I said I'm putting it in the show notes right now. And so he is he is a proper pen addict. He had all his bunch of Sino DXs and I think some safaris in the in the in the image. So we will put that in the show notes for everyone to see.

'''Myke Hurley:''' So I'm actually going to I'm going to put the prose of the poem into the show notes. So, yeah, that's people people go to the site. They'll be able to read it. Are we allowed to say Andy's surname in here or should we just say this from listener Andy?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I didn't ask him specific. I usually just go with first names unless I've cleared it with people. But I haven't asked him so we can find out. That's for sure. Because I told him I'd be reading it.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Cool. Well, I can update it afterwards. But that will be in the show notes. So if people go to the to the site, they will be able to see it. It will be on the page for this episode.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Good stuff, Andy. We appreciate that. That was awesome. That was awesome. So we've got some big field notes news this week. No new products been announced, but y'all know we've been talking about the new field notes group on Facebook and the revitalization of the eBay field notes market that Myke and I have talked about a bunch. I don't know. I guess that was mostly the beginning of this year or January, February, March. We were watching the field notes market and a bunch of people were selling. Well, now this field notes Facebook group has kind of kicked that whole secondary market off again and something pretty crazy happened this weekend.

'''Myke Hurley:''' We spoke about these going up last week, right?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. We knew there was a guy who posted to the group that said, I've got pretty much one of each from the beginning, including the butcher orange or the butcher blue and things like that. And he was going to be putting them up on eBay for everyone to have a have a crack at. So, you know, the two original ones that are the most rare, the butcher orange and the butcher blue. He hasn't posted the butcher blue yet, but the butcher orange went up. And do you see how much this thing went for Myke?

'''Myke Hurley:''' Just incredible. Yeah. Incredible.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So it went a three pack sealed of butcher orange, which is the first limited colors edition that field notes did.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' $305.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Over 23 bids.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' 23 bids.

'''Myke Hurley:''' The bidding was really interesting, right? Because it took off in the last minute. Yep. So it was up to $201 on August 12th. And then, sorry. Yeah. On August the 12th.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I think that's weird. It's difficult. It seems like it changes time. Anyway.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' The time. I'm ignoring that. The times are not laid out right. But it's basically the last hour.

'''Myke Hurley:''' In the last.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. It went from 2.10 to 3.05.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yep. Oh, man. I feel so sorry for the person who bid $300.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Like, that's just, you know.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. Because it went from $250 to $300.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I think the reason that the bid time is weird like that is because that's when people are putting in their maximums.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Okay. Gotcha. But they lost out.

'''Myke Hurley:''' They lose out by $5. Because you're putting that money down. You really want it. You know. Yep. I think I went up to a max of $160.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I thought I would stomach that because the conversion would serve me well.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. I forgot. I put in like. Yeah. Like right when it launched, I think I put in $125 or $150. And then I never went back after that. I don't think I would. I don't think I could go too much. That's too much pain after that. As much as I would like it.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Like, I shudder to think how much the blue will go for.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I do too. I wonder if he's even going to put it up there. Because I thought he might have done it by now. Because he put up a lot of. He didn't put up everything he had. And it was a. It was an interesting omission. So I'm wondering if it's actually going to come out there or not. But I would imagine. If that went for $300. The blue is. It has to go for more than that, right?

'''Myke Hurley:''' I would probably double. Like. Yeah. If he puts it up. If it didn't go for double. I'd be surprised. And that's because we know. I mean. And I have had it confirmed by the man himself. Which we'll talk about in a minute. That the blue is the most rare. Jim Kudal does not have butcher blue.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Right. You know.

'''Myke Hurley:''' So.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Right. So let's. Let's talk about that. Because I listened to. Myke did an interview with Jim Kudal last week on his. Command Space. On Myke's Command Space podcast. Excellent job by you. By the way. I think.

== Jim Kudal Interview ==

'''Myke Hurley:''' I think it's my favorite episode of the show.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. I mean. Jim's a fascinating guy. Oh. Just. Yeah. So much. And he can. And he can talk too. Right. You just get him on a topic. And he's gone.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Once we started going. And I had somebody. I can't remember who it was. But somebody tweeted me and was like. The reason that they thought it was the best episode. Was because we clearly had such a shared interest.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Especially for the Field Notes stuff. That once we just. Once we got going. It was just. There was no stopping us. It wasn't really an interview at that point. It was a conversation between us.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Right. But even the deck stuff. I found interesting. Yeah. Not to totally turn this into the Command Space stuff. But I mean. You know. Just talking about how that came to be. And all the sites that. You know. He's worked with in the past. And that. You know. You're familiar with. Or you work with. In the case of 5x5. And things like that. So there was just a lot of. Shared common ground. To where y'all can have these conversations. To where it just became that. Like it was a conversation. Not necessarily an interview. So I thought you did a great job. Thank you. But yeah. Jim covers lots of good Field Notes stuff. He talks about. You know. How it came to be. And he talks about. You know. The mistake they made. Which we've talked about before. The mistake they made. When they printed the Butcher Blue. The Butcher Blue. You know. They. They didn't account for the subscription. The color subscribers at the time of their account. So they. Yeah. Because they printed. Through to be able to ship everything.

'''Myke Hurley:''' They printed the orange and the blue at the same time. So they printed the same amount. And then. They then. After they. When they launched the orange. They launched the colors as well. Yes. Sold them. But then. So. Then started selling the blue. And then. Realized that they hadn't. Accounted for enough. For the. They. They hadn't pulled any aside. To get to subscribers. So then they had to pull them from sale. And send out. The rest of the head to subscribers.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Right. So they didn't have. Almost. Any available for. You know. Retailers. Or just for sale on the website. Or anything. So. That's. That's the tough one. It's not the first one. That's the rarest. Although it's. It's awfully. Awfully rare. The butcher orange. The blue. Is the real. The real one there. To. To get your hands on. If you're. You're an obsessive. Field notes collector. Like so many people are. So. And then. On. Addition to that. You know. Brian Bedell. Who is. I guess he's the. I don't know. If he's a product manager. I don't know. His exact title.

== Art Director ==

'''Myke Hurley:''' I believe. Jim referred to him. As the creative director. Creative director. Art director. I think he called him. The art director. So of like all the movies and stuff. But also with the books themselves. So when. The colors. Additions.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. So Jim talked a lot about the business side. And the. You know. Creation. You know. Of the company. Brian is going to be joining Myke and myself. On the pen addict podcast. Next Tuesday.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Excellent.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' And he. He can talk more about the nuts and bolts. Like I'll be. You know. Asking him about paper types. And why they choose. You know. The different papers. And kind of more the process. And the real nerdery. As. Jim kept referring to. You know. Y'all can talk to Brian. Brian about that stuff. Jim didn't want to get into the. Into the nerd topics too much. But we'll. We'll nerd out with Brian. Next week. So if y'all have any questions. Like really. Nitty gritty. Field notes. Production type questions. Be sure to email. Myke. Myself. Tweet us. We'll have all our contact information. At the end. Because that's the kind of stuff. We want to cover with Brian. Next week. And I'll send out a reminder. For everyone. Anyone who wants to get some questions in. But we'll. We'll spend the whole show. With Brian. Next week. And kind of get into the. The nitty gritty. Of the whole field notes process. So I think that'll be a fun. Fun episode.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I'm really excited for that.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yep. Yep. So continuing the. The five by five podcast. Love. I. I got name dropped out of the blue. From an.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Podcast that I did not expect. To. And it's one I subscribed to. But I hadn't listened to the episode yet. So I started getting some tweets. About. Brett Terpstra's. Systematic podcast. Brett does a great job. Bringing in guests. And they talk about. You know. Varying. Various. Tech topics. And they have some. Product picks. And app selections. And things like that. And he had. A gentleman. You've had. You've interviewed. On command space. Dr. Drang. Who is. Anyone. Who's in the. In the nerd realm. Online. Is familiar with. Drang's work. And one of his. One of his. Picks. For. In. In Brett's. Systematic podcast. He picked. The Uniball. Jetstream. 1.0. Millimeter. RT pin. And that. Caught me really. Off guard. Did you. Were you. Did you listen to that. Before people started. Tweeting us about it.

'''Myke Hurley:''' No. I had somebody. Sort of say to us. That we should just. Cut that bit. And then just make it. An episode of this show.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' He really knows. What he's talking about. When it comes to pens. Like. Yeah. He did. Dr. Drang. When he started. Talking about it. He. He said. Explicitly. Why he likes this pen. Why it works for him. You know. What. What the good features are. About it. You know. What. And he. You know. Why. He doesn't like other pens. And likes this one. And he really. He really nailed it.

'''Myke Hurley:''' My favorite part. My favorite part. Was where he's like. He has a little window. So you can see. How much ink is left. Not that you can do anything. With that. Because the pen's sealed. Right. So it's. It's useless. Strangely. That episode. Of systematic. And the episode. Of Command Space. With Jim Kudal. Both episode 57. Of those shows. Respectively.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I. I just noticed that. That's crazy.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Doesn't mean anything. But it's just weird. That is weird.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' That is weird. So. Thank you. Dr. Drang. For the shout out. And thank you. Brett. For having that. Pen conversation. I thought it was pretty cool. So y'all should definitely. Go check that out. It was a fun show.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Like. Drang is like. A very very impressive character. And. Brett. Brett does a. A fine job. He has a really interesting style. That I quite like. With the way that he conducts. His interviews. So. You should. You should go listen to it. Especially for that part. Because I spend quite a bit of time. Talking about. Drang's reasoning. For. For the. The judge dream. So. Yep. Even though I'm not a fan of that pen. Personally. I. Yeah.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' That was a conversation. Conversation him and I had on Twitter. Afterwards. I said I actually preferred the .7. And he's like. Well. I'm old and my eyes are bad. So I need the 1.0. The. The wider line. So I was like. Yep. That makes complete sense.

'''Myke Hurley:''' As you kind of expect. With Dr. Drang. Every little part of it. Has its reason.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Exactly.

'''Myke Hurley:''' You had perfect reasons. For everything.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yep. It was a good. It was a good listen. I thoroughly enjoyed it.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' All right. So we got. We got a lot more to cover mate. So why don't we do. We got a little sponsor action. You want to take care of. And we'll keep going.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Sounds like a great idea to me. All right. So I want to take a quick moment. To thank our sponsor. The fine folks over at Squarespace. Squarespace. The all-in-one platform. That makes it easy for you. To create your own website. For a free trial. And 10% off. Go to squarespace.com. And use the offer code. Tallyho8. Squarespace are continuing. To do amazing things. Updating their platforms. So frequently. With new features. New designs. And just strengthening. The award-winning. Customer support. That they have. If you want to start. A website. Any sort of website. Maybe a blog. Portfolio. A store. Anything. Squarespace can support. You just pick one of the beautiful designs. To get you started. And you can customize it. With loads of style options. That they have. So you can really create your own space online. Beautiful fonts. You can change all the colors. It's really cool. They take care of all the nasty stuff. Like hosting. SEO. And making sure that your site. Looks automatically fantastic. On any device. They reformat the site. To look great on all screen sizes. Because that's all the difficult stuff. They take care of all of it. You don't even need to worry about it. You don't even need to do anything. It just happens for you. Automatically. So easy to use. But if you need any help at all. Squarespace has a fantastic support team. That work 24 hours a day. Seven days a week. Go over to squarespace.com. Because that's where you'll find out more. Sign up for a free trial. You can watch the awesome videos. That they have there. So they give you examples. Of how different people use Squarespace. To fit their needs. And I want you to go. And sign up for this trial. There's no credit card required to do it. Just go and try it out. If you have a website. Maybe somewhere else. And you know. There are things that are difficult. Or even if you just want to have. Some of the hassle taken away. From running your own site. Or you have an idea. Like Brad. Has a new idea. And he started a new Squarespace site. For that. Go and try it out. And if you decide to purchase. It starts at just $8 a month. It includes a free domain name. If you sign up for one year. And make sure. You'll get 10% off. And help support the pen addict. On all of 5x5. If you use the offer code. If you use the offer code. Tallyho8. That's T-A-L-L-Y-H-O. And the number 8. So go check out Squarespace. Everything that you need. To create an exceptional website. And if you'd like to see an example. Of an exceptional website. Go to. Is it Nookco.com?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. Nookco. Why did I say Nook? Nook. Nook. Huh?

'''Myke Hurley:''' Nook. Nook.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Nook. Nook.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Nookco.com. So.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So I got the.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I used the Tallyho 8. Last week Myke.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yes. Someone picked that up. That was your little tease. Wasn't it? Last week.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' That was my tease. That's what I was up to. Last week. So I needed a code. Because I was launching a new site. And. Nookco.com. Just before we finish. I guess we'll just get into it.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I. Before we finish the sponsor spot. I just want to. Yeah. For people that go to Nookco.com. You'll see. On the. In the bottom. Sort of right hand corner. You'll see. Some images. And some little arrows. That go left and right. Now what this is. Is this is the Instagram feed. That you set up for Nook.

'''Myke Hurley:''' And you can pull that in. With a. Just one of the. The little blocks. In the. In the page building system. And it allows you to show your Instagram. Pictures as a slideshow. I just think it's really cool. Because it's native. You don't need to learn any code for that. It's just all there. Oh no. And even videos. You can just. You can press them. And it will start playing the video.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. It's really easy. And just to. To continue on the. The Squarespace bandwagon. Real quick. When we decided to. When my partner Jeffrey and I. Started. You know. Talking about. Forming this company. To make pen cases. And we're going to talk about that for sure. You know. One of our considerations was. Well. We need an e-commerce site. You know. To eventually sell our things from. So we went through. You know. A list of. You know. Kind of all the main ones. And Squarespace was obviously one. And we. We're going through all the plans. And all the setup and anything. So I said. Let's just set up a trial. On Squarespace commerce. Because I'm already familiar with. Just the Squarespace. The blogging platform. And how easy it is to use. And Jeffrey had only used. WordPress sites before. And you know. And he's done some WordPress coding. And things like that. And so we put in the. We did the trial. And he started playing around. With the commerce site. And he said. Boy. This is so. This is so simple. And so easy. To get set up. Let's just go with this. And that. That was what sold us on it. It was just very. Very. Easy. And self-explanatory. To set up. Kind of anyone can do it. And without any. Any real. You know. E-commerce background. And we'll talk about it more. As we go forward. Because there's. There's going to be a lot of things. On the commerce side. That are new to me. And that I'm going to be. Learning about. And things like that. So. That's what really sold us. Was how easy it was to use. And set up. So. With. It was a go. Pretty quick there. So. Thank you Squarespace. Tally ho eight.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Indeed. Indeed.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' And I. And I use that code. Believe me. No shame in this game. I'm happy.

== Company Launch ==

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So. Yeah. So. I started a company Myke. Tell me about it.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' It's nerve wracking. I'll tell you that.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' But. But. All right. So. I've always. Wanted to. Do something else. Besides blogging. That was. You know. Somehow affiliated with. With the pen addict. Whether it's. You know. Designing a pen. Or starting a pen store. I just wanted to do something. A little bit more. Than just necessarily. Writing about. You know. Pens and paper. And pen cases. And things like that. Just do something. That you know. I could put my name on. And be proud of. And something like that. Just be. You know. Add on to that creative vibe. That. You know. Which I'm enjoying. Doing. On the pen addict blog. Writing. And. Reviewing pens. You know. I wanted to kind of. Take that next step. And. Get a little bit more creative. And. For those that read the post today. On pen addict dot com. You're probably familiar with. Jeffrey's work. From a company called. Alter manufacturing. Where I reviewed a pen case. That he had sent me. It's probably been a year ago. It's called the motto. Motto two. And it's a pen case. That I really. Really liked. It's just. It's very utilitarian. Design. In its form. In its function. It's very well. Constructed. Feels very durable. And. You know. It's a case that I've. Always carried. Ever since I got it. So. Jeff and I. Over the past year. Have just kind of. We've kept that friendship going. And. You know. We throw it around. Boy. We really need to do something together. Or. We need to make a. Design. Come up with a pen case design. Or something other.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' And so. Just. Maybe a month ago. We finally said. It's time. Let's do it. No turning back. Let's put it down on paper. Let's get everything formed. We've got some ideas. That we want to do. Let's meet up. Go through these ideas. And see what we can come up with. So. Jeffrey lives about. An hour and a half away. So. That's why this. This relationship. Works out really well. We drive. Meet halfway.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' The first time we met. In person. We went through. A bunch of sketches. Went through. A bunch of designs. And. Said. Okay. I think we've got something here. You know. We. Went through that initial meeting. We came up with some product designs. And. From that.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Notco was born. I mean. It was. It was really. That simple. We felt. We felt comfortable working together. We felt good. About. The ideas that we had. That we wanted to do. That we wanted to get out of this company.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' And. I. I just think it's going to be a real. Real positive thing. We got a lot of work ahead of us. We went ahead and launched today. Well. Not. I wouldn't say launch. We went ahead and announced today. Because we wanted to share with everyone. Just kind of our.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Growth process. You know. We've gone from sketches on piece of paper. To now we're in the prototype phase. So we're showing people. You know. Here's some of these ideas we came up with. Here's what our plans are. Here's. You know. A sneak peek of. Of what's to come. And we're still working on perfecting the designs. Working on perfecting. What we're going to launch on Kickstarter.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' And. And things like that. So it's. It's.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' The. Ball is. Is. Fully. Fully rolling. At this point. We've spent about two or three weeks. Just going hardcore at it. So we felt it was time to. To unveil today. If you will.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Will you allow me. Will you permit me. To interview you a little. Sure. Yeah. That would be good. You can feel. You know. I mean. I don't know what you're willing to share. We haven't had a discussion. Up front about this. But. So. You're launching a Kickstarter project. In September.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yes. That's the plan. Hopefully early September. So. The. There's some dates. That are fixed. Just back end type stuff. That we may not. May not be able to get around. So I didn't want to give a specific date. So. September should be. A non-issue. Yes.

'''Myke Hurley:''' And what will the Kickstarter entail? Because. I mean. If you look on the Instagram page. For example. Which is. Instagram.com. Slash. Knock. Co. You've got a bunch of prototypes here. So what is the Kickstarter going to be for? Yeah.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' You'll see one. One of our. Our pictures just has like a pile. Of prototypes. So. The Kickstarters. We're going to narrow it down to. Four or five. Product designs. That. You know. Involve different. Different case designs. Um. And then. Within those designs. We're going to have different colorways. For each design. Um. So there'll be. You know. We're. Everything is kind of in this black and gray color right now. Because that's just where we're using for prototypes. But. Almost all of the. Production models. Are going to be some type of color. Um. Color. Um.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' You know. Color. Canvas. Color. Binding. Um. Colored. Lining. Things like that. So. Um. They're going to be. Um. Really good looking. And. We got. We have the color samples in. We're getting some of the color. Um. Prototypes made now. So we'll be able to share some of those. What these colors are going to look like. And then we're going to do. Um. We're going to do a couple of. Kickstarter. Limited. Uh. Limited colors. That will only be available on Kickstarter. Some. And. We'll pick a certain. Product. Say. I don't know. Most of the. Most of the Kickstarter products. Right now. If you. I'll go through them real quick. We. We haven't finalized the list. But we have a case. That. Jeffrey and I. Two cases that we love. One is the. What I call the three plus one. Oh god. Just take.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Just take my money.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Take it.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Just take my money right now. Why do I have to wait?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. I know. That one's getting a lot of good feedback. I just. I just. That was a design. I just thought was very useful. That I didn't have right now. Like. Everyone's. Carries their pens. Everyone carries. You know. Their memo books. You know. Be it field notes. Doan. Moleskine. Rodeo. Whatever. And. I just wanted a case. Where I could have pens. I could have pens on one side. The case in the other. And have just like a simple bifold case. And. You know. It. It's not rocket science. But it's something that's just not that available. In. You know. The materials that we're using. You know. There's lots of higher end leather type cases. That kind of. Sort of. Do something like this. But I really wanted. The impetus of this whole company. Is. I thought there was a space. I thought there's a. There's a gap. Between. Like. Some basic pen cases. That are available. Like. On the low end of the price. Price point. Like. It's staples. Or things like that. And then it jumps. You know. Really up into like. Really high end leather stuff. So. We. We. We wanted to make a nice. Durable. You know. Canvas cloth. Case. That's. That's. It's going to wear well. It's going to hold up well. It's going to protect your pens well. And it's going to look good. So. That three plus one case. Is something that. I was really. Looking forward to. And the prototypes are coming out really good. That's the one. I'm. I'm carrying that a bunch now. Oh.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I hate you man. But you're. You're just using it now.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yep. And. You know. And what's good about me and Jeffrey. Is. You know. We're. We're sharing these prototypes. Back and forth. And. You know. He's really easy to work with. And hopefully I'm. The same to him. And we. You know. I get it. And I say. You know. Here's what I don't like about it. And he's like. Okay. Let me. You know. I'm going to look at this tomorrow. Then I'm. I'm going to send you another one. And I'm like. Okay.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I'm happy that you're using them daily. Because I know that you're going to be very meticulous. About it. Right.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Right. And that was. That was one of my hesitancies. About. Just. Announcing this. The day. The Kickstarter launched. Right. I.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I. I kind of didn't want to do that.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' In one way. It helps. That. You know. Now that we've announced. And there's this lead up time. Until. There's actually products. People can buy. You know. You're kind of running the risk of. You know. Burning people out. Or. You know. Driving people crazy. By not having. By announcing and not having a product available. But on the flip side. I didn't want to just turn on the Kickstarter. One day. And say. Hey. Go buy. These cases. You know. I wanted to have. People have that background information. Ahead of time. And knowing how much we're putting into this project. Before just flipping the switch on Kickstarter.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I think. So another.

'''Myke Hurley:''' That's the right way to do it.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. So. And that's why. And we felt that we're going to do it soon enough. To where there's not going to be any burnout. Or any. You know. Forgetfulness. Or lag time. In between us. Announcing. And the Kickstarter really going. We're pretty far along. The whole process. So. It's. It's. A September launch. With. Without question. At this point. But another case. Yes.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah. I was going to say. I think I kind of sidetracked you a bit. So. You're looking. Launching with multiple products. For one Kickstarter.

== Multiple Products ==

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. We're going to. We're going to launch with multiple products. I think there's going to be. At least. Four designs. Maybe five designs. So. The second design. That I'm really excited about. Is the roll. Pen case. So it'll have. Like a. A pouch. A pouch style case. And the inside has a tongue. That rolls out. And it's going to hold six pins. You know. It's. Everyone's seen me. You know. Take pictures of that nomadic. That I use. It's kind of along those lines. A little bit different style. A little bit larger. Hold a little bit more capacity. In the roll. And in the case. It's. It's. It's. It's working out really well. So far. That design. It. I've been really happy. With it. It. It's. It worked perfectly. Really. And. The sample. The prototype. That I'm using right now. Is. It's actually pretty large. So I think you'll be able to hold a lot of pins. In just the pouch itself. So. And there's. There's a couple other things we're tweaking on that. As we go along. But then. Aside from those two. We're going to have.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' You know. Like a three pin holster. Design.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yep.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' That's one of the main things I wanted to do. Because I don't think there's any real good options for.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Canvas. You know. Holsters. You know. Most of the holsters are leather. And it's not a wrap. Where you just wrap it around itself. And tie it. You know. It's a holster. With like a tab over. Flap. That. That tucks in nicely. We're going to do a five pin. Pin case. Which is kind of like the. The three plus one. Bifold. But it'll just be.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Five pin slots. Three on one side. Two on the other. To hold different size pins. Things like that. So those are the main four. And then we're working on. We have two or three other ideas. For. Both. The fifth product. That we're going to launch.

'''Myke Hurley:''' So I assume that you'll just have like. Different configurations. So by. One. By you know. This one. This one. This one. This one. This one. By these two. These two. These two. And then all five. Or something. I guess.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. Kickstarter. Kickstarter is a little weird. With design products. Manufactured products. You can't. Include. A product. In more than one. Reward level. Like. I can't sell. A three pin holster.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' As a reward level. And then have another reward level. That's. The three pin holster. Plus. The three plus one bag. I can't duplicate. The holster. So there'll be. Several individuals. That you can. Purchase via the Kickstarter. And you can buy multiples. You can buy. Multiples. I just can't offer. The same product. In more than one. Reward level.

'''Myke Hurley:''' But I've seen that though. Like. So. Say for example. I know.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' They just. They just changed it. Not very long ago.

'''Myke Hurley:''' But you can buy multiple. Pledge levels. Yes. Oh. Then there's no problem then.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' No. No. Not at all. I didn't know that. I didn't know you could do that. Yeah. On the. Buyer's end. They can buy. The multiple pledge levels. I believe. You know. You just put in the amount. And then at the end. You know. You can choose. It was. You can allocate it. Properly. But on the front end. I can't. I can't offer. A reward level. That says. One. Three pin holster case. And then another. Reward level. That says. Three. Three pin holster cases. Something like that. It's a little bit confusing. And. Yeah. It's not going to be easy. Is it? Right now. Yeah. So I'm trying to sort it out. To where it's laid out properly. So that's. That's some of the things I'm working through right now. So it's. It's a. Definitely a learning process.

'''Myke Hurley:''' So have you already started the process at the Kickstarter?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. Excellent. Yeah. I've already started building the page. There's some back end stuff. You know. Where you have to tie in all these. All your. You know. Accounts and things like that. And there's some. I think the only delays in getting this launch. Actually will be. You know. Kind of. Paperworky type delays. You know. You just got to get. All these accounts tied in together. And things like that. So. You know. It takes. Three days to get this approved. Seven days to get this approved. Stuff like that. I think. Jeffrey and I are going to have our ducks in a row. It's just a matter of getting all the approvals. In a timely fashion. So.

'''Myke Hurley:''' So an interesting thing about Kickstarter. I don't know if you've known this. But I've come across it. Through talking to people that have done it. Have done them. You. You sort of say. Right. Here we go. We're done. And then it goes to be approved. And then they just put it live. So it's difficult to be like. It's going to go live on such and such day. Because Kickstarter. Okay. Turn it on. So you might say on Monday. Right. Okay. Kickstarter. There you go. And then Kickstarter will approve it. And it might come to Thursday. And then they'll just flick the switch.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Oh. I did not realize that. So that's good to know. I knew there's an approval phase. But I didn't know when it's approved. It's active.

'''Myke Hurley:''' That's the impression that I got. When I had a conversation with Jonathan Colton. On Command Space. Was that. Okay. It was just live. One day. So. Well.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I've got some good. I've got some people helping me out. With the Kickstarter piece. So hopefully. Yeah. I mean. That's the question I will. I will try to clarify.

'''Myke Hurley:''' If there's one thing that we have. It's friends that do Kickstarters. Yes.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yes. There's no doubt. And everyone's been super helpful. And wanting to. To help us out. And give us information. And. And things like that. Helping out with that design. So. What we're going to. When we. Have everything finalized for Kickstarter. And what we're going to offer. You know. The four or five designs. And each one of those designs. Is going to have. I think. Three. Colors. You can choose from. For each design. So. There will actually be quite a lot of. Variety available on Kickstarter. And then we're going to have. I believe. I know one. And if not two. Kickstarter only colors. That. We're going to be able to. The way we've set this up. On the back end. Production wise. We're able to do. A lot of customization. Type work. And limited runs. Special runs.

== Limited Colors ==

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So. We're able to do. You know. Particular color ways. In a limited fashion. So. We wanted to offer one. That's only going to be available. On Kickstarter. And one of the designs. So. That's to be determined. But there is going to be. Something like that. Available on Kickstarter. As well.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Will that be able to pay. To get it monogrammed?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Not right now.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Okay. Maybe when you start. But maybe.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' That's not going to be. Right. That's not on the table. For Kickstarter. But that doesn't mean. That won't happen. Down the line. You know. We want to be. The end game. Of this. After the Kickstarter. Project. Launches. Hopefully it's successful. And hopefully it funds. But regardless. Of whether it funds or not. We're starting this business. Yeah.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Because there will be a store. Won't there. Afterwards. That you will be. Yeah.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Because we're going to have an online. We're going to have an online store. After that. That's where. We're going to be able to. Expand the product line. Even more. We'll have. When the Kickstarter is over. We'll be turning the store on. We hope to have new product designs. Even by then.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' And then we'll have more. About. What all. You'll be able to do. With our products. And what we're going to offer. You know. Hopefully we'll be able to do some. You know. Some seasonal stuff. With you know. Special fabrics. And things like that. That we can do. You know. For. You know. Winter or spring. And things like that.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Will I be able to subscribe? Yeah.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I didn't think about that. Get a subscription. Yeah. No. I don't think we're going to do that. But you know. It does. It does give us the freedom. To have fun with it. And not just. You know. Have a stagnant product line. And. You know. We'll be able to keep it fresh. All the time. And. You know. I think it's going to be really good.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I'm so excited. I know that everyone listening. Is just like. Just shut up. And just give me. A place to put my cash.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I know. I know. And. You know. We're actually. We're actually shooting the video. This weekend. For the Kickstarter. So. You know. That's how far along we are. In the process. I mean. We're pretty. Pretty far along. So. It's hard to give an exact date. For the. The reasons. That we. We've talked about. For the Kickstarter. But. It's. It's. Not too far down the line. At all. We're. We're getting there.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Let me know. If you need a fancy British voiceover.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' We might.

'''Myke Hurley:''' We might. I would happily do it. I can put on my. My best announcer's voice. In 2013. Brad Dowdy. There you go. Like that. You definitely have those skills.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Not that I'm asking for you to reveal it. But do you. Do you have a goal. Set. Yeah. In your mind. Not yet. You don't. I. I mean. Knowing you as I do. I know that you're going to have a. I reckon you'll have a pretty modest goal. Yes. Which means that. You will meet it. Like you will. I just can't see why. Not. Like. And it's one of those things. It's like. You know. Don't jinx it. But. I. I can't see this being anything other than a massive success. In my opinion.

== Product Goals ==

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Well good. I hope so. But yeah. I mean. Jeffrey and I have talked about it. And I do think our goal will be pretty modest. Just putting down on. On paper. Like the things we really need. To get this business off the ground. Um. It will be able to keep the. Um. Kickstarter goal pretty modest. And I. You know. I hope we will be successful in meeting that. I. I don't see any reason why not. I think it will be very attainable. Um. So. I hope so.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Because you're going to get a bunch of people like me. That will buy like. Four. You know. Right. Like I'm just going to get. Like. All of them. Any of that interest. I'm just going to get them. Yeah.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' One of each.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I'm so excited Brad.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Well good. I'm glad to hear that. Because. I can't say. You know. I'm actually sleeping. Sleeping well these days. I don't sleep well to begin with. But. Um. Getting. Getting this all. Uh. Done. Has been. Extremely fun. But you know. When you're putting it on the line like this. And you know. Making a. Making a product. And you know. Putting. Putting your money where your mouth is. You know. It. Uh. It's. Uh. It's nerve wracking. You want to do. You want to do the right thing. And make the right product. And. And. And have a sustainable business on top of it. Because that's what we're looking to do. This isn't going to be. Like a one and done. Kickstarter thing. This is going to be. An ongoing. Sustainable. Um. Business. That we. Uh. We hope surround for a long time.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I personally hope that this is just the start. Like. We start seeing different products from you. Not. Not just. Cases. And. Holders. Like. Other types of. Yeah. Of products. That are in our wheelhouse. Because. As I've said to you time and time again. As over. What. What the. The listeners don't know. Is over the course of. Of our. Professional. Relationship. And friendship. I have. Constantly. Bugged you. Into. To try and get you to do something. In this. Space. I mean. What I have asked you to do. Is something different. That I still hope that you will do one day. And I hope that this will be such a success. That. That you will be able to. To devote even more time to it. And. And that this will become. A big thing for you. That's what I really. Really hope.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Well. Cool. I appreciate that. And I hope. I hope so too. And you know. Definitely the long term. We already have. You know. Just. You know. Groundwork. Not groundwork laid. But you know. We have ideas. Down the line. That may not necessarily be directly related to pin cases. But just other. Other products. I think other products that. You know. People that. You know. Listen to this podcast. And you know. Read the blog. Would enjoy. But you know. It's not the same. Product that they can just. You know. Walk into a store. And get anywhere. So that's kind of our goal behind. The whole project.

'''Myke Hurley:''' This is great. And you know. What I love as well. Is this. I think this is. I. I mean. I don't. You never really know how people feel. But I think this is going to be really interesting for the listeners. Because from now. We will now be able to follow this through. Like. So. You know. Every week or whatever. We'll get a little update from you. And then. When it. You know. When it comes to the point. That you guys. Launch. On Kickstarter. Then. I would like to get. You and Jeff on. And we'll talk about that. As a. Like I will interview the two of you. About. The full Kickstarter process. And. I'm sure. You know. It will be funded within two and a half minutes. And. We can talk about that. And I think it will be really fun. And then sort of going through. And then. The Kickstarter is met. And we'll be able to see how that goes for you. Right. And. You know. Do you fall. Victim to the. 17 month delay. That you see. In some. Right. I think it's going to be really. Really interesting. Because. It. This is kind of encapsulating. A lot of the frequent topics that we have. But now. We're going to have. Your. Real world. Experience with it. As opposed to just our friends and guests. This is going to be. One of the hosts of this show. Is involved. In the industry. Is becoming involved in the industry. That we talk about. I don't think. I can't think of any podcast. Where this has happened. Where it's like. During the show. One of the hosts decides. He's going to start a business. Which. Which relates directly. To the subject matter.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. And not only that. I have no business experience. Whatsoever. Yeah. I've never worked for myself. Or done anything like this. So it's going to be a massive. Learning experience. And. I don't know if it's fortunately. Or unfortunately. Y'all will all be able to watch. Watch along. As I. I flail. Or succeed. And. But. I'm. I'm pretty positive about it. I'm very. Comfortable with. Where we're at. And what we're going to be able to do. So. Hopefully. Things play out. The way that I'm hoping. And. I. Right now. I don't see any reason. Why they're not going to.

'''Myke Hurley:''' That's exactly what I want to hear. God. This is so exciting. I'm so happy. Guys. Just say. Brad told me about this. Like. Two weeks ago. Like. This is how fast. This has moved. Right. Like. It's moved very fast. Like. You told. You told me you were thinking about it. And then you sent me a picture. This was honestly like. Two weeks ago. And now. You're like. Ready to. Open the Kickstarter. You know. Sort of any day. It's very. Very exciting. And I think that shows. That you've hit something. Because you're moving so quickly. With it. You're confident. And that. That fills me of confidence.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yep. We've been really working hard. Behind the scenes. Once we started. Started this going. It's been non-stop. Pretty much. And Jeffrey is just. Killing it. With the. With the samples. And the manufacturing. The prototypes. And that's. That's the real reason. Reason we've been able to do this. So fast. Is. The way. The pace he's knocking these. Prototypes out with. You know. It's allowed us to. You know. Fine tune the designs. It's allowed us to figure out pricing. And you know. All the things that go on. Behind the scenes. That I've never had to deal with. Before. And. Yeah. In two and a half. Three weeks time. It's. It's gone from. It's gone from. Zero to. Zero to a hundred miles an hour. And. You know. There's no. We're on the autobahn right now. There's nothing stopping us.

'''Myke Hurley:''' This is great news. I'm really. I'm really. Really happy. And I think. I think people. Are going to. Are going to be. I'm sure you've probably had a lot of feedback today. Right. I'm going to assume that people. Oh my gosh. Really. Has it been a lot?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. It's been really. Really good. And people are so nice. And so positive about it. And I mean. I can't. I can't respond to everyone. But thank you so much. For all the kind words. And you know. We're. We're really excited. To be able to do this. And I'm glad to see that everyone. You know. Finds this project interesting. And you know. Hopefully wants to. You know. Be a part of it. And you know. That's one of the things. I've always done. Even just. In writing the pen addict. Is I. I try to. You know. I don't want. I want to be approachable. And have a relationship. With you know. Readers or listeners. And now in the. In the. In the next phase. You know. You know. Customers. And I just think. Having that open conversation. About things. Um. Has really benefited me. In the past. You know. Just as far as blogging goes. And podcasting goes. So I. You know. That's going to be the same way. Um. You know. With. With NotCo. Now. That we're going to. Get this going.

'''Myke Hurley:''' This is great. I'm really. Yeah. This is. This is awesome. I'm very. Very happy. I appreciate that. I'm sure that people. Everyone else will be too. We had another topic. But I think we should probably leave it. For next week.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. I think that's totally. Well. Not next week. Maybe the week. After. Oh yeah.

'''Myke Hurley:''' The week after. Yeah. Next week. Big. Big picture.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. It's a. It's a topic. That's. That's. Waited for. Quite a while. So.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' A little. Another little delay. Won't. Won't hurt it. Lamy 2000.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. So yeah. We can do that. We can do that. In a couple weeks. Yeah. That's no problem. Because I really. I really want to talk about that. So. But we need to devote some time to it.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' All right. So I'm sure I've forgotten all kinds of things. About. Knock. And what we're trying to do. So. Definitely get in touch. If y'all have any questions. Everyone's been. Been super super. Hyped up about it. And I'm glad to see the feedback so far. So. I think it's going to be nothing but a good thing. So. It'll be. It'll be interesting to. To see how this progresses over the next few months. Like you were saying. In public.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah. There's no hiding.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' No.

'''Myke Hurley:''' You have a. As well. If you go to knock. Co. Dot com. N O C K. C O. Dot com. It's a shame that the dot co is taken.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I know.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yep. So that's a real shame. But anyway. You go to knock. Co. Dot com. You'll see. A little email address. Where you can put your email address. To sign up for your mailing list.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yep. So we. We want to. Just keep everyone. Notified. That's not going to be a list. Where we're going to be. You know. Spamming you a bunch. That's just going to be a list. You can sign up to be notified. When the Kickstarter project is launched. So that's what we're using that for. You know. To give us. Give everyone a heads up. When that. When that project goes live. So. Yeah. Definitely. Go sign up for that mailing list. And. We'll notify you. As soon as it's. As soon as it's live on Kickstarter. Hopefully. In the. Early middle part. Part of September.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Exciting times. Okay buddy.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' It is.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Anything else you want to add today?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I don't think so. I feel like I've. I've. Rambled incoherently. About this. It's. It's like all new. And nerve wracking. So. You know. I'm sure I forgot something. Or misspoke. But. We have. I think that's it.

'''Myke Hurley:''' We have the time. To get it right. Over the next couple of months. Yep. We'll get it all out.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Do you know. It's going to be fun.

== Cult Patterns Mini ==

'''Myke Hurley:''' Have you received your. Cult patterns mini yet?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I have not. I was going to. I was actually going to mention that. I went to the mailbox. Before the show. And I was actually going to tell you. Offline. Before the show. Um. That I have not received it. So I will shoot those guys. An email. Just to make sure.

'''Myke Hurley:''' So we'll probably. I have not received it. So next week. You want to tune in. For our interview with Brian. Which is going to be awesome. Um. And then the week after. We'll probably be talking about. The cult pens mini. And the Lamy 2000.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I think that's the perfect schedule. Yes.

'''Myke Hurley:''' And then. We're. I'm. I'm trying to arrange another exciting interview. In September as well. So. We'll see about that.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' And that'll be right after that.

'''Myke Hurley:''' So. Thanks so much for listening to this. Very special. Monumental. You might even say. Episode of the Pen Addict Podcast. If you want to get in touch with Brad. I think first off. You need to get in touch with him. And tell him how excited you are. For Nock.

'''Myke Hurley:''' You should do that. By going to. Penaddict.com. Where you'll find. All the information you need. But Brad is on. Twitter. He is. At Dowdyism. D-O-W-D-Y-I-S-M. He is also. You can email Brad as well. If you want to send any poetry. You can email Brad. It's thepenaddict. Thepenaddict. At gmail.com. You can get in touch with me. If you would like to. To share. We can join forces. In getting these guys. To hurry up. And get their. Products out the door. I'm. I'm Ike. I-M-Y-K-E. And. Is that it Brad? We done?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I think so. And if y'all have any questions. That we can ask. Brian Bedell. Of Field Notes next week. Definitely let us know. Tweet us. Email us. Something like that. And. We want to hear. What questions y'all want answered to. For next week.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Excellent. Thanks so much for listening. Yeah. Please do. If you. If you've got questions. More around the technical side. If you're thinking around. You know. Yes. Basically listen to the episode. That I did with Jim. Of Command Space. It will be in the show notes. That's where we talk a lot about. About the history of Field Notes. We talk a bit about the. Colors and stuff like that. But. We really want to. Get into the nitty gritty. Of like the paper. The stock. How they make the choices. The printing processes. The manufacturing processes. That they go through. And all that really. Sort of nerdy stuff. Is what we want to talk about next week. So. Does that sound good?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Sounds perfect. Yes. Brilliant. Exactly right.

'''Myke Hurley:''' So tune in next week. It's going to be a fun one. Thanks so much for listening. We'll be back. Thanks. Bye. Bye.

[[Category:Podcast Transcripts]]
[[Category:The Pen Addict Podcast Transcript]]

The Pen Addict 623/transcript

2026-06-23T16:00:43Z

PencilBot: fixed spelling

{{Infobox podcast transcript
| name = The Pen Addict
| number = 623
| title = A Formal Vendetta
| date = July 10th, 2024
| hosts = [[Brad Dowdy]] 
[[Myke Hurley]]
| guests =
| link = [https://www.relay.fm/penaddict/623 Episode 623]
| audiolink = [https://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/traffic.libsyn.com/secure/thepenaddict/The_Pen_Addict_623.mp3 Audio Episode 623]
| length = 65
}}

* From RelayFM, this is The Pen Addict, episode 623. Today's show is brought to you by Heinz Pens, Factor, and Enigma Stationery. My name is Myke Hurley and I have the pleasure of being joined by Brad Dowdy. Hi Brad. You're going to have the pleasure of being joined by me in person in a mere two weeks. Two weeks, let's go. I'm looking for it. Yes, I will mention this now as kind of maybe like a final warning for people, but we are going to be doing a live show in jolly old London on the 27th of July. This is going to be an extravaganza event where we're celebrating 10 years of RelayFM, which is happening this year, if you could believe such a thing. Crazy. What this event is, is for us to celebrate the fact that we, as a community, have made this company last for a decade, if you could believe it. So, I hope that you'll be able to join us. It's crazy. I've been talking, like explaining to my non, you know, the people in my life who don't really know what I do. Yeah. That we're the 10th anniversary of the podcast network and that my podcast about pens actually predates those 10 years by a couple years. And they're like, what? You've been doing this that long? I'm like, yeah, like, it's pretty crazy. So, yeah, it's awesome stuff. Awesome stuff. So, I'm finally, I haven't totally turned my head towards the trip yet, but I'm like on that precipice now where I'm trying to wrap up everything that I need to get done before I go. And, like, I'm knee deep in the pen addict shop stuff, right? Because I had a big product launches last week. I started shipping this week. The orders have been outstanding. The feedback has been great. I appreciate everyone's support. The shipping has started. I'm like a solid halfway through the initial batch. I feel like I'm in good shape to, you know, like within a week, I should be 100% caught up, you know, outside of, you know, new orders coming in, you know, in the coming days and week. But, yeah, like the thoughts of packing for London are in my head. So, I think on next week's episode, we'll talk about stationery packing for a trip like this. Because I'm having all kinds of weird ideas on what I want to do with no, you know, no solid absolutes that I want to take and bring for stationery stuff. Because, like, I'm not going to bring a lot, right? But there's definitely things I want to bring and I want to carry. So, yeah, like I'm kind of pinging back and forth. So, maybe between this episode and the next one, maybe I will kind of dial that in a little bit and see where we're at as far as possible. So, good stuff. So, again, thank you everyone for who checked out all the new stuff I had in the shop. Quite a bonanza of good. So, it's been fun.
* Yeah, I mean, I'm proud of you. I said it last week and I'll say it again. Like, the Retro 51 is just like, it's so good. Yeah, I am. It's just so good, Brad. Yeah, thanks. The more I reflect on it, it's just like, this is probably the best collaboration idea you've had. Like, you know, like, it was almost like I'm jealous that you didn't think of this idea when we did the Kickstarter one. Sure, sure.
* But, yeah, you crushed it, man. You crushed it. I mean, shout out to Retro for allowing me to do this, right? Like, they could have said no, right? Because it's a little bit weird. They had to do the work, too, right? But they, yeah, this caused them extra work, right, to figure some things out. They knew, though. They knew it was a good idea. They were game from the jump. Yeah. And made things happen. And, you know, for that, I'm forever grateful. And I'm obviously really happy with the outcome. So, y'all can check out last week's episode. We dig into it more. I don't want to repeat myself. But, yeah, I look at it and smile. Like, that's, you know, all I can hope for with a project like this. And I felt that would be the case. And, you know, I'm glad that it has been the case and that other people like it, too. So, that's always, you know, my philosophy on these things. So, make something cool. Hope other people like it.
* We've got some follow-up on some of the RSTPA questions we've done over the last couple of weeks. Yeah, good stuff. This one comes in from Nathan, who says, In episode 621, Sam said that they liked the Lamy Safari less and asked how well Starter pens represent a brand's full lineup. Remember we were talking about that? Yep. Like, how good of an entryway is it? Well, Nathan says, Your discussion mostly focused on nibs with steel versus gold. If nibs are the main consideration, we should remember you can buy many of Lamy's nibs separately, including the gold ones, and easily swap among pen models. This may help someone like Sam try different Lamy pen bodies and nibs to find a combo that they like. And Nathan recommends trying the Lamy Studio with the rubberized grip and different nibs. And, like, that is actually a really good point. Like, the main thing that we were focusing on is the nibs that are unlocked within certain price categories. And Lamy is one of the rare brands where they sell those nibs and they're very easily replaceable. So if you want to try what a gold nib might feel like or something like that, you can do that, right? You can go ahead and try that out. So I thought it was an interesting thought experiment. It is because, specifically with Lamy, they're one of the few that will make sure their stockists have loose nibs, right? Like, if you have a particular retailer to buy from. I bought the Lefty nib from the San Francisco store. Yep. Yep. So they're pretty easily accessible. And I think Lamy does that because they make a nib, as you mentioned, that's easy to swap. It's literally just like a friction fit nib that slides onto the feed. So you can slide it on and off. And it's very stable when it's on. So, you know, don't worry about that or removing them. And same with, like, the Lamy gold nib that Nathan's mentioning. I actually have one Lamy gold nib that I got ground into a needle point. And if I'm using, want to use a gold nib Lamy, I just move that nib around to whichever one I want. It stays in my studio a lot. I've never done the studio with the rubberized grip. You know, that's maybe something like, I think you can just actually buy the grip section for that studio, if I'm not mistaken. It's kind of weird because it kind of goes against the aesthetic of what the studio is in a weird way.
* But, I don't know, it might be fun to play with. I'll have to check out and see if I can get that. So, yeah, I think this is a good idea. The other option that I have done is Pilot will often sell interesting nibs in their very cheap, like, shelf packaged pens. These are the Plumix. Comes with a cursive italic nib. And it's like an $8 pen. The Penmanship comes with an extra fine steel nib, which for a time, that was the easiest way for me to get extra fine steel nibs. For Pilot pens is I would buy the Penmanship. I'd buy, like, three of the Penmanships. You can get them for, like, six bucks each. I'm basically just buying it to put the nib into, like, Pilot Prayer or something like that. So, I have bought pen bodies just to take the nibs from and put them onto different pens. So, it's a good way to play around with different things. Yeah, I think so. And this comes in from Pete, who says, I sympathize with Ben, who is wishing to care for his plotter. I went with the plotter accessory, quote, leather ring supporter, to keep the leather cover nice. And there is an added benefit of protecting the rings when the notebook is in the bag as well. All that being said, we've got to embrace the patina and let the thing wear out a little bit too. I actually forgot about the leather ring supporter because that's the first thing I bought for mine. It's kind of like this little hidden thing you don't notice on your day-to-day use of the plotter because it would be the first thing you put into your plotter. You have your base cover and your rings. And then you put this little, it's kind of like an overlay piece of leather with cutouts. So, what it does is it prevents the binder rings from rubbing against the leather cover as much, right? So, you can still see little bumps where they come in, but it's basically a barrier. And it doesn't add any thickness or weight or complexity to the plotter, but it does protect those rings, you know, gives it a little bit more structure and a little bit more durability. I thought, this is a complete no-brainer so much so that I just assumed, like all plotters should come with this. Like, I think you should have this in your plotter, to be quite honest. But that's how these build-your-own systems work. I think you should embrace the wear of the thing. I think products become more beautiful when they're broken in like that. Well, this is just an internal thing. And then it's actually, it's more for external support, right? So, it's buffering the outside of the cover from hitting directly on those rings when the cover is closed, right? So, it gives it a little more structure there. But you can still, I actually still see like six ring marks on my external. So, like you can feel that. And I can see the discoloration from where the rings are wearing. But it's not as aggressive as it would be. And I think it does give it a little bit of added protection. So, I have totally embraced the patina on this. I mean, it's a leather good. It should only get better with age. Yeah.
* All right. One new product I wanted to mention this week. It's a product I've talked about a lot in the past. Actually, we've probably talked about it in like literally the entire run of this show. Yep. But they rarely update it. It's the TWSBI VAC 700R. They have a new color out called Kyanite Blue or Kyanite. I don't know the exact pronunciation of that. But I wanted to mention this because when they did their last 700 release, another 700R, the Iris, which is still available. It's like a stock edition. They changed and tweaked some of the design elements of the TWSBI VAC because the original TWSBI VAC, it was a little bit of a challenging design. Like there were some inconsistencies I felt in the visuals and in the aesthetics.
* And while the new 700R models of the VAC didn't 100% change everything, like for example, the clip texture is still different from the other hardware texture. They made it more, they made it work together a little bit more as a complete package of a pen. Before it felt like, you know, just grabbing a bunch of random blocks out of a Lego kit. And, you know, all of a sudden you have, you know, like a Millennium Falcon with like a TIE fighter window sticking off the edge. Like there was all kinds of weird parts on there. Like I just didn't feel like it worked together as a product. Yeah. But when they came out with this one, I think it's been two years. I haven't looked at the launch date for the Iris model, but it wasn't last year. So it's got to be like two years ago, I think. So this is the first update that they've made. And I found it interesting that they really just did a color update and it looks really, really good. So, you know, same, this last design change for the 700R model must have, must have stuck with the brand and turned out to be a very good one. And, and I would agree because I gave the original 700, you know, pretty poor marks other than like the technical aspects of it. Like the vacuum always worked, right? That was always a good part of it. But it was a struggle to actually use the pen because it was like chunky and clunky and hard to use.
* 700R made it more of a usable pen to one it's, I actually enjoy using it. And this new color looks fantastic. Like I, I don't need one of these, like this is one of those, like I haven't bought a Twisbee for my personal collection in a while because you know, they just do a lot of colors on a lot of the same pens, which is okay. Um, but I like, I might pick this one up as a second fact to have, I love the, I love the two-tone nib as, as well. That's like this, this blue, blue plain looking nib. Yeah. But I could see like, people might not like the nib, like also wondered, like, does the nib go with this? But I think it looks good. I would say the color is nice. I don't like the way that they have put it on the pen. Like the kind of two-tone wing thing. Sure. That, that, that style does not do it for me. Yeah. Um, was, did the 700 also suffer from the quality issues that Twisbees used to have? I don't think so. Okay. Um, cause it maybe it was a more expensive one. It kind of like, yeah, I don't know about that, but I think the, this pen uses a pretty thick plastic, like it's a kind of a dense pen. Okay. Um, which some Twisbees can feel that way, but some do feel like the, like the 580s tended to have, I felt like, like thinner sections and I could be like speaking out of pocket here, but just in not grabbing these pens and putting them right in front of me. Yeah. Um, this one felt more like structurally sound. Uh, this one's always felt like you could hammer a nail with this type of pen that doesn't prevent cracking or anything like that. But yeah. Um, I haven't seen any issues. To be clear, like, I'm not saying that this is an issue for this pen in general, but just more like in wondering why it maybe didn't get like stellar reviews, uh, to begin with, you know, like in the first instance that might've been part of it, but I don't know. Honestly, I just felt it was straight up ugly. Like I thought there were so many problems with the design and the way they put it together. Um, and good for them. They corrected a lot of the issues that I had with it. So it's, um, it's good stuff, but it's interesting that this is getting the once every two years update when they'll, uh, they'll push out some, they'll push out some ecos, won't they? Yeah, but you know why though, right? I mean, eco's the best. Eco's the best. Yeah, but the VAC is like a lifestyle. It is. It's not for everybody. No. It's not for everybody. Because realistically, like if you want to use the VAC to its fullest, you've got to get their bottle, which is so cool that their VAC filling. Yeah, that's true. That's true. You know, you've kind of got to go to that too. Like it's not as flexible, um, as, as other pens. And it also, it, it's still, the mechanism creates a size issue potentially, depending on how you look at it, which creates weight imbalance, I think. It does. In a pen of its, of its side class. So it makes, I don't think that this pen would ever be a big enough seller to do more than this. And I think people who are fans of the VAC should be happy that they, it's still a product in Tuzube's lineup and they are still kind of, they're doing things with it. I think that's cool. Yeah. And I'm interested to see the price, a quick real time follow-up from, uh, from the chat. Lisa says, it looks like the Iris was all the way back in 2020, October, 2020. Um, which is just astonishing. That time compression comes to bite you, huh? Yeah, man. Like there was a few years around there that didn't happen. So like, I feel confident saying it's about two years old, uh, when it's really four. So yeah, like honestly, seeing this kyanite blue has made me want to get my Iris VAC out and consider bringing it to London because vacuum fillers are one of the best like travel pens because you can seal off the, uh, the front end. Ah, yeah. We'll table this discussion until next week when I have more time to think about it. Yeah. See how you feel about it then. Mm-hmm.
* This episode is brought to you in part by our friends over at Heinz. Well, the Heinz Pen Company to be precise. Whether you prefer classic, elegance, or loud, sparkly, colorful resin-based pens, Heinz has something to suit your needs. Founded in 2017, Heinz has grown from a one-person shop to an internationally recognized brand. One of the more unique signature features that you'll find on Heinz pens are their color electroplated nibs and matching hardware available in more than 20 colors. This little addition can take a stunning pen over the top. You've likely seen their fantastic color plating on some Estabrook pens like the Pink Sands Estee and their Northern Lights Candon series. I have the Pink Sands Estee and love it. Heinz offers a wide variety of pen sizes to fit your personal preferences. From their Tashin-stift pocket pens to the giant Koenig and sizes in between, you'll also be able to find a comfortable pen to fit your hand. Artisans Jim Hines and Rachel Neal craft each writing instrument with care in small batches using traditional methods. Hines also incorporates a variety of quality artisan resins, ebonite, and a variety of unique materials. You can find Jim Hines and Francisco Lopez, the Hines guys, at most major pen shows around the country over the next few months, including the Pacific Northwest, DC, San Francisco, Orlando, and Dallas. You can see these incredible pieces in person. In addition to their website and pen shows, you can find Heinz pens at our friends at Pen Chalet and Atlas Stationers too. Plus, you'll also find them through small collaborations with Gentleman Stationer, Vanna's Pens, Brad's Pen of the Year 2023 from Enigma Stationery, and a forthcoming pen for the Pen Attic Store, which is available now, right? It's not forthcoming anymore. Not forthcoming anymore. Launched last week. It has forthcome. The Toschen Stift. It has forthcome. Brad. The Toschen Stift Break of Dawn. Why don't you talk a little bit about why you wanted to work with Heinz? Like, you know, give people an idea of like the quality of this product. So, one of the best things I can say about working with Heinz is that they're willing to take risks and take chances. Even though like the pen that I created, which we'll talk about in a minute, isn't like a huge risk or a huge like experiment. They are willing in their product lineup to experiment in all kinds of different things and all kinds of different shapes, different models, different hardware, you know, the nib coloring and the clip matching. All of that stuff is not easy for these small makers to dabble as widely and as wildly as Heinz has done, which means there's a pen there for everybody. They make some really, really large pens that I know some friends of mine really enjoy that are their favorites and they make really, really small pens, which is what I have in the Toschen Stift in the model that I stock at the Pen Addict shop and everything in between. So, like this isn't my first Heinz pen and it's definitely not going to be my last, but they're just so easy to work with. They're willing to go the extra mile to do anything and everything you're looking for in a pen. Like if you have an idea, bring it to Heinz and, you know, they probably can work with you to get something done. But on top of that, just their stock pens are glorious. Like I usually pick one up, you know, about once a year, add to my collection just from the cool materials that they have, the cool shapes that they make and the cool matching electro painted nibs and clips that they do. So, yeah, I'm a big Heinz fan. That's the big difference maker for me and it's why I have three pens that are either Heinz completely or have been, you know, enhanced within a Heinz nib. Yep. That color plane can really, if you've got the pen that is very heavily themed, it makes so much sense to have a electroplated color nib, right? Like, cause it continues the theme. So yeah, really cool. You can check out the Heinz pens today over at Heinz pens.com slash pen addict. There's a special offer available to listeners of this show. You can get 15% off your purchase using the code pen addict or by visiting Heinz pens.com slash pen addict. That is H I N Z E pens.com slash pen addict. This is good for one use. So use it wisely over at Heinz pens.com slash pen addict. Our thanks to Heinz pens for their support of this show and relay FM. All right, Myke, we got a shout out of the week. Shout out of the week. A little bit different this time, but I've followed this blog since I've been writing the pen addict and I think they've at least been around this long and it's called uses this by internet. The internet's favorite, a wafer baby who goes by at D on Mastodon. So I'm a Mastodon follower of theirs. But what uses this is, it's, it's a literal, literal meaning. And the idea, well, I'll read their intro. It says uses this as a collection of nerdy interviews, asking people from all walks of life, what they use to get the job done. So it's very tech heavy as you might imagine. But the reason why I follow it and the why and why I enjoy it so much is because even the most deep in the woods, computer people say, you know, they're going through like all these words that I've never heard of. And it's someone who's like very IT adjacent, like myself, you're hearing all these things. I'm like, I have no idea what you're talking about. And then they'll go, oh, and I use, you know, a Midori MD notebook and a Sakura Pigma Micron. And, and I can't live without, you know, this mechanical, this Pentel Sharp mechanical pencil. So there are these great interviews that I just get a lot of joy from reading about, you know, seeing the switch from the most technical, you know, type of interview into like this pure analog love. And it's fascinating when I see that happen. So if you haven't seen me, you've probably seen me sharing links from there for years. But if you haven't go check it out. Yeah. 1,282 interviews since 2009. So there's lots of stuff there to keep, keep track of. So good stuff. Very cool. All right, Myke, I want to talk about our good friends at Sailor. Okay. You know, the moratorium was lifted, you know, earlier this year. Yep. But they, they've, they've continued on a path where. They didn't stop. You just wanted to stop talking. Oh yeah. You know, like they're out there doing their thing and you were like, no more of this. But Sailor were like, we don't care. No, they don't care. They don't care. They're doing their thing. It's obviously working. But I wanted to mention something specific about the Sailor 1911 large, or I think it might be a common different size, but it's basically the gold spot exclusive Cthulhu 2024 edition. So this is a gold spot pen exclusive. So they've done something different with this pen while essentially keeping it similar to everything else. But I wanted to give them a shout out and gold spot a shout out for designing this because what Sailor tends to do is take the pro gears and the pro gear slims, anything in the pro gear lineup, including the king of pen. And there it's basically like color by numbers at this point, the way they build out the pro gear lineup in the special editions, you know, what colors the body, what colors the finial, you know, are we going to do, you know, is there translucent here, opaque here, solid here, metal grip section, no metal grip section, and they'll just jumble it up and make them. And so a lot of the pro gear lineup is similar in like the Build-A-Bear aspects of it. Right. And that's, there's nothing wrong with that. Like, I think some of them look absolutely sick, right? Like I love how some of them look, but it's kind of the same formula. Well, they've actually taken that formula and this, I'm actually going to praise them using that formula in a model and shape that they rarely do this on. Right. So this Cthulhu edition has the finials on the 1911 are rounded, right? So they're a little bit different than the flat ones on the pro gear lineup. So they've actually used the glitter translucent green in both finials and the grip section, which for 1911, I'm not saying they never do this, but if you go look at the 1911 lineups right now, even limited edition ones, you don't really see this orientation of sections and the way these materials work. Even though in big picture sailor world, this is almost basic to this day in a 1911, it's unique. And I love it for that. Right. I want, I want to see more 1911 special editions, especially when they just take some of that ideas that they have in the pro gear lineup and moving into this. Because when I see something like this, right? And then I look at two of their most recent releases, like I just can't help but like compare them and wonder if they're the same thing. So they have the ocean series and the galaxy series, both just came out with new pins. And I'm hard pressed to tell you that these are from a different series, right? Even though one is from, you know, a four pin ocean series and this one, latest one's called sunlight from the ocean floor. I think it's gorgeous, right? It's a beautiful pin, but then you flip over, they just released the galaxy series, the annual galaxy series release. And it's like, Oh, it's the same pin, except it's black instead of white. It looks cool though. It does. I'm not saying none of these, all of these look cool, but I'm saying this is now the expectation for the pro gear, which I was like, Oh, okay. I've seen this. Okay. They've again, you know, the, the build a bear aspects of it, you know, this part here, this part here, this sparkle here, this clear here, flip them up. And now this one, Oh, this one looks like it should go in the ocean. Oh, here, this one's darker. It looks like the nebula, whatever. Well, they've taken some of that and put it in a 1911. So I guess I'm being a little bit hypocritical, but I'm glad to see this in the 1911 shape for a change where we don't normally get it. So that's all I wanted to say is I, this one stood out to me, even though the formula is the same, the model that they're doing it on is not something that we've seen, you know, thousands of in the past 10 years, right? This is something you don't see that often. And I really like how it turned out. So it brings some new life, life into like the sailor limited editions. And I feel like this is a thing that we have spoken about in the past, right? We've often loved the 1911 and it gets limited editions, but less, and especially in collaborations. Like it tends to be that the limited colors, they're ones that sailor decide on. And the 1911 is a canvas right for something, you know, like it's a beautiful pen. In some ways I prefer it to the Pro Gear, depending on the, you know, the pen itself. But usually I can't get all the fun colors and designs on the 1911. I have to get them in the Pro Gear. So I support this idea. I think this is really cool. Yep. Yep. So I think you're, you get what I'm getting at here and I thought they did well and hopefully we see more of it. And, you know, I dug around a little bit to see, can I find some examples that were similar to this and I couldn't really come up with much. But yeah, I think 1911 is a great platform and I would love to see more. I get why the Pro Gears are that, that anchor finial, like it's a difference maker, right? And as far as style goes in a pen, like I get why they, why they do that. So, and the 1911 obviously doesn't have that, but it's a difference maker. It's pretty cool in its own right. And I really liked this one a lot. So you got it. All right. If you're looking, look, looking for pens, we have some pen shows coming up here in the U S that I wanted to give a shout out to this weekend, this coming weekend in Portland is the second Pacific Northwest pen show. I know last year was a, was a hit. Everyone really enjoyed that. And they've already moved locations to kind of better fit the needs of the, of the attendees. I think they like, they had some parking challenges, right? It's, it's hard to put on a pen show, right? I try not to give them too much grief, especially when they're just starting and pen shows that take and receive feedback and then make changes based on that feedback. I will always support, even though I've never been to this show, I can see so many things have changed just from the feedback from last year's show this year. Like the website's great. All the classes. I was actually looking back at Kimberly's review. She went to the show last year and is going again this year. So I'll be interested to hear the comparison, but just reading last year's review, like Kimberly couldn't find any of the class information online and how to, to handle that. Well, guess what? This year, all of that stuff is, is listed on the website with the times, the days, the times and the prices. Like, I mean, who doesn't want to go to a neuro, neuro graphics class? I can't even pronounce that Myke. You need the class then, don't you? I do need the class. So like, and this is good. This is a Saturday class. So this, this show is Saturday and Sunday and, but they bring in for people who come in Friday night, they have a couple of evening classes as well. Friday night, even though it's Friday's not a show day, but neuro graphics, let me talk about this. This is by Stephanie Shore. Anyone can dive into the captivating realm of neuro graphics where psychology meets art in a mesmerizing fusion of lines and colors. You'll have a unique opportunity to tap into the subconscious mind and unleash your inner artist. Different from the repetitive pattern making of Zentangles, let your hand take the wheel as you channel thoughts and feelings onto paper. Transform abstract concepts into vibrant visual expressions and ignite your imagination. Gain a newfound appreciation for the power of practicing art to connect mind, body, and soul. Like I'm in, like I, if I was there, I'd be going to this class. You know why I would be going to this class also is because it's at 445 on Saturday. I don't have to leave the middle of the show at like one o'clock. Hey, I'm great for all, I'm great for all day classes. Like they have classes from morning till evening, but Hey, I can wrap up my day with a class when I'm kind of done with the show. You know, I've seen everything I need to see, purchase everything I need to purchase. So I like having some later in the day classes. So check that out. That's coming this weekend. If you're in the area in the Portland area, check it out. And then I also want to give a shout out to the Miami Pen show, which is later in the month, July 19th and 20th. This show has been on and off for years, but they're under new, uh, new ownership. So the team behind Andrew William, uh, inks has taken over the running of the show. They've changed locations. They're putting a lot into it. This is actually a three day show Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.
* And I look forward to it. I've definitely been talking to them a little bit. Uh, one of these years, maybe I'll make it down there to the Miami show, but again, they have taken the feedback of allowing people to find information online, which these days you think wouldn't be a challenge, but we've always had a challenge in with traditional Pen shows that have been around kind of rest on their laurels with a website. The information doesn't get updated that, that frequently and things like that. You know, I can't find the ticket prices or I can't buy tickets online or I can't, or the vendor list is from two years ago. Right. So they have done a great job having everything on a really nice website. All the information is there. So I just wanted to give a shout out to both of these shows for like running a good, running a good website, which like, I feel like I shouldn't have to shout that out, but it's a little bit of an outlier and I appreciate them very much. So if you're in either of these areas in the U S check out your local Pen shows, you know, maybe, maybe take a day trip to them. And I mean, Portland and Miami are both great towns as well. So to give them a look. I always, you know, find it strange. Just they're not a sponsor of this episode, but just, just get a Squarespace website. You know what I mean? Like how hard. Yeah. Yeah. In fact, I know it's not hard.
* You know what I mean? Just, just give it a go. It's like, have you seen Brad? It is clearly not hard. Just see, see, see what it's all about. It could be fun. You know, you never know. But yeah, shout out to them. Both again, these are both new, new ish promoters from Portland two years now, Miami. This is their first year promoting. So it's, it's changed hands over a couple of years. Yeah. And, and actually hasn't run a couple of years because of that. But yeah, it's good to see. Good to see. Very cool. Very cool. I have a personal vendetta against the Miami airport, but we don't need to get into that today. So yeah, I've only driven to Miami. I haven't flown there. So I'll, I'll refrain. It wasn't the fault of the Miami airport, but nevertheless, I had to spend the night there. Oof. This episode is brought to you by Factor. Warmer, sunnier days are calling. Fuel up for them with Factor's no prep, no mess meals. You can meet your wellness goals in time for summer. Thanks to the menu of chef crafted meals, like with options like calorie smart, protein plus and keto. Factor's fresh, never frozen meals, a dietician approved and ready to eat just two minutes. So no matter how busy you are, you'll always have time to enjoy nutritious, great tasting meals. Make today the day that you kickstart a new healthy routine. Brad, as someone who's been locked inside of the shipping container for the last couple of weeks shipping out all your products, I'm sure meals from Factor can really help you out in those times. Yeah. I should have planned ahead a little bit better, but they're so convenient and this would be perfect for someone who's spending literally hours in the shipping department. And I'll sometimes have to think about like bringing lunch to me. Uh, so Factor works perfectly for that because they take two minutes in their microwave and the taste of these meals is so far beyond anything I could come up with myself for lunch. Myke, this isn't like I'm sitting here, you know, prepping dinner for 30 minutes or an hour. That's what it feels like when you eat one of these meals for Factor. It's like, Oh, someone put some time to put this together and make all the flavors work. All the ingredients are fresh. Everything's like super dialed in and it literally takes me two minutes to have an awesome meal. They spend the time so you don't have to, right? All the planning, getting it ready, getting it to you. Easy peasy. There is so much to love about Factor. With 35 different meals and more than 60 add-ons available to choose from every week, you'll always have new flavors to explore. You can reach your wellness goals of dietitian approved meals and ingredients that you can trust. And why not treat yourself to restaurant quality meals that feature premium ingredients like filet mignon, shrimp, and blackened salmon. You can keep kitchen time to a minimum too. Factor meals are ready in two minutes. No shopping, prepping, cooking, or cleaning up. So enjoy effortless support for your lifestyle. Choose from six menu preferences to help you manage calories, maximize protein intake, avoid meat, or simply eat well. Head to factormeals.com slash penaddict50 and use the code penaddict50 and you'll get 50% off your first box plus 20% off your next month. That is the code penaddict50 at factormeals.com slash penaddict50 to get 50% off your first box plus 20% off your next month while your subscription is active. I'm going to give it one last try. Penaddict50 at factormeals.com slash penaddict50. Our thanks to Factor for their support of this show and all of RelayFM. All right, I want to talk about a review on the Penaddict blog that just went live a few hours ago because I think Jeff did a stunning photography on this. He's an awesome photographer.
* And we've already talked about Retro 51 in this episode in my work with them, but this is what Retro 51 does best is make space-themed pens. And so Jeff did a review of the Retro 51 Tornado Mercury 7 Limited Edition. Rollerball. How cool is this pen? I don't recall seeing this launch. It must have just launched here in the past couple months, and I'm assuming it's still available. I think it's limited, but there was 1,958 versions or models released. So yeah. And I don't often see them do the white. This is what makes it? Trim? Yeah. This is what makes this pen is the white trim. I have a thing for stationery that uses white in unique ways, even just like a full white pen or white hardware is very unique in our world. You don't often see that. And it should be, I hate to say it should be used more because I don't want to see too much of it because that's part of the specialness of it. But when it's done well and done right on a pen like this, and I've got a fountain pen with white trim that I love. And I don't know. It just brings out the character of the product in a different way than your traditional trims. So yeah, I always enjoy seeing this. And I don't know. This one just caught me off guard. It's like, I don't have too much to say other than if you're not familiar with Retro 51, I think this is what they do the best is putting together like some of these space or aeronautical types of products. I mean, I don't talk bad about any of their product linux. Like I love the art pens and the Smithsonian pens and the metalsmith pens. Like they do all of it really well. But for some reason, these space themed ones really, really stand out to me. Yep. They're always really good. They're really, really good. So I wanted to give this a shout out and thank Jeff for the amazing work on this review. So y'all should go check it out. It'll be in your feeds now. Speaking of in our feeds, we have a lot of feed back, Myke. Yeah, that's nice. I like that segue. Thank you to everybody who sends in their Ask TPA questions. Remember, you can always send in questions for us by going to penaddictfeedback.com and you can send in your own Ask TPA. First one comes from Nick who says, I recently received my second Studio Neat Mark 1. This time the limited edition number 11 in vintage yellow with the copper knock. This is the correct color. However, protruding from the tip of the pen is a silver color refill tip. Stupid silver tipsies. We hate them. We hate some. That's good. That's a Gollum reference. I asked Studio Neat whether they could talk to Schmidt and get them to make their branded refills gold plated. In my opinion, this would make the tip on the Mark 1 design fully over the edge. They said it would be tough to do. Would it be tough? We have gold plated nibs, pen furniture, and other fiddly bits. So I don't see where the problem lies. This question blew my mind. I have never thought about this in all my years doing this. The ballpoint pen tip, I've never considered matching it to the hardware. And now I can't unsee it.
* So I think Nick's on to something. I actually exchanged a couple of emails saying as much with Nick. And I want to tackle his closing argument on would this be tough to do?
* For small projects, yeah. Right? For small projects. I think the thing here is to kind of speak on behalf of Studio Neat, which I can't, but how I would imagine it. Would it be tough for Schmidt to do it? Probably not. Right. Would it be tough to get Studio Neat to get Schmidt to do it? Yes. Correct. So, and this isn't even a Studio Neat thing. So we can take the Caran D'Ash 849 Year of the Dragon ballpoint review that I did on Monday. And I was just thinking about this the whole time I was doing it. It's a beautiful red and gold pen with gold hardware, gold clip, gold knock, gold highlights in the pen barrel, silver tip ballpoint. And this is Caran D'Ash who's making their own refills or assuming, you know. I've never considered this before, but it is such a good point. Yeah. So I got to thinking about how many gold tip ballpoint pen refills or, you know, in general, this type of refill that we see. And I could only come up with one. And Fisher makes a gold option for the space pen refill. I think they mostly sell silver, but I know I have some gold ones and I went and looked on their site and they do have the gold trims available for that. And there's just not a lot of companies do it. And I'm wondering why, because like, if you look at, if you go look at Pelican right now and you go to just their standard black and gold ballpoint that they're going to sell, I mean, it's, you would think they would match that with a gold refill, but they don't. And it's, this is, I don't know, this question is just kind of blown my mind. I just think it's customers aren't asking for it. So why would they bother? Yeah, I guess. It's an additional complication. You now have a second skew to deal with, right? But I guess it's just, but why do pen companies? It makes sense because the materials, like it starts with the fact that the materials change the experience, right? And that like, if you make a gold nib pen, you can sell it for more. That's where it begins. So then it becomes, why don't we make a steel one and make it look gold, you know? And then, then you're off to the races where like with a ballpoint pen, putting gold on it, it doesn't change the experience. And so why would they do that? Yeah. I don't know. And it's just like, you can, you can absorb the costs better in the higher cost products like the nibs, as opposed to like the mass produced, you know, making a million of these refills a year. But then also, why can't they make a hundred thousand, if they're going to make a million silver ones, can they do a hundred thousand that are gold plated? I don't know. It's such an interesting question. The margins have to be like zero on these, these products.
* You know, except, except for, I don't know. I take that back. I mean, between Karen Dash, all the refills have gotten like crazy expensive. The Uniball Jetstream refill, everything. These refills are getting to be like seven to $9 for like these ballpoint refills. And it's just, it's crazy to me. But, but I don't know what they would cost if we got gold plated because they'd have to make a smaller run. And maybe it has something to do with tradition. I don't know. Like maybe it's just, you know, that's the way we've always done it type of thing. Oh, that's hard. I wouldn't say it's tradition. That's just people being stuck in their ways. But I guess my point is, I'm surprised it wasn't the reverse. I'm surprised we didn't have to fight for silver trim refills. Right. Because the classic black and gold design of pens, you would have think the gold refill. So there has to be something technical about it back in the day. The original metals that they used were just silver. Yeah. Yeah. There has to be something that lingered just aesthetically to this day, even though it was maybe technical back in the day. So that's a really good question. I found this question to be endlessly interesting. It's rare that I get completely surprised by a question these days. And that was certainly one of them. Like, it's fun to be asked something that you've just never considered. Like, I've never thought about this ever. Now, I'll probably never be able to stop thinking about it. Yep. Even though this is something we talk about, like you said, in fountain pens constantly. How the, like, I was talking about how the TWSBI nib looked up top. You know, you and I were debating the blue trim on that nib, right? We think about that all the time, but not with other pens. Maybe this is a job for Heinz pens. Okay. Start electroplating some Schmidt refills. There you go. Let's do it. Let's see what happens. Let's see what happens. Rick writes in and said, I've recently discovered through the pen hobby that I am a completionist. I must run my pens completely dry, even if I'm not enjoying the combo. I love holding on to a ballpoint or a rollerball and running it to empty, or finishing a bottle of ink and repurposing the bottle. I'm not cheap or frugal, but I get joy out of finishing pen stuff. The opposite is my ink supply will outlive me. Between high-tech-y refills or writing of a Skippy pen, passing it on to someone who gets joy is great. As you know, to me, it's like posting or not. It's something most of us identify with, the idea of emptying a pen to the end. What do you think, Brad and Myke? There's no better feeling, honestly, in finishing anything in our world, be that an ink cartridge, a bottle of ink, a notebook.
* That joy is one of the things that puts a smile on my face, and obviously Rick's face, and I think a lot of us. But I am not one who will suffer a bad product just to be a completionist about it.
* I'm also probably the wrong person to talk about this because of the quantity of things that I have. But I just finished a small refill the other day, the Pilot Hi-Tech C Coleto refill, which is not a refill that's going to last you years. You can run them dry pretty quick if you're using it with any regularity. And I made a comment about, hey, I finished this refill. It makes us happy, right? It's the joy of using your things that you found something that works for you and the satisfaction of using it up until it's done. So, yeah, I think it's a great aspect of our hobby that we all take pride in when it does happen. But I will, you know, conversely, if I do have a fountain pen ink combination that I'm not jiving with, I'll straight up dump it. I will not sit through it for the purpose of, I have done this, therefore I must finish it. I will bail if needed. I'll agree with that. But in general, this is great. I would do this with fountain pens, right? Like I'll run a fountain pen to empty because I like doing that. And then I will fill them all up in one big batch or whatever is kind of like how I like to do things.
* Me and Eden do it together. We kind of see it as like a filling your pens party when we're like out of ink and all of our various fountain pens. I don't think about this or worry about this when it comes to like ballpoints and rollerballs.
* I don't think about filling them. But the one thing that I will add, though, is I do get great joy out of finishing a journal. Yes. Or one of my sidekick note pads or something. Like when I get to the end of a notebook, that's a great feeling. That feels real good to me. I like that feeling of either all the pages being gone or all the pages being filled. Like I love that. Yeah, so I'm in my field notes that I keep at my desk. It's really just kind of show notes kind of stuff. I have three pages left and I'm like super anxious to finish this up soon. And like I'll be happy. It's funny that we enjoy finishing things so much that staple day in a notebook has become a thing where you're halfway done, right? Have made it halfway. So I get to see the staples like in these field notes. Yeah, it's pretty cool. So I don't know. I love that part of our hobby. That we take pride in this type of thing. So yeah, it's pretty cool.
* This episode is brought to you by our friends over at Enigma Stationery. Enigma Stationery offers unique items from in-house designs along with top brands and hard to find imports. And now we can introduce to you all the new art prints from The Wolf Shop, Bromstad Printing, and Panty Cat. Like The Wolf Shop's Black Noodle Cat in Renaissance Style, Panty Cat's Cheeky Tea Party Print, and Bromstad's Hot Dog Risograph Print. That was actually quite hard to say. Well, I'm not laughing at you. I'm checking out these images. I just pulled them up. I didn't know what we were going to talk about. Heck yeah. These rule. Yeah, of course. They're fantastic. I mean, but yeah, it was the hot dog risograph print was harder to say than I expected. And I just struggled with it again, you know? Yeah. Sushi Cat Renaissance.
* Myke, Sushi Cat. I like saying Renaissance. If you're going to the RelayFM 10th Anniversary Live Show that I mentioned earlier on in the episode, Enigma Stationery will be there. And they're going to be giving out free stickers for fellow RelayFM fans. So if you see the folks from Enigma Stationery, grab yourself a free sticker from them. Thank you to the wonderful people at Enigma for doing that. I've been caring about our... They're actually coming over and I'm very excited about it and caring about our community. Yeah, I saw Dan mention that they were going to be there and I'm super excited because I usually see them at pen shows and I just haven't caught them this year because I've only been to Atlanta. So yeah, I look forward to... I have to go all the way over to England to see the Enigma fam. You know, sometimes you just got to do it, you know?
* And, this is to bear in mind, because of this trip, there is going to be an Enigma summer shipping holiday and it's last call for orders. July 14th is the final day to place an order before they'll take a summer break. The shop will be open for browsing, but checkout will be disabled until August 5th. So get in now, check out this wonderful stuff before Enigma takes their summer break. If you want free QR shipping or discounted international shipping on orders of $50 or more, plus a free gift, head to enigmastationery.com slash penaddict and use the code penaddict24 at checkout. That is enigmastationery.com slash penaddict to get your hands on the wide range of new prints, which are really good fun and so varied and wonderful, plus a free gift and free US shipping on orders of $50 or more with the code penaddict24. Our thanks to Enigma Stationary for their support of this show and Relay FM. So I'm pretty sure I'm going to need these Panty Cat stickers that they have. Like I keep browsing. These stickers rule Panty Ross. So it's like a Bob Ross, but a cat in underwear making a painting and it rules. And then there's another one that says I'm hot trash. Like this is my jam right here. So yeah, I can't do the rest of the show because I'm just going to keep browsing the site because this stuff rules. They do such a good job over it. I'm just going to start reading questions. Yeah, ask me a question and I'll start closing tabs because I got too many tabs. There's a hot dog Risagraph print. This question comes in from Ethan who says, This cat is eating the noodles. In your estimation, what is the best way to divest oneself of multiple low value pens? I have a handful of pens that are about $60 or less, some with dings and scratches or uncooperative nibs. I don't want to keep them around as I never use them and they take up mental space, if not much physical space. I'd feel terrible just chucking them out but neither do they seem that they have much resale value. What are my options? Yeah, great question. A lot of us go through this. I mean, you could just do what I've done which is put them all in a big box in the loft and hope to get to them at some point in the future. I mean, you know what I mean? So if you have ideas, Brad, I'd actually quite like to hear them. Well, idea number one does not work for you and it may not work for Ethan but if you have a workplace, you take them to work, you put them in a cup and say free pens and then maybe one person goes, oh, is this a fountain pen? Will you show me how to use it? And then you set your hooks in them and then you offload all the rest of them onto them. Very cool. That's trick number one. I employed that trick when I had a regular job and could offload some of my stationery. After I did it once, people asked me when I'm going to do it again. So it was pretty funny. Yeah. You know, you bring your extra pens, your notebooks, like stuff you can't sell, stuff you may not be using but it's not worth the hassle of trying to sell.
* So that's like my number one suggestion. If that opportunity is available to you, which is not available to everybody.
* Secondly, you can sell them in bundles for lower prices, especially the damaged ones and you sell them as, hey, do you want to learn how to grind nibs? Do you want to learn how to repair pens? Look at all of these pens that I've ruined and you can sell, you know, five of the pens for the price of one and someone will take you up on that just for parts or replacement nibs or practicing repairs, things like that.
* Anytime you can do like either of those things and then, you know, just kind of if you have the opportunity to enable anyone like in your family or things like that is what I would do. But, or you could even take it upon yourself to experiment with these pens. Like, do you want to try to make one of these nibs into a needlepoint nib, you know, just with the tools at hand and have fun because if you're not going to use them, you shouldn't care about destroying them and then maybe you can learn a little skill or something like that. But those are kind of the things I've done and then, you know, I'll just give away as much as I can. So, yeah, I guess so like a tad on to that, like maybe you don't work in a traditional office place if you're part of like a club or something, you know, like maybe you could bring them there or I'm also sure that like some of this stuff would be good for donations to a local shop, society, school or something depending on what the items are.
* Outside of that, I don't know if, it's difficult. Yeah, I don't know if a library is an option for that. I don't know if anyone, anyone could, I know we have a lot of librarians in our orbit. I don't know what a library,
* like I would almost think that would be better than a school because like, especially like a fountain pen is going to be tough for like school and children. But like, I don't know if a library that might be a step beyond what they would be willing to like take on. I don't know. I have a friend who asked me for some advice recently.
* They had found a, when clearing out a family member's belongings, had found a fountain pen and their child wanted to try it out. And they brought it to me because they just weren't sure about it. Never used a fountain pen before. And it was a metal pilot metropolitan. And it was super easy, right? That's like the best, that's the best kind of pen to be given. It's not like a, an heirloom pen. It's not like a vintage pen or it's not something like a vacuum filler or something. I'm like, oh, this is really easy. And so I just like opened it up and showed them that and obviously they weren't familiar with the cartridge anyway, right? So like they'd opened it and looked at it, but it didn't look like an ink cartridge to them because Pilot have their own proprietary thing, right? Right. And so I was able to be like, oh no, these are great. You can just get these on Amazon. You can get them anywhere, right? And I showed them what they needed to buy. And part of the reason that they're interested in understanding this is that their child is going to a school where they require fountain pens. Wow. Isn't that cool? That's rare these days. It's super cool. Super rare. I love it. Yeah. So it's a bit of an old school school, but I was just very happy to hear that at least some places are still doing that. Yeah. I'd be interested to hear what their pen of choice is. My assumption would be it would be base generic, you know, something cheap and easy, but if it was not, I'd be very curious. Yeah. I mean, I expect it. They just bring your own or whatever, and maybe the school would make a recommendation. True, true, true. Because, I mean, what they're obviously expecting, people just go and buy a Lamy Safari, right? It's probably, you know? Yeah. All right. Next question comes from Connor. Do you have any recommendations for business card-sized index cards like the Nock cards of yore?
* I have an open question to a friend. That friend's name is Anna Reinert, who will not reply to my email, so I'm calling Anna out right now. They're a little busy. I get it. Get it together, Anna. A little busy. Reply to his email, you know? But I want to do a thing for myself, like not as a product, right? And I'll just hold those thoughts. But it would kind of, I don't know that it would answer or solve this question because, you know, these little small cards do come in handy from time to time, right? Like, it's not a, it's not necessarily a bulk thing that, you know, people are going to find this and use a lot of, but like the reason we sold these Nock cards is one, because we found a really great card stock that worked great with fountain pens, and we made a product that fit a business card, we made it around a business card size, which in the US is a weird, you know, two and, you know, five, six. It's some weird measurement.
* but it's this weird standard business card size. Well, all of them are this weird shape. So, it's a great pocketable, you can slide it in other notebooks type of thing. So, I have an idea that I want to do and I want to see if I can do it. But as far as like to answer the question, the only things I've seen is it Morriman or Kikuyo? Gosh, let me see if I can find it real quick. They make, unfortunately, what you're going to run into is you're not going to, you can find paper this small, you're not going to find the heavyweight stock that you want. Okay, so I'm just going to cut to the end here because even what I'll show you will be, like you could find things around A7 size, but they are just sheets of paper, right? They're not going to have that thickness that you would expect from an index card or a note card. So, to answer the question, I don't have an answer, Connor, but this is something that I clearly enjoy because I've made them in the past and I would like to do something with them in the future.
* Whether that will happen, I don't know. So, that's a long way of saying I don't have a good answer unless you want to go into just a thinner paper style and then we can get a couple things. I think Morriman, Kikuyo, they make these little small, some of them are even, I think they even call them business card size. They're smaller than A7, I believe, but they're more paper, paper style. anyway, here's one I was trying to, those are too big. Let me see if I can find this one real quick.
* It feels like those are all too big. You need to be the one, you know, we can rely on you, you've got to make it work or just answer his email. You know what I mean? How hard is email? Very hard is the answer. Yeah, but yeah, my idea is to bring it back, bring it back old school. So I have an idea. So we'll see. We'll see. Open question. Product idea out there. Just waiting on reply.
* Peter wants to know, I was wondering how much ink does Bradley typically use when testing a pen?
* Number one, Peter, thank you for spelling my name correctly. I appreciate it. The Bradley. That was impressive. Yes, you're Bradley with no E, right? No E, Michael, no E. So yes, great job, Peter. And this is, I don't know if I'm going to answer this question how Peter wants, but like I fill the pen and probably use the whole fill of whatever I'm using. That is good to know. That's interesting. I would not have expected that. I expect you to fill it, but I didn't think you'd use the whole thing. I mean, maybe not before the review, but I use a lot. I use a lot before I do the review, which is why I don't ever, I don't always have like the most timely reviews like product, like my reviews may not line up with the product launch day if I can't get the product early. I want to spend some time with the pen. So a good example, Kaweco Piston Sport.
* So I filled that up and I just used the pen, used the pen, used the pen. And I bet I used half of that pen before, half of that fill before I used it. So maybe that's probably a better answer. That's how I would typically want to experience a fountain pen before writing up the review is, okay, I filled it up and I bet you with that pen, I probably used half of it before I wrote down my thoughts on the product. So that's maybe a more clear answer. Like I have, I'm looking at, I have one pen I need to review here and it's the Retro 51 fountain pen, the coffee one that Gold Spot does. And I've had that inked up for a couple weeks and I'm just using it, right? So I won't use the whole thing before I do my writing, but I bet I'll use like a pretty good portion of, in that case, a converter. To the UK, you know? Will I get kit thrown out? Will that be confiscated at customs? Depends, depends on the product description.
* Don't bring it. It doesn't want to be here, you know? Yeah. But yeah, I guess like a better, better, more direct answer for Peter is like, I'd probably like to get like half of a fill, like, you know, down. That's a good, that's a lot of writing or a lot of testing to kind of get a good idea. You know, it would be great if, you know, I could use a product for a year before reviewing it, but that kind of defeats all kinds of purposes, including my own for using that and, you know, fill it up five times or something like that. But it's not like that. Like, I'm not running through tons of ink before putting words down, but I'd say half of a fill is pretty standard.
* And Grizz asks, I'm very new to the show and the world of fountain pens, and I've only tried some entry-level pens, some stuff that's under $50 from Sailor, Pilot, and Tewisbee, and I found myself really enjoying the Japanese extra fine nibs, especially from my Kakuno. So I'm looking to explore more in this category. Can you make any recommendations for me? Nodding my head vigorously over here, Grizz. Great job. Glad you found the show. Glad you're enjoying it. And I am glad you found that you like the Japanese extra fine nibs, and you're done.
* There's not a lot of options. So this is my category, Grizz. So this is how I started. This is how... One of the... One of my favorite writing experiences is Pilot's extra fine nib, which, as Grizz mentions, comes in the Kakuno.
* They use that nib in other models like the Metropolitan. I don't know if they do extra fine for the Pereira, but it's the same nib. So once you've tried it, you've discovered it. The challenge now is duplicating that in these other brands.
* Platinum is probably your next best choice in the steel nibs in the beginner pin category that you'll find a comparable extra fine size nib. I believe they call theirs O2, like in the Preppy. Maybe fact check me real quick while I'm talking, but I believe that is the O2. O3 being their fine size, so you want to go O2, I believe, is their extra fine, which is not as common. So that's the problem, Grizz, is that these nibs are the outlier of what they sell as a product. So you're going to have to... Yeah, O2 is extra fine. Okay. So you can find that in a lot of Platinum's entry-level pins from Preppy to Procyon's, Prefonte, some of those other ones, I think. Maybe not all of them come with extra fine, and that's the challenge. Not every Japanese maker goes all the way down to extra fine in all of their product lineups. So after this, you're going to have to move into a gold nib to get into some of the more specialty nibs that these companies make. So Platinum makes one called UEF. That stands for ultra-extra fine. That only comes in their gold nib lineup. What about you, you, UEF? No. Well, you can get that done by a nib grinder. Yeah. That's the 401 level class for Grizz. So that's a little bit down the line where you get a custom grind into the fineness that you want. But that's where, once you get into the gold nibs, Pilot,
* Sailor, and Platinum all have options for that. Sailor, the least of the three. I think Pilot has the extra fine and the posting nib. Sailor's extra fine I think is the third rated one between Platinum and Pilot.
* But they're just not widely available in the lower price point pins just because they don't sell those as much. But they're glorious when you find a good one. So I don't know that I'm totally helping you Grizz other than saying that you found something really special and that you found something you enjoy and it's a tough category to like move up in the world in different pins just due to availability. Because once you start finding out that hey, I like this Pelican but their extra fine is like a Pilot broad nib you start to get a little bit frustrated and go back to those Pilot extra fines. Like it's a challenge. So definitely if you have any questions you can pass them on if you have more specific pins you want to discuss. And that goes for everyone, Myke. Yes. It's very easy to do it. Just go to penaddictfeedback.com There's always a link in the show notes too and you can leave us a question. It can be follow up maybe you've got something to add from something we've spoken about today. Maybe there's like a product that you found that we haven't spoken about and you want to hear what we think about it. You can always send that stuff in to us along with your questions if we can try and help or assist you in your love of pens, paper, and all analog tools. If you want to find Brad online you can go to penaddict.com Don't forget to check out the penaddict shop and all the wonderful wares that are there right now. Brad is at penaddict P-E-N-A-D-D-I-C-T and he's over at twitch.tv slash penaddict where he streams stationery goodness three times a week. You can find me here on Relay FM where I host a variety of shows and you can find my products over at cortexbrand.com Thank you to our wonderful sponsors of this week's episode Enigma Stationery Factor and Heinz Pens but most of all thank you for listening. Until next time say goodbye Brad. Goodbye Brad.

[[Category:Podcast Transcripts]]
[[Category:The Pen Addict Podcast Transcript]]

The Pen Addict 606/transcript

2026-06-23T16:00:30Z

PencilBot: fixed spelling

{{Infobox podcast transcript
| name = The Pen Addict
| number = 606
| title = It's Orange Obviously
| date = March 13th, 2024
| hosts = [[Brad Dowdy]] 
[[Myke Hurley]]
| guests = [[Wes Kwok]]
| link = [https://www.relay.fm/penaddict/606 Episode 606]
| audiolink = [https://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/traffic.libsyn.com/secure/thepenaddict/The_Pen_Addict_606.mp3 Audio Episode 606]
| length = 58
}}

'''Myke Hurley:''' From RelayFM, this is The Pen Addict, episode 606. Today's show is brought to you by Pen Chalet. My name is Myke Hurley and I'm joined by Brad Dowdy. Hi Brad.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' What's up, Myke? What time is it, boy?

'''Myke Hurley:''' This is only a way that I could check. We will talk about that later on in today's episode.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, also seriously, what time is it? Because we're in that no man's land of time zones.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Well, it's fine for you. It's fine for you. But this is the good one for me. So you had daylight saving time? Sure. Is it?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I don't even know.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Are you in daylight savings time now?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I'm on America time, Myke. That's all you need to know.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Well, whatever it is, the time changed. But the time doesn't change for me for another three weeks. Mm-hmm. But that means I get three weeks of all of my shows being an hour earlier, by and large, with one exception, which is good. Generally good, yeah. Because then I get to go home earlier.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yes. Yeah. So that's the good stuff. So this is like three weeks. We're off for like two or three weeks off kilter.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I feel like it didn't used to be three weeks, but I don't feel like it was that long. I think it used to be two weeks. Or maybe this is one of these things where it just surprises me every time. I don't know. This used to be the bad one. When I had an actual job, like a nine-to-five, this was rough because I had to rush home every day. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. But now it's great.

== Email newsletter "Refill" and its updates ==

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Well, we have other good surprises. I have another big surprise this show, and I think it's the first topic we're going to hit here. I think it really caught you off guard.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yes, I refer our listeners to Brad's wonderful email newsletter, Refill, which is available for members of penaddict.com. And Brad was doing a hot or not of different things. And this one caught my eye specifically. Hot, unique paper sizes. So talking about things like plotter, travelers, field notes. Theme system. The theme system. You didn't put that, though, in your refill, did you? Just note that for the record. Also, Sidekick notepad is its own paper size. And Brad says they all skirt the standards and lean into their own thing. We are better for it, apparently. And not paper standards. While I appreciate a solid commitment to standards, it's no longer a deal breaker when thinking about paper. Oh, so what's happened here, then?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I've changed my tune over the last, I don't know, 12 months or so. I've mentioned that I've softened my stance on standards only or GTFO, right? And I just think that the preponderance of new paper makers or even some older, more established thinking of travelers notebooks have leaned into their own thing for their own reasons. And I'm glad they do because they're taking these changes. They're experimenting. They're planting their flag in the ground saying, this is what we believe in and who am I to say that they're doing it wrong? And I'm willing to change my stance on these things, right?

'''Myke Hurley:''' I mean, I agree, obviously. Because I think that non-standard paper sizes allow for creativity in product design.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, I do. I do, too. And so one of my old standard stances was actually a very American issue. When we were manufacturing notebooks for Nock, you used to, it cost more to make a standard size because, again, these are international standards and not really seen in the U.S. Because, well, I was adamant that we were going to make an A5 notebook and we'd go to our printer and they were like, well, this is going to cost more because we can only get the paper in this other size. I don't even know what other size it would be. But it wouldn't be like an A1 palette of paper, right, where they could just, you know, efficiently cut it down to size. They were like, there's going to be a lot more waste and we're going to have to cut it. And I'm like, yes, that's what we're going to do because it has to be A5. And in retrospect, I'm completely happy with that decision at the time and I wouldn't change a thing. But the more I look at the things I'm using today, that was, you know, six, seven, eight years ago that we made that notebook. As I sit here at my desk and use things, I'm not using, I'm using one A5 notebook and everything else that's sitting around is kind of, you know, just a different size, like a non-standard size. And I really enjoy these products. So, you know, what's the harm in making your own size?

'''Myke Hurley:''' I think standards are a good guide, right? I think you can kind of work towards the standard, but you should be able to be flexible on it if it's in service of making the product better.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. One of my core stances in the past was, well, what about accessories, right? And it's just, you know, whatever. It's like you can't, you know, if you're buying into like an A5 notebook system and you're buying a cover and you're buying these different things that fit that system. And then, you know, you find another notebook you like and you can't, you know, you have to rebuy accessories if that's your thing.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah, but standards don't solve that problem because you can use varying thicknesses of notebook, right? So if you have a notebook cover that takes a 200-page notebook, but you've now bought a 400-page notebook, it's not going to fit anymore, even though they're both A5.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Exactly. So, yeah, I am very much pro the experimentation and the discussion and the design of all these notebooks.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah. I'm proud of your growth.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yep. Yep. Like I said, I think we're better off for the experimentation, which I think is probably, in general, a good way to think about it instead of being forced down one path, if you will.

'''Myke Hurley:''' All right.

== Uniball pin bracket and voting process ==

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So, yeah, that's good. I am about to force a path, though, Myke, and that is with the Uniball pin bracket. It is bracket season, of course, with March Madness taking place in the U.S. Every company has to do a bracket. Last year, we covered Lamy's bracket and told them how wrong they were in many of their choices. So this year, we're going to talk about Uniball's bracket and tell them how wrong they are in their bracket choices. So what I want to do, Myke, is I'm going to go through, I'm going to give my entire bracket here. So what Uniball has done, they've released this on their Instagram. You vote on their Instagram stories, which is, you know, whatever. It seems like a challenge.

'''Myke Hurley:''' It's a way to take votes, you know?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' It is. It's a way to take votes. It's fine. And the good thing that I like about this bracket, it's only 16 pins, right? So we have eight pins on one side of the bracket, eight pins on the other. You know, we'll go through all the entrants here. They have already done the first vote, which I have not looked at the results yet. So we're going to do that in a minute. I have not pulled that up to look at. But we're going to take their initial bracket, which we'll put a link in the show notes, to Instagram. You will have to embiggen this in any way that you can. And it is not very legible in the standard size. So we're going to start on the top left of the bracket, Myke. And this is Uniball, obviously, with Uniball products. And it should come as the shock to no one that I have a lot to say about this bracket. So we're going to go first. The first one, they went easy on me. So they did a good job of doing comparable products in the first round matchup. So we have the Uniball Vision in other parts of the world, like in the UK, where you are, Myke. This is the Uniball Eye, E-Y-E. And it's going up against the Vision Elite. This is a no contest walkover Vision Elite win. Even though I think the Vision is a very popular pin, it's one of the worst pins that Uniball makes because the ink, the rollerball ink, and I've been on my rollerball kick here recently. This is the one rollerball pin I do not like because it is just a straight up flood of ink on the page. For some people, that's a pro, right? Like artists really like the Vision because the amount of ink it puts on the page, right? I do not like it from a writing perspective because it's just a flood. The Vision Elite, for some reason, is a completely different flow of ink. It's very much more metered. It's a lot nicer to use. And I think the Vision Elite is a great pin. So that's easy. The second one going down the left side of the bracket here is the Uniball Onyx, which is their classic rollerball office pin, right? This is a pin you would buy by the dozen, throw them in the office supply cabinet, and that is going against the Uniball Deluxe, which is kind of the same type of refill but in a more premium barrel. So the regular workers would get the Onyx and then the C-Suite gets the Deluxe. Like that's kind of how it operates, right? Because they're fancier people. I like both of these pins. The Deluxe is a pin I used a bunch like back in the 90s over the Onyx, even though I use the Onyx similarly. So I'm going to have to pick the Deluxe here. So we have the Vision Elite moving on and then the Deluxe moving on. So the next category, they start to lose me a little bit. So the next matchup is the Jetstream versus the Jetstream 101. Now there's a million different versions of Jetstream. So the Jetstream in this scenario is the classic capped Jetstream pin, one of the original styles. And then the Jetstream 101 is kind of the stick pin version, more like the Onyx version of the Jetstream, right? It's just supposed to be streamlined, much less expensive. And, you know, even though it's got the same refill, same refill, same ink type, this was not an easy one because both of these pins suck. I just want to be clear. So we're going to take the classic Jetstream on this one and hope it gets knocked out here pretty soon in a future bracket.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Because the bottom of the left side of the bracket is the Jetstream RT, which is the follow-up to the regular Jetstream in the previous bracket, but just the click version, against the Jetstream BLX, which is also a click version, but has the BLX ink, which is, in this case, I'm going to assume it's blue-black. That's what the picture looks like. But there's actually some other really cool colors in here. And I'm going to take the BLX because of the ink color options. So we have the Elite versus the Deluxe in the final eight. And then we have the Jetstream versus the Jetstream BLX. So let's switch over to the other side of the bracket here. Myke, is this as thrilling for you as it is for me?

'''Myke Hurley:''' I'm on the edge of my seat, Brad.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Oh, good, good, good, good. So we flip it over to the other side and we get quite a range of pins. The first, like the first matchup on the other side, on the left side of the bracket, the right side of the bracket is the Gel Impact versus the Signo DX. Again, this is a walkover. That's the DX all day long and twice on Sundays. I don't even know what that means. But the Gel Impact is basically your wider barrel Signo refills, like your 0.7s and your 1.0 millimeters. And the DX just has way more variety. And it's just a flat out better pin. One of my favorite pins of all time. So the DX goes. Next up, Myke, we have two pins. I literally had to Google search, which is astonishing to me. And I figured out what they are. So they're calling this. I wonder if this is like an introduction of this new naming convention here. So we have the Elements versus the Spectrum. I have never heard of either of these pins. But what the Elements is, is the classic Jetstream Sport. And that's my favorite Jetstream of all time. And I don't know why it's called the Elements now. But if you look at it, it's literally what the Jetstream Sport is and used to be. Maybe this is just its new name. The Spectrum is similar. I've never heard of the Spectrum. And if you look at the picture, it's the Signo RT1, which is another awesome pin. These are two great pins. I've just literally never heard them called these names. So maybe they're just switching up the marketing a little bit on these. This was a top tier selection here. Both of these were very, very difficult to pick from. They're both two of my favorite pins. And we're going to take the Spectrum, which is the Signo RT1 model, just because there's more ink color variety in the Spectrum. And it's a really good pin. And it's one I highly recommend. Next up, we head into the pencil bracket. We head into the oddities bracket here, except for one standout, which you'll see in a second. The Chroma mechanical pencil, which I've never used, versus the Kuro Togo. Again, the Uni Kuro Togo, easy and a walkover. That is not even close. Not even a fair fight here. I would be shocked if the Chroma won, unless there was a BTS uprising in the votes to pull the Chroma through for some reason.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Do you think that the BTS fans are lined around the Chroma?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' We're going to find out here in a minute. We're going to find out. We're going to find out. And then the last one is the Emote. And it looks like they're using the Emote marker for this, because the Emote also comes in a mechanical pencil version, a colored pencil version. We're going to go with the Emote marker versus the Uni Pen Fineliner. This is a tough decision, and I think I have to go with the Pen, which is the standard Fineliner. Even though the Emotes are really, really good, and they have a lot of cool colors, I think the Fineliner is the way to go. All right. So before I continue the bracket, and we have the Elite Eight left, I'm going to go over to Uniball's feed, and I'm going to look at who has won this round, their first round here, because I'm pretty sure it's on there. Let's see here. So, yeah, we're on to round two. Let's see here. Okay. So the Vision Elite, whoops, won that bracket.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I feel like there's a pen missing, Brad. That, like, that, like, and I'm trying to Google it, and I can't find the name of it. Like, the very standard Uniball pen. Like, the Click one.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. So we're going to get to it. I actually have a note. Okay, good. There's two that are missing.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Okay, good. Because I feel like I'm losing my mind here. I'm like, where is the pen that I think should win this? Hold on that.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yes, hold on that. Because there's actually a perfect matchup that would have been better in one of these categories. Probably, like, over the emote and fineliner that we didn't get. All right. So the Vision Elite and the Deluxe, which is what I picked. Then we have the Jetstream, which is what I picked, and the Jetstream BLX. So I was 100% right on the first one. So I was thinking what I would pick, not what the fans would pick. But we are exactly lined up on the left side of the bracket. The Gel Impact beat the Signo DX.

'''Myke Hurley:''' That's a travesty.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' It is a travesty. But I get it, because the DX is only recently, like in the past five to seven years, been a store shelf pen, right? This was not a worldwide release, like the Gel Impact. So less people are familiar with the DX than the Gel Impact. So I'm picking the DX every time. I'm not surprised at the Gel Impact. One, just from an awareness perspective, right? From a shelf space perspective, the Gel Impact has more shelf awareness than the DX. So I get that. The next up, I had no idea what would win here. They picked the Elements over the Spectrum, which the Elements is the Jetstream Sport, and the Spectrum is the Signo RT1. I'm not surprised that that won there. I love the Elements too. That was kind of like an unfair matchup, pretty much, because both of them are very, very good. And then the Kuretoga versus the Chroma. The Kuretoga won, and then the Fineliner won against the Emote. So I matched up with the Vote, except for the Gel Impact beating the DX and the Elements beating the Spectrum. So to your point,

'''Brad Dowdy:''' there are, before I finish out the bracket here, which now we're pretty much in the easy part, to your point, what is missing? And instead of the Emote and Fineliner matchup, we should have had a Uni Signo 207 versus a Uni 1R. And I don't understand why either of those pens, even one of those pens, should have made this bracket somewhere. The Signo 207 instead of the Gel Impact, this, the, I don't know, either of them over the Emote and the Fineliner. The 207 and 307 has to be one of their best sellers around the world. And I don't know why that's not in the bracket. And then the 1R, and the, or I should just say the 1, the Uni 1, should have been in here because that's their most popular current pin. So I'm guessing you were thinking of the Signo 207, which is the classic. I think so. That's the G2 competitor.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah, this is what, yes. That is, this is exactly what I'm thinking of. Yes.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. So I had a note that the 207 and the Uni 1 should have been a matchup instead of the Emote instead of the, and Fineliner. That would have been a better competition because those pens are super popular. I don't understand why they're not in here. Or even the, the one of the Jetstream, like on the left side of the bracket where there's four Jetstreams, like two of those could have been removed. Like the BLX doesn't need to be here, even though it won. The BLX and the 101 don't need to be there, right? You can just have a Jetstream versus the Jetstream RT.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Obviously, I love it, but it doesn't make sense to me to have the Kuru Toga in this bracket. Like I don't, I don't get it.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Spoiler alert, Kuru Toga is going to win the whole thing. Yeah, I know. I'm picking the Kuru Toga. I believe the Kuru Toga will win the whole thing.

'''Myke Hurley:''' But that's why it doesn't make any sense. It's like, it's a different thing. Right. Why not put a notebook in it too?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' They, well, and then they put it, they seeded it correctly to where it's going to have no competition through the whole, through the whole thing, which is why it's going to win. So real quick, my final four would be the Vision Elite and then the Jetstream BLX.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' With the Vision Elite making the final, right? That's a whole, that's a pretty weak left side of the bracket. If the Vision Elite, which is a pin that I love, makes it all the way through. And then the other side, I had the DX versus the Kuru Toga in the final four with the Kuru Toga getting through. And then the Kuru Toga, it's a walkover in the final against literally every other pin on the left side of the bracket. Right? Like it's, the Kuru Toga has to beat the Fineliner right now. And then the Kuru Toga has to beat the Gel Impact or the Elements, which it's going to do. And then against any other pin that's going to make it through on the left-hand side, the Kuru Toga is going to win very easily. I think so. We'll see how the bracket shakes out, but it's always fun to have a little bracket season and see how these companies do it. But like you, I'm just curious, more curious about the 207 and 1 Omission, given that those are the two, two of the most popular pins that they sell. So interesting stuff. Good times, bracket season.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Bracket season, indeed. If you decide that you want to buy up a bunch of pens of your own and make your own bracket, I have a great place for you to go. And that's Pen Chalet. Let's go. Thanks to Pen Chalet for the support of this episode. They sell authentic, amazing rollerballs, fountain pens, ballpoints, mechanical pencils, and so much more. They have your favorite brands and they believe in giving you the best products they can at the best prices possible. Pen Chalet have faster, reliable customer service. They add new pens every single month and every two weeks you'll be able to find new deals over at Pen Chalet as well as the incredible deals that you get for being a listener of this show, which you can get to by going to penchalet.com that's P-E-N-C-H-A-L-E-T.com and click the podcast link at the top of the website. Enter the password PENADDICT for this week's special offers and to get the code you need to save 10% on anything at any time at Pen Chalet. What's catching your eye this week, Brad?

== Monteverde Ritma Gala Convertible Pocket Neck Fountain Pen ==

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So the first thing that caught my eye was the second pen listed which is the Monteverde Ritma Gala Convertible Pocket Neck Fountain Pen. Big name here. But you look at the picture. Easy for you to say. Yeah. But basically what caught my eye was the picture, right? I'm not familiar with this pen but it's basically a necklace pen. Like it's a classic design from like the early 1900s. You saw a lot of these necklace type pens. But the strap immediately reminded me of like, oh, that's kind of like a Y Studio thing in a larger fashion and then you scroll down and there's actually the Y Studio Brassing Portable Ballpoint Pens which is a really fun, really great pen. You usually don't see them on sale which that's a really neat pen to consider if you like a ballpoint and a unique barrel. It's like, it's a heavy brass barrel pen, faceted, I think six-sided pen and really neat. I'm pretty sure I've reviewed that on the blog and of course being the Y Studio fanboy that I am, I really enjoyed it. Then there's two Viscontis that caught my eye because they kind of shouldn't be in here. The Visconti Woodstock, the material that they have here is really, really nice and I've seen a bunch of pictures of these and they look spectacular and the price is ridiculous for what it is and then completely unfair to me, the Visconti Kaleido Fountain Pen and Fire Opal is now very discounted and that's, they have the nib size that I like and it's going to be problematic so just something to think about out there at penchalet.com some really neat stuff.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Some, just a couple of things that caught my eye, a couple of models of the stipulated Caplus, DaVinci Caplus pens at some bananas prices so if that was like a mechanism you were interested in trying out there's some really good prices in those pens as well.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Interesting,

'''Myke Hurley:''' I'm looking at them now. Wow. Yeah, that's very cool. Really great prices in those. So that is P-E-N-C-H-A-L-E-T.com click the podcast link at the top of the website and enter the password Pen Addict. With Pen Chalet you'll get free shipping on orders of over $75 in the US and they sell internationally as well with very reasonable shipping rates. Pen Chalet has low prices and high quality pens and offers a 100% satisfaction guarantee. A thanks to Pen Chalet for the support of this show and Relay FM.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Alright Myke, we have our shout out of the week. Shout out of the week. I need a pen store. Myke, what a good name. Have you heard about Pen Chalet? Have you heard about our friends at Pen Chalet? But no, this is, so Frank at Fontaplumo put up basically like a travel guide for if you're in, you know, you're traveling and you want to find out if there's a pen store around you, you can check out I Need a Pen Store. So, that's a really cool kind of one-stop place we'll certainly reference. We always get a traveling question, hey, is there a map of stationery stores? And this is a place, this is a website where you can, you know, search by shop name, you can search by location you're in, you can search by manufacturer to see what shops might carry a manufacturer. So, yeah, it's a really neat setup and tool for all of us who are looking for pen shops if we're traveling on the road. Maybe see something we haven't been familiar with before and I just wanted to give Frank a shout out for putting this out there. It's really neat.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Excellent.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Excellent. All right, Myke, when you're traveling the world, you might need to keep track of the time and the various time zones you're in. So, what if I told you that there was a watch that could help you with that and it was stationery adjacent in that it was a collaboration with the pen addict and our friends over at Notice created a watch very cool called the Sector Dive GMT pen addict edition. So, this might come as a surprise to a lot of people. It is a little bit out of left field. Out of left field but we have been working on this for months behind the scenes and by we I mean my friend Michael Harris who along with the pen addict slack watches board worked with Notice to make a pen addict you don't want to say branded but like themed themed styled yeah inspired it's orange and stainless and it looks awesome and it's got

'''Myke Hurley:''' the pen addict logo on the back as well

'''Brad Dowdy:''' on the back side yeah so we kept that subtly on the back I mean it's large on the back but it's not something you see right but that's the place you're more of a watch person than me that's the place where you get like the little extra details addition details you know whatever particulars you get on the back and things like that so the notice sector dive GMT yeah came about from the watches channel and I got involved through Michael wanting to basically wanting my approval it's like I don't know anything about this y'all do this and one of my approval I'm like heck yeah he like gave me some mock ups and and and showed it to me so yeah it looks super good one of my goals with this was the charity portion so fifty dollars of every sale is going to our friends at st. jude to help children cancer research so like I'm making zero dollars on this right this is a not-for-profit product if you will like I like I get zero dollars out of this I'm actually buying mine at full price right like and then fifty dollars of that is going to st. Jude so this is a really cool thing and what I did and what Michael had such a great experience working with notice and one of the co-founders Wesley Kwok I had the opportunity to sit with Wesley learn more about notice learn how this watch came about and kind of pick his brain on the brand and how their business works and so for the first time ever Myke and I are going to step away while I interview Wesley in the podcast so we're going to cut in this interview and then we'll be back once it's done all right everyone we're doing something a little different today I am being joined online by Wes Kwok from notice watches how's it going today Wes it's

'''Wes Kwok:''' going thanks for having me

'''Brad Dowdy:''' yeah absolutely so this is very interesting to me I usually pride myself on being like a top tier interviewer and getting all the good questions in and I realized it's because I'm always interviewing stationery people so this time I get to interview a watch person and I am not super dialed into the watch scene so it's going to be fun talking to you about the project that you have helped myself Michael from the stationery world himself and the slack watches channel which we'll talk about in a second so thank you for doing this and I guess I want to get

'''Wes Kwok:''' it was a big time gap in our memory but it's been seven years now since we started doing this still feels like we're the new guys and so our specialty and focus over the past seven years has really been sport watches for a very specific reason which I'll get into in a little bit but personally we've been me and my co-founder Cullen who's not on this podcast but you're eventually going to meet him he and I had met when we were 13 12 or 13 years old so we're childhood friends I like to say that we actually started becoming business partners way back then because I was the only other guitar player in our grade and he was the only other guitar player in the grade so we were like well I guess we're going to start a band and like literally the day that we met I rolled up to his house and he showed up wearing a purple Megadeth sweater and I was like alright we're going to be friends and since then we started working together playing music writing music we actually ended up the first thing that we actually put together ourselves was a guitar we built a guitar in I think it was 10th grade 9th or 10th grade and that's when I realized I at the same time but not coordinated we both got into watches and it wasn't until we met up a couple years later and we noticed that the other guy was wearing a watch when we were like hey I guess we've got more than music in common ended up talking about nothing but watches just became obsessed with watches and then fast forward to 2017 actually 2016 is when the conversation started but fast forward a few years and we were like hey we don't have a mortgage yet we don't have a wife no kids that we know of so this is the time if we're going to do something risky something that we have full ownership of this is the time to do it so we just designed a watch that we would want to wear I guess the initial idea we had was let's design a watch and make one for each of us and after that we'll go off and get a real job but we learned very quickly as I'm sure that you know from the pen world it becomes extremely expensive if you make one or two but if you make hundreds in our case it was 500 it brings the cost down becomes a little bit more reasonable so logically the

'''Wes Kwok:''' it did not work out that perfectly I think we ended up selling like 200 or something like that because the quality was just terrible we didn't know anything about making a watch or designing a watch but we got to keep our two watches each and it did well enough where we were like all right I guess people have you know they're interested in what we have to say and the work that we were doing so we did another watch and just kept it going

'''Brad Dowdy:''' did you have a particular style that you wanted to create for yourselves like between you and Colin did you have like a certain aesthetic that you were trying to land on were you trying to be like very classic or experimental or what was the thought process like around like the first watch

'''Wes Kwok:''' yeah at the time and

'''Wes Kwok:''' all the rage was vintage inspired design so straight lines not a lot of chamfurs not very complex case design you know like it wasn't it basically was made in the style of watches from 50s and 60s that was the big thing back then which is cool looks good but it wasn't really our style we wanted to do something a little bit more modern with sharper lines maybe a little bit more complex cases and so we started going down that path through that first project we found out that there are actually quite a lot of limitations not so much based on what physically possible to do but more so what type of machinery we can get access to how much we're willing to pay for these things and so we started running a lot of experiments with our factories and we flew out to our

'''Wes Kwok:''' shaking hands is important to get to know them but we wanted to show them that the American way of doing things is to innovate and push the envelope a little bit and if we want a long term relationship they would have to be willing to do some crazy experiments for us with the expectation that it's going to fail and it's not going to end up in a commercially viable spot and

'''Wes Kwok:''' we love doing it because as watch enthusiasts we love seeing new things we love innovating before notice we loved seeing innovative design innovative mechanisms things like that and we wanted to do what we could to try to push that forward for the American industry

'''Brad Dowdy:''' at what point did you or you and Cullen together realize that you had something was it in that first batch of watches that made you want to push forward or was this several watches down the line and a lot of debt accumulation I think we got it now

'''Wes Kwok:''' I know specifically which watch it was it was our fourth release it's called the Avalon and we actually still have it in our store we still make it we gone through a few versions of it we did a bronze version and now we're on the redesign of the platform but

'''Wes Kwok:''' most painful year in my entire life but definitely in notice's life and it was Thanksgiving day when we launched it in preparation for the following day Black Friday and I threw a party which is a terrible day to do a launch because you have to make the turkey and entertain all your guests so that morning woke up early put the turkey in the oven and then I went straight upstairs to the office and all my friends from childhood were coming over and they were drinking downstairs and I was upstairs with Cullen taking pictures getting the site ready pretty much the entire day we finally launched the watch at 930 at night on Thanksgiving day and then we rejoined the party and got the shots out and everything but I remember that day when we hit live it was one of those

'''Wes Kwok:''' in our business where we closed the computer we looked at each other and we were like if this does well we go all in this is the make it or break it moment in our business and if tomorrow we don't hit our goal tomorrow let's make the watch deliver it and start to wind down and pack it up and so had that conversation went down got way too drunk !

'''Wes Kwok:''' So at that point we were like people do what we're doing let's go all in at this point

== Creative platform for watchmaking and Notice's journey ==

'''Brad Dowdy:''' fast forward that to today what's your favorite thing about having notice and being able to have this creative platform for watch making because I've listened to a little bit of an interview I just caught with you and you talk about a lot of music in your background and I think it's very interesting to have this kind of artistic background in what's a very technical creative process in watches so what is it like for you and notice now in the current day and time what are you enjoying the most about this brand and making watches well

'''Wes Kwok:''' it's both right like you have obviously there's a technical side the technical engineering side where you need to have a certain if you have a to achieve X water resistance so that's the technical side but on the fun side and really where all of our designs start is when we take all of those technical limitations or requirements away and just try to make what we envision make what we want to make and when I say we I don't mean just me and Cullen like sometimes like in the case of this collaboration that we're doing with a pen addict this was more like we had a group that we're working with that had requirements and we try to figure out a way to make it work right that to me is equally as fun right even though that's kind of like the more technical side you know like so one example one specific example with this project is the bezel is bicolored and it's made of aluminum and having different colors on aluminum is something we've never done before to get the transitions to be sharp because I've seen it before but the transition in the color ends up looking a little murky or foggy and we needed it to be super sharp and so we ran a bunch of tests and did a bunch of experimentation and made a whole bunch of prototypes to make it work like that

'''Wes Kwok:''' compressor diver let's see where we can take this like both sides are I just love it

'''Brad Dowdy:''' yeah how is it I want you you you you've segued me perfectly into talking about this other one into what I have you on here for today but you mentioned something about Cullen early on and I wrote this I wrote this note down as someone who's who's also had business partners how important

'''Brad Dowdy:''' together he could solder these things right he could do certain things and you could do certain things how important was it to have this collaborative aspect where there's not this 100% overlap in the design and creative process but Wes has his part and Cullen has his parts and these things make the whole better how is it a !

'''Wes Kwok:''' a bit blurrier right like we had to do everything together and get

'''Wes Kwok:''' as we grew as our sales volume increased as the number of team members on our team grew we had to be a little bit more clear about where our lane is and what exactly our role is in the entire machine and so the way I like to put it though is Cullen is definitely the product guy he's the one that has the product ideas and he figures out what's needed for notice

'''Wes Kwok:''' things that the pen addict needs or whoever our collaborator is so he's definitely that I guess in tech terms it would be like CTO I guess

'''Brad Dowdy:''' and

'''Wes Kwok:''' my role again there's a very little bit of overlap in that right but my role is more so talking to people getting their ideas translated into a language that Cullen can understand right there there's that I mean everyone knows parts of a watch but to get it across the finish line we have to be able to translate it into watch terms then translate it into the actual language that our factories speak and so I'm kind of the liaison on the client side whereas Cullen's the liaison on the supply side and it works well I think I said in that interview that you were alluding to that this whole notice was basically us getting the band back together right we kind of already developed that creative synergy when we were kids and figured out what he's good at what I'm good at and we're just continuing to develop that relationship as we get older

'''Brad Dowdy:''' very cool yeah I love hearing that about the partnerships and how the different tasks and responsibilities go so let's get into this watch what did you think when you got an email I'm guessing you got an email from Michael Harris who is a good friend and a long time stationery lover that the pen addict slack would like to make a watch and they would like notice to make it what did you think when you got this email

'''Wes Kwok:''' yeah so I actually remember exactly when that happened too we had just released another collaboration and what it is so there are three main pillars of our business one is nodex which is our research and design platform we test new things we have an R&D budget that we try out a bunch of different experiments the second one is intersect ! which is a show it's not really a show it's more like a cocktail party if you actually go there and attend it you know what I mean the last one is design lab and that's our collaborative platform and

'''Wes Kwok:''' they specifically don't want to start a watch company because that's a whole different headache in itself where can they go to do that and we wanted to be that place and it's not like I mean collaborations are very common in the watch industry but most of the time what it is they change a color or they add a logo on the dial or something like that we wanted our platform to be a bit more flexible where we could actually do pretty much anything that our collaborators want within reason obviously so in the past we've done stuff as deep as creating an entirely new platform that was for our last collaboration I think that was the one that Michael reached out because of but I was excited I already knew that there was a lot of crossover between the watch and the pen world I actually was just dipping my toe into the pen world I got myself a bronze tactile turn nice which I'm a big fan of I still yeah I still use it and so I was dipping my toe into that world I was also getting into the denim world I got into the sneaker world I'm a big knife guy so I already know that there's all this overlap between the EDC community but we never had direct exposure to the pen world before so I wanted to see what it was like to work with someone that was primarily in the pen world like yourself and Michael so I was super excited by that by the idea of being exposed to something new

'''Brad Dowdy:''' yeah and it's new for me too I like to joke with Michael and all the watch channel so the

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I was looking the other day and we've had like I forget what year I started it but it's had over 6 million messages in the slack and I would like to joke that 5.9 million of them come from the watches channel so that's the big joke in the slack channel that's by far the most active passionate board in the slack so I'm not surprised that they wanted to come up with something like this and when they hit me with it I was like yeah sure they just wanted my sign off to use the name maybe use colors you know orange I think looks great in watches traditionally so I was like yeah and looking at notice I was like oh this could turn out pretty cool and what y'all created looks spectacular can you tell us what the watch is about why or

'''Wes Kwok:''' the platform was the well actually to be fair there was no pre-existing platform before this okay right so the sector platform is kind of what we built it on but there was no sector dive GMT there was a sector dive and a sector GMT one obviously was a dive watch one was a GMT and so Michael's idea was I mean it was brilliant because we for some reason had never thought of it even though it's kind of like let's just put it together dive GMT so it literally is the two put together and really he did all the legwork in figuring out what does the pen addict community want in a watch everything from colors but also to functionality so one of the big changes that we made after smashing the GMT and dive together one of the big changes was instead of doing the dive bezel as like a standard dive bezel we did a countdown bezel so the utility is a little bit different and I mean I'll put on the website soon I'll send you the link to describe the differences but

'''Brad Dowdy:''' yeah and Michael actually shot a video explaining that I was like okay yes I see this yeah

'''Wes Kwok:''' so the utility is a little bit different and then I guess you guys did a limited edition poker chip for the group as well and that that's where that idea came from from the bezel design to just model it after that poker chip yeah yeah and then new color so yeah it was one of those things where Michael really did all the legwork figured out what what the group wants and you know it sounds pretty straightforward but really kudos to him because when you find yourself in a design by committee situation you're going to tear your hair out you know and Michael did a really good job of filtering it and you know maybe he has a future in watch design someday

'''Brad Dowdy:''' that was actually I kind of had like a side question I was like I was not even going to get into it but do you prefer the design by committee aspect or do you prefer to just like hey here's the concept you go and it's like there's no right answer there's no wrong answer each project is individual so I'm glad that this design by committee seemed to work out very well and you know I'm just getting all the updates and Michael explaining all this and I'm really just nodded my head I'm like yes it

'''Brad Dowdy:''' to see what everyone thinks about this watch and I I'm just stunned and shocked and pleased with how it turned out

'''Wes Kwok:''' yeah thank you thank you and I would say arguably the most important part of this project is where the funds go we want to do as much as we can for charity especially like no one really needs a fancy watch so at the very least if we're going to sell

== Charitable projects and their impact ==

'''Wes Kwok:''' so last year we did two charitable projects one was with a local Atlanta charity and one was with a Navy veteran charity so this is one of those projects that's going to help us fill our quota of charity work for the year

'''Brad Dowdy:''' 100% and that's something I believe in Michael actually pretty much led with that for me and I was like yes I'm in like it was a simple aspect so we'll be donating $50 for every watch sold to St. Jude's Children's Hospital which is a big charitable group that we support every year with some big things through our podcast network so I really appreciate you helping and participating in that so yeah it's super cool super cool so I think that's it on the pen attic watch side but I know that's not anywhere near it for notice why don't you tell me what's the future looking like for notice what is what is on your drawing board what is coming soon tell tell our listeners what's going on with you

'''Wes Kwok:''' sure so so earlier I alluded to the three kind of pillars of our business so I think the at least the one that's taken up most my time right now is intersect which is the kind of watch event that we host around the country eventually around the world but again I definitely underestimated how difficult event planning is you know of all the years of running notice I think planning events is the single hardest thing I've probably ever done in my life I'm shaking my head vigorously you will not be seeing the video but so in two weeks we're expanding to Atlanta so we have Atlanta planned for March 23rd last year we did Dallas and LA so I think three events for this year feels about right we had Seattle planned but we literally had a conversation this morning about how stressful Atlanta is and let's just table Seattle to let's debut

'''Wes Kwok:''' so yeah we have Atlanta coming up March 23rd we have LA in the summer in September and then we're moving Dallas down to Austin it's just a bit more central bit of a larger community that'll be end of the year to close out the year so that's that's one aspect we're working on a lot more so under the nodex department that's kind of our R&D side we're working on a bunch of different things right now so the first product that we launched under nodex was an extendable clasp you'll be getting that on the yeah I saw

'''Brad Dowdy:''' that on the video it looks cool

'''Wes Kwok:''' but we're refining it and we're also making it different sizes working on licensing it to more brands we just picked up a UK brand and a couple US brands in the past couple months so we're onboarding them but we have a bunch of ideas about a new bezel mechanism a new crown mechanism I'm sure your listeners don't even know or care about what any of this means yet until they feel the watch and they're like oh okay I get it that's right

'''Brad Dowdy:''' that's right I think a lot of them will it's like yeah I think there's definitely some some secret watch lovers yeah for sure

'''Wes Kwok:''' so a lot of just like kind of for now we're keeping it quiet because we don't know if any of these things are going to work and then on the design lab side we have some pretty massive collabs coming up so after the pen addict we have a collab well we're going to continue our relationship with Matt Farah so we're working on a dive watch with him as well he actually introduced us to a couple of his his buddies from the YouTube world so we're going to be working with them all in the kind of like the YouTube car space we have a project coming up with a bourbon enthusiast who's also a pretty well known and always looking for more collaborations more cool ideas I think we're probably going to do another military veteran project this year at some point oh well other than the pen addict the other collab I'm excited for that's launching around the same time is our collaboration with Raven Watches which I'm sure Michael knows about they're based in Kansas City so collaborations is really obviously a big part of our business now

'''Brad Dowdy:''' yeah I love seeing that and I love seeing all the different people you're working with and spreading you know the watch awareness around and getting a lot of people involved and I think it's really cool and I'm really excited to be part of this project and get to meet you and get to learn about Notice so thank you so much for taking the time to talk to us today share your story tell us about the watch I'm sure I'll be picking your brain in the future so thank you so much Wes

'''Wes Kwok:''' yeah yeah thank you so much

'''Myke Hurley:''' so this is an incredible project I loved hearing Wes's story too I mean it's not too dissimilar to the stories that we've both had as well right of like finding the thing that you love and then trying to make it work so it was great to hear for people that are interested in checking out the watch can you give some of the particulars because it isn't super straightforward right like there is some stuff that people would want to know about how to buy the product could you explain a little bit about that obviously there'll be links in the show notes for people to go get it

'''Brad Dowdy:''' yep yep so this is essentially a pre-order right so Notice has built the prototype Michael's been wearing the prototype we've settled on the final design and details and price of the watch so we'll have the link into the notice page for the watch so the watch the total price of the watch is $475 you will pay 50% deposit today so this is a limited time window for this to be open so I think this will close on like March 27th so like two weeks from today so you have two weeks to put it down a deposit for this watch and then when the watch ships in like the July time frame of this year when it's ready to ship Notice will then collect the remaining balance so the 50% balance so this is based around one of Notice dive watches which Wesley discussed like some of those details in here and it has basically all the features that the Slack watches channel wanted to see right it had the dive aspects of the watch you know it's got the steel bracelet you know 100 meters water resistance it has a GMT also comes

'''Myke Hurley:''' with a leather bracelet though so that is on link bracelet

'''Brad Dowdy:''' so shout out to Wes for this he sprung that on us at the last minute so like with these types of watches right the bracelet is swappable I know Michael's been testing out the regular stainless bracelet and then the like the NATO strap you know nylon bracelets and then unbeknownst to Michael and myself Wesley is adding in a pecan brown horween leather strap so you have a second strap option for this that comes with the watch right so that was really neat and I really like the GMT aspect of it so now I can keep track of you whenever I need it I've never seen a watch that's done this before but apparently this is a thing I have a

== GMT watches and their functionality ==

'''Myke Hurley:''' GMT watch I really like GMT watches basically it's an extra hand that you can set to another time zone so you can see the hours in two different places it's very good for travel because you can set your home and your current location

'''Brad Dowdy:''' and then I like the countdown bezel as opposed to a count up bezel which is what a traditional diver dive watch would have right so this you can set more as a timer style bezel to count down from say 30 minutes to zero as opposed to counting up which is what traditional diver style bezels would do so yeah it's spectacular it's orange it's completely awesome yeah like I don't know what else to say other than like every step of the way like my jaw just dropped like Michael would email me and I'd be like you're kidding right and you're kidding right and just on and on and on and like they did all of this this has been months in the making I think since probably last fall we started working on this and Michael and Wes would kind of loop me in as we were going through and it's it's just been a pleasure to to work with these guys in building this product and I'm really excited

'''Myke Hurley:''' so yeah there'll be links in the show notes you should go check it out for yourself obviously it's a beautiful watch and we're proceeds going to charity too I mean that's a two for one right there we'll talk about it again I think next week too right as a reminder for people yeah we'll

'''Brad Dowdy:''' let everyone know yeah and then there is a blog post that just went up as you're listening to this you can go to pinac.com we'll have a link to the exact post in the show notes but Michael's write-up of the watch and he's been using it for probably like the final version the final prototype for probably like a good month so he has a write-up on that plus some of the pictures action shots and video of how it all works so yeah go check it out I think a lot of y'all will be pleasantly surprised in how this turned out and it's it's quite a cool crossover between our communities here and I'm super happy to be a part of it

'''Myke Hurley:''' all right if you want to go and check all of that out for yourself you can find the links in your podcast app of choice but you can go to relay.fm slash penaddict slash 606 thank you to pen chalet for their support of this episode thank you to us for joining us it was super cool and I'm really excited about this Brad I think this is super great I love that you've done this what a weird and wonderful thing to do if you want to find Brad online go to penaddict.com that's where you also find the blog post talking about the watch you can find Brad on social he's at penaddict p-e-n-a-d-d-i-c-t you should know that though and go to twitch.tv slash penaddict where Brad streams three times a week you can find me I'm iMike i-m-y-k-e and you can find my products over at cortexbrand.com we'll be back next week until then say goodbye Brad goodbye Brad

[[Category:Podcast Transcripts]]
[[Category:The Pen Addict Podcast Transcript]]

The Pen Addict 590/transcript

2026-06-23T16:00:20Z

PencilBot: fixed spelling

{{Infobox podcast transcript
| name = The Pen Addict
| number = 590
| title = Writing With the Theme of Writing
| date = November 15th, 2023
| hosts = [[Brad Dowdy]] 
[[Myke Hurley]]
| guests =
| link = [https://www.relay.fm/penaddict/590 Episode 590]
| audiolink = [https://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/traffic.libsyn.com/secure/thepenaddict/The_Pen_Addict_590.mp3 Audio Episode 590]
| length = 63
}}

From RelayFM, this is the Pen Addict episode 590. Today's show is brought to you by Squarespace, Pen Chalet, and ShipStation. My name is Myke Hurley. I'm joined by Brad Dowdy.

Hi, Brad. This show is brought to you by me and you as well. Myke, hi, how are you? You know what, Brad? That's so true. It's also brought to you by the RelayFM CMS and Libsyn.

What else? Brought to you via Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Overcast, Zoom, Audio Hijack, Logic. MacBook Air. It's a real family effect. Google Drive is involved. Safari. Instagram, YouTube. Sure. Tascam. Tascam. Sound devices, USB Pre 2.

And the Rotofaden Tashambegleiter. Oh, yeah. My life notebook. Oh, my G Herban blotting paper. The Zodiac pens, Aries with Papier Plume Oyster Ink. And you, chat. You. Actually, none of those.

Like, most of those things. Like, at least I'll say Rotofaden Tashambegleiter. I just saw somebody talk about that the other day and it's just been stuck in my head for a long time. And it is maybe a 400 episode ago callback.

So, shout out to the OGs. Yes. Show is brought to you by the OGs. - - All right. This is a show, Myke. We have one for you today.

It has started off rip-roaringly amazing. Oh, my God. And we are in a mood. But I want to, I don't want to bring us down, Myke. I actually want to prop us up and talk about your new Sidekick notepad website.

Oh, thank you. Yeah. So, I've been working with our wonderful, incredibly talented designer, David Daly of Yokioto Design. And I've worked with David on a bunch of projects, especially for Cortex Brand, but he's also worked on some RelayFM stuff as well over the last couple of years. And we've been putting together a new website for the Sidekick notepad.

It's at sidekicknotepad.com. I also bought sidekicknotepad.com because, you know, people are going to people. So, you can go to whichever way you think I said that. You can go there.

We have tons of beautiful imagery, most of it provided by one of my favorite keyboard creators. His name is Alex Otos. This was a, I think, genius idea that I had early on in the Sidekick's life where I realized that keyboard content creators would be great for photography for this product.

And I was correct. They are. Yeah. And it's, we're doing our best at trying to show what the product is. And I want to talk about, if you would indulge me for a moment, Brad, two things that I really love about this website. I really love some of the animations that David made.

So, like the perfect for daily notes, perfect for meetings segment where a page is ripped away. And it's left of another page underneath. I think that's really fun. And it's nice and different, which I like.

But also what we call the bento area, which is... Oh, okay. Maybe that's the area that I'm liking so much. Yeah. Which is all of the different features that the Sidekick notepad has. And each of these bentos has an original animation, which if you're on a Mac or a PC, you hover over them.

If you're on a phone, you can tap them and they do these little animations. But it's, I think, this type of design is all over the place these days. It's what is known as bento. Apple uses this a lot.

A lot of tech companies use it a lot. And David was like, I know you're going to like this. And he was right. And I think it's a really great way, I think, of showing the care that goes into making a product like this.

Because every single one of these boxes is a decision I had to make when it came to putting the Sidekick notepad together. We've got a lot of imagery, a lot of specs, and also a lovely little testimonial section as well from people that have used the product. I'm very proud of it.

And I hope that you'll check it out. You don't have to buy. I would like it if you bought one. But I just want you to go look at the website because I think it's really cute and nice and fun.

Yeah, the decision I made was to click all the bentos and turn all the borders blue at the same time. So fidget game too is what you're looking for. You can do that. You can do that.

No, that was the part that stood out to me when I was looking at the page. So yeah, very cool. Love it. And then got all the dimensions and all that stuff. And so all the deets, who makes it, all that fun stuff. So good times. Good times.

Good times. Well, congratulations and well done. You know who needs a website like this, Myke? Or what product specifically needs a website like this is the UniKuritoga Dive. Okay. Like this is a new OG, right?

Can you be a new OG? Is this a Nog? Would it be like a new G? A new G? I don't know. So this is a new recurring theme on the podcast, the UniKuritoga Dive.

It's gotten me in trouble. It's gotten me lauded. You got called down to answer for yourself at UniHQ. I called to the office.

Could Brad Dally please report to the principal office? So this has been a big part of my life, the UniKuritoga Dive. Because I love the product, right? I want it to exist, right?

It's one of those interesting things. I don't know if we can find an original show note so I don't have to link to the show where I described what the Kuruitoga Dive is. I don't want to go through all that again. But it's a very complex, complicated $50-something mechanical pencil that Uni made.

And it could use a Bento layout to describe all the pieces and parts and why it's $50 and things like that. So the short history of this pencil is that it has been tough to get, right? It has been hard to access for everyday consumers. You can't just go to a website and buy this, generally speaking, right?

It's short production runs. I don't know if that's on purpose or how Uni planned to do this whole thing. So they've had two releases now. They've released a blue model, which was the original.

Then they came out with a green and orange model later the same year, I think. And those were barely accessible at all. And now, Myke, across my Instagram comes the Uni Kuruitoga Dive. I'm calling it Purple Iridescent.

And all I can think when seeing this is, boy, this is going to be a problem. If past history indicates how Uni has handled this product lineup, this is going to be nothing but a problem. So when the first Kuruitoga Dive launched, I luckily had a friend in Japan grab me one at regular retail price, which is around $55.

They instantly sold out and went for over $200 on secondary markets. This is the coolest one yet, right? It's not just purple. It has an iridescent finish.

So I copied the translation here, which is always fun. So from Uni, what's this handle? Uni Mitsubishi Pencil on Instagram. This time, we imagined the Aurora and did a new butterfly expression that changes color depending on the angle you see.

Writing with the theme of writing. That's the best part. The Automatic Output Function Magazine's Kuruitoga Dive. Here's a go-to item for when you want to focus with your brain.

So a lot to take in there. But basically, we're getting a Purple Iridescent Kuruitoga Dive. And it's going to be nothing but an issue. Like, that's all I have to say.

If they don't make 10 times as many of this model as they've made for all the other models combined, this is going to be instantly $200. It doesn't matter. And I hate that. It doesn't matter, Brad. It doesn't matter how many of these they've made. It doesn't matter.

Like, there's too much hype now. And so it's going to sell out. Because this product will feature all of the people that like the look of this. It will feature all of the people that want one of these.

And it will feature all of the people that want a second one. And that is more people than they've made models for. I guarantee it. Because if they were able to truly, truly, like, produce this at a high level, then the product would be in stock. You know what I mean?

True. The base version. Say, like, the blue one. The original. So there's no way they made enough of these. But there's nothing they can do about it. Yeah. So I just did the yen conversion currently.

So it's 5,500 Japanese yen. It's actually about 37 US dollars. Okay. Yeah. Like, it's super cheap. But, like, I don't know who's going to be able to get this.

And that just bugs me a little bit. So we'll see. But it's just the way it goes. I know. It's just cool. I want people to have this pencil if they want it. And people are not being able to get it.

And it bugs me. You know? So anyway. This one's cool. Like, I don't need another one. Like, the Kuro Toga Dive is not a collection I need to dive into, if you will. Yeah. But, like, I have my one.

I'm fine. But, like, I just want to see other people get it if they want it. And this one looks like it's going to be pretty cool. Can you remind me? Can't wait to see.

Is there anything different in the function of the pencil? There's a few things. So, basically, they took all of their different, I don't know, technical aspects from the Kuro Toga. Yep. From the one that adjusts whatever mechanism they have that auto-advances the lead when you put the tip on the page.

Yep. And smashed it all into one, into one pencil. And then put a cap on it. And just an interesting retractable mechanism. And lots of little bells and whistles.

So, yes, it's got the same Kuro Toga mechanism. But the pipe is also adjustable. And it also will auto-advance your lead when you open the pencil and cap the pencil. I don't know. Can you fully retract the pipe in this?

No. Okay. No. It's only like a little bit. Because I thought that I heard you say that you could do that. And I was like, well, that wouldn't make any sense. Why did they do the cap?

But, okay, that makes more sense to me. But the pipe will also act as like an indicator for when the lead needs to be advanced. Like you can push it just a little bit, right? You have that little softness in the tip of the pipe that will extend the lead as you go.

So, it's kind of got all of their toys into one basket here. Yeah. I would like to have one one day just for the sake of it. But this is kind of one of those things where I'll get one in like two years. Yeah. Yeah. It's great to have one.

Like I'm super happy with it. I never use it. And I feel like, you know, Uni has been around for long enough that I would expect that they understand what's going on here. And, you know, just like from a little bit of like shared, like just like personal experience, I suppose.

If you have a product that's like getting a lot of hype, the natural thing that a lot of people do is like heavily stock the product. Like you really over order. But the problem with that is the hype will go and then you're left with too much stock.

And so like my feeling is they are trying to manage. I would expect they are trying to do a bit of management in that way. Like they could significantly over order. But if they over order too much, then they're going to have too much and the hype's gone away.

And then they're just sitting on like way too much stock. I don't know. The only positive I can think of related to that is we haven't had a mention of a new one for months. So hopefully they've built inventory correctly during this time. I'm expecting that they're just trying to just play it a bit chill.

Right. Yeah. Like build the inventory, but like don't order a million of them. Right. So like if this makes it into their online retail space, like their retail customers, which this really didn't last year, then you'll know that they've done an okay job. Yeah. Like it didn't even get that far last year because they were just poof, gone.

So, all right. So the Kura Toga could be a hot gift item for this holiday season. And if you can get it. So maybe I'll put that on my gift guide list when I talk to Anna next week. So I wanted to remind everyone to get your gift guide questions in.

I'm recording that episode on Monday. It's not going to release until the 29th of this month, but we're recording it, you know, like five, six days from now. So get your gift guide questions in. We've got several in already.

So how can people send us those questions, Myke, for Anna and I to answer? It's very simple. Just go to penaddictfeedback.com and you can send in a gift guide question there. There's even a little checkbox, like a little from a dropdown. You can select gift guide.

Just type in your question, your name if you want to, your email if you want to. That's up to you. And just leave Brad and Anna a question about a gift for you, how to ask for gifts from others, or gift ideas for somebody in your life who loves stationery.

Yep. So I've been building my list of questions for Anna and I to discuss, and we would love to have your input as well. So yeah, send those in. And I always look forward to recording this. So we'll be doing that soon.

I'm very excited to hear it, as always. It's a great episode. All right. Today's show is brought to you by Squarespace, the all-in-one platform for building your brand and growing your business online. You can stand out with a beautiful website, engage with your audience, and sell your products, services, and the content that you create.

Squarespace has got everything you need all in one place. With Squarespace, you can very easily sell your products in an online store. Whether you sell physical or digital goods, Squarespace has the tools that you need to start selling online. You'll know exactly what you need to grow your business with their analytics platform.

You can learn where your site visitors are coming from, where your sales are originating from, and you can analyze which channels are most effective for you. This allows you to improve your website and build a marketing strategy based on your top keywords or your most popular products and content.

Maybe you don't want to store all. Maybe you maybe want to store later on. Maybe you just want to set up a blog. It's very easy to do that.

Squarespace have everything that you need there. Like, for example, they have a thing called the Asset Library now, so you can upload, organize, and access all of your content from one place. So you don't need to go scrambling or digging to find that right image. You can manage all of your files from one central hub and use them across the entire Squarespace platform.

Squarespace have been around forever. They do the business. They know what's going on. They can help you out.

I have had so many Squarespace sites over my career and still do. Brad does too. They really are like the best in the biz. And, you know, we're getting ready to go into 2024 soon, right? - Which is Real AFM's 10-year anniversary. Also 10 years of uninterrupted support from Squarespace.

Amazing. They're the best. We love them, and we want you to go check them out. If you are starting a web project of your own or someone in your life is, maybe someone at your office, maybe a site for the business that you're working for, just go to squarespace.com slash penaddict, and you can sign up for a free trial.

When you're ready to launch, go to squarespace.com slash penaddict and use the code penaddict to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. One last time, squarespace.com slash penaddict and the code penaddict when you sign up to get 10% off your first purchase and show your support for the show.

Our thanks to Squarespace for their continued support of this show and all of Real AFM. All right. Shout out of the week, Myke. Shout out of the week. We have Inky Rocks.

So I have followed Alessa for a long time on Instagram, and I did not realize that they also have a YouTube channel. So y'all may know Alessa on Instagram, inky.rocks. Also, frequent appearances on the Tokyo Inklings podcast. But recently, she just did a video upon return from the Tokyo Pen Show.

So I'll put a link in the show notes for everyone to go watch that. And you can go give the Inky Rocks channel on YouTube a follow like I have because I did not know it was there. And go check out their Instagram as well. This is definitely a hide your wallets type of feed.

Always has been. Always will be. And I really, really appreciate it that much because it's some really cool stuff on there. So she does a great job. So there you go. All right. Kind of related to an upcoming sponsor on this show in this episode.

I was browsing around our good friends over at the Pen Chalet, and I stumbled across a pen that I had not seen before. But it's apparently not new. And it really caught my eye. And this is more of a conversation of me reaching out to the community wondering if anyone has an ST DuPont DeFi Millennium Fountain Pen.

So they came out with this model previously with color barrels, which maybe kind of crossed my eyes like last year or something like that. I don't even remember exactly when. There's like an orange barrel, a red barrel. I think there's like blues and greens.

And like it's fine. It's ST DuPont. And like it looks cool in silver. But now they came out with this all black stealth one. And that's the one that caught my eye.

And I'm not, you know, I'm not like fully stealth like all the things. But the way this pen is shaped, like it really stood out to me. I think the black one is the best looking of all of the ones here. Like I think it works a lot better.

So that's what actually made me finally stop and look at this, right? Because I've never gone past of, oh, that looks nice. And, you know, just moved on. So I got into this link a little bit.

And, you know, just seeing the original stealth shape and color. And I was like, oh, this is cool. Let me look at this a little bit more. Then I scrolled down a little bit.

And have you seen the front end of this pen, Myke? It is the most hooded nib I've seen since a Parker 51, right? It is a very, very, you only see almost like the edge of the tines and a little bit of tipping. Yeah, a hooded nib, basically, in this scenario, the body of the grip, like I guess it could be plastic or metal, I don't know.

Extends all the way basically to the very end of the fountain pen nib. So like the nib itself, like you're really only just seeing the very end part where the line is drawn. Yeah, which is cool. Like I like that idea.

It looks like a falcon to me. That's like the profile I get here. Yeah. It's that in combination with the barrel shape. And then in combination with the all black color that stood out to me more than the previous releases of this.

So I really don't have much more to say other than I'm kind of curious if anyone has these because I think kind of the big hang up here is it's Estee DuPont. So that equals cash money. So this is $360. I don't understand Estee DuPont.

Can you explain them to me? Like this is a brand that I'm not very familiar with. It's just like almost a strictly luxury brand. Like, oh, this is I'm looking at their page on Pen Chalet right now.

This is like a for the executive in your life. Yeah. This is their starter pen price point, right? Like this is, you know, it's on up from here. So what Estee DuPont, what we've talked about in the past is when they've had like the X-Wing fighter pen and stuff like that.

So they've done some really. Yeah. I don't know if you remember that one. So where you have like the whole display and the X-Wing fighter. I just found the most American pen of all time.

I've seen that one. The Estee DuPont Declaration of Independence pen. Yeah. This thing is screaming at me through my computer. So they have a lot of pens.

Like that's their thing. They're like if Montagrappa only sold their high-end pens, right? And didn't have like the more standard traditional pens. That's what I think of when I think of Estee DuPont.

But this is a more, you know, lower entry point for them as a brand, right? It's all relative. And I'm like halfway compelled. Like I don't want to buy this or to test it out. But I am just interested if anyone has tried like one of the previous versions.

I'm assuming they make their own nibs. You know what? I have no clue. I've never owned an Estee DuPont. I have no clue how they go through this.

Their other fountain pen nibs look like it. Okay. Like they've got stamping and a design work which looks kind of, it looks unique in a way, right? Like or somebody is white labeling for them. But I would like to believe that a pen brand whose typical starting price is like four figures is making their own nibs.

Yeah. Like that's like the baseline. That's the normal Estee DuPont price range. Like that's where it starts. So Estee DuPont has a 145-year legacy of creating exceptional products for exceptional people.

Hell yeah. So yeah. There you go. So anyway. So it's Estee DuPont. Estee DuPont. Estee DuPont. So they look cool. They look cool. It's just like it's there is a barrier to entry in the pocketbook to these pens. So this has been the first one that's been kind of compelling to me.

And it's still like crazy expensive for what it is. But I don't know. I am curious. So if you own not just any Estee DuPont. This particular one. Like I'm sure all the Estee DuPont's like if you have like one of the nice expensive ones.

I'm sure it's great. But like this one's weird. Which is right up my alley. I like the weird stuff.

I actually have an extra thing for you here which is weird. So Estee DuPont also make a lot of lighters. Yes. That's what I knew them for originally. They have one lighter called the Estee DuPont DeFi XXtreme.

And so I think it's of the same range as these pens because they're called DeFi, D-E-F-I, right? Oh, D. Sure, sure, sure. It also looks visibly incredibly different to the rest of the product line. Where the rest of the product line is like all gold and silver, that kind of thing.

Interesting. But this one is like very EDC. It's got a lot of ridges and grips on the side of it, you know? I just found the Declaration of Independence lighter, Myke. No way. Where is it? Yeah. Come on, baby. It's $2,000. Whoa. It's more expensive than the pen.

What? I could buy a copy of the Declaration of Independence for that, I think. Can you imagine, Brett? I'm not suggesting anybody does this. I'm just saying, can you imagine someone buying this and then burning the Declaration of Independence with it?

Whoa. We're going to get emails. It's like this light is the Declaration of Independence now. You know what I mean? It's like takes the soul of the paperwork and puts it inside the lighter and it's ready to go.

Well, then they could. So, S.T. DuPont needs to buy a copy of the Declaration of Independence. Use one of their lighters to burn it and then make a pen from the ashes of the Declaration of Independence. Oh, come on. You know what I mean?

We got to bring this full circle here. That's how you do it. You know what I'm saying? It sells it for like a million dollars.

Brad, can I? I feel like I haven't done this, but can I just read the description for the Declaration of Independence pen? Okay. Yeah. Like, I haven't read it. I don't know what I'm going to get here, but like I'm excited about it. I'm going to jump it forward a little bit maybe.

Just for the record, this is a French company, so I'm a little bit confused. That is a very good point. So, let's go to the top. Celebrate the aspirations of America.

Well, that feels like a bit of a slight. With the S.T. DuPont Declaration of Independence Limited Edition Rollerball. I'm on the Rollerball for some reason. The U.S. exclusive.

No joke. Really? You're not selling this one in Paris, S.T. DuPont? It's a limited edition to 176 pieces. That's not a lot. Proudly exhibit the colors of old glory in a combination of solid brass, natural liqueur, and a palladium trim with the S.T. DuPont Declaration of Independence Limited Edition Fountain Pen.

This pen's bright blue lacquer pen body is paired with a red cap with intricate goldsmith-engraired stars offering a brilliant contrast. The pen's vibrant blue lacquer is layered over engraved guillage, creating a final look similar to traditional patriotic bunting used by many Americans to decorate their hands for the 4th of July.

I will say, by the way, I actually think this is a very good-looking pen. The blue, so the barrel's great. The barrel is incredible. The cap is not for me.

Yeah, me either. But that barrel sells it. The barrel's great. Because I will say, I will say, I'm not done with this yet. I will say, for a product like this, I think it is nice-looking. Because products like this tend to go a bit too hard, and I think that they have been pretty reserved.

Yeah, you could make, like, this is like $1,600. You could make the $5,000 edition of this, and it would be pretty intense. If Montegrappa made this, the pen would be shaped as a flag. Yeah, yeah. It would, or like you would.

Yeah. You'd start writing, and confetti would start pouring out the back of the pen. You can actually use this pen. That's a feature. Useable. A reminder of the power of a collective vision of human democracy. The colors of the U.S. flag serve as a beacon of strength to the world.

With the limited edition Declaration of Independence rollable pen, Estee DuPont showcases the young nation's vision and accomplishments in creating a government by the people for the people. Estee DuPont's homage to the emblem is even more poignant, as France stepped in to support the new American nation during the American Revolution.

Now, that's interesting. There we go. There we go. We found it. We brought it home. We brought it home. We found it, baby. They just, like, oh, knife in the side.

Thanks to us, the French, you're free. This is giving me so much, you know? This is the true freedom prize right here. Proudly display your patriotism in your pen collection.

Estee DuPont's Declaration of Independence limited edition rollable. Patriots and collectors alike can also consider the lighter. Oh, that gave me so much more than I was hoping for. You know? That was amazing. Don't forget us. That was amazing. We helped too. Incredible. Freedom prize. Estee DuPont, hats off to you, you know?

Hats off. Hats off to you, Estee DuPont. Well done. You're doing a good job. You're doing a good job. All right. You can check out all of these products over at our next episode.

That was not the ad. No. Pen Chalet. Pen Chalet have Estee DuPont pens, but they also have pens from all of your other favorite brands because I'm sure Estee DuPont is a new favorite brand of listeners to this show. Maybe I'll get Ron to send me one of the DeFi's.

Well, we can try. Pelican, Lamy, Pilot, Sailor, Cafeco, and many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many more. They're an authorized dealer of all of them and they have all of the products you're looking for. Whether you want a new rollerball, a new fountain pen, a ballpoint pen, mechanical pencil, maybe you need some refills, a carrying case, some converters, just some fun accessories.

They got it all. Pen Chalet is running special discounts every couple of weeks. You'll find new products, you'll find closeout specials, and they're always adding new styles of pens. So you can always go back and find something new.

I think back over the years, just how much Pen Chalet's catalog has grown. That is, I'm sure, part in part due to the support of people like you who listen to the show and go and support this great company. Free shipping on orders of over $75 if you're in the US, but they also sell internationally with very reasonable shipping rates.

Pen Chalet believe in fast and reliable customer service. And they have low prices and high quality pens and offer a 100% satisfaction guarantee. So go to penchalet.com, P-E-N-C-H-A-L-E-T.com and click the podcast link at the top of the website.

And to the password, Pen Addict, for this week's special offer, and to get the code that you need to save 10% on anything at any time over at Pen Chalet. What is there, Brad? What is in the special offer area for listeners of this show? Please tell me.

We're going to keep it in America from the jump, but I'm not going to let you completely off the hook here. Oh, say can you see, you know? The Conklin All-American Demo Special Edition, they're a really great price, way more than half off, and they have a clear demonstrator, blue demonstrator, orange demonstrator, and a rose gold trim demonstrator, which all look very, very cool.

But further down, Myke, well, they have the Visconti Demo Stones, which are an awesome orange pen. I really, really like that one. They had orange, I don't know if they have purple, so orange, green, and red are the ones left. So this is a really great price for the Visconti Homo Sapiens.

But Myke, I have to talk about the Pinnider Limited Edition Queen Mary fountain pen. So here we have the Italian brand making the British pen. So the Pinnider Limited Edition Queen Mary fountain pen's somewhat vintage taste is considered contemporary to the golden age of the fountain pen when traveling and riding were synonymous with the time.

Well, I would just say, Brad, this is based on a boat, not a bus. Yeah, well, yeah. It's still a British boat. Okay. Pinnider's Queen Mary pen is layered in resin in red, white, and blue, commemorates the Queen Mary's 30 years of service navigating transatlantic routes. This thing has three portholes in it, not just one porthole.

So this is pretty amazing. So, yeah, go check this out because the price is kind of a knockout. It's a real declaration of independence style pen. So, yeah, I have not seen this before, and it is wild.

It is wild, as all Pinnider pens are. So go check out all the awesome specials over at penchalet.com. P-E-N-C-H-A-L-E-T.com. Click the podcast link at the top of the website and use the password penaddict.

You will be able to get the code that you need to save 10% on anything at any time at Penchalet, as well as seeing this week's special offers. Our thanks to Penchalet for their support of this show and RelayFM. I think I've made a real mistake this week trying to cover a moderately serious topic next.

Okay. Even though it's, I mean, it's by no means serious. But I wrote a review earlier this week on the Myke's Pen Fund, not named after you, named after my other Myke friend, Myke Green. Wicked Wisteria, which is this wild pink acrylic fountain pen that I reviewed on Monday.

That's the material. And Myke is a pen maker that turned this pen and was selling his pens online, sells them at pen shows. I bought mine at the Chicago Pen Show. So the question came up when I was reviewing this pen. And when I, as a reviewer, think about maker pens, there is honestly not a lot to say.

Right? The, I get a lot more value from something like Caroline's interviews, Meet Your Maker interviews, which we can do a link to that, where we hear the story of the makers, how they got into making the pens, you know, why they do the things they do, why they make the designs they make.

But then when it gets down to me having a pen to review, you know, it's an acrylic turn barrel with a steel nib, nine times out of ten. And there's only so many things you can say about it. So I got to thinking that I wanted to review this pen, and I've reviewed maker's pens pretty frequently.

How do I choose a maker's pen for me? And I thought that was a good way to bridge kind of the gap of like a product review when, this is a very like specific item to an individual customer and buying a pen from an individual maker. So Myke's pen that I bought kind of checked all the boxes for me.

And I thought that would be good to talk about what those boxes actually are when I'm out here shopping and checking out all kinds of makers. Because we're having like, we're in like another maker's renaissance here, right? Where we're just having a lot of people making a lot of pens.

It kind of came out of like the pandemic times where people were getting into new hobbies that they could do at home. And a lot of people were making pens. A lot of people were making materials. Some people were making hardware for these pens.

All kinds of different things. So in the end result, now we have a lot of people with a lot of pens for sale. And a lot of us see them online, on Instagram, at pen shows, you know, through various stores, things like that. So what do I look for when I'm walking up to a table that I have no idea about the person, the maker, the products, anything like that?

What do I like in these pens that I see? And you see, you've seen pictures, you know, these, you walk up to a table, it's just a rainbow full of pens, right? All kinds of materials. Some of them with a lot of different shapes.

Some of them with a singular shape. So Myke's were generally a single general shape, you know, just kind of like a standard, straight-sided, rounded-in pen. So when I look at this, I look at a lot of the craftsmanship, a lot of craftsmanship-specific things. So if I'm looking at a polished pen, so when you're looking at these acrylic pens, there's kind of two general different feels to the pen.

You have the glossy, shiny look. That's a polished pen, right? When the pen is done being made, there's different buffing that the maker can do to kind of polish up and make them a glossy finish. Or, conversely, you can have a matte finish.

You can take the same material and finish it a little bit. Rougher's not the right word, but it is a more texture-based feel, right? It doesn't have the shine or the gloss. It doesn't reflect the light off of it.

It just kind of absorbs the light off of it. It's two different feels. And both of them are great, right? I have pens that are glossy.

I have pens that are matte. I like them both. But when you're buying one or the other, what do I look for? So if I'm buying a glossy pen, I want to see this finish on this pen to be consistent, right?

And I think that's one of the things that I look for. So you can get, and I've seen it before, you can get an uneven polish, right? Where some areas aren't as glossy or as shiny as the others. And like this example of this pen, like it's just perfectly done from tip to tail.

Like it's really glossy, really finished very well. I also look at the threads on the pen. Like do, you know, threading is not an easy thing to make for manufacturers, right? So are the threads smooth?

Does everything work as intended, right? And I'm not just talking about the cap. I'll always, I'm not talking about the cap threads. The barrel threads are just as important, right?

So you unscrew the internal of the barrel as well. Like I'm taking apart this pen while I'm sitting here shopping for the pen in front of, you know, these makers. Like I'm kind of disassembling it, if you will. And I want to see how that works, right?

Because, you know, you want to make sure that the internals are as good as the externals, right? All the way through. Because that's going to help with the longevity of your pen, right? If you have wonky threads or, you know, something's a little bit off kilter, like you're just going to have an annoyance later, if not a problem.

So, and, you know, does the barrel like thread on seamlessly, right? Is the cap seam and the barrel seam flush all the way around? Like, is that even? Like, is it off center a little bit?

Which you'll sometimes see when people are just starting, you know, you can have a little bit of an off center feel to that. So that's one of the things. And then on the personal front, I want to know what the fit and feel of the pen is like in my hand, right?

So is it heavy? Is it light? Is it well balanced? Does the grip section fit my fingers? Like, is it concave or straight?

Like, it doesn't matter what it is, but does it fit, right? I have concave pins. I have straight grip pins and all of the above. And does it fit?

Does it work? Do I have enough clearance from my fingers and the threads for the cap? If that's the way the pen is designed. Do I have enough clearance from the edge of the barrel where the cap seals, right? Is there a big step down there that gets in the way of my fingers?

Is it sharp? Is it rounded? So there's a lot of little things that you can think about when you're stepping up to a maker's table to check out what they're offering. And like, I didn't even define what a maker is in the beginning because it's almost impossible, right?

Like, you make notebooks. Like, I make metal pens, right? They're all different types of definitions. But I think generally, if you've been to a pen show or looked at pens online, generally small, individual, one- or two-person shops, a lot of handmade stuff, hand-turned stuff, or design stuff, design and manufactured stuff.

You know, there's a lot of different classifications of makers. But for this purpose, I'm definitely talking about, like, the fountain pen makers all the way from, like, Edison pens to a Sean Newton to a smaller maker who's just kind of doing this as a hobby, like Myke at Myke's Pen Fund.

So that's kind of my little description of what I look for when I pick up a pen from someone who's making the pen themselves. They don't have to make the material. Like, Myke gets the material rods from other makers. Like, this particular material was from Divine Pens Plus.

Some people, like Jonathan Brooks at Carolina Pen Co., makes his own materials, right? So he'll make the materials and turn the pens, right? So there's lots of different ways you can go about looking at this. So it's a big, confusing, kind of complex world.

But it boils down to when you're doing this and shopping for a pen like this at a pen show, you need to figure out what suits your style, right? What's important to me may not be important to you, right? Like the weight or the balance or the size or the length or the shape of the grip section.

You, myself, and, you know, whoever's listening could have completely opposite taste. You just need to know what you're looking for when you go up to a maker and then figure out, do these things work for you? And in the end, you know, I ended up with a really, really great pen from Myke.

And it's one that I enjoy and one I kind of can't put down even though this is a very simple pen, right? It is not complex. And that's good. Like I like this, that it shows off the material, right? And that's kind of what this is made for.

So anyway, I just wanted to point out a few of those things. I definitely, you know, if y'all have questions about that, I'm always glad to answer, you know, your thoughts. Like every, every maker does things a little bit different and you end up finding out like what works for you.

The more you look at these things, the more questions you ask. But that's one good thing about makers. Even if you can't get to a pen show, even online, they want to talk about their pens, right? Because they're very passionate about these things.

So don't hesitate to ask questions on, if you see them on Instagram or on their websites and their contact forms, things like that. And especially in person as you're checking out of the wear. So there you go. That, I thought I would bring that up a little bit when I did this review.

And I love this pen and I probably need to stop taking pictures of it because people yell at me. It is a good looking pen. I mean, everything you described though, like is the benefit of in-person pen shows. Totally. Because you just can't do like 75% of these things online, you know, like holding it, feeling the weight.

Like what was the pen that you mentioned recently that looked light, but when you received it, it was like incredibly heavy. Do you remember? I think we were talking about this last week. That like there's a pen that like you picked, you pick it up and you're like, oh my God, like you had no idea.

You don't want to talk like that. Oh yeah, yeah. The, the, the Otto Hoot design. That was it. Yeah. Because it looks like it's just made of plastic. And it's thin. Like it's a narrow pen, right?

And you pick it up and it's, it's, it's a sizable weight pen, right? So yeah, that's, that's something you can't even look at that and say, oh, it's X amount of grams when you're looking at a website that doesn't always relate. And plus there's a whole balance issue, right?

Like I, I'm very lucky to be able to go test out a lot of this stuff in person. And I, I just want to be able to communicate those things to people who aren't able to get out there and kind of explain all the difference, even though there's like slight differences and there's a lot of nuance and context involved.

I want to be able to share like those thoughts and at least put those thoughts in people's heads as they're thinking about, you know, making a purchase. All right, let's take a break, final break of the episode and then we'll do some last TPA to close out. What do you think?

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I think it's been a few weeks since we've hit these ass TPAs, so we might be a little bit behind on these, but we always hold them in there. We're very, very behind, but I brought some in. First one comes from Kathleen who says, My father-in-law gave me his Mont Blanc Meisterstruck 149 that was given to him upon retirement from a job in the 80s.

I was able to get the ink out through a several-day soak in a shot glass full of soapy water, but I wasn't able to unscrew the pen. There seems to be two places where you can unscrew it. The one towards the end will unscrew to a point, but the one by the nib is stuck, stuck, stuck.

What should I do? So, I'm a little bit confused, and I think I know what Kathleen's getting at. So, this is, if it's 149, it's a piston filler, so I'm guessing that's the one towards the end is the piston mechanism. Yeah. And the one towards the front, or the one by the nib is where the grip section in the barrel opens, right? -huh.

So, I'm not sure that it actually should open there. I'm not like a Mont Blanc 149 professional, so I've added in a couple of links here, including one of Mont Blanc's own guides to where they discuss some of the assembly of their pens. But their 149, given that it's a piston filler, it's not going to open up from that front end, right?

So, you just have that piston opening in the back, and you could maybe remove the nib itself, like the nib in the feed, out from the front end of the pen. But it probably doesn't have a separate, unscrewable area. You're probably looking where the cap threads are, and that does not unscrew, right?

It's part of the piston filling mechanism like that. And those Mont Blanc's, I don't believe it comes off. So, I put a couple of links in the show notes. There's one disassembly video that I found on YouTube.

The 149 is probably the most popular fountain pen, like, ever made. I mean, not by quantities, right? There's obviously, you know, Parker's and Esther Brooks back in the days. But just, it's a well-known pen that there's a lot of content out there made about, including disassembly posts.

So, I would take a look at the video I linked, and I'd take a look at the Mont Blanc page. But I don't think you're having, I don't think you're going to be able to unscrew anything else on the front end of that pen. I don't believe that's how those pens work.

So, you just need to look at removing the nib, which is a different thing from unscrewing the barrel in the front end. So, that said, I would keep, I would give it another good soaking and try again from there. And if you can get the water to run clean without unscrewing anything else through the piston cleaning through water and running it through there and soaking, you could probably use the pen.

I would fill it up with water first to make sure it doesn't leak, right? So, clean it out, get it so the water's running clear, then actually fill the piston mechanism and the pen with water and leave it for a couple days and see if it leaks any.

And then after that, then you're looking at some maintenance. But we'll cross that bridge when we get there. But yeah, take a look at these links in the show notes, and I don't think you're going to be able to unscrew the front end of that pen. Gary says, I've been into pens and stationery for many years and have a small collection of fountain pens.

I'm thinking of going to my first pen show, the Leeds pen show here in the UK, in early December. That would be my first experience. My question is, what should I expect and how should I get the best out of the show? I mean, one thing is that whole topic from earlier, right?

Like that you'll get to go and handle pens, right? So, like, just go and pick everything up. Like, that is, like, one of the best things that you can do at a pen show. Just go and pick everything up because you don't otherwise get an opportunity to do that.

What else would you recommend, Brad? So, the UK pen shows are one day. Usually, I haven't looked specifically at the Leeds show. I'm assuming it's also a one-day show.

I would go there at the beginning, right? I would start, like, the early. I would get there before they open and get ready to go in when they start because it'll only get busier throughout the day. There'll be a crowd there at the beginning, but it'll continue to rise throughout the day.

So, I would have an idea of kind of piggybacking on what Myke just said. To have, like, if you've been looking at a few pens online, say, a Pilot Vanishing Point or a Leonardo Memento Zero, I would make a list of those pens you've always seen online but never had the chance to pick up and use or to hold to see how they fit and how they feel and make a point to walk around to different vendors to see if they have those pens and kind of get that experience of at least holding them, if not using them.

Not every opportunity will you be able to use those pens, right? Like, not every pen in those shows are inked up or available to test, but a lot of people will have those testers. So, that's what I would look at. I would take it all in, right?

I definitely always believe in taking, you know, a full lap of the show, just kind of going slow, taking it in, see the things that were on your list, and then after you've done that, then kind of make a plan if you want to make a purchase, whether it's even just ink or a notebook, or you want to look at that vanishing point again for the second time, or you found this vintage Parker 51 that you want to ask more questions about, right?

You know, if you're into vintage, you know, you want to find out if the pen has been restored or not, right? To make sure it's going to be a good writer for you when you take it home. So, that's what you want to do. I say go early, have a list of what you want to see, right?

Not what you want to buy, but have a list of what you want to experience, right? And check those out, and then just go from there. Then you can just play it by ear and figure out what you want to do if you actually want to buy anything.

So, that's how I would do it. Take it slow, take it all in, have a list, and have fun. Perfect. Caroline says, I'm not a big user of rollerballs, and whenever I hear them spoken about, I'm confused by the tip sizing. You recently mentioned the Pilot G2 refill with a, quote, 0.7mm fine point.

0.7mm is not fine in fountain pen tips, as far as I understand. Like, a 1mm stub nib exists, and that's a big deal. And I think the 0.5mm preppy is considered a medium, right? Are rollerballs sized on a different scale than fountain pens?

If so, why? I mean, rollerballs, a lot of them are sized differently between rollerballs as well. So, it's a complex, I can't give you a black and white answer to this question, but I can give you some general ideas, right? Because I could take, I could take, like, different, like, non-fountain pens, and comparatively speaking, what are you actually measuring, right?

So, let's start with the non-fountain pens. So, your traditional, say, your Pilot G2 pens. When you talk about a 0.7mm, you're not talking about the line on the page. You're talking about the technical size of the opening of the nose cone that the ball sits in on these pens, right?

So, it's a measurement, not a line width. So, when I have a 0.5mm pen from Zebra and a 0.5mm pen, both gel pens from Pilot, they could write differently depending on the paper you use, depending on the ink color, right? Sometimes the formulations are different. But the expectation is that that nose cone measurement where the ball resides is both 5mm.

You may not get a 5mm line out of that. For example, if I take the same Zebra 0.5mm gel ink pen and put it next to a 0.5mm ballpoint pen, Uniball Jetstream, the way the Jetstream ink works, it's going to be a much finer line out of that pen.

So, that's one part of the complexity here. Secondly, that terminology does not cross over into fountain pens, fine, medium, extra fine. Those things do not cross over whatsoever. Even, you could look at ballpoint pens as a great example.

So, what one company describes as a medium, say, Caran d'Ache has a medium ballpoint pen. That's probably a 1.0mm. Uniball has a medium refill that could be 0.7mm, right? So, you just have to take that into context of each company, each brand.

I know this is not simple. It's confusing, and it's not easy to understand. Over into fountain pens, we now have regional issues. Similar to the different size gel and ballpoint refills that you could run across.

Northern nibs and a lot of European manufacturers fall into this category. German nibs, Italian nibs, French nibs. They use one sizing, general guideline for extra fine, fine, medium, and broad. And then, in the Eastern market, the Japanese brands, a lot of them use a different sizing for extra fine, fine, medium, and broad.

So, what you have, if you take your Platinum Preppy medium nib and compare it to a Lamy medium nib, you're going to see a huge difference in these. So, I wish I could give you just this crystal clear answer, but it's really just learning about the regional differences in fountain pen nibs, which company ascribes to which nib system, how individual nibs are going to differentiate between those companies, how nib materials are going to change the line width.

Even if they both are marked fine, you could have a fine steel nib and a fine gold nib. Guess what? They're probably going to write different line widths, too. So, it is not a universal system that anyone uses. So, I probably made this worse for Caroline, I'm guessing.

So, if you have specific questions, like, I can answer all of these questions, but trying to describe this in general terms is almost impossible. Because no one uses one universal system that we can all go off of, right? There's no universal fountain pen tip size. Unless you're getting into, like, Caroline mentioned, like, a 1.0 millimeter.

Yes, everyone is making a 1.0 millimeter stub at 1.0 millimeter across, right? That's fine. Those are universal. But some companies just make a stub nib. What size is that, right? And how does that relate to a 1.0 millimeter?

So, it's an exceedingly complex answer that I cannot do much better than this. But I can answer every question specifically between one pen versus another, gel pen versus ballpoint, all of these things. So, it's endless, endless information in this aspect. And I get the confusion that they have.

Just understand, in a basic level, that standard pen sizing does not cross over to fountain pen sizing whatsoever. Michael writes in to say, I'm not sure if you've seen this already, Brad, but in case you haven't, they've opened a Books Kinokinuya location in Atlanta. There's a Chicago store that's a little closer than Atlas Stationery for us suburbanites.

My daughter and I like shopping there for cases, washi tape, and more. Did you know about this, Brad? I did. I got, my messages blew up when they opened this in Atlanta. I think it was over the summer, so just a couple months ago, that they opened this Kinokinuya.

And you and I went to the one in New York. It's awesome. When we, yeah, it's an amazing, yeah, huge. It's essentially a bookstore, right? And then usually in these other locations, like a lot of the locations, they'll have a whole stationery floor.

Like the one we went into was two levels. Like the upstairs, like the street level was the bookstore. And then you go into the basement, it's like the magazine and gift shop. And it's not like a basement, it's like a gigantic place.

So I need to get to Kinokinuya. I need to make sure my budget's ready for that trip because it's such a great shop. They do a wonderful job with stationery curation at Kinokinuya's historically. So I will be anxious to get to the one in Atlanta and I will do that one day for sure.

And Joe writes in to say, I'm getting married in April and I'm in search of a pen to sign the Ketubah. I think I said that correctly. I apologize if I didn't. This is a Jewish marriage contract.

It is a piece of art that ultimately will be displayed. The paper is cold press, slightly textured, acid-free art paper and is recommended to use a, quote, micro pigment pen with archival ink. Obviously, a fountain pen is out since four of the five signatories don't regularly use them.

I imagine something like a Sakura Pigma Micron would be a good choice. But I can't help but wonder, is there a nicer option for this special occasion? So we have actually had like this similar question before. Well, I mean, even I had one and I ended up giving up because it just felt like too much complication and did whatever the registrar told me to do.

Yeah. So when the recommendation is to use, and this is Joe's quote, so he's getting this literally from the recommendation, micro pigment pen with archival ink. They're saying you should use a Sakura Pigma Micron is literally what they're saying. Yeah. And that's why Joe says, I imagine the Sakura Pigma Micron is a good choice.

That is literally the description of the Sakura Pigma Micron. So the question is, can I get a nice one? So short answer is no. Yeah. But they do make a sleeve for the Sakura Pigma Micron.

I've reviewed it on the blog. And Sakura makes it. It can at least fancy up the exterior of the barrel. I'll have to go pull the link or if I vamp long enough, Myke can maybe pull the link.

Sakura Pigma Holder. Yeah. So they do a holder. It's about $20. This is hilarious that they make this product. They make a black one, a silver one, and a blue, dark blue one, I believe, if I'm remembering this correctly. And I have the silver one.

It really, it just, it fancies up the barrel of the Sakura Pigma Micron. This is the way to do it. Yeah. The Micron is one of the great pens of all time with one of the ugliest barrels ever. But they're so ingrained to people see that barrel and know exactly what that pen is because it's a legitimately good pen.

So they made this sleeve to go over and say, hey, look, it's not as ugly now. And that's an option. And it works, right? I have one. It sits on my desk.

I have the silver one. It's really, really nice. Outside of that, if you wanted to experiment before you did this and do something a little bit weird, you could buy one of the either, like the Euchre's type felt tip refillable pens or a rollerball fountain pen pen. Like Monteverde makes a tip that takes fountain pen ink and then use like your diatrament as document inks, right?

Your permanent inks. I recommend not to do any of these things. Yeah. Like the Micron's the safe choice. The other one is something you would want to experiment with beforehand. Yeah. Don't mess it up.

The Micron's going to work. You can still keep the pen if it's important to you, right? Even if it's just a plastic secure Pigma Micron, like you can just like keep it. You could get the barrel engraved.

Yeah. It doesn't matter what it is, right? But I like that combo that you just said, right? Get the holder and get the holder engraved. Job done. And get at least an 05 tip Micron.

You want a wider the tip, the better, right? They go down very, very small. 05 is like their medium tip. That's as fine as I would go. So that would be my recommendation for that.

Here's kind of like a rule for life for me. Just try not to be that person, you know? Well, breaking out the fountain pen. It's difficult. Yeah. Breaking out the fountain pen would be that person in this case.

And like as much as Joe wants to use it and much as I would love Joe to use it, I would just go with this, go with the Micron, get the sleeve for it. And it's at least a little bit of a step up. All the efficient wants to do or the registrar, right?

They just want to do their job, you know? Yeah. And then like you're coming in with your pen, messing it all up, right? Just like, you know, they just want to do the job. Sometimes us stationery lovers have to stand down, right?

Yeah, you've got to. Yeah, stand down. Stand down, Joe. Your poor partner, they've got enough to think about. You're spilling ink everywhere, you know? Yep, yep. Great question. Love it. Great question. But you have an option, which is great.

If you would like to send in a question for us to answer on a future show, you go to penaddictfeedback.com. Penaddictfeedback.com. But you can also send your gift guide questions and suggestions there, too, for the gift guide episode. I would like to thank our sponsors for supporting this week's show.

Ship Station, Pen Chalet, and Squarespace. But of course, thank you for listening. If you want to find Brad online, go to penaddict.com, spokedesign.com, penaddict on social media, and twitch.tv slash penaddict, where Brad streams three times a week. You can find me, I am at iMyke, I-M-Y-K-E, and go check out cortexbrand.com and sidekicknotepad.com.

Thanks so much for listening. Until next time, say goodbye, Brad. Goodbye, Brad.

[[Category:Podcast Transcripts]]
[[Category:The Pen Addict Podcast Transcript]]

The Pen Addict 586/transcript

2026-06-23T16:00:10Z

PencilBot: fixed spelling

{{Infobox podcast transcript
| name = The Pen Addict
| number = 586
| title = Only 19,996 to Go
| date = October 18th, 2023
| hosts = [[Brad Dowdy]] 
[[Myke Hurley]]
| guests =
| link = [https://www.relay.fm/penaddict/586 Episode 586]
| audiolink = [https://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/traffic.libsyn.com/secure/thepenaddict/The_Pen_Addict_586.mp3 Audio Episode 586]
| length = 49
}}

From RelayFM, this is the Pen Addict, episode 586. Today's show is brought to you by Pen Chalet and Ship Station. My name is Myke Hurley and I'm joined by Brad Dowdy. Hi, Brad. Hello, Myke. How are you? I'm good, my friend. How are you? I am good. I'm good.

I'm busy making all the things, shipping all the things. I thought maybe we'd talk about that a little bit today. Talk about what I'm up to with Spoke, mostly what Brian is up to with Spoke, what all we got in the hopper. So let's just say it up front, like Brian's my hero.

Brian is Spoke. I'm just another pretty face, Myke. I won't take that at all. I know Brian's great, but I will not handle that. You're not an incredibly important part of the Spoke machine.

A Spoke in the wheel of Spoke, as it were. Yeah, so every now and then I like to just chat about what we've been doing at Spoke and what we have in the pipeline. I thought today was a good time getting, seeing that we're getting towards the end of the year, the holiday season.

Are we going to have new things for the holidays? People are always wondering that. But before we get to that, we have been cranking out new Roadie and Roadie XL models for the past couple of months since like probably August. The Roadie Model 2 and Roadie XL have been doing super, super well.

And we've added in, Myke, I don't know if you've seen this, but we've created different like cap types where we have like a slotted cap. We have a perforated cap with like holes in it. And we've added different grips into the pins, knurled grips. Knurled is cool. I should get one of the knurled ones.

So what I haven't even tried yet, I just got, I just received a shipment of them and I haven't tried them personally. We have a brass knurled grip. I'm super interested how that's going to go. So a Roadie with a brass knurled grip is now available.

Those kind of things. My favorite thing that we've done recently, and this is the last pin that I've stolen. I talk about, I think it's funny when I actually have to steal one of our products because it's so good. I have to have it, which is very rare.

I try not to pull from our own inventory for my personal use. Myke, the Roadie Groove Poly Blaze is one of my favorite pins we've ever made. Like it is the smaller Roadie, which I love. And it's a titanium barrel or stainless barrel. Titanium, it's both. So sorry.

The grip is titanium. It's grooved and it has a titanium barrel and it's got a stainless steel nose cone because that's the part that has to be stainless. So it hits the magnets right. So it's mostly titanium.

And then the cap is orange Delrin. So it is absolutely sick. It's cool to have like the plastic and the metal. That's not plastic, but you know, the Delrin, the polycedil Delrin.

That texture together is so cool. Like I wasn't sure how much I was going to like it. And it turns out I actually love it. So that's like, that's my favorite.

You do a big boy too, don't you? So that's what I wanted to talk about today. That's new. So we did the small one. The small one is what I stole.

We just launched the big one, which is the Roadie XL. Those have been flying off the shelves and you can get the Delrin. We do the Delrin caps in orange and black. So it's like a groove pattern.

And you can get them in orange and black. So I really like what we're doing there. We've added in the brass grip, which is fun. We've mixed and matched some of the Delrin caps.

So you can get a purple barrel XL with a black Delrin cap and a titanium groove grip. It's just I'm a big fan. I'm a big fan of my own products, Myke. And I would hope I would say that, right?

Like I love what we make, love what we do. And if I didn't say that, I wouldn't be part of the company. Like I love this stuff. So Brian's crushing it.

So what I wanted to add on to this is what we're working on for the rest of the year. And I think I might have alluded to this in a podcast not too long ago. I can't remember if I did or didn't, but I know I shared them on Twitch.

So we're testing out our click mechanism, right? So we're doing a spoke click pin and we'll do two different sizes of that, right? So we'll have a click mechanism for a longer barrel pin that will fit your Pilot G2 refills. And then we'll do a click mechanism pin that will fit your Parker style refills, like our Jetstream refill that we use in the roadie.

And we are pretty far along in these prototypes. And given that I teased them not too long ago in the hope that we would have them before the holidays, I'm not sure we are. It's going to be close because we're trying. It's really hard to design physical goods, like as you know.

And we're having like we're we want to be happy with the end result. And we knew in the prototypes, the prototype was to test the shape and the knock. And we put on like a temporary clip. So we put on like a wire clip.

So like a wire clip is like you see on a Lamy Safari, right? That's not what we're using for this, but it just had to be temporarily done until we can get our clip finalized. And we're just struggling with that. Like we want it to be really good.

And so like I'm wondering now we don't even have the clips in production yet. And are we going to get them done before the holiday? So I wanted everyone to know that we're making this click pen, but we're trying to finalize the clip. So we're going to be up against it here.

We're going to get to see like just we always start these things out with a few colors and a few shapes, right? We'll usually do like the popular colors like black barrels or silver barrels, you know, black knurled grip, silver groove grip, things like that. And then if it goes well, people like the pins, then we start mixing in the blues and the purples and the reds.

Then we can start looking at brass grip sections and brass knurling and things like that. So I like that we're able to iterate as we go kind of thing. But that was all to say, I hope we get these clicks done before the end of the year. But I'm not holding my breath given how manufacturing goes.

But I'm sitting here just playing with them, using them. They're really good. The shape is good to go. Like I've pretty much signed off on everything. We just got to finalize the clip.

Did you make your own click mechanism? So we made part of it. So like the part that moves on the inside is a part we found. Brian bought a bunch of parts and tried to test them out.

And we use the kind of an internal part that's off the shelf. And then we replace the end button, if you will, with our of our own manufacturing. So we'll be able to, so like the part you actually see and touch on the outside of the pen, we make that part.

But the inside that moves it up and down is off the shelf. So that gives us an option to like trade out and, you know, do different colors and do different anodizing and different parts on that. So, yeah. Is it clicky? It's very, it's, it's, I'd say it's medium clicky.

It's solid, but quiet. Okay. Right. It doesn't rattle. It's not metal on metal. So we decided to go with a nylon material, which is basically like a plastic that never wears out. Yep. And it's, it's quieter than metal.

And it doesn't, it's when it's, since it's a mechanism that's constantly rubbing against itself, like it doesn't have that wear that you'll have on there. So it should last forever and it's been rock solid so far. So, you know, we need, I need a click testing machine. I said I was going to go on Twitch and just start a Twitch stream and I was just going to do like 20,000 clicks just in silence.

And people hated that idea. I'm just going to stream, man. What's wrong with you? Because how would you even keep count?

I don't know. I would just go. I would just go to town. We're going. Here we go. That was four. I hear nothing. That was four. That was four clicks. I trust you. There you go. Only another 19,996 to go, Brad.

Exactly. Exactly. So anyway, they were very confident in, in the mechanism and we like the part. I'm excited to see this. Manipulate. It's very cool. I wish I had, like I've shared pictures of what they are right now with the non-final version of clip. And I think they look cool.

Just like we're definitely not sold on this clip. So we want to finish. It'll be a more traditional split clip. Like if you look at our pins right now, it's going to be that style of clip as opposed to like a wire clip, which was in our prototypes, which was again a placeholder.

So manufacturing is hard. We're working up against a time crunch for the end of the year. And we have been working on this for a while. And prototypes are expensive to make.

Like we got 10 prototypes made and that just costs a fortune, right? When you're only getting 10 things made, manufactured, that costs just a fortune. So yeah, but we, we like how they turned out. Now we're just, now we're just trying to finalize it.

So I just wanted to give everyone an update on where we're at. And then, you know, that's it for the, this year, but 2024 is right around the corner and we'll have, we'll just keep cranking out more, more pins, more designs, more grips. I like the modular aspect of everything that we make.

So we're going to work on the modularity of the parts, the more parts we can swap out and the more customizable products that people can make, the happier they are. So we like that, even though it's like, we're, we're into a, we're a heavy skew business. You sure are.

So that's a challenge. And, you know, but we're happy to do it because both Brian and I like making these options. Like if we can make a cool pin barrel and a cool grip and allow people to mix and match some of that stuff to make their cool pin, I like, I'm all about it.

So there we go. So that's where we're at right now with Spokes. So it's, it's been, it's been fun. That's what's mostly I've been working on.

And, and I have like literally no other projects in the hopper other than like Spokes has been super busy recently, which is great. And Brian's crushing it. Like, right. Seriously. Like, like Brian. Brian is the, the engine that drives all this. And I'm just happy. Yeah. He's the man.

He's the man. So yeah. I'm excited to see this click pen. Yep. I think it's going to do well. I just look at the shapes. The shapes are good.

They're very spokey, right? Like they look like spoke pins, but then there's something different about them. Yo, this has a knock and Oh, the grip on the long one is tapered where we haven't had a tapered grip before. So it's, it's cool stuff like that, that we get to mess around with.

And Brian gets to flex his design muscles and I get to make pins that I enjoy using. And it's a, it's a, it's a good collaboration. And, the, the products have been coming out super, super well recently. And, I'm excited to see what's next.

Do you want to know what I'm up to? Yes, I do. All right. So let's take a break first. Wow. Are you ready to drop something on us after? I'm thinking about maybe talking about something I haven't spoken about.

You've, you've. Okay. All right. You've been to take a break then. This episode is brought to you by our friends at Pen Chalet. They sell authentic, amazing roller balls, fountain pens, ball points, mechanical pencils, and so much more. They have your favorite brands from Monteverde to Pelican, to Lamy, to Pilot, to Namiki, to Sailor, to Kaweco, and many, many, many, many, many, many, many more.

Every time I go to Pen Chalet, I click their brands tab on the website and I just look at the ever-growing list of products that they have. They're always adding new styles of pens. Every single month you're going to go and find new pens, but it's not just pens.

They also have all the accessories you're going to need. Carrying cases, pen holders, refills, fountain pen converters, and so much more. They run special discounts twice a month. So close out specials every two weeks as well.

Pen Chalet believe in fast and reliable customer service. They do free shipping on orders of over $75 in the U.S. They sell internationally with very reasonable shipping rates. Pen Chalet has low prices on high-quality pens and offers a 100% satisfaction guarantee. So I want you to go to PenCalet.com.

That's P-E-N-C-H-A-L-E-T.com. And click the podcast link at the top of the website. Enter the password Pen Addict for this week's special offer. And to get the code you need to save 10% on anything at any time over a pen chalet.

Now, Brad, this is one of those weeks where I was talking with Ron and it was like, oh, no, this is like secret special week. We have offers we can't talk about. You know? Yeah. Sometimes Ron's up to some stuff. We can't talk about it because he's doing some secret specials for Pen Addict listeners.

And this is one of those weeks. Given the run that he has been on recently. The Ron run. The Ron run that he has been on. I am scared to see what he's got cooking because it's going to hit me right in the pocketbook.

Because like recently, there have been so much good stuff. I've never gotten more feedback on all the great stuff that we see on our pen addict page over at pen chalet. So, yeah, for Ron to say that, like, let's go. I'm excited. Let's go, indeed. That's penchalet.com.

P-E-N-C-H-A-L-E-T dot com. Click the podcast link at the top of the website and use the password pen addict. You'll find the special offers there and also the code that you need to save 10% on anything at any time at pen chalet.

Our thanks to pen chalet for their continued support of this show on RelayFM. All right, Myke. What you cooking? Do the shout out of the week first. We've got to stick to the format, you know? Shout out of the week.

Fountain Pen Pharmacist. This is a blog I've been following for ages and they do ink reviews. And it's the coolest thing when you go to the homepage at Fountain Pen Pharmacist. Like, I'm usually used to only seeing, like, the individual posts coming in my feed. But when you pull up the main page and get to see all the ink reviews and how all the comparisons are listed out on the homepage, it's like, how can you not click through every single one of these posts?

They just look so cool. So, great job over at Fountain Pen Pharmacist. A lot of ink reviews for, yeah, I think mostly just ink reviews. And you'll see some other reviews mixed in there from time to time.

Amazing job. And shout out to all the pharmacists out there. My wife is a pharmacist. And boy, they are up against it right now. So, I feel you Fountain Pen Pharmacist.

You're not alone out there. Keep making those ink reviews and escaping from the drudgery of your day-to-day job. All right. So, at the moment, I'm in, like, just wild trying to understand the final quarter of the year kind of mode. Where, like, so many things are coming together and crashing, like, tectonic plates.

So, and we're structuring. I feel like what we're doing this year, while it is chaotic, is at least, like, understanding a little bit more how to structure this part of the year for us. Like, every business is super busy around the holiday season, right? That's just the way things go.

But at Cortex Brand, the theme system journal is, I consider us very lucky that it actually sells very well all year. But it obviously has a natural bump around the holidays. People buying them for gifts, but also mainly because it's when people are starting yearly themes. Maybe it's the first time they've done it.

Maybe they want to give it another go, and they want another journal to do it, right? And we have, like, a whole thing. The podcast has a big time then as well with the yearly themes, and it all ties in nicely together, right? But that means that we need to, like, really think about what we're doing around this time of year.

You know, like, we're putting a restock order, which is not too many units. I think we're pretty good where we are right now, but that's happening. So I'm, like, dealing with a restock with our supplier. We still make the journals in Poland, and so, like, I'm working with our Polish supplier on that.

And then also, like, we're working to try and maybe do a little bit more marketing around the whole time period. And we're not going to, like, we're probably not going to put, like, a ton of advertising spend on this marketing, but we're trying to, like, maybe use this year as an opportunity to understand what the best messaging is.

We have, like, five different messaging options that we're going to go with over, like, a two or three month period, see what works and maybe adapt some of it in future years. But, like, just because there's, like, having done this, you know, we've been making this product for four years now.

And so, ooh, that's a weird thing to think about. I was doing the math while you were pausing. I was like, yeah, that was, like, four or five years. Yeah, and we're getting ready.

I think it probably, if it hasn't happened or happened very soon, we've sold 40,000 of them. Right. That's amazing. Congratulations. Which is, like, sickening to think about. Like, it's sickening more, right? But, like, it's built the business, right?

And so we want to play around with that a little bit more as we're continuing to, like, think about what the Theme System Journal is. Because, like, you know, the Theme System Journal is currently still the bread and butter of our business, but it's not where we've been putting our focus.

Like, we've been putting our focus into the Sidekick notepad because it's new and I think has a larger adjustment on market. And, you know, I just think it's, like, to a lot of people, maybe a more interesting product. It's also, it's my favorite because it's also, like, expensive.

It's expensive to make, which means we used expensive materials. And, like, obviously that's where I am going to lean towards more because I just want things that feel really nice to use. And we're still kind of, like, building that part of the business where it feels like for at least the last little while the journal has kind of, like, run itself, managed itself.

And so we've got, like, a bunch of things. When this episode goes out, we're in the last couple of days of selling our subtlety and sweater and hoodie, which is, like, something we do once a year. And it sells very well. But, like, the added pressure that we've got right now is that we are using that as a part of the business to help us fund the restocks that we're doing, which is, like, not a thing we thought about before.

Right? So it's, like, a very different way to think about how we need this to be more of a success than we've necessarily thought we needed it to be before. Right? We're always kind of, like, we've got the subtlety going up. We'll see how it goes. And it's always done really well.

And we've been very happy. But now this year we put expectation on it that we hadn't before because we are beefing up supply of the Sidekick notepad because Gray is going to make a video about it also in Q4. And he's kind of a big deal. He's kind of a big deal.

And, you know, like, he's done two videos about the journal before, and every single time we sold out. So, and that is, like, thousands and thousands of units that we sold, and we just sell out. And I don't want to sell out of Sidekick notepads, so we have heavily overordered, hoping that we will sell a bunch when he does his video, hopefully, that people will like it.

And then we'll also still have stock left, right? And then we can restart. Right. But so I'm kind of, these are, like, the things I'm working on right now. Like, as we're recording today, I'm also, like, waiting on a quote for shipping for those because we ordered, like, tons of them.

And we need to get them shipped over. Included in that is, like, a new skew, I guess, of the Sidekick notepad, which is, I've mentioned it before, Sidekick Calendar Companion, which is, like, a, it's the same format. Different color cover. I'm anxious for this to see if this is something that's going to, would integrate for me because I have a feeling it might.

Yeah. And it's just, it's, like, a seven-day layout thing. So it's, you know, it's one page, and the page is broken down into the seven boxes. It's actually six boxes, and the weekend one is cut in half, right? Yeah. It's mostly a work thing.

But it's the same thing. It's 60 pages, so it's, like, a year, which is, like, very different to think about. But it's all the same construction. It's the same product, but just a different print.

Same dimensions. Yeah, same dimensions, same paper. We're still using the extract coffee cup paper, but we've changed the color of it. We don't have a ton of color options, so it's just, like, a lighter gray rather than black. And so, like, we ordered a bunch of those, and they're going with this shipment.

And so, like, we did them together because it reduced the cost, right? So we're working on that, but, like, we wanted to have, this wasn't what we were going to be doing. Like, we have, like, a whole other product that is effectively ready for, like, ready for us to just place an order on.

Maybe we'll do one more prototype, but it was going to be our holiday product, which we haven't spoken about yet. I'll give some very simple details on. We're working on a pocket notebook in the Sidekick family, but it's a lot of, like, similar design aesthetic, like the way it looks.

But we're making it from different materials because we're trying to make an entry-level product into the family. And so we're trying to make it as cheap as we can make it, and it be kind of like a, not a loss leader, but like a equal leader. You know what I mean?

Like, we're not going to lose money on it, but we're not looking to necessarily make money on it because we want to give… It's an entry point. It's the entry point product because we want to show people what our products are like if they don't want to spend the money on a Sidekick notepad, right?

Right, right. And so that's what we're working on, and it's going to come in two packs, and we're going to do lined, dot grid, and to-do list. And you just choose a two-pack, and you get two of either lined, two of dot, two of to-do.

I'm excited about it. I would say Gray started, like, putting it in videos, which is kind of funny. You can kind of see it, like, peeking up in places what it's going to look like. Well, perforated pages as well, but you don't need to perforate them.

You don't need to rip them out, I mean. Like, the Sidekick notepad, I think you kind of do need to rip each page out, but I know people don't. But the Pocket notebook, we are making it that you can choose. That's great. That's great. I don't know when that's coming, though.

Right. I hope that we will have, because now it's kind of like a Domino's thing, if the Sidekick notepad sells really well over the holidays, then we'll make the order. If it doesn't sell, like, gangbusters, then we're just going to need to wait a little bit longer. Like, we will sell through everything that we're ordering, but it's just about, like, how soon.

And if we do sell a bunch, but not so. Basically, if we sell all of them, then it's going to need to wait still, because I need to make another Sidekick notepad order. Right. But my hope is that it will sell really well, and we'll then still have some stock to sell, and then I can, well, then we can progress with the Pocket notebook.

But I have, like, a ton of other things. Honestly, it surprises me how I keep having ideas for new paper product. I thought I was going to run out by now, but I feel like I have, like, all the time, I just have more and more ideas. Like, I have, like, an idea, like, for different lines, too.

I have different types of journal that I want to make, and I have different kinds of notepads that I want to make. And so, I don't know how many of them will see the light a day, and I'm trying to be a bit more realistic. Like, I keep saying, oh, we're going to have two new products next year, and I've been saying that for the last four years.

So, like, all I'm kind of committing myself to mentally right now is we will have one new product in 2024, and anything else is, like, golden, you know? Yeah, that's great. That's great. So, you said one thing, if I can elaborate on this topic a little bit more.

I wasn't really planning on doing this, but I was taking some notes while you were talking, and you said one thing or alluded to one thing. I don't know if the listeners caught, but it's also how we run things at Spoke is you make things to help fund other things, right?

So, like, it's a good way to run the business, like, we don't run this from debt, which also means, like, we don't necessarily make a lot of money. Like, there's not a lot of take-home money in these projects, but we're making a lot of projects that fund other projects to do cool things, and you hope in the end, the collective totality of all these things, oh, you can make a little bit of money in the end, right?

Like, most of the year, we're not taking any money out of the business. Right. And, like, we set up the business in, like, we didn't, basically, we just sold products for a really long time and held all of the money and then created Cortex Brand. And, like, that funded journals, it funded the Sidekick Notepad, and we didn't take any money for, I don't know, like, the first year and a half, at least, because we were just putting it all in.

So, we are debt-free, and even though we're committing, like, a lot of money into the stock that we're ordering right now, we still have cash in the business. Like, it's just like, for me and Gray, that's just the way that we want to work. And there are a lot of downsides to doing it this way, especially around taxes.

Like, we have, it's complicated stuff with the way that the company's set up. But we believe in the long run it will help us create the business that we want to make by not having debt and not having investors and all that kind of stuff. Like, it's just not what we want to do.

Exactly. And, like, one of our big expenses is prototyping expenses, which I alluded to. Like, if we want to make a new clip. Oh, it must be healthy. Yeah. If we want to just make, like, a new clip die, it's going to cost us four figures, like, just for the die.

And I hope it works, right? Yeah, we don't have that. And then you have this part and that part. And, like, so we have to think about those types of things.

So, like, we're always working towards, hey, what can we fund to, like, make these prototypes for the next thing that we hope is going to be, like, a really core product line. And those types of things built on it. Like, we spend a lot of money prototyping. But it's because every unit is, like, I don't know.

Like, sometimes I've spent, like, $200 on a notebook or whatever. I might do a few of those, which is expensive. But it's not, like, every time you want to revise a die, it's, like, a four-figure number. And, like, that's horrible.

Yep. The second thing, which I just thought about, and, like, I know this in my head and listening to you and I talk about, like, products, product releases, things and that. If you take, like, your full, like, 12-month calendar of, like, production, you really have about three months during a 12-month year to create things.

Like, when I think about it. Yeah. Because it's so hard to get things made and it's so hard to go through all these processes. And you think about someone who makes stuff, it's like, oh, well, you're just making stuff year-round. It's, like, literally, you have about three months for your ideas to come to fruition to get anything made in, like, the following 12-month period.

Because that's how hard it is. The dream for me, and I guess it is for you, too, is that, like, we get to a point where someone else is doing that. Like, and then I can work on the design I can do, right? Because I can't actually design, you know what I mean?

Like, I can't draw out what I want, but I do what I think is, like, I come up with the product and, like, what I want it to be and then work with someone who can, like, help me make it. You know what I mean? Which I think it is a part of design.

I don't know what you'd call it, right? But it's kind of, like, how I would imagine, like, a chief design thing. You know, like, someone who's, like, the design lead of a company is not, like, opening AutoCAD, right? Right, right, right. But they're, like, saying that this is what I want it to be, this is what I want it to be made of, this is what I want it to look like, you know, all that kind of stuff.

And then I hope that one day I can just focus mostly on that and we can have someone to help do the logistics stuff. But we're just not even close to that yet. But I think it can happen. I think it will happen.

But it's just about how many years it takes to get there. This is good stuff. These are those conversations we always have and now we get to have them online. Yeah. Because I just thought it was on the pocket notebook.

It's like we're using recycled paper for the first time. I found a very, very good recycled paper. Different from what's in the sidekick. Yeah, because we use Monk and Lynx.

Okay. I'm thinking of the cover for the sidekick is the. Yeah, that's the coffee cup paper, which we won't be using on the pocket notebook because it's too expensive. Sure, sure, sure, sure. Gotcha. But in kind of, like, in its place, we're using a 100% recycled paper, which works pretty good for fountain pens, which is a thing I've never experienced before.

Right. Because there's usually a lot of fibers, right, in recycled paper. And there is a little bit of it, but this paper has been designed with that in mind. To reduce that. And so it's, I've used, like, all kinds of fountain pens on this paper, and I've been really, really pleased with the results.

So that's what we're going to use as kind of, like, as a way of being conscious, like, in the way that we use the coffee cup paper, but we can't use it in this one because it would make, it would kind of, like, destroy the idea of the product.

Right. But also not reducing the quality, but finding something that can still work well, has a great story to it, and also helps if we're producing these products, reducing the impact of the product on the world a little bit. Cool stuff. Who knew this was the Big Business Boy podcast?

Sometimes. It's good stuff. Yeah, every now and then. We talk about this stuff offline, but every now and then I like to talk about it online. But for all you people who are like, snooze fast, talk about some other stuff. We're going to talk about some other stuff, but first we have a sponsor to thank, and that is ShipStation.

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I have been a long-time ShipStation user. When we started Nock, that was our shipping platform of choice. I remember. Yeah. It served us very well through Nock's creation, through all of Nock's Kickstarter projects. And I enjoyed that platform so much that I've integrated it through the pen addict shop.

So everything that goes through there, like if we do the big Retro 51 projects, or just my day-to-day selling Fire on Fire ink, and the other pens that I sell, that all integrates with ShipStation. And what ShipStation does is makes it such an easy way to get my orders out, right?

It's all integrated with the platforms that I use, in this case, Squarespace for the pen addict shop. I just tie all that stuff in together. The orders show up. All the information's filled out.

I can set all these defaults where I'm not having to click buttons on all these orders every time and wasting time. I can set up all the defaults that I want. They have gobs of shipping options if I needed to make some changes for different international options if I wanted to do that.

The thing that I like the most about ShipStation is they tell me when changes happen in the broader shipping landscape that I need to be aware of. Helpful. That is helpful. Because I'll be straight up with you, and Myke will, too. Thinking about shipping stuff is not fun.

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And I've been using it for a while. When you get orders from me at Panatic, they are all routed through ShipStation. And yeah, I'm a huge fan. Been a customer probably not quite a decade, but I bet we're pushing a decade here pretty soon.

Well, yeah, because you were using them when you were shipping, when we used Nock to do RelayFM merchandise, like right at the beginning. And so like, we're coming up to 10 years. That was around like 2014-ish. Yeah. So probably next year will be like a decade.

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All right. Since this is a podcast about pens, let's talk about some, Myke. Okay. So we have a little game we're going to play today, which we have done lots of little games in the past. Some of these are always enjoyable. So my friends at Sam Alpert on Instagram, you Twitch streamer, Twitch chatters, might know him as Glyph in Twitch, sent out a, tagged me in an Instagram post last week and said, you're taking a pencil, a fountain pen, and a non-fountain pen with you.

What do you choose for each slot and what are you carrying them in? So a really simple concept of making a little kit and the restrictions are pretty light, right? A pencil, a fountain pen, and a non-fountain pen. So three writing instruments and a case to put them in.

What are you carrying them in? So Sam put as out on Instagram. We'll have a link in the show notes. We have a spoke model four.

We have a right turns auto medley. And then we have a tactile turn TI bolt action. So those are the three pins, the pencil, the fountain pen, and the standard pin, all carried in a Notco. Oh, they listed it as a high tower.

It's a lookout. So the three pin lookout for Notco. We'll get, we'll give Glyph some grief about that. But look, the problem is you have so many products and they all had very different names. You know, what do you expect from people?

I mean, this speaks like right to my like PTSD of pen shows with a little printed sheet that I would need. So I have asked Myke to participate in this experiment. I have built my, I have built my kit. I've not posted it on Instagram.

I'll do that probably next. One of my next Instagram updates, we'll build this kit out. Make sure we'll share it out there. But I had, I like the restrictions of these types of things.

And we could do this, you know, over again next week. And I would probably pick different things. But it's like, okay, what mood am I in at the time that I'm trying to build this kit? Like, what am I feeling?

What am I enjoying? Do I want to have a theme to the kit? And that's what I landed on, Myke. So I don't know if you can tell just by my handwritten descriptions of the pens that I'm using.

But there is a little bit of a theme here in that they're all kind of shiny, silvery metal. So number one, we're taking the Spoke Rohde Groove Polyblaze. I may have talked about this a lot at the beginning of the show. This is my favorite Spoke product.

This is the pen. And this might be my single most used pen over the last couple months in any category. Okay. It goes with me everywhere. It's pocketable. It's portable. It has a great Jetstream refill.

I love the look. I love the style. I carry it with me everywhere. This is the pen that got me in trouble at Uniball saying, why aren't you carrying a Uniball pen?

I said, au contraire. Mont frère. Mont frère. It has the Uniball Jetstream. We built it because we love the Jetstream refill. So, yeah. Did you say suck it after you said that?

I didn't. I feel like that would have been a good moment for a suck it, but I understand why you maybe wouldn't want to do that because you were being corporate Brad that day. It was literally within the first two minutes that I walked through the door that I was meeting.

That would be setting a tone, wouldn't it? I was meeting my contact and then someone happened to be walking by and saw the pen in my shirt and said something like right from the jump. And I was like, yeah, we're going to hold off on this one. But I did dig in on the refill.

So I wonder if like, because that was my initial urge. I wonder if in that situation, if I would have actually said that, you know, I feel like I wouldn't, but also it felt like the obvious thing to say. So I don't know. I don't know. So that's the pen.

That's the standard pen I'm going with. For the pencil, I thought about another spoke. But once I kind of had a broader look at this, because I do use the spoke model for is my favorite spoke model mechanical pencil and probably one of my favorite mechanical pencil period.

You know what matches this spoke roadie very, very well is the Rotring 600 in silver, which is my one and only Rotring. It's the silver barrel. It's 0.5 millimeter. It's got the great knurling. And it's just, it's just the goat of, of mechanical pencils.

It just is. As much as I love so many other mechanical pencils, this is number one. And like number two is pretty far down the list. So it's, it's that good. The fountain pen, I went with a pen that I raved about last week in the Pilot Murex.

So I really set up this kit to be the shiny metal titanium steel looking kit to where I, I don't know this. I'm pretty happy with the results of this combination of three pens. So with the Pilot Murex, I always use the Pilot blue black cartridges in them.

You know, I might have to, I don't have this currently inked up, but this kit has gotten me inspired to use all three of these pens. Make sure I'm carrying them, using them regularly. Not just the spoke pen, which I use all the time. So the case was my biggest challenge, I think.

Because like in Sam's post with the Lookout, it's like, well, I could just use the Lookout. It's a standard three pen case. But I tend not to, so I thought of this as something I want to carry around, like that I was mobile with. And, you know, leaving the house with, going places with.

So I tend not to look at, use the Lookout for that. I tend to use the Lookout if I'm putting it in another bag and carrying that other bag. But I won't carry necessarily the Lookout just by itself. So I thought I might use the Tallulah.

Again, back to your knock naming of products. So that was a two pen case with a zip carry and it's thinner. And that would work for this. And I really thought about that.

But then I remembered I have this great Superior Labor case. It's called their Wallet case. I think it's called the Pen and Wallet case. It's a very, see, they have very normal names, Myke.

Why can't they call things the Tallulah? And then I would know, I would know more what they are. Although Pen and Wallet is pretty descriptive. But the Pen and Wallet case from Superior Labor.

This I bought when we were together at Wonder Pens on our Toronto trip in what, like 2019, 2018, something like that. I bought this case then. I still love it. It has three pen slots on the interior.

It's got a couple little slots for cards. It zips closed completely. I can fit it in a pocket, you know, fit it in like a shorts pocket or a jeans pocket very easily. It is very strong and durable and I love it.

And that is my kit. I'm so happy with this kit. I might just run this kit for like the rest of the year, like, and just kind of make it my portable writing kit with the pencil, the fountain pen and the standard pen. And I'll have to throw in some little note cards or something in here to add to it.

But yeah, I'm very happy. All right. Do you want mine? I don't really have a theme. Let's go. Yeah, absolutely. I just picked what I like.

So that's a theme. Pen, standard pen. I'm doing the same as you. Cortex brand. Mark 1. That's a good color. Black or the blue.

Like, I'm not going to lie. Well, okay. I have the blue. The blue is my, in my heart, you know, like the black is for everyone. The blue was for me.

Yes. Gotcha. You know, that's my favorite one. Earlier, you mentioned the spoke roadie groove polyblaze as the writing implement that you have used the most recently. Mine is the Studio Neat Mark III mechanical pencil. Fascinating. I don't understand. I cannot get enough of this pencil.

Yep. I just, I use it every single day. I have it on my desk. It like just nestles up against my sidekick notepad. And it is what I use to take the majority of notes that I'll make it a day.

Yeah. Love it. That's, so the best products I find are the ones you keep grabbing, but you can't totally explain to someone else why. I can't explain to you what it is that I like about it. I just really, really do. Like it just is very pleasurable to use.

But like it doesn't have the bells and whistles of like a Kuro Toga, right? Like it's not like it's doing something special. It is a mechanical pencil. Like that's what it is.

But I think there's just the simplicity, how comfortable it is to hold, like the overall size and weight. I don't, I just love it. I really love it. Yep. For my fountain pen, I've decided to go like a little wild with it because I feel like I would need that.

Because I kind of imagined this as like a desert island kind of scenario. Yeah. You know? Yeah. So I went with the Platinum 3776 Galaxy Starlight, preferably with the Tokyo Station pen stack nib that I have in it. This pen is very famous in the lore of the pen addict.

And we haven't heard about this pen in a while. We've been through a lot together. You've been through a lot. The nib broke immediately.

Took a long time to get a new one sent from Japan. Then I chipped the Urushi. And now it's got this behemoth stack nib inside of it. It's just good times, man.

Yeah. So the other favorite product category is, you know, aside from like what we're talking about with the Mark 3, where it's just something you pick up and you don't know why. It's products with a story. Right? Yeah. Like products with a story that are meaningful. Like that's...

I mean, plus this pen I bought to celebrate Real AFM's Sith Anniversary. And so it already had a story before I bought it. I bought it from Choosing Keeping. Yeah. And yeah. Love this pen so much.

And it is actually one of the pens which is always in my Sinclair. It is one of the pens that I mentioned in the previous episode of not being inked right now. And that makes me sad. Gotcha. Gotcha. Gotcha. And so you mentioned the Sinclair.

That's what you're carrying it in. Well, yes. See, I'm an OG, right? So I have the Nocco Sinclair. Which one do you use?

Which color? The brown one, I think. Brown and violet. Coffee and violet. No, no, no, no. I have the black one. I have the black one on my desk.

The... Aqua? No, I think it's the one with the... Is it the one with the special material? So there's a black wax canvas. I think I had the black wax canvas one.

Yeah, and Aqua Interior. Yeah. Yeah. That's the one I got. Yeah. Yeah. Because the brown one was the one I bought for myself. And then the black one, I don't remember how I got it.

Whether you gave it to me or it was a Kickstarter award or something, I don't remember. Yeah. That was a Kickstarter one, which you probably did back. Yeah. And so that's... I use that one. I'm sure the Rickshaw ones are great.

I've just never used one. Sure, sure, sure. You know I'm an OG. Yeah. Same, same. That's why. I was looking for one of my OG Tallulah cases just when I was thinking about this. One of my favorite products we ever made, complete digression, is the Tallulah Clay and Sunshine we did for Panatic 19.

That might have been Toronto, New York. And it's just that clay and sunshine material was not a color that I thought would ever work together. And it's turned out to be just one of the best of all time. Oh, man. I forgot about the Tallulah.

Now I'm looking at it. Yeah. Yep. Yep. So I was actually looking for that. That's what I was thinking I wanted to carry for this little segment here. But we want the Superior Labor case.

So yeah. Really good stuff. I love these little thought experiments. If y'all have more that, you know, we've done different things. We've had price limit games that we've played. We've had, you know, pick one ink and one pen and one paper, like the kit kind of games that we've had.

So I love doing this kind of stuff. And if y'all have any more that y'all want us to set up, let us know. Be happy to oblige. Because it gets me thinking about things a little bit differently.

How it, because I have to pick three things and they, I kind of want them to work together and what is my concept here. So it's, it's fun to do. So if you would like to send those in, I actually have a great way that you could do it.

Yeah. Go to penaddictfeedback.com and you can, you can submit these things there. You can give us all kinds of questions, all kinds of follow-up. Go to penaddictfeedback.com. Fill in the form.

Let us know. You can also go to penaddict.com to see Brad's writing. You can go to spokedesign.com to please buy his products. You can find Brad online as penaddict on all the social platforms and over at twitch.tv slash penaddict streaming three times a week. I am iMyke.

I am YKE. Please go to cortexbrand.com and buy your products from there as well. Support your neighborhood podcasters. Thank you to ShipStation and Pen Chalet for their support of this week's episode. But as always, from our heart, thank you for listening to the show.

We'll be back next time. Until then. Say goodbye, Brad. Goodbye, Brad.

[[Category:Podcast Transcripts]]
[[Category:The Pen Addict Podcast Transcript]]

The Pen Addict 560/transcript

2026-06-23T16:00:00Z

PencilBot: fixed spelling

{{Infobox podcast transcript
| name = The Pen Addict
| number = 560
| title = Dear LAMY,
| date = April 19th, 2023
| hosts = [[Brad Dowdy]] 
[[Myke Hurley]]
| guests =
| link = [https://www.relay.fm/penaddict/560 Episode 560]
| audiolink = [https://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/traffic.libsyn.com/secure/thepenaddict/The_Pen_Addict_560.mp3 Audio Episode 560]
| length = 55
}}

'''Myke Hurley:''' From RelayFM, this is The Pen Addict, episode 560. Today's show is brought to you by ExpressVPN and Pen Chalet. We'll tell you about those a little bit later on in the show. My name is Myke Hurley and I'm joined by my friend Brad Dowdy. Hi Brad, how are you?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' You're gonna tell us about us right now, huh Myke?

'''Myke Hurley:''' What's this energy?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I don't know. Where are we today? It's a podcast about pens, why shouldn't I be energized? Like you said, we're gonna talk about our sponsors later, I felt like we're gonna talk about us now.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Right, right, okay. I'm just checking, just doing a vibe check on you, you know? Just wanna make sure who I'm dealing with today.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Myke and I always have like a pre-game and then I tend to throw them a curveball by the time the show launches and that's just kind of my move these days.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Perfectly normal, you know? We're chit-chatting, how are you? How was your evening? You know, like, oh, by the way, did you remember this thing we're gonna do? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm like, alright, you've got your recording going? He's like, yep, I'm all ready. I'm like, ready to start? Yes, we start. And he's like, yo, what up? I'm gonna punch you in the face. You know? This is what I'm dealing with these days. I don't know what's going on. We're in a new era of the show where it's your villain era. You're in your antagonist era.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Oh, no. I am never in a villain era. I mean, maybe once in a while.

'''Myke Hurley:''' No one would ever say, you know what? People would say that I'm in the villain era for, you know, making you feel this way. No one's ever gonna be like, oh, Brad Dowdy, he's the villain.

== Lamy pens discussion ==

'''Brad Dowdy:''' That's right, that's right. Although, I do get up into Lamy again today, so we have that to look forward to at least.

'''Myke Hurley:''' You're in your Lamy era. So, last week's show, we had Enigma Stationery as a sponsor. They're not sponsoring this week's show, but they sent one of the Mark 1s to me. It didn't arrive in time, so I just wanted to do, you know, I want to make good on the fact that I had nothing to say about the Enigma Mark 1 Special Edition on last week's episode. I have it, and it's kind of stupendous. Like, it is so good looking. They did, everybody involved did a wonderful job. And I know what you mean now, because last time you said it had a different texture, right? Yes. And I was like, I didn't want to correct you, because I thought it might have been like the one that we did for RelayFM hosts this year. Because that Cerakote had a kind of an additive added into it, and it gave it kind of a shine. But this is more than that. Right. Okay. So, I'm not crazy. No, you're not. And Dan actually confirmed it's Cerakoted as normal, but it has a coating because of the glitter that they put into it. So, like, it is actually finished differently. So, it has a rougher, but not in about, like, it has a texture. There's just more of a texture going on.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. It's smooth and shiny, but it's not, like, polished glassy. It's hard to delineate between those descriptions when you're trying to, like, physically describe the feel of something. Yeah. Yeah. I was using it on stream yesterday, just writing some notes, and I actually got an email when I was done. Because I didn't really, I was just writing, and I wasn't talking about the pen. I just picked it up to write these notes on my email. What was that pen you were using? I need to know what that pen was. Yeah. It's a knockout. It's a knockout.

'''Myke Hurley:''' So, I think there are still some available. I'll put our link in the chat. So, it's been a stalwart on my desk here. It's been really good. I want to talk about a couple of products throughout our episode today.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' One of them that I'm finding interesting more so from an idea than as a, like, necessarily something I want. But, you know, I've long been a fan of Black Wings. I was a volume subscriber for a long time. I'm no longer a Black Wings subscriber. I actually hadn't bought any newer Black Wings since one of the era's models came out a year or two ago. But I always follow them, right? Because I think they do interesting stuff. So, now they've, for a while, they've been doing Black Wings Lab pencils where they will make just some different types of features on the pencils, whether it's a different type of finish or a different type of artwork or some different type of, you know, ideas that they're putting out in smaller batches and they're calling it Labs. Well, now they have a Black Wings Labs notebook. So, I caught this on Instagram and scrolled through my feed and I was like, wait a minute. Is this a, like, cut-proof cover on this notebook? That's immediately what I saw when I saw this cover. So, you're familiar with, like, those cutting boards, right?

== Cutting board and blade purchase ==

'''Myke Hurley:''' I just bought one yesterday. My first cutting board, I bought one and a blade and all that kind of stuff. Yeah. I want to be able to do more prototyping, like, easily with paper products. So, I went and bought a bunch of stuff yesterday.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. So, it's not. So, spoiler alert, it's not that. It looks like it. It does look like it. But there was a product, I believe it was on Kickstarter a couple years ago, that was a cutting mat cover notebook, which I never ever backed that. But, like, that kind of stuff is cool to me, right? But, anyway, the look of this one was a knockout. I really like this bright blue and white look. The interior of the notebook is, honestly, like, this is a labs edition of something not particularly interesting to me. It's just basically a blank notebook with stencils, right? So, we have had lots of products over the years, if you've followed stationery at all, and you're into, like, notebooks and paper and what you can do with different layouts on papers. You get a blank notebook, and then you can have, you know, four or five different line type inserts.

'''Myke Hurley:''' They're like these clear sheets that are very heavily printed, and the paper is thin enough that if you lay the sheets underneath the page that you're working on, you can see, like, lines or a grid through the page. So, you can, like, you know, they're using, they have some videos on their Instagram. I'm watching one now as you speak to me, where they're, like, mixing and matching them to do, like, a couple of different layouts and stuff. And I will say this is very clever. Right. Like, I think that this is a good-looking notebook. Like, I actually really dig the design. I dig the stitching on the outside. I dig how thick it is that they put the little elastic to put the pencil onto the spine. Like, that's cool.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' The pencil loop is great.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah. And I like that, in general, like, this is different. This isn't just, like, hey, we made a notebook. Like, they put some thought into it. Whether this works for you or not, like, for me, this feels fiddly, right? Like, to have to have these plastic sheets and, like, putting them in and out. Like, I would just like it to be grid. But this is, like, I don't know. This feels like a really nice, like, hey, if you're already doing some, like, fun journaling kind of stuff, this is, like, that kind of process for you. Right? Like, this is, like, a fiddly, involved, like, meditative thing where we're going to give you all the stuff and you can go ahead and, like, make it your own. I like it for that. But this is something I was saying. Like, it doesn't excite me for me. But I like it from a product design perspective that they didn't just make a notebook. Like, they put some thought into it, whether it works for you or not.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I completely agree. We're very much on the same page here. Like, I have no desire to order one of these, like, for myself to use, right? But I want this to exist. I want Blackwing Labs to do more paper stuff. Like, I think paper is really, really hard. Like, you and I can talk about that. We've talked about it a bunch. We're actually going to talk about it more later in the show. But there's not a ton of experimentation in the paper world. And while this isn't, by any stretch, extreme, like, experimentation. It's, in fact, it's kind of basic. But the idea that they actually put a lot of thought into this and a lot of design into this, I think. And it came out very, very well. Well, this just makes me anxious to see more from them, which is why I put this in here. It's like, this really caught my eye just from the aesthetics. And then I like that this is, they're making a note that it's the first notebook in the Lab series. The one con I have, or in the negative side of the ledger, the name.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' They name the products by the date of release. So the name of this notebook, if I have to tell you what lab notebook this is, it's 041823.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I mean, I don't have a problem. Okay, since I understand what you're saying. It's not a good product name. I don't have a problem with it if it's, like, only expected to be a limited run thing and they're, like, testing it. Right? Like, if this is popular and people like it, they're not going to call it 041823 forever. Right? Like, it will get a name. You're right. You know? Yeah. But, like, at this point, there isn't really a need to, like, go through the work of also naming the thing. You're right. If they're only going to make 150 of them all, or, you know, probably 1,000, 2,000, whatever. Right? But it doesn't feel necessary. You're right on that. I agree.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yes. If this becomes a product line, that is no longer the name. It is now, you know, whatever they decide to call it. Yeah.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Because, like, you know how hard it is to name things. I do. I do. If you're only ever going to make a limited run of something, having to come up with an inventive name as well as doing all the product design work, it's like, oh, my God. Come on.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. Fair enough. I think that's how you can get away with it, with the lab series. Just call it that. And then if it becomes a thing, it gets promoted into a real name, real name and design.

'''Myke Hurley:''' It would be super cool, though, if they made that front cover like a cutting board. There's absolutely zero reason to do it, but it would just be cool.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I would order it if it was that. Like, I don't need it, but I would get it just because I like cutting boards and cutting mats and stuff like that. So it's pretty neat. You are pretty limited notebook sizes with, like, those cutting mats. It's like, yeah, you can only do so much with a small one, but, hey, maybe it's, you know, like with your washi tape and stickers and, like, journaling set up. Like, I think it would probably work that size. So pretty cool. All right. That's not our only experiment this week, Myke.

== ChatGPT and AI tools ==

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Chat GPT. I know you're a big fan, according to Cortex, right? Like, you and Gray talked about the AIs taking over the world.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I'll tell you how I'm coming around, right? Like, because here's my thing with AI, right? And there's a couple of episodes of Cortex. They were last year. A lot has changed. I still feel very similar about people using AI to make art. But, like, I think that it is bad. Like, to simplify my thoughts there, there's, like, multiple hours of content in Cortex if you want to get a bigger, like, explanation from me. But where I've started to kind of, like, draw the line for me is people using AI tools to enhance the work that they're already doing.

'''Myke Hurley:''' And or, like, it's for you. So, like, Microsoft have a bunch of tools now that they're working, right? Where they're, like, you know, you get an email. It's like, summarize this email for me. It's like taking out busy work. But the idea of people using, you know, like, there was that thing over the last few days where there was, I'm sure you've seen this, where there was a song that was made that sounded like Drake and The Weeknd. That's wrong to me. Like, fundamentally wrong. Right. You know? But the idea of somebody, it's like, I just, I'll probably talk about this on an episode of Cortex in the future. But, like, we're working on a new kind of subproduct right now. And I used ChatGPT to help me come up with a name. Gotcha. Yeah. And it saved me six hours of work going through thesauruses instead, you know?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Right, right. I mean, there's benefits. Like, this is a whole, this is why you have the Cortex podcast.

'''Myke Hurley:''' But you teased me, so you got me on my high horse and off we go.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I did that. I knew what I was getting into when I did that is just to get on you, just in the general sense. So, like, I'm not into, like, much of the AI. I obviously follow all that from a technological perspective and, like, a world-changing perspective. You kind of need to be aware of this stuff. But, like, I don't, you know, I don't dabble or do anything with it. So, the idea came up. It's like, well, how could, you know, what would ChatGPT think about the Panatic podcast or things like that? So, I was wondering how this works. So, I signed up, created an account. And I asked ChatGPT. I said, explain to Lamy why they should make an orange Lamy2000. So, this was an idea just to have a little bit of stationery fun with ChatGPT.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I really like that you can't do that, by the way.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' What?

'''Myke Hurley:''' ChatGPT. That I can't say it? Every single time you stumble the first letter. I do. It's incredible. I do.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I want it to be GPT. So, yeah, it's tough. It's tough. So, chat, yeah, the chat AI. We'll just call it chat AI. So, anyway, ChatGPT. So, I just wanted to have some fun and do something silly with it. So, I said, hey, you know, help me explain to Lamy why they should make an orange Lamy2000. Because we were just talking about this last episode, right? Just, you know, all the different things. So, I asked ChatGPT the question. And I'm going to read to you the response, okay? I didn't put this in there because I didn't want to spoil it for you. So, it says, hello, Lamy. As an AI language model, I'd like to explain why an orange Lamy2000 would be a great addition to your product lineup. First of all, the Lamy2000 is already an iconic and beloved pen that has been in production since 1966. Its timeless design, high-quality materials, and exceptional performance make it a favorite among pen enthusiasts and professionals alike. Now, imagine this classic pen in a bold, eye-catching orange color. This would be a unique and exciting addition to the Lamy2000 lineup, offering customers the opportunity to express their individuality and style through their writing instruments. Orange is a color that evokes energy, enthusiasm, and creativity, which are all qualities that are important to many people, especially those who use pens regularly for work, study, or personal expression. Additionally, an orange Lamy2000 would stand out from the crowd, making it easy to spot and identify, which could be helpful in busy or chaotic environments. Overall, an orange Lamy2000 would be a great choice for customers who are looking for a high-quality pen that is also unique and stylish. It would also be a great opportunity for Lamy to showcase its creativity and willingness to take risks in design and color choices. I hope this explanation helps to convince you to consider adding an orange Lamy2000 to your product lineup. Thank you for considering my thoughts. Sign me up.

'''Myke Hurley:''' It's a good email. You might as well just send it. My question to you is, do you know, did you use ChatGPT like 3 or 3.5 for this?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I just went into OpenAI, hit the ChatGPT button, sign up for an account, hit ChatGPT. You didn't pay them any money, right? No, and just typed it into the text box.

'''Myke Hurley:''' So I've ended up, at the moment, I'm using the paid one for a month because I thought I needed it for something Federico was doing, but I didn't. So I paid for a month by accident. So I've just gone in and asked ChatGPT4, which is a better model, the same question. Would you like to hear the answer? Yeah. It's long. It's actually still going. It's been going since you started. It's done now. All right, here we go. Dear Lamy, I am writing to propose the idea of adding an Orange Lamy 2000 to your esteemed line of fountain pens. As a brand known for its innovative design, quality, and precision, introducing an Orange Lamy 2000 would not only bring a fresh new look to the collection, but also cater to a wider audience. Here are a few reasons why this would be a good idea. There are six reasons. Okay. Okay. One, expanding the color palette. The Lamy 2000 is a classic and iconic pen, but its color options have been rather limited. By introducing an Orange version, you will cater to the tastes and preferences of an even broader audience, attracting more customers and collectors to your brand. Two, symbolism and cultural significance. Orange is a vibrant and dynamic color that represents creativity, enthusiasm, and warmth. These qualities resonate with the Lamy brand, and introducing an Orange Lamy 2000 will make a strong statement about the company's commitment to fostering creativity and innovation. I don't understand how it drew that comparison, but it did. Three, seasonal peel. Orange is a versatile color that can evoke feelings of both warmth and freshness, making it an ideal color for all seasons. It is particularly well suited to autumn and spring, where its warm tones reflect the changing leaves and blooming flowers. Four, increased visibility. The Lamy 2000 is a pen that stands out due to its timeless design and superior functionality. An Orange edition would make the pen even more noticeable, grabbing attention in pen displays and attracting potential customers who may have not considered a Lamy pen before. Five, collaboration opportunities. An Orange Lamy 2000 could open up opportunities for collaborations with other brands, artists, or designers, fostering a sense of community and innovation within the industry. I know a guy. Exactly. And six, limited edition appeal. By offering an Orange Lamy 2000 as a limited edition, you can create a sense of urgency and exclusivity, driving sales and interest from collectors and pen enthusiasts alike. In conclusion, adding an Orange Lamy 2000 to your collection would not only provide a fresh, vibrant option for consumers, but also strengthen your brand image and attract new customers. With its symbolic meanings, seasonal appeal, and potential for collaboration, an Orange Lamy 2000 is a fantastic opportunity for both growth and innovation within the Lamy brand.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' That's pretty great. They're good, right? Yeah, and it definitely stepped it up with your version, a little bit more in depth. I like how the chatbot plays up Lamy's historic, you know, oh, you're so great, Lamy.

'''Myke Hurley:''' It's very good at flattering.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. And imagine if you did this, how even greater you would be.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yep.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So, that was our fun little experiment. We'll send these off to Lamy. Just kidding. They're not going to do it anytime soon. But, yeah, maybe we can eventually get the chat GPT version of the Lamy 2000 out there for everyone. I think everyone would be interested in the Orange Lamy. So, let's make this happen.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Sounds wonderful. All right. This episode is brought to you by our friends over at ExpressVPN. I don't know if you've heard, but streaming services that are out there, some like Netflix and others, often have tens of thousands of shows available. But depending on where you're located, you only get to see a small selection of what's available. It's almost like paying for a gym membership, then only using the treadmill, even though there's all these other machines available to you if you just went and tried them out. That's where ExpressVPN comes in. When you use ExpressVPN, you can change your location, where it thinks you are, and you can then change what streaming services is, where they're thinking that you're located by doing this. They have almost 100 different server locations, so you can discover thousands of new shows to watch on services like Netflix, BBC iPlayer, YouTube, and more. It's super easy. You just open up the app and you select, like, which location. So, I do this when I'm traveling mostly. So, if I'm, say, in America and I want Netflix to think that I'm back in the UK, so I could carry on watching Modern Family, for example, which is available on Netflix here, if that was the show that I was watching at the time, but it's not available in the US, I wouldn't be able to access it. So, I can open ExpressVPN. I can say, change my location to the UK. It will just connect for me. Then I reload Netflix. Super easy. You just open the app, select your location, tap a button to connect, and refresh the page to get access. There are tons of reasons to choose ExpressVPN over other VPNs. It has blazing fast speeds to mean that you can stream in HD with zero buffering. It's compatible with all your devices, your phones, laptops, smart TVs, and more. And ExpressVPN has the added benefit of encrypting your data so you can browse the web securely. So, make a smart choice. Stop paying full price for streaming services and only getting access to a fraction of their content. Get your money's worth today at expressvpn.com. That is expressvpn.com. ExpressVPN.com. To get an extra three months of ExpressVPN for free. Our thanks to ExpressVPN for the support of this show and all of RelayFM.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' All right. I've got a shout-out of the week. Yes. That is a repeat shout-out, but for good reason. So, I have given the Snowy Studio, my friend Clarissa, at the Snowy Studio on Instagram a shout-out before because I think they're an awesome person and they have an awesome Instagram account. But specifically, I ran across a post that they just put live for a silent auction for earthquake in Turkey. So, this is to support, you know, the big tragedy in that region of the world. The earthquake was devastating and this is a way to help raise money for that. So, I wanted to shine a light on the silent auction. There are one, two, three, four, five, six different packages you can bid on for the silent auction. All of the rules and instructions are in Clarissa's post at the Snowy Studio on Instagram. We'll have a link in the show notes directly to this post so you can go see. There's Rickshaw goods, Franklin Kristoff goods, some Galen leather products, all kinds of stuff. Like, I can't even go. There's a platinum president that's been customized. The exterior, you know, added artwork onto that. That's good looking. Yeah, it's some cool stuff. So, go check this out. I wanted to shout this out because, you know, like, the world we live in, like, the, unfortunately, like, a lot of these, like, just devastating regional disasters and any type of, you know, terrible things that are going on in our world, they just kind of get pushed to the side when the next awful things happen. It's an unfortunate state of our world right now. So, it's nice to not forget about the people that are still in need, and I know these organizations in Turkey will greatly appreciate all of the support. So, thank you, Clarissa, for putting this together, and y'all go check it out over at the Snowy Studio on Instagram.

'''Myke Hurley:''' If you're interested, considering that we slightly jumped the shark today, I have the opportunity for us to jump the shark completely. As I have asked ChetGPT, explain to Brad Dowdy why you should bring back knock note cards. Oh, no. And I have a six-point plan if you're interested, or, you know, it's up to you, really.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I mean, let's do it because we're going to talk. So, one of my topics today, let's save it for the topic. So, this will be our lead into the topic. Hold that thought because we just have a couple of links I want to get through real quick. And that will be the perfect segue into the topic I want to talk about. So, that will be fun. All right. There was a Kura Toga Dive website update that a friend of the show, Evan, sent to me. So, we have talked about the dive ad nauseum here. We've shared the dive website because it's really, really interesting how much work they put in to create a website for a product that was hard for people to buy. Okay. But I just wanted to point this out because if you are interested in the dive, we mentioned that they had two new colors. Actually, they have the color names on here, which I didn't think we had before on the U.S. site. So, Twilight Orange, which is a great name. And then the unfortunately named Dense Green. That's a name choice that we're going to go with there.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I'm just going to go out on a limb and say that Dense Green is not the name. Okay.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Probably not. So, what I find interesting is – so, I follow the Kura Toga Dive and the reason why it keeps coming up here is because I find the idea of this product to be so interesting. That this is literally like Black Wings Labs. We're talking about the labs. This was Uniball's kind of labs idea, but they just went full bore right into the mainstream market. But this was definitely a labs type product, and they found success with it as best as I can tell, right? With the immediate sellout of the original blue version, whether that was a telling piece of data or whether that was a manipulated short inventory mad rush FOMO type of situation. So, to be determined. But they've backed it up quickly, well, a year later with two new colors. So, this is going to keep going. So, that's why I bring this up, that I am going to continue to follow the Kura Toga Dive. I think it's like – it's not a great product in usability, but it's a great product for like design and innovation and creativity. Like a literal labs project, right? Like I don't want to use it necessarily, but I want it to exist, and I want Uni to continue to experiment because it's kind of like – it's an engineering marvel, but I don't know that it's like super usable. But that's okay. Like this is fun. These are the type of products that I love. I love to experiment. I love to play with. So, I will continue to keep an eye on the Kura Toga Dive and everything that's going up with this.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Of course you will.

== Coronation Ink and calligraphy ==

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. That's kind of my thing. So, next up, Myke, did you read about the Coronation Inc.?

'''Myke Hurley:''' I had no idea there was a Coronation Inc.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I had no idea either. So, I was sent this link that was in the telegraph.co.uk. So, the telegraph over there in the UK.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Mm-hmm.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' The Coronation Invitation Special Inc. And it's a little misleading, shockingly.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So, the Coronation Invitation is written in special new royal blue ink. Calligraphers have been putting finishing touches to more than 2,000 personalized invitations to the ceremony. So, they're handwriting 2,000 invitations. And it wasn't like they worked with a company to make this ink. They worked with a calligrapher who mixed their own ink. Okay. To use for this, which is great. Like, that's fantastic. Yeah. That's how it should be. But it's kind of like the way we read it as stationery fans. It's like, ooh, who made the ink for them to use for this? Well, it's not like that. It's definitely more of a custom thing. So, I did – I'm going to read you this little bit here. And this – I thought this was pretty interesting. So, it's Jenny Collier of London Scribes Calligraphers, which has worked for the royal household for more than 15 years, selected several high-quality gouache paints with beautifully deep pigments, which she mixed by hand. So, it's a very, very custom ink. I'm thinking of the color as new royal blue, Jenny says. And I think it really sings among the invitations, beautiful heraldry, illustrations, and gilding. Writing each name in traditional italic calligraphy, which is what we specialize in, takes just a few minutes plus drying time of the bespoke mixed ink as well as double-checking every name. So, they're like literally handwriting in calligraphy, italic calligraphy, all of these 2000 invitations. And they said they use simple dip nibs with traditional one-millimeter nibs. And it's quite meditative practice. You just have to be calm while writing to keep a steady hand. Yeah, no doubt. So, anyway, I thought that was interesting to share just the process more than, hey, there's a new, you know, coronation-only ink. Like, this is really more a process.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I'm not surprised they had to bring someone in because King Charles could have got pretty upset.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Like, imagine if King Charles had to write his own invitations.

'''Myke Hurley:''' If the pen wasn't, you know, the pen wasn't doing his thing, he's going to get mad.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, we're going to get the documentary people up in us again if we start talking about it. So, yeah.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Oh, my God, I forgot about that. Would you contribute to wise media's pens? So, funny.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So, anyway, I thought it was just a fun article, more from a general calligraphy sense. And, you know, of course, there's a royal calligrapher. So, yeah. So, that's cool.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I did not get an invitation to the coronation, by the way. You didn't? I didn't.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Nope. I'm sorry. Like, was there a chance? There was probably a chance. Like, I mean, you're like a famous, like, you know, 30 under 30 or, you know. I'm over 30. In the UK. I know. But, like, at the time, like, you're famous. At what time? I don't know. When I was under 30? No, I don't think there was a chance.

'''Myke Hurley:''' But you've always got to keep the faith. You know what I mean?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Cortex. I mean, Cortex, you know. Uh-huh. Using UK printers. Like, I don't know. Maybe they had some hints. I have yet to receive one. Maybe they could print something off. Maybe your printer could, like, you know.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Maybe they haven't finished. They're doing 2,000 of them, so. Okay. There's still time.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' You've got, like, two weeks left.

'''Myke Hurley:''' There's still time. Yeah. I'm just putting it out there. I would love to be there. So, you know, if you miss anybody out there is listening and wants to invite me to the coronation, I would very happily attend.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' All right. All right. And the next time King Charles needs a pen, where might he go looking for it?

'''Myke Hurley:''' He could head on over to Pen Chalet. That's right. He sure could. I mean, they ship international. They have great international shipping. And I bet that Ron and the gang over at Pen Chalet would do a really good job looking after his Ron owners. A hundred percent.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Pen Chalet sell authentic, amazing rollerballs, fountain pens, ballpoints, mechanical pencils, and so much more. You know, when I said that, I got a flashback to that Retro 51, the coffee one again, just now. Okay. This is absolutely unrelated to the Pen Chalet spot, but just like, yeah. But you know what I did see? I'm going to segue this back in again. Did you see the Retro 51 special, the new Pen Chalet special, the Phoenix one? I have not. Let me go look. It's sick. It is heavy metal, man. All right. I don't know if it's called Phoenix, but it looks like a Phoenix. Yeah, it's called Phoenix. There it is. This thing is heavy metal, baby. That's sick. I love it. It's so cool. It goes hard, you know. Yeah. So look out for that one over at Pen Chalet. You can get yourself a wonderful discount because you listen to the show. And I'll tell you how in just a moment. Pen Chalet have all of your favorite brands and they have the products that you're looking for. They're adding new styles of pen every single month. And every couple of weeks, you can find closeout specials and special discounts. And you can get even more special discounts every two weeks because you listen to this show. Pen Chalet, as well as carrying pens and, you know, mechanical pencils and all that kind of fun stuff, they have the accessories that you're looking for as well. Whether you need a carrying case, some ink, maybe you want a converter, whatever it is to help your stationery life shine, Pen Chalet has got it available to you. As Brad mentioned, they do ship internationally and have very reasonable shipping rates. And if you're based in the U.S., you'll get free shipping on orders of over $75. Pen Chalet has low prices on high quality products and offers a 100% satisfaction guarantee. So I want you to go over to penchalet.com, P-E-N-C-H-A-L-E-T.com and click the podcast link at the top of the website and enter the password of Pen Addict for this week's special offer. And to get the code you need to save 10% on anything at any time over at Pen Chalet.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So before we get into the deals, this Phoenix, the flames are raised up off of here. I'm looking through the imagery. There's a bunch of imagery. So it's not like a flat, you know, it's not like a flat imprint on there. The flames are like raised and lifted off the barrel. It's kind of, that's pretty cool. All right. So on our awesome, on our awesome exclusive offers for Pen Addict podcast listeners, there are a bunch of Gioia pens, fountain pens right off the jump. So we have reviewed one or two of this brand on the site, on the Pen Addict before. And Kimberly, I know, has reviewed them and really, really enjoys these pens a lot. Some of her favorites. And there's one in here that's actually kind of one of the more simpler designs of the Gioias. They get a little bit wild with like the different features. But the Capo de Monte looks like right up my alley. It's like this blue-brown swirl acrylic. It's a really great price. These are really great pens and have been thought of very highly by Kimberly in the times that she's reviewed them. Further down the list, there is a Maiora, which I enjoy. So I've reviewed the Maioras before. The Aventus. The price on this Aventus is way more than half off. It's like a crazy price for this beautiful yellow acrylic pen. And then there's a sneaky entrant in here that if you're interested in this pen, I have a feeling you need to go jump on it. There is a Pelican M800 Brown Black in here, which probably does not have many in stock. This was something they did recently. That does not come up very, very often. So this is like one of those sneaky things that when you look at this list that Ron puts together every week, sometimes one of those things jumps in there that shouldn't be in there. And that is one of them. So if you're interested, go check this out.

'''Myke Hurley:''' That's very cool. So go there and check it out for yourself right now. I will just say as a correction for myself, the Tornado, the Phoenix Tornado is awesome, but it is one of the products that the discount does not apply to.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yes. So there are a few limitations. Absolutely.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Sometimes there has to be. But that discount is available on so, so many products, more than you could count. Just go to penshalay.com and click the podcast link at the top of the website and enter the password penaddict to get your hands on the code and to see the special offers that Brad was talking about. Our thanks to Penshalay for their support of this show and RelayFM.

== ChatGPT and NotCo note cards ==

'''Brad Dowdy:''' All right. So I'm going to let you get into the ChatGPT, NotCo, note card situation. But let me set this up a little bit and then I'm going to get you to read this. So I wanted to just do a general conversation. I called it Why Maker Pens? But it's not really like Maker Pens in particular. It's really like makers in the stationery space. But I just called this little topic Why Maker Pens? And this is just like an overview, an idea, a makers 101 type of situation on what I think about when I think about makers. And as someone who makes things and Myke as someone who makes things in the stationery space, I always find this topic very interesting and we get a lot of questions about it. So one of the best products we ever made for NotCo was our note cards. And I've tried to remake them but can't find the paper and then I've not tried to source new paper. But apparently ChatGPT is going to tell me why I should bring these back, right? Well, I would hope so.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I mean, you know, maybe this is the last thing you need to like push you over the edge. Okay. To do it. Again, I have another six point plan.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' They're very big on the... They're like six. Yeah, that must be like the proper number to like get things done.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Some level of SEO marketing has told the model that it needs to create six points. Right. Dear Brad Dowdy, As a dedicated fan of NotCo and your excellent range of pen-related products, I am writing to propose the idea of bringing back the Knock Note cards. These cards were highly appreciated by the writing community for their quality and utility and reintroducing them would not only satisfy existing fans but also attract new customers. Here are several reasons why bringing back Knock Note cards is a fantastic idea. One, high quality materials. I don't understand how that's... But anyway, Knock Note cards were known for their premium paper quality which allow for a smooth and enjoyable writing experience. This quality is essential for fountain pen users as it minimizes feathering and bleed through. By bringing back these note cards, you will reaffirm Knock Co's commitment to providing superior writing materials. Two, convenience and portability. The compact size of Knock Note cards makes them extremely convenient for carrying around and using on the go. They easily fit into pockets, pen cases, or bags, making them perfect for jotting down ideas, to-do lists, and reminders whenever the inspiration strikes. Three, versatility. Knock Note cards are highly versatile catering to a range of uses, including personal and professional settings. They can be used for quick notes, brainstorming sessions, study aids, or even a thank you or greeting cards. Nostalgia. This is for nostalgia and customer loyalty. What? I know. By bringing back Knock Note cards, you will appeal to the nostalgia and loyalty of long-time Knock Co customers. This will not only rekindle their love for the brand, but also encourage them to spread the word to friends and family, driving new sales and interest. Five, expanding the product line. Reintroducing the Knock Note cards will add variety to your current product lineup. There isn't one. And provide a complimentary option to your existing pen cases and other accessories. Oh, okay. Knows all about you. Six. This is the final one. Customization opportunities. There's definitely a similar flow here. Yeah, yeah. Knock Note cards could be easily customized with unique colors, patterns, or limited edition designs to make them even more attractive to customers. This will also open up opportunities for collaborations with other brands, artists, or designers, fostering a sense of community and innovation within the stationery industry. In conclusion, bringing back Knock Note cards would be a great decision for both Knock Co. and its customers. With their high-quality materials, versatility, and appeal to customer loyalty, these Note cards can contribute to the continued success and growth of your brand.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Okay, ChatGPT, you're just a big old butt kisser, aren't you? Yep. Yeah, so after about like the fifth one of these, we'd go, oh, yeah, this is like very, very cut and pasty. Yeah. In conclusion, but it's pretty funny. Like, I thought that was pretty good. So, yeah, ChatGPT says, bring back the note cards. So, maybe one day, Myke, maybe one day. I will never say never to that product because it was such a good product. One of my favorites near and dear to my heart, like this topic, Myke, of makers and maker pens. So, the question I asked myself is, how do you define maker? And it's kind of impossible, right? Yep. Like, to give a real clear definition of maker. And I'm just talking about it in the context of the stationery space, right? There's all kinds of different ways we could go this, but just in the stationery space. It's definitely a know-it-when-you-see-it situation, right? Like, you kind of know. Like, you kind of know who would be categorized as a maker, who is, you know, a brand, who is, you know, different moving parts in the stationery business. So, the makers, to me, what I think about are people who bring their own personal ideas into, like, products, right? That they're making their ideas come to life in what they want to see from products. That's kind of my general classification of a maker. You know, there's no boardroom meetings involved. There's no public shareholders, you know, like some of the big Japanese brands are publicly traded, like Pilot and, you know, Sailor's Parent Company. You know, we're not trying to make the shareholders happy. A maker is someone who has a belief in their ideas and wants to see them made, right? So, a lot of makers are just singular, right? Just one-person shops. Like, we just did a Meet Your Maker, a series. And this is probably why this topic's in my head, is where we're doing a series on the blog that Caroline is writing for. It's called Meet Your Maker. So, like, Renee from Scriptorium, like, that was our last feature. A lot of these makers are just one-person shops. Like, she makes pens at her house, on her lathe, in her workshop, and does wonderful products. Or you can have makers like my friend Blake from The Paper Mind, who, you know, we're going to talk about paper later, but, like, we're not making paper, right? But he's designing notebooks to fit around certain paper and making these notebooks into the things that he wants to see out there in the world and things that he wants to create. Then you have larger makers in our space. Like, you think, I think of people like Edison Penco, you know, who started small and have grown into, like, big workshops and several employees. Same with Franklin Kristoff. Or even someone like Rickshaw, who has essentially, like, a production shop and they manufacture their own stuff. Like, there's no all-encompassing definition of maker, right? So, like, do you have anything to add to that? Like, it's, you can't strictly define it in black and white terms when it comes to stationery makers, right? There's a big bucket to draw from.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah, definitely. I mean, the maker thing is so complicated, right? Like, do you consider yourself a maker if you don't actually ever physically make?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Right. Right. So, we're going to talk about that a little bit. I have, like, kind of allude to some of that here. Yeah. So, yeah. So, like, the idea of it. So, I guess trying to figure out how to define that, I guess to explore that a little bit more is why people choose to make things. Why do they want to be a maker? And, like, looking at it from my perspective, I've always felt that the best products that people make are opinionated, right? Like, I'm an opinionated design person. I'm not a design one thing for everybody type of person. I'm designing for specific solutions and in specific ways, right? So, like, that's an opinionated product. And I think a lot of makers in our space design products like that. You know, like, when I like a product to take a stand, right? I like a product. I like someone who makes a product to be able to tell me why they chose to make this product, right? Here's what I believe in as my product and why. Why I believe in these things. And it could just be, like, a technical design, right? Yeah. Why do they believe, like, their technical design is great and they want to see it come to life? It could be a creative design, right? It could be a very much more artistic design or exterior elements, right, in the maker space. Someone's putting their ideas out there in a very, like, straightforward and direct manner, right? This is what I believe in. And, you know, I've always said is, like, this is what I want to use. I hope you like it, too, right? That was always my philosophy with Nock, right? This is what I want. I hope you like it, too. But I'm not designing for everybody, right? I'm not going to change a design to meet the needs of every user, right? And, like, maybe I don't know if that's wrong or things like that. But, like, I think a lot of makers, like, think the same way. It's, like, they want to put their idea and their vision of the products out there. And I think that's great.

== Maker identity and product design ==

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So, yeah. Like, these maker goods are not for everyone. Like, we make pens and pencils at Spoke Design that I will flatly tell people, like, this might not be for you, right? Like, there's reasons why people might not like our pens, but there's reasons why people actually love these things.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Do you think that that is a thing that is inherent to makers or just to certain types, right? Like, I feel like there are a lot of maker fountain pens that have very similar body designs, for example. Because I think maybe what you're driving at is similar to me, where, like, we are opinionated makers. But I don't know if that is a universal thing.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Right. So, the way I see it with what you're getting to, say, let's take a general cigar-shaped fountain pen. Yep. So, how does a maker differentiate themselves between the next cigar-shaped fountain pen? Well, that comes into materials, right? Like, so there's material choices. There are nib choices. There are external option choices. Do you design the pen, you know, cap flush? Does the pen cap, you know, stick out a little bit? Do you have a straight section or a concave section? Do you have a roll stop element to this pen? What is the differentiating factor? And I do think that is a hang-up for some makers to be able to differentiate themselves between others that are making similar things, right? So, that is one of the big challenges of being a maker.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' You know, I talk about in writing this up, specifically, like, what you're talking about with fountain pens, a lot of my favorite makers are the ones who make unique shapes for pens, right? Like, Sean Newton, right? Sean makes some really cool shapes. Like, they're not all for me. I have one Newton fountain pen, but I love looking at Sean's pens, right? Because there's a lot of unique shapes. Now, on the other hand, like, you're looking at material makers, say, like, Carolina Pen Company or Starry Night Resins, you know, you're getting, you know, maybe if they're making their own pens, they're more of a traditional fountain pen shape because that's what's kind of popular right now, right? People, like, want to see a cool material in a standard shape, right? So, there's kind of something out there for everyone as far as that goes. If you like a standard shape but a cool material, like, you can find that. If you want one of these cool materials and some really weird and unique shapes, you can find that too. And then you can also, like, change up the materials, right? Like, you know, Ryan Krusak makes mostly wooden barrel pens or, you know, Ian Schoen makes mostly metal barrel pens, right? And things like that. So, yeah. Like, I, there is a challenge, like, as someone who makes things to set yourself apart from the rest of the crowd, right? That's how you're going to continue to exist as a maker, right? What story are you telling that's different from the other stories, right? So, I think that's important. And then you get into the more designer aspects, which is kind of where I put spoke design and, like, our friends at Studio Neat, right? We design our own products, right? We'll engineer and CAD detail and technically design all these products and then have someone else manufacture the parts and then we will assemble them, right? So, like, I think that's part of being a maker as well. So, that's the design aspect of it. You know, we have unique designs. We have someone else manufacture the bits and bobs, all the parts, and then bring them back in-house for the assembly and, you know, the packaging. And seeing how people who do design work as opposed to, like, pouring the resin, right, which is, like, the very physical work, how designers tackle different problems with, you know, pens and pencils and paper products. You know, how did this designer solve a cat posting issue or what did this designer do for a clip design? I think that's all in, like, the maker realm and that's all, like, a fun part of the process to me. So, what I think, and it's kind of why I put the Blackwing notebook up top, is I think I want to see more, like, notebook makers kind of get into this, like you are, right? How can we solve different problems with paper? Because none of us are making our own paper, right? So, the pen makers, like, you take Carolina Pen Company. Well, Jonathan's, like, literally making the resin that he ends up making the pen from. Like, it's kind of, he's handling a lot of it. Like, if me and you decide to make a notebook, we're not out here, like, you know, getting the pulp and making the paper, like, ourselves. We're not out here, like, some trees. We're not, I know.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Me and you in the back, you know, like.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Right, right. So, but I also consider us to be makers because we have these ideas and we're, you know, putting the effort into making these things come to life because we want to see them exist, right?

'''Myke Hurley:''' This is actually pretty similar to, like, a thing that I am struggling with but trying to, like, deal with is calling myself a product designer.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Mm-hmm.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Like, where's the design? Like, I'm having the idea and I'm sketching it out and I'm, like, this is what I think it could look like but I don't, I'm not putting the thing together. I'm not, like, doing accurate measurements. I'm not in Photoshop, like, putting out the layers. Like, where does the design start and end, you know? Right. But I'm trying to, like, get used to calling myself that but I think it's somewhat similar of, like, what's a maker, right? Mm-hmm.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Mm-hmm.

'''Myke Hurley:''' That's why I don't even really know if I consider myself a maker.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Mm-hmm. See, I do. Like, you make podcasts. Like, the way I define it. Well, for that, I feel like I'm a creator, right? Right.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Like, for the content side, it's weird.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Words are weird, Brad. Yeah, words are weird. Like, I don't like content creator. Like, that's, you know, not one of my favorite terms but, like, I get it. Like, I definitely fall into those categories. But, like, I love using the term maker because I make words on the blog. I make audio. Like, I make video content and I make products, right? And, like, all of that makes, all of that, like, kind of falls into, like, just maker of making things. And, like, I think you can make words too, right? Like, I think you can type and write and do all those things. It's, you know, that's a little bit looser definition. But, like, whenever I have to, like, write bios on, like, social media or things like that, I always write blogger, podcaster, maker. Like, that's just what I, like, put in there is just, like, my general, like, go-to. I don't write, like, stationery content creator, right?

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah, I'm podcaster and product designer.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. So, like, I've never called myself a product designer, though, even though, like, I've designed products and helped design products. Brian on Spoke is more of a product designer than me. Like, he literally, like, engineers out, like, the drawings and everything. Like, he's, like, a legit designer. Like, I couldn't do that type of stuff. But then I'll take, like, the alpha products and, like, break them down and test them and do all that stuff. Like, that's where my role comes in. So, like, it's a fun conversation to have because it's a pretty broad, broad topic. But I kind of wanted to just throw this out there for people to ask questions more or see how they define makers or, you know, what are they looking for for makers? You know, like, I see a ton of pen makers at pen shows now, right? And that's where I tend to do a lot of my shopping at pen shows with people who are making things and coming to these shows because that's sometimes my only chance opportunity to get my hands on the things at these pen shows, right? Where if I want a new Leonardo pen, I know it's going to be great and I can just order it from a retailer, right? Yeah. So, like, I'll skip that and get that later if I want that. But at a pen show is where you can, like, really see these makers. Like, that's a great space, great opportunity to get started with, like, maker goods. Like, and, like, again, like, this is not for everybody, right? Nothing is for everybody. Or not everything is for everybody, I should say. I misspoke there. And, like, if you're interested in learning more about these things, let me know. Like, and we can, like, pick, like, a singular topic and talk about it more. And I think it's good having these meet your maker posts on the blog. And, you know, it's an interesting topic to me because this hobby, the maker space is very prevalent, right? It's on equal footing. Like, at a pen show, it's on equal footing with traditional retail, I would say. So it's pretty cool. And I want to make sure, like, people have a good understanding of makers, like, what they do, why their products are different, what's important about them in the community, you know, why I think it's important to support the makers in the community. And, yeah, I think it's a great topic. So take this as just a general introduction and my general ideas on the maker topic. And if y'all want to hear more, definitely let me know if you have specific maker questions, specific ways to explore. Obviously, you know, we've talked to makers plenty and can always talk to more makers and do interviews. But, like, I want to know specific questions that y'all have about making things or about people who do make things and what to expect. So how can people give us that feedback, Myke?

'''Myke Hurley:''' Go to penaddictfeedback.com and you can send us this feedback in. It's the same place you can go if you want to send us any follow-up or ask TPA questions for us to get to on a future episode of the show. That is at penaddictfeedback.com. If you want to find the show notes for this week's episode, you can go to relay.fm slash penaddict slash 560. You'll also find the links there if you want to send us feedback. There's, like, a button on the page where you can find all of this in the show notes in your podcast app of choice. If you want to find Brad online until the next episode, go to penaddict.com. He is penaddict on Instagram. He is also penaddict on mastodon.social. You can find Brad streaming live three times a week over at twitch.tv slash penaddict. And you can find Brad's products that we were talking about. His make-hood products. Make-hood. Make-hood. Made-hood. Made-hood. Made-hood. Made-hood products over at spokedesign.com. You can find me. I am at imike, I-M-Y-K-E on mike.social. You can also find my products that I help make over at cortexbrand.com. Thank you to ExpressVPN and Pen Chalet for their support of this week's episode. Until next time, say goodbye, Brad.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Goodbye, Brad.

[[Category:Podcast Transcripts]]
[[Category:The Pen Addict Podcast Transcript]]

The Pen Addict 548/transcript

2026-06-23T15:59:46Z

PencilBot: fixed spelling

{{Infobox podcast transcript
| name = The Pen Addict
| number = 548
| title = Emergency Cufflinks
| date = January 25th, 2023
| hosts = [[Brad Dowdy]] 
[[Myke Hurley]]
| guests =
| link = [https://www.relay.fm/penaddict/548 Episode 548]
| audiolink = [https://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/traffic.libsyn.com/secure/thepenaddict/The_Pen_Addict_548.mp3 Audio Episode 548]
| length = 68
}}

'''Myke Hurley:''' From RelayFM, this is The Pen Addict, episode 548, and today's show is brought to you by Squarespace and Pen Chalet. My name is Myke Hurley, I'm joined by Brad Dowdy. Hi Brad. What's up, Myke? Pow, pew, pew, pew, pew, pew. Wow. How we doing today? I'm tired, so I'm a bit strung out this week.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Okay, clearly I'm not, because I'm doing like laser noises. You're like popping off all over the shop. I'm ready to pop off on this podcast today. This podcast is loaded with stuff I want to talk about. Like, we got Lamy News, we got Montegrappa Weirdness, we got Ink Voting, we got Pilot Doing Good Things and Silly Things, we have The Weirdest Pen That Has Crossed My Desk in a While. We got all the things this week, Myke. So, let's start it out with one of our favourite topics here, the Lamy All-Star. And we can't mention the Lamy All-Star without mentioning the Lamy Safari. So, there is a long-running battle, battleground between bloggers, myself versus Anna at the Well-Appointed Desk. I'm Team Lamy Safari. She is Team Lamy All-Star. And we fight every year over who has the best special edition. So, every year, Lamy will do a broad, these are broad releases, right? There's obviously limited editions, like we just talked about last week, you know, Myke's Pokemon edition, right? This is their broad, worldwide, singular release for the Safari and for the All-Star. They do this every year. And most of the time, I'm very biased towards the Safari. And most of the time, Safari wins the design competition, right? It's got the coolest colors or the coolest designs. And while we haven't seen the Safari release for 2023 yet, they did release the All-Star 2023, Petrol and Lilac. I think Safari's up against it this year, Myke.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Well, I mean, I just, I'm personally happy for our All-Star rivals and friends that they finally get to understand how good the Petrol is because we got this as a Safari, I don't know, like five years ago. So, like, I'm just happy that they finally get to join us on that.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, I mean, it's a little bit slow. I mean, and they weren't necessarily original right here. They didn't come up with any original concepts. They took, yeah, yeah, yeah. They did existing, you know, existing colors that the Safari already dominated in the past, right? Like, the Safari has crushed these colors in the past and released inks to go along with them. Like you said, the All-Star finally caught up to them. But, you know, I'm not going to lie.

'''Myke Hurley:''' 2017, Brad, was when the Petrol Safari. Is it really? Yeah.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Welcome, All-Star. Welcome. Five years later or six years later, welcome. Welcome to the chat, All-Star. But, I mean, they're going to do great, right?

== Petrol Safari and Ink Preferences ==

'''Myke Hurley:''' The Petrol is one of my favorite colors. The ink is so good, too. Like, the Petrol ink is, it's top-notch. That's a good blue-black, Brad. That's my blue-black that I own and love.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' It's a great ink. And right now, according to retailers, there is no ink available to order. That doesn't mean it's coming or not coming. But right now, these pens are released or are going to be released, like, this week, I think, the All-Stars. But there is no matching ink, and I'm going to, yet. Like, we just don't know. Like, we don't know. There's no definitive answer one way or the other. But if it's not available right now to go on sale in conjunction with the pens, I would think it's not going to happen. But I wouldn't put it past Lamy to just do something later, right? And they've reused ink colors before. They're obviously reusing this model, this model color this time. So could there be ink? Maybe. If they're not launching it in conjunction with, I kind of think it's not going to happen, though. But I would love it if there were ink because Petrol is a great ink, as you mentioned. And this metal or aluminum All-Star is lilac, not dark lilac. And dark lilac was the famous ink that they released back in the day when they did these for the Safari lineup. Well, we're going to keep mentioning that this is kind of a do-over colorway.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I look forward to the original Safari one that they'll come out with and that All-Star fans can expect in 2029.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Wow.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. So usually these announcements, a lot of times we get to do them at the same time. So I don't know where the Safari announcement is, but I would imagine it's coming in the next month or so. They get these out in the beginning of the year.

'''Myke Hurley:''' It's going to be so good, Brad, that they need to get some space.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I mean, you saw last year's, and you know that's not true. I don't know. You know Safari can catch some L's. Like, I'm a realist Safari lover, Myke. I'm a realist. Like, I call it how I see it. And, like, sometimes they lose. It's just more times than not they win. And I think they're in for a challenge this year.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Strawberry and cream?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' It was strawberries and cream, yeah.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah, that wasn't good.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. That was a little weak in the design department on that one. But then again, we are doing rehash colors in the All-Star. So what do you expect?

'''Myke Hurley:''' 2021 was a banger, though. The actual Safari colors, like the orange and green. I bought both of those. That was a banger, yeah.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' That was one of the best. That was probably been the best in, oh gosh, probably a decade.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I would like to make a request to one of our many wonderful pen blogging listeners. Someone should make a gallery of all of the previous releases as far back as they can go for both Safari and All-Star. I think that would be good. Just so you can see it going back through time.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. I'm sure there's probably some kind of resource out there. I used to follow back in the Flickr heydays. There was an account that did that and had all the limited editions on all the pages. But I haven't looked for anything like that. I bet we could find something pretty quickly. Some kind of...

'''Myke Hurley:''' Google wasn't helping me just now.

== Lamy Special Edition Releases ==

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, yeah. We can find it. So, yeah. It's looking like a good year for the Lamy Special Edition releases, at least on the All-Star side. So now we'll wait and see what Team Safari does and hopefully things stand up to this.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Should we have some type of Montegrappa ranking where the chaos...

'''Myke Hurley:''' This is the best. Everyone, this is the last episode of the Pen Addict. We found the perfect pen. We did it. It's over. The perfect pen has been found. There is no longer any need to continue. We have found the pen.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I love this so much. So what I was going to say is, can we beat... Can Montegrappa's weird pens beat the chaos pen, Myke? So the chaos pen has long been a favorite of the Pen Addict podcast and Myke and myself as just outrageous design in pen form, right? And Montegrappa seems to do that as well as anybody and maybe better than anybody. Like, I might just go ahead and say it. Right. Maybe the last three.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Batman, Tootin' Kar-Moon, and now this one. Like, I'm all in, baby. If I had this kind of money, I would have bought all of them.

== Montegrappa 007 Spy Master Duo ==

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. So what we have now is the 007 Spy Master Duo. Why don't you lead this? Because you're pretty hyped about this. I definitely have some...

'''Myke Hurley:''' I'm going to give you three quotes from the Montegrappa website. Machined from gray stainless steel, rifling on the upper barrel and cap segments invoke the iconic 007 gun barrel title sequence. So, like, the main body of the pen is, like, is just kind of like a black kind of material. I don't even know how to describe it.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' It's, like, carbon fiber-y looking. Yeah. Yeah. But, like, it's more of a yeoshe type of pattern. Uh-huh. Than, like, a carbon fiber. It's more like a yeoshe type.

'''Myke Hurley:''' The cap and the, like, the back section, they've got that kind of, like, spiral effect. Like, with the, you know, like, as the kind of the sights, the camera sights or whatever, you know, the rifling, as they call it. Because you're looking through the gun, right? It's like in the James Bond, when that sound that I was doing, when he's walking down, he turns and shoots at you, at the camera. Like, that is if the camera is inside the barrel of a gun, right? Right. It's got that kind of, like, spiraling effect that goes around. They've evoked that in the cap and in the end finial. And I'll say, like, just as, as far as Montegrappa pens go, this is the most pen-looking one of them that we've seen, right? Like, it just looks like a classy pen. Like, it's not, like, covered in bandages, right? You know what I mean? Like, it's just, like...

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Batman was at least reasonable. But, like, yeah.

'''Myke Hurley:''' But even then, like, the snakes on the chaos. This pen looked like a tactical EDC pen, right? It did. Like, this just looks like a nice pen that I think you could get away with and people wouldn't really bat an eyelid to. But that is the point, my friends. That's the point. Because it has two special tricks up its sleeve. It has a forced barrel segment concealing a set of cufflinks that can be extracted and locked back into place according to need. Each is emblazoned with the 007 logo on them. Now, you may think to yourself, why would they put cufflinks in a pen? Now, I've got two reasons for this. One, because then you get to be like, look at my fun gadget. I have cufflinks in a pen. The other is, the bananas filling system that they have created for this pen means that they don't actually have cartridges or a converter. You put ink inside of bullets!

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I mean, you have to use red ink, right? Like, it's gotta be red ink.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I guess so. They use like a kind of orangey ink in the product imagery, right? Yeah. The ink goes in bullets. Listen, there's a special reloading pipette which delivers ink into high-capacity ink capsules made of brass in the shape of bullets that you load into the pen. This is the greatest thing ever made. You get like this extra tube, right, that you pour ink into. You put these bullets into this tube and push it down. It like squirts ink inside of them, I guess under high pressure to get like to completely fill it up. And you'll maybe get through half a day of writing because these things are tiny. But then you load the bullet into the pen. You're a spy now. And you can't take this pen on a plane. Don't even think about it. Don't take this pen through any scanners of any kind because you'll never be able to explain it to people. It comes in an incredible attache case with two inks in the case and a little passport and everything. This is the greatest pen ever made by anyone ever. Like Montegrappa, what do I have to do if you just give one to me? Because I'm not going to give you 5,000 pounds, right? Because this is too much money.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' But you just tell me what you need. We should have started there. 5,000 pounds. Myke's excitement is not underselling anything about this pen. It's incredible. It's unbelievable. And Montegrappa does this over and over and over again. And I just don't get it.

'''Myke Hurley:''' This one feels next level to me, though.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Like, legit. Like, a lot of the time, it's like, oh, this is really nicely made. And you're just paying a high price for it. But this seems, like, legitimately complicated to produce as a thing and to get it to work. Let alone the research and development. Like, have you ever seen this kind of filling system before?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So, sort of. This is basically like a traveling inkwell system. For those who don't see or aren't seeing the pictures right now, I can describe it. It's like a vial, right? It's, Visconti is sold like a traveling inkwell. And you essentially would normally take, not a bullet, you would take your converter. Or you would take your piston filling fountain pen and remove the nib and basically attach this vial pressure fill. Like, almost like a pump system. And put it into and refill your pen that way. But it's a lot of times, it's a traveling ink vial that you can just attach a converter to. Or a vacuum filling pen and suck up the ink from the travel. So, what they've done is essentially make a cartridge filling version of a traveling ink vial. And wherein the cartridge is a literal bullet with a brass bullet with 007 on the side.

'''Myke Hurley:''' They got 007 on them. They made a brass. And, like, you screw the bullet, like, the back of the bullet into the grip section of the pen. It's so clever. It's so clever.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, that is pretty smart. The cufflinks thing, you can miss me with that. Like, that's ridiculous. But, I mean, this is, it's supposed to be ridiculous, right?

'''Myke Hurley:''' Right, but here's the thing. Here's why I like it, right? It's stupid, but here's why I like it. You're sitting down, you're talking to someone, you're telling them about your pen. You're like, oh, this is my James Bond pen, right? And then you're like, oh, of course it has, like, secret cufflinks hidden in it. Because it's, like, such a James Bond-y thing. Oh, no, it's perfect. And those cufflinks should emit some kind of, like, knockout gas or something. You know, like, that's what, in James Bond's world, that's what they're doing. Or, like, it would be, like, a homing device. I'm sure it probably started with hiding something in there, right? So, it started with, like, oh, we have this space, what can we put in there? What if we make it look like some little tracker or a laser or, you know, make it James Bond-y? And then it kind of ended up with, let's actually make it something that's, like, usable. And so, they're like, well, people that will buy this pen for 5,000 euros, they probably wear cufflinks. Like, every day.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So, let me poo-poo two design elements. One is the external cufflink. If you're actually using the cufflinks, you have an open back pen that ruins the design, right? Because that is literally the infenial. The external cufflink is the infenial. So, if I have cufflinks and I'm using the pen, my pen now looks stupid, right? Yep. Second-

'''Myke Hurley:''' But to be real, Brad, no one's wearing those cufflinks, right? Like, I agree with you, but no one is like- However, what I will say, I have been in a situation where I needed cufflinks and forgot them. So, if I have my pen, I'm good, you know?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Of course. Of course. Second aspect, again, for anyone who's buying this pen, they would not care. This is the ugliest nib design they've made on any of their special edition pens. It's awful.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah, it's not great. It's just says it's a big number 60 with 007. I just think it should have just been 007. Like, I know they're doing it for the 60th anniversary thing, but the nib should have just been 007. Like, that's all it should have been.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. Or it should have been the rifling. Like, that swirl, that type of design would have been killer on a nib and would look great. This is an overcooked nib for an overcooked pen, which, like, that part's cool. Like, I love everything about this. Like, I'm excited that you're excited. And Montegrappa, like, I don't know. Like, I want to sit in these design meetings because it's just got to be outrageous. Bonus points for the Sean Connery choice imagery. That was the one kind of bond feature. Okay. Okay. But it's a great, great image that they use. You know, it's got the tux on at the baccarat table. I'm sure it's got cufflinks. Yeah.

'''Myke Hurley:''' That shows everything you need to, you know, to get across.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' To understand this pen. Yeah. Like, it's fitting with the pen.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I think that is an image from Dr. No as well, which makes the most sense.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Okay. So, yeah.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' It's fantastic. Unbelievable. Like, well done, Montegrappa. Unbelievable. Like, we joke about this stuff because, like, we just find it fascinating. And what fascinates me the most about Montegrappa is the 10 out of 10 execution every time on this stuff. I don't get it. Like, it's impressive. Yeah.

'''Myke Hurley:''' It's like, like it or love it, they execute flawlessly. Right? Like, you don't have to like the designs. Right. But, like, this is next level. Like, I cannot believe the amount of work that goes into something they only make 380 of.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. So, let me ask you, and we'll wrap it on this. So, say just you own this pen. Uh-huh. And are you carrying it in the attache case and then taking that to, like, your office desk, dropping down the attache case on the desk, flipping. I mean, you got to flip the little clasps, right? It'd be hard not to, right? That little thing.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Like, you know what I would do, though, Brad? I would get, like, a really thin, like, piece of wood to put in there or something and then make it a writing desk afterwards. Or maybe you could close it and it's your writing desk. Yeah, close it and let it be your writing desk.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Is the passport a notebook? Yes. I didn't see that. Okay. It is. Okay.

'''Myke Hurley:''' This is the greatest product ever made.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Right? Okay. I mean, I'm not going to say no. I'm not going to disagree with you.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I will say it's so sad that they make a rollable version of this because it, like, removes all of the good stuff, right? Right. But, you know, like, why? But, you know, you do you. I know why they do it. Like, I know why they do it.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' But, like, it's just sad. All right. Let's rein it in a little bit here.

'''Myke Hurley:''' What's the point? Is it worth continuing? It doesn't get better than this.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Is this the end of the show? I think it might have to be. This is the end of the show.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I don't know. We might need to keep going. So maybe one day you can afford this to get this for yourself.

'''Myke Hurley:''' That's a good point. Give it, like, 10 years and I can buy it.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Right? That's going to take a while. That's going to take a while, Myke.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I want it so bad, Brad.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Oh, my gosh. What a day. I knew this was going to be a good show. So let's switch gears completely and talk about Diamine and their willingness.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' In a Montegrappa sense, to work with the community to make cool things. So Montegrappa does it maybe on a different level than a lot of companies do. And they're able to do that. And they're known for that. Diamine kind of turned this, not turned a corner, but they kind of jumped into the more social media type aspects of their products. For, like, an historic, classic brand to take on, say, like, a Reddit board under their wing and work with the fountain pen for Reddit to create inks, like, year after year is really impressive to me. From a company being, like, thinking about that type of thing to work with, hey, this group of, like, passionate users to make these products. So they started several years ago with the slash rfountainpens subreddit to vote on inks. And this year's inks came up. We talked about these not too long ago. But the final versions are in. And I just wanted to put the links in the show notes because I think the colors this year are going to be my favorite colors that they've done in a while. So there's actually going to make two inks. The first one is called Sailor's Warning. So it's a bright red, orange, pink, shimmer, purple, blue shimmer. It's just a wild shimmer ink and a great color. Like, I am really, really anxious to get a hold of this. Like, this is such an interesting ink. Such a really cool color. And I voted in the final selection. There was one, two, three, four, five, six, seven Sailor's Warning samples that were sent out. And Nick Stewart at nickstewart.inc had samples of all these, did some great testings. And so you would take these numbers, pick out your favorites, and do kind of like a stack ranking, one through seven.

== Diamine Ink and Community Engagement ==

'''Brad Dowdy:''' And whichever one, you know, won that Reddit vote is what Diamine's going to make. And I just think that's really cool of them to participate in something like this. I voted for the one that eventually won on Sailor's Warning. So I have very good taste along with everyone else who chose. Chose number 37 was the sample that ended up winning. And the second one is Celadon Cat, which is a gray, blue, green. It's really hard to describe ink because even the samples are pretty varying. One could be very blue, one could be very brown, one could be very green. I voted for the third favorite. So this one was number 41, I believe. And that was my third favorite of the ink. So it's really, really neat to have this Diamine participation and see it continue to grow every year. And people get excited about this and think about this all year. Like, when did we do the original, gosh, it was probably like in the fall when it was time to, hey, let's give Diamine our ideas to eventually get down to these colors, right? They have that level of participation. Diamine's not saying, here's five inks we're thinking about. The literal origination of the ink ideas came from the Fountain Pen subreddit. And Diamine just goes with whatever they create. And I just think it's fantastic. And I think it's worth sharing. And I'm looking forward to these inks. I haven't been able to find a release date for these inks yet. But I'd imagine, you know, this is probably like a late spring type of summer thing, right? So the votes are in, the colors have been decided, the formulas have been decided. So now Diamine just has to make them, produce them, get them out into the system. And they're usually like a worldwide release. They're just part of the main product line now. Like Diamine Earl Grey, which is a great gray ink, came from this vote in a previous year. Like it's in Diamine Writer's Blood came from this vote in previous years that have become like core Diamine inks. And I just, I love this so much.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Certainly an interesting thing to do. Like it's intriguing to me. Like with this kind of stuff, I wonder of like, is it best for the business to like to do it this way? Like sometimes, you know, there's that old ad. And I don't know if this, I don't believe this is always correct. It's like you don't just listen to what people ask you for. I can't remember the phrase, right? Like you have to like work out what is coming. You can't just do everything that people ask for.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So where I think that comes into play here, and I agree with that sentiment, is the size and age of a company like Diamine, who has 150 years behind them. They're able to, you know, take, okay, let's say 2% of our energy to this. Yes. Where if you and I decided to have this ink company that we've been running for about five years, this would take 40% of our energy to accomplish. And then it's not as good of a decision for us, if that makes sense.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Because that's the way I think about it. You're putting all that effort in for something that people tell you that they want, but then they maybe don't buy it. Like that's the concern, right? Right. That you run into that like you end up in a situation where you've made this thing that doesn't really have a point of view in it. It's just like what 100 people told you that they want. And then you're like, oh, all these people are going to buy it. But for whatever reason that I don't genuinely don't understand, it just doesn't work out that way. Right. Because people's intent to buy is not the same as people's actuality of buying.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Exactly. And you said the correct word. And I don't even think you know that you said it. But when you design things, especially as smaller companies, you said point of view, right? You have to make a decision that you believe in and are going to stand behind and can't let every single customer's whim affect that decision. Where smaller companies, that's hard for them to do. But a larger, stable, historical company like Diamine has that ability to absorb that a little bit better. So, yeah, it's great.

'''Myke Hurley:''' But like for a company of that size, it then is a good thing to do because it also generates, even if it doesn't result in sales as such, which it has, you say. But even if it didn't, it's good for building your community, which can be helpful around something that is ultimately like a faceless corporation kind of feel otherwise. Yeah.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Like literally people will talk year round about a singular ink from this brand. Yeah. And it's just a massive, enormous win for them. Yeah. And I very much believe like that wasn't their intent going into this, right? Like they think like, let's do this and see how it goes and we'll make a cool ink. And now it's just been, it's like, okay, yeah, that worked out perfectly. Let's keep going. So, yeah, it's fantastic.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Some young marketing person at Diamine came up with this idea and was just told, oh, well, you just run it yourself and see what happens. Right. And then it turned out to be a big success. Yeah. You love to see it. This episode is brought to you by Squarespace, the all-in-one platform to help you build your brand and grow your business online. With Squarespace, you can stand out with a beautiful website, engage with your audience and sell your products, services and the content that you create. Squarespace has got you covered by offering everything for you. So it's very easy to get started. You go and you sign up and you choose from one of their beautiful templates. They are categorized to try and make it easy for you to work out which one you want. Maybe it matches to the type of site you want to make, you know, whether you want a portfolio or a blog, or maybe it helps if you like the type of business that you're running. You can pick a template that kind of reflects that. And they also, what I like, especially for the business ones, is it gives you like a template page structure. So like for a type, for a website of this kind, you need a contact page and an about page and maybe you need an FAQ, that kind of stuff. So it helps you think not just about the design, but also about like what a website like yours is going to need, which I think is very cool. And they then have all the tools. Once you've got it set up, which is great to do, it's easy to do, it's all drag and drop. You just click and choose colors and fonts and you can resize everything. You don't need to know any code to get a beautiful professional website at the end of it. Then once your site's up and running, you can sell your products in an online store. It doesn't matter whether you sell physical or digital products. Squarespace has all of the tools and integrations that you need to start selling online. And then once you've got things going further, you can then use Insights to help take your business to the next level. So Squarespace has an Insight platform built in to tell you where your visitors are coming from, where your sales are generating from, and which channels are most effective for you. Then once you have that data, you can improve your website, you can improve your business, and build a marketing strategy based on your top content or your top products. So go and check this out for yourself right now. I've been using Squarespace for 13 years, maybe.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, I need to look at some anniversary dates for myself. It's got to be double digits.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah, I mean, it's probably a bit closer to that. I'm thinking about when I got started in podcasting, but I'd set up Squarespace's website for myself before. I was trying to do writing projects and stuff like that. So it's probably closer to 15 years now at this point. They are where I go when I want to start a website. So you should go there too. Go to squarespace.com slash penaddict, and you can sign up for a free trial today with no credit card required. And when you're ready to launch, use the offer code penaddict to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. That is squarespace.com slash penaddict. And when you sign up, use the offer code penaddict. You will get 10% off your first purchase and show your support for the show. Thanks to Squarespace for the continued support of this show and all of RelayFM.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' One little small item I wanted to bring up was a little bit of a follow-up to me just heaping praise on Pilot's new mechanical pencil-led Instagram that I just fawned over and could write a whole dissertation on. Stationary-wise, I loved it. Pilot had a couple new things pop up into their feeds. One is a bit of artwork from an artist called Eric Small Things on – at least that's their Instagram handle.

'''Myke Hurley:''' You don't think that's their real name? If you couldn't imagine.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, probably not their real name. Oh, okay. But they draw small things. And what they did for Pilot this time was essentially make digital wallpapers out of Pilot products. So there's like a – it looks like a poster, right? It's got like the Kakuno and the Dr. Grip and, you know, ink cartridges and ink bottles. And it's just this fun little bit of artwork. And they've made it so you can download, you know, like different sizes to have different wallpaper. And it's – yes, it's hashtag marketing like big time. It's good though. It's cool. It's cool. It's great, right? It just looks nice, yeah. This is, you know, just – it's those little things, right, that I get attracted to like this. Not only is the art just like really cool, like I don't care. It's like, hey, thanks Pilot for like doing something a little cool with an artist and sharing it with us. And just having these neat little things. So, yeah, if you're like a Pilot super fan like I am, you look at this and go, oh, man, that is super cool. Like I'm totally not going to use this as my wallpaper. Like it would be just too busy for me. But I love looking at this. And I love that they work with someone to make these types of things, right? Those are the types of things I want to keep praise on. Then I click over. Let's just keep things honest and real with Pilot here for a minute. Myke, we have talked about their product.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' And I mess this up every time. It's I-L-M-I-L-Y, right? It's their little more like journaling focus. Basically, this is their Instagram product line. It's the I love me, I love you. Okay, there it is.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I was like, it must stand for something. And I reckon I-L-Y is I love you. But I couldn't work out what the I-L-M was.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' All right. I love me, I love you. I call it the Barney lineup for certain reasons. I was going to say, yes, it's very Barney. And they haven't, I haven't seen much on this product, right? And again, this is a really journaling goods, stationary store, small items, you know, stamps, pens, highlighters, markers, accessories for like your journaling and, you know, different things like that. It's a very, very highly specific sub brand. And they came out with an interesting product line. And I'm trying to decide if this is like the ink I, excuse me, the link I put in there is this kind of two color pen. And I thought it was a friction at first because it looks like the one of the classic friction barrel designs that they've reused. But it's really more of just like, hey, this is ballpoint pen.

'''Myke Hurley:''' And I like me. I like you. It's not love.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Okay, sorry. Sorry. I was too, too much into the Barney there. So I have reviewed one of the ballpoint pens that they've made for this product line before. And it's really good. Like Pilot makes great products. And they generally, what they'll do is they'll kind of take a shell of a product and tweak it for the sub product line like this. But they had this ballpoint pen. And I'll get a link for it for the show notes. It's actually the second image on their current Instagram. But I know that doesn't really fly for talking about on this podcast. But I'll get the name of it. It's really good, but it's just a little bit overpriced, a little bit premium. And I'm curious on how this product lineup is going for them in general. So this is one of those things that I don't talk about a lot, but I keep an eye on because I want to see if it succeeds. Right. And I'm sure just strictly in the Japanese market, it's probably doing pretty well because it's basically stationary design for Instagram. Right. Like you can tell with the aesthetic of this brand, that's what they're trying to do. And like Diamine, you know, they probably had a group in Pilot. Pilot's a much, much larger company than Diamine. They probably had a group that said, hey, let's build a product line that focuses on this. And they obviously got the backing to do it. It's been around a couple of years now. It doesn't look like there's any slowing down. But I'm curious, like I'm like I see no interaction on these Instagram posts, right? No comments and things like that. So I'm just kind of curious how it goes. So this is one of those things I always have in the back of my head that I wanted to bring up because we haven't talked about it in a while. And it still exists. And, you know, I don't hope it fails or anything. I'm just curious. I'm curious, like I'm very curious about how this goes because it's almost I don't know how additive it is, right? So like if Pilot has the friction and the friction is just blowing up by, you know, any measure, it looks like the friction is blowing up. And they have all different types of frictions. And then they have frictions for like the professionals and they have frictions for the journalers and they have frictions for the Instagrammers. Do we also need this full product line that is kind of like cannibalizing some of their other stuff? I don't know how that stuff works, but Pilot's a huge company. They know better than me.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Oh, a lot of that, like the journaling and Instagramming crowd like that is probably additive sales. I don't know if it's necessarily cannibalizing their existing products, right? Like at least that's the goal of this product line.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' And the thing is, if you take a one-to-one product, like say if you have a Dr. Grip standard and a Dr. Grip in the I Like Me, I Like You product line, there's a premium just for that product line, even though it's the same physical product, just for the paint job and the exterior, right? So you might have like a 50% premium for the same pen. So they're making up for it like at the price point level as well. So it's interesting. One of those things that I love about stationery is there's all kinds of things out there. Myke, I think the next thing I want to talk about might be even more specific than the James Bond pen as far as usefulness to people. I backed a Kickstarter project called the Carto. That's K-A-A-R-T-O. And why did I back it? Well, strictly because it's weird and that I thought it would work, right? So I don't just back Kickstarter projects on a whim because, oh, pen, you know, it's a pen. Let me back it, right? If I think it's, you know, somewhat cool, somewhat interesting, something I think I will use, something unique I want to test out to see, hey, does this work? Does it not work? And the Carto kind of checked all those boxes for me. So what it is, Myke's already called it the Batarang. And I think that's kind of a good way to put it. It's a small, thin, curved pen that is designed in this very ergonomic way to just kind of relieve all stress when you're writing. It just kind of fits into your hand, fits into your grip, gets you into this very traditional way to hold the pen, which is honestly one of the biggest flaws, right? And it's not a flaw in the design. It's a, like what we said, it's a point of view. Like that's what we said earlier. This is an opinionated product. This is why I cannot recommend this product to anyone. You just have to know if this would work for the way you hold a pen. For me, with a traditional grip, yes, it slots right in. Like I can just pick it up and go. Like I don't even have to adjust anything. It just works for me. For someone else, they could look at that and say, I could never use this because it's not going to fit the way my fingers hold a pen. It uses the Pilot Hi-Tech C Colito ink cartridge. It's got this slot in the back where you slide in the cartridge and you can actually reverse the cartridge to protect the tip when you're not using it. It's a really neat little design. It wasn't very expensive. I think it was about $40 or so for me to test out, which that's like a fair price for me to like take a shot on something. Uh-huh. Um, it's aluminum and I have been using it daily for like the past two or three days. I really love it. There is a, the one writing challenge that I've had with it is, and it would be hard to even explain this on like a product video, but your, your writing angle is kind of fixed. The, the angle that the tip hits the paper is hard to adjust lower, right? So if you have a low writing angle, right? So if you think of a pen hitting the paper at a 45 degree angle, okay? So like the tip hits at a 45 degree angle. Just work with me on this. So the Carto hits it at a little bit higher angle than that. So it's a more vertical angle of the pen and it's hard to drop lower, say to like a 35% angle because of the backside of the pen, the way it works into your hand, you don't get the correct balance or aim with your, your writing instrument. So you're very fixed to a more vertical writing tip. So it's kind of specific in that way, but it feels great. Like it feels like you're writing with nothing when it's locked in there really good. Like I don't feel the pen. I don't feel it hitting my hand. I just write with it and go. And like, it's, it's weird looking, but it's essentially like any other pen for me. Um, you could never use this, right? Like a bunch of people could never use this. I don't know that it's even great as the selling point of being like a very ergonomic learn, you know, how to grip a pen type of thing. I think it's more, it should just be sold as, Hey, this is a fun writing tool. Like if you, you know, this is, it's weird and I've been working on this cool design and this is how it works. And I think for a lot of people it would work super well, but like, I wouldn't go more than that. Right. To say that, Hey, this is going to change anything. Right. It's just more of a cool toy, uh, to have. And, and I genuinely like it. Like I'm using the heck out of it, but I think it's for most people, it's probably a no go.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah, I think so. This, you know, this feels like a very personal thing. I mean, I can just look at it and feel like this wasn't right. Yeah.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. And that's why this is, this is a very simple product to not recommend to anyone because it's a, it's a binary choice. You look at this product and you can go, yes, this will work for me or no, it will not work for me. There's not a lot of, well, maybe like it's, it's, it's either yes or no. For me, it's yes. I think, um, that's probably a small percentage of people, but like, I mean, it was obviously successfully backed. It was a smooth Kickstarter project, right? Like I haven't backed a lot of Kickstarter projects recently. Like this was just like, Hey, this looks cool. I backed it. The shipping timeframes were, you know, the basic couple of months and then boom, we're in, got the pin. Um, it showed up. I didn't even realize I had forgotten about it and here it was. And I've been kind of using it ever since it stays on the desk and it's just wild. Uh, I, I'm not going to stick it in my pocket or anything, but yeah, it's good to go.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Would it fit in the pocket? Just put it in the leg?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I mean, if you, you can actually reverse the, uh, the tip. So it's protected right for storage and portability. Oh, so you pull out the refill on the backside, reverse it. Yeah. So there's a little neat little notch design in here that is kind of serves two purposes. One is it holds the back end of the refill when it's in the writing position. So the refill doesn't move. But secondly, when you want to remove the refill, the tip of the refill goes into like a, um, further away section that that's kind of like custom built to protect the refill. So it it's, it's smartly made. So speaking of smart, smartly made Myke, I wanted to give our shout out of the week to derail pens. So Adolphus who I got to meet at the Orlando pen show, um, and picked up a pen from him at the Orlando pen show this past fall was my first time meeting him. Uh, even though I'd seen him at a couple other pen shows before and what we're doing with shout out of the week. Um, as I mentioned last week, it kind of came from blog of the week that used to be shout out of the weeks can now be anything, Myke, this, this week, this week, this week, it's a maker, right? Sometimes we're going to have a YouTube channel. Sometimes we might have an Instagram channel on here, um, an Instagram feed on here to, to give a shout out to. And I wanted to give a shout out to Adolphus because he's super cool, makes some great pens. Uh, Caroline, who, who writes, um, these monthly meet your makers, make your articles for the pen addict. This just happened to come out in a perfect time for me to put them out in the shout out of the week. And, uh, Adolphus and derail pens, they, he attends a lot of pen shows, right? So if you like what you see in the blog, go check out all the things that he makes, check him out at a pen show coming soon to, to, uh, your area. And, uh, yeah, I just wanted to give a huge shout out to like an awesome person and some, an awesome pen maker. So, uh, we will continue to see more from derail pens and he's been making pens for a long time, long time. And he does a great job. So I wanted to give him a shout out.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Good one. All right. This episode is brought to you by pen chalet. They have all of your favorite products from your favorite brands and maybe even products that you don't know are going to be your favorite yet, but you'll find them at pen chalet. We're very fast and reliable customer service. You'll find them at the best prices around because every month they are discounting products up and down, closeout specials, you know, everything. I don't mean they're discounting things up. I just meant like up and down the product line. You know what I mean? You get what I'm saying.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I gotcha. I gotcha.

'''Myke Hurley:''' They're always adding new styles of pens every month. You can go back to pen chalet. You can find yourself a new rollerball or a new fountain pen. You can find yourself a new pilot, a sailor, a cafeco at Monteverde and many more or even just the accessories that you're looking for, whether it's some new ink, a converter, a fountain pen case or holder. They got it all. Pen chalet do international shipping with great shipping rates. And if you're in the U.S. and spend over $75, shipping is free. Pen chalet has low prices on high quality pens and they offer a 100% satisfaction guarantee. So go right now to penchalet.com and click the podcast link at the top of the website. Enter the password pen addict and you'll be able to see this week's special offer and get the code you need to save 10% on anything at any time at pen chalet.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' The one reason you should always check this page is because Ron just drops things in there that you don't think you would normally see. Right. So sometimes it's sometimes it's things you'd expect. Hey, you know, we're almost sold out of this pen, so let's move the last few units or things like that. But sometimes things pop up that you wouldn't expect. This time, the Lamy All-Star Bronze Fountain Pen, which was a several years ago edition, is now available. So this was one of the annual editions. It's like, did Ron just find a stock of these and now they're for sale on here?

'''Myke Hurley:''' Right. Yeah.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' That's why you got to check this. And then I found something as I scrolled way down this list, Myke, something you never see. And I'm assuming I can talk about it, but there are retro 50 ones on sale here. So there's a couple of the popper models are on sale from Ron and they might be the pen chalet exclusive editions. I can't. I haven't clicked through to see exactly what.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Lamy special edition Safari Fountain Pen strawberries and cream. It's there, baby. Oh, nice. If you want it, you can get it.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yes, you can.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yes, you can.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So, yeah, retro 51 is not something you normally see on this list. And the last one I want to talk about, the Viscont Rembrandt S, which I don't know if we mentioned recently. This is kind of a little bit of a change to Visconti's lineup. I think this is a newer price point that Visconti's trying to hit. And this is even discounted from there. I have never seen. Like, this is one of the most popular Visconti models. And they normally run around $200 or between like $2 and $250, depending on the model. This is outrageously priced and something that I even want to go look at. Oh, yeah. There's the strawberries and cream. So, yeah. There is a ton of stuff on this list. Oh, the Pinaferina. Wow, that's a good price. Okay. Yeah. Go look at the list. There's a lot of things. I've been a good boy this year, but maybe I need to go shopping at Pen Chalet myself here when we're done with the show.

'''Myke Hurley:''' P-E-N-C-H-A-L-E-T dot com. It's Pen Chalet dot com. Go to the top of the website. You want to click the podcast link there. Enter the password Pen Addict, and you will get your grubby mitts on these special offers. So, thanks to Pen Chalet for their support of this show at Relay FM.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Got something on my desk here, Myke.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' It's been here a while.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' It's been off camera, as they say. What could this be? It's soft launch season, baby.

== Cortex Brand's Sidekick Notepad Launch ==

'''Myke Hurley:''' It's soft launch season. The next product from Cortex brand is now available. It's called Sidekick Notepad. This is the first podcast I'm talking about it on. Oh, nice. But I felt like this is something Pen Addict listeners would like to hear about. I want to say I'm in soft launch season. We're kind of announcing it on the Cortex podcast in February. But this product has been in development for so long and has actually been sitting at Cotton Bureau since November. It got to the point where me and Gray were completely sick of the fact that it wasn't available for sale and decided to put it on sale. And it has actually been very helpful for me so far in kind of like building the story of the product in a way to be able to explain it to potential customers. You know, like in what imagery we show and trying to explain how to use it, what it is and how it works. And so also today is like my first crack at trying to explain the Sidekick Notepad to people in audio form. It is a desk pad. Like it is a landscape style desk pad with perforated pages. It has 60 pages of Munk and Lynx 100 GSM. So it's the same paper we use in the theme system journal, but slightly thicker. It is made by hand in London, England, which I am immensely proud of. We found a supplier in London. I have spent a lot of time at their manufacturing facility over the last year that we've been working on the product. It has been in development for since June of 2021 is when we started work on this project. And it was in manufacturing on and off for about a year because we had a lot of stuff we needed to work out to make it work the way we wanted it to work.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I want to come back to that part in a moment, the manufacturing part, because I just think that you would find some of this fascinating too. It is the way that the notepad is separated. It's about two thirds dot grid and then one third, maybe like more like a quarter really of a to-do list. So similar to the journal, it's got the little circles of the lines through and boxes next to them. The idea for this notepad is that it's kind of serves two purposes. The one that I use it in the most is I have it sitting in between me and my keyboard. We measured it out in such a way that I think is a very comfortable for a lot of people, for most people. We measured it on people of all sizes to see that this was like a good size, a good depth to put your keyboard behind. It's 18 centimeters by 30 centimeters. We also kind of molded it around about the width of a 13 inch MacBook. It was like that's the kind of width that we wanted. It's a little smaller than that because it just didn't want to match up completely. Basically, the what else can I say? The the cover of the notepad flips over and around the back. So you get this kind of spine across the top and it goes around to the back because really this notepad is supposed to remain open on your desk like that is its ideal form. So you open it and leave it in front of you to take notes whenever you want. And the other place that it is perfect is for meetings. So one of the ideas for this product in my mind is whenever I go to a meeting, I don't like to have a laptop in front of me because I feel like it puts a barrier between me and the people that I'm talking to. And also it's too easy for me to get distracted by what's going on on my computer. And so the sidekick notepad is made in such a way that you would bring it to a meeting, take all your notes down, write your action items down in the to do area and then take it back with you and tear off the page or whatever you want to do. Keep it around until you tear off and start again with the next page. In that element, we had to work with our paper suppliers and manufacturers to laminate the paper that we're using to make it thick enough that when you picked up the notepad, it didn't bend under its own weight. It was very important to me. But the weightage of the paper that we wanted to use did not exist. So we had to go through an expensive process of laminating paper together to get a thickness, like a weight that this product's not offered in. The cover and backboard paper is made of something called Extract by another British company called G.F. Smith, who I worked with a friend, Matt, who works there. You've met Matt, right? I believe you may have met him at my wedding.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Maybe so.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I think so.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I'm going to blank right now, but I know we've had this conversation about Matt.

'''Myke Hurley:''' And this paper is called Extract, and it is made from recycled coffee cups, which is the only thing you can do with the paper coffee cup. Paper coffee cups are otherwise unrecyclable because they have the plastic lining inside. But G.F. Smith has been pioneering with this machine that can take these cups and with a very expensive process, produce paper at the other side of it. So the sidekick notepad's cover and back is made of coffee cups that otherwise would have been sent to landfill. So I'm very happy that we were able to find that product and the paperwork's great. We've gone a little extra with the debossing this time and put a clear coat foil inlay on the debossing so it shines more. I am so freaking proud of this thing. I have been using the sidekick notepad every day for nearly a year in some form, and it's exactly what I want. It has 60 pages. I don't use a page a day. I will use a page every couple of days or whatever whenever I'm ready to start fresh. Tear it out. It's got a wonderful perforation, and you're ready to go again. So sidekick notepad, it's made to sit between you and your keyboard. It's made to go with you on your meetings. You take your notes. You write down your to-dos, and when you're done, tear a page off, and you're ready to go for the next day.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So a couple of things. One that I've talked to Myke about, and he sent me one and had me test it out. The paper is awesome. It works perfectly with fountain pens of all shapes and sizes. You can see the sheen on a sheen ink. You can see shading on a shading ink. The smoothness of the paper works with your extra fine nibs. It's great for markers, pencils. I threw everything at it, which is what I normally do when I test, and it just worked super well. Outside of your standard Sharpie markers, right? So Sharpie, you need sketchboard paper for that to not bleed through. Everything else is perfect.

'''Myke Hurley:''' But the bleeding through is not so important because, really, it's only printed on one side. So if it bleeds through to the other side, it's just a blank page on the back there.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, but literally none of the fountain pens bled or feathered or even the Zebra Mildliner, which is generally a highlighter, but it's more of a marker. That didn't even touch anything on the page. The things I haven't specifically called out to Myke are the little details that opinionated designer boy over here appreciates. If you didn't mention it, I was going to mention the back cover. It's ridiculously good. I have a very short list of particular things that I overly enjoy about notebooks, especially one is extremely thick and rigid covers for products that need them. And while you might be keeping this at your desk, it still just gives you this feel that your notebook is going to stay how you want it to stay. And that's how the backboard is. This was that process I was talking about.

'''Myke Hurley:''' They presented to us originally putting it on a gray board. And I have a version like that and I didn't like it. It didn't look finished. And then they gave me the thickest paperweight they had in extract. But when I picked it up, it would fold over on itself. I was like, this isn't going to work. So we did this thing and we at one point used all of the extract that was available in the UK. Like that was like a delay that we had. We had to wait for more to be made.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. It's ridiculously good, the back cover. The second, which I didn't even put together in my head, even though I've seen it the whole time until you mentioned about the printing. You actually printed the reverse side of the cover. So the Cortex logo is on the outside. But when you flip it over to actually use it, there is a little sidekick deboss in the top left of the spine. That's abnormal. Like you don't like even though, OK, does that technically make your pad better? No. But it's a design element that you don't see. Right. Like this is something that I noticed because it doesn't belong there. And when I see it, I was like, that's a choice. They made a choice to do that little thing and it makes it that much better for me. So those are the little things.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Like the pre-folding of the cover. Like all of this stuff was so complicated to work out. Like that debossing on this kind of the spine was a mathematical nightmare for all. But like trying to work out like exactly where it was placed and then producing a file that it would be the right way up. Because technically it's printed upside down.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Right. Right. Because it's on the fold. Yep. But on the inside. So, yes, it is. I look at that and go, that is not normally done because it is difficult. And like having gone through all these printing processes, I look at that and I was like, that is a cool touch. Do you want to know why it's there? They did not have to do that.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I can tell you why it's there. So when we originally made the product, it was just blank up there. Right. And as I was using it, I was like, well, I've designed this product to be open. Like that's what it's for. Right. It has a cover, but you're supposed to just leave it open. So it's always ready for any notes that you might have.

'''Myke Hurley:''' But then there was no branding on the product at all. Right. Like you wouldn't look at it and remember what it was or like people wouldn't see it. Like all of the photos we'd take of it wouldn't have anything on it.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' And you didn't steal from the paper layout to put your logo in the corner of the grid. Right. Which is what the choice a lot of companies would make.

'''Myke Hurley:''' So I was like, well, I didn't want to put the brain logo on there either because it was a bit too busy. Like we tried that and I found it a little too busy. And so we spent a lot of time trying to come up with a name for the product. And like this is part of the production process as well. Like this was originally just called Sidekick. But the longer I used it, I was like, we could make more than one of these. Like we could make hopefully if this does well, like I want to make just a to-do list version. Right. Well, then that's Sidekick to-do list. So I didn't want to. So I thought, well, I like the name Sidekick Notepad. It also helps with Googling because, you know, the word Sidekick is very generic, right? Right. And so, you know, it helps with intellectual property and stuff like that. So I was like, oh, we'll call it Sidekick Notepad. And also it allows us a little bit of flexibility that hopefully this could be a little sub-brand for Cortex Brand. And I don't think we would put Sidekick Notepad on the top. I don't know. Maybe I'll see how it looks when we go for our second printing. But that's why it says Sidekick there right now.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. It's great. That's what those little things I noticed. The whole thing is great. Y'all did a really good job. So you should be proud. I know this was a long process. And I'm glad it exists. And great job.

'''Myke Hurley:''' So I'll give you some deets and stuff. So it was made by a company in London called F.E. Berman. They are based in South London. I can take the train to them. And there was a couple of months where I was going every week because we were working through various things. There's a couple of things about it that are fascinating to me. So I'm referring to this as hand-assembled. And I don't think people believe me. But I will tell you, this product is hand-assembled. Like machines print the paper, right? Right, right. But I have watched the paper being fed into a binding machine. And I have watched a guy bind it. I watch a guy cut each notebook. Every notebook is cut to size by hand because they glue it, right? So it's glued to the top. But you have to make the notebook a little bit wide or you'd have to glue like a glob of glue on each side. So they make it a little wide. And then someone goes in by hand, cuts, cuts, cuts. The corners, the rounded corners, they had to buy a machine to do this where they made a blade, a rounded blade. Someone feeds it into the machine, steps on a pedal, boom, cuts it. And every single one of these products is made like this. It's one of the reasons it took so long. But the other reason was I had to push them in a bunch of directions, right? Right. This is one of those things where I know you must have experienced this too. When you haven't come from this world, you have ideas that aren't the way that things are done. Correct. But then you push and work with people to find a way to do it. And I found it incredibly valuable. And I think they did too. They were like things that this company had done in the way that I wanted them. They didn't have a machine to do the rounded corners that I wanted. So they found one and this was now a new thing that they can offer, right? They can round the corners with notebooks. But like it was so fulfilling and so amazing that I would get to go there and I would talk with these guys. And, you know, this book had to go through some revisions in its design to make it work the way that I wanted. Like the original, I wanted the circular perforation that we have in the theme system journal. Right. Right. Along the top. Yeah, it's like a dot. Yeah. And they made it. They made a version for me and it didn't look right because it was too messy at the top. Because it was like all these like little sharp corners left. It looks great in the journal because it's like a tiny corner. But you got an entire 30 centimeters of that thing and it looked bad. You know, so like we had to go through all this product revision. They were an incredible partner for us to work with. And I am so excited. And we applied for and got a certification that we got the Made in Britain certification, which I am also immensely proud of. And I want to get out ahead of it. These things are made in London. They are put on a boat and sent to Philadelphia. Right. And that's where they're shipped from. If you are buying it in the UK, I just want to let you know something. You are paid. The reason it's more expensive is because you're paying the VAT. Right. You're paying the sales taxes. This is the same for most of Europe, especially. The actual shipping of this product is expensive. It costs $12 to ship it inside of the US because it's oddly sized. And also, that's what shipping costs. Shipping costs what it costs. Like there is no way around this. Right. Like we are, I feel, I am now like full on independent maker. Yeah. Shipping podcast. Let's go. No, because it's like Amazon messes up for all of us because they made people, including me, believe that shipping is free. Shipping is not free. No one's making money on shipping except the shipping companies. Right. Like it's just what it costs. So my point is, especially in the UK, I've checked this myself. It costs about $12 still to ship, but you're paying 20% on top, which is sales tax. If we had a facility in the UK, but we shipped it to you from, you'd still pay the VAT on top of the US sales price. Like that's what we charge. It's the same for Europe. So if you're going to the thing like, wait a second, this is like $50 in total. Please check that there's taxes being added to it. There are taxes we have to pay. And what it means by you paying it at checkout. We spoke about this on the show before. You pay it at checkout means you won't get a customer's notification later on. And then it saves you money because then you don't have to pay a handling fee. You still have handling fees. So like, trust us. We're doing the best we can. If it was as easy to just have a second facility, I tell you, we would have done it a long time ago. It is so hard. Like, you know, we work at Cotton Bureau and they, you know, and even if we worked, you know, Cotton Bureau only shipped from the US at the moment. I don't know if they're ever going to change that. But if we went, if we were with a company that didn't, that had the opportunity for us to have a second logistics facility, I still think at the scale that we're at right now, I don't think we could do it because it's hard enough to manage one set of stock numbers. I would have to manage two sets of stock numbers. And I just don't know if we're at the stage in our business right now where we can do that. I hope that one day we will. Hey, if you want it, support Cortex Brown to buy a psychic notepad. That's what I'll say. I'm so proud of this product. You know, I don't know how many times I will say this, but I'll say it right now. I love the journal. The journal is so important to me. But I think psychic notepad is the best thing that I've designed.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Cool. Yeah, I love it. It's really great. And I love manufacturing shipping digressions. It's my favorite. Yeah. I know the listeners don't, but I'm over here just like, yeah.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I mean, this is, I'm not going to talk about that so much on Cortex, but I feel like this is the place where I can talk about it with you.

== Challenges in Manufacturing and Product Development ==

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Well, we've discussed it. Like we've discussed it. We've tried to level set expectations. Like this stuff is hard. Like manufacturing is hard, right? Yeah, my best business tip to anyone who's just listened to all of this is don't start your own printing business. Like that's the best advice I can give anyone. It's a nightmare. So it's great that you, and then my second biggest advice, because I get this question in emails a lot and we can wrap it here after this and tell everyone how to email me. If you want to email me, Brad, I have this notebook idea. Where's the best place I should get it printed? It's the place you can walk to or drive to. Like I can't, there is no printer. Like that you can use across halfway across the country and be happy with the results. You have to physically go into that facility, explain your ideas and work with them in a long, drawn out, confusing process to get made what you want to made. That's how we did it at Nock. That's how Myke has done it with this product. And it is the best way to get anything you want made like that. So there you go.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Our journals were made in Poland and it was very expensive because I had to keep paying for them to make me one-offs and they were like a couple of hundred dollars per one-off. Yeah.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' It's like a couple. Yeah. Like if you want one notebook, it's going to cost you probably between like two and $500.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Because, you know, I could explain a thing and then I'll be like, well, they say, yeah, that's no problem. But I was like, I need to see that you understand it. Make me one. You know, and it was so expensive, which is like not a thing that I had to do. Because when I was going down to F.E. Berman, they would have it and I'd be like, what if we did it like this? And then they could show me. Yep. You know, like I had a way that I wanted to do the binding and they made a version for me and showed me that like it won't stay together if you do it this way. And then they were able to show me like other books that they'd made with this specific type of glue binding and it worked perfectly. They were like, you know, they had this big, thick book and they were holding it up by just one page of the book and it didn't separate. Oh, yeah. And I was like, yeah, that's what I want. So like that was the experience I was able to have here and it was a joy. And, you know, I'm so happy with our new partners here and I'm so proud of this product. Like, again, if you ever want to take notes while you're at your desk, if you ever want to take notes while you're in a meeting, Psychic Notepad is made for you. So go check it out at cortexmerch.com.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' All right. I think that's a wrap this week, buddy. We got a lot of STPA to get to next week. I already have new topics I want to discuss next week. So we are rolling. We're rolling in it right now. So I love stationery, Myke. I love stationery. Let's keep talking about it.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Thank you for giving me the time to talk about this today.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Absolutely. I'm glad we could. It's been a while.

'''Myke Hurley:''' If you want to find Brad's work online, go to penaddict.com and you can go to spokedesign.com. Congratulations on your four years of being in business together.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Crazy, right? Yeah, I can't believe that. It's cool stuff. Like, you know, we talk about making stuff that makes you smile and that you want to use personally. Like Myke just went through all this with a sidekick. Yeah, it's that kind of feeling I get when I pick up any spoke pen. Yeah.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Brad streams multiple times a week over at twitch.tv slash penaddict. He's penaddict on Instagram. Brad on micro.blog. You can find me. I'm at imike, I-M-Y-K-E on Instagram. Go check out the Cortex brand Instagram too. I'm trying to do more with it there. Oh, cool. And I'd be interested to know what people think. So that's at Cortex brand. You can go to cortexmerch.com where you can check out psychic notepad, themes, list and journal, stuff like that. Thanks to Pen Chalet and Squarespace for the support of this week's episode. But most of all, thank you for listening. I hope you've enjoyed today's episode. I've had a blast making it too. We'll be back next time. Until then, say goodbye, Brad.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Goodbye, Brad. Bye.

[[Category:Podcast Transcripts]]
[[Category:The Pen Addict Podcast Transcript]]

The Pen Addict 520/transcript

2026-06-23T15:59:35Z

PencilBot: fixed spelling

{{Infobox podcast transcript
| name = The Pen Addict
| number = 520
| title = National Guacamole Day
| date = July 6th, 2022
| hosts = [[Brad Dowdy]] 
[[Myke Hurley]]
| guests =
| link = [https://www.relay.fm/penaddict/520 Episode 520]
| audiolink = [https://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/traffic.libsyn.com/secure/thepenaddict/The_Pen_Addict_520.mp3 Audio Episode 520]
| length = 55
}}

'''Brad:''' From RelayFM, this is The Pen Addict, episode 520. We're back, baby! This episode is brought to you by Squarespace. My name is Myke Hurley, I'm joined by Brad Dowdy. You know you're listening to this and you're thinking, but you had heard you last week.

'''Myke:''' Yeah, I was literally here last week, Myke.

'''Brad:''' But you weren't, were you? Never was I. As mentioned, we recorded that episode in advance, so for me and Brad, in our timeline, it's been two weeks since we recorded an episode of The Pen Addict, so I'm happy to be back.

'''Myke:''' Can I say I'm happy to be back on the normal timeline? Yeah. That the podcast out of time was a weird, weird thing. And we did not do the best job at recording it, because I just fail at that whole getting into the headspace of doing the podcast out of time. It's just like, I just want to talk like I'm in the future, but from the past kind of thing. It's a mess. It was a mess. We did, I did an average job at it, and when we normally do a good job at recording a podcast in time, which is what we're going to do today, Myke.

'''Brad:''' Yeah, this is much better for a show that is mostly news-focused. That's the thing for us. Exactly. You know, as mentioned, we spoke about the Mark III a little bit, and it absolutely crushed by the time the episode came out. They were funded even 24 hours of us recording, which was then six days early.

'''Myke:''' Yeah. Yeah. And then, of course, we're going to have to follow up on the TWSBI narwhal stuff that we talked about before, but it's like, I don't even want to now, because it's already like two weeks in arrears of happening, and everyone already knows. But I feel like in podcast continuation style, we need to at least mention it and go through a couple things, right? Yeah. So, like, that happened, like, I think the day after we recorded, which was almost two weeks ago at this point. So, it's like, eh, that's old news, but it's like, well, we kind of got a touch on it. But we're back. We're back on the normal schedule. I'm back from vacation. I actually took a real legitimate vacation.

== Vacation Reflections ==

'''Myke:''' Went to the beach, hung out, read some books, like, literally did as much of nothing as possible. And I got to say, it was fantastic. Like, this is the first family vacation we've taken since, like, you know, like a real vacation, not like a little weekend kind of thing with, you know, seeing other people kind of deal since pre-COVID.

'''Brad:''' Maribeth posted just some incredible photos. Yeah. She does. She's such a good photographer, my gosh.

'''Myke:''' She loves, she loves, she loves taking pictures. Like, that's her hobby. Her hobby, like, when, if she's home and she's off, she's usually thinking about taking pictures, if not sitting in front of her laptop editing pictures that she's just taken and does all kinds of things. So, she's really, really talented that way. And that's just kind of her thing. She pretty much keeps it to herself, right? Like, it's not a big deal. Like, she's not, like, putting herself out there, but she really, she has a passion for it and she's really good at it. And it showed. I tried to share a couple. They're on my Instagram feed or in the member's newsletter. Just some cool shots she took. So good, man. But that's what we did. Like, she's doing that. While she's doing that, I'm sitting on the beach reading a book, right? So, it's just like, it was good. To follow up on the stationery that I took with me, I figured we would do a quick recap of what stationery actually got used. I knew I was bringing too many fountain pens, right? I don't need four fountain pens for a non-fountain pen writing, drawing, you know, vacation kind of thing, right? So, I just, I really, I used one fountain pen most of the time, the Fagianato PKS in orange that we talked about last week. And I wrote it dry. Like, that feels good, man, right? It's like, it's anytime you empty, and it's just a, you know, a cartridge converter type of situation. So, it wasn't like a huge, massive ink capacity. But it was such an enjoyable writing experience inked with the Bungokan Kobayashi Shizuoka Orange, a.k.a. the Bullet Train ink. That's what I call it. I'm the only person that calls it that. But it's a lot easier to remember. It's the Bullet Train ink as opposed to Bungokan Kobayashi Shizuoka Orange.

'''Myke:''' And again, we talked about this last week, but the experience of writing with that was great. It was a good combination. It was kind of the perfect little vacation diversion pen that I journaled with while I was there. The second thing.

'''Brad:''' Was that what you expected? Like, did you expect that that was going to be like the standout?

'''Myke:''' Yeah, I did. Because it was the most unique pen that I brought. Yeah. Out of the fountain pen category, right? There was no reason for me to bring four fountain pens on this trip. Sure there was. You know? You brought that to me. I mean, that's what I do. Okay. There wasn't another option. Let's be clear. There was no other option, but I understood even while I was packing that I'm not going to use all these pens, but I'm taking them, you know, because this one I love and that one I want to try. And this one I want to test the ink. And, you know, you make all the little excuses. All the pen addicts know all the little excuses you make to overpack your stationery, right? Like, it's super easy. Super easy to do. But I did use the notebook and the note cards that I brought. And I also, Myke, in last week's, aka two weeks ago episode, we talked about the tactile term ultim goods. I got those. And I brought those on vacation. That was probably my most used pen. Aside from, like, when I was journaling, I was using the Fajonado fountain pen, right? Otherwise, if I was writing, which I took a lot of short notes, quick notes, things, you know, you know, just carrying it around with you pen, EDC pen, the tactile term ultim bolt action pen, I did get in hand. So quick review on that. Quick disclaimer, Will from tactile turn sent me both the ultim and natural in the short configuration, as well as the Bayar knife, the ultim handle knife. Ah, the knife sold out. It's happened. They are all coming back, I think. I haven't confirmed with Will. I am, as not a knife person, right? Like, I have a few knives, right? But, like, I think the last knife I bought was three or four years ago when I was at Dromgoos. And they have some knives there. And they had a G10 handle, bench made. I think the model is called the Proper. Yeah. That I just love. It's a very simple, thin knife. And this ultim knife is kind of like my platonic ideal of a pocket knife, right? As someone who's not, like, way, way off the deep end into this stuff, I am thrilled with this knife.

'''Brad:''' The James brand Folsom knife is, that's, like, as good as it gets. I freaking love them. I have two of them now. I have their original one, their green one. Yep. And I have the DDC, the Draplin orange and black one. Mm-hmm. I love them.

'''Myke:''' This is thinner and lighter than that James brand, which is what I really appreciate about this. Oh, I have no doubt.

'''Brad:''' The James brand one is quite hefty.

'''Myke:''' Yeah, but it's still normal. It's not, like, overly big. Like, it's a knife I would consider buying, right? Yeah. If we're not a knife person, just give me something simple and beautiful and functional, right? And this is even more of what I would have wanted without knowing that I wanted it, right? Like, it's a $200 knife. Like, let's not, like, beat around the bush here. This is a very expensive product. But as far as knives goes, just, like, fountain pens, it's, like, people who are into knives say, $200, eh, you know, whatever. You know, like, we buy, you know, more expensive pens all the time. It's the same kind of, you know, passion that knife enthusiasts have, like, when they see the price. Like, if you're new to it, you're going, like, oh, my God, that's crazy, like, expensive. Then if you're knee-deep into it, like we are with pens, you're like, okay, I see it. I understand the price, right?

'''Brad:''' How much are they? Because it doesn't say in, now, $199. Yeah. I mean, I don't know. I mean, it doesn't surprise me because I know what, in general, like, nice-made things are expensive. You know what I'm saying? Like, I feel like I'm in enough hobbies at this point that I know that stuff can add up.

'''Myke:''' Yeah, just your Ultem keyboard tray. Just that piece, how much would that piece cost?

'''Brad:''' Oh, I don't even know, man.

'''Myke:''' Like, a couple hundred bucks just for, like, the bottom. Yeah, easy. So, yeah. Like, so, let's talk about the pen for a second now that I actually have it. It's great. It lived in my pocket pretty much for a week straight. Right? And it's exactly made for that. Right? So, that's the Ultem thing. Right? It's a plastic, and it's durable, and it's lightweight, and it makes for a good shell for a pen. Right? It's a little bit wider than the standard tactile turns, which I didn't realize until I got it. I was like, oh, this is a little bit wider. I think, you know, just for wall, barrel wall integrity and structure purposes, I think the pen has to be, like, crafted a little bit wider just for that reason. But it's kind of the perfect EDC pen in that it's just ultra light, but extremely durable. And it kind of checks both of those boxes, which is pretty rare to do. And the bolt, I mean, this is one of the best bolts going. I mean, listen to this.

== Ultem Pen Discussion ==

'''Brad:''' Yeah, that's nice.

'''Myke:''' I mean, it's just a rock.

'''Brad:''' I've got to say, what I don't understand is people that buy the pen but get the black one.

'''Myke:''' Yeah, so, like, I guess we'll talk about this in just a second, but, like, Ultem comes in two colors, essentially, right? It's this amber, what's considered the natural Ultem color, the translucent amber. That's when I hear Ultem, I think of that. And then the other Ultem option when you're buying it at bulk to manufacture things from is black. And the black doesn't pop like the amber, but I think people really also don't like the amber a lot either. It's a weird color. Yeah. I won't elaborate on that, but I love it because it's that orangish-yellow.

'''Brad:''' I mean, it is what you're buying. Yeah. You know, like, that's what it looks like. And so you get it because it's kind of not just a material, it's a color. It's both things, you know?

'''Myke:''' I agree with that, yeah. Even though it does come in black, when you say Ultem, I never even think black. But I will say the black has matching black hardware on it. So, like, the clip and the knock all match, and it's really clean. Like, I prefer the standard Ultem, but, I mean, I think the black is clean. But it's, I mean, you know, the consumers have voted, right, the standard Ultem is sold out while the black is available, right? That's kind of all you need to know.

'''Brad:''' Because really, it's just lightweight, right? Like, that's what the black is. It's just lightweight. It's an ultralight. There just isn't, I mean, that just doesn't have the same pull, I would assume. Because there are a lot of lightweight materials. You get any black plastic, right? You know what I mean?

'''Myke:''' Right.

'''Brad:''' Yeah, exactly. I guess it has an interesting texture, but still.

'''Myke:''' It does. It's still got that same, the tactile turn ridges, which I was surprised when I got it. Because they don't, like, the original photographs, I couldn't tell until I, like, kind of zoomed in. You know, tactile turn's known for those, you know, cylindrical ridges around the pen. And I'm sure there's a more technical name for it. And that's kind of, like, their staple. Like, every pen has that. I was like, oh, are these Ultems going to have it? And they sure do. And it makes it feel great. Like, again, like, this is, like, one of the better just EDC type of pens. If you just want something that you're not going to have to worry about destroying and just can take it and go. Like, I really love it. I put the, it ships with the Schmidt EasyFlow 9000. So, it's the Parker style refills. And if I was going to, like, really, like, hardcore EDC it and I, like, worked outside, I would put a Fisher Space Pen refill in it. But I put it in the Jetstream, the SXR, you know, the Platinum, excuse me, the Parker style ballpoint, the 07, which is just perfect for it. So, I really, really like it. So, yeah. Thank you, Will, for sending me these. I'll probably have some reviews of them later. But we'll continue to take pictures and share them. Because I'm really happy with them. Even though, like, you know, I did get, you know, these are mine. I got these for free. So, Will sent them to me. And I would happily pay for them. You know, maybe I just need to go buy them. When they come back in, maybe I'll buy some and give them away on the blog. I generally like to do that. Yeah, I generally, that's my move, right? Like, I am so lucky to get these things. But I also want to, like, support these makers that are so kind to me by actually, you know, giving them my money.

'''Brad:''' Well, but the other thing you do, though, I mean, we're inside the looking glass now, is what you've just done. That's the kindest thing you can do, is talk about the product. Right, right. If it's good, I mean, that's the other part. It has to be good. But you talk about the product, right? And then if it's good, then other people want it because you are an influencer.

'''Myke:''' A penfluencer. We decided I'm...

'''Brad:''' We're inside the looking glass now, man.

'''Myke:''' We're past it. We decided... What did we decide? I'm not an influencer. What am I? I'm a tastemaker. Tastemaker, I believe. Yeah. We prefer that. I prefer that term very, very much.

'''Brad:''' Although, don't eat the ink. We've been through this before. Do not.

== Tastemaker vs Influencer ==

'''Myke:''' Yeah, please don't eat the ink. All right, so the next pen that I wanted to talk about is another Ultem product that came out last week and that I don't have in my hands yet, but I hope to one day soon. The Shown Design Smoltem, which is one of the greatest names ever. I like that you like it. All right.

'''Myke:''' Let's be perfectly honest. It's not a good name, right? Because it's hard to say, but it's a very correct and fun and accurate name for what the product is. Is fun written down? Yes. Yeah. I love this name. You know, I don't know that I... Even for someone like myself who likes to have fun with products and all of this stuff, I don't know if I could have actually pulled that trigger. I would have called it the, you know... I mean, he does it kind of like the AKA, right? Pocket Engineered Plastics Ultem, AKA the Smoltem. I mean, we're all going to call it the Smoltem, right? Yeah.

'''Brad:''' I mean, I would say Shown is great with this. Like, what was the... Is it Peak? Is that the little ghost one? Yeah. Yeah. Love it. That's the one at the top of my list. Memorable names. Memorable names, for sure.

'''Myke:''' Yeah. Yeah. So, this is... What this is, is Ian at Shown Design made, like, full-size eyedropper-able Ultem pens. Again, black and the standard, you know, Ultem Amber. And this is a smaller, kind of pocket six size, pocket pen Ultem barrel fountain pen, which is really great. So, it's a little small eyedropper guy. And I just adore it. So, I still... I'm kind of making a mental list for when I go to San Francisco. I'm assuming Ian's going to be there. If not, I'll order it. I still want the Peak first, right? That's... I have the Ultem. I want the Peak barrel, which we'll put a link in the show notes to the Peak, if y'all don't know what I'm talking about. And then the Smoltem is probably after that. But, like, I still want the Peak ahead of this one. But I kind of love it. And, you know, I like that these manufacturers are messing around with, you know, interesting materials. Ultem's become very popular these days. It must machine well enough for people to keep making things from it, right? Like, we talk about how when makers experiment with new materials, not all materials are manufacturing friendly, right? Like, there's damage that can be done to either the materials or the machinery, depending on the types of materials. And Ultem looks like it's kind of become a pretty good option to make things from. So that brings up a question, Myke, from NeighborVillain in my Twitch chat. Is Ultem a fad? And they asked me this on stream yesterday. And I said, I'm going to hold that and talk about it. Since I knew we were talking about the tactile turn and the shown design, I said, let me take this on the podcast. Is Ultem a fad? And the answer, my answer, is yes. I don't know if that's what people would think I would answer or they would think I would say no. It's absolutely a fad. Can I correct you?

'''Brad:''' May I correct you? Sure. It's a trend. Fad.

'''Brad:''' Okay. Is there much difference? Yes. Fad is a derogatory term, I think. Okay.

'''Myke:''' I think people take it that way. Yeah. Yeah. Okay.

'''Brad:''' That's just a fad. Like, it's rubbish. It comes and goes. Nobody wants it. Like, fad kind of has this idea of like, oh, it's crap. And like, no one wants it. And we're all going to forget about it. And it's going to be done. Like, Ultem is just a trend. Like, it's just popular right now because it's new and people are doing it with pens. Eventually, it's going to calm down. But it will remain an option that people will continue to use. Like, it's not going to go away. It's just in vogue right now.

'''Myke:''' That's how I would answer. I'm trying to. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm not disagreeing with any of that. I'm just trying to think about my idea of Ultem as a platform for stationary. It is currently trendy. And it's currently good. Like, I'm not saying, like you're saying in a derogatory way. It's not trendy like, oh, God, can we stop with this Ultem stuff? No. Like, I love it. I think there's a cap to it. I think it's limited. Yeah. Just like, just in the color discussion we're having, there's only so much you can do. So, it's never going to be crazy popular. And I don't think it's necessarily going to have a long tail either because there's going to be something else. Exactly. And this is what I'm saying. That's going to come out.

'''Brad:''' You are, like, for me personally, describing a trend. Okay. You know, that, like, it's having its moment in the sun right now. Yes. But this excitement is going to fade away. But I don't think it's like, then there will never be Ultem pens again.

'''Myke:''' Right, right, right. Right. Okay. I think you're saying what I'm thinking. Yeah. I was thinking about it in a different way. I was thinking of it more as, is there, like, a termination point in Ultem? There's not, but it's not going to be as popular as it is right now, like, you know, a year from now. Right.

'''Brad:''' It's like shimmer inks were a trend. And now that's calmed down, but it's not like they're gone. But for a while, everyone was doing them.

'''Myke:''' I mean, they still are. Like, shimmer inks have staying power that, like, Ultem does not have staying power, right? They're different categories.

'''Brad:''' But this is what I'm saying. It's like, the shimmer inks are still around, but it's not, like, all we're talking about anymore. They're just, like, you can still buy them. People still make them. But they had that moment where it was, like, you couldn't move for people introducing brand new shimmering lines, right? Like, but now it's, like, okay, this is just a staple of what exists. So, like, trends, like, the items in a trend, like, they stick around. Especially, you look like fashion and furniture, right? Something becomes trendy. People buy it. They still own it. Yeah. You know? Where I feel like fad products tend to be, like, you just get rid of them.

'''Myke:''' Mm-hmm.

'''Brad:''' You know, like, we all saw, like, fads when we were kids and toys and stuff like that, right? But it's, like, eventually it's just, like, nobody wants this thing and they just get rid of it. I'm trying to think of something that I would consider a fad in pens and I'm struggling with that at the moment. But if I think of something, I'll let you know. Okay.

'''Myke:''' Yeah. So, like, and Alan's bringing up the point, like, the real point why I think it's, like, a trend and doesn't have, like, this long-term thing. Unless there's some kind of, like, color additive that can be done, then, you know, the two basic colors just, they have a limited shelf life of creativity. Like, they don't have a limited shelf life for my personal usage, right? Like, I bought the pen. I love the pen. I'm going to continue to use the pen. That's also the only one I need, right? Sure. Like, I'm not going to get the purple one or the swirly one, right? Because it's not a technical feature of Ultum. Like, if that becomes a feature of Ultum, then I think we're in business. But, again, Ultum is not made for the pen industry. Like, we have custom makers making acrylic, right? It's a commercial product. And, like, I don't know that there's necessarily a need for them to make purple or magenta Ultums as a business model. So, we'll see. I would love it if they did because I love the material for what it is. Like, that kind of very, like, tough to destruct plastic. Like, I'm down with that. But, yeah. So, there you go.

'''Myke:''' All right. What's this next thing we got in here? Recording.

== Sailor North American Edition ==

'''Brad:''' Yeah. Someone threw this in the Discord. Who was it? Ryan. It's a new Sailor North American edition with line characters.

'''Brad:''' You have nothing to say on this? You're always so excited about the bear and the duck when anybody else does it.

'''Myke:''' Okay.

'''Myke:''' Line is not in America.

'''Brad:''' But it doesn't matter, though, right?

'''Myke:''' It doesn't matter. Like, I'm confused. It's like, why is this a North American version when we don't even have line in here?

'''Brad:''' It surprises me, too, right? Yeah. These are good-looking cute pens. So, like, great. I'm pleased that they did it. They're amazing. Do you know what I mean? The reason I'm saying is, like, you and me and other people that listen to the show have to try, like, loads of nefarious means to try and get our hands on pens that look like this, right? These look really good. There's a duck.

'''Myke:''' Okay. I scrolled down the Instagram comments. First comment. Cute indeed, but is line even popular in North America? Crying laughing emoji.

'''Brad:''' It doesn't matter, man. Because this is just a duck pen and a bear pen.

'''Myke:''' I completely agree. That's what they are. I'm glad my initial thought was the initial thought of other people as well.

'''Brad:''' I mean, yeah. It's weird, right? Yeah, yeah. Because they should have just done a bear pen and a duck pen and left line out of the equation. But they didn't. But now, like, these are great additions, like, color-wise.

'''Myke:''' I think they look fantastic. How good is the finial on this duck? Like, these are the most basic finials ever. It's great. And it's just glorious. Yeah. And these have to be $400, right? These have to be, like, crazy. I would assume so. What are these? Are these the full size? No, these are 14K, so they're the Pro Gear Slim. They're Slims. Yeah. So that makes them probably $380.

'''Brad:''' They have custom nibs, too.

'''Myke:''' Yeah. They're fantastic. They're great. I have no qualms with the pen. Like, it's great. Like, I love everything that Sailor makes. I don't know when the next time I'll buy a Sailor pin is. Like, I bought one in Atlanta. And, you know, because I could get it at kind of like the before price. And, like, I'm good with that. It's like, am I going to buy another one? I probably will because I love them so much. Yeah. But it's like, this one's interesting.

'''Brad:''' I merely wanted to talk about it because of the licensing thing. Because this is what it was like. This is odd to me that they would like, of all characters, you know, that this is what they work for. And maybe it's just because, like, Sailor has an existing relationship with them. I don't know. It's usually Lamy, right? A dude line?

'''Myke:''' Yeah, Lamy. So, like, yeah. This was my next question. Where does this discussion originate? I would be hard-pressed to think that Sailor North America would initiate the conversation. Let's bring line pins to North America. I would think it would be the other way around where Sailor Corporate would be, hey, we have this line license and these pins are great. Can we do, like, a North American version, right? Like, which direction do you think this went?

'''Brad:''' I mean, I wouldn't be surprised if at some point we see that this is the Japanese edition too. Like, it's the same pin. You know? And, like, just Sailor North America is bringing it over because it's a great design.

'''Myke:''' Nope. Both pins available as North American exclusives. I was just looking for that. So, there it is. I don't understand that.

'''Brad:''' I don't know why they did it.

'''Myke:''' I don't know why they did it. But I like them. This will be the pin where the Asian market will be having to hunt down the options in the U.S. Yeah, see how you like it, you know? Yeah. They pulled a reverse Sailor on us. Yeah. I guess they did. That's funny. It's really great. I really love them. I can't get over the duck finial. I don't know why. That just really speaks to me. It just helps that it's orange. So, it's pretty cool.

'''Brad:''' That's all I had to say on the matter. I like them. I think they look good. But I don't know why they're buying them either.

'''Myke:''' Yeah, it's surprising. It's certainly a thing. It's okay.

'''Brad:''' This episode is brought to you by Squarespace, the all-in-one platform for building your brand and growing your business online. You can stand out with a beautiful website, which is so incredibly easy to build. You don't need to know any code. You just go to Squarespace. They have these beautiful templates that you can get set up with. It's as easy as browsing the category of your business to find a perfect starting place. Customize it in a few clicks and make it look and feel exactly as you want so you can engage with your audience. You could do this by setting up a blog. They have these wonderful blogging tools so you can share stories, photos, videos, updates. Of course, this is what Brad uses. He uses Squarespace and what they're blogging functionality for the pen addict. You'll be able to categorize, share, and schedule your posts to make your content work for you. You can also sell anything with physical digital goods. It doesn't matter what it is. Squarespace has the tools that you need to start selling online. This can be products. It could be content. Whatever. Squarespace has you covered. You also have these great tools that you can use for insights so you can understand how to grow your business. If you ever wonder where your site visitors are coming from or which channels are best for referring traffic, all of this can be analyzed in Squarespace. It's all built into their platform. Once you've got that data, you can improve your website, build a marketing strategy, and you can maybe focus some top keywords and stuff around your most popular products. Really incredible stuff. No matter how much you want to get involved in, they've got the tools there for you. If you just want to have a blog, that's easy. But then if you want to add a store down the line, if you want to add email campaigns down the line, you can do all of it with Squarespace. It's a one-stop shop. It's perfect. Go to squarespace.com slash pen addict. You can sign up for a free trial today. No credit card required. Then when you're ready to launch, use the offer code pen addict, and you will save 10% off your first purchase for website or domain. That is squarespace.com slash pen addict. Then when you sign up, use the offer code pen addict, and you'll get yourself 10% off your first purchase and show your support for the show. Thanks to Squarespace for the continued support of this show and all of Relay FM.

== National Mechanical Pencil Day ==

'''Myke:''' Michael, how did you celebrate National Mechanical Pencil Day yesterday? Did you celebrate? No. And what do they mean by national?

'''Brad:''' I mean, you know, whatever nation you're in, I suppose.

'''Myke:''' Yeah. It's just, why isn't it World Mechanical Pencil Day?

'''Brad:''' I feel like the only place where national is used is America. Like, other places would give it a more descriptive name, and America's just like national. You'll get it.

'''Myke:''' Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. So this is one of those days, unlike Fountain Pen Day, which is great. This is one of those days where there's like 10 things that the day is that, you know, it's like National Guacamole Day, you know, It's Independence Day in Algeria. National Guacamole Council.

'''Brad:''' National Apple Turnover Day.

'''Myke:''' Yeah, that's the perfect one. Yes.

'''Brad:''' National Bikini Day. National Graeme Cracker Day. National Hawaii Day. National Workaholics Day. Pet Remembrance Day. St. Cyril and Methodius. Zambia Unity Day. It's Ryan Shane's birthday. And Tavia Mowry's birthday.

'''Myke:''' Okay. Okay. I am, I did not know it was National Graeme Cracker Day, so I'm going to celebrate that later when we get off. But yesterday I was streaming, and, you know, I got the, hey, happy Mechanical Pencil Day. I was like, I did not know these things. Which, you know, it's a fun jumping off point to get me to talk about mechanical pencils and what my favorite mechanical pencils were. And we've covered this before on the podcast. Maybe last National Mechanical Pencil Day, Myke. Like, maybe this is an annual event that really sticks in my head, so I remember it every year, which I don't. But I thought I would mention, give a shout out to a few awesome mechanical pencils. And I did a little tier ranking off the top of my head. I didn't really, like, spend hours thinking about this list, so I guarantee I left off your favorite pencil. And I don't mean you. I mean the collective listenership. I guarantee I left off someone's favorite pencil here. And it was not on purpose. It was that me making this tier list quickly. Because I think there's a very defined S tier, Myke. And I think it's clear. And I am not open to discussion, really, for the S tier. After that, I think everything's up for discussion. So in the S tier, it's two pencils. It's the road. For me, this is my list. Rotring 600 and Spoke Design Model 4. And that's the extent of the S tier list. And that's how S tiers should be. S tiers should not be large and all-inclusive. And, you know, like, complete, right? They should be a very defined top of the list. Then everything else is, like, a complete tier below these pens.

'''Brad:''' I always read it as steer.

'''Myke:''' I have never done that in my life. But I really dislike you for letting me have that visual now. So thank you. What about the next tier? Then what's the next tier called? Is it ATA?

'''Brad:''' No problem at all. That's A tier to me. Like, I do not have a problem with A tier, B tier, C tier. No, no, no. But S tier, I'm always like steer.

'''Myke:''' Okay. Well, I'm always good on S tier, but I'm going to call the A tier ATA. ATA. From now on.

'''Myke:''' So the Rotring 600, I just think it's one of the best products ever made. One of these days, we're going to do the Panatic Ratings podcast that we keep threatening to do, that I do for Panatic members. You know, I'm going to have a bunch of those. And then the Spoke Model 4 is right there with it as well, which chat's giving me grief. The Spoke Design Model 4, the custom builder should be back up today as you're listening to this. As we're recording, Brian, the parts are going to be available hopefully today to turn back on the customizer for that.

'''Brad:''' You kind of failed though, right? Because it was National Mechanical Pencil Day yesterday. I don't know if you knew. You could have like engaged on Instagram. I don't have the... Content engaged, you know?

'''Myke:''' I don't have the nationaltoday.com calendar widget into my calendars to give me the list of, you know, national...

'''Brad:''' You just need it for Mechanical Pencil Day because you own a mechanical pencil company.

'''Myke:''' Right, right. So yeah, we did fail on that because I had no clue it was National Mechanical Pencil Day. So those are my two favorites. Those are on S tier. On ATA, we have the Uni Kurutoga Roulette. Very specifically, the roulette. Only the roulette, Kurutoga makes the A tier. It's the best kind of... You want to jump into a Kurutoga, but you don't want the basic plastic one. It's $13 and it's a metal grip section Kurutoga mechanism. It's the best. Like I think it's my favorite Kurutoga bar none. Then we have the classics, the Pentel, the Pentel Sharp, the P-series that everyone knows, and the Pentel Carry. Those are two very different styles of mechanical pencils, both very unique. And, you know, great designs, classic shapes. They just kind of set themselves apart in just how long they've been around. Like these are pencils that have been around for 30, 40, 50 years maybe in the Carry or the Sharp. One of them, I think, hit a 50 anniversary recently. So, yeah. These are great. And then a surprise entry in the A tier, I believe, is the Tombow Monograph Grip Shaker. This is a pencil that I reviewed that really stuck out to me because I didn't expect... It's one of those pencils that I didn't expect it to be this good that I just kept using and looking at going, huh, this is really special. Like it's really, really nice and a great, great design. Then in the B tier, I have the Uni Shift Pipe Lock, which is really a great pencil, one of my favorites. I think it's only down a tier because the upper barrels feel a little bit cheap. So, like it's a metal grip plastic top barrel, which is common in a lot of pencils. It just feels a little bit off sometimes in the Shift Pipe Lock, but in the way it works, in the way it looks, in the way it's designed. It's great. And the Pentel Smash is also in the B tier. It's behind the Pentel Sharp just because the Sharp has so many more options. They do a lot of fun stuff, more lead grades and things like that. But the Smash, it's borderline A tier, but I think that's kind of my just initial, hey, let's take a pass at this quick tier rating for National Mechanical Pencil Day. And I use these all the time. Like I'm a real... Here we go, Myke. This is what I want. You know what I want? I want a Pentel Sharp Ultum Mechanical Pencil. I think out of all the models that I've listed here, the Pentel Sharp, the P series that everyone knows, the P205, 203, 205, 207, 209, you know, that's a lead grade indicator. It's a skinny, lightweight mechanical pencil that would be perfect for Ultum. Like they're a plastic barrel. I want an Ultum Pentel Sharp. So there we go. So let's bring the Ultum conversation all the way around. So someone make that for me. Maybe we'll make it at Spoke. Who knows?

'''Myke:''' That's not a hint or anything. That's not a hint or anything.

'''Brad:''' That is a trademark infringement, you know? Yeah, that would look good, I think.

'''Myke:''' Yeah. That pencil and that material is the one out of this list. So what did I list? One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, like 10 pencils here. That's the one that needs an Ultum barrel out of all this entire list. Tombow could do it, but I think it would just be better in the Pentel. So it'll never happen, but a boy can dream and it would look great on my desk. I would be loving that if I could get it.

'''Brad:''' Pentel Smash is such a funny name.

'''Myke:''' I mean, it helps make the pencil, right? Like, it's a great name. It's technically accurate in what they design, right? So the grip section is made of these little rubber pillows, if you will. So you're really smashing down these little pieces of rubber in the grip section as you write. So that's the idea. And then they have, the way they do the knock is like a plunger style where they have, I don't know, it's like a little accordion rubber, so it looks like you're smashing it down. So they leaned into the name and designed a pencil around it, and it's really great. It's a really great pencil.

'''Myke:''' I feel like you would be a Pentel Smash fan. Like, for a non-mechanical pencil user, like outside the rotary, like that would be the next one I would recommend for you.

'''Brad:''' Huh, okay.

'''Myke:''' Yeah, it's just a weird little pencil that is technically, great. It's just really, really great. So it's good stuff. All right, Myke. In the two weeks since we've actually recorded a podcast, I feel like we have to talk about the conclusion, I say that in air quotes, of the TWSBI versus Narwhal saga. Did you have a chance to read the official statements put out that I linked in the show? We'll have in the show notes in case y'all haven't seen them.

'''Brad:''' Oh my gosh, I didn't. I'm sorry.

'''Myke:''' Well, that's fine. It's very... Should I just read them?

'''Brad:''' Should I read it?

'''Myke:''' No. Okay. Because it's very legal-ese.

'''Brad:''' Oh, I did read this. I didn't read this today. I read this when it came out. Two weeks ago. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Sorry.

'''Myke:''' I thought they were new ones. No, no, I read this.

'''Brad:''' I read this. Yeah.

'''Myke:''' Okay. I figured as much. I was just going to let it go, but yeah.

'''Myke:''' TWSBI essentially backtracked everything. Yeah. I'm going to assume under legal pressure, the way this is written. You know, I talked to some lawyer friends of mine. I was like, is this like, what do we have here? Did this like go through lawyers? And they're like, yeah, this is like a pre... I'm going to go through lawyers. Yeah. Yeah. This is like a, let's settle this before it goes any further type of documentation. Um, okay. TWSBI, like it's, it's okay. Like I'm glad we're done. Okay. That's, that's the big takeaway because TWSBI didn't have a leg to stand on from the jump. Everyone seemed to know that except TWSBI.

'''Myke:''' And then TWSBI doubled down by saying, Hey, we're going to pull, um, you know, we're going to pull our products or we're not going to allow you to purchase future products. If you continue to carry Narwhal. And that just made things worse. So TWSBI does come out of this with, you know, they did not come out unscathed in the court of, you know, public perception. Right. Um, Narwhal for their stance, basically were put on the back foot, just having to defend themselves. And I'm assuming, you know, instigated these conversations to, for lack of a better term, make it stop. Like whatever TWSBI is doing, like needs to stop because it's just uncalled for unnecessary. Um, turns out, you know, TWSBI doesn't have a leg to stand on shocker. Um, and we're kind of done. Like, I think it's just kind of a wrap. So if you're not familiar with this or need, you know, an update to the conclusion or hadn't seen these statements, we'll link the statements in the show notes, but they're, they're not necessarily worth reading other than TWSBI had some retractions, kind of apologized and took everything back basically. And Narwhal's like, yeah, like they pretty much had to do all that. And so we're back on to where everyone can order TWSBI and carry Narwhal. And, you know, we're definitely, I'm sure those two companies aren't one big happy family now, but at least like in the greater consumer and retailer space, it's done.

'''Brad:''' Honestly, this is the best way it could have ended.

'''Myke:''' Yeah. Aside from never starting, this is the only way.

== Narwhal Controversy Resolution ==

'''Brad:''' That's why I was very particular about what I said, right? Yeah. This isn't the best thing to have happened. This is the best way this situation could have gotten resolved because now it's just like, look, they done messed up, right? I don't know what was going on at TWSBI. I still say like they believed it, you know, right? Like I'm not saying obviously it wasn't right to believe it because now they've agreed that, but they believed it. Like to them, it meant something. And like they were on one about it, you know, like big time. Right. But it was clearly. Yeah, they were on one is a great way to put it. It was stupid, right? And now they've eroded goodwill that they have for kind of for no reason now. And so.

'''Myke:''' Yeah, I think that's a good way. That's the terminology I was looking for. They've eroded whatever goodwill they had. And some people didn't like them anyway just because of, you know, you know, existing, you know, manufacturing issues or whatever that I think have been resolved. Like I'm a super huge TWSBI fan. And like now I think of them differently. Like I'm a little bit agitated like that this whole thing happened that didn't need to happen. And like, you know, I'm going to still use TWSBI's and, you know, still review TWSBI pins and things like that. But it's like, man, I wish we didn't have to do this. Like, you know, no one likes this stuff. Especially when it was essentially like completely unfounded. Like what happened didn't have to happen. So to wrap it up, let's talk about two new products from one from Narwhal, one from TWSBI. That's coming up soon. One out now from Narwhal, the School Kill. I think that's how you say that. This is a model that Narwhal's had. And I didn't realize they did an annual edition, you know, like a big run. But like for the year, like the 2022 limited edition. And it's like 2,000 units that like all the retailers get. This is a really good looking pen and a good quality pen for $60. This is the Dragonet Sapphire mic. Is this year's edition.

'''Myke:''' My hang up with Narwhal, and this is going to be my consistent hang up until it changes, is I don't love their nibs. I like their nibs. I will use the pens. I don't love them. I think they could be better for me, for the way I write. They have very large tipping, which makes the finest nib that they sell a fine. And then even the fine kind of writes like a medium, right? And on upwards, you know, the medium writes like a broad. And it's great. Like if you like that type of ink on the page, knock yourself out. You're going to like these Narwhal nibs. For someone who likes extra fine nibs, this is a tough sell for me to even go with the fine. And, you know, I could always get it modified. I understand that. But in general, I like Narwhal's pens. I think the real interesting thing that Narwhal does is the ebonite barrel pens, like the more expensive pens. They have done some interesting designs. The Nautilus, for example, has an interesting ink window. It's like a round porthole ink window. I think they look kind of cool, rounded ends. And they use some different materials, different acrylics, different ebonites. They're much more expensive. Like they've been willing to just dabble up front with more expensive materials than like TWSBI ever has. Outside of a few like rare limited ones. I think those might be more compelling for me to buy and get a nib grind done and say, hey, this is my Narwhal that I use that I like. So like the Nautilus Grand Rhapsody that I'm looking at at our site sponsor, Pen Chalet. Anyway, it's this beautiful, it's this beautiful material. And like, I don't know. I would probably really enjoy this pen. Except I'm hesitant on the nib and that I can't even just start with an extra fine. So I do like them. The School Kill, the Dragonette Sapphire is really, really pretty. I'll probably end up with one of those at least to review and check out. TWSBI did a really smart thing, Myke.

'''Myke:''' They, after they announced the, had their, released their statement on, okay, we're finished with this Narwhal stuff and we're retracting everything we've ever said. And they promoted maybe the single most popular pen they could ever promote. And that's the TWSBI Diamond 580 Iris.

'''Brad:''' We got a way to make you forget.

'''Myke:''' Yep. I mean, if this doesn't make people forget, like the past few months, like, I don't know what else they could do. Maybe bring back Micarta or something like that that everyone loved.

'''Brad:''' Or the, they'll do like, you know, they did the Republic of China, which they then made the U.S. edition. They do it in like France or something, you know.

'''Myke:''' But yeah, I mean, like this is the way to, this is the Monday release after the Friday afternoon press release. You know, bad news on Friday, Monday, let me show you all the new fancy stuff we got. So that's pretty much what this was. So that, I mean, the TWSBI Diamond 580 is probably going to be the most popular TWSBI that TWSBI has ever made, right? Like it's, I don't know that the 580 is the most popular model. I, I'll never be able to know. I mean, I would argue it's probably the Eco just from a price point perspective. But for what this pen is and how much people have enjoyed the Iris VAC, I mean, this, this is how TWSBI gets right back into the good graces, right?

'''Brad:''' What is, is there like a, like a general consensus of love of this pen? Like why, why is this, why are you so?

'''Myke:''' It's the, it's the, the finish, the Iris finish. So the, the coating, the rainbow prismatic coating, like that's gonna, that's what sells these pens. Just like we saw the, like the Leonardo Memento Zero that Stilo and Stilae did. You know, these little prismatic touches throughout a translucent barrel really pop off the page. And, and people really, really enjoy this stuff. Like this type of anodizing, the rainbow anodizing and, you know, the nib and all the different parts poking through. It, it just makes for a big seller, makes for a big seller in pen. So that's, that's why I'm saying that. This one will be extremely popular.

'''Brad:''' Yeah. Okay.

'''Myke:''' So, yeah. So that one comes out, I don't know, a couple of days from now. No, next week sometime, next week sometime, like the 15th, I think. Okay. There you go. So now we can go back to talking about TWSBI pens and Narwhal pens, maybe. Who knows? But that's a couple of their latest releases and their beef is over with.

'''Brad:''' Hooray for everybody involved.

'''Myke:''' Especially us.

'''Brad:''' So we don't talk about it anymore. I don't want to talk about this anymore. So I'm really happy. Yes. Yeah. We can officially confirm that it was Brad and I who brought the parties to the table. Oh, yeah. And dealt with this. So we didn't have to talk about it on the podcast anymore.

'''Myke:''' Yeah. Yeah. We got them all in a room, said, y'all hash it out because we don't want to talk about this anymore. Sick of this conversation. We were the mediators, the arbitrators.

'''Brad:''' Brad rifled through TWSBI's product library and was like, you're bringing this one back.

'''Myke:''' Yeah. Then I put on my PR hat. So we went from legal mediation into PR and said, all right, this is how you get out of this hole. Negotiate PR. Rainbow anodization.

'''Brad:''' So it works around here. All right. Let's do some hashtag RCTPA episodes, questions. We'll do a couple and we'll finish up today. This comes from Andrew. Do you expect the bot compatible steel number eight nibs made by Magna Carta to take off or fizzle out?

'''Myke:''' So I've held this question for a while. Yeah. Because I wanted to talk about it. And the answer is neither. Right? This is a specialty product. Right? So this is what I wanted to kind of address with the question. It's the posing of the question. Are they going to take off or fizzle? Like the number eight nib, let's just say the number eight nib, not necessarily from Magna Carta because Magna Carta is making these pens. Other makers make number eight size nib options. Are they going to take off or fizzle? And the answer is neither. Right? Because they're a specialty product. So they just by law, they neither take off or fizzle. Right? The people who want them will get them and enjoy them. Is it like they're big? Right?

'''Brad:''' I guess is the thing. They're like big. Okay.

'''Myke:''' Yeah. So like they're limited in their options. So, you know, you can use it with like Bach fittings or you can buy it with like these Magna Carta pens. Like the pens look great. Right? I think like the pen looks great. The nib looks great. Like everything about it looks great. And, you know, they have like the nice, nice ebonite feeds and everything about them is really, really cool. But that doesn't make them like a crossover success. Right? Because they're just too big for a lot of people. Right? So that prevents them from taking off. But they'll also never fizzle because they're technically great. Right? Like what they've created is awesome. It's kind of like Ultim. Right? The Ultim is more of a takeoff than a fizzle. But it's capped. Right? You're capped in how many of these you can sell. So that keeps it from like rocket to the moon type status. But it sure as heck not going to fizzle because the people that are into this stuff, it's like are fascinated by this. Right? Like it doesn't speak to me because I generally the smaller the better for me in pens, nibs, everything. So if I'm buying a big – if I'm going to use a number eight nib, generally that means I have to have a pen that's going to fit that. And that just makes everything bigger. And that's not what I enjoy writing. Yeah. And I think that's common. And I think that's common.

'''Brad:''' It's saying that they checked – they actually were there. They had them at the Baltimore show and none of them would fit inside of their shown Ultim number eight section. Okay. So I have one of those as well.

'''Myke:''' Yeah. Yeah. So maybe you're just having to buy Magna Carta pen barrels or having something made around these nibs, which I can see happening. Like I've seen like Edison, I think, make some number eight nib, some barrels to fit these nibs. But I could be wrong on that. I think it's just something I saw in passing. But, yeah, like they will neither take off or fizzle their specialty, right? And so the specialty connoisseurs will love these. And it's good to see. Like you want to have specialty goods in like a really like particular hobby like ours, right? You – if everyone – that's why we have so many makers, right, that are making so many unique products is to fill all these little niches and needs that we want to test out and enjoy and see if we can make the perfect thing for us. And this is going to be the perfect thing for a lot of people. But it's not going to go gangbusters nor is it going to drop off the map. It's just going to be good for the people who want it.

'''Brad:''' And Andrew asks, what is the closest thing to the Nocco Tallulah? I've been really enjoying just tossing this in my backpack. But I've been wanting to have two ready in case I want to have different setups on my day. I don't want it to be leather. I want it to be canvas or nylon or whatever material that was made for the Nocco Tallulah with zippers. Is anything close that you would recommend to this?

'''Myke:''' He says, pretty much I want another Tallulah. Yeah. Which I think is just a great way to end it. Yeah, good luck because the only thing I could even remotely suggest was leather, which isn't even fair to answer this question. But this is a product I own and a product that kind of reminds me of the Tallulah, but it's not really that way. It's a superior labor leather pen and wallet case. They really call it their wallet case. It's zippered. It holds like three pins on the inside. And it's a little bit bigger and wider than the Tallulah. It's also extraordinarily more expensive than the Tallulah.

'''Myke:''' Yeah, I don't know. So there's been some poor designs. Oh, gosh. I can't think of the company that made a really terrible Tallulah-looking case, just like a two-pin zip fold case. And a bunch of people bought them, and they were kind of falling apart, and they didn't go really well. Yeah, outside of that, Andrew, I apologize. I don't have a great idea for this. And so if anyone has ever come across anything like that with the zipper, the Tallulah is a very specific design that we made at Nock, and it was great. Like it was one of those, again, it's one of those designs I genuinely wasn't sure it was going to work until I made it and started carrying it. And then I was like, oh, this is, I think people are going to like it. And so, you know, it was always been one of my favorite cases, and I appreciate that you like it so much, Andrew. And I wish I had a better recommendation for you. Like I've seen some slim cases. They just kind of never add up to, like, the exact kind of thing that the Tallulah brings. So I don't know, maybe one day I can work my magic with someone, and we'll bring that back. But until then, man, who knows?

'''Brad:''' Thank you for listening to this week's episode of The Pan Addict. If you have a question of your own that you'd like to send in for us to answer, just send out a tweet with the hashtag RSTPA. You can use question mark RSTPA in the RelayFM members Discord, or you can email it to hello at panaddict.com. Go to panaddict.com, and you'll find the wonderful writings of Brad and his many wonderful writers that we have over at The Pan Addict. So you can read some wonderful articles. You can go to spokedesign.com, where I believe by today...

'''Myke:''' Allegedly. Allegedly.

'''Brad:''' You can get yourself a wonderful mechanical pencil to celebrate yesterday's National Mechanical Pencil Day. Brad streams on Twitch three times a week, twitch.tv slash panaddict. Brad is at dowdyism on Twitter, panaddict on Instagram. I am imike, I-M-Y-K-E. Thanks to Squarespace for the support of this show. And we'll be back next time. Until then, say goodbye, Brad. Goodbye, Brad.

[[Category:Podcast Transcripts]]
[[Category:The Pen Addict Podcast Transcript]]

The Pen Addict 516/transcript

2026-06-23T15:59:26Z

PencilBot: fixed spelling

{{Infobox podcast transcript
| name = The Pen Addict
| number = 516
| title = A Selection of Odd Recordings
| date = June 1st, 2022
| hosts = [[Brad Dowdy]] 
[[Myke Hurley]]
| guests =
| link = [https://www.relay.fm/penaddict/516 Episode 516]
| audiolink = [https://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/traffic.libsyn.com/secure/thepenaddict/The_Pen_Addict_516.mp3 Audio Episode 516]
| length = 53
}}

'''Myke:''' From Relay FM, this is The Pen Addict, episode 516. Today's show is brought to you by Pen Chalet. My name is Myke Hurley and I'm joined by Brow Daddy. Brow Daddy.

'''Myke:''' Brow Daddy. Brow Daddy. Brow Daddy. Dando. The middle word in pens. Hey Brow Daddy. Brow Daddy. Brow Daddy. Nice to speak to you today.

'''Brad:''' Average on a good day. Hi Myke. How are you? This is how this episode is going to go today. Yeah. We have questions Myke. Or I should say we have answers allegedly because our listeners have questions in the form of hashtag Ask TPA which I'll admit this publicly Myke we have been doing a poor job of getting to. Poor job. Each week. I will take the fall for that. I'll be the fall guy because we've just had so much other fun stuff to talk about and we tend to kind of put the Ask TPA at the end. Maybe we should start leaving, leading every show with Ask TPA. At least one question so we don't find ourselves in these binds. I do too. We'll work it out. It's the right workflow but that means sometimes we've got to catch them all up.

'''Myke:''' I'll tell you the real problem here. The real problem is we have had a selection of our CPA that are really long. They're like long emails which we like. Which are good. But usually we don't have enough time.

'''Brad:''' Yeah. An hour into the show we skip the long ones. We get the short ones.

'''Myke:''' Today we're going to get through as many of them as we can because we are coming to you from the past. This is a pre-recorded episode as part of a selection of odd recordings that will occur throughout the month of June because me and Brad are a couple of busy boys. This first question comes from Stephen who says, do you have any recommendations for pens that take space pen refills? I love the refill and what it does but not the space pen itself and have lost a couple. Something bigger would be nice. Okay.

== Space Pen Discussion ==

'''Brad:''' Okay. Okay. So the bigger space pen kind of defies a little bit of the logic behind the space pen in the way that not in the way that it should be but in the way that people design for space pen refill pens. The good thing is the Fisher space pen will fit into any Parker size compatible refill pen. So the Parker refills are kind of the one of the most popular refill choices for pen makers to create pens around.

'''Myke:''' And this is a pen size, right? Like the pen refill size is called the Parker size. It's not necessarily Parker pens which is a whole other thing. Correct.

'''Brad:''' Correct. Not to be confusing at all. Yeah. So I'm going to tell Stephen specifically what I use but then we'll talk about a few other things. So for the larger space pen refills, I tend to go for the smaller ones, right? I like the traditional space pen refill barrel. I like the spoke roadie can take the Parker size refills. You know, that type of pen pocket pen can use those Parker style refills.

'''Myke:''' And what a great pen it is. Brad Dowdy, could you tell us some of the special features and benefits of the spoke roadie?

'''Brad:''' Um, I have a Joy Division one that you can't have. I saw that and I wanted it and it made me think, is it possible for me to ask you for something? Brian gets mad every time I post that but I can't help myself. Um, so what I, I do use a specific pen barrel for a larger space pen and that's the County Comm Embassy pen. I bet I've had this thing a decade. Um, they're still available, I think. Um, I have an aluminum one. They also make titanium ones but it is a full size. Kind of, you know, EDC slash tactical looking barrel that has a screw cap and a clip. It's not retractable. Um, it takes, you know, takes the space pen refills. And this is the pen that I leave in my travel bag because I don't have to worry about it, right? And then I also don't, it has a clip on the, on the cap so I can just clip it in the bag and know I'm not going to lose it. And then I also know that I have the Fisher Space Pen refill in it. By the way, I use the fine blue refill at like $5 a pop. I still just, it's the best space pen refill. Um, because I, I like Steven. I do like the refills. Um, so yeah, I use the County Comm Embassy pen for my larger space pen refill. But like you are really open to choice here. Um, there's a, a ton of different pens that we could, like I could point you to like anything by tactile turn, you know, but those, those bigger pens that will fit the space pen, you know, the big eye design pens, bigger pens that'll fit the space pen refill. You actually have more choice than you think. What you're looking for is Parker, uh, refill compatibility when you're talking about, um, buying a different pen barrel for the space pen.

'''Myke:''' With the quote unquote Kickstarter pens, take this, I have an, at least have an option to take this kind of refill.

'''Brad:''' And a special note here, the space pen refill ships with an extender that you have to use. So you want to keep that in the refill pack when you're swapping it out. Because for example, like the shown design pocket pen, it was built, the original shown design pen pen was built around the Fisher space pen minus the extension. So it's not hot swappable with the Parker pen, right? So there's this, uh, additional piece you need to keep. You'll see it. It's, it's very obvious when you buy a refill, it's this white kind of twisty looking piece that goes on the back. That, that is the Parker compatibility piece that you need. Otherwise you have to find one that is designed for the shorter space pen refill. Um, as long as you buy a refill of like a fresh refill and it comes with that piece, it'll fit in any Parker compatible pen. So that's just something to keep in mind.

'''Myke:''' All right. Next question comes from Diane. I've been mulling over wanting a Leonardo Memento Zero Grande. That's right. It's Grande. Yeah. Grande. Yes. But not knowing which one to get. I also wanted the Jonathan Brooks pen and all of his work. Uh, from all of his work, I particularly like the mother of Pearl. I stumbled on this on Instagram one night and ordered it immediately with an elastic fine nib and ruthenium. Uh, so there's, this is a type of a Memento Zero Grande with, uh, the, the material that Diane likes. But what, and I'll put a link in the show notes if you want to see it, but what ink should I get for this pen? I want something that does justice to its dark green, violent, and silver colors. I thought about Je a bon vert Atlantide, which at least is green and silver. However, this is a piston pen. I don't have the wrench to take it apart yet, and I'm leery of putting anything in particular into it. Good call. Maybe I should get over that. I don't know. This is, this is, Myke's adding some thoughts to this to make this more confusing. Its first fill was Pilot Orochizuku Ibisu, a light turquoise. Didn't suit it.

'''Brad:''' So this is probably going to be my favorite email because I know Diane, well, it's a beautiful pen. My God. That Diane sent to me a while ago, and she is going to yell at me for just now getting to this because I think it's, it's already been solved in like subsequent emails, but I kept this in her on purpose because this is a really cool pen that deserves a really specific ink and I have the ink that I would use for it. It's a little less green maybe than Diane's looking for. And it's not as obvious as Sailor Studio 123, but it is in fact Sailor Studio 223, which is a darker purple with a little bit of green in here that I think is kind of the perfect match for this pen. Even though knowing Diane like I do, she has already solved this problem, but I wanted to share this in here because this is an ink pick. Yeah. That's an ink I'm going to get for myself, even though I don't have anything that would match that. It's as specific as the Mother of Pearl Leonardo that Diane has, which is such a unique pen. Like I love that pen that she picked out, right? It's, it's really, really cool.

'''Myke:''' I have this pen suggestion for you that this would look pretty good in. It's the Leonardo Memento Zero Grande.

'''Myke:''' No way. Yeah. It's really good. It looks, it's a good looking pen and it looked good with the sink, you know?

'''Brad:''' So I actually, I think it would match a Brooks material pen that I got at the Atlanta Pen Show. That's kind of what I'm thinking about. But like the last thing I need is more inks, but that's, that's Sailor Ink Studio 223 is actually, at the top of my shopping list for ink. So I'll, I'll get it one day. Like I'm not in a hurry, but yeah, I think that's a good match for that pen because it brings out a little bit more of the subtle purple colors while still having the, the matchiness of like the green and some of the brighter undertones. So yeah, I think that's, that is my choice. And I will wait for Diane to yell at me in my inbox soon.

== Stationery Design Advice ==

'''Myke:''' This comes from Phil. Could you share some lessons learned for people looking to get into stationary design or creation early pitfalls, things to watch out for, et cetera. I've learned a ton from Thoroughly Considered and The Pen Addict, but I'd love to hear some shop talk.

'''Brad:''' Yeah. Yeah. So generics are hard, like to just like give kind of like the, an over one singular overarching thing. But my, one of the things I talk about and it's hard to describe is like, anytime I make a design, I want it to have rules. Right. And what I mean is I want to be able to explain this design to you definitively, not in like a nebulous way. Like, why did you decide to have a clip or to not have a clip? Why does this product, you know, not have a strap on it? You know, why didn't you do this? Why didn't you do that? And I want to have a conviction in my design to be able to answer those questions. Right. And that's not an easy thing to do. Right. But you want to have rules around your design so you can actually get to the end. Right. If you don't have... I agree with you.

'''Myke:''' Doesn't mean you'll get it all right. Right. Because I've been in that situation too. Right. Where like, I have reasons, but people say things and like slight tweaks still give me what I want and give people more of what they want, which is definitely a thing that I've been in before too.

'''Brad:''' I just feel like you'll never complete a project.

'''Myke:''' No.

'''Brad:''' Unless you have rules. And it's hard to think of it that way. It's like, I'm going to make this cool thing. Right. And all of a sudden, now you're trying to make everything for everybody. But at some point, you have to stop. So you have to give yourself these rules when you're making things, in my opinion. I agree with you. I think people will disagree with some of that.

'''Myke:''' I don't. But I believe products... I know you do too. I believe products are best when they have a point of view and they have a particular set of features, benefits, things that make it what it is. It is an opinionated product. Like, they are what I think are the best kinds of products. Now, naturally, what that means is you will never be able to create a mass market product that way. Correct. But I believe that products that are opinionated and they are designed to conviction and they are designed well will find an audience that will champion them. Yep. So like, you could make a more generic product and sell 50,000 of them immediately. Or you could make an opinionated product and sell 10,000 of them a year for the next 20 years. Right. Because their people will keep coming back to that product.

'''Brad:''' Yeah. So a little anecdote back when we started Nock way, way back in the day and telling people or family members who are not into this stuff at all, like telling like essentially an outsider is like, oh, well, this could eventually be in like Walmart and like in the back to school dissection. I'm actually... No, it's designed specifically to not be there. Right. Like, so it's having these like discussions with yourself and when you're making these decisions. And like you said, using the word opinionated like that, like design is opinionated and, you know, figuring out where you want to stand on that design, answering the question spectrum is it'll help you define what type of product you're going to build and hopefully allow you to get to the best conclusion for what you're trying to do.

'''Myke:''' The last, a more practical piece of advice that I'll give, if you're working with manufacturers, like you're working with companies that are helping you bring the product to life, from my own experience now of having worked with manufacturers all over the world, try and manufacture the product locally to you. Mm-hmm. Yep. Like, tomorrow I'm going, as we record this, which will be last week when you hear it, I'm going to a factory in London to look at the first kind of off the press of a new product that we'll work on for Cortex brand. Yep. Now, when I've worked with companies outside of the UK for this, what has to happen is the product gets completed in full and then they send a version to me. And it just doesn't work like that for me. Right. But I can be there when they're first completing it. And so I can say, yes, this is good or no, this is not good. And being able to get an email this morning and they're like, hey, do you want to come down tomorrow? And I can say yes and do that. So far, this has been a vastly better experience than when I've been making products in other countries. Yep. Not that the quality of those products is anything other than stellar. Like, I'm very, very happy with the quality that we've got from the thesis and journal, which is made in Poland right now. But I'm not able to go there and look at something and communicate immediately. There's a big delay between things. And I've really enjoyed the process for our next product that we've been able to make it in London, which is unbelievable by the way that we are actually making is made in London. That's cool. I'm very excited to tell the story of that, how this all kind of came to be and how it works a little bit later on. But it's been a very, very good experience for me so far. Yeah.

'''Brad:''' Because let me tell you, the people you're working with, like in our world, that are, you know, say our printers or something, they have no clue what you're trying to do because they're busy making, you know, office pamphlets and things like that. So being able to have these conversations is helpful.

'''Myke:''' With an asterisk, like this company that I'm working with, I don't know how, but they get it. Good. They typically work on a lot of luxury products. So they don't find it weird when I have like very particular, when they're like, you know, I want to do this thing. It will make the unit price increase, but I just think it will look nice.

'''Brad:''' Yeah. Right.

'''Myke:''' And they're like, okay, like I see that. And they appreciate it. They've been a very good partner so far. Yep. Fingers crossed. Yes. Andrew asks, if Brad was a well-known, if Brad has a well-known fascination with tennis shoes and sneakers, what is Myke's footwear of choice?

'''Brad:''' You want me to answer that? No. I can answer this.

'''Myke:''' No. No, no. I was just wondering if you were going to mention anything about your well-known fascination of tennis shoes and sneakers. I mean, I know you're a big, you're a sneakerhead.

'''Brad:''' Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I've kind of wound that down. Like, I'm really happy. I haven't bought like a new pair of like sneakerhead sneakers in, I don't know, a year or two. Maybe. It was kind of like my, it was like my pandemic hobby was sneakerheading. I'm kind of over that now because I don't wear them all. And I have a problem if I buy things to not use. But Myke has exquisite taste in sneakers that he shares a lot of similarities with me. But what is your favorite these days?

== Personal Sneaker Preferences ==

'''Myke:''' There is a pair of sneakers that I have been wearing daily for years, like years. And I adore them. And Adina found some for me because it's a particular design. Mm-hmm. And it was like a one-off. And Adina gifted me some for Christmas. And so it's now got another life from them. But I'll probably get another couple of years out of them. It is the Adidas Pharrell Williams collaboration.

'''Brad:''' Sure.

'''Myke:''' They make a shoe called the Who, H-U. I think it's meant to be a human nature. Human. Yep. Yeah. But these ones are just Hugh. And they're a very soft sneaker, like on the top. They're really, really good. I love them. It's very hard for me to find images of the ones that I have. But I'll put a link in the show notes to the product that exists. Because it's still a product that they make, but they just don't make it in the color way that I have. So eventually, I may switch over to these. Outside of that, these are my everyday trainers, as we call them here in the UK. Okay. I'm also a fan of the Vans. Like the traditional Vans. I don't even know what they're called. Like the traditional one. Not the slip-on. Laces. Laces. With laces. Yeah. And I like... They make a model now, like a bunch of their shoes, that's called Comfy Cush, which they're more cushioned. Because I love Vans, but boy howdy, do they rip my feet apart. Right?

'''Brad:''' They are not an all-day walking around shoe. Traditionally.

'''Myke:''' These ones will do it. Yeah. The Comfy Cush ones will make it work for you. Like they make it work for me. I'm a big fan of this particular one. And then... But the shoes that I wear, I think, the most are actually the shoes I wear in the studio. And I am a Mojave's slipper guy. Okay. For the studio. I find them to be just the right amount of comfort. But then also they've got the little thing you can pull up on the back and you can walk around with them like they're a regular shoe. Yeah. Because I don't like to wear my outside shoes in the studio. So when I get here, I change into these. It's a fancy studio, man. We have carpet in here. And I just don't like the idea of just treading around my outside shoes on the carpet.

'''Brad:''' Yeah. That makes sense. That makes sense. So today I'm wearing some Adidas 4Ds, Myke. So I don't know if you're familiar with those. But they're the ones with like that kind of weird lattice works. Oh, yeah. Lattice work sole. That is shockingly good.

'''Myke:''' They're the 3D printed ones, right? Yep. Which they call it 4D, which is funny. You know what I also want? And I've been, I've had my eye on them for a while and I am going to do it. The Nike Flygo. The Flyease. They're the ones you can just step in and out of. Yep.

'''Myke:''' That's it. The Nike Go Flyease. That's the one that they make. Yeah, those are cool. I think these look really sweet. John Voorhees got some because he injured his leg again and he bought some and he's like, these things are incredible.

'''Brad:''' Yeah. They're a really cool design. That's something I've read a lot about the design of those. It's a very technologically advanced design and I appreciate that.

'''Myke:''' And I think they've done something really smart with like the Flyease. There's a bunch of different ones now, but like where they have, you know, they've basically designed a shoe for people with mobility issues. But have then like subsidized the design work in making versions of the shoe that anyone would want. Right. Right. So like I don't have mobility issues, but I like the idea of a shoe that I could just slip in and off when I'm here at the studio. Right. Like this could actually replace my Mojave slippers for me. Gotcha. Because I change in and out of them frequently. Like if I'm going out to get a coffee or whatever, I won't wear my slippers out there because it's the whole point of wearing them. Yeah. Anyway.

'''Brad:''' Sneaker cast. We could do a whole like I am just biting my tongue on like all the things I could talk about. But like I'm kind of mostly out of that game now because, again, it's like pens. Like I will preach, you know, if you're going to buy it, you need to use it. And I stopped using like I don't have the opportunity to wear all the sneakers that I was buying. So I stopped. Like just cold turkey. I haven't bought a pair of like the sneaker heady type sneakers in probably we're probably about two years now.

'''Myke:''' All right. Okay. Next one comes from Brian. And it's a longer one. All right.

'''Brad:''' I think this one we tried to cut down a lot of these. I think this one is one of the good context ones. Needs it. This one gets us there. And I think it's kind of a universal question that I think is worth answering.

'''Myke:''' Okay. I just took a sip of water. Let's do this. From Brian. I am a fairly new pen addict. Right now I'm in the Lamy Safari world and pen and ink part of my fountain pen journey. Originally, I found the pen addict after being a Cortex listener. Hi, Brian. This year, my theme is reflection, specifically writing more stuff down to remember things now. I've been more aware of my mental growth over the next year. Love it. Love it. In the past, you posed a question for what the next steps after your Lamy Safari should be. And I thought I could offer a unique perspective from a newly forged pen addict. Back in August of 2021, I was going back to work as a teacher and I found myself asking for a pen from a colleague and realized that I didn't want to touch anyone's pen. And while still in the midst of the pandemic. My co-workers laughed it off, but that's 100% serious. So, after finding your podcast in the top five list on the blog, I found a space pen to fit my then current needs and your podcast to be my new addiction. Since then, I now have a knocked matte black space pen. I don't know that one.

'''Brad:''' Yeah, there's a space pen that has a knock. It's kind of a squishy knock. Oh, okay.

'''Myke:''' A bullet matte black space pen, a Lamy Safari Terrafine with Lamy Blue Black ink, and a Schaefer Star Wars Yoda fountain pen medium with diamine aurora borealis. To follow up with the Lamy Safari then what conversation, I found buying a novel fountain pen like the Schaefer Star Wars series was the perfect follow up for me after my Safari. But I agree with Myke that going into the converter is probably the way to go. This was the next step I took after I finished my initial Lamy Blue refill. I think the next step for me will be buying a new nib for the Safari to test if I really like the fine nib or would prefer something different. I found that I like the ink flow on the page from the Schaefer medium nib, but admit it does write a little wet. So, I'm curious as to how the Lamy medium will write for me. I would just jump in and say here, Lamy medium is not a wet pen. So, I don't know if that's a Schaefer thing. I think you'll have a better experience with a Lamy medium nib. My other reason for wanting to explore the Lamy nibs is that I'm also beginning to look at the Lamy 2000 as my first gold nib pen eventually. And I want to make sure that I do not invest in a pen like that with too small of a nib that cannot be ground down by someone like Myke Masayama at the LA Pen Show. Sorry for my pen life story, but I just wanted to share and thank you too for opening up this awesome new world to me and also let you know that I am following your recommendation from your early podcast to listen in order. Oh boy, I'm currently on episode 68. Honestly, by the time this episode goes out, Brian might have caught up for how long we've had this in a document. And I'm loving every second of the show. You two make my commute in LA traffic far more bearable. And also, okay, if you're listening in LA traffic, you may complete the entire show in the afternoon. It's by the understanding I have of LA traffic. I do have a couple of questions for you. One, do you think many people like me have found this new pen obsession comforting during the pandemic?

== Current Pen Trends and Community Growth ==

'''Brad:''' Absolutely. Right. I think it's crystal clear. And I say that by not by like necessarily like looking at numbers or anything like that, but just anecdotal evidence from retailers that I was very worried about their inability to travel to pen shows, which is, you know, a good chunk of change over the years for, you know, companies that actually really need the business. That they, I don't, I won't go as far as saying that they had a boon time during the pandemic, but they had, they ran healthy business during the pandemic. They didn't have a bus time. Yeah. Yeah.

'''Myke:''' They didn't have a bus time. Which is what we were worried about first. But then it ended up being that like people wanted a new thing to do.

'''Brad:''' And then the second anecdotal piece to that is once travel started happening, I'm getting more and more just one-off reports from pen shows at all the new faces that are there, which is a continuation of the first step during the pandemic is like discovering this new thing.

'''Myke:''' Which is good for pen shows because if the community has grown, the people that still do not want to go to pen shows will now be replaced by the people that are new in the hobby. Right. So it's good, right? Like that's what you want to happen.

'''Brad:''' Right. So you're still not at pre-pandemic numbers, but you're kind of having this backfilling of new customers. So that also means like there's like a shift in the buying habits as well to like, you know, less expensive, you know, introductory type pens and starter inks and notebooks and things like that. So, you know, it's all kind of like a cycle and that's kind of the cycle that we're in right now. And I think that's healthy, right? It feels healthy to me and I do think a lot of that came from, you know, finding hobbies during the pandemic times. And I think there's no doubt in that.

'''Myke:''' Second question. Do you think my current plan flow from Safari to Lamy 2000 is a good way to go about my pen journey or should I just buy another Safari or Aostar to test the medium nib?

'''Brad:''' I have a harder time with this question.

'''Myke:''' I don't. So I'll say first, get another Safari in a different color of a medium nib. Don't just buy a nib, right? Because the price difference isn't that much and treat yourself to a new Safari. That's what I would suggest. I do.

'''Brad:''' I agree with that. I agree with that step.

'''Myke:''' Because Lamy Safari nibs, it's really not much of a price difference. Plus, the nibs are really small. They're easy to lose. So genuinely, like Lamy's nibs, no, Lamy's nibs specifically are tiny. They are tiny.

'''Brad:''' I'm giggling because I lost one on stream the other day.

'''Myke:''' Oh, okay. Okay. I thought you were just laughing at me. They're really finicky and small. And like, I would just get a new Safari. Okay.

'''Myke:''' The Lamy 2000 is a funny old bird. Yeah.

'''Brad:''' I have more of a hard time with this question.

'''Myke:''' It is a great pen, provided you get a good one. It is very unreliable in the experience, in its nib experience. Yes. So if you are, it's a recommendation we always give for the 2000. Get a good 2000, you'll be very happy. I have a good 2000. I think you have a good one, but I don't think it was your first one. Right. You want to get it from either a pen show where you can try it out and make sure that it feels right for you.

'''Myke:''' And or from a retailer that has a good, like, returns policy in case it doesn't work out with the one that you buy.

'''Brad:''' Yeah. So I think my struggle with Brian's question is that the Safari nib to the Lamy nib is not a comparable path. No. Like, you shouldn't consider those to be, hey, I'm following this path. Yeah. And the, I can take something from my first experience with the Safari nibs and transpose that into my expected experience with the Lamy 2000. And I think that's a flawed way to think about it. Like, they're...

'''Myke:''' And this isn't the same for all types of pens. Right. But it's just the particulars of the 2000s. It is built differently.

'''Brad:''' Mm-hmm. These are not connected in any kind of straight line whatsoever, like your experience there. So my thought is to try a different brand completely between... I think trying the second Safari nib is fine. And I agree with Myke in that I would buy just by the pen. Like, you're going to spend $15 on a nib or $25 on a pen. And just get a fun one and go with it from there. I don't know if you should try, like, some other brands. Like, maybe a Pilot, right? To get a different, you know, a Japanese-style nib, medium nib, to see how that type of line works for you. Like, a Pilot Metropolitan medium nib. Like, I think that would be a better, a more worthwhile test than buying another Lamy nib to see. I don't know. I think this is actually a very complicated question for what is posed as a very simple question. And that's why I wanted to cover this. Because I think it's good to figure out, okay, which Safari nib size do I like? Like, it's also, I want to be clear that that is not going to translate whatsoever to how you feel about the Lamy 2000s nib.

'''Myke:''' What else? Okay. I, like, part agree with you, part not. Like, I wouldn't go straight to Japanese medium. I would, because it's not.

'''Brad:''' I think it should just be, I don't, it doesn't have to be Japanese medium. I think it needs to be a different brand. It could be Faber-Castell, it could be Kaweco, it could be whatever. I, I just think they're, you know, Twisby, maybe. Just something different to. Yeah, I can see that. Just to kind of grasp an idea of, of, hey, here's how one type of pen manufactures their nib and here's how a different type of pen manufactures their nib. And I'm not saying you have to test all the nibs from all the brands. I think just one thing different from Lamy, Safari nibs, is enough to kind of help you gain a little bit more understanding and education without breaking the bank before you go into, like, a 2000.

'''Myke:''' Yeah. What I will say is, like, it's a mixture between what we both said. I would say your next thing should be a medium Safari so you can compare fine to medium. So you have, like, a light for light comparison, right? Yes, I'm fine with that. Then instead of Lamy 2000, then get a Japanese pen of some description. Yeah. That's why. Yeah. Because I think having the comparison of a good fine to a good medium, like, this is, like, an understanding that you have between the two, I think is good. Because if you go to a Japanese medium, now you're back towards fine territory again.

'''Brad:''' But get a Platinum Preppy medium nib. Yeah. That pen will blow your mind and change everything you think about pens and the path that you're on and might cause you... It's just... It's a data... It's a different enough data point to make a difference in how you think about it. And the more data you have, whether it's good or bad, is helpful. And it's such an inexpensive pen. Like, it would be okay to spend $5 on a Preppy. And get the medium. Like, I think it's the 03 is the medium nib.

'''Brad:''' Maybe it's the 04. I forget. They're a little bit harder to discern. Is the recommendation.

'''Myke:''' Get both Preppy and a medium Safari and you're going to be having a great time.

'''Brad:''' Yeah. I just think you've got to step out of that Safari thing to test one thing. To test one other thing.

'''Myke:''' Yeah, go outside of Lamy. For sure. For sure.

'''Brad:''' Before you get to considering, like, the Lamy 2000, which is a completely different conversation. Which is a great pen and you should maybe get one. But I just don't think you're getting the information that you think you're getting on that path by doing this.

'''Myke:''' Yeah, I think the key here is, like, don't jump straight to expensive gold nib pen when there's so much more that you can experience in the cheaper pens. Which will genuinely, like, open your mind. Like, I would maybe then recommend, like, if you, like, get a Preppy and you like that, get a Twisby Go or a Twisby Eco. So, try that, right? Because these are all going to be super different and you might find something you didn't know in yourself. Yep. That'd be my recommendations.

== Exploring Different Brands and Nibs ==

'''Brad:''' I think it's a great question. And this is, like, the always important question, right? Like, this question comes up a lot because we get a lot of people just starting on this journey. And there's so much to learn and there's so many things out there. And honestly, a lot of this stuff is really expensive, you know. Like, for someone just getting into this, a $25 pen is insanely expensive. Like, that's a big decision to make. So, I'm just, it's hard to say to, like, try a bunch of different things. But I really think that's important in the beginning.

'''Myke:''' Yeah, because you could buy, like, four or five of these lower level pens of all different shapes and sizes instead of getting the Lamy 2000. Yep. And I reckon you'd have more fun. Yeah.

'''Brad:''' Who knows? Who knows? So, it's a great question and something we will continue to explore.

'''Myke:''' Yep. Thank you so much for that. No, Brian, I'm sorry it took us so long. It was a very good email.

'''Brad:''' I think that was the most aged of the STPAs. STPAs. Sorry, Brian.

'''Myke:''' Brian's already got his first Nakaya, you know.

'''Brad:''' Brian's on episode 265 now.

'''Myke:''' Brian, if and when you ever hear this, please let us know what you ended up going with. I'd be very keen to know. Yep.

'''Myke:''' I'd tell you a place where you can buy some of those pens, Brian. Ooh, let me hear it. Penshela. Because they have your favorite brands. They have the products you're looking for. Whether you want a rollerball or a fountain pen or a ballpoint mechanical pencil. Pens of all sizes, all shapes, all prices, all brands. It's all over at Penshalay. And they're always doing great deals. Twice a month, you'll find closeout specials. You're going to find discounts. You're going to find new products being added all the time. Whatever they can get their hands on, they're going to put it online and then they give it to you for a great price. Penshalay do great prices on the products you're looking for. They have really great, reliable customer service. They do free shipping on orders of over $50 in the US. They also sell internationally as well. I bought a bunch of things from Penshalay myself. They also have limited edition products and they have accessories too. Carrying cases, pen holders, refills, converters, ink cartridges, ink bottles, so much more. So as a pen addict listener, not only will you get low prices on high quality pens, not only will you get a 100% satisfaction guarantee, you will also get 10% off anything over at Penshalay. If you go to penshalay.com and click the podcast link at the top of the website and enter the password penaddict, you will be able to get your code to save 10% on anything at any time. And you will also get to feast your eyes on some special deals. Now, every once in a while, me and Ryan have a conversation. And he's like, got some good stuff on there, but you can't talk about it. And this is one of those times. So if you want to see some deals that are so good, we can't even tell you about them, go to penshalay.com, P-E-N-C-H-A-L-E-T.com, click the podcast link at the top of the website, enter the password penaddict, and you will get to feast your grubby mitts on these special offers and get the 10% off code that you need to save anytime over at Penshalay. Our thanks to Penshalay for their continued support of this show and RelayFM.

'''Brad:''' All right, this next question is kind of a follow-up and a continuation of what we just went through. So let's go forward. Do you want me to read this one? Do you need a break from the reading?

'''Myke:''' No, man, I got you because you're good at all the answers, you know. So I get to say some stuff and you get to answer and then I get to say some other stuff. If you read the questions and give the answers, I'm sitting here twiddling my thumbs and like spinning my fidget spinner, you know what I mean? What am I going to do?

'''Myke:''' This comes from Andreas. I have a few pen brands that I am really intrigued about that I have yet to try. So far, I have Lamy, my first love, Twisby, and Pilot. Brands I would like to try include Sailor, Pelican, and Platinum. My question is, what is the true entry level of each brand to get a taste of what I can expect from the higher level offerings? I don't want to shell out $300 on a brand I have not tried. For example, I see the Sailor Compass at $30 with only one nib, and I wonder if that pen would give me a true sense of what the brand offers and maybe explain the love fest you two have for them. So for these pen brands and others, if you care to, what are the true entry level offerings? So we mentioned some of these a moment ago, right? So like with Twisby would be the go, with Platinum is the preppy, Lamy is the safari. What's Pilot? Metropolitan?

'''Brad:''' I'm going to change it up a little bit from what you're saying a little bit. Pilot is probably the Metropolitan and then maybe the Pereira, but they're different feels but use the same nib.

'''Myke:''' I prefer the Pereira.

'''Brad:''' So you're kind of getting a nib idea with the Pilot. So with Pilot, like that's what I'm looking at, either the Pereira or the Metropolitan to give you a nib, you know, kind of idea, at least from line width. Now you got to have to understand that these steel nibs and gold nibs that make up a lot of the price difference between these pens, there's a different feel, right? There's different firmness, you know, there's different softness, there's different smoothness. So it's a little bit tough to say apples to apples that this Pilot pen is going to compare to the next Pilot pen, you know, when the gold, when you're considering a gold nib in there. But I think the, for Pilot, I think the Metropolitan and the Pereira is a good example. For Platinum, I think I would actually step up the preppy and to get a more overall feel in the barrel from like the Prefonte or something like that, or the Procyon, whichever one is like the $20 Platinum, that's the one I'd be looking at. It's a little bit upgraded barrel. And I don't know, it's, it's, the nib is the same as the preppy. So you could just go with the preppy, but I don't know. I just like the feel of, of that kind of $20 Platinum pen range. For Pelican, I honestly think it's more like the, the, the 205 series, like the M205, which is over $100. That being an entry-level Pelican, because your next, most Pelicans that people buy and use are gold nib Pelicans. So getting the same kind of mechanics in the barrel, like from the piston in the same shape barrel as the 405 series Pelicans. I think the 205 is a great, it's a very expensive entry-level pen, but I think it's such a high quality entry-level pen. Like that's what you're looking for at Pelican. You're not looking at some of the really like $20 or $30 Pelicans. Sailor is the hardest one because I think this, I don't like the Sailor Compass. I don't think it's representative of gold nib Sailors, which is really kind of the entry point for Sailors. They, Sailors tried. Sailor is not as good at the entry level as Pilot and Platinum, in, in my opinion. They don't have the quality there that the other brands have. They don't have the barrel consistency that the other brands have. And I, I really haven't enjoyed some of the nibs that the Sailor Steel nibs. I think they're the least representative. So for Sailor, you're actually looking at a Pro Gear Slim as your entry point, in my opinion. And that's more like a $200 pen, right? Which is not really entry level. It kind of defeats the purpose of this question. But I don't, I think my point is they're the least representative comparison of the lower end as it would relate to getting a feel for the higher end pen. So I think Pelican, Pilot, Platinum, I think I like those answers for that. For Sailor, I don't think there is as clear of an answer. So there you go. That's my thoughts.

'''Myke:''' All right. I love how I'm like, oh, I've got some ideas. No. No.

'''Brad:''' What do you know? You may not. You may not. No, but I mean, you were right about that. No, you're right. You're right. You're right. But I think, I think Pilot and Platinum make awesome entry level pens. I think Sailor does not. Yeah. And then Pelican does make entry level pens, but the pen you're leading into is not represented by their entry level pens. You got to bring it up a little bit.

'''Myke:''' Mm-hmm. All right. We'll go back to another question from Andrew. If DC is the fountain pen super show, San Francisco has all the fun from countries like Asia as well, and Chicago is the oldest, what are the non-American pen shows known for?

'''Brad:''' Being cooler than all of the American pen shows.

'''Myke:''' London hasn't been, though.

'''Brad:''' Eh, okay. Minus London.

'''Myke:''' We had that hope, you remember, the 2020 hope of like, oh, I was a new pen show, and then it obviously didn't happen.

'''Brad:''' But I mean, look at the Dutch pen show. Look at Madrid. Look at Toronto. How different was the Toronto? How different was that from what you've experienced?

== International Pen Shows Experience ==

'''Myke:''' It felt like an orderly pen show, which is not an experience I've ever had before. Everyone was going in the same direction around the room, right?

'''Brad:''' There were random cues popping up, and as packed as that was, the level of cuing was amazing. Yep. So I guess that's what the other shows are known for. They're the cueable pen shows.

'''Myke:''' There is something that Andrew left out here, which is the Atlanta pen show, which is known for Brad Dowdy. Is it, though?

'''Brad:''' It's known for Waffle House. Waffle House 1.

'''Myke:''' I don't know about that. It's like, if people want both the first and the last word in pens, they go to Atlanta.

'''Brad:''' Oh, just wait. There's a question about that later. So we'll get to that. I don't know if we're going to get to it. But actually, we'll finish on that one.

'''Myke:''' We're going to finish now, because we're running long again, which I can't believe.

'''Brad:''' Shocker. Shocker. All right. I hope to get to more international pen shows. That's a goal of mine. So that's why I'm not trying to hammer five or six U.S. pen shows every year, now that traveling's back on a little bit. But I'm going to mix it up and try to get out of the country maybe once a year or once every other year to experience. And then I can answer this question better, because right now I don't have a great answer, but I certainly look forward to trying to find out the answer.

'''Myke:''' It's gone from Jacob. I really like the M200 brown marbled. That's a Pelican, right? Pelican M200 brown marbled. Yep. I love the aesthetic and design and the chatoyancy of the barrel. What on earth is that? What's chatoyancy?

'''Brad:''' It's the shiny. Like if you go back to the Leonardo that you linked before, it's kind of that bright, foily looking aesthetic, if you will. Right? That brightness of the shine. So it's not just like color depth. It's essentially like the extra chatoyancy. Chatoyancy. It's one of my least favorite words.

'''Myke:''' I don't get it.

'''Brad:''' You will get it when you see it. Think of it. It's like the pearl looking thing.

'''Myke:''' Yeah. I have different words for this. Anyway. Right. And the chatoyancy of the barrel matched very well with the black cab and the gold color trims. Really liked it. And Pelican has superb reputation. But I fear of a miss out of a gold nib because of the same similar price of the M200. I can also get a Pilot Custom 74, which is widely regarded as one of the best entry gold nib pens. I can only spend money on one of these. Which should I get? Should I be FOMO on the Custom C74's Gold Nib or get the Pelican or what?

'''Brad:''' All right. We're going to combine two questions here. I want you to read this next one that I just moved up from Michael. And then we'll have one larger conversation here.

'''Myke:''' From Michael, I have long wanted you to discuss the frequently heard and written admiration of gold nib pens. As an example, Jeff Abbott's remarks in his recent review of the BBS 456, quote, The 823 has a 14-karat gold nib, so it automatically just feels nicer to use when writing. It has soft flex and smoothness on paper that a steel nib can't touch. Given that tipping materials are very similar, I have trouble with the understanding the frequent comments about smoothness. Softness may be evident, but not necessarily. Having a stable over 300 fountain pens, I speak from experience. I have golden, quote, nail nibs and soft Estabrook steel nibs. I'd love a considered commentary about this gold nib meme. Is it purely psychological bias?

'''Brad:''' All right. So this is a broader steel nib versus gold nib questions on both of these. Jacob being new and trying to learn the difference and Michael being experienced and wondering, is there actually really a hubbub? So let's take Jacob's kind of first, but I'll preface that with my personal preferences is I'm almost material agnostic, right? The nib has to feel right to me, regardless of whether it's steel or gold. And what that means to me is my nibs, I want them to be firm, okay? This is something that I have discovered about myself in the long term of what I like, okay? So I've used plenty of steel nibs that are soft and I've used plenty of gold nibs that are firm. In general, it's the opposite, right? So most steel nibs are firm and most gold nibs are soft. It's not universal. I agree that there's opposite ends pretty frequently of the spectrum here. So Jacob, you should never fear missing out on a gold nib, in my opinion. I think steel nibs are great. I think they're some of the best nibs on the market. They're some of my most used nibs. They're some of my favorite nibs. So you should be looking for the writing experience that best suits you. And if it's a steel nib because of the firmness, you should use that because it fits on a pen that is aesthetically pleasing to you, like the Pelican that you're mentioning. Knowing that you will always be able to get a Pilot Custom 74 with a gold nib from here till the end of time, right? That is just a common Pilot Custom 74. You will always have the opportunity to have that gold nib. And it's a good gold nib. It's a little bit soft. It's pretty smooth. Each manufacturer finishes their nibs differently, which is kind of rolling into Michael's part of the question, right? Like, I can tell the difference between Piler, Salid, and Platinum nibs, right? But a lot of people will just say, hey, 14-karat gold nib. Like, that's what it is. Well, Pilates are very glassy, almost sticky, right? Pelican, excuse me, Platinums have a kind of tactile feedback. Right? And then Sailors are the firmest of the three and can be a little bit more scratchy, right? Not all gold nibs are created equal, just like not all steel nibs are created equal. So, Jacob, if I can only spend money on one pen, what should I get? You should not worry about FOMO and only being able to buy one pen and not getting a gold nib. Like, I'm not going to tell you how to answer this question, but that should not be in the calculation, the FOMO of, well, I could have spent this money on a gold nib pen. Because that doesn't mean that that gold nib is going to be good for you. It just means you paid for a gold nib. I hope that, does that make sense? I think I said that like as clear as I could say.

'''Myke:''' It is a preference thing. For my style, I think gold nibs are better. I think in general, they can be too. But it isn't universal. And, you know, on the last episode, I was talking about the fact that one of my favorite pens that I've ever used, one of the best performing pens I've ever used is the M90, which is a steel nib. But it's also like the best, one of the best steel nibs you could get. Like, so it's all relative to you, your preferences and the pens themselves.

'''Brad:''' So, yeah. So to follow up at Michael's question, he ends it with, is it purely psychological bias? And if you read Jacob's question, it's purely psychological. Jacob is saying, what am I, I feel like I'm missing out by not having this gold nib and paying the price for it, even though like the steel nib is a similar price. I think that is psychological, right? So my answer to that, and I think that's what Michael's alluding to, is it shouldn't be. Like, it's false. Like, it doesn't add up in the end because it doesn't matter what you spend on a gold nib. If it doesn't work for you, it's a bad purchase, right? The material doesn't matter. You have to figure out what's good for you. And then if it has to be, for whatever reason, if it has to be gold, well, then you can find some, a specific brand that makes nibs a specific way. Like Aurora, for example, makes a very thick, dense gold nib. That tends to be firm. Where Pelican makes a thinner, bouncier gold nib that is great for like broader, you know, wetter ink flow and wider writing. Like, that's why I can't use Pelicans because the nib doesn't match. I couldn't care less if it's gold or steel. I care if it works for the way my, for, you know, my handwriting is. So, you don't want to get caught up in the FOMO of buying a great pen and avoiding it just because it's a steel nib. And then buying maybe a lesser pen for yourself just because it has a gold nib. Like, you have to erase that from your head and think about what's the writing experience goal that you're trying to get first and foremost. So, yeah.

'''Myke:''' Yeah, I don't agree with the insinuation, though, that like we only like gold nibs because they're more expensive.

'''Brad:''' Oh, I don't buy. I obviously don't buy into that at all.

'''Myke:''' Yeah. But I think there is a slight insinuation there from Michael's question.

'''Brad:''' Sure. No, I think that's like the bias, right? Like, I don't have that. But when you're looking at someone like Jacob who is newer and he's trying to understand what's the big deal. And what I'm telling you is it's not a big deal.

'''Myke:''' But I don't want to say that it's not a thing because it might be the thing for you. Right. Yeah. Last question comes from Andrew. If Brad is the first and last word in fountain pens, what's Myke?

'''Myke:''' All of the pointless stuff in the middle, the things that are wrong, the stuff that needs correcting, I'm all of those words.

'''Brad:''' Yeah, Myke is a thorn in my side. The filler. That's what Myke is. Brad's all killer and I'm just filler. That's how it goes. We'll leave it at that.

'''Myke:''' And that's the last word. Thanks so much to everybody who submitted a question for this episode. If you would like to submit, because we still didn't get to all of them. We didn't even come close. I knew we weren't going to. You can send out a tweet with the hashtag RSTPA. You can use question mark RSTPA in the RelayFM members Discord. And you can send longer questions to hello at penaddict.com. If you want to find Brad online, go to penaddict.com. He is penaddict on Instagram. Dowdy is on Twitter and streams at twitch.tv slash penaddict. And I am imike. I am YKE. Thank you so much to Pen Chalet for the support of this episode. And we'll be back next time. Until then, say goodbye, Brad.

'''Brad:''' Goodbye, Brad. Bye. Bye.

[[Category:Podcast Transcripts]]
[[Category:The Pen Addict Podcast Transcript]]

The Pen Addict 500/transcript

2026-06-23T15:59:16Z

PencilBot: fixed spelling

{{Infobox podcast transcript
| name = The Pen Addict
| number = 500
| title = Pens!
| date = February 9th, 2022
| hosts = [[Brad Dowdy]] 
[[Myke Hurley]]
| guests =
| link = [https://www.relay.fm/penaddict/500 Episode 500]
| audiolink = [https://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/traffic.libsyn.com/secure/thepenaddict/The_Pen_Addict_500.mp3 Audio Episode 500]
| length = 180
}}

== Anniversary Reflections ==

'''Myke:''' From RelayFM, this is episode 500 of The Pen Addict, a weekly show where we discuss pens, paper, and the analogue tools we love so dearly. My name is Myke Hurley and I am joined by the quincentennial king of the pen and pencil, the 10-year pro-gear, my friend and yours, Brad Dowdy. Hi Brad.

'''Speaker 02:''' And I said I wasn't going to cry. Like there was no chance. This is a very busy episode.

'''Brad:''' Oh my god, I started crying already.

'''Speaker 02:''' And now that it's actually real, my eyes are watering and we did 500 episodes with you, my buddy. And this is not supposed to happen.

'''Myke:''' We've got so much work to do and I'm sitting there crying.

'''Speaker 02:''' We fully intended, like, ah, no, there's no way we're going to cry. We've done this before. Like, this is old hat and now here I am, just sitting here, just like, my gosh, Myke, 500 episodes of a podcast about pens.

'''Myke:''' No, it's not the 500. It's the 10 years that gets me.

'''Speaker 02:''' It's 10 years. That is really a special amount of time.

'''Myke:''' My relationship with you is outside of my family, like, my second longest relationship of my life.

'''Speaker 02:''' Yeah, earmuffs, Adina, earmuffs.

'''Myke:''' We haven't known each other for long enough. I know. I hope, honestly, that my relationship with Adina last month. But to be honest, you're never going to go away. You're like 26 years old.

'''Speaker 02:''' Yeah, yeah, right, right. Yeah, thank you, Myke. I would not be here without you. Like, I think that is known for longtime listeners of the show. And I didn't plan out a speech at the beginning of this. Maybe I've been trying to, like, kind of avoid it this whole time. It's like, ah, no, it feels like such a weird thing. But I'm extraordinarily proud of what we have done, what we've made, how much fun we have, how our friendship has evolved, and how our listenership are just, like, genuinely the greatest people on the planet. And I'm just very thankful. That's really all I want to say about today.

'''Speaker 02:''' And, yeah, like, I'm just thankful for you and thankful for our listeners. And 10 years, man, it's amazing. I love it.

'''Myke:''' Everyone knows this by now, but I will recap. Obviously, this is episode 500. But the day that we are recording, which is February the 9th, 2022, is the exact 10-year anniversary of the first episode of The Pen Addict, which is February the 9th, 2012. So very special day for us. I'm very pleased that we're able to make this work today. We have a lot to go today. You can probably look at the runtime of the episode now as you're listening to this and understand what's ahead. So there'll be time for feelings later on, I'm sure. We have put out a call to The Pen Addict listenership with one simple question. What is your favorite stationary item? And what we wanted was your responses. We currently have – well, not currently because we cut it off because we're smart like that. We have 278 pen addicts who wrote in. A few more wrote in, actually, Brad. I cut a couple out because they weren't serious answers. So I would say close to 300 people written in.

'''Speaker 02:''' That's our literal entire listenership.

'''Myke:''' No. That's not true at all. I will say again, our listenership is a five-figure listenership, which is something that we don't really talk about. We don't. And I kind of can't believe that that is the case.

'''Speaker 02:''' It's serious business. Yes.

'''Myke:''' And that is kind of an incredible – honestly, the most incredible thing, more incredible than the fact that we've been doing this for as long as we've been doing this, is that we have that many people that actually really want to listen to this thing, and we love every single one of you, that you care enough to join us every week. But anyway, I'm getting off track. I interrupted my fault. We promised we would read all of the responses, and so we're going to do that.

'''Myke:''' There is probably not a lot of time for dilly-dallying in today's episode. We will stop occasionally because some, I think, we may want to discuss a little bit. But by and large, we're going to be turning this episode over to the Pen Addict listeners themselves to tell us a little bit about their favorite products, because you have to listen to us talk about ours all the gosh darn time. So Brad, do you want to start off?

'''Speaker 02:''' Yeah. I want to give our listeners a tip this episode. We are not going to have the most epic-length show notes. Oh, no. So what I suggest – You just have to Google this one. Yeah. Get out your favorite pen and piece of paper right now, and if we say something interesting –

'''Myke:''' I hadn't even thought of that, Brad. Yeah. Like 350 links in the show notes. Yeah, no, that's not going to happen.

'''Speaker 02:''' No, that's not going to happen. So you should play along because I'm doing that as well because the very first reply made me think of this. It was like, oh, I should have bought this a long time ago. So let's get it underway with my good buddy, Shmevelin. J. Urban. J. Urban.

'''Myke:''' J. Urban. J. Urban.

'''Speaker 02:''' This is kind of a perfect first link, by the way.

'''Brad:''' We can't even finish the first one. Yeah. We're already jumping in.

== Listener Contributions ==

'''Speaker 02:''' Because now I have to say Violette Pensée. I don't even know if I said that right. And now we have a whole episode about pronunciation, Myke.

'''Brad:''' I was going to read Violet Pensée.

'''Speaker 02:''' We're never going to get through this.

'''Brad:''' I think it's probably right the way you're saying it.

'''Speaker 02:''' My first bottle of ink, my first purple ink, still my favorite.

'''Myke:''' All right. Mine comes from Cecilia. Although fountain pens are my obsession, my very favorite stationary item would be my Visconti Homo Sapiens mechanical pencil. What? For seven millimeters. I didn't even know this product existed. The weight, feel, patina, and with a 2B lead, it is my most used and versatile writing implement. Also, I bought it when I resigned from my previous job, which was meant to stay in the course of my life. So it has amazing memory associations each time I use it.

'''Speaker 02:''' All right. I'm two for two on writing things down, Myke.

'''Myke:''' Did you know that they made mechanical pencil resin for Dharmas Sapiens? Now I'm fascinated.

'''Speaker 02:''' See, this is why we did this. This is going to be a very expensive episode for me. All right. Tim writes, My traveler's notebook I made myself. It has been with me through many years and helped me in a million ways. Like that's the kind of importance that we're talking about here. I love that stuff.

'''Myke:''' Rachel Cooper says, My pilot decimal that is engraved with my name and credentials. My parents got it for me as a gift after I passed my registered dietitian exam after six years of schooling.

'''Speaker 02:''' Nice.

'''Myke:''' Nice.

'''Speaker 02:''' All right. Carol says, Fabiano T. Tipolo, printmaking paper, platinum century, 3776 UEF. Yes. Specifically, Chartres blue. I studied this cathedral for decades, visited France in 2016. Pencil, Rotring 600.5, runner-up, spoke, model four. Shout out to the spoke, model four, pencil ink, diatramentous document brown. These are very special because they represent my tools and medium used daily in my life as an artist. I like that. It's like a whole kit of.

'''Myke:''' Carol is the first rule breaker. We have a first rule breaker. We can keep it. What were the rules? That's not favorite thing. There's more than one thing there.

'''Speaker 02:''' Her favorite thing is what she uses to be an artist. Look, I'm not,

'''Myke:''' I'm not doubting any of this, but I'm going to, I want to keep her rule breakers tally here. So that's one.

'''Speaker 02:''' She will be happy to know she is a rule breaker. She's my,

'''Myke:''' there are some people, Brad, who broke the rules so badly. I had to remove them. Like there were a few people that were like, okay, I'm not going to do this. Here's my list. I'm like, no, we told you what we wanted. And you broke the rules. Only a couple of people removed for such fragrant rule breaking. Mine comes from Chris. I think my favorite item right now is the Hobonichi five-year tech show in the A6 size. I think it's more specific. I think it's more the specific size of the A6 that I like more than anything. I just started using it this year and it's my daily stoic entry journey. I think they meant journal. I just got into stoicism and it really helped me find my yearly theme as well. Honestly, I would love a little more room for each entry as I generally do my main daily journaling in the day, a page, Hobonichi tech, tech, tech, tech, tech, and A6 as well. Uh, I'm just not willing to give up the aesthetics and portability of the A6 for the larger A5.

'''Speaker 02:''' These, these five-year techos are getting me. Courtney Lewis says, while they're all special, the Sailor Shikiori spring rain with an architect nib, my husband bought me for my birthday in 2021. He's not a pen person. So it means a lot to me that he is so supportive of my hobbies.

'''Myke:''' It's very important that you have supportive partners. Like I have Brad. That's my supportive partner here. And Brad has me. Uh, Courtney, AKA finally Chicagoan, uh, Pelican Pelicano in blue left-handed version sadly vanished a couple of years ago. I think a pencil case vanished while I was moving because I'm missing kind of around five daily drivers. It was my first brand name fountain pen. It got me down the rabbit hole. Pelican Pelicano Junior in aqua left-handed and Pilot Cocuno in white, soft, violet, medium. My current daily drivers, they're smooth writing, reliable, and durable. Okay. Courtney gets added.

'''Speaker 02:''' I was going to say, that's two pens. Are you, is that the list? I'm keeping a tally here,

'''Myke:''' Brad.

'''Brad:''' We're going to,

'''Speaker 02:''' all right, let's,

'''Brad:''' we got 278 responses. At the end of this, we'll work out the percentage of people that did not follow the rule. The one simple rule.

'''Speaker 02:''' I can't believe this. All right, Steven Laverty, you're on deck. Let's see if you can handle this. Cause we, I didn't pre-edit all of these. We didn't read all this stuff. Myke did a really good job putting together this. I skimmed.

'''Myke:''' Basically what I did, I'll tell you my, my, my thing here. I would, if this was me that set this up, I think Brad was way too generous with the character count. Shocking. I said this to him, uh, when we were putting this together, way too generous with the character count. Uh, so what I did is the ones that were really long. I did read them just to make sure. Cause some of them needed editing. They didn't get cut. They just got like tightened a little bit.

'''Speaker 02:''' Yep. Yep. Yep. All right. Steven says the desk sharpeners that teachers had on their desk when I went to primary school in the 1980s, when your pencil was broken or blunt enough and the teacher decided if it was blunt enough, you could go to the front of the class, pull the little lever to open the sharpener, insert the pencil, release the lever. And the pencil was gripped in the metal jaws that left a toothy ring around the paint of the pencil. You then turn the handle and felt the shavings drop into the sharpener. The whole process of walking to the desk and using the sharpener and getting a new sharp point was exciting and often the highlight of a school week. Isn't it funny how we have those, uh, those great memories of our stationary uses when we were young.

'''Myke:''' Big sense memory for me though.

'''Speaker 02:''' Mm hmm.

'''Brad:''' Mm hmm.

'''Myke:''' Mine comes from Chris Hockinson, the Baron Fig Squire. I know the company gets a lot of flack in our circles, but it's a darn good pen. No tip wiggle, perfectly weighted, slightly widened grip section. I keep trying new pens and keep coming back. I just can't quit you, Squire. Great pen. Great pen.

'''Speaker 02:''' They crushed the Squire. Yeah, no argument for me either. I praise the Squire any chance I can get.

'''Myke:''' The original one. I don't like their click one. I don't like the way their click mechanism. Correct. The original twist. They used a bad click mechanism, but the twist one is fantastic.

'''Speaker 02:''' Yep. Zach B says, It is definitely not my most used, but my favorite just on history grounds has to be my vintage scriptomechanical pencil. It's black, marked property of US government, and identical to the ones used by NASA astronauts during the Mercury and Gemini programs. The 1.1 millimeter lead is hard, but not impossible to come by, unfortunately. Regardless, it lives in my NASA flight jacket pocket, ready to be used. Killer.

'''Myke:''' That's nice. That's real good. Kathleen, a.k.a. Galantium. Cathine. Is that Cathine? Or is that just spelled wrong? Cathine. Cathine, okay. Oh, I should also say, we are going to pronounce your name wrong. Yes. Facts. You know, there's kind of nothing we could do about that. I mean, maybe we could have said, give us a phonetic thing, but that still doesn't usually work. Anyway. Yep. So, this is just blanket apologies for names, okay? Mm-hmm. My favorite stationary items, uh-oh. Plural. Uh-oh. Uh-oh. Or at least the most sentimental, the Pilot Precise V5 and TWSBI Eco. The Precise was my gateway to good pens in general, when I mindlessly picked one up in middle school, and it led to me, it led me to Brad waxing poetic about the purple ones on the blog, and you can guess what's happened since then. Mm-hmm. The Eco is my favorite pen, full stop. A clear Eco and a bottle of Diamine Red Lustre was my first dip into fountain pens, and TWSBI continues to make great pens that aren't the most bland thing you've ever seen at great prices. And that price is what, is really what makes the Eco, and now the swipe and go so special. The accessibility of these pens cannot be underrated, and without them, we'd have a lot less pen addicts in the world, and I'd be among them. I really appreciate that. I think it's completely true. It's one of the things I love about TWSBI, but, uh, Cathine gets into the rule breakers list.

'''Speaker 02:''' Johnny from Louisiana. For me, this was easy. It's my Pilot Metropolitan and Black Crocodile with a medium nib. This is the first fountain pen I bought when I started listening in early 2017. Little did I know, this would be the same pen I'd use when I got married three years later. Very nice.

'''Myke:''' The crocodile thing, that's the grip section, right?

'''Speaker 02:''' Yeah, so in the first batch, especially, they did some, uh, like reptile pattern prints, uh, in the, not in the grip section, but right above, like a barrel band type of thing.

'''Myke:''' Thomas H. The Lamy Safari. It's a reliable, relatively cheap workhorse pen of a utilitarian design that I find beautiful. I have several in a variety of colors and always keep them inked up.

'''Speaker 02:''' Let me just tell y'all right now, episode 501 is gonna be hot. It just, just be ready for episode 501. We're getting into Lamy's new stuff that we are. Oh, yeah. It's gonna be on. It's gonna be on. Fox Peterson. Fun fact, Myke, there are actually three shades of gray Sharpie brand permanent markers available in both the fine and ultra tip pen. I know this because when I'm looking at a pen cup containing baseline fountain pens, gel pens, paints, roller balls, et cetera, of decent quality, I nearly always have a reason to grab one of the ultra fine gray Sharpies first. Drawing a sketch, the lightest gray Sharpie is easy enough to color over and provide shade. Making a note, using the darker gray Sharpie and annotate on that spare piece of tape you have within arm's range. Gray is close enough to black to be readable in monotone photos you choose to scan and gray Sharpies have the alcohol base that's great for layering, blending, and even coloring in the tiny blotch on my car seat cover left from where I learned that I accidentally sprayed bleach on it. I'm no big spender, but I've got a few retro 51s and a Benu pen and a large collection of Lamy Safaris and limited edition colors, but my favorite pen is the least colorful of them all and the least unique. Pour one out for the ultra fine gray Sharpie in any of its three shades and hey, if you spill, you can always color in that blotch with your Sharpie while you're at it.

'''Myke:''' I'm going to say Fox didn't break the rule here.

'''Myke:''' This one feels to me that they were just making some comparisons. Okay. I mean,

'''Speaker 02:''' I agree with you. I'm just shocked at your lacks so far.

'''Myke:''' I make the rules now. Okay. I'm the pen addict now. That's what happens for the next 500 if we swap it around. Fox Peterson, by the way, sounds like an anchor, like a TV anchor. Yes. Like that's a great name. Like they sound like, hi, I'm Fox Peterson and welcome to the 6 p.m. news. Anyway,

'''Myke:''' Neil Sivola, Sivula, Neil Sivula. Why did I put an extra V in there? Neil Sivula, Levenger five-year journal recommended years ago by friend of the show, Patrick Rohn. Neil said friend of the pod and I couldn't bring myself to say that. Like seriously.

'''Speaker 02:''' That's one of your words.

'''Myke:''' I don't like pod. Doesn't, no. Just started my third five-year journal. Wow. I may not be able to journal more proficially, prolifically during my day, but the last 10 years I've been faithfully jotting a few ideas down while I make my morning tea. It has been a real pleasure to be reminded of important events over the years. I bet I could go back and find an entry about Brad's brief sabbatical from the podcast all those years ago. Yes, I've been here since the beginning. Congratulations, gentlemen.

'''Speaker 02:''' Man, if I didn't do that sabbatical, we wouldn't have hit this date, right?

'''Myke:''' Ages ago. No, we wouldn't have hit the date and we would have hit 500 ages ago, but then we could have had two separate celebrations, you know?

'''Speaker 02:''' Michael C., all the beat-to-heck field notes that my father had used. He always had one sticking out of his shirt or pants pocket along with a mechanical pencil. If you put him on the list, I'm going to hurt you.

'''Myke:''' No, that's fine. Okay,

'''Speaker 02:''' all right.

== Rule Breakers Discussion ==

'''Myke:''' Because it's not specific products. Okay, thank you. It's like, the issue I have is like, hi, I'm here to tell you about my four favorite things. It's like, no, that's not what it said. All right, so we're on to number 18 now, right? Woo! Yeah. My Kokoyu Jibun Days Planner, my Pen BBS Fountain Pen and Washi Tape, you see? I'm retiring sooner than I would have liked, so I'm not sure how much I will have to plan, but it might help me with the new job hunt. Plus, I get a ridiculous amount of pleasure keeping track of tasks and decorating each day. It is a nice ritual.

'''Speaker 02:''' Lots of notebook representation and planner representation in this first batch here.

'''Speaker 02:''' Temporarily awry, Big Eye Design Pens, TI Arto. Before I got this pen, I was content to use my Retro 51 and limit myself to the huge number of Parker G2 refills available. It was completely fine. And then I got my hands on the self-adjusting grip of the Arto and realized I could have every refill. No more hacking ends or using 3D printed adapters. It just works. I hate the term game changer, but that's what it was. I don't think I could ever go back to not using this every day.

'''Myke:''' Really cool. That is cool.

'''Myke:''' Scott says, Love that one from Scott. Love that one. I do wonder if somebody keeps buying Scott a new one and he just doesn't know.

'''Speaker 02:''' Julie Paradise. My favorite stationary item is my vintage Mont Blanc Meisterstuk 142 with its fine medium stub. I flattened the round tipping myself. The pen might look unassuming and scratched up, but it's a dream to write with. It has a bouncy nib and perfect flow. It makes me want to write all the time. Favorite pens that are great and also a beater, that's the way to go. That's the way to go.

'''Myke:''' Daryl. Two-speed diamond 580 ALR Prussian blue. This pen was mentioned on the Pen Addict and I love the look of it. It was the first pen that I saw and thought I really like how that looks. I would go back and look at it every once in a while, but I had never had a fountain pen and I wasn't sure if I wanted to get one. I finally emailed Brad and asked about it as a starter pen and what inks to go with. He gave me information and I ordered the pen and some Crimson Pilot Hiroshizuki Yamabudo ink. I love the pen and even though I have added a couple of other fountain pens since then, this is still the one I use every day at work.

'''Speaker 02:''' Yeah, that Brad guy's okay in my book. He's all right. Albert Hernandez, my favorite item is my leather notebook cover. I bought some leather and built it myself. It's sized to carry three Baron Fig notebooks and they're not quite a five size. I've had it four or five years now and it's wearing very nicely. What I like about it is that it's become familiar and comfortable imagine if I found something like this at a thrift store I would think to myself that it's old and beat up and ugly but because I made it myself and I use it every day it's special and full of character and charm.

'''Myke:''' Stitchpunk, my two Scribo Piuma fountain pens. Classic, simplicity and appearance, unique and interesting colors and gloriously soft and bouncy nibs that ride like nothing else I've ever used. I have the extra fine and medium in the 14 carat flex nib and I want more. Scribos, Scribos, Scribos, customer service. It's also excellent and very responsive. Since I got these pens I really haven't wanted to use anything else. They're just that good. Yeah, on my list. On my list. I'm going to let them slide through here by the way.

'''Speaker 02:''' I think that's singular. Yes. All right, Tyler, not my son I'm assuming although he has a taste that I would appreciate. Yeah. Oh no, listen to him. My best pen is my Y Studio portable brassing. Like father, like son. That's a good kid. I cannot explain it but this nib is just so smooth and it's a joy to write with every time I pick it up. However, my most sentimental pen is my Kaweco Lilyput Fire Blue because it was a gift from my partner. I love the fact that my burn pattern is utterly unique formed on Michael Guterle's desk and I can't help he didn't write that was my edit. I don't think I believe this is true. It's the lore, Myke. I know,

'''Brad:''' but I don't believe it's true.

'''Speaker 02:''' And I can't help but stare at it sometimes when I should be focused in a meeting. Happy 500. Thank you, son.

'''Myke:''' Happy five rule breaker to Tyler.

'''Myke:''' Gordon B. My favorite item of all time is the paper mate eraser mate. Back in the 80s, it caught my attention and started my love of stationery. By the way, I recently found one on eBay in its original packaging and had to buy it. It writes horribly but I still love to look at it and remember how I wanted to get all the colors back in the day. This is a mechanical pencil, Brad. I don't know if you are familiar with it.

'''Speaker 02:''' No, no, no, no, no. This is a pen. This is one of the first erasable ballpoint pens. Gordon and I must be of similar age because this was a pen you had to have like in the 1980s and it is straight garbage but you had to have it, right? So that was one of those things.

'''Myke:''' I was thinking of something else.

'''Speaker 02:''' Mm-mm-mm-mm. Brittany Elmer, the 0.38 Muji gel pen. I always have a few knocking around while I don't use them as often as I once did. They will forever be the stationery item that let me know there are better things out there. That's perfect.

'''Myke:''' Eric Lineman, Brad, I have my father's Montblanc 149 that his mother gifted to him when he got his PhD in 1974. It is in a brass pen well in the huge eight-foot oak roll-top desk that he made for my mother. Just sitting at this desk and using his pen brings me memories that both my parents have passed away. I will gift it to one of our sons when the time is right.

'''Speaker 02:''' Gosh darn it, Eric. I mean, I'm glad I got some of my crying out because I don't need it later in the show.

'''Speaker 02:''' David Reed, while I normally have such difficulty in selecting a single favorite anything, I think that my single favorite stationery item can be chosen. It has to be my Pilot Custom 743 with a posting nib. Yes! It's nothing special to look at, but when you write with it, oh boy, it lays down a smooth, precise line on any paper I need to write on. While the pens I have inked shifts around, this one is absolute constant. Always inked with Kiwaguro. Always ready to do exactly what I need it to do. This pen performs and only disappoints in its appearance and the difficulty getting it. Why Pilot makes the PO nib so hard to get and only puts it in pens that are lackluster in appearances beyond me. Tell them, David. If I could get a posting nib and a nice dark green custom 83, another pen that deserves better colorways, I would be an extremely happy man. But a plain black 743 with a posting nib is still a joy to write with and that's the important thing, right? David's definitely a listener of the show. Oh yeah.

'''Myke:''' Kim, my favorite stationery item is the Hobonichi Techo English version. I often feel like this planner holds my life together. I tried other daily journals, other planners, but nothing clicks with me the way the Hobonichi does. So thank you, Brad and Myke, for discovering it for me all those years ago. Also, happy 10th anniversary. I know Kim, by the way, has been listening since episode one.

'''Speaker 02:''' Yep.

'''Myke:''' I'm sure there are lots of people here. Yes. Like, I have no doubt about that, but this is one that I know. yep. That makes me happy.

'''Speaker 02:''' Ulysses Xerces. Yeah. I got that one. my purple Twisby Eco with a 1.1mm stub. It's a great writer and a cool pen, but much more importantly, a friend who I have lost had this same pen, and I think of her whenever I use it. Awesome.

'''Myke:''' Kenneth L., I really am enjoying my Lockby Field Journal. It's a great size, it's easy to carry, and the paper's great. It has a refill with calendars, dot grid, lined, and blank. Easy to use for whatever you want. I have no idea what this product is.

'''Speaker 02:''' I know exactly what it is, and that's why this show has worked for 500 episodes, Michael.

'''Myke:''' That's the point. I don't know anything.

'''Speaker 02:''' Adam, my Sailor 1911-esque royal tangerine. What do I love? It was, what do you know? It was a wedding gift from my wife who had it engraved with our wedding date and to have it to hold. She was very proud of her pen pun. Ah, I get it. It was my first really nice pen and sent me down the path of buying many more Sailors, 11 in total. It's a pen I will keep forever and always makes me remember that special day and my wife. Get it to have and to hold, Myke. Get it?

'''Myke:''' For what? for inky and, I don't know. I was trying to think of some kind of pun, but I don't have one.

'''Myke:''' Because I'm also trying to find a different name for this person

'''Speaker 02:''' so I don't have to read. Myke is vamping right now, Chad.

'''Myke:''' I'm vamping because I don't want to read this name. Do you know who this person is?

'''Speaker 02:''' Just by the handle, but personally, no, I don't. But the handle is very well known to me.

'''Speaker 02:''' Let's say...

'''Myke:''' Ink Farts says, I don't know, this is gross. It's not my all-time favorite stationary item, but one that I'm so grateful exists, Waterman Serenity Blue. Pens, papers, and trendy inks fall in and out of rotation, but Serenity Blue has been my go-to ink when testing new pens and while grinding nibs, and it is itself a beautiful blue that I never tire of. It's affordable, safe, predictable, and even sheens without being a pain to deal with. Just a classic ink with enough character to not be boring.

'''Speaker 02:''' Yep. Agree completely. Dr. Lamb Chop in New Zealand, Myke. A stamp of my name made from individual lead-type letters. On a visit to Tokyo, my friend Yui took me to an old-school small maker of posters and books. They also have a service in which they make a stamp of your name by inlaying the lead-type into a wooden holder. Crammed into this tiny shop were rows and rows of Japanese characters and a much smaller section for all the Latin letters used in English. Off Yui went in one direction to find the four characters she needed to make the stamp of her full name, and I went off in the other direction to find the 13 letters I needed for mine. An additional 14 I needed to make the stamp for my partner. I was... Is Lamb Chop 13 letters? Wow. I was done with this task in five minutes, but Yui had to look for about a half an hour. Afterwards, we went out to eat and drink. The item is special because that day was great fun. The craftsmanship in the stamps is excellent, and my stamp reminds me of the four times when we could travel, see our friends, and have adventures. Isn't that what it's all about, Myke? Our friends.

'''Myke:''' I think so. It's not about the pens. It's the friends we made along the way. Mm-hmm. Ricky says, I won two A5 Apple notebooks. The covers are leather with an embossed apple. I don't know if they're genuine, but they're special to me.

'''Speaker 02:''' Might need a picture of those, Ricky. Send it in if you get a chance. I don't know that I've seen those. Hide it from the wife, Visconti Homo Sapien, the way it feels and writes, and my first Grail Pen purchase.

'''Myke:''' Kiri. Pentel Pocket Brush. It was my introduction to bristle tip brush pens and changed everything. The versatility of the bristle tip brush is unmatched, and the convenience of a pen means it gets used way more than my other real brushes do. Brushwork is the very, brushwork is the characteristic of my art that most people remember best, and it's all thanks to this pen.

'''Speaker 02:''' That is factually correct. One of the great, great pens of all time. Brian C. I love writing with my newish Lamy Safari Terra in my new Minimalism art-dotted notebook. The Lamy Safari is my first fountain pen and I love the way the pen writes. I never realized writing could be such fun and therapeutic experience like this until I first started writing with this awesome piece of German engineering. And now, since starting up on the paper from this new notebook, my obsession has been taken to a whole new level. The pen writes comfortably without being too wet or scratchy and the ink dries fast and perhaps most importantly doesn't bleed through the page. I know that technically this is two items. Thank you for making

'''Myke:''' this decision easy for me, Brian. I was going backwards and forwards a bit there,

'''Speaker 02:''' but you put yourself in this club. He says, sorry, not sorry, but these both have really made staying organized as a traveling music teacher most enjoyable experience. You two definitely helped guide my first few stationery purchases as a freshly inked pen addict and I couldn't be more happy with the informed purchasing choices you helped me make. Thanks, guys.

'''Myke:''' This is from Powell. Fountain pens and pencils. They are the best tools to help me understand when I am really thinking and reflect on it. Also, typewriters. I'm a fan of mechanical keyboards, but this is different. Rescuing them, fixing them, and giving them a spark of life again is so much fun, also for journaling. I don't even know what to do with Powell, Brad, because Powell didn't actually give us anything.

'''Brad:''' Just like, hey,

'''Myke:''' I love it all.

'''Brad:''' All of it. I don't think I'm going to put them in any category. Maybe I create my own category for Powell. Actually, yeah. Powell's going in their own category.

'''Myke:''' Just call it Powell. Yeah, one. Of like, what is it? People who suggested no products. One person so far.

'''Speaker 02:''' All right, Matias. I still love my Pilot Custom Heritage 92 demonstrator. It was the first fancy pen I got for myself and it goes with me everywhere, so it has seen all the milestones. I need to ink mine back up. Great pen.

'''Myke:''' Kit. My Field Notes National Park set. The edition came out right as I left university to start a graduate job, and from the get-go, I have used this set to keep track of my daily to-do lists. I have slowly worked through the whole set and intend to mount and frame the full set, oh, nice, once it's finished as a memento of my achievements through a challenging time to embark on my career. The fantastic art has inspired great wanderlust while chained to a desk. Good luck with the reading and congratulations on 500 episodes. See you at 1,000. Oh, I don't like the thought of that for some reason. 1,000 seems like a lot, but why not?

'''Speaker 02:''' Geert. I don't know my best Dutch D.

'''Speaker 02:''' Best Dutch G. Nice work. You really nailed that one. Nailed that one.

'''Myke:''' So Geert said, because no one else can see what you can see, so I have to explain this. So Geert, oh, Geert, Geert said, in brackets, let's hear your best Dutch G, and I don't know what that could mean.

'''Speaker 02:''' Yeah, I failed. I failed pretty aggressively, I think. Lamy Joy Calligraphy with 1.5 millimeter stub nib and registrar ink. The reason it's so special to me because it's the pen I use to write the handout notes for the Dungeons & Dragons game I run. Great underrated pen.

'''Myke:''' Registrar ink, is that the like, what's so special about that?

'''Speaker 02:''' It's the, it's not just Iron Gaul, it's like aggressively permanent.

'''Myke:''' It's funny to me that it's like these Dungeons & Dragons games, they are like significantly pumped.

'''Speaker 02:''' But the registrar's, the registrar stuff, we did an episode back around like the wedding time and the British requirements for documentation.

'''Myke:''' That was why it was like too difficult for me to take a pen on my own. Yep. Joe Casabona says, I want to say the Leonardo, uh oh, I've lost my place, I pressed the key by accident. 44, 44. I'm back now, I'm back now. Yeah, so we are on number 44 by the way. Joe says, I want to say the Leonardo Memento Zero Grande, but to me, the Mark 1 by Studio Neat is the most perfect pen ever created. I can use my favorite refill, the Schmidt Easy Flow 9000. It's a great weight and that knock. I have three and love them all. An orange pen attic version would be an insta buy for me. That's not a bad idea. That's not a bad idea whatsoever. Joe, you're in the bad crew. There you go. You're in the Raw Breakers Club. Wow. It was a good idea at least. It was two things. You can't do that. You can't just be like, oh, I wanted to say this thing, but I actually mean another thing. Well, don't say the first thing then.

'''Speaker 02:''' All right. All right. Jenny Realia says, I have fond memories of the Dixon Ticonderoga, both the number two and the Carmine Red checking pencil. The most basic of basic pencils. There are better pencils and I use them, but the Ticonderoga is omnipresent and never fails me and has never failed me since I was a child. I like this. We are of two minds. We definitely have some throwback important stationery here. I like it.

'''Myke:''' I do love saying Ticonderoga though. That's a great name.

'''Myke:''' Capitiano says, I told myself when I bought the Shone Design Peak that I wouldn't use it until I passed the Japanese language proficiency test N3. The test results are out now and I'm using my new pen. Congratulations. Yeah.

'''Speaker 02:''' That's awesome. And I'm also writing down Is that the ghost one? It is the ghost one. That's nice. I'm writing it down because it needs to go on my list because I keep saying I'm going to buy one. Alex Ibarra, it was a Pilot Kakuno. I love the little smiley face and writing with it was just a pure joy. It made me realize I could make my life happier by just sprinkling in little bits of joy and in many places as I could. That's a great subtext for this podcast. Myke, we sprinkle a little bit of joy as many places as we can.

'''Myke:''' Nathan says, my favorite item for the past few months has been the Pilot Decimo. It's the perfect fountain pen to use at my job since I often have to write quick notes on the go while switching between different paper types. The Decimo provides a great writing experience with complete reliability and zero fuss. It is a tool I can trust. Mm-hmm.

'''Speaker 02:''' Mm-hmm. I have five things written down on my list now. The odd copy. I love my Lamy 2000 but I have to give my love to the Fine Point Sharpie pen. I've spilled more words into legal pads and journals throughout college with the Sharpie pen and it'll be hard for any other writing tool to catch up. I love how this pen makes my handwriting look and still makes me grin when I pick it up all these years later. And this is the Sharpie pen, Myke, that we've discussed many, many times, not the permanent marker pen. Eight.

'''Myke:''' What? Eight. Up to eight rule breakers. Oh! When I give you that number, that's what I'm counting. Oh, wow. Yeah, well, look, there's two in there. Okay. Aaron R says, park a jotter with a red plastic slash gray metal body because this is what got me into stationery as a kid.

'''Speaker 02:''' Facts. That was Myke's favorite response so far. Very clear, very defined. One item. Go. Bork and Bork.

'''Speaker 02:''' Bork Ben Bork says, Lamy Safari Terracotta with a gold nib ground to a stub. Reliable, everyday carry and fantastic writing experience. Pairs well with the Lamy Petrol and any pocket notebook. Bonus points for the nib as it was ground by a great friend and penabler.

'''Myke:''' All right, so that was number 51. I'm going to take a break now. All right. We've got something special today from one of our longest running sponsors and biggest supporters of the show and that's our friends over at Pen Chalet. Pen Chalet sell all of the products that you're looking for from all of your favorite brands. They sell rollerballs and fountain pens, mechanical pencils. They sell inks and refills and pen holders, carrying cases, all the accessories you're looking for as well. They do free shipping on orders of over $50 in the United States and they sell internationally with great shipping rates. They do fast and reliable customer service. They run discounts twice a month and they're always adding new styles of pens and products over at Pen Chalet. Pen Chalet has low prices on high quality pens with a 100% satisfaction guarantee. So, go right now to PenChalet.com that's P-E-N-C-H-A-L-E-T.com and click the podcast link at the top of the website. Use the password Pen Addict and you'll get the code that you need to save 10% on anything at any time at Pen Chalet. And also, Brad, what else are they going to find there right now?

'''Speaker 02:''' They are going to find something that Ron and I worked on for this special 500th episode and as a thank you to all of you wonderful listeners, Ron has set up a big 500th episode giveaway of Brad's favorite things. It's actually celebrate the Pen Addict's 10th anniversary. So, and it says enter to win one of Brad's favorite things. He also officially gives you permission to remember them anytime you're feeling sad and then you won't feel so bad. I didn't write that copy but that's pretty funny. All right, we're giving away five sets of items that I put together on Pen Chalet and let me tell y'all, Chad, this is just for y'all. So, like, if you're listening to this episode, go over to PenChalet.com type Pen Addict in the radio podcast feed and then you will see a way to enter into this giveaway. You should keep this to yourself because then you have a better chance to win but you should support our friends at Pen Chalet. So, let me tell you what you can win. You can win a TWSBI Eco and Jade with TWSBI Grape Fountain Pen Ink. That's one combo. That's one giveaway prize. You can win a Lamy Studio Fountain Pen with a steel nib with Lamy Crystal Amazonite Ink. That's number two. Number three giveaway, Bennu Euphoria Bora Bora. It's one of the really cool, I love the Euphoria shape and the Bora Bora is one of the great colors. Ink that up with Pilot Orochizuku Konpeki. Next up, we have an Estabrook Estee in Sea Glass with Estabrook Lilac Shimmer Ink. And then we have the last item, one of the new Leonardo Memento Zero Brooks Resin Pens and Leonardo Red Ink. So how cool is that that Ron wanted to do this, wanted to let me pick out some of my favorite pens, which, hey, I love all of these. The Eco, the Lamy Studio, the Bennu Euphoria, the Estabrook SDC Glass, Leonardo Memento Zero, all of them from the amazing Pen Chalet, a long, long, long time supporter of this show, of the blog, of, you know, this whole pen community as a whole. And I just thank you so much, Ron. Let me tell you directly that I really appreciate your friendship and your support over all these years. And I appreciate our listeners supporting our good friends over at Penschalet.

'''Myke:''' So go to penschalet.com, P-E-N-C-H-A-L-E-T.com. Click the podcast link at the top of the website. Enter Pen Addict. You'll get the special offer code. You'll see a bunch of special offer products because there's always a ton of great stuff there.

'''Speaker 02:''' By the way, I wrote down a product for me to check out, the Lamy Studio Special Edition Rollerball in Aquamarine. is really, really speaking to me. That's a great price. There are deals down there too. But also at the top

== Special Offers and Giveaways ==

'''Myke:''' of that page is where you'll find the ability to enter into that giveaway. Thank you to Penschalet for the continued support of this show and Relay FM.

'''Myke:''' All right. Is it me now? It's me now. Yeah, you did Bork Ben Bork, right? So mine's from Mel Martin. I have a Sailor Sapporo in some version of slightly sparkly purple. Maybe it's blueberry that several of my friends pitched in to buy me for my 40th birthday. It's my favorite color and the subtle sparkle always makes me smile. But what really makes this my favorite all-time station item is the love and thoughtfulness that my friends put into coordinating such a wonderful gift.

'''Speaker 02:''' Yep. Perfect. Perfect. Gene says, Pelican M800 blue stripe fine nib. Hard to list all the reasons but it's just gorgeous in its design, function, ink capacity, prominent place in the fountain pen world being a flagship Pelican. Most of all, it just fits in my hand and flow and line is silky smooth. Perfect.

'''Myke:''' Elizabeth, a bottle of Yamabudo, Yamabudo, Yamabudo. That's a charm. There he goes. Hiroshizuku ink

'''Brad:''' because a very thoughtful student gave it to me.

'''Speaker 02:''' That's our second mention of Yamabudo. We should have a Yamabudo tracker. That's a very great thing.

'''Brad:''' I'm not tracking it. How much stuff do you want me to keep track of here?

'''Speaker 02:''' Brooklyn Becca, congrats on 500. This is a fun idea. I've been thinking about this since yesterday. I think my favorite stationery item has to be paper. Too simple? Too easy? Boring? Maybe. But when I think of all my favorite stationery products, they all revolve around paper. Books, cards, notebooks, clippings, birth certificates, diplomas, marriages, licenses, art, diaries, planners, keepsakes in general. While not necessary to sustain life, paper is central to many, many good memories. If you must know specifics, there is a lot of ordinary paper, but I prefer to use even just slightly better 32-pound paper in my Tomoe River original paper notebooks from Hipponodo. What are you going to do, Myke?

'''Myke:''' That's fine. I'm going to let it go. Yeah! I'm going to let it go. Aaron, my favorite stationery item right now is my Platinum Galaxy Starlight with a broad nib that was a gift for my 10th wedding anniversary. What ink should I pair it with? Oh, we've got a quick question here.

'''Speaker 02:''' Palo de Roshizuku Yamabuda. All right, next up, Kim in.

'''Brad:''' The high-tech C

'''Speaker 02:''' Coleto pen in 2004 because I switch ink colors in my notebook when I change topics to make it easier to keep different items separate. I can have five different ink colors to rotate through in one pen, which makes this a much easier and more portable thing to do. Plus, I love that I can choose colors and I'm not limited to just red, blue, black, and green like a lot of multi-pens. I have three different Coleto bodies with different colors in each, so I can use the color scheme I like best on any given day. Yes!

'''Myke:''' Luke from Brisbane, Australia. My Visconti Homo Sapiens. It was the first expensive pen I bought a number of years ago. I never had any troubles with the nib and it has always been an amazing writer.

'''Speaker 02:''' Homo Sapiens tracker. The non-fountain pen episode. My big pen, because it's not fussy like a fountain pen. You know what? Fair.

'''Myke:''' Justin H. My current favorite stationary items are the new Cortex Mark 1s of a theme system journal. Yes! Yes! Come on, someone! It is my most valuable pen! I don't own a ton. There's something special about the quality of the build and the feeling of joy I get when writing with that combo of pen and journal. I truly enjoy the writing process so much of these, where I typically handle so much writing digitally. I love being able to slow down and enjoy those writing moments. Y'all don't have to kiss up to Myke. He doesn't appreciate it. Y'all kiss up to me. I appreciate that. Here's the thing, Justin. You're going in the Rule Breakers Club, but you're also going in Myke's Faves Club. There's just one in there right now. We'll see how that progresses.

'''Speaker 02:''' All right, Emmett says, the Lamy Safari fountain pen. Sometimes I just like to look at it because it's so pretty. I remember emailing Brad when I was about 12 and saying that I was like an idiot, and it's crazy to think it's at 500 episodes already. Maybe I'll have gotten the Canalea Kona Cherry by the 1000th episode if you ever get there. Thank you for the great podcast. Thank you.

'''Myke:''' That's wild. Like someone was listening when they were 12.

'''Speaker 02:''' Yep, yep, yep. Incredible.

'''Myke:''' Ellis, platinum fountain pen. The colors are routine, but the writing experience is fantastic. Starts every time.

'''Speaker 02:''' I mean, literally all of them, right? John Boland says, Brad Myke, happy 500. I love my Pilot Custom 912 with an FA nib. It's as classically stylish as Cary Grant's suits, or Audrey Hepburn's little black dress. Piano black. We're going in, Myke. We're leaning in.

'''Brad:''' Come on, Joe.

'''Speaker 02:''' Piano black.

'''Brad:''' Taking us on a ride here.

'''Speaker 02:''' Rhodium trim and flat ends always look good. It's the perfect size, big enough to comfortably hold, but small enough to fit in a shirt pocket. The number 10 FA nib is Sublime. It's a high performance instrument. Like other high performance instruments, sports cars, gaming computers, et cetera, it is finicky and requires upgraded components and consumables. John, you can write for me anytime. It requires upgraded components and consumables just to get the best out of it. In this case, that's the feed and ink. With a flexible nib factory ebonite feed and piloter Roshizuku ink, likely Yamabudo. That's my edit. The FA flies. It's such a joy to write with. It's got nice bounce and a little bit of pleasant tooth, particularly on the upstroke mic. The nib responds to subtle inputs to add line variation at will. It's easy to write with as reversed or as expressive as it's easy to write as reserved or as expressive as I want. And if I really get cooking, I can produce extreme line variation for quite passable copper plate, although I need a lot more practice. I use it for all my letters and thank you cards. Thank you for the opportunity to gush about my favorite pen and best wishes for the next 500 episodes.

'''Myke:''' Amazing. Love it. Alexandra, Namiki Yukari Milky Way, not because it's by far my most expensive pen because it's not even my best writer, but because of what it represents in my life. I got it as a celebration for a new job that got me a significant raise and allowed me to leave a pretty toxic job. It also reminded me of my dreams of being an astronaut as a child, given the theme, and made me feel that the stars are your limit as far as your dreams. Happy 500, guys. I honestly hope that that was going to and now I'm an astronaut. You know, like the job I got is now I'm an astronaut. Maybe they are. I don't know.

'''Speaker 02:''' Maybe, maybe, but that's a beautiful pen. It's the one I own and it's the best. The best. Helen from Toronto, my pen cup currently holds about 40 pens of all sizes, shapes, colors, and quality. From it, I select a pen that fits my mood or task. A pen received as a gift from a loved one that I'm thinking about, a bold writer with a thick line for an important signature, or one that is comfortable for longer writing chore. The pen cup is special because it reflects me in all my states from playful to focused.

'''Brad:''' Hmm.

'''Speaker 02:''' It's the pen cup. Yeah, I know. It's the favorite stationary item. Yeah. The pen cup is singular.

'''Myke:''' But there's no product there. However, the pen cup specifically is a thing. It represents an idea. Yes. All right. If you think about it, the pen cup is a concept. A customized all black Lamy Safari fountain pen with a red clip is, this is Scarlet's entry, inked with Diamine Red Dragon. I guess if your name's Scarlet, you would want an ink like Diamine Red Dragon, right? I feel like that fits pretty nicely. This pen is special to me because I put it together while healing from extremely poor mental health as a reclamation of my past being forced to write with one at school and a statement of who I am now writing everything in blood red. Hell yeah. Yes. Hell yes. That's some Game of Thrones type stuff right there. I know. I've never seen Game of Thrones so I have no idea if it actually is.

'''Speaker 02:''' True, true, true, true. Sirwin, my favorite fountain pen is my Karis Pen Company Pony Express, ink. It's a gorgeous hunk of patinated bronze slowly turning a deep brown with still golden spots where I hold it. I love it because its heft reminds me of the weight of my words. They will live on for generations just as this pen will continue in our family for generations bearing the marks of each writer. That's cool.

'''Myke:''' Lynn, Sailor Pro Gear Slim Lucky Charm. It normalized pens in its price range for me both a good and bad thing.

'''Speaker 02:''' Yeah. And 5607, my Leuch Term 18-month calendar planner. Weak display on the left side of the page and line page for notes on the right. I use it with my TWSBI Eco with Deatramentus document black ink every day.

'''Myke:''' 10. Mmm, really? Wow. 10. Aggressive. 10 out of 69. Nice. Aggressive. Aggressive judgment there. Number 70 is Seattle Sparky. My seven seas writer because Tomoe River. Like writing on angels' wings. Message straight to the ears of God. Haven't sampled the replacement yet. Stock to Tomoe River for quite some time. This is, I wished I could accurately get across this message. I'm going to give it another go, Brad. Mm-hmm. I almost spit up

'''Speaker 02:''' my coffee the first time.

'''Myke:''' My seven seas writer because Tomoe River, like writing on angels' wings, messages straight to the ears of God. Haven't sampled my replacement yet. Stocked with Tomoe River for quite some time. Time! I think that does a valid job of getting across the way this message of the right now.

'''Speaker 02:''' Dwayne Lively says, my Levenger Sunset fountain pen. It looks like R2-D2 and has a great nib. It's also the first pen I bought via the internet. That's cool.

'''Myke:''' In my mind, Levenger Sunset, I can't imagine how a pen called that would look like R2-D2.

'''Speaker 02:''' I know. I gotta look at that one. I do not have a picture in my head.

'''Myke:''' My Lamy 2000, since it was a birthday present from my brother 15 years ago. It was only if I'm filled with Noodler's Walnut, which he also gave me. I have many other fountain pens, some much more expensive, but that's one that's always in use and one I will never part with.

'''Speaker 02:''' I wish I had that level of commitment. Catherine says, my red medium nib Pilot Metropolitan. This was the pen that got me hooked, and while I have pens that cost 10 times as much, this one always makes me smile. That's why we love the Metro.

'''Myke:''' Irene K. I love my Cafe Coast Ball in dark green of golden finial. It's the first fountain pen I bought as an adult. A direct consequence of listening to this show. I have never found a pen better suited for me.

'''Speaker 02:''' I'm so happy we did this, Myke. I'm having fun reading all these.

'''Myke:''' Well, we're up to 76 of 270 something, so you've got a lot of time

'''Speaker 02:''' to change your mind. I haven't looked at the clock yet, so I might rescind all that. Rich Kelly says, I enjoy using my wax seal camel stamp. I use a glue gun to melt the wax, much easier than using a tea candle and spoon, and I write a letter using one of my favorite pens. Just like I believe there is no such thing as a grail pen, I also feel no such thing as a favorite pen. I have 59 fountain pens in my collection. My Le Bon 325 in flame red with a fine nib. I like the fine line it produces and enjoy the wet feed, a rare combination. I use Clairefontaine paper. It doesn't feather or bleed through. After allowing the ink to fully dry, I carefully fold and place the letter in the envelope, apply the piece de resistance, my camel wax seal.

'''Myke:''' 11.

'''Speaker 02:''' Come on, man.

'''Myke:''' What do you mean, come on? There's like 12 things in this list.

'''Speaker 02:''' But it's all about the camel stamp.

'''Myke:''' I just called it

'''Speaker 02:''' a list even. So? It's, it's, it's, mm.

'''Myke:''' Eliseo Santamaria, Santamaria. Could be either. Pens! I can tell a lot by people's preferences and writing style. My pen represents me. Okay, Eliseo, you go into the rarefied air. Ooh, the club of two, which is people who suggested no products. But at least they made me shout pens. So that's good news.

'''Speaker 02:''' Leslie says, my favorite item, why are we limited to just one, Myke? That's what Leslie wants to know. Doesn't matter, Leslie,

'''Myke:''' I'm assuming Leslie kept to the rules.

'''Speaker 02:''' We appreciate you being a rule follower, Leslie, at least Myke does. You created the rule. Assumedly. Anyway. I was trying to keep it short, Myke, it did not work. It's fine. It did not work. My favorite item is Parker International dual fold in black with a medium nib. This is the last fountain pen my father bought me the summer before I started uni. My parents had been in Florida buying furniture and my dad saw it at one of their airport shops. As the person who introduced me to fountain pens at a young age, it was even more special as he rarely purchased spontaneous gifts. Since he has passed away, it has made me treasure this pen even more. And while I do write with it, it never leaves the house. Happy anniversary, gentlemen. Sounds like you made

'''Myke:''' the right choice, Leslie. I think that's perfect. Tim. This isn't a good start from Tim. Uh oh. I'm going to slightly alter this question and comment on my most memorable stationery item. Okay, maybe you pulled it around. Fair. Fair. A Stadler lead holder pencil I bought around 45 years ago. I no longer have it, but I suspect it was similar to the Stadler Mars Technico 780. Why is it my most memorable item? Because it was the first real stationery purchase I ever made. Moreover, I found it at this magical place I never even knew existed in my hometown. Something called an independently owned stationery store. And now long departed Williams Stationery in Red Deer, Alberta, Canada. And that's where my love affair began. Just like true baseball fans have their first ballpark experience locked in their memories, I sense the stationery disciples out there remember their first foray into the magical kingdom. Beautiful. Absolutely.

'''Speaker 02:''' Like I always said, I can draw the layout of the bookstore that I used to go to when I was a kid that I hadn't been there in 40 years. Marty B, Twisby Eco. I have fancier pens with gold nibs and beautiful designs, but every time I use my basic blue Eco, I feel the same thing. Smooth writing, consistent flow, no matter what ink I use, comfortable to use, to always enjoy to write with. It's my EDC.

'''Myke:''' Awesome.

'''Speaker 02:''' Yep.

'''Myke:''' My one is Brian the Wharf. My favorite piece of stationery would have to be my transparent green Twisby Eco with a fine nib, which is always inked with Shin Ryoku. Ryoku? Mm-hmm. This is the first pen I bought for myself at my very first pen show, which I attended with my brother. The show was the 2019 Triangle Pen Show, where I also met Brad for the first time, so this pen has a lot of great memories to it.

'''Speaker 02:''' Nice. So this is Ryan or Ryan P. Just, you know, for clarification. My favorite stationery item at the moment, because these things are always changing, is the 2021 Diamine Inkvent Calendar, because going through the calendar has taken me very far out of my ink comfort zone. It was very into cool tone, fairly basic. I was very into cool tone, basic, fairly basic inks for a long time. Blue, blacks, purples, greens, grays, some browns, and some pinks. And this set has helped me discover how awesome orange, brown, red, and yellow inks can be, and also has expanded my palette to get into more sheening and or shimmer inks. Love the discovery.

'''Brad:''' Hmm.

'''Myke:''' All right, I'm going to let this one go. Yeah. Yeah, you are. I mean, it's technically 25, anyway. Evan Rosenberg, I have a lot of pens, even more now than when I started listening to the Pen Addict podcast shortly after episode 300. When I close, you've got a lot to catch up on then, Evan. When I close my eyes and picture a pen, though, I still see the Rotring Core capped rollerball in the Technor colorway that I used to carry in my pocket in high school 20 years ago. I still have that pen tucked away in a case with my other Rotrings, taking a well-deserved rest after years of pocket carry and being responsible for instilling a lifelong appreciation for pen design that isn't afraid to be a little different.

'''Speaker 02:''' I like it. I like it a lot. James MB, my favorite stationery is Claire Fontaine Spiral Bound A4 Sayers French ruled notebooks from my favorite online stationery store wonderpens.ca. Shout out wonderpens. It's a lovely beefy sized notebook reminiscent of notebooks I used in high school. The paper is wonderful to write on with fountain pens and the French rule leads itself well to casual writing practice. Always a fun distraction to note taking. Didn't know it came in A4. That's pretty

'''Myke:''' amazing. Jennifer, my favorite and most precious item is my black Nakaya Nakai writer purchased at the San Francisco pen show in 2019. It has rose gold hardware and a fine soft nib that writes perfectly and I'm left-handed. I purchased this beautiful pen at the SF pen show in 2019. When I pick up the pen, it brings such joy and happy memories. First pen show, meeting Brad and Myke, rooms full of stationary goodness and lots of happy pen people.

'''Speaker 02:''' Miss pen shows,

'''Myke:''' miss pen shows. One day, Brad, one day.

'''Speaker 02:''' One day. Nick says, it may be the spork of writing instruments, but I have had a black paper mate flare in my pocket since my first job in a grocery store at age 15, which was 26 years ago. They aren't for looking at, but they can do just about everything acceptably. That is factually correct. Love the flare.

'''Myke:''' I don't know if I'm familiar with it, actually.

'''Speaker 02:''' You would recognize it if I showed you a picture. Okay. Basic, standard, classic.

'''Myke:''' Brandon, I love my Visconti Special Ops in medium. This pen was my first medium nib after staying with fine and extra fine since I traveled down the rabbit hole. This was my gateway pen to broad and stub nibs, and I now have a couple of other pens. Basically, what Brandon is saying here is that they took the right path of moving away from the horrible fine and extra fine to something a bit better.

'''Speaker 02:''' Brenton Raleigh says, Parker Penman Sapphire. I must have drained half a dozen bottles of that stuff back in the day. Still unequaled. And that is factually correct as well.

'''Myke:''' Mark, Edison Menlo Custom in Brooks Galaxy Prime. A beautiful pen that feels like an extension of my hand and writes like a dream. I chose the material, the pen model, and the nib, a custom ground medium stub. extremely well made to, it's my me pen.

'''Speaker 02:''' Mm-hmm. Perfect. Noel Arroy, my favorite stationary item is my Canalea Kona Snow Fountain Pen that my now wife bought for me as a wedding present. It's the most beautiful pen I own and brings me joy every time I use it. Not really much more to say than that, but it is definitively my favorite stationary item.

'''Myke:''' My current favorite is the stationary from Pigeon. PigeonPosted.com in the UK. Their designs are a fun combination of letter and envelope and the artwork is really neat.

'''Speaker 02:''' That's a lot of British listeners. I wonder why. It's not a specific product. What's up with that?

'''Myke:''' On the list. I recommend a website. Thanks, Chelsea. Thank you, Chelsea, but you're going, you know, you've made that category

'''Speaker 02:''' to three. Sam Kurt says, my tactile turn zirconium pen with a Schmidt fiber tip refill. I love the feel and action of this pen. It's super heavyweight and takes some getting used to, but I love it.

'''Myke:''' Inky Raven. Ink samples. There are so many fascinating combinations of ink colors and properties. Samples have let me try hundreds with let me try hundreds of them without the commitment that four bottles require. How many lists is this on, Myke? Well, that's four. This just goes on the people who suggested no products list. And it's now up to four.

'''Speaker 02:''' Zinnia. Maybe an odd pick, but I love the Rhodium Meeting Book. The paper is great and handles my favorite fountain pens effortlessly. However, the layout is what gets me. As someone with ADHD, the notebook is structured perfect for my brain, sectioning out places for notes, action items, and supplementary info. It's the only thing I've found that keeps me focused at work. P.S. Love the podcast. I'm a short-time listener who started last year to find cool stationery Christmas gifts and couldn't put the show down. Yeah, thanks for being one of the best parts of my week. That's an interesting

'''Myke:''' way to find the show.

'''Speaker 02:''' Not an odd pick at all. Highly individualized stationery that solves problems is one of my favorite things. So glad you found something that works well for you.

'''Myke:''' Claire Rude says, I think my favorite item is the Hobonichi Techo. Lots of Techo fans on the list. Special to me because I get to open it every day and enjoy it. I love the paper and all the accessories that go with it.

'''Speaker 02:''' Jim in Tucson. My set of Alvin Draftmatic Mechanical Pencils got me through architecture school and will always have a place on my desk and in my bag. I have all four lead sizes, 0.357 and 9, and each one has its function. But the blue DM07 is my go-to for taking notes and quickly sketching ideas.

'''Myke:''' Okay, I'm going to let this pass.

'''Speaker 02:''' Singular. It's absolutely singular. Yes. Pencils. It's a set. It's a singular set. Yeah, I'm going to let it pass, but it's not singular.

'''Myke:''' It's not singular. Tim, my Pilot Falcon was my first gold nib pen and I bought it myself when I graduated from my PhD. I need to ink my Falcon up. I love that pen. Do you ever feel like when we do this kind of stuff that we should have PhDs?

'''Myke:''' Feels like everybody else has PhDs. I don't have one.

'''Speaker 02:''' That's how the survey came about. The Slack survey came about.

'''Myke:''' PhD.

'''Speaker 02:''' That was the question. It's like, why is this a thing? Why is this a thing?

'''Myke:''' I would like to just put a call out. Any school in the world that wants to give me an honorary doctorate, I will accept it.

'''Speaker 02:''' I just want you to know that. We need a pen PhD. I need a stationary PhD.

'''Myke:''' I will take it.

'''Speaker 02:''' Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Rita Montero, aka Ink Tales, I didn't spend much time thinking about this, which in a way makes this choice more honest. It has to be the Sailor 1911 Royal Tangerine. Yes. It was big and impulsive purchase for me and absolutely worth it. I love the way the medium fine nib writes. The size of the pen is ideal for me. In that orange color, it is gorgeous. You know what I mean. Both of you have at least one of these. I like that they clarify you have at least one of these. I have the regular

'''Myke:''' and the king of pen.

'''Speaker 02:''' Yeah, and I have the small and the king of pen. It isn't my most expensive pen, but I'm always wanting to ink it up and use it. I think that's the main feature of a favorite stationary item. Thank you both for many enjoyable hours of pen related conversations.

'''Myke:''' The king of pen is what I was going to pick up today to take my show notes with, but I opted for just the original orange pro gear instead. Okay. That felt fitting for today. Nice, nice, nice. L says the Elia Note 6mm lined Tomoe River paper 496 page notebook. It has all the qualities that I love. It is special because the 6mm ruling is now defunct. It was a lovely burgundy magenta that both glowed from the white pages and receded after writing was on the page. Along with the fountain pens I used to write, it made me excited every morning to journal. Alas, I have just one left. That's really cool.

'''Speaker 02:''' Zach, permanent inks. I have kept a journal for decades even before I discovered fountain pens. Once I got into fountain pens I began using them exclusively, but I grew up in a time where there are only two types of fountain pen inks, permanent and washable. If the bottle didn't say washable, it was permanent, period. Unfortunately, once I got into fountain pens I also discovered new inks, a much greater selection of colors than before, but most of them were washable. This I found out by water testing the ink I had been using for my journal after about five years. So now I have five years of memories that can be erased by a heavy fog. So now I am obsessed with permanent inks. With the current selection of colors and permanent inks, I really can't understand why they are so disparaged. I love permanent inks. I don't disparage them at all. Personally, I would like my musings, however uninteresting to others, to at least last for my lifetime. So permanent inks are not just a favorite, they are a requirement for me.

'''Myke:''' Okay, that comes up to number five for Zach. On the list. Anything. Stephan, I do like, I like this though, because you know what I understand what Zach's saying. Yeah. That like all of the love for inks, all the cool colors and cool brands, it's not permanent stuff. Like that's not one of the qualities.

'''Speaker 02:''' Oh, I disagree with nothing that they said.

'''Myke:''' Yeah. Stephanie Sos is number 100. My five-year Hobonichi, to be honest, when I started it back in 2019, mine is to 2019 to 2023, I was afraid I wouldn't have anything to write about. In the beginning, I mostly used it to keep track of marathon and ultra marathon training and my show off, am I right? I can't just do a regular marathon. That's incredible. What is an ultra marathon? Like 23 marathons? What is that?

'''Speaker 02:''' No, it's like a singular, like a hundred and something mile race. Oh, God. A hundred plus, like 120-ish, something like that.

'''Myke:''' Oh, my God.

'''Myke:''' And my finishing times on events. I also listed the weather and any family things that happen on each day. My day-to-day life is pretty routine, so I sometimes added drawings, doodles, little things, and then it happened. Hello, 2020. The world is introduced to COVID and everything about the way we lived our day-to-day lives changed. Now this little five year is a documentation of what life looks like before the pandemic and all the changes that we had to adapt to. Looking back on the years that I've already filled out, it's really interesting. It's crazy how different life is now in 2022 than it was in 2019. I'm really grateful I started at the year that I did. What a thing to be able to give to family in the future.

'''Speaker 02:''' Yep, yep. I'm really like looking into these more and more, the more I see about them. Mary Heintz, Uni Signo DX Pens. I like the sound they make as I write. Mary and I are now best friends. Can I just say, it's very simple.

'''Myke:''' See what Mary wrote there? This is what I wanted everyone to send in. Just that.

'''Speaker 02:''' You're also now Myke's best friend for different reasons.

'''Brad:''' When Brad pitched this to me, this is what I thought we were going to be getting.

'''Brad:''' No, I wanted some stories. What we actually got is more like this

'''Myke:''' from Parker. We love you, Parker. Carus Customs Render K V2. It's a great quality machine pen that is simple in looks and beautiful in design. Coming from a machinist background, this pen is beautifully machined and contains very well thought out features such as a channel cut inside the cap to house an O-ring to keep the cap in place, especially when pocket carried. This is also one of the few pens I have seen fully machined out of metal, including my favorite material from when I was still a machinist. 360 alloy brass. For more dense materials such as brass, this pen feels mighty and hefty in the hand. And every time I write with it, I can appreciate the machining that went into this pen. This style pen is the only type of pen that can stand up to the abuse I put it through on any given day without fail. I can carry it in my front pocket every day and never have it pop out or the cap loosen. I can carry it in my wool vest and working outside to jot down notes. Never have it go missing. I can pop it into the inside or outside pocket of a suit coat and it looks classy while also remaining utilitarian. It fits with a Pilot G2 refill by default and can accept others like a Schmidt P8126 or 7. This makes it perfect for me as my desired refill is the Pilot Precise RT, which gives me the pleasure of writing the same feel as my normal Precise V5, V7 in a refillable barrel that I love so much. I have a few other pens from Karis Customs, but this style covers every facet I need in my day-to-day life without compromise.

'''Speaker 02:''' Thank you, Parker. See? Parker's our people. Like, this is, this is, that's our people, Myke. Right there. Perfectly explained. Hey, look. The level of nerdery is elite. I love it. I love this. It's so good.

'''Myke:''' Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

'''Speaker 02:''' We're up to number 104.

'''Brad:''' 103. The next answer is- 278. All right?

'''Speaker 02:''' The next answer is exactly what you want. I know. This is exactly what you want. The Pandemic with Bruce. My favorite stationary item is my shown design Ultem with the number six Yovo steel nib. I like the matte texture of the Ultem, and it's really comfortable for long writing sessions because it's so light. And my favorite ink of all time is Mont Blanc Petrol Blue because of the dark greenish blue color.

'''Myke:''' No, I think that, see, Bruce isn't exactly what I want, right? Two, two, two, two.

'''Speaker 02:''' Yeah, yeah, two.

'''Myke:''' I just want to make it clear that I love our listeners, and I'm very happy that they have contributed in this episode. My main concern is just the marathon that we have. Yeah, yeah. We're in an ultra marathon.

'''Speaker 02:''' 2,000 character field limits. Sorry.

'''Myke:''' Why did you do that? Diego. I'm a generous soul, Myke. I'm a generous soul. Let's see how you feel by the end, too. Lamy Spirit Mechanical Pencil. This was the first premium stationary item I purchased. I purchased it while in university at a high-end retail store in Toronto. I remember walking out of that store thinking, what have I done, and why did I spend so much on a pencil? As soon as I started using it, that was like the awakening of my addiction. That pencil was the start of my journey that transitioned to ballpoint pens and fountain pens and continues to this day over 20 years later.

'''Speaker 02:''' Jorge Madrigal, the Lockby Field Journal. Second time. As a high school teacher, it's indispensable. It holds two journals, one for my everyday happenings and the history classes I teach, the other calendars, to-do lists, meetings, etc. I also have rulers, journal plastic templates, and of course, my trusty Lamy 2000 with me at all times. Love your podcast, fellas. The Discord is starting to side with me. Uh-oh.

'''Myke:''' Because you said 2,000 characters.

'''Speaker 02:''' That's 300 to 500 words. I like stories.

'''Myke:''' They're starting to side with me now. Now they're understanding, right? Now they're understanding. Kate also said the promise of reading them all was an interesting one. And I said, who do you think suggested that?

'''Speaker 02:''' I mean, we had to do something special. I feel like we did, Myke. We're still in it.

'''Myke:''' I mean, people will decide if it's special, you know?

'''Speaker 02:''' True. Well, as long as I feel that it's special. Yes, that is ultimately all that matters. So this is all about me.

'''Myke:''' I learned that 299 episodes ago. I don't know. But Nick Hyam said the twist bullet pencil in walnut from metal shop John Fontaine in 2016. A well-engineered bullet pencil that helps me use up my black wing and tombow stubs. Sadly, the company no longer exists.

'''Speaker 02:''' Great product. From the Rostra, my favorite stationary item is my 350 milliliter bottle of Pilot Blue Black ink, which is not only a great everyday ink, but it's played an essential role as I have learned to tune and adjust nibs.

'''Myke:''' Michael G says my pick is the Aurora Duo Cont. You don't hear much about it, but I love it for three reasons. One, I like to keep a low profile, so the classic look and hooded nib is a great fit for me. Two, the nib itself is my favorite in my whole collection. The line width, feedback, and flow is perfection for my tastes. Three, my beloved got it for me for Christmas a few years ago. What more is there to say? Congratulations on 500. Your talking about pens on the internet means more to people than you know. Looking forward to the next 500.

'''Speaker 02:''' Oh, nice, nice, nice. All right, Mary, even supposing, says, when I submitted my dissertation, my sister gave me a pilot vanishing point, my first gold nib and fanciest pen yet. I used it at the end of my defense to sign the final paperwork granting me my PhD. There you go, Myke. Myke Masayama turned the medium, tuned the medium nib into an exquisite cursive italic at my first pen show. I love writing with this pen and it is always inked. This pen means more to me than any other I will ever own. And oh my gosh, Myke is about to have a coronary on this next one.

'''Brad:''' Oh, I've read this one

'''Speaker 02:''' during my preparation.

'''Brad:''' This one was on the edge of will it stay in or not? This one, like this is the edge, right? Things over this edge. I mean, just how it started

'''Speaker 02:''' is all you need to know.

'''Myke:''' Mailman Dan. It's not that. I don't have a problem with mail people. No, no, no. I have no issue with mail The next part.

'''Speaker 02:''' The next part.

'''Myke:''' I ask for forgiveness as I have two pens to offer. I think both are interesting and I have seldom if ever heard either mentioned in stationary related media. For background, I have been a mailman for many years until fairly recently. Pens as tools are required daily and repeatedly. They were abused by use and weather and would frequently be unintentionally left in possession of others. No fancy or expensive pens for me. First, I present the unassuming Jin Hao 991. This was my very, this was very much my starting point with fountain pens. It is a cheap pen in both senses of the word. On the plus side, A, cheap. I could lose, I could afford to lose or break them and later give them away and you can still get them for a couple of bucks. B, almost all of them write, most write well at least to the uninitiated. C, more write consistently, most write consistently, they seal well and write from day to day. And my favorite part, D, you can store an extra short cartridge in the body. On the downside, A, cheap. Which is, back to the A earlier, it will break. Usually either the cap will crack or the nib section will crack right where the body threads onto it. Second is a pen that I wish had been around 30 years ago. As a mailman, one of the worst things about pens is the need to open up two or three coats during Midwestern winters to reach a pen that wasn't too cold to write with, like it wouldn't work. I discovered the Uni Power Tank ballpoint at just about the time the post office finally quit using pen and paper to capture signatures such as my luck. The Power Tank is a write anywhere on anything pen similar to the popular Fisher Space pen, but this one is quite affordable. If I lose a pen or a customer claims one as their own, it's no big loss. I can now leave a pen in an accessible outer pocket during the winter and write on wet paper during the spring, even though I don't really have much call to do either anymore.

'''Speaker 02:''' I mean, how great is that?

'''Myke:''' Thank you, mailman. I just like the name Power Tank. That's a good pen. I wouldn't mind if you called me Palatine. Okay.

'''Speaker 02:''' And from Bruce Horn, we have Twisby.

'''Speaker 02:''' For many years, it has been the eco, but my wife just got me a 580 for Christmas and I think it might eclipse the eco a bit. I love the way it feels in my hand. I love the way it looks, especially when it has a somewhat translucent, colorful ink in it. I love seeing the ink sloshing back and forth in that big barrel as I'm writing. I only like piston fillers and I only like demonstrators and Twisby works for both of those. Nibs are also great. This new one has a broad nib, something I haven't tried before. My preference so far is a stub nib, currently debating between the 1.1 and 1.5, both of which I like. I like the fact that getting a 1.5 millimeter stub nib is an option for the 580, even if I have to order it from overseas to the US.

'''Myke:''' 14. Chris Ferraz says... What, that one? That was one. No, it has been the eco, but my wife just got me a 580. There's two pens in there. There's two pens in there. Two pens.

'''Myke:''' Chris Ferraz says, Pilot shaker 0.5 millimeter mechanical pencil. Just shake it for the lead to advance. I didn't know this. This sounds cool. Yeah. And you'll write continuously without distractions. Beautiful, durable, sturdy, super practical, great design with black body and yellow finial, iconic. A true classic, the best mechanical pencil ever made.

'''Speaker 02:''' I'm making a list called protest, and I am protesting Bruce's entry into the multiple pen list.

'''Myke:''' I'm being asked questions if I've actually counted everyone correctly, so they might have gone through anyway, because I might have missed one out.

'''Speaker 02:''' Protest. Jordan Peterson, at my job as a school teacher, I love my Lamy Safari, as it's durable, easy replaceable, fun to use, and comes in fun colors. Yeah.

'''Myke:''' Not that one, by the way. Nah.

'''Myke:''' Jordan spelt differently. Stevie Cheese Steak, great name. Hope it's a real name. Any of the fountain pen friendly notebooks I have made myself. I use A4 short grain paper, sometimes even cutting the paper out of top bound A4 notepads, folding into signatures for my A5 journals.

'''Myke:''' I'm going to let that one go. I was waiting. I'm letting it go.

'''Speaker 02:''' There is about to be a quick second on the protest list.

'''Brad:''' There's two potential categories it could go in, but

'''Speaker 02:''' I'm letting it go from both of them. All right. Gwen says, Sailor Progear Slim Spring Rain. My first expensive fountain pen, my favorite pen, and it was a birthday gift from my parents last year. Lots of the Spring Rain series,

'''Myke:''' a very popular series. Tom, a limited edition Pento Energel with Shiba Inu's all over it. It's very cute, and the 0.7 millimeter Energel is my favorite overall gel refill. Nice, nice.

'''Speaker 02:''' All right. Check this out. Lee says, my Metal Shop CT Timber Twist Bullet Pencil, which we just spoke about a minute ago. That product is totally unique, and people always ask questions about it, which gives me the opportunity to give an impassioned explanation. It also lets me get every cent out of my pencil purchases, so it's stylish and thrifty. What more could I ask for?

'''Myke:''' Kramer, not that one. My Leonardo Memento Zero Stromboli is both distractingly gorgeous and performs wonderfully. Paired with an Apica notebook makes a perfect match. Leonardo Jerry. That was pretty good.

'''Speaker 02:''' Fuzzy Man. It's a black Sailor Pro Gear with a zoom nib. It's not the flashiest looking, but it's the culmination of 10 years of pen collecting, trying to find the one that felt just right. I smile every time I put pen to paper. My pen acquisition habits slowed down considerably after I got it. Is that a good thing? Yes.

'''Myke:''' Lisa. My favorite stationary item is fountain pen inks with a lot of shading. Uh-oh. It's so hard to pick just one, but I really love the complex earthy tones of the Sailor Manyo Shirakashi ink. Oh, pour from the depths there. In the bottle or a pen, the ink looks like a dark blue-green. On most paper, this blue tone disappears as the ink dries, leaving behind warm shades of brown and green, sometimes for reddish sheen. However, on one paper, Cosmo Air Light, the blue tint remains with the ink staying a spruce green color. When used as watercolor, the shades have become tree bark, dusty green succulents, and deep forested hills. I am intrigued by the great variety produced by a single ink, and watercolor painting reminds me of my grandma, who would paint beautiful watercolor cards for us.

'''Speaker 02:''' I mean, do you want to sell me an ink? This is how you sell me an ink. I mean, it sounds pretty incredible, right? I'm finishing Shirakashi. I'm just finishing Shirakashi. Shirakashi.

'''Myke:''' Say Le Manyo Shirakashi.

'''Speaker 02:''' Emil, I was thinking I should go with something clever or something funny. In the end, I went with something sappy. Waterman Hemisphere. A first pen of note I got from Diana, the only woman I loved.

'''Myke:''' Oh, beautiful. Mm-hmm. Alina, I've been a stationary enthusiast for as long as I can remember, and I've used and loved a lot of notebooks and pens throughout the years, but lately I've been enjoying the simplicity of a blank pocket Moleskine and a black 1.0 Jetstream. I take notes on my reading. I write down thoughts and ideas. I do simple sketches and draw my maps. I have my notebook and my ballpoint pen, and that is enough, and that is number 15. Yeah.

'''Speaker 02:''' Okay. Legit perfect setup, though. Dave W. says, my favorite is my gold nib Pilot Custom 742. My mother gave me for Christmas this year because it's from my mom. I like to keep it in my rickshaw bags koozie and write with it in my Loitch Terms Some Lines a Day journal. I'm on year three, and it's awesome to see stuff from just a few beers back, and welcome to the list, Dave.

'''Myke:''' Philip S. says, the Franklin Christophe 45 is the perfect size for a pocket with a slip cover. It takes a number five year old for vintage options and comes in so many colors. I've traveled six hours to the Philly Pen Show for the primary purpose of finding the right 45.

'''Speaker 02:''' Yes. Love it. Anais says, my favorite stationary item is the Sailor Pro Gear Slim Shikiori Dragon Palace. It's my first gold nib, and after 10 years in the fountain pens hobby, I've been dreaming about Sailor pens for a long time. Finally decided to buy this pen as a gift to myself at the end of a very hard year of med school. Therefore, it has strong sentimental value to me. This pen is on my desk at all times. Just looking at it and writing notes with it lift my spirit during studying sessions. I could do a whole dissertation on this statement on why we buy and use the things we do and why we get enjoyment from. So I appreciate that. This is a constant theme in what we're reading here. So I appreciate that.

'''Myke:''' This is just between me and you. I have no idea what's happened to the format end of this document. I don't know why the colors have changed all of a sudden, but they have.

'''Speaker 02:''' Yep. I almost went to the wrong spot, but now I think we're back on track. Are you good with this? Yeah. It's just reversed. That's all. Yeah.

'''Myke:''' I did a thing in Google Sheets where you can add like alternate lines, get different colors, like so it makes it easier to read. Myke did a really good job, by the way. I worked for like an hour on just formatting this document. I manually added a row between every row. Yes. I had to right click add a row for every single thing.

'''Speaker 02:''' I was looking at this going, oh boy, how much was this was manual and how much was this? Most of it was manual. Most of it was manual. I could tell.

'''Myke:''' The colors have changed. I don't know why. We're just going to have to deal with that. Maybe I can change it. We'll find out in a moment. Where am I? Am I up to Andrew now?

'''Speaker 02:''' 126. No, you're on Ray. Oh, yes. 126. See how it messed me up? The colors change, but the tracking is correct.

'''Myke:''' Ray Toffoletto says, my Opus 88 fountain pen paired with Akkerman Park Pop Purple. Oh, that's fun to say. Because 88 is the year of my birth and I bought it on my birthday at Akkerman's shop in the Hague. Nice. The place where I got my first fountain pen a long time ago and I was studying in Holland. Number 16.

'''Speaker 02:''' Andrew says, my favorite stationary item is a nib, one created by Ralph Reyes, named the epilogue and inspired by the work of Mr. Nagahara at Sailor. It's one of Ralph's earliest creations. It's a three-layered nib that writes an extra fine line when held normally, a wet quintuple broad when held in reverse. This nib has found its home in a coned giraffe, a pen that is capable of keeping up with how much ink this nib guzzles. This nib and other examples of Ralph's creations have inspired people around the world to create and innovate, to experiment with what a nib can do. To use it is exciting, just as exciting as seeing what those who follow in his footsteps dream up. I think I know who this Andrew is.

'''Myke:''' Okay, so I'm up to number 128 here, right? Yeah. Correct. John Chow Seymour. Pilot Friction 0.38 millimeter erasable pens. Brad said on the podcast once something like, you wouldn't want to write one of these unless you specifically needed an erasable pen. But that's the thing. I always need to erase. What do the rest of you even do when you make a mistake? Scribble it out? My notes deserve better than to be filled with splotches. These pens have been a godsend, finally allowing me to take the notes the way I always wished I could, clean and color coded. I really appreciate the energy in that. It's good.

'''Speaker 02:''' I don't even need erasers on my pencils. That's how much I erase. Kit says, clear, Twisby Eco, what are you doing to me? I fixed the formatting, all right?

'''Brad:''' Leave me alone. I've been working on this. All of the colors changed again in front of front of the eyes.

'''Speaker 02:''' While I'm reading, the whole thing shifted.

'''Speaker 02:''' I still hadn't gotten that cough out of my throat. Kit says, clear Twisby Eco with a super 5 0.5 stub nib because it's the first nice pen I bought. I live in Australia. It's a $50 pen here. Plus, I learned I could swap the nib for another one. So the 05 stub is great. Just enough flair, but not too broad for my needlepoint gel loving self. Also, it's the one I'm about to pick up, pick back up and use because obviously it's a favorite pen I'm using.

'''Myke:''' This comes from Hugh. Nice try getting me to say something like a Simpsons joke there. Nice try. I'm smarter than that. A medium Pelican M800 with Pelican India ink, which gives a thick, thick, wet black line. Pity that that ink doesn't seem to be available anymore. Anyone got any better inks for this pen? Hugh goes in. Rule Breakers Club.

'''Speaker 02:''' David at Too Many Pelicans might know about that ink. Hi guys. Happy 500, 10 years. My favorite item of stationery is the Noodler's ink Bay State Blue. Being an Aussie, I live in a place populated with dangerous animals, so I really appreciate a dangerous ink. I didn't know where that was going and it went perfectly.

'''Myke:''' Mark Hopkins. I love fountain pen since I was a kid, but I didn't truly go down the rabbit hole until I discovered Tomoe River Paper. It was then that I understood each pen's personality and felt my desire to explore ink. There isn't a perfect paper or pen. There is just time and experience and a love of the hobby. But some things make it real and for me, that was Tomoe River Paper.

'''Speaker 02:''' Patrick says, the PACU, the pen addict cinematic universe. That's what keeps them going, Myke. The blog, the podcast, Twitch streams, Nock, RIP, Spoke, and the community around it. For me, one of the key things to enjoying a hobby is sharing with other people. And in some way, the PACU is great for that. I appreciate the sentiment. You are now on the list.

'''Myke:''' Oh, Brad put you on that list. Yeah. You're nice to him. Nothing. I know.

'''Speaker 02:''' I mean, he's like, I consider Patrick like a good friend. Like, I know Patrick. I've met him. You've met him many times at the Atlanta Pen Show. He is also on the not mentioning a product list.

'''Myke:''' Showbit says, the Parsons Essential Fountain Pen by Peter Ford, Mr. Pen UK. It was an invaluable tool for me while I wrote my doctoral thesis. Another one. Perfect weight and fit for my hands with dozens of nib grinds at 50 pounds approximately. I wish I was keeping a list of doctors.

'''Speaker 02:''' Marte says, After trying other solutions, my Hobonichi A5 cousin has become my favorite. It meets all of my needs, a place to track my schedule, my to-dos, and enough space to write down my thoughts and notes. I need a one journal system. I failed using a multiple notebook system of one for schedule and one for to-do lists and one for journaling. And of course, that paper.

'''Myke:''' Adam Turoff says, Needlepoint nibs like the Pilot Custom Heritage 912 PO or any of the great needlepoint nibs that modern nib grinders are making. All in the nib by Damien Alomar, Custom Nib Studio, Gina Solerino, Franklin Christoph, Myke Rumasuyama, Yukio Nagahara, and so forth.

'''Speaker 02:''' All the shout outs there, Adam. Thank you. Matthew, Myke's next favorite entrant, Schaefer Sovereign, Imperial Fountain Pen, and Sterling Silver.

'''Myke:''' That sounds kind of cool. Bettina. My journals. I started keeping a mostly daily journal in 2006 at the age of 17. I enjoy looking back through old books and remembering the time. For recent journals, I usually remember what was written in which book. This is very useful when looking for receipts or figuring out our last visit to the movies. However, my favorite book is the Some Lines a Day Leuchtturm. Is that a product? Is that what it's called?

'''Speaker 02:''' It's called Some Lines a Day. Yes. That is the literal name.

'''Myke:''' That's hard to, when you're reading it like that. Yes. I've started for my son one day prior to his birth when my water broke. The first year my husband and I enjoyed making up narratives about our days in the voice of our son. My favorite line was, it's in German. The translation is, so I don't turn into an orange or something, which my husband wrote when we had to take our son outside to avoid newborn jaundice. Now, in the second year of his life in the book, I can read back to the same day one year prior when making an entry and relive past memories. That's super cool. I'm not even sure what category to put Bettina in, honestly.

'''Speaker 02:''' Um, a category of awesomeness, Myke. That's the only category Bettina belongs in. I think we're going to let them go then. Chris Peters, my favorite fountain pen is my TWSBI ALR 580 Prussian Blue. Again, with an EF nib, even though I have a Pilot Custom 74, black with gold trim medium nib, I still use my 580 as my daily driver. I just love the ink capacity and how the steel nib is just so darn smooth, it just glides over paper. It's the smoothest writing experience I have and absolutely love it. My runner-up, uh-oh, it's my newly bought Mark I. I'm hoping I can snag a Cortex one. Dang it, Chris. Butt kisser. When they come back in stock, but they are another amazing recommendation I wouldn't have found without you guys. Keep up the awesome work and thank you.

'''Myke:''' Chris entered two categories. Chuckle Stuff says, although I have many fountain pens that I love using, the one that means the most to me is my Black Pilot Metropolitan. It was a birthday gift from my daughters that I received just after I started getting into the hobby. I have bought and sold a lot of pens over the past few years, but I will never sell this pen. My daughters didn't understand my love of fountain pens, but they researched the top five lists on the pen addict and bought me a pen that they thought suited me. I don't use it very often, but I love it. It's more than just a pen. Congratulations to the two of you for making it to 500 episodes. Hoping for another 500. Very cool. Very cool.

'''Speaker 02:''' Sergio Z, my favorite stationary item as of episode 500 is my binder work metal edge notebook. Why? Why? Yeah. Why? As a critical care physician, the last 24 months have been the most challenging of my life. Since January 2020, I've answered the following three prompts on a daily basis. I will focus on, I will let go of, and I am grateful for. This practice has proven to be most healing and has allowed me to enjoy my fountain pens and inks. The binder work notebook ties it all together. Thanks PA for being a positive vibe for this tired soul every Wednesday. Well, thank you, Sergio Z, for being amazing.

'''Myke:''' Josh M says, my favorite stationary item is my Parker 51 teal and metal Luzreloy aromatic with a right italic fine nib. I understood about two of those words.

'''Speaker 02:''' It's aerometric. Aerometric? Being a filling system. Yeah, yeah. Okay. Filling system.

'''Myke:''' Teal and metal. This is one pen? Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Okay. It is my second fountain pen and the second one I restored. Ah, it's vintage. Yeah. Now I know why I don't understand what any of those words mean.

'''Speaker 02:''' We've done this 500 times.

'''Myke:''' Look, come on. You know vintage pens I don't mess with. I took two broken 51s from eBay and made one working pen from them. I have no idea how the nib became a bright italic, but I love it that way. It has a mismatched body and has some character. It's a matchy matchy of my favorite ink, Waterloo Mysterious Blue. It inspired me to dive deep into the stationary rabbit hole and I use it every day.

'''Speaker 02:''' All right. 19. Geal. Geal.

'''Speaker 02:''' Geal says, my Lamy Studio Blue with extra fine nib because it got me into the hobby. It was a leaving present from my colleagues on my last day at my previous job. I also liked writing with my old fountain pen, which is why they gave me one. But this Lamy Studio made me realize what difference a good fountain pen can make. So I took an interest in the fountain pens and the interest turned into a hobby. Congratulations, Brad and Myke with 10 years and 500 episodes. I wish you many more episodes in the years to come. If you wish to win your own Lamy Studio, you can go to penchalet.com, click the radio podcast link on the button, type in the word pen addict, and there's a giveaway for five sets of pens and inks, including your very own Lamy Studio.

'''Myke:''' That's incredible. That's some vertical integration there. That wasn't even that. It's just Brad going rogue. Jack Bulkley. It is close, but I would choose my Ryan Crusack legend made from teak that I sent him. The teak was from the deck of the USS North Carolina battleship. Whoa. Son. All right. I'm happy we got a crew sack in here, actually.

'''Speaker 02:''' Nice, nice, nice. And big, big thoughts out to Ryan, who's going through some tough back stuff right now. So I hope he gets all squared away here soon and hope to see him on the road before too long. Annabelle Lee Enriquez. My favorite is the Blackwing Volume 155, the one with the Bauhaus design. He used my favorite Blackwing soft lead in the design, but the first time, black eraser clip is perfect. I bought the volume set of red, blue, and yellow gold pencil caps on Marisad, knowing that one day I will use up all the pencils in the box. Well, Annabelle, if you need some more, shoot me an email and I will send you mine.

'''Myke:''' This comes from Kelly. My favorite stationary is my blue Pilot Vanishing Point Decimo in brushed blue. Part of what makes it special is the medium nib that Mark Backer stubbed for me. The small amount of line variation makes my handwriting a bit more elegant, even when I scribble scratch. A second part is the knock sound that I can't lose. Oh, it's the second part is the knock sound and I can't lose the cap because there isn't a cap. The third part is the grip is close to the writing surface and just the right size for my small hands. Lastly, the pesky clip placement. Actually, idiot proofs the pen for me as I never have to worry about which side or edge I try to write with. Thanks for all you do. And I'm glad Dana Stevens mentioned you a very long time ago.

'''Speaker 02:''' Super, super awesome. Super smart. Joel, my favorite stationary item is the Pilot Custom A23 with the transparent barrel, which is always inked with one of Brad's favorites, Pilot Orochizuku Shinkai. It's a fantastic rider and a level of pen that I never imagined I would own, but I was able to obtain for a reasonable price from a member of the Pen Attic Slack. Using it reminds me of the generosity and kindness of the entire Pen Attic community. A huge thanks to Brad and Myke for bringing us all together.

'''Myke:''' I'm going to let this one go. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. I agree. That's a correct decision. This is one of the most challenging questions someone could ask. Let's see if you rose to the challenge, Isaac. Here we go. Here we go.

'''Speaker 02:''' How many lists will you be on?

'''Myke:''' I would say that my favorite stationary item is the blank page. I know that at its face, my response seems very abstract in general, but hear me out. No, Isaac, someone already did this. We have one for paper.

'''Speaker 02:''' We have a vote for paper.

'''Myke:''' When confronted with a challenging task that you can't solve in your head, you go to the blank page to visualize or record your thoughts. The blank page is used to draft ideas and communicate to others. It can be used to leverage the work of others and can be used to compose a symphony. But why not ink? Why not the pen or pencil? Because the page is used as literally the canvas upon which the most important ideas are presented. It is the backdrop that is mundane in its appearance. It's not the focus, but rather the foundation for thought. Isaac is a big thinker, Brad.

'''Speaker 02:''' Isaac right now in my head is standing behind a podium at a high school gymnasium. Here's my TED talk about paper. The red velvet carpet. It's beautiful. I love it. This is great. Keep going.

'''Myke:''' It represents opportunity in strife. Imagine the writer struggling to get the first word down or the artist drawing the first line. In my own career, I have faced my nemesis, the blank page. It has forced me to release my thoughts and to make a statement. Every day is wasted when I leave the page blank. Over the past eight years, I never saw myself becoming a writer filling the thousands of blank pages as I have done over the years. I've provided an opportunity to help and inspire others. So I say look to the paper, whiteboard, tablet, or napkin with any marking instrument handy. The blank page is my favorite.

'''Speaker 02:''' He might be going on your list, but this is great.

'''Myke:''' Oh, without a shadow of a doubt, Brad.

'''Speaker 02:''' Every day is wasted when I leave the page blank. I like it.

'''Myke:''' Okay.

== Blank Page Philosophy ==

'''Speaker 02:''' I mean, he's on your list, but I like it. Good job, Isaac. All right. B, aka Boots and Barry. My Pilot Vanishing Point fountain pens. I only own two, Stripes and Rod and Stripes model. Stripes was my first golden fountain pen that I got on my birthday while Rod and Stripe carried all the memories when I progressed in my career. And at the same time, I wrote in the memories in my journal before my loved ones passed away.

'''Myke:''' Number 20 on the rule breaker list was B. I didn't even think about it, but dang it. Yeah, you're right. And now we are on to response 150 of 278. Michael Dillion says... We're tracking. We're tracking. We're tracking something. As of now, my Estabrook Seaglass, because I can't help to keep looking, but keep looking at it. And I just ordered a custom 74 in teal that could change the order. Notco A5craft dot dash notebooks are my favorite notebooks that I love writing. And luckily, I have a small stash left and Ulster Blue Water Ice is my favorite ink. Michael, you... You're one of the most egregious rule breakers so far.

'''Speaker 02:''' And if you're interested in Estabrook Seaglass, go to our friends at PenChalet.com and click... Nice. But no, Estabrook Seaglass specific pen is on the list. Peter says, Twisby Eco in white. I used it, or rather four of them, all white, all fine nibs as my reset pen. I went through a patch about 12 months ago where it felt like any fountain pen I used, regardless of brand, struggled in some way. Either it would skip or wouldn't write normally unreliable paper or inks would look washed out and I'd struggle to read my notes. I was growing frustrated with the hobby as it was becoming a chore to get working tools, let alone exciting ones. So I repurposed my pen budget to invest in four Twisby Ecos in white, white to avoid any self-imposed pressure around ink barrel color matching. Nice. Nice. And inked them up with four favorite inks. There's an asterisk here. Uh-oh. Because of the Twisby Eco's general reliability and simplicity, I had a couple of weeks of stress-free writing where things just worked. It removed the disappointment I was feeling about this hobby and I got back into habits I find helpful. Journaling, thinking on paper, etc. I brought in other pens again over time and I'm back to experimenting and enjoying the variety. But it's nice to know the Twisby Ecos are there if I ever need them again. Twisby Eco had been in my collection previously, but it plays a special role now. Here you go, Myke. Asterisk. Those four inks, if you're curious. Myke was very curious. Oh, I am. PWZ, Blue Black, Pilot Orochizuku, Yuyaki, Diamine Green Black, and Diamine Earl Grey.

'''Myke:''' Good range. Number 22. On the list. Again, the live track. We have a lot of live people listening live. They're suggesting that I may have missed someone, but that's just the way it goes. That will account for the one that we disagreed on earlier on, I guess. Okay. So I say we're at 22. I have a protest. That's what I am. My list is the official list. Official list. If you counted 23 out there, well, unfortunately, I'm the list holder.

'''Speaker 02:''' So we'll have a re-audit.

'''Myke:''' No, I don't know. Michael G. Ellis, the Hipponoto Journal. Just a great book. 500 pages of Tomoe River made well. Various cover colors offered. Bookmark cloths. Writing pad. It's amazing for me.

'''Speaker 02:''' All right. Skip says, I have had the privilege of owning some lovely, inexpensive pens from Lamy, Conant, Pilot, and others. They were all great, but at the end of the day, I decided to downsize, simplify, and go with just two pens that represented, at least to me, the essence of a fountain pen. The barrel and the section. The feed, the nib, and let's not forget the ink. The two pens are, for everyday use, the Moonman C1 and, for traveling, the Opus 88 demonstrator. The thing I like about both these pens is they live up to that essence. All of the components are clearly visible. Everything is simple and not overly engineered. Except for the shutoff valve and the Opus to provide some comfort and safety on 24-hour flights and bumpy bus rides and raging heat, simplicity prevails. My daily pen, the Moonman C1, is as simple as it gets, but it looks great, works flawlessly, and represents the basic elements of a fountain pen. It is beyond simple to clean and care for and is also priced in a way that it's affordable. I understand, by the way, there's been some controversy, Myke, about the design of the C1. Controversy?

'''Speaker 02:''' Is it plagiarized? While I respect IP rights, in this case, perhaps there is not clarity as to where or within the whom, or where or with whom the design originated. Finally, now that my FOMO has ended and I have landed on two pens, I spent more.

'''Myke:''' Is this the Kaweco issue?

'''Speaker 02:''' Uh, yes and no. It's all kind of lumped into one overhanging Moonman issue.

'''Myke:''' Okay.

'''Speaker 02:''' Finally, now that my FOMO has ended, I have landed on two pens, I spent a lot more time truly enjoying podcasts like yours and all the wonderful stationary-related blogs without the pressure of wondering what my next purchase might be. I now enjoy every pen you discuss vicariously and happily.

'''Myke:''' Susanna. I scribbled my way through a Yamamoto Cosmic Air notebook in January of a Prussian blue 2B580 ALR inked with rubber-oaster soda pop blue. And yes, it was heavenly. Now, Susanna. Okay. Susanna. Like, look. Come on. This is a great reply. It is, Susanna. But look, Brad. Look. There's three things there. And what I'm not clear about from Susanna's answer is if these are Susanna's favorite things ever or if it's just favorite things of January.

'''Speaker 02:''' I mean, I feel like they're the favorite things ever. I mean, Prussian Twisby Blue is like a repeat offender in this list for all the good reasons. Great pen. Like, it's got to be the greatest.

'''Myke:''' All of this stuff sounds awesome, but there's three things there, you know? So I don't know what you want from me.

'''Speaker 02:''' All right. I'm going to read this next one. It says, Karen, I'm a nice one, I promise. I feel so sad for people with the name Karen, you know? We love you, Karen. We love you, Karen. Congratulations on your 500th show and thanks for all the work you do. I was given a silver-metaled bodied paper-made pen the Christmas before I started my last two years of high school. It was the first pen I purchased refills for, so I was able to make it exactly what I wanted. I used it for every class, every assignment, every essay, and every test. I would joke with my mom that it was the pen that knew everything because it literally had done all of my learning with me. I used it for high school graduation tests and then took it with me when I became an exchange student in Japan. That's cool. I continued to use it to write letters home and took it with me when I climbed Mount Fuji.

'''Myke:''' Whoa!

'''Speaker 02:''' There's a shop at the top and I got my trusty pen out to write on a postcard I'd purchased and somehow left it there. At first, I was devastated because I couldn't exactly pop back up and get it, but then I realized that if I was going to lose an amazing pen, that was a fitting place to lose it. Yeah. That pen started me on my love of stationery and I still remember it with much fondness some 32 years later. That's cool.

'''Myke:''' Yeah, if you just left it in the hotel room, you wouldn't remember it this way. Yeah. You know? Honestly, that might have been the best result for that pen is for it to be left in this great way. Carl Goranowski. Pilot multi-pen body, the Hitec C Kalito. I love to have many colors on hand at one time. I am always excited to use them. Cheap enough that I can lose them. Useful enough that I will leave other pens at home and use just this one.

'''Speaker 02:''' That's cool. All right. Yeah. Chris Orff. My favorite stationery item is my custom-made Rango fountain pen. It is short and fat and made with three different colors of sensuous ebonite. It has a delightful steel Yovo 0.5 millimeter cursive italic nib custom ground by nib magician Mark Bacchus.

'''Myke:''' I love that Mark shout out.

'''Speaker 02:''' Mm-hmm. It's my daily driver and I love it more each day for every additional scratch, stain, and increment of wear polish.

'''Myke:''' This comes from Zach. Oh, man. Now, Zach, come on. Straight on the list. Let's see where we're going to go. I'm going to bend the rule and tell my favorite functional pen and... My favorite sentimental pen. My favorite functional pen is the Sailor Pro Gear Azure, the medium nib. It feels so good in my hand and writes perfectly to my taste. My favorite sentimental pen is a recent pen that my spouse gave me. It's a wooden ballpoint with my name on it that was given on our ninth wedding anniversary. When I rotate my fountain pen out, the wooden pen is always with me. Very nice, Zach, but you're going on the list. So that's up to, by my count, 25. Here's the thing, Brad, that I just saw... No sentimentality at all. When I read this, I imagine there are a number of listeners who know what's coming for them now, which I enjoy.

'''Speaker 02:''' I had this thought. I was like, oh, there are people that are like, oh, no. There's a bunch of oh-nos out there right now. Still like a little over 100 oh-nos coming. This is fun. This is why we did this. All right, Mark Montgomery, a Pentel P207 with Pentel P205 guts and the clip slid almost halfway down the barrel. Let me explain.

'''Myke:''' Wow, Mark.

'''Speaker 02:''' Wow. My dad passed away six months ago. We could not have been more different. He was a hunter and I'm vegetarian. He was a structural engineer and I can't do math, which is why I'm an environmental lawyer. He wore a bright green Carhartt pocket tee and relaxed fit L.L. Bean jeans every day and I wear all black and skinny jeans. We voted differently. But one thing we shared was our love of stationery and my love for pens and pencils and paper came from using his engineering tools as a child. He carried the blue bodied P207, yes, in his shallow pocketed t-shirt every day, which is why he had to slide the clip down the barrel so the tip wouldn't poke through the bottom. I used to carry my black barreled P205 every day in the pocket of my black flannel, oh, in the pocket of my black flannel, ample room, clip in normal place. When he died, my two brothers and I each took one of his pencils from his drawing board. My handwriting is exactly like my dad's block architect style, but mine is much smaller, even smaller than yours, Brad. Luckily, the internal mechanism of the Pentel sharps are interchangeable, facts, to accommodate my smaller writing style. So now I carry a blue barrel P205 for every day for my love of stationery and my dad. Thanks for 500. Here's to 9,500 more. Wow, we're going to 10,000.

'''Myke:''' I like the story a lot from Mark. Good stuff, Mark. That's cool. That's really nice. All right. So Jeff M says, My red pilot vanishing point of broad architect nib grind from Custom Nib Studio. My fiance got it for me for my 30th birthday and I loved it. The metal kathunk, the weight, the sense of purpose when deploying it like a tool that can do some literary damage. I let her borrow it and she carried it, clipped to her jeans, pocket tip up. Then she sat down, partially knocked it while sitting down and smooshed the nib. She was more devastated than me after sending it to Gina for a repair and re-grind. I used that vanishing point, appreciating my fiance and how her enthusiasm in trying to get into fountain pens pushed me further in with nib grinds. It's in my top three permanent keepers. Great story.

'''Speaker 02:''' That's awesome. Awesome. Dina says, Monteverde one touch tool pen. As an engineer, this pen has been an absolute gem. That's a good all arounder. Fiddle twist.

'''Myke:''' Is it cheating to say that my current favorite stationary item is, quote, maker pens? I have fallen into the rabbit hole of independent makers on Instagram and I don't want to get out. It's a long way from a 1970s Schaefer No Nonsense, my first fountain pen, but I'm fascinated by what they're doing and I want to say one of each, please. It is not wrong to say that. It is wrong for this, so you are going into the people who suggested no products list there, Fiddle Twist, but I strongly encourage that you get one of those maker pens because they're great. I love maker pens.

'''Speaker 02:''' Yes. Luke says, I never owned it, but there was a red quill pen for sale at the museum when I was a kid. It wasn't very good quality or anything, but I saw it and wanted it so badly. Eventually, years later, I saw a nice pen in the store and I bought it because of that memory. That's why I'm a pen fan now.

'''Myke:''' I don't know about this one.

'''Myke:''' I'm going to let it go, I think.

'''Speaker 02:''' All right. All right. You're the arbiter. I do have one protest lodged, but you are the arbiter of the list, so I will let your decision stand in this case.

'''Myke:''' Larry Kirby. Nakaya Long Cigar in Kuro Tamanuri with a soft, fine nib. Feels great in the hand. Looks amazing. And the nib sings and fits my handwriting perfectly.

'''Speaker 02:''' I never say nibs sing as much as I do with Nakaya's. They just sing.

'''Speaker 02:''' Stefano El Hombre. My blue and white Pilot Cocuna. It's my first fountain pen and I still use it all the time. It's pretty. It's easy to clean. And even after I switch from cartridges to bottled ink, it's served me very well. I wish Pilot would make more colors of it though. And I also think it'd be nice if I could buy standalone nibs with a smiley face. Yeah, right. But I only want those things because I love it so much. I wish they would do that.

'''Myke:''' You would use that on more of their nibs. Yep. A little smiley face. So cute. Paul Atreides says, Atreides, my favorite stationary item is my finger in the sand. Get out of town, Paul. I'm starting again. This is a paper. This is a paper list. I always have it with me. You don't always have sand with you though, do you? And in the rough world of Canly, it's really nice to be able to erase a message instantly of my foot. Is Canly a place? Maybe. Okay. I'm not familiar. You have to be careful not to be eaten by a sandworm while you write though, so it's best to be concise. Is this some kind of like, is this a reference? Is this Dune?

'''Speaker 02:''' Oh, maybe.

'''Myke:''' You see, Paul got through this one because I would have taken this out. Paul, you're going in the...

'''Speaker 02:''' Well, just wait. I get another easy one and then you get to lean into the next one. Yeah, no, I left this one in purposely though. Okay. So let me read from Mickey Gottlieb.

'''Myke:''' Can I just say, Brad, just before you start, if you're a Dune fan and you're like opening Twitter right now and be like, look, we don't all like what you like, all right? I'm not interested. Leave me alone.

'''Speaker 02:''' Is this Dune? Mickey Gottlieb, the Mont Blanc Starwalker fountain pen writes wonderfully and most importantly, a birthday present for my wife of 53 years. Wow. That's awesome. Congratulations. All right. All right, Myke.

'''Myke:''' This one comes in from Quill Idyllic.

'''Speaker 02:''' This is titled favorite stationery. This is my good friend, my good friend, Nicholas. He also emailed me this.

'''Myke:''' My favorite bits of stationery change each day and there are many. Pencils, paper, ink, pen cases, fountain pens from far off places, bottles, stands, and colors pleasant, aluminum and resin. Now you say, one must I choose, then fountain pens will be my muse. I love the flow and flex and feel that makes each word I write so real. With celluloid surroundings then, I have much more than just a pen. The look, the depth, touch the smell, because the sense I know so well. 500 times, 500 reasons, pen addiction through the seasons. All stationery is sublime, in medium, in bold, and fine. What is that? It's very good. You take number 11 on the people who suggested no products list, but you did create a poem, so I appreciate that.

'''Speaker 02:''' All right. Let's see. Okay. 169. Yeah, I know. My spreadsheet is jumping. Okay. It's hard because of the, I know, it's so much bigger than the rest of them. And it's written, that was written in like a poetry format. Yeah. So it's a very long post. My favorite item, sorry, this is from Josh. My favorite item is my Schaefer Snorkel Statesman. That is really difficult to say. In pastel blue, with a fine PDAG, I don't know what that means, Myke, Triumph nib. So it doesn't feel so bad.

'''Speaker 02:''' Palladium agronomist Triumph nib is what I'm going to go with. I don't usually like vintage pens, but if my house burned down, I'd save this pen first. It's special to me because of the engineering behind it and the journey I took to acquire it. It's elegant, timeless, comfortable, and reliable. And it makes my handwriting look amazing. It took me over a year to hunt down the exact model I wanted, but I found it down to the ratio of the metals and the nib. And new old stock to boot. It's a pen that, for my use case, has no flaws. Really nice.

'''Myke:''' AG is silver, so it is good.

'''Speaker 02:''' Okay, what's PD?

'''Myke:''' Palladium. I don't know, I made that up. You said it. Adam P says, first, congrats on 10 years and 500 episodes. I'm an avid pencil user, both classic wood and mechanical. When it comes to wood pencils, there is nothing better than a black wing pearl for me. This was the first high-end pencil I bought, and to this day, always have at least one within reach. The smoothness of the pencil and paper makes writing fun, and I love the smells that sharpen them. Uh-oh, if I'm not using a black wing, I will always have a Musgrave Tennessee Red in my hand. I have never come across a better smelling pencil, and I find them to be a joy to use. With both of these pencils, whenever I give them to someone to use, I very rarely get them back. Last, because I did say I use mechanical pencils as well, the Rotaring 600 in 5mm. I always have a few on my desk of different LEDs ready to go. A Rotaring 600 with 4B LED is a perfect combo. Drafting pencils have a special place in my heart. My father was a draftsman, and they were the only pencils I was allowed to use growing up. If you guys ever want to talk mechanical pencils or LED holders, let me know. Congratulations, I'm looking forward to what's next. Nice. What's next? Is it you go on the rule break?

'''Speaker 02:''' Next is the owl and the octopus. It would have to be a Leuchtturm 1917 notebook. I hate to name drop a company. That's literally what this show is about. That's all we do. But I find myself always carrying one of their pocket notebook sketchbooks. And my commonplace book and planner is their new 120G notebook, which goes with me and my backpack. I don't mind using any marking making tool to draw and write with. But for me, I need a book with decent paper to handle almost all the tools and me setting a beer or coffee on top of it. These books seem to withstand my abuse. That's why I recommend them so much. They handle all the things and are good for beer or coffee coasters.

'''Myke:''' Sam says, Hiroshizuku Konpeki. It's so pretty, but I can still use it for serious business and no one bats an eye. One of my favorite inks for that reason.

'''Speaker 02:''' Penchalet.com. Enter the pen addict. There is a Konpeki entry in there as well. Oh, in the giveaway? It's with one of the pens. I forget which pen. Maybe the Lamy Studio I put it with? I can't remember. Tom Keekly says, my favorite is a now vintage Auto Point Twin Point mechanical pencil. It was on my dad's desk his whole life and I keep it on mine. Those are cool classic pencils. Love it.

'''Myke:''' My next comes from John M. I bought an oversized Gray Pearl Schaefer Balance from the person who got me into vintage fountain pens. I had just bought my first Lamy Safari when I found out that there was a vintage restorer in my small college town. We met up at a bar and he showed me a bunch of vintage pens. I walked away with an ever sharp skyline that day, but I was fascinated by the much more expensive balance. After I published my first academic article, I bought the balance from him. It has an aftermarket clip that I guess makes it more of a user, but that's what's so special about it. It's a pen for writing, a tool. My friend was a writer as well. When I bought the pen, he told me to write something good of it. He has since passed away and the pen is a reminder of a good friend who was eager to share his knowledge with someone new to the hobby.

'''Speaker 02:''' All right. Ellis says, I was very excited to learn that Philofax has a notebook which lies flat and allows additional pages with an elastic divider. Very nice, Ellis. Very efficient.

'''Myke:''' A different Colin. Well, I didn't say this. This is what this person says. The Pilot Plumix or Metro Stub so I can write fancy. It has nice line variation while still fairly fine, which is a rare combination. Also, learning to make historical inks like Iron Gaul is a fun project.

'''Speaker 02:''' Mega underrated nibs. Pilot Plumix or Metro Stub.

'''Myke:''' 15, 20. 27.

'''Speaker 02:''' Dreidel. Red Montegrappa. Monte. Grappa. Fine nib with Robert Oster Tranquility Ink. Great pen. Better pen name. And you're on the list, apparently.

'''Myke:''' I don't know. I've let some of the ink ones go. The combos? I'm going to let that one go. All right. Good. You've been letting those go. Good for you. Some of the inks I let go. It kind of depends how the person introduces it.

'''Speaker 02:''' Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know? It's the pen and it happens to have this ink.

'''Myke:''' Yeah.

'''Speaker 02:''' Okay. This is not me, by the way. This is from Brad. I could answer this.

'''Myke:''' Pento Energel 0.5 and 0.7 because it's the perfect pen for lefties who don't want ink all over their hand when trying to write. I'm also going to let this one go. Yeah. Totally. And we are now on the final stretch. We have 100 more to go. All right. We've done 178. So it's time for a break. We can do this. It's time for a break. Well, we're going to do it. I don't know how long it's going to take.

'''Speaker 02:''' I'm just pumping myself up. Pumping myself up.

'''Myke:''' All right. This episode is brought to you by Harry's. 2022 is the year to break up with old routines. If your old razor isn't giving you the shave you deserve, break things off and switch to Harry's. Brad, why should people switch to Harry's razors?

'''Speaker 02:''' Because they have the best blades ever. Yeah. I need to order some new blades. Not because I go through them quickly, mind you. It's because I use that. They last so long. I actually forget that I need to order because I never think I have to order blades because they just last that long and give such a great shave. And they are just absolutely perfect. The best thing that I've ever done for myself in a long time.

'''Myke:''' Look at that. New customers can redeem a Harry's trial set for just $3 when you go to harrys.com slash pen addict. Harry's delivers a close, comfortable shave at a fair price. Still as low as just $2 per blade, Brad. So when you do need to refill, it's not going to be expensive for you. Harry's blades are designed to stay sharper longer. In a recent study, people who shaved four times a week said their eighth shave was as smooth as their first. Harry's is giving their best offer to listeners to this show. New Harry's customers can redeem a starter set. You get a five blade razor, a weighted handle, foaming shave gel with aloe, and a travel cover to protect your blades when you're on the go. That is a $13 value for just $3. There's truly never been a better time to try Harry's. So go to harrys.com slash pen addict to try Harry's today. Our thanks to Harry's for the support of this show and RelayFM.

'''Speaker 02:''' Next one, Myke, you know this guy. Jonathan Brooks says, my favorite station would have to be my stacks of used rhodia pads from previous pen shows. Every customer or even potential customer will use one of my pens to test while at my table during a show. Most of the time, it's a signature or ABCs, but there are also personal notes left to me by my pen friends, almost like a yearbook at the end of the school year because we may not see each other till next year's show. It's heartwarming to flip through these pages and see thoughtful words that were left for me, whether it's something about me or my work. I treasure each and every one of them. That's one of my favorites. Note to self, write dirty things on Jonathan's book the next time I see him. Gonna do that next time.

'''Myke:''' That's one of my favorites. I love that. I really love that. And Jonathan's a great friend of the show. By the way, if you were to ask me what my favorite is, I was thinking about this earlier.

'''Speaker 02:''' Don't answer. We're going to do a segment on our own next episode.

'''Brad:''' Ah, look at you.

'''Speaker 02:''' Missed the content over here. Well, we have been asked. Well, if you're making us do this, what is yours? How are you going to answer it? And we're going to see how many lists you're going to be on, Michael Hurley.

'''Speaker 02:''' That's right. I called you out.

'''Myke:''' Well, I know how to do this.

'''Speaker 02:''' Mm-hmm.

'''Myke:''' 180.

'''Myke:''' Comes from Tom. My not code to Lula from the 2018 Kickstarter. It might not be as exciting as a fancy fountain pen, but no matter what pens or pencils I'm using at the time, it's their home and comes with me on my travels along with a little stock of business cards and a 15-centimeter ruler. It's the perfect companion in my work bag.

'''Speaker 02:''' Great colorway, that one. Mm-hmm. Derek Bolton says, traveler's notebook. It's flexibility and setup and use. That is a legit great answer because it is a very small answer, but a very broad application. Love it.

'''Myke:''' Sherry says, tough question, but when I pull out my Nanami writer's notebook and it falls open to a new page, it ticks all the boxes. Mm-hmm. The creamy Tomoe River paper invites me to scan my fountain pens and consider my ink options, knowing each combination is going to look and feel great when I start writing. The feel of the pen, the character of each nib, and the sheen, shading, and color of inks. A session with my writer's notebook incorporates a lot of the good stuff in stationery, and the anticipation is as good as the experience. Ah, really good. Really good.

'''Speaker 02:''' Toasty Treat says, my Sailor Cross Concord. It was an anniversary gift from my husband and has been customized with Rodan and Arushi from Bukamundo. So not only does it write beautifully, but it's also gorgeous and has a ton of sentimental value. And I personally drool every time Toasty Treat brings it out on stream. And I have to see this pen. It is glorious.

'''Myke:''' Jesse, my favorite pen is the orange Pilot Custom Heritage 91 that my mother perched for me at the Ginza location of the Itoyo Stationery Store in Tokyo during a visit to Japan for my brother's wedding. Great pen and water store. Mm, jealous. One day, right? One day.

'''Speaker 02:''' One day. Martin Christensen says, Diamine Ancient Copper. It's one of my first bottles of inks that's not blue or black. And I bought it just to get free shipping. There's a lot of wonderful ink out there, but this one speaks to me because it almost seems to glow on the page like smoldering embers. Unrelated, am I the only one who can't read the name Pen Addict without immediately making the jump to Pen Addict Cumberbatch? Pen Addict. Pen Addict. Pen Addict Cumberbatch.

'''Myke:''' Pen Addict Cumberbatch. Deborah, my Narwhal Fountain Pen. My brother gifted it to me and I absolutely love it. Nice, nice.

'''Speaker 02:''' Philip, at Pens in Gaming. Here's a shocking answer if you know Philip. Coned Bulk Filler. This is my perfect pen for me and I could barely do better than if I was designing a pen myself. I love the design aesthetic with its flat ends, large shape, and modern look. I have a Delrin one and a demonstrator and love both. Another thing I love is these two pen bodies. With these two pen bodies, I can switch in all kinds of nibs. I've used Sailor King of Pen nibs, Mont Blanc 149 nibs, and many more. This allows these two pens to never feel old to me.

'''Myke:''' Yeah, okay, you ruined it at the end. I didn't notice that there was a second pen going in there. You could have gone away with that, Philip.

'''Speaker 02:''' It's the singular coned bulk filler shape in two separate materials.

'''Myke:''' Uh-huh. Wow, you said two pens. I don't know what, you know, you basically snitched on yourself. Richard says, Mont Blanc Meisterstruck Platinum Coated Fountain Pen 149 Medium nib. It was a 10-year anniversary gift from my wife. Whenever I use it, I feel like the pen wants me to be doing something profound, like signing the Declaration of Independence, or at least making my journaling that little bit more meaningful. It makes me want to set higher goals. Nice.

'''Speaker 02:''' Brandon Newell, Namisu Nova Titanium with an Anderson Pens Yovo EF nib in the Bach housing. Both can take a beating if I damage the nib. Easily replaceable. Diamine Blood Orange, good for editing. Making notes, dark enough to sign documents. P.S. When are the pen addict Yovo EF nibs coming? So that's pretty funny. I should look into that.

'''Myke:''' Goes on the list.

'''Brad:''' No. Yes. No. Yeah, I decided this one goes on the list. Protests. That's my second protest.

'''Myke:''' Because it's not with.

'''Myke:''' It's just like an extra, right? The way it's written. I don't know. I think it's with. Look, I don't make the rules. Devin says, I'm enjoying my Cortex Subtle notebook and my Retro 51 Leap pen along with a tactile turned zirconium glider. Now look, obviously, Devin goes in my favorites list. Yeah, go ahead. But also goes in the Rule Breaker list. Okay.

'''Speaker 02:''' That's fair.

'''Myke:''' Go up to 30 now. Joe says, hi, guys.

'''Speaker 02:''' Happy 500th. I really enjoy your podcast. The pen that got me into collecting was the Parker Dual Fold Centennial Big Red. It's 100 years old and still kicking. In addition to writing beautifully, it has an incredible history, much of which can be easily found on the web. For example, the original Dual Fold was advertised as non-breakable as evidenced by it surviving a 3,000 foot fall from an airplane. The Dual Fold was endorsed by none other than Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. According to the Sherlock Holmes Society of London, Doyle wrote several of the latter Holmes stories with it. What more could you want from a pen, Myke? Congratulations, Joe.

'''Myke:''' This comes from Tony Gerhart. I have a custom-made fountain pen from Chesapeake Pen Co. I have been a Maker's Mark Bourbon ambassador since 2009. I have bottles of bourbon with my name on them, and they've made several pilgrimages to Kentucky with only the intent to spend the day at the distillery. One day, scrolling through Instagram, I saw a wood pen with the distinct red wax color of my beloved bourbon brand. I read the caption and found out that not only is the color an exact match on purpose, but the wood is reclaimed from the barrels used during the aging process. Oh man, how cool to find that, right? Like, just randomly? I immediately messaged Chesapeake Pen Co. and expressed my deepest desire to add one to my collection. It took a while, but after all the materials were gathered, the pen shape and nib size were determined my pen was created. I would have been ecstatic of a color-matched pen, but I was blown away by the quality, attention to detail, and personal care that was taken. My ambassador number was engraved on the pen, super cool. And I also received an additional piece of engraved bow with my name and ambassador number on it for my desk. And finally, in the exquisite packaging was a heartfelt and personal letter. All of this elevated this from just another pen purchase to an experience that defines my love for this pen, this community, and my collection. Love that story. Love that story.

'''Speaker 02:''' All right, OSU Aaron, you surprised me with this one. The Estabrook Estee Oversized Rocky Top Fountain Pen holds the title of my favorite pen. This was the first diamond cast resin pen I owned, and as an Oklahoma State University grad, the orange and white with a little gray shimmery colorway is perfect for me. I had the amazing writing experience of the journaler nib and the wonderfully comfortable size, and this pen becomes more dear to me than pens I own that are three times the price, which he means specifically Aurora, which I thought he was certainly list because he's an Aurora super fan. That's very cool.

'''Myke:''' Look at pens, Estes. Mm-hmm. Eugenuity says, Waterman Charleston Fountain Pen gave me a reason to keep writing my PhD thesis. I feel so stupid on today's episode.

'''Brad:''' What have you done in your life? Oh, spoke for three hours reading a list?

'''Speaker 02:''' I'm a doctor of penology. Greg says, I'm stuck. I can't pick a favorite. Let's hope you do, Greg. However, I can mention my favorite pen today. It's a Burgundy Mont Blanc 22 with a factory OBB nib. I got into this hobby in 1999, and a few years later as an administrator from Pen State who became my, as an administrator from Pen State who became my pen sensei. The main lesson was, it's the nib. Everything else is secondary. This pen's nib is a writer's dream.

'''Myke:''' Patrick C says, it has to be my Sailor Pro Gear Slim Fountain Pen Negroni Limited Edition with an extra fine nib. I heard you both talking about it on the show. I'm denied about getting it, but didn't, as I was a skint PhD student at the time. Yeah, let's go. Let's go. Myke, I said my own name. My wonderful now fiance bought it for me as an engagement gift that I take with me everywhere in my William Hannah pocket notebook. A cheeky second item. Oh, Patrick.

'''Brad:''' I was going to let you go, Patrick, but you put it in there.

'''Myke:''' That cheekiness will cost you. Her favorite cocktail is a Negroni, so it really hits a special spot for me. Thank you. Kansu. Jensu? Is that? Jensu. Okay, cool.

'''Speaker 02:''' Jan Blatchford. Paste. Paste or yawn. My platinum 3770 Bourgogne with a medium nib. It was the fourth pen I got after reading about it on the pen addict. I have periods of using other pens, but always go back to this one as it's the old reliable for me. I used Diamine Burgundy Royal in it to match the color of the pen, which also has become one of my favorite colors to write with.

'''Myke:''' You see now, you threw that part in there. You wouldn't have said that. You would have got away with it. No. You've let some of these go. No. I know I do, but not always. Isn't this one? Let this one go. Because you see, look, it's like, I don't just, oh, and I use this ink in it. I use this ink in it, which is my favorite ink. You see, you couldn't just have one, you know? Jacob says, the Lamy Vista. It's my gateway. It was my gateway into this wonderful fountain pen hobby. Do a whole episode on the Vista.

'''Speaker 02:''' Hilda says, a vintage pencil. Sorry, I know it's a pen podcast because it has history and I'm saving it from the landfill.

'''Myke:''' Perfect. Phil A says, a Pilot 74 with soft, fine nib that I received recently. No regrets in buying my first Japanese gold nib fountain pen after about seven years on and off of penabling. Wow, you're awesome, sir.

'''Speaker 02:''' Great. Good choice. Good choice. Andrew S. Guess what, Myke? The Twisby Diamond 580 ALR Prussian Blue with a 1.1 millimeter stub nib.

'''Myke:''' As many Prussian blues as PhD students.

'''Speaker 02:''' This pen is close to my favorite color. I love the large ink capacity. It shows off my Pilot Orochizuku Siuro ink. The writing experience is both exquisite and fun. Often I find myself making loops and doodles in my notebooks just for the comfort and joy. Okay.

'''Myke:''' Bridget, if I had to pick just one item, that was the rule, so it would be the Pilot Precise V5 RT. The cap version was one of the first pens I truly fell in love with, but the retractable version is just about perfect for me. I love the needle point, the click, the design, and especially the liquid ink. It's a great pen. It is. I've been trying to find a fountain pen equivalent of that shade of blue for ages. It's just one of those pens I always want to have around. Thank you for doing this. Congratulations to Brad and Myke on 500 episodes. Thank you, Bridget.

'''Speaker 02:''' Yep. I have a fresh pack of those laying around the house right now. Chris says, I've been using fountain pens since I was in high school. I was inspired by my father, who maintained a goals and dreams journal and was a fan of S.T. DuPont and Montblanc back in the 60s. His handwriting was stunning, and the habits of writing has been a constant presence in my life. For me, I found myself enamored with the now defunct Omos and recently Aurora. While I love all the pens in my small collection, if I had to pick a favorite, as Myke would say, that is the rule, it would have to be the Omos Grand Paragon in Arco Bronze. This pen fits my hand like a fine bespoke suit, cool to the touch, weighted but not too fatigued, in a Masayama tune fine point that sings and glides over the page. A pen that never fails to bring a smile to my face and found thoughts of my father, many years gone now. Yes, in the business world, eyebrows do get raised when colleagues see my writing with a fountain pen, yet many appreciate the fancy handwriting that flows on the page. Sometimes it stops people in their tracks. Recently, I was at the bank cashing a check, written in that copperplate-like style, and the 20-something-year-old teller to the check and froze, mesmerized by it. Well, all of it. Wow, nice handwriting. Wow, indeed.

'''Myke:''' Eric McGee says, My favorite stationary item is my Galen leather zippered A5 folio. My wife got it for me last year for our third anniversary to replace my NotCo seed. How do you feel about that, Brad?

'''Speaker 02:''' Whoa, whoa, whoa. No, listen. No, the next part, they wore it out, Myke.

'''Myke:''' I'm glad someone wore it out. It was starting to get a little worn. I take a notebook with me everywhere, and I use it as a combination of bullet journal, commonplace book, and planner, so this was the perfect gift. Unfortunately, the pandemic has had me mostly working from home, so it hasn't developed much of a patina yet. I prefer to fill it with Clairefontaine Basic, my essential A5 notebook in dot grid. Man, some of these notebook names. And my two most used pens at a time, currently a Platinum 3776 with Platinum Blue Black Ink, and a Twisby Draco with Robert Oster Astorqueezer Rot. Wow, man, Robert.

'''Speaker 02:''' Great ink, rough name. Awesome. What is that? It's great. Astorqueezer Rot.

'''Myke:''' For the record, I got her a custom-made leather pouch with a handwritten letter printed onto the interior. Oh, that's classy. I'm not sure how we will top each other this year. I discovered this podcast about the time we started dating, and I sometimes share episodes with her. This will be one of them, so I'm hoping you'll read this out, and I just wanted to say thank you, Hannah, for supporting my stationary obsession, and congratulations to Myke and Brad on 500 episodes. Here's to 500 more. Hannah, I've got to let you know that your husband, Eric, is a rule breaker and goes on the list.

'''Speaker 02:''' What's the difference from filling a pen with an ink than filling a pen case with all the products?

'''Myke:''' Brad, we've got in here Gale and Leather, then we've got Clairefontaine A5, and then Platinum 3776 with Blue Black Ink, Twisby. There's like 12 products in this. They're the ink in the fountain pen. Not into it.

'''Speaker 02:''' Miles Knapp says, Miles, you're Myke's friend. Miles says, Waterman Edson fountain pen, beautiful translucence, and a wonderful unique nib. Uh-oh. There's an also, Myke. Ah, you see? Also, I ruined it. I didn't read all the way down. Also, NotCo 3x5 cards.

'''Brad:''' Number 34.

'''Myke:''' Luke says, My favorite stationary item would probably be my Purple with Flames Spoke Roadie, which was my first expensive stationary purchase, and since then, I've become obsessed. Listening to the shows made me spend the most money more than any other podcast.

'''Speaker 02:''' Yeah, I don't even have one of those. Those are cool. Justin C., my 1952 Schaefer Sentinel Snorkel. What is it? Was Schaefer in the snorkel and the alliterations here. This was the first year they made these, and you can tell by the color of the snorkel because it's the only year the snorkel was made of gold and gold-colored. I'm pretty much all modern fountain pens these days and have been for years, but this pen got me into fountain pens in a way I just never could have without it. I'm from Iowa, so I love that there's Fort Madison, Iowa, USA imprint on the barrel. I love the unique 14K nib that wraps around the entire end of the pen tip. I love that it writes impossibly smooth and fine and works without a hitch, even with a record number of separate parts inside to make the snorkel filling system extend and retract and fill the internal bladder. It's almost always inked with Pilot Blue Black or something similarly troublefully free and standard issue.

'''Myke:''' I'll let it go. I don't know why. It's just a feeling I get from them, you know? Sometimes it feels like people are just giving information. Sometimes it feels like people are trying to sneak a second product in there, you know? And I feel like Justin is just in fun. KD Mari says, my Twisby Eco EF in plain old white. I learned about the pen through the podcast, researched it on fantastic community YouTube channels, and ultimately found a retailer in Canada to buy it from. Shout out to Wonder Pens. Shout out to Wonder Pens. This has been my most used pen in a growing collection and has been inked with Sailor Gentle Blue since the day it arrived in 2017. Every other pen I own gets compared to this one. Congratulations, Brad or Myke, on 10 years, 500 episodes, and for helping the community spend millions

'''Brad:''' on stationery. That's not something I want to think about.

'''Speaker 02:''' Big Twisby Eco love today. Nancy J, I'm addicted to the Nemecine paper. It's fountain pen and budget friendly. I can even use Noodler's base day blue and it doesn't bleed through. It's one of the all-time greats.

'''Myke:''' Nofar says, Moleskine notebooks. They were the catalyst for the whole stationary blog community with Moleskineery. They don't have the best paper, although they do have the best designs. But after trying many other notebooks with better paper, I discovered there's something about them that makes me want to write in them more. And it isn't the best notebook and isn't the best notebook the one that you want to use. Yes. And I like that. And I think that there's a place here in the annals of this episode.

'''Speaker 02:''' Yeah. And Nofar is a renowned Moleskine superfan and I hope you're doing well, Nofar, and I think about you all the time. All right, next up, Hambala. I went back and forth for a long time trying to find a favorite. I don't really have favorites, but I'll mention one of the things that I keep coming back to that I use every day and if I leave it out of my bag for a day to try something else, I'll always pick it back up in the evening to use it again tomorrow. It's a Sinclair from Nock. Hey, cool. Hey, it could have been any case probably. I've just gotten used to, whoa, hey, settle, whoa. Whoa. Sell that, sell that.

'''Myke:''' There's a one-two punch there, you know. wow.

'''Speaker 02:''' Sheesh,

'''Myke:''' I love my Sinclair. Well, honestly, whatever,

'''Speaker 02:''' I don't care. It could have been any case probably. I've just gotten used to pulling five or six fountain pens in there along with a couple of markers, a ruler I never use and some sheets of stickers. It's like bringing a little piece of my home desk to the office. I have a few. Okay, you came correct there. I have a few because I liked it so much I wanted to have a bit of variation, but the one I really use is the black wax canvas with the red interior that a kind slacker helped me pick up and mail across the Atlantic. Very cool.

'''Myke:''' Where am I? 212. 212. Oh, I put my cursor in the wrong place. 212 comes from Myke. Any Parker fountain pen. There's something I can't.

'''Speaker 02:''' Any Parker, Parker Flyter. Flyter, sorry.

'''Myke:''' Any Parker Flyter fountain pen. There's something I can't put my inky finger on about the subtlety of the design.

'''Speaker 02:''' I think those, if I'm, the chat will correct me if I'm wrong, I think those have an integrated nib on the front end, if I'm not mistaken. I could be wrong though. So they're very cool looking. All right, Chris L. Pilot Custom Cade? I don't know, I don't know what that is or if it got, if it got, if it got, uh, spell checked. It was my first gold nib pen into the hobby. A friend reintroduced me to fountain pens, which I've used back in my,

'''Myke:''' The Cade maple fountain pen. It's wood. Oh, okay, cool. I've never seen that. It's a wood version of the custom.

'''Speaker 02:''' Nice. Okay, cool. Friend reintroduced me to fountain pens, which I've used back in my elementary days. I believe my very first one would have been a knockoff Parker. The Pilot Custom Cade was a little bit, a little bittersweet memory as I was on my way to migrate out of the country and I only had three or four months worth of shared excitement with my good friend into the world of fountain pens. We often caught up and talk about all things pen and life during that duration, which would stick to me as solid memories. The pen now serves as a fond memory every time I uncap the pen and the smoothness just adds on to the experience being made out of maple wood. With each change in season, the appearance change takes on a deeper color. It makes me happy knowing that next time we meet up, the pen will always look more beautiful than the day we last saw it together. Congratulations to the team on 500 wonderful episodes. Keep the good vibes going and we'll be rooting for the fountain pen addict team. All right, I'm writing Pilot Custom Cade down. I need to see this.

'''Myke:''' Now, Alan says, my Hobonichi. I currently use a cousin Avec primarily for journaling and tracking my day. I tried a number of different Hobonichi formats, but I have been using some kind of Hobonichi for the past several years. I had never journaled before discovering these, but now I do every day, which allows me to reflect on my experiences and to use multiple fountain pens and inks, which brings me joy.

'''Speaker 02:''' All right, Pessy's going to cost me some money here. Montblanc Heritage 1912 fountain pen. I am not a Montblanc fan. I've owned a 149, but didn't like it. The 1912, though, is truly special. And no, I'm not even talking about the amazing mechanics of the safety piston combination, although that alone sets it apart from nearly everything else on the market. No, the best feature of this pen is its nib. It's small and unassuming, but it somehow creates a writing experience like no other pen on the market. A little bit springy, but not really flex. Some feedback, but smooth. Most nibs are described in this way, but this one is special. It has to be experienced to believe. Susan mentioned something similar in her Peninnect review. On top of that, the B nib is an amazing cursive italic directly from the factory. I have two 1912 nibs now, one in the 1912 itself, another in the Bohem, and they are both amazing. Out of my more than 200 fountain pens, all thanks to you guys, whoa, sorry about that, Hessey, using the two 1912 nibs always makes me smile in a way no other pen can. Congratulations to 500 episodes.

'''Myke:''' I'm going to let it slide. I don't know why. I like the cap design. The thing here was really pretty on this pen. Yeah,

'''Speaker 02:''' it's like the, like Hessey mentioned the Bohem, which is the small safety pen that I have. The 1912 is the big one that I have always kind of wanted for myself. It's a really, really nice pen.

'''Myke:''' All right, Matthew, my favorite stationary item is the Notco Sinclair. Yeah, get rekt, I could use just about any case, but I don't care, whatever. No, I didn't say that. I bought my Forest Green Sinclair at the beginning of March 2020, and I've used it every single day since then. These days, I mostly work from home, but I carry the Sinclair back and forth to my work desk each day. It follows me in the evenings and sits bedside at night. My Sinclair currently holds, uh-oh, one ballpoint, spoke roadie, and four fountain pens, three lamis, and a spoke icon with various nib sizes and ink colors, three pocket notebooks, an emotions of feelings journal, a significant events journal, and a catch-all list for sketches and ideas, and several index cards, two with lists of shows and movies I want to watch, organized by the platforms they're on, a few with to-do lists, and one for tracking my current monthly expenses. All this fits in a small, compact, portable, sturdy, well-organized, and designed case that has been with me daily since I got it. There's nothing else quite like the Sinclair. I hope there's a way for this product to continue in the future.

'''Speaker 02:''' Matthew's the PhD of my heart, Myke.

'''Myke:''' 35. 35. All right,

'''Speaker 02:''' Chewbacca. It's a stationary item, and it makes stationary items. My lathe. It has allowed me to really jump deep in the next phase of the hobby, and without it, I would be way less involved in the community. Yes. I kind of love that.

'''Myke:''' Jerry K. Two pens immediately come to mind. Come on, Jerry. Come on, Jerry. First, the simple pen, the clear Opus 88 Omar of an amazing nib. It started as a broad. It was turned into an architect RT by J.C. Emmett. Shout out to the nib tailor. It now writes as a broad architect when used traditionally, but turned the nib upside down, and it's a very fine tip. The reversible tip is the RT in that architect RT name. This has become a daily writer for me. I can use it for anything. The second part is a favorite because of the story. Every summer through pandemic, I led our senior class, I teach high school history and rhetoric, on a tour of Greece and Italy. In 2019, while in Rome, I found a small pen shop, Novelli, where Marco introduced me to Leonardo pens. I was looking at others, but he insisted that I try Leonardo. He asked why buy a gold nib when the steel nibs on these are so good. I tried it and ended up with a Memento Zero that is a part of my daily carry. This eventually led to acquiring an MZJ in the Brooks Vesuvio. It was Memento Zero Grande, right? MZJ? But that's another pen and another story. Mm-hmm.

'''Speaker 02:''' I did it. Still on the list, though.

'''Myke:''' Oh, yeah, for sure.

'''Speaker 02:''' All right, Travis says, my favorite pen is a Blue Custom 74. I bought it for myself when I passed the bar and it was the first expensive gift I had ever bought for myself. Nice.

'''Myke:''' john kivas galen leather zippered a5 notebook folio in purple this is hard there are a lot of actual pens that i thought about picking my shown design pocket six my first fountain pen over 30 my canalia mao mckay or my sailor wicked witch of the west but then i settled on this galen lever folio since this is where i keep my theme system journal but some not some not code dot dash cards and the six pens i use to write every night the pens change over time but i get to smile every night as i take them all out to fill my journal for the day and make note cards about things i want to remember for tomorrow you saved yourself a little bit but you still

'''Speaker 02:''' you still become a list you're on two lists i'm gonna i'm gonna have to report this judge to the board or something like what very inconsistent in very inconsistent in their judgments i don't know the stationary rules board or something i don't know i sit on that board so good luck lowell says my favorite stationary item is my grandfather's olive green parker 45 he passed away quite young so i didn't get the chance to meet him having and using a pen that he carried with him helps me feel more connected to him i love thinking about what he must have used this pen for writing letters or notes to my grandma jotting down to-do lists signing important or trivial documents who knows family members who knew him and know me say that we're similar in many ways and it's meaningful to be able to share this pen with him super cool jason says my canalea

'''Myke:''' kilauea uh my first pen of up 200 but more importantly the pen that introduced me to hugh and carol who've become family and working with them at the show has introduced me to tons of passionate pen lovers ah i know that jason love and i love you and carol we both do bill maudlin

'''Speaker 02:''' says i'm probably not the only one to say this pretty close lamy 2000 i think it might be we've had some mentions but maybe not as the primary some on the list mentions i think i have two one extra fine nib and one medium nib this is a pen that works gives me joy just to hold it's both classic and timeless in the best ways while i don't use either of them every day they are always

'''Myke:''' inked up and at the ready andrea my lunch term five years journal i start another one i started in january 2020 and there i wrote about the birth of my son and the joys and challenges of fatherhood the struggle through covid the loss of dear ones and the process of looking for a job that finally fulfills me pens come and go what i wrote with them stays with me in this journal yeah yeah yeah

'''Speaker 02:''' blue jay says my black parker vector the pen that brought me into the fold my first fountain pen was a lamy safari and extra fine because i liked fine gel pens which in retrospect retrospect wasn't a pen or nib for me it was nice but i didn't think it was amazing enough to justify spending so much more than i usually would on stationery my fountain pen journey would have ended there except two weeks later i found a parker vector calligraphy set in a second hand store and bought it on a whim i immediately fell in love with the line variation and even the fine calligraphy nib the way that even the simple blue ink had character it made me realize what fountain pens could offer that my usually usual pens couldn't and down the rabbit hole i went i now have many pens which are way more expensive and have better writing experiences than that first parker vector but it would always have a special place in my heart

'''Myke:''' oh come on go let go jeff j my favorite stationary item is my osprey pens milano it was a generous gift from the creator and i have cherished it since receiving it simple but means more to me than any

'''Speaker 02:''' high dollar pen i own nice very cool gordon first time shout out for the twisby go favorite new pen it's affordable fun comfortable to hold easy to fill and the broad nib is amazing actually correct

'''Myke:''' good job jordan gordon theo is number 228 which means 50 to go all right first of all thanks for 10 years of stationary conversation i don't have anyone in my day-to-day life that shares this passion so i rely on your weekly discussions to fuel me you also introduced me to the medium of podcasts so thank you for being the gateway to endless hours of entertainment and information as for my favorite stationary items uh-oh uh-oh that's plural uh-oh when i was growing up my dad had a montblanc 146 that i was understandably not allowed to touch when he retired the pen was put up with the rest of his work items and largely forgotten years later when my dad saw that i had gotten into fountain pens he surprised me uh one visit and present and presented that montblanc to me as we talked i could see he was fascinated by the variety of inks i use he had only used montblanc black i asked if he wanted to hang on to the 146 but he insisted i keep it that year for father's day i bought him a twisby rb and a bottle of waterman serenity blue my dad emigrated to the u.s from taiwan in 1970 so i knew he would love a pen made in taiwan with a finial bearing the white sun in the blue sky from the flag i wasn't sure if he'd actually use it but it was something i wanted him to have dad passed the following new year's day when we were going through his office i found a twisby inked on his desk and his journal filled the serenity blue so these two pens one my dad gave me and one i gave him are my favorite stationary items i'm gonna let that one go yeah you think

'''Speaker 02:''' really cool story theo i that was really neat i like to see it here in that that's pretty cool all right nick says 1948 parker 51 it is so much better than the 2021 parker 51 that is nick's emphasis not mine also strathmore 300 drawing paper checks all of my boxes for paper it's all these also's get you mike it's also gonna get you oh yeah i didn't even pick that one up yep

'''Myke:''' number 38 yep 38 joey says i found this hobby while in engineering school after i forgot to bring extra pencils to an exam all of the work we did from circuit calculations to calculus to engineering drawings was done by hand needing to do any of that with a single dull pencil added a lot to the test stress again a mechanical pencil was the easy solution but i couldn't bring myself to buy a six pack from the dollar store after doing some research i landed with the uni ball kuru toga ah yeah yes perfect the gimmick of retaining the pencil lead is no gimmick my writing never varies it works perfectly with engineering paper the gunmetal body fits in any engineer's workplace and despite its businessy look it never looks out of place with the colorful pens in my pocket protector five years and a dozen fountain and ballpoint rollerball pens later the kuru toga is still one of my favorites and is the stationary item that i think that i talk about the most i give the kuru toga 4.5 out of five spells my sweaty exam hands would appreciate if the knulling was a

'''Speaker 02:''' little more aggressive yeah i hear you i hear you very cool john says the parker vacuumatic golden web love it that's the pen you bought for me mike yep beautiful look from a different time smooth writing fine point with a bit of flex also has a very clever high capacity filling mechanism perfect confluence of art and engineering i think that's what you can get a lot of ink in there and you can actually

'''Myke:''' spray it all over a desk very easy to do uh this comes from from medievalist it's a schaefer school pen from the late 1960s or early 70s inexpensive red transparent plastic body still near proprietary cartridge my father who died in 2005 used this pen to grade papers and i remember it well

'''Speaker 02:''' using this pens reminds me of my father hmm very cool john cook my favorite item reminds me of the hours when i would sit quietly next to my dad as he precisely created drawing for his job as a draft draftsman my token for that connection is my vintage rotring 600 perfectly constructed

'''Myke:''' constructed mechanical precise miss you dad yes says leonardo aficion italiana bespoke pens they are perfectly sized for largest they're perfectly sized for larger hands have a fully disassemblable piston for easy cleaning and are available in beautiful colors paired with a tomoe river dot grid a5

'''Speaker 02:''' notebook it's pure stationary heaven og and tristy says my favorite stationary item is the studio neat mark one we're gonna have to send this episode to uh tom and dan every time i pick it up and hear that click i smile it's the perfect weight i'm thankful the podcast connected me to this gem of a pen

'''Myke:''' brandon s

'''Brad:''' oh i see what's so brandon s is brandon s sorry i misread the questionnaire that was the person whose previous name i said was yes i don't know why they wrote yes uh what is your name yes so yes the person who loved leonardo aficion

'''Speaker 02:''' italiana that was brandon s and they copied the answer again but gave us their name in a second line that's funny all right yes yes all right um i'll read this one uh yeah young lynn yeah yeah the hobonichi techo planner i have tried so many planners before staying with the hobonichi techo the daily layout helps me stay organized and and the daily quotes are interesting to read this is also a very

'''Myke:''' good data point episode mike apparently clearly grayson says my favorite pen would have to be the matte black vanishing point of a fine nib i'm an engineer i mostly use my pens to jot down quick notes or sketches while working at my desk i love not having to deal with a cap every time i want to write down a quick bullet point and the nib is fine enough for detailed sketches and math yet smooth enough to be enjoyable to use thanks for the weekly entertainment looking forward to the next 500

'''Speaker 02:''' nice all right aldo says i have acquired many pens since i got into this hobby a few years ago some of them with amazing gold nibs however my twisby precision is the pen i treasure the most because it has a story to go with it i purchased this pen from wonder pens shout out wonder pens when mr dowdy wow i'm old mike and anna came to toronto this is a very special memory for me i'm always reminded of that day whenever i pick up this pen sadly i did not get a chance to talk to anna too shy to approach her plus she was looking at ink swatches did not need to disturb her she's pretty scary like i would avoid avoid anna at all costs just kidding if memory serves me right i believe mary uh from the pen cup uh was also there and really love her blog and i wish i got the chance to talk to her keep up the

'''Myke:''' great work guys and 500 more episodes this comes from rodolfo it says i am a paper addict while i do have more pens and ink and than i need in my lifetime paper is the one item i cannot resist the feel when the nib touches the paper good paper nib touches good paper color thanks and how it changes the whole writing experience is what does it for me favorite everyday paper midori md lined favorite paper for letters claire fontaine triomphe link lined are you in the rule breakers club yes you are favorite list

'''Speaker 02:''' rule breakers club thank you rodolfo adam says i'm happy that the yovo number six is becoming somewhat of a standard nib housing across a range of pens it means that one can trivially mix mix and match nibs between pens currently i'm loving the sig ef nib from franklin christoph sometimes it lives in a leonardo sometimes in a dark dark dark green spoke icon if i see another pen i like the look of there's a good chance i don't need to worry about the nib size because i can always swap things around later rich sticks it's definitely the people

'''Myke:''' you meet along the way whether online or in person whether in online chat or in person at a pen show it's the people that make me the most excited about my pens and other stationary items a big thanks to both of you as well as all the others in our little corner of the world for making such a pedestrian item as a pen so enjoyable so rich sticks his favorite stationary item is human beings

'''Speaker 02:''' so rich rich sticks knowing him as i do i guarantee about a hundred uh hundred uh readings ago he was in the uh-oh category i could see him doing it right now knowing him well i would see him going uh-oh alistair upton says sailor pro gear demonstrator my first sailor pin and the one i purchased at genza atoya uh in 2018 i had never heard of this brand of pin before listening to the pen addict and to buy this in japan was special to me this store is a must see for all pen addicts multiple shout

'''Myke:''' outs for the genza toy store all right so i'm on to 244 with greg uh i happened upon an ebay listing for several pens at a reasonable price among which was a monteverda intima fountain pen and glacier blue i love it because it feels like the pen found me oh nice emma says i love my red lami safari it's

'''Speaker 02:''' beautiful and writes really well i definitely made some great friends in the hobby it's great to talk to them about stationery i don't know what else to write but i love the podcast that was you wrote

'''Myke:''' exactly what you were supposed to perfect well done can coy says my green faceted pilot vanishing point from 1999 my first adult fountain pen with a slightly bouncy medium 18 carat gold nib is still in rotation and a perfect writer with a pilot blue black cartridge

'''Speaker 02:''' nice rudyard kip yard says i use my caveco support to fill out my customs paperwork on a recent flight love the everyday luxe in a pint-sized package

'''Myke:''' lisa says my favorite stationery item is the hobonichi weeks with three by five cards not coal lined index cards preferred yes i realized that i am cheating by including two things okay good love the stationery led me to the hobonichi weeks and now i can't do without it it helps me manage my life and lower my stress level while recording and so offloading events and tasks but i can also play with pens log inks use my washi tapes and random stickers and it is the most compact and portable item that could possibly do this and they're gorgeous to boot i usually get the movement edition three by five cards are a necessary accompaniment to keep track of overly ambitious daily to do's they are ephemeral unlike the weeks which is crucial and the nostalgic look of not coastline cards makes them perfect yeah

'''Speaker 02:''' perfect melissa says i collect fountain pens and the most special one i own is my platinum 3776 stardust i have quite a nice collection of less expensive to mid-range pens i live off a relatively modest income i work for a non-profit profit organization which is rewarding in many ways but will never make me a wealthy person i truly believe that there are great pens to be had at almost every price range but i still find myself sometimes wishing i could have some of the special pens the custom made limited editions etc first world world problems right however my platinum stardust for me fills that niche several years ago i put aside some money for a more expensive pen and was trying to decide which one to buy when goulet released this little pen from platinum it wasn't even a proper limited edition if i remember correctly i just think it was a small batch of material they had which they offered to goulet since i already had money set aside i jumped at the chance and scored my beautiful 3776 black resin with gold shimmer there were only about 30 ever made i almost never hear them mentioned anymore so i sort of feel like it's some forgotten rare artifact of course being a 3776 it's also an amazing writer and it's fine nib makes it perfect for writing in my five-year hobonichi even though it may be modest to some i love that pen and the fact that i can have something unique

'''Myke:''' that's very cool kim h says my favorite stationary item is the fountain pen i'm reminded that my grandmother bought me first my first one when i was a kid and then i got my lover's stationary from her and my dad there wasn't a stationary shop in town that we didn't frequent when i resurrected my love of fountain pens in the 2010s it brought me to the pen addict and this community where i have felt welcomed and understood although the through line is about fountain pens it is really the friends i have made that remind me just how fortunate i am thank you brad and mike for this wonderful podcast

'''Speaker 02:''' and all you do for the community yeah that's exactly what i thought you were going to say diane and scott i get to read a poem this time 500 episodes fun and light-hearted lami safari was where it all started brass town and sinclair to lulu and seed knock made the products all pin eggs need sailor and pilot marlin and twisby pelican leonardo and visconti shown design retro and fountain roach rings these are a few of our favorite things shimmer and sheening and now chroma shading rainbows of color so bright and unfading there's more to life than old black parker quink how could we have just one favorite ink field notes and leuchterm and black and red notebooks tomoe river and rhodia goat books

'''Speaker 02:''' colordex cards bound together with rings these are a few of our favorite things when it's monday or a gray day and i'm feeling sad i ink up a pen and i draw a few swirls and then i don't feel so bad

'''Myke:''' then i don't feel so it's beautiful this is good that was good good job good job it was really good jared says as someone who recently even the last four years started using fountain pens again my favorite stationary items evolved over time currently it is an arrow arrow metric parker 51 purchased from the 2021 san francisco pen show the parker 51 feels very nice in the hand and has been great to take notes from all the papers i have read i have to read in my master's program oh boy another one that said i've used rhodia notebooks over the past three years and they've been a great recording medium i'm gonna put you on the list

'''Myke:''' hit the itchy trigger finger there 41 by the way because now there's a bit of space from it because i think people would i did put kim h on the uh people who suggested no products list but just didn't say it at the time because this is then a really nice message but now we're a couple i feel like i can go back now we have some distance

'''Speaker 02:''' added yeah we can have some distance from it and you're added yeah oh they were added immediately

'''Speaker 02:''' i knew what you were up to jose mateo ayala amarillo stationary because the owner is so passionate about stationary and thanks he thanks to you he shared his podcast to the spanish-speaking

'''Myke:''' community is informed about stationary and fountain pens all right says uh my favorite pen is a very cheap pen bbs 355 with just an incredibly smooth nib and huge ink capacity i bought it right at the start of my fountain pen journey and sometimes it feels like i could or should have just stopped there all the sailors pelicans and pilots i've purchased since cost more haven't yet and haven't yet delivered as well overall probably could have saved myself for money but where's the fun all right richard says i

'''Speaker 02:''' could narrow it down to just one item but the category of stationary i always come back to would be small sleek fairly nondescript until you look just look closely if you know what you're looking for probably vintage fountain pen probably italian or german there's always at least one in my rotation ink with something blue black they don't call attention to themselves they are perfect for my hand and they just work yeah they are perfect for mike's list 14 on that

'''Myke:''' achilles says my favorite stationary item is my stack of turtle sticky notes i've been struggling with depression for over a year now in that year i lost all interest in stationary a couple of weeks back i went for a walk late in the evening and out of boredom decided to browse through the last two open stores in my town there i saw the most adorable sticky notes i've ever seen i've never been a huge fan of sticky notes i never knew what to do with them but these ones were too cute to not take home they are turtle shaped and turtle colored and have an adorable face that looks at you with a huge smile i don't know what it is with this turtle but when i look at it i just get the feeling that it wants me to get better it wants me to hold on so now i stick them to my computer with my next therapy appointment written on them it's also ignited my love for stationary again since then i bought a couple of small things and tried to hack out the stationary i have so thanks little turtle i will also say thank you

'''Speaker 02:''' little turtle yes i would say thank you little turtle turtle and thank you achilles that is really really awesome thank you so much g dresser says cw pencils baseball scoring pencil the lead makes beautiful dark line and smooth the right width the round barrel makes it comfortable to hold the eraser works really well and is the best eraser on the end of a pencil that i have ever used it helps me fondly remember cw pencil shop and everyone who worked there really cool wayne bond says the

'''Myke:''' most meaningful stationary i own are the pieces i could never replace they are gifts from inspiring people in my life they believe in me even when i do not using the pieces reminds me of them and my true

'''Speaker 02:''' fortune nice and your new life that's number 15 daniel says diamine earl gray ink and ink i wanted to design for a long time in 2017 our fountain pens helped me make that the possibility as a dedicated subreddit ink and daniel sent me a daniel sent me a really beautiful email um recently related to

'''Myke:''' this so thank you daniel hope you're doing well alifo says the apica cd premium notebook that's silky

'''Speaker 02:''' paper that is truth truth right there underrated product lisa from canada says i'm a big fan of the pilot vanishing point decimo my favorite is probably my champagne extra fine decimo that i bought with money given to me by my mom after her older friend left her a small inheritance when she died i love the pen and think of my mom's friend margaret when i use it gareth thomas says the parker vacuumatic that

'''Myke:''' i bought on a whim on ebay writes wonderfully i hope i'm in as good condition as it when i'm 76

'''Speaker 02:''' mike chrispeck my favorite stationary item is a pair of white feather 603 fountain pens my mother gave to me after learning about my new hobby some few years back the pens themselves are a cheap chinese pen that look quite reminiscent of a certain popular hooded nib parker pen what makes them so special is the fact that these pens were the ones she used when she was a kid going to school in a small village in poland my parents immigrated to america some 30 plus years ago and these pens were one of the few things my mom brought over in the one suitcase she had despite having acquired pens that are objectively better in every single way such as my sailor king of pen i still find myself gravitating gravitating towards these special pens when i use them i'm reminded of the courage my parents had to leave their home and come to america for opportunity to better life which never fails to make me smile and appreciate everything they've done really cool i'm gonna let that one

'''Myke:''' slide too mm-hmm valerie said visconti homo sapiens bronze age my grail pen that i bought for myself as a reward for my study and the pen that i used to sign my degree with the material has a great feeling

'''Brad:''' and i really enjoy the weight and balance of this pen amazing pen amazing people john t my favorite is

'''Speaker 02:''' from a special occasion a personal tour of the pelican factory in germany i bought my pelican m800 at the factory store mere steps from where it was hatched i like that it's a stunning and dignified gray and black stress them all it's always inked with edelstein smoky quartz which complements its colors that's

'''Myke:''' awesome nancy t says my favorite stationary item is my collection of italic nibbed fountain pens ranging from my original pilot plumix to a vintage esterbrook lj of a 2312 nib to most recently a custom ground on a modest twisbee iris at the ohio pen show they add so much flair to my writing nice loving it's a good

'''Speaker 02:''' italic doug beal doug doug my jonathan brooks alien autopsy a double-ended pen with grinds by mark bacchus one end has an architect paired with luminous ink and the other cursive italic paired with matador red ink this pen mark going to a pen show to see my friends what are you going to do now mike how many

'''Brad:''' pens and inks is that um no i think it's fine you're dang right it is i think it's fine they still trying to trick me then i was i was having trouble my pen wasn't writing so i was trying to get my pen to start writing so i didn't miss the last one my pro gear was failing me motorsports fan

'''Myke:''' says the pelican m815 was that 815 i don't know metal striped yeah i love pelican nibs and the 800 series is the perfect size for me i have an anthracite ma05 which is a quality writing instrument but the m815 takes it to a whole new level it's so classy i also love the extra heft created by the palladium plated brass strips which just adds to the sense of quality that's a really cool pen

'''Speaker 02:''' putting on the list though no and where yeah there's two in no there are but one clearly supersedes

'''Myke:''' the second all right all right all right i'm gonna give that one back to you thank you thank you

'''Speaker 02:''' all right sefi says my md notebook a5 that i use as a diary the paper is amazing for fountain pens and the leather cover is really soft and seems to age very well agree across all accounts there sefi

'''Myke:''' all right so my next one is ken yeah yeah i remember getting a parka jotter from my parents years ago as a kid although thoughtful i was never impressed with it it's feel how poorly it wrote never used it and it was lost to time i now use one of the new all metal jotters in victoria violet with a 0.5 auto flash dry refill a wonderful combination and the gift they would have bought had it been available at the time every time i use it i remember them and it brings me such happeners every day that's

'''Speaker 02:''' cool nice oscar says my favorite stationary item is a sailor fountain pen it was a gift from my mom whose friend got it for her when she was in japan there was a stationary shop right by hotel my mom asked her to try and find something for me the pen has a steel nib is 1911 shaped is a demonstrator with silver glitter running through it and has silver hardware it also came in a set with a bottle of sailor yamadori ink which is a favorite of mine what makes this pen extra special for me is that i just can't find anything about it online is it a profit junior a compass a japan store exclusive probably all of the above oscar the way sailor does it i don't know i think i found a listing for it on a taiwanese store once but i haven't been able to find it again maybe someday i'll find something about it

'''Myke:''' but every time i write with it i enjoy the element of mystery daniel w jang says parker jotter fabric zipper pouch my first pen i believe was a cheap parker jotter from wh smith that's a story in the uk which came which they bought colt pens which came with this little fabric zipper pouch where you can safely store your pen inside when you're not using and while my fellow parker wielding classmates never used there citing it annoying i favorably kept mine with me novelty aside it had functional aspects to it where it prevented my stationery from getting soaked in ink whenever the pen leaked which while didn't happen often it was really annoying when the rest of your stationery was covered in parker standard blue ink well for me it was only localized to the pouch only but as exam season came i was forced to switch away from my fountain pen and to all black generic ballpoint pens and thus as time went on my use of trusty parker jotter went down and down it also doesn't help that i for at the time thought for i for at the time thought i was helping the ink flow bent the tip nib so much that at one point it was a right angle with the rest of the nib making it completely useless however that pouch still served its purpose even with its matching parker even without its matching parker jotter it came with me to all of my gcse and a level exams carrying the black uniball gel stick which technically wasn't even allowed in an exam and even to my first year of university last time i remember seeing the pouches at my parents place when i went back for easter break in my second year of uni it was placed in my dad's cup of all sorts of random pens and pencils uh that he has collected over the years since then i've reunited with fountain pens started with pilot mr2 and most recently kaweco al special fp my hope is that when i get back to my parents place it will still be in that cup of random stationery uh since looking on ebay 14 pounds seems to be a lot to spend on the pouch however sentimental it might be hopefully the story was interesting i had originally intended to give a short 650 essay on this pouch until i realized the limit was 2000 characters therefore proving that at least part of the limitation was a necessity

'''Speaker 02:''' that's awesome and i i need to i need to see this parker jogger fabric zipper pouch sounds cool all right laura at scribbles and fluff my favorite stationery item right now is my benu broad nib that is currently in a beno briolette luminous dream a glow in the dark hit you across the face dare you to look away fountain pen i always knew it was possible to reverse right but i've never had such a nib where you could feasibly reverse right with the right ink flow in line with my experience made me realize i could have a two-for-one experience with a single fountain pen writing broad and fine lines just by turning the pen i need more thank you brad mike for all that you do i can't thank you enough much love

'''Myke:''' laura nice from curtis my blue pilot varsity i have plenty of other nicer pens but i was gifted a secondhand set of pilot varsity pens by a dear friend when i was just getting into the hobby you know what approaching three years later i've eyedropped that particular varsity they're great writers you just need decent paper to handle the flow you know what that's pretty cool i like that

'''Speaker 02:''' brian collier says i'm very lucky to have a job in philanthropy that gives me a chance to work on big community issues from 2014 to 2017 i let a group working on the issues of economic mobility and how to help children born into poverty poverty have a fair shot at achieving the american dream it's a heavy topic with a lot of challenging topics but one way i kept my thoughts together was through detailed notes and mind maps created in the moramond nemesine a4 imagination notebook i probably filled five or six of the books over the course of our work and considered them minor works of art and hopefully the art will lead to better lives for children in their community congrats on 500 and thanks for inspiring

'''Myke:''' us on a weekly basis that's very cool sean emerson congratulates us on our 10th anniversary and says i always wanted a pelican m800 or m805 for years having owned the m205 and m600 models my family gave me an m805 stone garden for my 50th birthday and it has been inked and in use ever since i know it's hard to understand if you don't own one but the balance weight effortless piston mechanism and beautiful two-tone nib make it one of the best pens you could ever use i know we're trying to wrap this

'''Speaker 02:''' up but i'm not sure we've had many pelicans besides the 800 series mentioned no four there was a 1000s

'''Myke:''' wasn't there like the bait like the did not mean the pelicanos yeah the pelicano and things like that but

'''Speaker 02:''' like out of the core size group it's 800 or nothing that's pretty amazing pretty amazing brandon is pretty amazing because after a few after listening for a few months mike he got a lammi safari extra fine nib and love it and paired it with a cortex brand subtle notebook love it going on two lists that

'''Myke:''' oh with my one now isn't it it's you last one oh my god final one lyle chan says my favorite stationary item is whatever i happen to be using at the moment yes i'm so happy we're finishing it on one like this i make a point of only keeping pens ink journals and paper that are a joy to use and gifting everything else to a home that appreciates it more than me there's two reasons why that's great one that's a nice message two goes on a list i can't believe it

'''Speaker 02:''' no editing was done in this list to end in this manner all right so do you want the results of the list spread yeah let's let what's the title of the list and the the count okay mike's faves fine okay so those are those are the cortex you know mentions things of that nature yeah okay mike's faves

'''Myke:''' five people who suggested no products is 16 wow that was more than i thought and i just read all these and hold on five ten fifteen twenty twenty twenty five thirty thirty five forty forty three people are rule breakers rule break breakers now we actually had 277 responses because one was a double right so that means 15 percent of the people that filled in the survey uh filled it in incorrectly they picked more than one item hey mike move fast and break things right that's true but you know what brand even the rule breakers i want to thank actually i think the rule breakers especially because they they added uh an extra game for me to play on top of this list and we did it uh three hours uh it's kind of what i expected yep yep it was worth it i love reading these i loved hearing from our listeners um that made this episode extra special we could have just spoke about ourselves for an hour and a half but this is a much better way to do it so thank you for this idea brad but of course thank you to everybody who sent in a question and we know this is just a small percentage of you and yeah more than sending in a question uh tuning into this show every week is more important uh supporting the show and and giving us a reason to keep publishing these episodes and we've been doing it for 10 years now let's say every week nearly every week there was a period where there wasn't every week but every week we've been going it's been 10 years 10 years these 500 episodes so um thank you all so much for your continued support brad thank you for showing up every week and doing all the work that you do means an awful lot to me you mean more to me in the show which is to say a heck of a lot yeah and i greatly value our partnership um and yeah wish it continues

'''Speaker 02:''' many more years i appreciate you buddy i am really happy that we have made it 500 episodes 10 years all the things and honestly show no end in in sight of stopping and uh i love all the feedback we get and i love all y'all that uh helped us out with this special 500 episode so uh thank you all i i couldn't thank you enough and uh especially you mike for uh getting me to do this sit in this chair in the for episode one and uh who knew it would be off and running this long i will say if i can

'''Myke:''' change the mood for a minute how unbelievably sad it makes me that we were not able to be in person to do this together true true and i i greatly look forward to when that becomes a reality again uh so yeah same here hopefully this year thank you for listening to episode 500 of the pen addict podcast if you would like to send in questions to us please don't use that form anymore you can send it to it i turned it off rstpa or you can email them to hello at penaddict.com if you want to find brad online you go to penaddict.com you can go to spoke design.com brad is at dowdyism on twitter penaddict on instagram and streams multiple times a week at twitch.tv slash penaddict i bet you're not going to stream today are you probably not probably not probably not i'm recording another show in 15 minutes i don't think i'm gonna make it i think i'm just gonna fall asleep under the desk i think this actually might be the longest episode of a show that i've ever made oh really maybe yeah it might be interesting uh i'm i'm mike i am yke if you want to pick up one of those products that makes you a mike fave go to cortex merch.com thank you to pen shelly and harry's for the support of this week's episode uh we'll be back next week and we're on the other side of it episode 501 uh thank you until then say goodbye brad goodbye brad

[[Category:Podcast Transcripts]]
[[Category:The Pen Addict Podcast Transcript]]

The Pen Addict 488/transcript

2026-06-23T15:59:06Z

PencilBot: fixed spelling

{{Infobox podcast transcript
| name = The Pen Addict
| number = 488
| title = Your Warranty is Voided
| date = November 18th, 2021
| hosts = [[Brad Dowdy]] 
[[Myke Hurley]]
| guests =
| link = [https://www.relay.fm/penaddict/488 Episode 488]
| audiolink = [https://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/traffic.libsyn.com/secure/thepenaddict/The_Pen_Addict_488.mp3 Audio Episode 488]
| length = 59
}}

'''Myke:''' From RelayFM, this is The Pen Addict, episode 488, and today's show is brought to you by Pen Chalet and Squarespace. My name is Myke Hurley, I'm joined by Brad Dowdy. Hi Brad.

'''Brad:''' Hey Myke, how's it going? Pretty good, my friend. How are you? I think good, to be determined. We'll see how this show goes. Alright, that sounds like a threat. Yeah, it does sound like a threat. That's what I'm saying. Threatening. That's the energy you want. I know, I am ready to get after you a little bit later in this episode. We're just going to hold that thought. It's in my head.

'''Myke:''' We were chatting before and Brad kept, I don't know what it is, but Brad keeps saying to me, like, I'm in trouble for something. And I don't, I have yet to understand what that might be. I guess we'll find out. We have some follow-up on a state of stationary conversation that came through from CY. Did you want to talk about this?

'''Brad:''' Yeah, so it was, I need to go, I'm actually going to go back and listen to that episode and take some notes, just kind of see what I said. Because, like, I wrote a whole bunch of notes for that episode. But then when you, when you're talking about it and thinking about it, you kind of lose track of, of how it's going, right? It's really hard to put all these things in your head and get it, get them out in a coherent fashion as I'm doing right now. Like, so wonderfully. But one of the bits of feedback I had was from CY. He says, I think y'all are missing the Chinese manufacturers on innovation. I would venture to say that hundreds of thousands of new fountain pen users have been introduced to the fountain pen world thanks to their innovations in manufacturing at scale. Pen BBS, for example, introduced lots of folks to higher end filling mechanisms for less than $50 loads of color options and now nib sizes too. On the Japanese side, I'd say that the Kakuno was industry changing as well on introducing kids to fountain pens. So, yeah, like, one of the points I made to him was when I was considering innovation and the discussion around innovation, I didn't consider scale, right? I was thinking more of design innovation as opposed to, like, manufacturing scale innovation. Because really the only manufacturing scale innovation we're seeing right now is, hey, we're buying a ton of gold nibs and they're costing us more than ever, so we're going to charge more for them. And that's our scale right now. It's like, I think about Pelican when I talk about this. It's like, they have to invest a lot of money in natural resources. And even at the scale that they purchase things, it's still, like, very, very expensive and those costs get passed on to us. But in the getting new users aspect, I like the idea that CY presents that, okay, are we getting more people using fountain pens because there is actually a scale, like in China, for example, to where the fountain pen market can be more widespread? And does that lead? And does that lead? I hope that leads to actually more design and technical innovation with scale innovation leading that way. And his point about PenBBS, you know, is similar. And that's why I like brands like Twisby, right, for their low-cost piston mechanism and Opus for a low-cost eyedropper filler mechanism, relatively low-cost, compared to, you know, like if Montblanc came out with an eyedropper, you know, it's going to be, you know, $700,000, where you can get an Opus eyedropper filler eyedropper for, you know, $100. And you can see if this type of system is interesting and works well for you. So, yeah, I think the scale is beneficial in that it gets the product into more people's hands. And the benefit of getting it into more people's hands is then you find out the small amount of people who it registers with on a different level, and they start thinking about products differently down the line, right? That's my hope for manufacturing at scale is not the scale itself, but the access it gives to someone in an office somewhere who gets an idea because they were part of the receiving end of this economy of scale, but then takes that and works it through their head and actually create something new and innovative down the line, you know, 10 years from now. So, like, I think that's a very positive thing.

'''Brad:''' So, that's the way I look at that. But other than that, like, the feedback was positive, you know, it was pretty tame. Like, I must have done a halfway decent job, which is a miracle in itself, Myke, that I didn't get raked over the coals for much that I said last week.

'''Myke:''' I thought you did a good job. Maybe you'd said a bunch of things that were wrong, but everyone just thinks you're right. Do you ever think about that?

== Troubles with Feedback ==

'''Brad:''' Yeah, yeah, that's the, like, the person who yells the loudest is the rightest. Yes. Yeah, well, I'm always willing to admit when I'm wrong or when, you know, my opinion needs to be tweaked and changed. And this was a good perspective because it wasn't something that I considered, which is why...

'''Myke:''' I think CY came at it from just a completely different angle to what we were thinking about, but it's also very valid.

'''Brad:''' Right, and that's why I was saying, like, that's why I like to do this publicly, and that's why I keep myself accessible. Like, you can reach me because then we can have these conversations. It's like, hey, did you think about this? And I was like, you know what? No, I didn't. And, like, I enjoy having those conversations.

'''Myke:''' How's Nano Como going?

'''Brad:''' Wow. Wow. So, good up until a couple days ago. I've had some life events that have put a damper on my riding. It has stopped it cold for reasons that life is more important right now for me. But, like, right up until, say, Tuesday, I was going pretty good. Let me get my notes out here because I did a little calculation on Tuesday. Tuesday, because Tuesday was the 15th or the 16th, whatever. We passed the 15th, which is the halfway point of the 30 days of November. So, I've been through 15 days. I had missed three days up until that point, and I had written 16,500 words in 15 days. So, a little over 1,000 and something words per day, 1,100, whatever that means. So, like, I was feeling pretty good about that, and now I'm in, like, a rut of where I'll have, like, several zeros in a row. But, like, I'm not actually worried about that because I am actually enjoying this product. This product? Project.

'''Brad:''' Words are going to be hard today, Myke. You'll just have to keep me in line. What I'm finding is there is no way I'm stopping what I'm doing, right? Even though I've hit a wall as far as time goes right now, right? I don't have the two plus hours a day that I need to be able to, or the mental capacity to be able to sit down and transcribe a novel. That said, after, like, the first three days, and I mentioned this last week, I have come to, like, love doing this. I miss when I'm not writing. I think about, you know, like, if my day is going along and I'm very busy, and I think about, hey, I'm pretty soon going to have this window to write, and I'm going to enjoy it, right? Like, that's an interesting place to be for me. Like, it feels good, and I'm learning things as I go about my writing, about my time management.

'''Brad:''' I'm thoroughly enjoying the products that I'm using. You know, I've finally gotten into some non-fountain pens, right? Like, I use the Kaweco Sport Gel Roller, the Ombre Edition that we have talked about, you know, probably about a year ago. I use that for a segment in the book, in the writing. I've used a mechanical pencil for the first time. So, I use the Wingback Mechanical Pencil. It's something they sent me. It's a new product they got. I don't even know if it's on a Kickstarter or if they're just selling it directly. But it's kind of a shorter stainless steel mechanical pencil neural grip, and I love the pencil. But what I've learned from it is that my grip pressure is much, much more intense with a mechanical pencil because I'm pressing really hard to make sure the lines are dark enough, right? So, I can read them as I'm writing them. And then I stopped after two pages of that, which is about 600 words.

'''Brad:''' And normally, most pens will – I'll go for five pages, which is about 1,500 words. But my hand was so tired using the pencil. And, like, I learned this, right? Like, I use mechanical pencils all the time, but I'm not just, like, constantly writing, you know, sitting down and writing for 30 minutes to an hour in a row. What do you think the difference is?

'''Myke:''' Like, why do you think one type of thing hurts more than another?

'''Brad:''' In this case, I really think it's the darkness of the line on the page, right? I wanted to be sure I'm getting a dark graphite line.

'''Myke:''' Right, so you're pressing too hard.

'''Brad:''' Yeah. Whereas if I'm using a fountain pen, even if it's small, I'm using a blue or black ink most of the time.

'''Myke:''' Yeah.

== Paper and Ink Contrast ==

'''Brad:''' And that, you know, that is visually easier on the eyes on this ivory-colored paper or cream-colored paper, I guess this probably is, than a graphite. So it comes from me wanting to see the words that I'm writing.

'''Myke:''' Yeah.

'''Brad:''' And you just kind of do it accidentally until I got about, I was really, I noticed it pretty quick. I was about halfway through the first page. I was like, huh. You know, like, the pencil itself is not bothering me, but my grip pressure is. So then I switched. I wanted to, I kind of doubled down. Right after that, I didn't go back to a fountain pen. I have the Tactile Turn Stealth pen that they sent me. We'll talk about that. Well, maybe I'll do a whole breakdown of that next week.

'''Brad:''' And it has a Pilot G2.7 millimeter refill. I was like, okay, let me go, let me see if my idea is correct, that it's just the pencil, and use a standard pen, right? A gel pen instead of a fountain pen. And I wrote three pages with that pen, no problem. So, and that had us a dark black ink. And it really was this idea of me forcing my hand onto the page to just get this darkness, you know? And it's like a subconscious thing, right? You don't notice you're doing it. Yeah. But your eyes are telling you as you're writing, it's like, I want to make sure this is dark enough for me to read. So, even if you're only writing with like 5% more pressure, anything like that changes how your hand and grip feels. So, yeah. I am going to try a wood case pencil soon just to see how that works for me. To see, am I going to have like the same feelings of like intensity on my hand pressure as I'm writing. Because I'll choose a little bit darker core, a little softer and darker core. And the wooden pencils are lighter anyway. And I can hold it a little bit further back. I don't know. I have a feeling that I'm going to get the same results, right? Because it's almost a subconscious writing.

'''Brad:''' Separate from that, I learned two things about some fountain pens that I use. One, my Nakaya Piccolo and Kikio Blue has a stock EF nib. I can get 400 words a page on an A5 page without like any pressure at all. So, the day I used that, I only wrote three pages. But it was 1,200 words, which is kind of crazy if you think about it. You look at it, you don't think it's that much smaller than some of the other pages. But in totality, by the end of the page, that's what it came to be, right? Yeah. I actually noticed it. But, you know, I'm just kind of freewheeling my word counts, right? I'm not counting my page. I did an estimate in the beginning. And I get just over 300 words a page, no matter what pen or nib size I've been using. But this one was noticeably smaller. So, I made a point to stop and count. And like the first page I counted was like 408 words. And the second page I counted was like 410 words. I was like, wow, I guess I get 400 words a page in there. So, I did allocate for that when I was adding.

'''Brad:''' The most recent pen I used, and this gets into the broader topic of what am I learning.

'''Brad:''' As I'm doing this, I'm learning I'm enjoying switching pens and inks a lot, right? But I don't do that on a day-to-day basis because I'm not writing this many words necessarily in a consistent fashion. So, the last pen I've used was the Pilot Custom 823.

'''Brad:''' And mine has a fine nib that I had ground into, a cursive italic nib. And this is the best pen I've used so far. It feels great in the hand when you're writing with it. It's like well-balanced. It's not too heavy. It's not too light. I don't use it posted, obviously. The vacuum mechanism. You're a monster. Yeah, I'm not a monster. I don't like that.

'''Brad:''' So, the vacuum mechanism gives it a little bit of added weight, but not too much to where it's a heavy pen. The grip section and barrel threads are all very soft. It's hard to describe how that feels, but it's a smooth, slightly tapered section. The grip threads don't get in the way. It's just exceedingly comfortable. And the nib, this is the first nib I've used, the first modified nib I've used, right? I've used all... Oh, what is this? So, it's a fine nib, but I had it ground into a cursive italic, right? So, it's a little bit squared off, but still small, right? Like, my words are small. I haven't taken any pictures of these recently, but I'll take... I have some catch-up pictures to put on with, like... I'm going to do the Nakaya and the 823 and the pencil, just to show some of the differences that I've had. Because I've been kind of keeping track of some of my favorites as I go. And this 823, I could write the entire book with this 823. I see why this is... I mean, we already know it's such a popular pen, and it's a pen that I rave about, and it's a pen that I love. But I love it because I heard so many good things from other people who were using it before me. And, you know, this is the Neil Gaiman pen that, you know, a lot of people talk about. Like, he writes some of his work with, and it's just good. It's just good. I dare to say it's probably one of the best bang for your buck pens on the market, even though it's, like, very expensive. You know, it's around $300, give or take, I believe. I don't know if the price has really increased. I just haven't looked. But based on all the other prices of other things increasing, this becomes almost best pen in any category for, like, a hardcore fountain pen user. Like, it's just that good, that quality of a product. So I've been loving that. So that's led me into kind of the last little topic on NaNoWriMo, and that's the using of things. And I am just searching. Not searching. Searching is the wrong word. I am just avidly going through my collection of pens and wanting to ink up literally everything that I have. But I ran into a problem, Myke. I pulled a trick straight from the Myke Harley playbook. I went to ink up a pen. I was like, oh, look at this.

'''Myke:''' I'm already unhappy with the categorization of this. You inked up the pen, and it was perfect, and you loved it, and you had a great time, and everyone was happy.

'''Brad:''' It didn't exactly go that way. So I was like, oh, I haven't inked up my 1911 standard tangerine. So the small 1911 tangerine in a while. And I've always loved that smaller size pen, right? It's a great writing pen. So I was like, okay, this one's going into the rotation. So when I got the 823, I pulled out the Montegrappa Mia, which is about to go in the rotation, and then I pulled out the 1911, which I wanted to ink up. So I unscrewed it, go to ink it up, and guess what I find? A converter stained with dried out ink that I somehow stored without cleaning, which I never, ever, ever do. I don't do that. And all I could think about was this is one of Myke's pens that he's left inked for a year. This is unacceptable. And just like now I know how you feel. I never have this, though.

== Pen Storage Issues ==

'''Myke:''' This never happens to me where I'm like, oh, here's a pen that I like. Whoops, I left it for a year, and it's all dried up. This never happens. They all get used. They just have ink in them for a really, really, really, really, really long time. But they get used. So this doesn't, I don't have this sensation of, oh, no, it's all dried up.

'''Brad:''' Well, I mean, this sounds like a location argument to me, Myke. Like, mine was actually put away. Yours is theoretically, I mean, like, air quote used because it's not put away. It's in the big block of madness.

'''Myke:''' That's the life hack, isn't it? You don't put, never put them away. And then they get used. Then they don't dry up. You see?

'''Brad:''' So right before the podcast today, I tried to clean it out as best I can. So it's sitting there soaking for me to check back out after. I had to disassemble the converter. It was just all caked up and gunked up. That never happens to me.

'''Myke:''' The only pen that has ever happened to me, genuinely, is the Pikachu Lummy Safari, where I had, I think it was the Pilot yellow ink in it, and it just all crusty and stuff, and I didn't want to do it. And it's like, I was like, oh, I don't want to. And I did do it. I cleaned it all out, and I put one of the Sailor Ink Studio inks in it instead, which is better to it. So I have had that. So I will say this. The only time I've ever had that where it's like it's got all dried and crusted and terrible and gross.

'''Brad:''' And that's funny that you say that because this was an orange ink. It actually might have even been Fire on Fire, and those yellow, orange, red inks are going to be, are the crusty ones, right?

'''Myke:''' Yeah, Fire on Fire can get like that. Mont Blanc Lucky Orange gets like it too, so I have to keep my eye on it.

'''Brad:''' Oh, that's a different level. That's a different level. That's like it's the ink is basically solid. Yeah, it's the greatest ink in the world, like crusty-wise, compared to Lucky Orange. And I use Lucky Orange. It's great, but you don't use that pen for a week. It's just, it's growing stuff.

'''Myke:''' Yep. Nice. Yeah. Tasty.

'''Brad:''' So that's my update. I actually have, I'm staring at three new pens I want to ink up. It's fun that I'm thinking about like future review pens, right? Like I always try to test things out, some before I review them. So this is a good way with the Nano Como, copying, inking up pens, you know, testing out new inks and pens as I go.

'''Myke:''' I think you're finding out something really interesting here, to be honest, which is like, I don't know if we would have suggested that the custom 823 would have been so good for this job. Like this is like a different thing that you're working out here, I think, which is like endurance, like for endurance, which is like a different, could be an interesting thing to include into reviews.

'''Brad:''' Like, yeah, and like I mentioned, I mentioned last week that like my physical endurance is changing as I go through this. Like I remember the first few days, I would just complain about my wrist and my grip and my fingers. And, you know, you know how if you grip something for too long, like you can't, you know, release out your fingers, they get all stiff. And like the physical aspects of my hand have improved to better handle my writing.

== Physical Endurance Changes ==

'''Myke:''' You're becoming stronger every day. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Unstoppable. Yep. All right. This episode is brought to you by Pen Chalet. They sell authentic, amazing rollerballs, fountain pens, ballpoints, mechanical pencils, refills, inks, converters, accessories, everything you're looking for, they've got it. And they are an authorized dealer of all of your favorite brands. Pen Chalet believe in giving you the very best service that they can. So they make it fast, they make it reliable, and they do free shipping on orders of over $50 in the US, but they sell internationally. You can ship all over the world. And they offer a 100% satisfaction guarantee on their high-quality products that they offer to you at the lowest prices that they can. Pen Chalet is running special discounts twice a month, close-up specials as well, as well as adding new styles of products. You're always going to find new pens, new stuff over at Pen Chalet, so it's always worth checking back in. So go right now to PenChalet.com, P-E-N-C-H-A-L-E-T.com, and click the podcast link at the top of the website, and enter the password Pen Addict for this week's special offers, and also to get the code that you need to save 10% on anything at any time at Pen Chalet. What's jumping out to you this time, Brad?

'''Brad:''' Big Bennu party over here at Pen Chalet. Oh, Big Bennu Energy over at Pen Chalet. Big Bennu Energy. So there's several models that I love here. My favorite Bennu model is the Euphoria, which I have reviewed on the blog. Wow. That one is going to be one that I will be inking up to use in the book. These pens, they really are very striking. They're not for everybody.

'''Myke:''' Yeah, but they don't look like anything else. If you want to have a pen, like, genuinely, if it's something you want is I want to have a pen that looks like a pen that nobody else has, you can go get a Bennu.

'''Brad:''' Yeah. I tell this story a lot, and I'll share it again. When I would work at pen shows for Van S, and we'd have tons of ink and tons of pens, if we had Bennu pens, I would sell more Bennu pens to people than all the other pens combined. It's just, it's a really cool pen that comes in all these wild materials and wild shapes. So, like, the Briolette is just, like, a crazy price right now. It's kind of the smaller torpedo-shaped one. And then that goes in huge contrast to the Grand Scepter, which may be one of the most popular Bennu sizes.

'''Myke:''' This is my favorite design of them, to be honest.

'''Brad:''' Yeah, this one passed through my hands, and I sent it on to Sarah, but when I got it, I was like, I could get into this. And then I kept the Euphoria for myself to review. It's actually the most traditionally shaped, but has all the Bennu wild features in there as well. And then they have the Bennu Supreme, which I've never tried, which is their more, the most normal-looking, and I mean that in the best way possible. These pens are wild. These are great prices. They are eminently enjoyable. I love my Bennu pen, and I think they're fantastic. One more thing. I'd be remiss if I didn't mention, Myke, the Stipula Netto Patented Filling System Pen Care Filling Ink Pot that you can get at just an amazingly low price.

'''Myke:''' So, if you want to check these out for yourself, go to P-E-N-C-H-A-L-E-T, penshalet.com. Click the podcast link at the top of the website and enter the password penaddict. So, thanks to Pen Chalet for the continued support of this show and RelayFM. So, how's knock shipping going?

'''Brad:''' It was going great up until this week happened. I had finally, I had gotten down to like 150 orders, which I'm pretty happy about. And then I just hit the wall, what, Tuesday, Monday, Monday maybe is when I, or whatever, one day early this week. I was like, I finished my day. I was like 150 left. I was like, yeah, I can probably get these done like in the next week, 10 days. And then I've just hit the wall since then. But I should have time this weekend to catch that up. And I have received the kind of final batch of goods from the factory. So, I'm going to have some big inventory updates for a couple of products, like a couple hundred more cases, like Lookouts and Pencil Cases, some things that sold out early.

'''Myke:''' So, this is stuff that you had to pay to get released. Is that right? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

'''Brad:''' So, it was already built and they just hold it. Like, it's just, it's how that business works. So, yeah. No, they just hold it until I build the whole order. They go ahead and build everything, save it's 500 cases. And then I'll say, okay, ship me 150. And then in two weeks, they'll send me whatever I want. They'll just send me whatever after the big batch is made. So, yeah. So, I have those in. And so, what's going to happen is once I finish this round of shipping and get to just, you know, a handful of orders coming in a day left, I will re-inventory the whole shoot and match. And we'll kind of have one more big round of final send-off stuff. And then, you know, we'll see where we're at from there. That might be the time where, you know, the site, you know, everything is listed as sold out. And then we'll have, like, maybe a last hurrah in Atlanta next year or something like that. With anything else I can scrape up and, you know, all the things, all the one-offs and two-offs that it doesn't really benefit to put on the website at this point. So, it's – everything's been going really good as far as that goes. You know, it's just put me behind because there was so much love for all of our cases. And I appreciate everyone – appreciate everyone's kind words and hope everyone's enjoying their cases. Yes.

'''Myke:''' It says you're never going to get rid of it all. Every time you sell out, there's always going to be more. You're just going to be – you're going to be closing this company out for the rest of your life.

'''Brad:''' I know it's not going to happen until next year. So, it's going as good as I hoped other than just, you know, the shipping is taking a long time. And I appreciate – everyone's patience has been excellent.

'''Myke:''' It's slow. It's just a slow process when you've got one person shipping out hundreds of orders. Like, it's the time.

'''Brad:''' Yeah. And this isn't, like, a prepackaged good that I can just do in bulk. I still, like, literally inspect every case. Right? That's the time process. That's one of those proud things about Nock that we did is how we do our QC. And it's just time-consuming. Right? It just is. Like, I'm physically touching and inspecting every case still to this day. Wouldn't have it any other way.

== Previous Sponsor Discussion ==

'''Myke:''' So, last week, we were sponsored by Kenro Industries. And we were talking about the – You were sponsored by them. No, we both were. I mean, it all came around and went around by the end for me anyway.

'''Myke:''' And they were showing off the Estabrook Pink Sands. This is not part of that. Like, the reason we're talking about it is because I have one. You purchased one. I purchased one because I was really intrigued by it and I wanted to see it. And there were so few of them, I was kind of like – Well, they only made 50, right? And I wanted to show – It's all sold out now, I believe. Yeah. It's sold out that day, I believe. I ordered it on Wednesday and it arrived on Friday, which I do not understand how they did that.

'''Brad:''' I was shocked to see this in the show notes today. Put it that way.

'''Myke:''' I did have a funny thing too where it kind of went missing for a few hours. So it was FedEx delivering it. And they said they'd delivered it, but they had not delivered it. Like, they said they left it outside the front door. It was not left outside the front door. And then a few hours later, like, you know, I checked the mailbox and stuff. A few hours later, Idina checked the mailbox again and a slip had arrived in the mailbox and said it was left to someone else. It was really weird. I don't know what happened. I feel like maybe the driver had a target and just said that they delivered it and then just brought it later on in the day, which is strange.

'''Brad:''' That's just how fast it was. Like, it broke the space-time continuum.

'''Myke:''' It shipped out on Wednesday, I think, which is what. But the reason I was concerned about this specifically is there was only 50 of them. If one was lost, there was only 49, right? So it was like a bit of a concern. So I would say overall, like, body of the pen kind of looks, feels as I would imagine. It's like my other SD, you know? Like, I don't know what they call their acrylic kind of pattern, but it's kind of like, I don't know, like broken glassy type. Yeah, kind of mosaic-y. Mosaic is a good one, yeah. So it's got that similars to it. The color is very vivid.

'''Myke:''' I would say it's definitely more of a coral pink, like the body of the pen itself. And it feels great. But the reason I bought this is for the nib, right? So the nib has got this coating on it, which it's difficult to describe. Like, it's a kind of rosy, goldy pink color, I think is probably the best way to describe the color of the nib itself. And so, yeah, it looks fantastic. I mean, and it works just as great as my other rest of work. And so I was just really intrigued by this nib. And it honestly looks to me like it's kind of like a, I don't know if this makes any sense, but it's like they made the nib out of some kind of pink material. Like how a gold nib looks like it's made out of gold, right? Right. This looks like it was made out of something. It doesn't look like they painted it. It doesn't look like it was like energized, you know, or whatever. Like it really has a look to it that it was made from something. And that something just so happened to be pink in color. Yeah. So it's very impressive.

'''Brad:''' That's a very positive comment I take. Yeah. A takeaway. That's a very positive takeaway, I think. Yeah.

'''Myke:''' Like it doesn't look like it was plated. It doesn't look like it was colored. Like what is it? Rhodium? Is that it? Remedium? That's like a, what am I thinking of here?

'''Brad:''' I mean, there's rhodium plating on like the pins that I get, like my Nakaya that's sitting right here. Like it's anything that's silver looking on a gold nib is usually rhodium plated, but it looks natural.

'''Myke:''' I feel like I might have had like a Franklin Kristoff nib once, which was black. And it looked like they'd applied something. Yes.

'''Brad:''' Traditionally, a lot of the black nibs. There's been some improvements in that technology in that process. But yeah, when you and I were initially buying black nibs, you know, after about the fifth time you've used them or cleaned them, you start to get like gray and it like starts to rub off and things like that.

'''Myke:''' It was more really like, because again, I don't know how, I've only had this for a few days, really. I don't know how it's going to hold up over time. I'm super intrigued. You know, there was like a care note in there where it's like, all right, just be gentle when you clean it. Don't use like shimmery inks or whatever. Mm-hmm. Which honestly, I feel like every pen says that, right? And I understand, right? Because like the margin of what is a shimmery ink, you know, like is wide. And so I think it's probably just in everyone's best interest to be like, I'm not covering that. Your warranty has been voided. If you're putting solid things into the ink, like this isn't, I'm not going to, you know, this isn't for me. So I don't hold that against any pen maker that says that, to be honest.

'''Myke:''' So yeah, but like with those, with those, like the black nibs that had in the past, it looked like someone had put something on the nib. You know what I mean? Yes. Like it was being coated. Oh, totally. This does not look like a coating at all. That's what I find so impressive about it. So I'm really intrigued. Obviously, this was difficult and or expensive because they only had 50 of them. And I feel like that was 100% a thing of like, this is how many nibs we can get. Like the nib care card was from Heinz nibs. They put that in the box, right? Right. So that came from them explicitly. So yeah, I chose a Sailor Ink Studio 731, but I'm not sure this was the right choice. So it's like a- Isn't that an orange? No, it's like a vividy pink. It's like a pinky. But I'm not sure. I think this might be a contrasting color pen, actually. Okay, sure. It's so pink. I don't think I want pink ink, but I don't know what to have yet. Like for example, my 1911 Wicked Witch is all purple, right? Right. And I have a green ink in it. Yeah, that's exactly what I do. Wicked Witch. But I think I might go for maybe a really bright blue or yellow with this. So it's like corally still. I'm thinking of getting ink which is themed for this rather than matching. I don't think the matching is working for me from a visual perspective.

'''Brad:''' Yeah, that's a good way to put it. Theme as opposed to match. Theme appropriate ink. But yeah, it does match, but it's not matchy-matchy, right? It's a coordinating ink.

'''Myke:''' And also because there are technically two pink colors going on here. The body and the nib, they match, but they're both two different types of pinks. And we're adding a third. It's too many. It's too many pinks. Yeah, I can see that.

'''Brad:''' It's starting to clash. Yeah, I think your bright blue would be good. I think so too.

'''Myke:''' There's one of the Sailor Ink Studio inks that we have, which is a really bright blue. I love it. Let me see if I can work out which one. I don't know if it's in my, it's in one of my kind of, the 141 is really beautiful. It's like, it looks like the ocean, like a bright blue ocean.

'''Brad:''' So yeah, might go with that one. That's the call. That's the call. Well, good. I'm glad you like it. Every time I click on the links, I'm like, man, that's a good looking pen. It's a good looking pen.

'''Myke:''' I'm genuinely really happy that I had the curiosity. Yeah. Because, you know, they sponsor the show. And so, you know, I suggest take it with a grain of salt. But what I'm about to say, I really love these Estabrook pens. I think the Estee is an excellent pen. And so I do recommend, like, if you find one that you like the aesthetics of, it's worth going in on. I think they're great. And I think they're doing really interesting stuff. Which actually brings me to something that I wanted to ask you about. I saw a review for the Edison Gold Spot Newark Orion Nebula Diamondcast, which is quite possibly the longest name of any pen that I have ever seen. And that's because there seems to be quite a lot going on here. Like, there's, like, three different companies that have come together to produce this pen. That's exactly right. And what I wanted to ask you is, the diamond cast material that this pen is made from, is that the same material that Edison is, that Estabrook is using?

'''Brad:''' That's correct. So the diamond cast is from McKenzie Penworks. And that's who makes the diamond cast material. So, you know, there's different, you know, just like if you have a Brooks, you know, primary manipulation, you know, there's different recipes. You know, there's just different recipes for, you know, each diamond cast material and different, you know, concoctions and things. I just, I don't know why.

'''Myke:''' I thought that diamond cast was an Estabrook thing. I didn't know that they were buying it from someone. But that makes a lot of sense because it's, comparing it to Jonathan makes, because Jonathan makes his materials for lots of different pen manufacturers. Right. I just didn't know that. I didn't, I don't know if I've been sleeping on this, but I don't think I'd heard of McKenzie Penworks or it hadn't logged in my brain.

'''Brad:''' Gotcha. Yeah, yeah. And maybe I didn't explain it well enough to you just to say that, yeah, this is, this is like someone making this product. And then other, you know, pen manufacturers using their products to manufacture their pens, just like, you know, what the, the Tanzanite Estabrook I have. I forget the exact name of it that I, that I, that I really love. One of the first ones that they did in the first batch was kind of a teal green and blue one, which came out great. And then this one, the Orion Nebula, which is in the, the Edison Newark, which is Goldspot's model. So yeah, there's three different things going on with this pen. It is one of the best pens I've bought in a long time for my personal use. So like, this is like, again, this is kind of like Myke saying, Goldspot sponsors the Pen Attic blog. And, but I bought this pen from them, you know, regular price.

'''Myke:''' Yeah, like these pink sands, I paid my own money for that. They didn't send me that. Which is kind of funny. I ended up probably in the hole, honestly. Yeah, right. On that one.

== Estabrook Pens Review ==

'''Brad:''' Right.

'''Brad:''' Yeah, no doubt. So yeah, like I just purchased this as normal. You know, I have a 10% off code at Goldspot. And like, that's what I, that's how I got this pen. But it's just cool. One of the reasons I bought it, aside from the looks, which we'll, we'll circle back around, because that's what I think gets a lot of people, is the shape of the pen. So I love a pen model called the Edison Beaumont. It's one of their original models. And it's a smaller sized pen. Not a small pen, but in the scope of all of their fountain pen shapes, it's one of the smaller ones. That's not considered like a mini size pen. It's thinner, shorter, lightweight. And the Newark is just a slightly bigger version of the Beaumont. And I had some comparison pics in the review. And you can see in there, both lightweight pens. And having that shape that I know works so well for me, and then ramping it up with a material like the Orion Nebula, I tried not to buy this pen. Like, this is how my process goes these days. And I talk about it a lot, is like something comes on my radar, and I like fall in love with it immediately. And then I just, I don't do anything, right? I just think about it for a while. I don't run and push the buttons like you did last week. Jamming buttons as fast as you can.

'''Myke:''' Sometimes you have to do things for science. Sometimes you do. Sometimes you do.

'''Brad:''' So what I did was I actually bought one of these to give away for Pen Act members. And I was like, you know what? I'm going to buy one for me too.

'''Myke:''' The material, the images that you have is really beautiful. It really, the colors look so great.

'''Brad:''' Yeah. Like, this is kind of one of those pens that just ticks all the boxes for me. It's kind of like, it's really got everything. This is why, also why I love like steel nibs. Like, I don't need a gold nib to feel like the most satisfaction I can get in a pen having a gold nib. Like, I can love a pen even if it has a steel nib. Like, it's not a downgrade to me because the writing experience really, really works for me with steel nibs and the firmness of steel nibs. And it's, the material is one of those that you just have to stop and look at the pen every now and then because, like, you'll be writing away and it's like, oh, let me spin this around in my hands and check out all the magic that's happening here. It's a really spectacular material in a pen shape that I love. And, you know, just the way it feels when I write. So, yeah, it was an all-around winner for me personally. I'm a big fan of this pen. This is going to be, this is a, I'm trying to think of all the pens I've bought this year, which is not that many. Like, there's two that really stand out as kind of like the top of the heap and like heavy rotation pens. And that's this pen and then the Blizzard of Visconti Homo Sapiens.

'''Myke:''' This is a big surprise to me. I mean, like, just because of the way you described it, it feels like it might have been too small and or light for me.

'''Brad:''' Yeah, a lot of people don't like the Beaumont shape because it's smaller and lighter. But I've always leaned towards those smaller, lighter pens. And despite the fact I was just raving about how the 823 writes, which is, I'd say that's above, that teeters on the large size of pens. It's maybe not like the biggest, but, you know, that's enjoyable too. But there's just something about these smaller pens that really clicks with me. And the Newark shape is definitely one of them.

'''Myke:''' Yeah, I think this is cool because I feel like I don't hear about Estabrook pens as much anymore. So, like, I'm really pleased to hear that you've got a new one that speaks to you. Or Edison pens. That's what I meant, Edison pens. I get those Edison, Estabrook, and Estee. Trust me. It must be worse for you, for sure. Like, I mix those up so much. Yeah, I feel like I haven't heard about a new good Edison in a while. Like, they were all the rage, you know, a number of years ago. Because they were doing something that really nobody else is doing. They were, like, the innovator of the acrylic.

'''Brad:''' And filling systems. Like, Brian Gray really, like, leaned into unique filling systems. And still offers all those unique filling systems.

'''Myke:''' One day I'll get mine repaired. One day I will get mine repaired. But what I wanted to ask you about for this pen, the Newark Orion Nebula Diamondcast, is about the price?

'''Brad:''' Yes. It's a premium with the diamondcast material. So, the stock, what you would think of as a stock Edison, is, like, the basic acrylics, like you were talking about. So, the stock acrylics, which are still, like, beautiful, just standard acrylics, are $169, which is a great price, honestly. Nice. For, like, custom-made, like, you know, small batch manufacturer pens with steel nibs, like, that's the price, right? That's what this range, you see a lot of people in this price range. It's a great price. So, the upgrade is, what, so that's $65, $66 of an upgrade. That's, you know, a third of the original pen costs or so. Is it worth the upgrade? I mean, for me, it wasn't even in consideration. Although, before this one released, I almost bought the green one. There's a green Newark and just the standard acrylic. Because I like, again, it's a shape thing for me. It's a pen shape thing. But, yeah, like, you have to think about the Diamondcast Premium. Because it's an ultra-premium price point. For this pen, the Estabrooks are an ultra-premium price point. Like, they go from, like, what, $170 to around $300, if not more. Because it's a bigger, wider pen, right? The Estabrooks, especially the Oversize, it's a wider diameter, longer pen. So, it requires more material, right? So, there's an even bigger percentage upgrade. So, that's just a personal thing. You have to decide, is it worth the upgrade? So, this one was $225. And, like, I mean, everyone's different. I didn't blink. Like, it was a non-consideration for me. The difference in price. Like, I just thought it was just easily worth it. Like, not even questioning any... To me, they were the same price. If that makes sense. I don't know how to explain it other than that. It felt worth that extra premium for that material. And that was the least of my consideration, was that price difference.

'''Myke:''' All right. This episode is also brought to you by our friends over at Squarespace, the all-in-one platform to build your online presence and run your business. From websites and online stores to marketing tools and analytics, they have got you covered. They do this by combining cutting-edge design with world-class engineering to make it easier than ever for you to establish your home online and make your ideas a reality. Squarespace has all of the tools that you need to create a beautiful, modern website. You start with one of their beautiful, professionally designed templates, use drag-and-drop tools to make it your own, and customize the look and feel, settings, all the products you have on sale, basically everything with just a few clicks. And all of Squarespace's websites are optimized for mobile as well, so they're going to look great on every device. You get free unlimited hosting, top-of-the-line security, there's nothing to install, patch, or upgrade. You get access to 24-7 customer support, you can grab a unique domain name, and take advantage of SEO and email marketing tools, and so much more. Squarespace can let you do anything you want to do with a website, whether you want to announce an upcoming event, promote a business, publish a blog post, publish your artwork, or even just take the idea that you have and give it a place online so people can find out more about it. Squarespace has everything you need to make this a reality. It's why I've used them. It's why Brad's used them for a decade, over a decade, both of us. So it really is just the place to go if you want to put something online. Go to squarespace.com slash penaddict, and you can sign up for a free trial today with no credit card required. Then when you're ready to launch, use the offer code PENADDICT, and you'll get 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. That's squarespace.com slash penaddict, and when you decide to sign up, use the offer code PENADDICT, and you will get 10% off your first purchase and show your support for the show. Our thanks to Squarespace for their continued support of the Pen Addict and Relay FM.

'''Brad:''' All right, I did a review on my Squarespace blog earlier this week, Myke. Like the Diamondcast from last week, as passionate as I am about talking about that, Edison, X, Goldspot, Newark, Orion, Nebula, Diamondcast, Myke, I love gel ink pens, especially microtip gel ink pens from Japan, and I want the Secura Balls line to be one of the next great pens, but it's not there. It's not there.

'''Myke:''' I hadn't realized until you said it. When you said it out loud, I realized how much I hate the word ball sign. It's really bad. It wasn't so much of an issue when I read it, but when it said out loud, I do not like it.

'''Brad:''' Yeah, and this is a ball sign ID, right? So that's a whole different, you know, You go to ID the ball sign,

'''Myke:''' I've always lost the point, you know?

'''Brad:''' Yeah, yeah. But this is Secura's, once again, repeated attempts at getting, breaking ground in the gel ink pen market. A very tough competitive landscape that is dominated by Pilot, Uniball, Zebra, and Pentel, right? I don't know that anyone would argue that those aren't the top four gel pen manufacturers, and then you have this whole subset of manufacturers that is just kind of picking at the crumbs of whatever those big players leave behind. You know, your Secura's, your Oto's, your Ray Mays, your whoever. You know, and I kind of want one of these pens to make a difference in, you know, kind of like nip at the heels a little more. This one's close. It's not there. I think there were some inconsistencies in the refill, but they have changed. They have made a barrel that works, and they have a refill and an idea for the inks that works, right? The ball sign ID uses...

'''Myke:''' Ball sign.

'''Brad:''' Ball sign. Lennon toolbar. Ball. It uses the mix of black plus a color ink, right? So that's black and purple, black and red, black and brown, black and green, black and blue, right? That's a very cool thing to do these days, and it's a .4 tip, and it writes really well. It kind of writes like a Uniball RT1 refill, and it just needs a little bit of tweaking. Like, it's a little expensive for a little bit lower quality barrel. I feel like they do something which none of their competition does, really, and they have a metal clip, but then they don't match the nose cone of the pin with that metal same aesthetic, right? Some pins have a plastic clip and a plastic nose cone. Like, that's fine. Some pins have a metal tip and a metal nose cone where it matches. This has a metal clip and then a plastic nose cone that doesn't look like it fits the quality of the rest of the pin. So, like, I really overanalyze these cheap jet-link pins because I think the market is interesting. It's like, if Secura could, like, tighten this up, like, five or ten more percent, like, this could be, like, a really good, like, competitive pin. I don't think it's there yet, but you can tell by how I talk about it and how I review it that I really want them to do something to, like, you know, like, poke the bear at the top, if you will. But, I mean, Secura is a big enough company on their own for their other products. So, this is, like, a sub-product for them, almost. Like, they're, you know, they're the Secura Pigma Micron people, right? That's the whole thing. Like, that's kind of their deal. And I'm sure they sell, like, tens of thousands more jelly roll pins than they do this pin, right? Because that's what the kids buy. But this is, like, that office supply core pin that all the other competition has on lock. And this is kind of their attempt at that. And I just see it, like, it's close. And, like, I want these types of things to continue to, like, be a thing and improve. I wouldn't rate it above any of the other pins that I mentioned yet, but, man, it's close. Like, it's getting there. It's like, come on, Secura. Like, I'm trying to pump you up here. It's like, you're close. You are really, really on the right path here. But there's some changes you need to make.

'''Myke:''' All right, let's finish out today's episode of a couple of Ask TPA questions. The first one comes from Nibs On Point, who asks, I just found my first fountain pen from what was 30 years ago. I remember Myke's first fountain pen from the show, which was the yikes fountain pen of all knowledge, in case you like a memory. What was Brad's first fountain pen?

'''Brad:''' I wouldn't bet my last dollar on this being my first, because I think I had, like, a Platinum Preppy. You know, I tried, like, the Platinum Preppys and the Pilot Varsities, like, your disposable types, before when I was just testing things out. But the first one that I remember kind of reviewing and kind of trying to decide if this is a thing, and I remember not even, like, totally liking it, at the time, was this Lamy Safari, and it had, like, this chartreuse barrel. I think it might have been a limited edition at the time. And the review's up on the blog. I'll have to go find it, but it has to be that pen. And there were fountain pen reviews before that, but that's the one that sticks in my mind as my first, because at the time, like, the Platinum Preppys or the Pilot Varsities, like, didn't really leave, like, a mark on me, right? But the Safari did, because at the time, I didn't get it, right? It didn't, like, click with me. And, like, I'm sure that review says as much. Like, there was no, like, oh, my gosh, this is it type of thing. It was like, okay, y'all wanted me to try a fountain, like, a real fountain pen. I did, and it's a pen, and I'm just going to stick with my gel pens, I think was probably kind of how the review went. And this is me not even recalling it from probably, I don't know, it's probably been 10 years ago at this point. But I'll find it and put it in the show notes. What was the model name again? I don't know. It was, like, this bright yellow green. It's, like, a chartreuse-y looking color, but I don't know the official name of it. I probably just did, like, Lamy Safari fountain pen review. So we'll just have to look at the date. But that's what I consider, like, my first fountain pen. And I don't have that one anymore. I ended up giving it to someone. I kind of wish I did have it, but not a big deal. Do you want me to read this?

'''Myke:''' It's not very long.

'''Brad:''' Yeah, yeah. All my reviews were really short back then. Okay, go ahead.

'''Myke:''' So many readers of this blog are fountain pen fans and have been trying to get me on the bandwagon for the longest time. This is from November 24, 2008. Well, the time has come to get my seat ready because I am really enjoying this Lamy Safari I ordered from JetPens a couple of weeks back. Fountain pens always look beautiful and interesting to me, but I had stayed away mostly because I felt I didn't have much use for them. What good was spending that much money on a pen that was just going to sit in a drawer and collect dust? RIP. If you couldn't tell by the majority of my reviews, I'm a micro tip ink pen fan. Fountain pens are big and messy, right? But the more I read about them and the more I thought that I could get proper use out of one and the Lamy Safari looked right up my alley. In looking at the models available, this lime green body with chrome clip, that's the model, really caught my eye. And as good as it looks on a web page, it's even better looking in person. The plastic barrel is sturdy and looks like it could take a pretty good beating and any other concern I had with fountain pens. I also wasn't sure what nib size to order, but this one came with a fine nib and that's working out great for me. I think any nib size larger than that would be out of my comfort zone and the next one I order, yes, there will be more, will have an extra fine nib. As expected, the ink flow is excellent and the writing experience couldn't be smoother. I'm going to have to tweak my writing style a bit to get the best use out of the pen. Spoiler alert, Brad, you didn't looking at the image.

'''Myke:''' I'm going to tweak my writing style a bit to get the best out of the pen because one thing I found is that my normal writing style and angle, my south to north strokes, come across the nib a bit and I lose the ink on occasion. Ah, you may have changed it a bit. Nothing I can't correct and heck, maybe having a fountain pen will make me want to work on my cursive handwriting again. Overall, I couldn't be happier with my first non-disposable fountain pen purchase and unfortunately for my wallet, I think there will be more to come. Oh, little did he know.

'''Brad:''' What a review from young Bradford.

'''Myke:''' Man, that's like November 24th is next week. That's kind of fun.

'''Brad:''' 2008, 2008. So that was one year into the blog because the blog started a year before that, like right around that day.

'''Myke:''' 13, oh my God, 13 years ago. I'm pleased we found that.

'''Brad:''' Yeah, we're coming up on the 14th anniversary. I want to say like the anniversary date is like November 29th. Right. So this will be the 14th anniversary coming up here in a couple weeks. So yeah, that was good. That was good. Like I was more positive on it than I recall. I got most of the details right except I was a little bit more positive there that there would be more in my future and you know, it escalated. Yeah, it escalated a little bit.

'''Myke:''' And TJ asks, this is a longer question. Now that I'm almost a year into my first fountain pen ownership, I realized that I'm starting to need to learn different things. For example, I've gotten to the point now where I have a lot of pens, a lot for me, about six, and I don't use them all every day. Recently, I saw some articles that said you should store fountain pens horizontally and definitely not with the nib or tip pointed down. Is that accurate? I'm willing to believe it, but I had assumed that storing them nib down made it easier for the ink to stay in the nib so it would be more likely to write after not being used for a while.

'''Brad:''' Yeah, logically that makes sense, right? So nib down would lead to that, but it leads to other issues as well, such as like pooling in the feed to where if you have it stored nib down that when you get the pen out to write it, it's going to really just kind of like spew all over the page. So horizontally is the best. You will get people to swear by other ways, but I don't store my fountain pens that are inked any way other than horizontally.

'''Myke:''' I store them nib up.

'''Brad:''' And Myke stores them nib up, which you're just like, that's fine too. Like there's no wrong answer, but you're going to have to manage things. Yep. Sometimes my pens need a minute, right? Right. So Myke has to plan on priming his pens. Like if he picks one up that he hasn't used in a week, it's probably going to take a second to start writing, right? Like that's the sacrifice that he makes for that. If you leave them nib down, you're going to have to like, you might want to start on a paper towel to suck out all the ink that's just kind of pooled in the feed. Like it's not going to run out the nib or anything like that. That's not going to be the problem. But the problem is you might just have like a heavy application of ink like for your first few lines because it's not balanced.

'''Myke:''' One of the things that made me comfortable to store my pens like this was we were at one pen show. It was one of the early pen shows. A very good friend of the show, Thomas Hall, he was showing me a pen and it wasn't starting. And he aggressively shook it. Yeah. Like took the end of the pen and just put the cap on and just one big like bang, right? Like just like, ah. Yeah. And then it started writing. And then I was like, well, if Thomas is going to do it, I'll be fine to do it.

'''Brad:''' Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, I'd say 80% of people are going to say horizontally. And then there's room for other options for other reasons. Yeah. I don't like how much space they take up when they're horizontal. Yeah. Right.

'''Myke:''' That's why I store vertical. And if you are going to store vertical, you should store vertical up, nib up. Honestly, to be honest, most of the vertical storage solutions if you're using fountain pens only work that way because the cap is too large to go inside the slot that they've created in there.

'''Brad:''' Right. Right. Yeah. I would have, nib down would be like only in case of emergency. Like that actually makes me nervous to store a pen. I'll tell you what I do. It would make me anxious. A nib up I could do.

'''Myke:''' My pen well. My pen well craftsman that I use. But that's like, because that's in use. I don't, when I'm finished writing notes, I take it out and put it away. But like right now, I have my, my pink sands Estabrook in the pen well craftsman because I'm using it. And it's just like, right. It's where I put the pen for the time being. But then I don't know why

'''Brad:''' that angle makes me feel more comfortable than just like straight vertical. I don't know why. I agree with you. Even though it's the same,

'''Myke:''' same effect. But I wouldn't leave a pen in that overnight or like for a couple of days or whatever. It's just like, yeah, it's an in use product. Yeah. Cool. So a good question actually. I like that. Yeah, it is. It is. We'd love some more questions by the way. Please send us some tweets or in the discord. Hashtag AskTPA on Twitter. Question mark, AskTPA in the RelayFM members discord or email them to hello at penaddict.com because we have to, we might be pre-recording an episode in the next couple of weeks. So having a bunch of AskTPA would be great for that. So please, please send them in. If you've got any questions or if you want to hear us talk about anything specifically, it doesn't have to just be a question to be like, hey, I want to know more about this. So hashtag AskTPA on Twitter or question mark AskTPA in the RelayFM members discord. Thank you so much to Squarespace and Pen Chalet for the support of this episode. If you want to find Brad online, go to penaddict.com and spoke design.com. Brad is also penaddict on Instagram, Dowdy is on Twitter and you can always find Brad streaming over at twitch.tv slash penaddict. I am at imyke and you can find really beautiful, fantastic journals and notebooks at cortexmerch.com. The end of the year is coming so you want to make sure you have your theme system journal. I'll just say it right now. If you want one by one, if you want one by one. Yeah.

'''Brad:''' We do this every year. Yeah.

'''Myke:''' We got a lot of them but who knows? Cool. No. Yeah. We'll be back next time. Until then, say goodbye, Brad. Goodbye, Brad.

[[Category:Podcast Transcripts]]
[[Category:The Pen Addict Podcast Transcript]]

The Pen Addict 484/transcript

2026-06-23T15:58:45Z

PencilBot: fixed spelling

{{Infobox podcast transcript
| name = The Pen Addict
| number = 484
| title = Don't Lie about Being in Antarctica
| date = October 20th, 2021
| hosts = [[Brad Dowdy]] 
[[Myke Hurley]]
| guests =
| link = [https://www.relay.fm/penaddict/484 Episode 484]
| audiolink = [https://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/traffic.libsyn.com/secure/thepenaddict/The_Pen_Addict_484.mp3 Audio Episode 484]
| length = 73
}}

'''Myke:''' From RelayFM, this is The Pen Addict, episode 484. Today's show is brought to you by Pen Chalet, Squarespace, and Estabrook by Accutron. My name is Myke Hurley and I'm joined by Brad Dowdy. Hi, Brad.

'''Brad:''' Hi, Myke. How are you?

'''Myke:''' Very good, my friend. How are you? Good, good. Why'd you let me go on vacation last week? I just decided to like rip things apart and like I had way too much time to think and things happened. What is going on? I didn't really know it was my decision to let you go on vacation, but I'll bear that in mind for next time.

'''Brad:''' Okay, thank you. I appreciate that. I'll let you know when it's coming up and I'll let you decide, you know, if something else major in my life needs to happen.

== Survey Results ==

'''Myke:''' All right. Well, we've got some stuff to talk about later on. Today, people might be aware, they might not be aware, but we'll get to that when we get to it. But just as a last reminder, we want to let people know that the Pen Addict Slack survey, which doesn't require you being in the Slack, we've mentioned it a couple of times over the last few weeks, that's coming to a close now. So if you do want to get your entrances in and get your information and build up this really cool database, I don't really know how to describe it.

'''Brad:''' Well, it's a data point. It's a point in time of a very much shooting fish in the barrel survey, right? It's not an open managed survey, but we know the restrictions of people who are listening to this content or taking the survey. So it's a little bit skewed that way, but it's just a fun look at people who are into this hobby and the things that they're into. Yeah. This is the last week. We'll have more on it once Kat and Michael, they'll analyze it. They'll do some, I think, video analysis of it. And I know the point we were on last week about the top brands, that's definitely going to be a thing. And we got the big pen show bump on the survey as well. They went from like 400 and something to 600 and something responses, and I'm spending a couple of days. So if you haven't taken it, go take it. It's fun. It just talks about what you think about fountain pens and brands and things like that. So it's good stuff. It's good stuff. I believe it's anonymous too, right?

'''Myke:''' It's anonymous. Yeah, yeah.

'''Brad:''' Because they do ask some age and data, like some personal data, but it's all anonymous. Just to kind of map in what this community is built upon.

'''Myke:''' Which is just interesting stuff, and I really look forward to digging through some of the results. I had a few people contact us about our confusion about Pilot. Yeah, yeah. I did too. I did say like Vanishing Point is probably like a big point, like as like a big contender. I wasn't really thinking about, but obviously makes a lot of sense, right? The Pilot Vanishing Point is a very popular pen, and it's also like a really good pen for its money for most people. So that could really be a big sway. I still don't, it still doesn't feel number one worthy for me, but we're all different.

'''Brad:''' Well, again, like it's a multiple selection question, which we missed in the beginning. But still. I'll stick to my comment that it's just, it's such, it's a brand with a very high floor, right? There's very few bad Pilot products, and so people tend to latch onto those and keep them for a long time. So it's good. Kat and Michael did let me know we have respondents from all continents now except Antarctica. So I would like to give a special shout out to those of y'all stationed down there at any of the substations in Antarctica. We have to have one pen addict listener down there, right? But like, like, number say, we got one on that continent. So I'm going to need them, like in the next few days to number one, download and listen to this podcast. And then number two, go answer this survey. But number three, don't lie about being in Antarctica. I don't, all of a sudden, if we get five. Hang on, there were 9,000 people from Antarctica. You know, if we get five respondents from Antarctica, we know you're full of it. So here's the thing.

'''Myke:''' Here's the thing.

'''Brad:''' Let's just up the ante.

== Antarctica Challenge ==

'''Myke:''' Fill it out if you're from Antarctica and send us some, an image, some kind of proof, you know? Yeah. Yeah. You know, like you filling it out with the newspaper next to you or something, you know? Yeah. One of those things. Yeah. Go outside.

'''Brad:''' Take me an outside picture. You know? Yeah. We're going to need proof if you reply that you are in Antarctica or no one's going to believe you. You get nothing for this, by the way. No, no, no, no. Just our eternal gratitude. Yeah. So we can check all the boxes, check all the continent boxes. Twisby's checking all the boxes, Myke, with their custom colors and interesting pins. And this one popped across my feed first and foremost because of the artwork. And the artist's name is Karashi Soil. I, you know, my apologies. I didn't check on the pronunciation of this, but they're an artist who basically draws stationery, like for the most part. They draw like real life products, right? Yeah. Let's say that, you know, they could draw like cameras or phones or whatever, like that type of artwork. And it's really fun artwork. I really like the style and the detail. And they worked with Twisby to make their own, I guess, I don't want to say, it's not custom, but like a limited, yeah, like a limited colorway for Japan only with the artist's artwork. And the first question that comes up is, well, haven't we seen this color before? And for Twisby and the artist to actually have a comparison photo in the marketing, it cracks me up. It just does.

'''Myke:''' I think that this is the artist's like personal brand color. Yes. Like going through their account, they seem to share, I believe that this is in Japanese and it seems like they share a lot of pens that are yellow, you know, like, which I'm imagining. Twitter's failing me on the translation here, which is a shame. Yeah. I've had that too. But it's, I imagine they're like, you know, like this is my color and now they work with it. It looks like a lot of their artwork is done with fountain pen as well. Like just looking at the way the lines look and stuff. So I think that they draw with fountain pen. So actually their profile. I think this is super cool.

'''Brad:''' Yeah. Their profile on Twitter says most of the artwork is done with fountain pens. So I did get that.

'''Myke:''' Oh yeah. Look at that. That's cool. I think that this is a great idea from Twisby. Like this is just like, this is what I want to see. Like I would like to see a pen brand embrace limited editions with creators and influencers. So like, again, comparing it to keyboards again, as I like to do these days, like a lot of the key cap designs and stuff, they are from particular designers, like not companies. And it's that person's design that they then get manufactured. They partner with a manufacturer and it gets made. And I think it would be kind of cool for a company like a Twisby or even a Kaweco if they did it right. Like to say like, for example, like the way that you do it, but you have to maybe do a lot more work than would be normal, right? Where you're having to like, hand these companies down, buy them in advance or that kind of stuff. I think it'd be kind of cool if like, you know, Twisby just partnered with a bunch of artists and creators and influencers. Like what color would you like? You know, what color would you like to sell to your audience? I think that would be a really cool idea. I think it would do well.

'''Brad:''' So here's what I want to see. It's along your lines, but this is the real reason I wanted to bring this up. So the color itself is, you know, like you mentioned, artist representative, right? It's their color. It's not, it's, you know, it's a little bit more of a mustard yellow compared to more of a, just a more lemony yellow of the original one.

'''Myke:''' And the box features original artwork from the artist too, which is amazing.

'''Brad:''' So that's my thing. So the selling point here to me, as we mentioned last week on the show, is the garbage we create. The selling point is this artwork. So what I want here is I want a print. I want a t-shirt. I want a tote bag. That makes me feel better about them using a similar color for the eco because this is killer artwork.

'''Myke:''' Yeah.

'''Brad:''' And all it is, is on a box that's going to sit in my closet, if not go in the trash can for some people. And it deserves more than that. So that's what I wanted to say about this. I love the idea. I love the correct collaboration. I love the product. Give me this artwork somewhere besides on the garbage that we create.

'''Brad:''' And that's the point I want to make for Twisby. If they're going to continue to do this and have these, you know, you know, next, next shade down the line color collaboration, right? To where they're going to end up using up all the colors like Kaweco did and have to like rename the product line. Oh no, this is now the eco classic, right? So we can use the color again on the barrel. Give me something else. Give me a notebook print, you know, give me a notebook cover with this printed on it and sell that in collaboration. It'll make me feel better about having a same color Twisby eco that comes at a premium, right? So this is 8,800 yen. So it's around 77 US dollars, which I think I've only I've bought the Japanese orange limited edition. I think it was around like 65, something like that dollars, maybe $70. So that's kind of the going rate for these, these limited edition Japanese Twisbys. But I would like to see more collaborations, but take them a little bit further than just box artwork. Yeah. And, and any, honestly, any regular color, this is any regular color. Like this could have been done anytime by Twisby. Make me feel more special. So anyway, I love it.

'''Myke:''' I want a Myke Hurley Twisby. Yeah. I want a Brad Doughty Twisby. Pick a color. Like let me pick a Pantone color and we'll go wild with it. You know? Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. I think I would like to see them do it. They've clearly done it. I don't know if it's just like maybe, you know, someone in the Twisby art department just loves this artist. Right? Yeah. And, and just wanted to like, don't mean it's in a weird way, like get close to them, you know, like, like, oh, now we know each other. We are collaborators. Like it's a cool thing.

'''Brad:''' Oh yeah. No, we all have, we all like super fan over people we'd like to like to work with and people who have some, some cool stuff. So yeah.

'''Myke:''' Like Brad Doughty. Mm. That's what, that's what, that's what I did.

'''Brad:''' I, I found what you're getting for Christmas, Myke. It's not the Twisby that we just mentioned. It's the, I'm getting you a, a, a PP for Christmas. Stop this now. The, the, the PP1 pencil precision. It's a lot of piece. Mm-hmm. Um, you can make your own wooden pencils, Myke. I had a listener or reader send this to me and I was like, it kind of blew me away. Cause I did, there's no way when they sent me the link, I was like, this is going to be just garbage. Right. This is not going to be a thing and it's going to be dumb. And then I started looking at it and I'm like, oh my God, this thing is crazy. And it looks like really, really legit. So I reached out to, uh, the erasable guys. I'm like, have you, certainly you guys have heard of this. And they said, they said that they had an Andy was trying to get like a loaner unit. But what this is, is this really involved woodcase pencil maker machine, like a self, like your own tabletop pencil maker. Right. And let's, I'll just go ahead and say upfront. So, you know what we're dealing with. If you can't see the link right now, it's like a $600 unit. Right.

'''Myke:''' So it's all these tools. Yeah.

== Pencil Making Kit ==

'''Brad:''' It's basically, it's basically like a whole toolbox and on how to make a pencil. And it's, it looks to me like, I just, I don't know, but it looks extremely well done, you know, from just my visuals. I would love to know if someone has tested this out because you're doing everything, like you're putting the slats together. You're putting the cores in the middle of the slats. You're extruding the barrels to, to cut the shape of the barrel. You know, do you want a hex barrel or do you want, you know, a round barrel? And you can do these different things with this.

'''Myke:''' And they erase it on and put an eraser, the barrel. It's got a little, man. This is a wild thing. I, I will say, I don't know why. The only reason I can imagine somebody wanted this is because they just wanted it. You know, like I don't really think there's much of a purpose for it as such. Right. I don't think people need to make their own pencils, but I could imagine like you might, if you like this kind of thing, like, like hobby stuff or whatever, you could, oh, this seems like a fun activity. Right.

'''Brad:''' Right. And they did pose it as, hey, you know, do this with your kids. Right. Right. It's very, it's theoretically kid-friendly the way the marketing is. Well, I don't know, man. But it's not, it's not on there, like it's a complicated piece of machining. Like, I mean.

'''Myke:''' I don't know if this is Myke friendly. I don't know about kid-friendly. This, I mean. It's pretty intense. Yeah. I think I could get caught in something here.

'''Brad:''' Like, there's a lot of things going on. Yeah. But you just like, it's, they even have it set up. I was like looking, I was like looking at the, at the marketing page and you go all the way down and you see like the painted pencils. I was like, well, how do they suggest like you paint the pencils? And they actually have that built in. They have like a holder that's built into this device that allows you to turn the pencil as you paint it. It's really cool.

'''Myke:''' Right. Like it's really, they have a bunch of stuff. With this company, you can do like make, they have like chopstick makers and stuff too.

'''Brad:''' Yeah. So it's wild. It's, but I think you said it the best. It's kind of like a hobby kit, right? Yes. So it's like one of those things, like if you're going to do like a science project, like this is a more like a hardware type project, right? Like, you know, it's, it's pretty cool. I, they have clearly thought a lot about this.

'''Myke:''' In general, Brad, I don't know if you checked out their website, but like they sell just tools, right?

'''Brad:''' I mean, I'm looking at stuff. Yeah. I'm looking at like thousand dollar planers and stuff like that.

'''Myke:''' They are beautiful.

'''Brad:''' Yeah.

'''Myke:''' Really beautiful. Like just like the planes, like the block planes. Yeah. They're stunning.

'''Brad:''' Yeah.

'''Myke:''' They really are.

'''Brad:''' Cool company. Pretty well. Yeah. Very cool. Never heard of this before. You know, their, their tagline is serving woodworkers worldwide since 1983. So they're definitely like in that, that market. Yeah. And it looks like some pretty cool stuff. So I wanted to bring that up because I thought it was neat. And I thought it was, it surprised me when I clicked the link, what I was actually seeing. So it was very cool.

'''Myke:''' All right. Should we take our first break?

'''Brad:''' Yeah. We might have some other stuff to talk about.

'''Myke:''' We've got some big stuff to talk about. But first, let's thank our, one of our sponsors of this episode. And that is Pen Chalet. Pen Chalet have everything that you need for your stationary habit. If you're looking for a new pen, you're looking for some ink, maybe you want some refills, some carrying cases, carrying cases. That sounds like a great idea, right, Brad?

'''Brad:''' Yeah. Love a pen carrying case. Maybe. Let me think about it a little bit.

'''Myke:''' You can think about that.

'''Myke:''' Pen Chalet have all of your favorite brands. They do fast, reliable customer service, and they're doing discounts all the time. Pen Chalet always have great prices, but they're always doing special discounts, as well as adding new styles of pens, new products. Every time you go to Pen Chalet, you're going to find something new, because they have everything that you are looking for. They also back it up with the best, reliable, most fast, I don't know why I said it that way, customer service around. They sell internationally. They have great shipping rates. I've bought from Pen Chalet a bunch of times. It's a fantastic experience. But if you're in the US, they do free shipping on orders of over $50, which I think at Pen Chalet is easy to make a car up over $50, because they have so much amazing stuff. And Pen Chalet really wants you to have a great experience, which is why they offer a 100% satisfaction guarantee on their high-quality pens that they sell to you for the lowest prices they can. So go to PenChalet.com. That's P-E-N-C-H-A-L-E-T.com. Click the podcast link at the top of the website and enter the password PENADDICT to get your hands on this week's special offers and to get the code that you need to save 10% on anything at any time over at Pen Chalet.

== New Pen Addict List Items ==

'''Brad:''' This is a crazy interesting list. Lots of new things on the list this week. First off, the Tibaldi N60 fountain pens. I reviewed a different model Tibaldi. I think this is probably the better model to go with, the N60 model. They look nice. They're a really good rider. I really enjoyed my experience with it. It's a great pen. The Mayora Impronte is a pen I've just reviewed that I think is really great as well. If you like Leonardo-style pens, Mayora is another company that is along those lines. They have the same DNA coming from Omos, the closure of Omos. This was one of the splinter companies.

'''Myke:''' I think we spoke about them a couple of weeks ago, didn't we?

'''Brad:''' Yep, yep. We talked about my review, which I loved. And then you scroll down. There's some really interesting stuff down here. Once you get down, there's a pen from Stipula called the Suprema, which I have never seen before. It's an expensive pen, but it's a big discount. And this is something I would have to research and not necessarily buy on a whim. But I'm kind of intrigued by how the Stipula looks. And Stipula has been doing some new things recently. Sorry, my apologies. The closure of Delta from the new pen makers. My apologies. I said that wrong. There's too many closures and too many spawning companies. The interesting thing, Myke, the Platinum 3776 Mac E.A. fountain pens are getting closer to the standard 3776 prices, which is a compelling price point.

'''Myke:''' Yeah, that's the one I was just looking at. Like, I can't believe the price of this Mac E.A. pen 3776.

'''Brad:''' It's really good. And then the President, which is being discontinued by Platinum, is an even lesser price. You're getting down into the full 3776 price range at this point. So it's an interesting list. There is a lot of good stuff on this list from Pen Chalet. So I appreciate Ron putting all this together. It looks fantastic.

'''Myke:''' All right. If you want to go check this out for yourself, go to penchalet.com and click the podcast link at the top of the website and enter the password penaddict. Our thanks to Pen Chalet for their continued support of this show and RelayFM.

'''Myke:''' Anything happen this week that we need to talk about? So in case people aren't aware, Brad sent out a newsletter to the Knock Co newsletter subscription list and announced it in other places as well. Knock Co, of course, the brand that Brad's been running for like six or seven years, I think.

'''Brad:''' Um, 2014, I think. Yeah, 2014 was like the website launch. Was that the Kickstarter launch? That was the Kickstarter launch too. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was 2014. So there you go.

'''Myke:''' So many years now, like six or seven years. And Brad announced that Knock Co in its current iteration is no more.

'''Brad:''' It is. It is. This has been a decision a long time in the making, as Myke has been privy to. One of the few people that have been privy to the long term rolling around in my head of making this decision. And it's not obviously an easy decision to make, but it's the right decision at the right time to make. Knock can no longer sustain itself as it is without me putting in more time and money. And that's the short version of it. And, you know, it's probably how a lot of businesses shut down. No more time, no more money. And Knock is a heavy time and money investment brand, right? There is so much that goes into products. There's so much money that goes into, like, the capital. There's a lot of inventory float that you have to have and a lot of money tied up. And it could work. Like, the reason why it took me so long to let this go is because I know it could be successful if I had more time and money to put into it. So, the problem with that is I have so many other things going on that are going really well. I don't have, like, the 40 hours a week that Knock would need to be successful. Like, I fully believe if Knock was my only job and I spent 40 hours a week doing it and, like, that's all I wanted to do, it would be just a really successful, sustainable business. But as it's set up now to where the product launches are stretched out, you know, the inventory is large, the requirements from, you know, just design, production, inventory management, operations, marketing, shipping, all of those things, there's not enough time for me to, like, really get in there and make a difference, right? So, I threw money at it from my own bank account just trying to sustain because I know it's a good business, right? What were you sustaining? I was sustaining nothing. I was just sustaining.

'''Myke:''' What were you throwing money at?

'''Brad:''' Oh, inventory, inventory.

'''Myke:''' Right, but this is part of the stuff that I think it can be difficult to get you out around, right? Mm-hmm. If the business was selling stuff that you had to get, you know, if you needed to replace inventory, why were you having to pay for it?

'''Brad:''' Right, right. So, let me explain it. Let me explain it this way. Yeah. So, the business basics, and I think some people will understand this and some people won't, but especially for small businesses or non-public, non-public you run businesses, people, business owners talk about being profitable or not profitable, right? And that's just accounting magic for a small business. Small businesses do not want to run at a profit because you are then taxed on your profit. So, if you're not in these types of businesses, you haven't run these types of businesses, that sounds really weird. But it's not when the expenses for running a small business include your salary or your distributions or your bonuses or however, whatever money you are making for actually doing the work, right? Those come off before you get to the final end of the year decision. Did we make a profit? Yeah. So, not only... So, Nock has never been profitable, right? But we've always gotten paid. Mm-hmm. I haven't made a personal dime from Nock in about two years.

'''Myke:''' So, you... All I've done is work. You haven't even been...

'''Brad:''' There's been zero distributions to me in about two years.

'''Myke:''' So, this is like no, no profit, like real no profit.

'''Brad:''' Like, that's a different version of the business is not profitable. That is like literally I'm losing money because all I'm doing is spending time and investing my own money to just kind of float the inventory a little bit longer, right? So, that's a different type of not making a profit. Like, I think most small businesses that are sustainable, I think they're proud to say they're not profitable if they're like sustaining payroll and, you know, payments and disbursements. Like, if you're not in this world, like you don't... People may not understand how that works.

'''Myke:''' It's also worth saying it's different in different countries. It's not as clear cut as that here in most popular types of ways that businesses are put together.

'''Brad:''' Yes, that's a good point. So, in the US, you can be... Your business can not make a profit forever and you run a successful business, right? Right? So, what we're doing is we're like literally not making a profit as in I'm only spending time and money and not getting... It's the bad version. I'm not getting anything back. So, at some point that has to end, right?

'''Myke:''' So, here's the part that like to go back that was very good, very helpful. But like the part that's saying like if you were buying inventory out of your own personal money... Yes. ...why were you doing that? You know what I mean? Like you must have been selling stuff to buy inventory, right?

'''Brad:''' Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, because I wanted to keep it going because like it's one of the things I'm most proud of and it's kind of my baby. But like what I mean is...

'''Myke:''' Okay, so it's complicated. Yeah. For you to buy inventory, the company must have been selling stuff for you to replace their inventory, otherwise you wouldn't buy it, right? Yes. So, why couldn't the company pay for the inventory? Because it doesn't move fast enough. Right. So, you were... So, there's bulk ordering... You were buying new products, right? Hoping that they would sell to offset some of the cost of everything else.

'''Brad:''' Right. Okay. And in this business, like a single case could be a year from design to production to receipt and then another six months to a year to sell through the product. And then you multiply that by like how many different products we have. It just becomes this whole spider web of trying to manage from trying to make the right decisions all along the way. And it just ends up catching up to you. Like it's difficult to manage this many products with like order minimums and time that it takes to make a product. Like these products... I'm not making a digital product that's infinitely repeatable, right? Yeah. Like we're making a thing that has long lead times and large minimums and things like that. So, you just end up getting stretched too thin in the end. So, all I was doing was just trying to keep my head afloat until I got to the point where it's like I can't make new things because I can't commit the time or money to make me feel like there's some kind of big turnaround or something, right? Like I know it's a good business and I know it's a great product. But I can't run it individually. Like, you know, I talked about how the different things I've got going on, right? Like all the pen addict stuff, you know, the blog, the podcast, the membership, like that stuff is doing great, right? Yep. And all the spoke stuff that I've got going on with Brian, like all that stuff's doing great. And like people were emailing me, it's like I'm shutting down Nock. Are you going to be okay? And I'm like, Nock has cost me money for two years. Like I've been okay for like the last two years because the other things I have are doing good. So, and those things I can allocate my time and resources to because they're not just the huge bulk of time and resources that Nock requires, right? I can do those things, you know, I could spend 10 hours and make a difference, 10 hours a week and make a difference in pen addict stuff. I can't spend 10 hours a week and make a difference in Nock stuff, right? Yeah. It would require 40 hours. So, and I can't do that, right? So, you know, that's why I've just been stringing it along for a couple of years. Like keep thinking like, well, I'll just do another few case designs. I'll make some more, you know, orders and put out some money and then it'll eventually come back. And it's just this slow burn. Like it's a really long, long process. And if it was the only thing I did, like it would work fine. I fully believe that. But like, I just don't have that. And the way everything that I do is set up, like I also have like spending the time on like the pen addict stuff and the spoke stuff is definitely more worthwhile. Like that stuff's paying the bills. Well, I don't want to just have those things bring in money that I spend on Nock. Because of some vanity reason, right? Like, you know, just wanted to keep it going. And so, yeah, I eventually just decided to pull the plug. We've been talking about it a while. You and I have probably been talking about it for six months or more. Just like I need to do this. And it's a hard decision to make. It's not easy.

'''Myke:''' So, I have a bunch of questions for you. There's more I want you to say. But just to, because you mentioned the other brands.

'''Myke:''' I know that obviously like, I think we have a similar thing of like you have an idea and you want to pursue it. But would it be fair to say that you ended up moving and looking at other products, other companies because maybe Nock wasn't where you wanted it to be?

'''Brad:''' I'm not tracking you. Say that again. How do you mean?

'''Myke:''' So, like, you know, you have all these other endeavors that you were a part of. Like, Spoke and stuff like that. Yeah, yeah. And was it a thing of like, you were even more pushed or desired to do other things because Nock couldn't do what you hoped it would? Yeah.

'''Brad:''' Like, you can see more on the table. Like, there's opportunities that I'm not pursuing with Pen Addict and Spoke to improve both of those things because I don't have the time. Yes. Well, what is, where can I get this time back? I was like, and I've never considered like that not closing down Nock was the thing until I finally, until I kept writing checks. And I was like, you know what, this thing is costing me money. And I know, like, I have lists of things. Like, I spent vacation, like, writing down all the things I want to do going forward, right? And they were all Pen Addict and Spoke things and no Nock things because I knew it was over. So, I spent vacation, like, writing the newsletter to send out to close down Nock because it's just not working for me personally anymore.

'''Brad:''' You know, some of the things I wrote in the newsletter that I sent out were talking about, you know, what the future of the brand. Like, I'm not saying, like, Nock is done forever, but it sure as heck isn't going to move along like this, you know. Am I leaving the door open for, like, to carry, like, the note cards, which was, like, the biggest comment I got in reply to, you know, the newsletter and the news of Nock shutting down. I was like, well, where am I going to get my index cards now? Yeah. You know, could I keep that as a one-off and sell them in the pen store? Sure. Like, I'm not there yet. Like, but, like, I'm not saying no to that, you know. Could I do, like, a special project with the Sinclair and we do some fun collaboration type of thing? Sure. Like, you know, I'm leaving that door open from a Nock type of product. But Nock as it is now is not going to be, like, a large retailer of pen cases and stationery. It's just not sustainable for me.

'''Myke:''' Yeah. Okay.

'''Myke:''' Do you have – so, you have a couple of points in our notes here that I want to make sure that you feel like you've hit on before I pepper you with my questions. Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Is there anything more that you want to mention on this before we take a break and get to that?

'''Brad:''' OMG the feedback. Y'all are amazing. Everyone who replied, who, like, ordered stuff, it's mind-blowing, the feedback I got. And it just –

'''Myke:''' Yeah, because your plan was to basically, like, sell off everything just so you had no inventory. But I remember you saying to me, you thought it was going to take a while.

'''Brad:''' Yeah. So, I put in the – I didn't know what to think. So, I did kind of an inventory before I did this, right, a product inventory. So, I knew what I had to put on the site for sale. And then I announced that all the cases were going at 50% off in the newsletter. And it was madness. I can't believe the amount of orders. I can't believe how quickly everything went. There's still plenty left for some cases. But what happened was not in my purview, right? I didn't think what happened happened. I now have a big Kickstarter level of shipping to do. I might have to send out another newsletter today saying, number one, thank you for all the amazing feedback. Number two, it might take me a month to get all these orders shipped. It was that big. Which is good. Like, that's what needed to happen. But even I – it caught me off guard for sure. Like, I'm in a shipping hole for a while. Which is okay. Like, you don't think about that. Like, I knew it was going to – like, oh, yeah, a bunch of people will order a bunch of stuff. Not at the scale that I saw happen this week. So, it was crazy.

'''Myke:''' You're going to be very busy, aren't you, over the next couple of weeks? Yeah.

== Feedback and Future Plans ==

'''Brad:''' Next month. Like, literally, it's going to take me like a month to go through this backlog. That's how many orders I got, which is great. Thank you all. Like, that's – it worked as intended. Just, I think, even better than intended. But it goes to show me – Yeah. Yeah, it goes to show me that, like, people really love this product and people really appreciate what we did. And that makes me proud. And we'll talk about that more. But, yeah, that's the current situation is we sold through a lot of cases and have a lot of shipping to do. It's going to be – it's going to take me a while to process all that. And then after that, we'll kind of get a lay of the land, see what cases I have left, see, you know, if there's inventory that I've missed. I know one product, you know, that I'll be able to put back up, you know, a small amount of – like, one box, like, kind of slipped through the cracks. And I was like, oh, well, I just can't do that today. But we'll have another round of new inventory as we go through this month. So, you know, maybe later in the year I'll send out another note and say, hey, this is, like, the final stock. And then, you know, maybe next year – I haven't thought about this at all. Maybe next year in Atlanta we have, like, the last hurrah of, like, all the one-off prototypes and all the just the random stuff that I can't sell.

'''Myke:''' See if you can somehow rent that old – your garage for a day. Yeah, exactly. That would be hilarious.

'''Brad:''' That would be hilarious. Like, there's – we have such good memories. Like, such good memories. Like, and I don't want to, like, put knock out the pasture. It's too important to me. It's a really important part of my life. And, you know, while this is the end of what it is now, like, I hope it doesn't go away forever.

'''Myke:''' All right. Let's take a break. And I got some questions for you. All right. As you knew I would. I'm ready. This episode is brought to you by Squarespace, the all-in-one platform to build our own online presence and run your business. From websites and online stores to marketing tools and analytics, Squarespace has you covered because they combine cutting-edge design with world-class engineering to make it so easy for you to establish a home online and make your ideas a reality. Whether you want to promote your business or your next idea, whether you want to showcase your work with a beautiful portfolio, whether you want to sell physical products, whether you want to announce an event, write your blog post, it doesn't matter what it is, Squarespace gives you the tools to do it. You start with a professionally designed template and use drag-and-drop tools to make it your own, to really make it look even more beautiful and modern than just what they give you out of the box. It's awesome. You can customize the look and the feel, the settings, the products that you have on sale, and more with just a few clicks. And everything's optimized for all screen sizes, so it's going to look great everywhere. With Squarespace, you get free unlimited hosting, top-of-the-line security, dependable resources, 24-7 customer support, the ability to grab a domain name and register it for the site, take advantage of SEO and email marketing tools, and so much more. And you don't have to patch anything, upgrade anything, install anything. They take care of it all for you. So, go to squarespace.com slash penaddict, and you can sign up for a free trial today with no credit card required. And when you're ready to launch, use the offer code penaddict, and you'll get 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. That's squarespace.com slash penaddict. And when you decide to sign up, use the offer code penaddict, and you'll get yourself 10% off your first purchase, and you'll be showing your support for the show. Our thanks to Squarespace for the continued support of the penaddict and all of RelayFM.

'''Myke:''' So, one of the things that you've been mentioning, and I heard you mention a little bit, because you were talking about this in your Twitch stream yesterday, twitch.tv slash penaddict. People should go check it out.

'''Myke:''' Can you clarify, like, why a lot of the conversation is focused around you and your decision? Because, you know, a lot of people will be aware that Nock was you and Jeff.

'''Brad:''' Right, right. And Jeff knew this was happening, right? But Jeff and I, about, I don't know, was it a year ago? We talked about it on the podcast. When I wanted to keep Nock going, I knew I had to invest some of my own money into that. And from a business paperwork perspective, as 50-50 owners of the company, I could not invest my money without the partner investing a similar amount of money. So, and I wasn't going to put that on Jeff. Like, I wanted to do it. And, you know, I wasn't going to make him make that decision. So, I said, hey, would you just let me take over the company? I'm going to try to make this work. And the way I'm going to do it is I'm going to invest some of my own money into it. And so, we actually did, like, a paperwork transfer of ownership to me. So, it was solely, like, my decision, like, how to allocate funds and, you know, do all that kind of stuff and try to make things work out in the end. And then it got to the point where, you know, I had to make the decision that we made today. Like, it was just me continually trying to fix, trying to make Nock a thing. And, you know, it got to the point where, like, I could no longer sustain that. So, you know, I'll let Jeff know, talked about it. And he said, you know, that sounds like a good decision and, you know, all that stuff. So, yeah, like, that's why it was, you know, I talk about, you know, like, we talked about it when you were reading some of my emails. Like, sometimes you say I and sometimes you say we. And it's, like, that's totally how it has to be with Nock because Nock is me and Jeff. It'll always be me and Jeff, no matter, like, whose name's on the paperwork. Like, Jeff is why Nock exists. And I'm just forever grateful to him. I consider him a close friend. And just he's an amazing designer and maker. And, like, Nock wouldn't exist without him. So, just huge shout out to Jeff. He knows I love him.

'''Myke:''' But ultimately, the decision to shut it down kind of had to come from you. And that's that, right?

'''Brad:''' Yeah, I mean, I've been the only one involved in the business for two, three years now.

'''Myke:''' Yeah.

'''Brad:''' Like, even when it was a 50-50 thing, like, Jeff was just, I mean, Jeff, you know, has a wife and kids and a full-time job. And, like, couldn't put the time in that, you know, to work on it. So, it's been a solo show for quite some time now. Yeah.

'''Myke:''' How? We touched on some of this already a little bit. But I want to kind of understand, like... So, you had a business that was selling products, but it wasn't making money. Mm-hmm. Were there some... Did you guys make mistakes? Like, were your margins wrong? Did you overorder on certain products? Like, Nock was a successful business. Mm-hmm. But it wasn't... It seemed like it got to a point and things kind of seemed to stop. Do you have any feeling now on what might have happened?

'''Brad:''' Yeah. Going to retail was the worst decision we ever made. Okay. That was all on me. That was my decision.

'''Myke:''' Can you explain a little bit about what that decision was and why you think it was wrong?

'''Brad:''' Sure. Basically, our margins are great if we're selling products direct. Yeah. Right? We built it to sell our margins... Built our margins to sell the product directly. Yep. So, and that worked well. And, you know, it's like, well, if we're going to grow the business, do we need to go to retail? And let's try to do that. And took a cut on our margins just to do that.

'''Myke:''' Ask the retailer, say, well, just... Oh, I'm picking them out of that. You don't have to. But you can't go to Goulet and say... Sure. Well, then Goulet comes to you and they're like, hey, we would love to sell some knock products in our store. And then you go, okay, then. We charge $25. You're going to have to charge $35. Right. You can't do that. And the reason you would say that is because, well, now, you know, you could be taking, say, a 10%, 20%, 30% hit on your margin. Because now, you know, like the retailer needs to make money too. So they now need to make money from what was originally all the money you made. You've got to give them a slice of that. So it reduces the amount of profit that you see from an individual purchase.

'''Brad:''' Exactly. And with the idea, the false idea, that we would make it up in volume, right? Well, it happens.

'''Myke:''' Right. Right? It does happen. But it doesn't happen for many people. But it does. Right. In theory, it could have happened. I see why you did it. Yes.

'''Brad:''' But. Yeah. I don't regret the decision, but I made a mistake. Right? I think those are two things I can separate in my mind. Yeah.

'''Myke:''' Because you can still look back at it and be like, in the same circumstances, in the same situation, I would still make the same decision. Right. But it always was the wrong one. And if I was going to try a post-mortem, my feeling would be it was unnecessary because the people that were buying knock cases would have bought them from you. They didn't need to buy them from the retailers.

'''Brad:''' Right. So, that's when, from our perspective, I'm looking at it like, brand. Let's get our brand built. But we really had more of just like, it was a more personal thing.

'''Myke:''' It was a more personal business. You know, like if you, you know, there are other companies that could have carried the product that may have been better for that, you know? Just because like, you know, I think a lot of the places that the products were in, they're already very much in our community. Like, they're very much in our world. Like, for example, if you were able to put it at like, an office supply store, right? It might have been a different situation. Because then you are truly adding on sales where I think probably what happened is you just moved the sales around to different places and overall lost money on it. Yeah. Yeah, totally.

'''Brad:''' Totally. So, and then, you know, that gets into the whole like, inventory questions that we've had, you know, in the past. It's just like, carrying like so much volume and dollars tied up in inventory. Right, right. Like at one point.

'''Myke:''' Because now you're holding inventory in multiple places, right? Right, right. So. Because when do you, when you're working with a retailer, when do you make the money?

'''Brad:''' Just on, just on the initial sales. Yeah, see, that's not what you want, right?

'''Myke:''' Yeah. The ideal situation, which I don't even know if this exists, is the retailer pays you up front, right? For the product.

'''Brad:''' I mean, they did. Our retailers paid up front. Okay. Yeah, that was fine. Like, that was fine. So, balancing. So, when you do that, right? Say we're working with 10 retailers. Yeah. I have to understand their business to understand how much I need to order. Like, what is their business model to sell these products? And what is that volume? And like, plan ahead and like, make these like, educated guesses on volume and future orders. And it just becomes this whole cycle. And we just ended up, you know, just digging a hole.

'''Myke:''' Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Okay. That makes sense. Mm-hmm.

'''Myke:''' Why shut knock down? Why not just rest it?

'''Brad:''' That's kind of what I'm leaning towards. I mean, I'm definitely, well, okay, let me rewind. Why shut it down? Because like, I'm never going to have 40 more hours a week to work on it, to take a break and then reboot it, right? Yeah. That's not what I want from knock. So, I mentioned that I am not, I mentioned this in Twitch, that I'm not going to work 80 hours a week to try to make this successful along with everything else. Yeah. I'm just not going to do that. I'm not in like, I'm not on hashtag team hustle. You know, I'm not on, you know, work or die type of things. You know, I have a family, I have a life, I have other things I want to do. I have other successful businesses that I run. I don't need to kill myself to make this happen. Like, if I decided to, you know, work 80 hours a week, knock would still be going. I'm choosing not to work 80 hours a week because I don't want to. I'm just going to be very clear about that. I do not want to rise and grind, as the chat is saying. That is not me. I don't think that mentality does the businesses of those people justice. Yeah. Because I think everything I've built is personal. And you lose that when you're, you know, when you're always be hustling. I think you lose the personal touch that makes these things successful. And that's like the most important thing to me is to have like a personal connection, a community, a conversation with, you know, your customers. And you're just going to lose that.

'''Brad:''' That's my opinion, you know, in that type of thing. Could I, I mean, is it technically possible for me to do it? Sure. But then it's technically possible for me to not have a life. And I like having a life. I like having my family. I like my kids. I like having, I like having free time on the weekends. I don't want to work weekends anymore. I work, I work every Sunday. Um, I basically work six days a week, right? Already just to do the stuff that I need to do. I, I, I've chosen not to work Sundays anymore. It hasn't worked yet and it's not going to work for a while with all these orders I have to ship. But like next year, I don't want to work on the weekends. That's my goal. So I'm just not going to do it. And this is this decision I had to make to get there because everything else is working really well. Like I have, I have time to work on pen addict and make it better. I have time to work on spoke and make it better.

'''Brad:''' Take those two things that are successful. Not that knock wasn't successful, but adding in just a marginal amount of hours to knock does, will not make that a success. It needs a huge bulk of hours that I just don't have.

'''Brad:''' So to get back to your original question, why shut it down and not rest the brand? Because I'm never going to bring it back the way it was before. Never, ever. It's not even a consideration. I might, like I said, I might do, I'm not even saying I'm for sure going to like have like a singular pen case and a singular note card product. I think those are thought, those are decisions I don't want to make today. Yeah. The decision I will make today is that knock is not going to be what it used to be. I promise you that just because I don't have the time.

'''Brad:''' You know, I, I'm not taking anything off the table other than me running knock as a full-time job. So everything else is, is, is on the table, but no decisions are even remotely ready to be made for that.

'''Myke:''' Okay. So basically what you're saying is like this, you know, the, a standalone website selling a bunch of cases. And like, it's just, that's just not, that's just not the thing. Right. Right.

'''Brad:''' Okay. Like I said in the newsletter, like I could see knock being a project based, you know, outlet. Right. Like one-offs collaborations projects, but on a, it's like a very small scale. And I mean collaborations as in like, I would make a case to sell on the pen attic site and that's it, you know, that kind of thing. I don't mean like, Hey, let me collab with like every retailer and every retailer has their own case. I don't have time for that.

'''Myke:''' No, because now you're back to square one again.

'''Brad:''' Or, or the desire to do that because I don't need retailer X to come and say, Hey, can we do this collaboration? And I say, yes, that's literally a year of my time right there. It's if they call me today, it's going to take us a year to deliver the product. And I don't have time for that.

'''Myke:''' But at the, at the same time, knock has this IP, it has all the, the case designs and stuff. And so that's valuable.

'''Brad:''' I think our case design, that's why I'm not ending the brand. I'm keeping the brand because I think our, what we have built is valuable. Whether I'm making money off of it or not. Right. Like our case designs are valuable. I think they are special. Like, I think they made a difference in how people think about how they carry their stuff in, in this community. And I'm not letting that go. Like, like if anything, like that's like the, the thing I'm the most proud of is our design work. Me and Jeff is we made some really good stuff and, you know, maybe someone else will own it one day and it continues to exist. And that means we did a good job. That stuff is valuable. And I, I'm going to tell y'all right now, I understand that. And I'm not letting that go. No one's going to be making, you know, our stuff without our involvement in it. Yeah. At some, at either, you know, licensing or purchasing or whatever. Like none of that's on the table. Like I don't even know where to begin with that. But there's a reason why Nock is not just going to vanish off the planet because I think what we make is valuable. I think it's actually very valuable to be perfectly honest. So, and I don't have to sell it.

'''Brad:''' If that makes sense.

'''Myke:''' Yep. It does. Um, so really like ultimately the thing to take away is what goes away now is this standalone store of a range of products. Like that's not happening anymore. But yeah.

'''Brad:''' The store, the retail storefront's not happening. The pin show tables are not happening.

'''Myke:''' Yeah.

'''Brad:''' Um, that type of like just big retail is not happening. Yeah. You know, one-off, one-off stuff is definitely on the table. It's just not, don't expect any, even me to even think about that until next year. It's going to take me that long to ship, to ship everything I have right now.

'''Myke:''' So you, you, you've at the moment, you've got a lot of stuff, right? Like a lot of orders, you know, when you see all of these orders come through, like these hundreds and hundreds of hundreds of orders. Do you get any regrets about closing this down? Like clearly people love the stuff and there's, there's a desire. Or do you think like, this is just a one-off? No, people aren't going to do this usually.

'''Brad:''' Yeah. No regrets. Okay. Cool. Like it's not even a consideration because you've known me long enough. I don't make snap decisions. Yeah, I know. If you have followed me for long enough, you know, I'm just not going to jump for no reason without thinking about it for quite some time in the bigger picture. And I don't have one ounce of maybe I should rethink this and try to make it a go. Like I am done. Like that part of this journey is done. You know, maybe there's a different journey to be had, you know, like that's why I like, I'm not sad about this, right? Like this is a journey type of situation. I am so proud of what Jeff and I built and I'm so happy with what we created. And, you know, I'm just like going down the road. Like we've got more mile markers to hit down the road. And this was maybe a little detour or something, but it's not a negative.

'''Myke:''' So what you're saying is life is a highway?

'''Brad:''' We don't need you to sing in two consecutive episodes. Are you sure? I don't know. I think it could become my new thing. Yeah. No, no. But like, you know, I am, like I'm happy. Like, and I'm not relieved yet that I made this decision because I have a lot of work in front of me to really kind of wrap this up. But like I know by next year, like all I have to do is open my notebook that I took on vacation and look at all the things I want to do. And knowing that I made this decision today is going to allow me to do those things that, you know, are going to continue to build on what I've already built. Like it's hard to talk about yourself in like a business sense. You know, that's always been a difficult challenge for me. But like I am really happy with what I've built and that I've been able to make a living of it. And Nock was a part of that like for a long time. And, you know, now it's not going to be like a core part of that. And like because everything else is going so well, like I'm totally cool with that. Like I'm completely fine. It was just it was hard to make the decision, but I know it was the right decision.

'''Myke:''' Yeah, I think I think it was too. I mean, sometimes, you know, when you when you have all of these different endeavors, you just need to let some stuff go to find some mental space. So that you're able to continue focusing on everything. Sometimes it's not even about like how much work a project or a thing actually takes up. Like, you know, you might work on it for two hours a week, right, which maybe isn't that much or whatever. But it's the mental energy that it takes for having all of these things just in your brain all the time that I actually think takes the much larger load than the time spent.

'''Brad:''' Yeah. And you know me, that's a very big issue for me. Like the mental the mental energy. Like I get I get sapped and drained on the regular just because of the mental overhead it takes to continue doing this.

'''Myke:''' Spoiler alert. Guess who's also been thinking about this? Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, like that's that's what that can be a big it can be a big effect. And I think for that reason is is more than enough for you to continue with this idea, especially considering, as you say, like it just changed and it wasn't it wasn't the same anymore. So.

'''Brad:''' Yep. Yep. And like I I had to come to peace with that over the last six months and I finally did. And and yeah, I'm I'm I'm content with the decision. I'm it's it's totally the right decision. And it's actually, you know, a little bit overdue, I would say, you know, you know, not extremely overdue. But, you know, in the last six or nine months, you know, maybe I could have jumped a little bit earlier and, you know, but it's all good. All good, man. I am.

'''Brad:''' I don't know. I don't know how to end this other than to say just like I'm really proud of knock and really happy that I mean, it's your journey, right? Like, yeah, you are now. It's a big deal for me. It just is. And that's what makes it hard to let it go, despite knowing that it's the 100 percent correct decision. Yeah. So, yeah, that's why I just ramble on. I'll keep rambling on about it. So to put a bow on this, maybe I don't know. Maybe you have more questions, but I will say there's going to be another email coming saying, OMG, thank you. It's going to be a while before you get your order. Because it's a mess. It's wow. It's a lot. So, yeah, expect a knock email today. And if you're not on the email list and you have placed an order, it's going to be a while. But I will ship everything. It's just going to take some time.

'''Myke:''' This episode is brought to you by a new collaboration between Estabrook and Accutron. Watchmaker Accutron and pen maker Estabrook have joined forces to produce a new pen collection commemorating both of the brands. And it's called the Accutron by Estabrook. These two brands have a really rich history. Both have successfully represented what was beloved about the past with the great possibilities of the future. And so the Estabrook is a collaboration that is history in the making. This Estabrook is made from the proprietary diamond cast formula in Accutron green blended with gold and diamond dust. Gold plated trims accentuate this limited edition collection, which delivers in luxury as much as it delivers with an exemplary writing experience. 100 pieces of this collection are offered in the Estee Oversize model with 18 karat gold nibs coveted for their exceptional performance, making their Estabrook debut with the Accutron tuning fork logo engraved upon them. The Estee Accutron is also available in limited production traditional fountain pen size with a gold plated nib and engraved logo in a full range of nib sizes. Every pen is equipped with their cushion cap closure to provide a secondary seal to ensure an easy start every time. Plus nibs specially manufactured for Estabrook by German maker Yowo, and they can be inked with any international cartridge or converter. The Estee Accutron is also offered as a limited production rollerball as well, so you get a different writing experience, but with that same beautiful design. These are lovely looking pens.

'''Brad:''' So you need to click the links in this show note because these don't pop up at retailers like that you're used to. They're a direct collaboration with Accutron, and they are worth checking out because this material is awesome. This is one of the coolest ones that they've done yet, and they have a little Accutron logo etched on the nib. And I just think it's really well done, set up perfectly, and I think it's a killer collaboration. And do yourself a favor and go take a peek at these. If you're into the Estabrooks at all, which I am, I'm kind of in love with this one, and it's worth checking out.

'''Myke:''' I'm using my Estee today, actually. Yeah, I need to ink mine up. So nice. They're really great. They really are. I really do like these pens. They're overall just a great package, and then in these special edition colorways, it's just even more so. It's super cool. And you should go check it out for yourself. Go to accutronwatch.com slash collections and choose partnership items, and you'll see the Estee Accutron there. You can also use the code on the site PENADDICT20, and you'll get 20% off, which is incredible. That's accutronwatch.com slash collections. Choose partnership items. We also have links in the show notes as well, as Brad mentioned. And you'll use that code PENADDICT20 for 20% off. Thanks to Estabrook and Accutron for their continued support of this show and RelayFM.

'''Brad:''' I'm exhausted.

'''Myke:''' Yeah, should we do a couple of us TPAs and get out of here?

'''Brad:''' Yeah, we can. We can.

'''Brad:''' Yeah, I feel like, so you know me, I feel like I've said a lot, but I want to say more, but there's nothing new I would say. So you have to stop me, so we should do some STPA. Yeah.

'''Myke:''' All right, TJ asks, I have six fountain pens, and I already cannot keep track of which ink cartridges work with which pens. How do you keep all of this straight, or does no one actually use these cartridges after a certain point and just switch to converters?

'''Brad:''' So, I mean, anything written, right? Like, I try to manage that just by writing it down, right? It's, you can't keep in track. You make a, like an ink log, right? So you just have, when you put the cartridge in, you go and you write down what is where, right? That's how I've done it in the past. Then, I don't know, TJ's probably already there with six. Like, if you have two fountain pens, it's easy to, like, keep up with. But six is, like, a bit of a management issue. Like, how do you keep them straight? And maybe you're not quite, like, the FPC.ink, the fountain pen companion setup yet. But if you use a notebook regularly, flip it to the back page, and that's where you do this stuff. That's how I do it. And then I know when I've finished that pen, even though I have six, I can refer back to what I had in it before and then make a decision. Do I want to put in the same cartridge? Do I want to clean it and put in a different cartridge? Or, like TJ's alluding to, you're going to be in the converter. You're going to be in the converter and ink bottle game before long. Like, that's just kind of how it works.

'''Brad:''' That's just kind of how it works. So, the cartridge management is a little bit tough. Most of them are in international sizes, either short or long. So, they're compatible to a degree. There are some slight variants in the sizes and widths. Like, you might have a long international cartridge that will fit in the barrel that came with, but might not fit in another barrel just from a diameter perspective. I just try to keep them in their original boxes. Because I know which one, you learn pretty quickly which ones are proprietary. Like, if you have a Lamy, only Lamy cartridges are fitting there. Right? If you have any of the Japanese pens, only their cartridges are fitting in there. Everything else, eh, it's kind of a toss-up. I mean, there's some small proprietary stuff with, like, Parker, Schaefer's, and Cross. In general, you figure out pretty quick.

'''Myke:''' I mean, one of the reasons that most people, including me, switch to converter is you don't have to think about this anymore.

'''Brad:''' So, I keep a box full of cartridges, but they're all in their original box. And then I keep a separate box just full of empty converters that I just go grab. Even, like, they're mixed up. Like, my international converters are mixed in with my Japanese converters because I can, I know what they look like just visually. But, like, my cartridges, I just keep them in the original boxes and know how to pull them. And if I, if you get to a situation where you're ordering pens and you receive a bunch of cartridges, right, like, that are shipped with them and you don't really know what they are, what the ink are, what the ink in them is, you know, I just, I set those aside separately. Like, I have a little Ziploc full of the unknown, the unknown cartridges that I just keep for probably no reason. But, you know, I'm usually swapping in something that, that I've purchased separately than what the, what the pen ships with.

'''Myke:''' Sorry, TJ.

'''Myke:''' There are words to say. We can't help you. You have to get used to it.

'''Brad:''' Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, you, you'll, you'll, you'll get the visuals soon of what goes with what. Like, it's pretty easy. And the feel.

'''Myke:''' You know, sometimes you jam a converter in and it doesn't fit. Like, okay, need a different one for this pen.

'''Brad:''' Yep, yep.

'''Myke:''' Matt wants to know, what's up with Conid?

'''Brad:''' I feel like we've covered this before, but I'm not sure. Um, even if we have, they are, I guess they've always been a medical manufacturing company that has an engineering group that also made pens. Um, someone can correct me if I'm, I'm wrong in my general assessment of, of what the brand does. So when COVID hit, they escalated their, um, side of the business that is the medical manufacturing and no longer had time to make pens. They've never said they're done with Conid as like a brand or a sub brand of what they traditional make.

'''Myke:''' Conid focused on COVID.

'''Brad:''' Mm, yes.

'''Myke:''' Yes. Yes. Um. Come on, I can't not do that. You put that in my lap and I have to take that.

== Conid Discussion ==

'''Brad:''' Conid dash 19. If they don't come out with a Conid 19 pen, they're, they're leaving it on the table. See now that's, I feel like that you went too far now. I mean, it was your fault. Like you went there.

'''Myke:''' It had nothing to do with me. I didn't make you say that.

'''Brad:''' Yeah. But they, people who are Conid customers love that pen. And there is a really hot secondary market for Conid pens because they are so beloved. But they have not announced what they're going to do. Like I thought at one point they kind of peeked their head above water and said, hey, we're going to start doing some pens. And then nothing ever happened. Um. So, I think the situation is we're all just sitting and waiting right now. Huh. So.

'''Myke:''' I didn't know that. Yeah. I didn't know they were a medical manufacturer. So, I don't know if we spoke about it. And I just.

'''Brad:''' It's something to that degree. Yeah. It's something to that degree.

'''Myke:''' Yeah. I had no idea about that. Interesting. Yep. Yeah. I think they have a thing on their website. Because it's going to the website. And they're like, our products cannot be ordered at this moment. Read why. And so, I'll put a link to show notes to that too.

'''Brad:''' Yeah. But that's like. That's probably like. I don't know. Over a year. It's April 2020.

'''Myke:''' Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. When they put that in there.

'''Brad:''' Right. Right.

'''Myke:''' And the last question today comes from Two Hands of Blue. Do you have any recommendations for a good fountain pen under $100 that takes short international cartridges? I adore my Pilot Metropolitan 2P580. But I've been gifted a pack of international cartridges. And it seems like a good excuse for a new pen. Preferably not Kaweco. Don't like their style. But if it's the best option, I'll be good to know too.

'''Brad:''' So, I'm in a mad dash to find the name or the model number of the Pelican that takes cartridges. Okay. There is a non-piston filling that looks like the M205.

'''Myke:''' Right.

'''Brad:''' But it's not called that because it's not the piston. And I think it's under $100. And it's going to fit those cartridges. So, some of the Pelican pens. So, one of them is the Stola 3 that Chad is reminding us. So, that is one. That's not the one I'm thinking of. So, but Pelican makes several designs. And they take international cartridges. Okay. And, man, I'm blanking on this. I reviewed it on the blog. But I just, they, since everything's like a model number, I can't think of the number. And it, like, it really didn't take off. Right? Like, it was, I don't even know if they still make it. But, yeah, maybe it was the 205. But they called it something different. Like, the P205 instead of the M205. Is that it? So, I'm sorry. We're, like, rambling here. I'm looking at Chad. I'm doing searches.

'''Myke:''' Everybody's trying to work this one out, huh?

'''Brad:''' But it's actually a 200 series. Yeah, here it is. The P205 cartridge fill. So, I don't know if they still make it. How much was this pen?

'''Myke:''' How do you look at that?

'''Myke:''' Huh. Okay. So, it's just a regular looking Pelican.

'''Brad:''' It's a, it looks like your standard piston filling. And I don't think they make it anymore. But, yeah, I would look at some of the Pelican's other, like, lower price offerings. Yeah. They're going to fit international cartridges. Pelican makes international cartridges. And that's about as good a quality as you can get. Yeah. That's, like, outside of Kaweco. Yeah. And they have, they have products that take cartridges from, like, $20 up to, like, $100, where this, the P-series used to be. And then, you know.

'''Myke:''' Penchalet still have it. But it's still in inventory. In inventory, $160.

'''Brad:''' Oh, yeah. That's more than I would pay for that, honestly. Like, I wouldn't, you can get the piston filler for that much. Right. So, like, I don't think that's worth it. If you have to have it, like, if you have to have it, so. Can I have it? Yeah. So, the chat is, the chat's actually saying the axle, the spoke axle, I didn't even consider. It's actually $79. That's a great pen. But if they don't like the Kaweco, they may not like the short style of the axle, right? No. The axle is, like. The spoke axle is perfect.

'''Brad:''' It's funny. Like, I don't even, that didn't even cross my mind. Come on, Brad. It didn't. Come on, Brad. Like, now that I have time to, like, you know, totally promote my other companies, I'm still going to be bad at capitalism. Like, it's just, it's my move. It's my move.

'''Myke:''' So, let me do it for you. Thank you so much for listening to this week's episode of The Pen Addict. You can send in a question with a tweet, hashtag RSTPA, question mark RSTPA in the RelayFM members Discord. Or you can email them to hello at penaddict.com. Go to penaddict.com where you can read about all of the latest goodies in the pen world. We have posts written by Brad and the wonderful team over at Pen Addict. You can go to spokedesign.com where you can find Brad's pens and paraphernalia. It's interesting for me now that the intro has just gotten a little shorter. So, I have to, like.

'''Brad:''' I was waiting for it. It didn't hit me until you started. And I was like, what's he going to do?

'''Myke:''' I'm just going to, I don't know what I'm going to do. I'll work it out. Go to twitch.tv slash penaddict. You can go to penaddict on Instagram. Dowdyism on Twitter. Brad on micro.blog. I am imike. I-M-Y-K-E. Go to cortexmerch.com and buy some frigging notebooks.

'''Brad:''' I don't know why I'm so angry about it. You should make a product called the frigging notebook. So, you can say go buy some frigging notebooks.

'''Myke:''' No, I've got something that I'm working on, but it's going to take the time. It's taking time. You know how it is. Manufacturing is hard, Myke. Yeah. There's one thing. I've got a prototype. It's sitting right here in front of me. It's awesome. But I'm particular. So, it's going to take a while. Yep. Thanks for listening to this week's episode of The Pen Addict. Thank you to SD, Accutron, Squarespace, Pen Chalet for the support of this show. And we'll be back next time. Until then, say goodbye, Brad. Goodbye, Brad.

[[Category:Podcast Transcripts]]
[[Category:The Pen Addict Podcast Transcript]]

The Pen Addict 450/transcript

2026-06-23T15:58:35Z

PencilBot: fixed spelling

{{Infobox podcast transcript
| name = The Pen Addict
| number = 450
| title = The Friendships We Made Along the Way
| date = February 24th, 2021
| hosts = [[Brad Dowdy]] 
[[Myke Hurley]]
| guests =
| link = [https://www.relay.fm/penaddict/450 Episode 450]
| audiolink = [https://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/traffic.libsyn.com/secure/thepenaddict/The_Pen_Addict_450.mp3 Audio Episode 450]
| length = 133
}}

'''Myke:''' From RelayFM, this is The Pen Addict, episode 450. Today's show is brought to you by our friends over at Pen Chalet. My name is Myke Hurley and I have the pleasure, as always, of being joined by Brad Dowdy. Hi, Brad.

'''Brad:''' Hey, Myke, I got a huge smile when you said episode 450, even though we've known this has been coming for at least 449 episodes, that we would get here. But yeah, huge smile. I'm very happy about that.

'''Myke:''' And I did just note before we started today, that we have passed our nine-year anniversary of the show. So February 9th of 2012 was when we did our first episode. So we are terrible again and missed it. Two weeks ago. Two weeks ago. I hope that we don't miss our 10th. No, we're not going to miss our 10th. We've got a lot of exciting stuff planned for next year.

'''Brad:''' Yeah, I think that's what happens when you get older. Like, you start forgetting things, especially dates. Like, birthday. What's that? But yeah, nine years of podcasting, episode 450 today. It just makes me happy. That's it. That's all I have to say. I'm very, very, very, very, very happy to be doing this, be doing this with you, and to continue doing this.

'''Myke:''' Today we have a very special episode. So Brad set this challenge for us a few weeks ago. Basically a special episode where we take a look at Kickstarter and its effect on our community by analyzing the projects that we have. What we have done is analyzed a selection of projects that the two of us have backed over the last 10 years or so. I wanted to bring those to the show today to talk about them and to, over the course of the episode, take a look at how Kickstarter has changed the hobby. Yeah, I think.

'''Brad:''' Yeah, it's definitely a mix of the good, the bad, and the ugly, right? Oh, yes. Played out that way.

== Kickstarter Overview ==

'''Myke:''' Perfect way of putting it. This really is the good, bad, and ugly of Kickstarter. Because there has been a lot of that just in the stationary community. I'm on some Kickstarters right now in the stationary community that get a bit ugly, Brad. But we're not going to talk about those today.

'''Brad:''' You'll have to tell me offline because I don't think I'm in any active dumpster fires right now.

'''Myke:''' Oh, I am, man. I'm in a real bad one. It's bad.

'''Brad:''' We'll take that. Just put a dollar on every campaign and run up these numbers. These are all to get something from the project. Six of those unsuccessfully funded. Two were canceled for various reasons. 95 of the 120, Myke, were stationary related or adjacent. Wow. That's crazy. That's crazy. Yeah. Like, then the other stuff is like a lot of other Kickstarter creative stuff, books, music, games, whatever products, things like that, bags, all that stuff. But yeah, like a full, like practically 80% of my 120 projects that I backed were stationary related. And boy, are we going to talk about them. How about you? What did your numbers look like? I was a little bit shocked.

'''Myke:''' 74 back projects.

'''Brad:''' That's a ton. Like, that's a ton. Like, I know I had a bunch, but that's a lot.

'''Myke:''' I have been and continue to be a big Kickstarter backer. Three were unsuccessful for me and one canceled. 28 of my 74 were stationary related or adjacent, which is obviously a huge difference in our makeup there because yours is like three quarters and mine is less than a half. The rest of my projects are a mixture of games, a back to a couple of events, movies, apps, and just general tech hardware stuff, which tends to be. And really, like, I think it's kind of funny when you look at it, those are kind of, those statistics and their makeup is actually a makeup of us as people, really. Where, like, you are primarily stationary and I am a mixture of different things.

'''Brad:''' Yeah, I go to Kickstarter for the pens and then I might find something else, right? And then you're tended to be drawn there. It's probably generated mostly from tech and, you know, related to that. And then, you know, you'll pick up some stationary stuff. Like, if we talk about it or if we cover it and it seems interesting, things like that. So, yeah, it is very telling the percentages of the categories that we're involved in. But it makes complete and total sense. I couldn't believe that it's been since 2011. June 2011 was my first project I backed. It was not a stationary project, one of the few. It was for Molly Crabapple's Week in Hell, which she's an artist I follow. Now she's an artist, activist, popular figure. But she basically, it was kind of stationary related in that she locked herself in a hotel room for a week, covered the walls in white paper, and drew the entire room. And then she would cut up different sizes based on your backer level of the drawings. So, you would back whatever, like, my backing was for, like, a six by six, you know, cut out of the wall. And, like, I still have that, you know, sitting in my closet. So, it's just kind of funny that it wasn't necessarily stationary related. But I found her because, at the time, like, we had talked about stationary. That was when I was working with Jetpens, and I had contact with her. And we were talking about, like, Sharpies and how they worked with this paper and for this project and things like that. I remember doing all that stuff back at the time. So, I guess it was kind of stationary related. But, yeah, 2011. When was yours?

'''Myke:''' 2012. July of 2012. 2012. And it was a book, like, an e-book called The Professional's Guide to Podcast Production. And it's made by a guy by the name of Jim Metzendorf, who we now work with at RelayFM. I saw this. I was like, wait a minute. Jim is an editor of a large selection of our shows, some of mine and some other shows as well. So, Jim, I've known of Jim for a long time, and I was a fan of his work, if you would call it that. You know, like, in the sense of, like, I listened to and appreciated his editing on a bunch of shows I was listening to at the time. And, obviously, back in July of 2012, I mean, I've been into podcasting for a couple of years. So, I was still very new, and I actually still had a lot to learn of editing. And I backed Jim's project to get, I think it was not just the book, but I think I also ended up getting some EQs. So, I would send him, like, my audio, and he created an EQ setting for me, for my voice.

'''Brad:''' This is funny because the friendships we made along the way are a very consistent theme of this. And it's funny to see that very first one. And I laughed when I saw that link in there. It had Jim's name in it. And I was like, you've got to be kidding me. Because a lot of this is, you know, a lot of friends that, you know, we made through the stationary world, through these projects.

'''Myke:''' I haven't mentioned this to him. I kind of feel like it, I don't know, something like that. I want to embarrass him, you know? So, I kind of just put it out there in the world.

'''Brad:''' Well, I'm not above embarrassing my friends. And I'm going to do that right out the gate, Myke. The second project, number two project, right after the Molly Crabapple one, that I backed, was the CWNT Pen Type A. Which turned out to be one of the most... Historic. Historic, famous, infamous projects in Kickstarter history. Or even just in the stationary world. But I think it crossed over some lines to where it was making, like, articles on, like, tech sites and news sites and things like that.

'''Myke:''' It was important to note... I'm sorry if I'm spoiling for you here. So, it raised $281,989 on a $2,500 goal in August of 2011. Now, this is particularly significant because of the date. So, back in August of 2011, Kickstarter was very, very new. And the idea of a $2,500 goal makes a lot of sense. Right? So, like, if you go back to your first one, Molly Crabapple's campaign was, like, $4,500 goal. And she raised $25,000, which is amazing then. But Kickstarter at that point was much more a, hey, I'm an artist. Here's my music.

'''Brad:''' And this is when the goals meant something, right? The goals have lost all meaning. Yes. Now. Yes. Back then, goals meant something. Molly took her, said, look, it's going to cost me this much in, you know, nights at a hotel, food, and product to do this project. And CWT says, we've made this pen. We think we can prototype it. And we think we can sell it. This is how much it's going to cost us to get us going. It's not some made-up number so you can run a huge percentage over goal completion number. So you can't have, like, a, you know, funded, you know, 15,000% funded, right? Which is what modern Kickstarter is. So, yeah, it was important at the time that, I guess, to make the point that it kind of blew up and got away from them. And I don't mean that in a bad way. It turned out to be rough for many reasons. There were articles you can find, if you just search it up, about the manufacturing processes that they went through, the failures of the manufacturing processes, the bringing it in-house, the intellectual property theft that took place, and just on and on. Like, right out the gate, I can't think of any project that has superseded this as far as if it could go wrong it did in this one. Like, we've had repeats of this, right? But I'm not sure, like, at least in the projects that I've backed, there's been, like, million-dollar projects that have been, you know, that have gone sideways on a lot of people. But just from our perspective, it was crazy. And, you know, I was fortunate to get to talk to Saewe and Taylor, the people behind CW&T early on, had, like, an early prototype of the pen type A because I love the Pilot High Tech C, which is what it was made for. And I didn't think this pen would do that good, right? Because it wasn't a great design just for, like, day-to-day use of a pen. It's like a desk pen, the way it was built with this basically brick metal ruler, which was the pen holder for people who aren't familiar with it. But it did. And it's telling, as we'll get to later in this episode, that they didn't let this destroy them. Because not everyone, I think, would have handled this, you know, in the future as well as they have. Yeah. And that's also a theme. And that's also a theme.

'''Myke:''' And that's also a theme. It was one of those things where it got coverage, and then it was getting coverage because it was doing so well, which then ended up pushing it further. You know, like, we're going to talk about Studio Neat in a little bit, but the original Glyph was like this, too. Like, the Glyph was one of the biggest early Kickstarter campaigns. And it was like, oh, this is a cool product, so people will start buying it. And then it gets coverage because it's cool, but then it starts getting coverage because it's such a success when that was new for Kickstarter.

'''Brad:''' Yep. And then, unlike the Glyph, this one ended up getting, like, soap opera-y. Yeah. Before the end, which just, you know, exacerbated any news that had come out before. It just kept going on and on. Like, it was a couple, it was, I didn't look at the end date, like, the final, like, closeout date of, hey, we shipped the last pen. Had to be a year and a half, would be my guess. Like, an 18-month, if not longer, time frame. It was very, very long, so. But, yeah, like, this.

'''Myke:''' It was October of 2012 was the update where they'd posted all of them.

'''Brad:''' Okay. So, that's not that bad. It was, you know, what's that, 14 months? So. 14 months. So, I mean, I've had projects run that long, you know, with delays. But, yeah, it was crazy. And it dragged on for years afterwards, the fallout from that.

== New Buying Experience ==

'''Myke:''' Because it was new, delays were new.

'''Brad:''' Right. Right. And people didn't know. People was like, well, where's my pen?

'''Myke:''' People were not used to this way of buying things, either. These, like, undetermined, long-term pre-orders, if you ever get it.

'''Brad:''' Mm-hmm.

'''Myke:''' You know? So, it was all very, very new. So, it stood out and continues to be a standout.

'''Brad:''' And one last thing that stood out was Sewe would write these novel-length updates. Like, they did not hold back, right, on the updates, on the details, good or bad. They laid it all out every time. And it was like reading these books every time he would publish a blog update. It was incredible. It was what an incredible project.

'''Myke:''' So, again, something like that with that openness and updates probably set a trend, which continues to this day. Yep. Yep. They really were innovators, and for good and bad. Exactly. In whatever it takes to make a Kickstarter campaign.

'''Brad:''' Yep. And how you handle that, you know, helps kind of determine your future. As we work through this, there's going to be a lot of recurring themes this way.

'''Myke:''' So, my second project, which was my first kind of stationary-related project, was a campaign called I Draw Comics Sketchbook and Reference Guide. This was in August of 2012. You know, the gates are open now. It raised $245,000 on a $10,000 goal. Golly. Yeah. It was a book in kind of the Leuchtturm format, Moleskine format, you know, like with the little elastic that goes around the front. And it was part guide on how to draw comics and like comic art. And then the other half of the book was sketch paper for you to actually draw in. I have no idea why I backed this.

'''Brad:''' I don't know why I backed this. Before I saw that in the show notes, I was going to ask. I was like, oh, how's your comic career going?

'''Myke:''' I don't think I've ever. Well, I know I don't have the talent for this. Maybe that was why, you know. I will say back in August of 2012, I was still kind of in the world of, I feel like I'm a creative person. And I haven't found the thing that has made me truly successful. Like we were having some success then with the shows, like in the podcast were taken off. But I was like desperately looking for the thing to change my life. Maybe that was part of it. But I have no skill in this area. So I don't know why I did it. I mean, I know I was into reading comics a lot more than I am now. So maybe I had like an idea for a comic and thought, well, maybe if I could learn how to draw, I might be good at this. Because I do not know. But that was why I backed, I draw comics back in 2012.

'''Brad:''' You know what you did, Myke? You kickstarted. Yeah. This is what happens. Like you've got things. I've backed so many projects that like I don't know where these products are. Like out of those 95 stationary products, how many of those Kickstarter projects, which is kind of sad in retrospect, how many of those do you think I use? That are at least in my world daily, it's probably like less than 10, which is pretty crazy if you really, really think about it. But that's what Kickstarter was at the time. And that's what we do with Kickstarter. I do it a lot less now. Like my Kickstarter funding has gone way, way down compared to what it used to be. You know, it's changed over the years, which I'm sure we'll get to more.

'''Brad:''' This second stationary set that I backed, which I guess was my third project I backed. We're not going to count these down like this. But it just so happened like this was the beginning. And this was kind of the heyday. And all these new and interesting products come up. And this one was called the PHX1 design tool set. The makers were then an unknown pair of gentlemen named Chadwick Parker and Joe Wang. And if those names sound familiar, they are now known as Big Eye Design, which is pretty funny. When you look back at December 2011, this product that they made, they had made some other non-stationary products. I can't remember if they were Kickstarters or not, but like furniture and like things like that. But it's interesting to see someone kind of feeling things out, finding their way, you know, honing their design chops and making a product. At the time, it was very, very cool. You know, looking back, it's super basic now. But it's I wanted to focus on this project because it kind of laid the groundwork for what eventually became Big Eye Design. So this was a singular just tube, like a metal tube. I think it was stainless. I can't remember if it was titanium or stainless. And it was designed so the front end had threading where you could remove, say, a Uniball Signo DX pin front end, the whole nose cone and everything, and put that into this tube. And screw that front end section into the tube. And then there you had a different barrel for your DX. And you could also do this with the Hitec C. It was important at the time because this was like the ramp up of the Hitec C, but the DX didn't have anything. But really until what Spoke did with the DX, because I wanted it so bad, because this was the answer I gave people for years. It's like, I want something nicer for my DX. And I was like, there isn't one. You know, I backed this one called PHX1. It's like, oh, will you send it to me? People would ask me for it. And I was like, no, no. But it just didn't have that compatibility. But the way they did it with a threading, they did it from a threading perspective where you would remove part of an existing pin and put it into this one. Also, this pin on the back of it, Myke, you could put an X-Acto knife. It's like a tool pen. And it's a little dangerous. Yeah. So, but you see it now and you go, well, yeah, of course they became Big Eye Design and made all these things because this is what they were thinking about back in 2011, right? How can we mix and match a few different things into this pen? Was it great at the time? No.

'''Myke:''' No, because it's also funny. You can look at it and be like, this is janky. Like, you can look at it and it's like, this is a little janky.

'''Brad:''' But you get the, you see the groundwork, right? Of what, look at Big Eye Design now. Like, they make some great stuff. It's very cool. Very cool to see this kind of stuff. And it's really cool to see this next one you put in there because I was not an original backer. And they are now one of my personal favorite stationery brands.

== Ajoto Pen Campaign ==

'''Myke:''' Yeah. My second stationery project was the pen by Ajoto. So the Ajoto pen. They had a 15,000 pounds goal. This is in November of 2012. And they raised 46,000 pounds. So they weren't a massive blow away success. I think part of it was it was UK based. So obviously shipping would be tricky maybe for some places. And it wasn't cheap either. Like, to my memory. Yeah, I paid 60 pounds for my version. So it definitely wasn't a cheap pen at the time. It was their first. And I was surprised Ajoto's only Kickstarter campaign. Yeah. Which I was very surprised about. Like, not that I thought I remembered something. Just that I'm surprised that they never did another one. And what I love about that is Ajoto is the exact thing that Kickstarter was supposed to do. Like, unlike pretty much every other company we'll talk about today, especially in the stationery world, they did one Kickstarter campaign. Now they have a successful business. The Kickstarter got them going. And now they just carry on. And the pens done very well. And it continues to do very well. Almost at this point, I consider them one of the only luxury brands in our space. Like, that isn't a huge company. Right? But I kind of look at the Ajoto pens as quite luxury.

'''Brad:''' What you would consider more of a maker. Yeah. As opposed to a company. Like, Leonardo is small. And they manufacture their own pens. But I don't. It feels like a different classification than someone like Ajoto. If I'm just kind of comparing that correctly.

'''Myke:''' Yeah. That's kind of the way that I look at it. And I remember at the time, like, I was really blown away by the precision of the design. And how beautiful it was. And they were also UK-based. And it was the first luxury pen of any kind that used the Schmidt refill. Yep. These were the first. Right? It was before the Mark I, before the Squire, before anything. They were using the Schmidt refill. And, yeah, it was just fantastic. Great campaign. They had great options. And my Ajoto is still in use. I love it. It's a fantastic pen. And they continue to do great things. Super cool.

'''Brad:''' Yeah. I love seeing that. I went through my whole list. So, I hand wrote my notes, right, to prepare for this podcast. I wrote three and a half A5 pages, like, in my tiny handwriting. And I got to the end, and I was typing it up in the doc. And I was like, wait a minute. Where's Ajoto? Because I had one of the earlier Ajoto pens. But I must have just gotten it from him. I was never a backer, anything like that. I was like, I couldn't believe it. Like, it was not in my backer list at all. So, I was glad that you were a backer and put it in the list. So, it was pretty cool. Next one, Myke, is where, let's say, the bad things hit the fan. And I call this one the first successful failure project that I was a part of. It's a project that backed, right? It funded. So, this is the Apollo Technical Pen and Drafting Scale. This probably puts, gives some people the heebie-jeebies. They raised $141,832 in December of 2013.

'''Brad:''' This was peak high-tech C time, right? Everyone's making pen barrels for the Pilot High-Tech C. And this was a very pretty, think of it as a Rotring 600 for the Pilot High-Tech C. I think that's fair to, you know, to say this design of this pen was trying to be. It was a capped, metal, faceted barrel. Really nice, really, you know, complex campaign. And they raised a lot of money. And they hit, you know, the manufacturing issues. Like, we used to talk about, when you and I were backing a lot of Kickstarters, just, we would, like, double the dates. You know, just because there's always, it's a given you're going to hit a manufacturing issue and not make whatever date you were planning on. And they hit all of them. Like, whatever failure you could have along the way, they did. And then they started shipping pens.

'''Brad:''' And some people got their pens, including myself. It looks like about, they shipped, but they said 75%. It looks more to me like about two-thirds of what they said they were going to ship had shipped. I got one. And it didn't write. Like, not from a refill perspective, but from an engineering perspective, there was a technical flaw in the design. So, like, after all the drama, after all the money, after all the delays, they ship it. Not to everybody, mind you, yet. And it mostly doesn't work. Like, a few people's works. And you'll have to go back through the, if you're that interested in it, you can go back through. There's some diagrams and things in the updates where they didn't depressurize the barrel. And they made the fit so tight that there was no airflow. So, the ink could not flow out the refill because there was, it was airtight. And that's when it really, like, got loose.

'''Brad:''' And...

'''Myke:''' Got loose is just a beautiful way of putting it. That's when things got a little silly, I should say.

'''Brad:''' Not where... Not where... People weren't just mad that they didn't get their pen. The people who had got the pen had now have a pen that doesn't write. Yeah. And so, they were, like, 0 for. And it was, like... So, that was funded December 2013. And Pranay and Paul vanished on everyone in February 2016. That was their last message. No follow-up on the orders not filled. And then no replacement follow-up for the people who had bad pens. They were essentially, like, zeroed out. Like, they may... I'm sure they spent all the money they raised. Like, they didn't vanish with the money.

'''Myke:''' Now, I'm not advocating for people's money being stolen, right? Yes. I mean, we've all had it happen to us. I will talk about some... One of mine, since it's in a minute. But, like, in this scenario, unless... Well, it was clearly their issue, their mistake, I think, right? Here, it was in the design. So, the manufacturer is not going to give them their money back, right? Not for what has been made. So, the only way to fix this is to spend more money that they probably didn't have.

'''Brad:''' Like, that's fine. You can only make people so mad. So, your last message says, we're broke. We can no longer make a single pen. I'm sorry to everyone that we let down. Which they didn't do. That's your last message. The last message is, here's how we're going to fulfill everything.

'''Myke:''' That's a very good point. I didn't... I can't see the last message that they left. It's a backer only thing. I was just going around in it. But, yeah. That's a good point. That you... You know, what you should do is say, I'm sorry, I don't have the money. You're not going to make people feel better that way. But, at least, you're being upfront with it. Yeah. Yeah. But most failed Kickstarters do not end that way. Most failed Kickstarters end with, hello? Is anybody there?

'''Brad:''' Well, that's funny you say that, because this project that funded in December 2013 still has an active comment section as of October 2020. There was 2,688 comments in this comment section of people commiserating about how terrible this project was.

'''Myke:''' I want to share a guilty pleasure of mine. Now, again, I'm not taking any pleasure in people losing their money, right? It's really frustrating, and it's upsetting, and it's your money. You deserve it. But going through the comment section of failed Kickstarters, it's like stepping into another dimension sometimes. Like, you see all these people super mad, and then you get to this point where people start copying and pasting. I hereby invoke my rights under Kickstarter's terms of use, and they link the terms of use. Project creators are required to fulfill all rewards of their successful fundraising campaigns or refund any backer. I demand a full refund. And you just see this over and over and over and over again. People copying and pasting. Like, it's going to do something, you know? Right. And these things just get, they get, as I'll say it again, they get real silly.

'''Brad:''' Yeah, yeah. So, there's one message from October 2020. Just checking in for 2020. Happy New Year, everybody, except Paul and Prené.

'''Brad:''' So, yeah, they get silly at this point. But, yeah, people are burned, and they have an outlet in these comment sections to just go and just lay into them.

'''Myke:''' Yeah, I was talking to somebody yesterday about these kinds of things. And we were talking about, like, investing, and they were referencing cryptocurrency and stuff. And they said to be something which was so special. It's like, I treat these kinds of things like I do a Kickstarter campaign. I give them my money and expect I'll never see it again.

'''Myke:''' Speaking of which, what you got next? So, my first failed, first successful failure, so funded but didn't work, was a game. It's a video game called Last Life. Last Life was a campaign in May of 2014. It raised $103,000 against a $75,000 goal with nearly 5,000 backers. Basically, like many video game projects, especially around this time, there was a really great trailer. And it was somebody who had a great history. They'd been working on games for a while. People were vouching for it. People would play the early access versions of it, and it was great. But the developers came to realize it costs a lot of money to make a truly great video game. Especially when you've had a successful Kickstarter campaign, and they run out of money. So, in 2018, they spoke about trying to get extra funding for the game. Like, they were saying, like, we've run out, but we're working on extra funding. And then they just disappeared. They went away.

== Game Project Failure ==

'''Brad:''' That seems like not nearly enough money. Like, right from the jump.

'''Myke:''' People didn't know then, though, Brad. I remember this happened a lot with video games around this time. People would just, they would be indie developers, right? Right. And they think, you know, they do this thing, and it's like, six figures? I can make my game for six figures. Right. But it tends not to work that way if you're doing it without having a job, right? Like, I think a lot of indie game developers, they make their game on the side. But now, what's replaced Kickstarter, really, for this type of stuff, is early access games. So, people will pay you while you're making it. And you kind of make money along the way. I think that's... Play along with it, yeah. That's become the model now. I don't really feel like I see a lot of Kickstarter campaigns for games. And when I do these days, I've seen some where it's like, okay, here's the Kickstarter campaign. We will then use this as a way to help us raise money, right? Like, because if you have a successful Kickstarter, you might be able to get some additional financing. Yeah, this was a really beautiful-looking game, and it just never came to be.

'''Brad:''' That's wild. I just remember, I don't remember the name of that one giant studio that blew it out, where it was several million dollars worth. Like, and they made a studio, made it like a real run at making games and things like that. And that seems successful, but like the small dollar stuff for video game creation, even if it's a singular person, like that churn rate on that... You just light money on fire until you can actually deliver something. So, maybe that type of early access helps solve some of that problem.

'''Myke:''' Yeah.

'''Brad:''' There's one problem we cannot solve, Myke. Nobody can solve. Nobody can solve. And that is, what pen do you use to sign your child's birth certificate, Myke?

'''Myke:''' The Visionaire. Now, we wanted to include it at this point because it was very successful. Didn't fail as such, but didn't go very well. So, $324,393 raised against a $15,000 goal. 5,803 backers back in June of 2013. I was thinking back on this, Brad. And I don't know if I have forgotten or if it was just weird at the time. I do not understand why so many people backed this project. Like, the marketing of the campaign itself was very good, right? That was the whole thing. Like, the way it was written, the way the video was made, it was good marketing. And, like, the way stuff was written, we make these jokes, the only pen you'll ever need, the one for your son to sign the birth certificate of their child, like, all of that. But it just exploded. And to this day, I don't know exactly why nearly 6,000 people wanted this specific fountain pen.

'''Brad:''' Yeah, that's the challenge with this one because there was technically nothing wrong with this product, except it wasn't really, like, from pen people's perspective. We knew this was, like, a basic Chinese knockoff pen. And it was a resale product, which goes against what Kickstarter is. Yeah. But what this was, which you alluded to, was a marketing success.

'''Myke:''' Fantastic marketing. So good.

'''Brad:''' But I've never been able to grasp why. Because I can't remember the guy's name that ran it. He was literally clueless about fountain pens. Yeah. I remember I was texting him at the time and we were trying to set up phone calls and all these things. And, like, he was using India ink to fill his fountain pens. And it was just a real, real train wreck of, like, what a fountain pen user would think about a fountain pen. But where he hid it out of the park was accessing thousands of $8 pens and selling them for $37.

'''Myke:''' The whole way along.

'''Brad:''' So there's stuff like... The right price.

'''Myke:''' He included a converter, right? And was, you know, saying, like, is this piston filler mech? And, like, really, like, saying, like, he was using it. And then there was, like, this big post about, like, okay, now the packaging's amazing. Just a cardboard tube, right? Like, he would just... He had a very good way of... Then once you gave him your money, you felt like you were continuing to get something good for it. Now, we knew it was a joke, right? Right. We looked at the pictures of it and could see it was both generic and basic, right? Like, it was just ABC fountain pen, right? It was like, whatever. As you say, what probably did happen was the guy bought them from China and resold them. So, but I backed it because we were speaking about it so much, one of us had to have it. Yes. And to this day, it continues to be a pen that people want to see from me at pen shows. I backed the early bird chrome version for $37, which I... Now, looking back at it, it's so expensive for what it is. Right. And like, if you want to know for sure that this pen is basically a knockoff, right? So, they delivered nearly 6,000 pens on time. Yeah. Right? They were on time, which it would have been impossible for somebody to have these pens, quote unquote, made if they were thinking they were going to raise $15,000 and they raised $324,000. Because one of the biggest problems in Kickstarter campaigns is having a big success. Right? I remember the Fidget Cube people spoke about this like really eloquently. Like, and they were very good, right? And they did a really good job of like outlining the fact that a success of their magnitude, it brings more problems. Because you are not ready for the volume that you will be dealing with. You are in completely different territory now. Like, just how do you ship them? Right? Because they've got to go somewhere, right? Like, it ends up being a huge issue. And again, like in the keyboard community, when people were doing group buys of their own, right? Which is like, so they'll create a keyboard, they have it as unlimited, it takes off, and then you've got to bring all these products in and like package them and ship them. But if you're one or two people, now you've got 3,000 boards to do, and they've all got to be quality controlled, like it can be a real issue, right? So, unbelievable that they managed to do it on time, because, you know, the comments are full of people that are unhappy with the pen, basically that it stopped working, you know? And so that's interesting to go through those. Basically, this was a cheap pen, sold for what I expect was a very good profit for the creator, exploded due to great marketing, and then they disappeared. Yeah. So you'll note the project is technically deleted on Kickstarter. Like, oh, sorry, not the project, the BHG design, the creator has deleted their account. And it says that, but you can still, I think this is good of Kickstarter, you can still view the projects, even if the creators have left the platform, which is important for history. The Visionaire will remain a meme forever.

'''Brad:''' It was a perfect storm, right? Like, mostly around the timing, right? I think nowadays, if this rolled up today, it might succeed, right? If you had a $15,000 goal and you were selling this pen for $37, it would probably fund, but not at the levels that it did, right? And more people would be aware of what exactly the product is. I think it just really hit at this really strange peak. Like, it couldn't happen this way any other time in Kickstarter's history or future, I don't think.

'''Brad:''' To put a little bit better taste in our mouth after the Visionaire, Myke, I wanted to just mention two projects that ran almost simultaneously from two companies that are still out there making things today. That I can't believe it was this long ago that I backed the Tactile Turn in February 2014, the first Tactile Turn, and the first TI2 Techliner in March 2014. So, Will Hodges of Tactile Turn, Myke Bond of TI2 Techliner, they've both been, you know, great friends over the past year since they were making it. But it was cool, it's cool to see these first attempts at making a thing from, you know, people who want to make these things for a living, which both Will and Myke have gone on to do, make very successful pen companies or, you know, pen plus in the case of TI2, making all kinds of different projects. But I thought it was really neat to, like, Tactile Turn raised $48,000 and TI2 raised $55,000. They ran almost simultaneously on the platform, backed them both, still have those pens that I backed from those campaigns, still enjoy those pens. And I just thought it was kind of cool to see what that time frame was for these people that keep doing it.

'''Myke:''' They are the kind of modern idea of a modest success on Kickstarter, like, because their first, they did their first campaigns and they raised around $50,000, which is a lot of money, but it's not a lot of money when you're selling something, because in that is all the cost, right? Yep. So, like, they had 700, 800 people backing their campaigns, right? Which is not a lot of product, ultimately. And then they went on to create their businesses and do additional campaigns. This is more of the modern way of doing things, as compared to a Joto, as I mentioned earlier, who did one and then started their business from it. But this is not a criticism. This is a very valid way of doing business now, is using Kickstarter as a platform and you continue to bring new projects to it and reduces a lot of risk for you, all that kind of stuff, does market research, basically. But these guys have continued to go on and have a lot of projects of similar kind of sizes to these. And if you do one of these every year or two, along with your additional products that you sell, that's a business.

'''Brad:''' Yep. Yep. It's really great. So, it was cool to see that they've kept on and have been successful ever since and that we got to back them in the beginning.

'''Myke:''' All right. This episode is brought to you by our friends over at Pen Chalet. They sell authentic, amazing roller balls, fountain pens, ballpoints, mechanical pencils, and so much more. They have all of our favorite brands like Monteverde, Pelican, Lamy, Pilot, Namiki, Sailor, Kaweco, so many more. And they're an authorized dealer. They're always adding new products. Every couple of weeks, you're going to find new stuff over at Pen Chalet. And you're also going to find new discounts, too. They're always moving things through, adding new stuff, new brands, new types of product from brands, and then also doing great discounts as well. They also have all of the accessories that you're going to need, whether it's pen, paper, I should say, pen holders, refills. Maybe you want some ink or carrying case. It doesn't matter what it is. Pen Chalet have got it for you. They have fast and reliable customer service, and they do free shipping on orders of over $50 in the United States. They sell internationally as well with great shipping rates. Pen Chalet has low prices and high-quality pens, and they offer a 100% satisfaction guarantee. So go to PenChalet.com and click the podcast link at the top of the website. Enter the password pen addict for this week's special offer, and to get the code you need to save 10% on anything at any time at Pen Chalet. What is drawing your eye this time, Brad?

'''Brad:''' The first pen in the list is one of those pens that everyone should have. And I don't have it, and every time I see it, I say I'm going to order it. And it's the Monteverde tool pen. So this is on sale, a pretty good sale, like less than $20 for this really cool pen. It's just, you know, it looks like one of those pens you should just have around the house because it's got the ruler and, you know, just the good pen and just kind of, I don't know, it just seems like a thing you should have. So it's a very good price to check that out. But he's got a couple of Conklins, a couple of more Monteverdes, a couple more Benus, which I haven't seen the Benus Supreme on sale for here before on our page. And then as Ron tends to do, he'll sneak something in there. There's a Pelican 805 in there for crazy, like half-off pricing. I probably shouldn't say that out loud. I don't want to get in trouble. So there's an interesting Montegrappa a little bit further down that I have not seen before that, you know, I'm a fan of how Montegrappa pens are and how they write. And then the Platinum 3776, there's some that are a really, really nice price right now. So you should check all these out.

'''Myke:''' So go ahead over to penshalet.com right now. You want to click the podcast link at the top of the website, enter the password penaddict for this week's special offer, and to get the code that you need to save 10% on anything at any time at penshalet. That's P-E-N-C-H-A-L-E-T.com. Our thanks to penshalet for their support of this show and RelayFM.

'''Brad:''' All right, you got another one here that was kind of a launch product, if you will. Kind of like the last ones that I mentioned.

'''Myke:''' Yeah, I wanted to give an example of like the Tactile Tern and TI2 Techliner, which is the Nexus Minimal Fountain Pen from Nemisu. Now, we know Nemisu is a brand now. I've actually realized, I've backed three of their pens. They had a 104,568 raised against a goal of 10,000 to 2,000 backers in July of 2014. I backed the all-titanium model of this pen. It was my first titanium pen. Do not like titanium nibs is what I learned. They performed great, but mine was really squeaky, and I didn't like that.

'''Brad:''' It's an interesting thing.

'''Myke:''' Yeah, good flex on it. It feels nice to use, nice and soft, but it makes a weird noise. Not for everybody. They're another UK-based company. They saw delays in this campaign. I think they've had some sizable delays for all of their campaigns, but that's how it goes. Their shipping completed in August of 2015. It was originally estimated for November of 2014. I don't think that was that bad. But the big thing here for the Nexus Minimal is that it put Nemisu on the map, and they've gone on, in my opinion, to make many better products than this, even though I did really like this pen. I love the Nexus pen. But my favorite of theirs is the Nova, which I think is the most controversial, but was a pen that I really, really enjoyed. It was the Nemisu Nova.

'''Brad:''' Yeah, the Nova was one that was heavily delayed, but out of their control, it was a nib issue. So that was when Bach was having troubles producing nibs, and then when they came out, they had QC issues on top of that. But they kind of got that in the past. Their last couple of projects have been really good. I think I've backed whatever their most recent one was. I'm pretty sure I backed that one, so I'd have to take a look at that. But again, this is like one is like they got their start. They keep doing cool things, and I'd love to see it.

'''Myke:''' You'd love to see it.

'''Brad:''' I'd love to see it. When I was going through my list, this one popped up, and I was like, wait a minute. This was a Kickstarter? Do you remember the Bullet Journal launching on Kickstarter, the actual physical notebook? Bullet Journal? Me neither.

'''Myke:''' I backed it too, but I didn't remember it was a Kickstarter campaign.

'''Brad:''' Yeah, I was like, wait a minute. What is this? And it sure is heck. This was essentially the Leuchtturm launch for the Bullet Journal. That writer worked with Leuchtturm at our behest. We did that, Myke. I'm going to take full credit for that.

== Leuchtturm Bullet Journal ==

'''Brad:''' $79,416 October 2014, the Leuchtturm 1917 Bullet Journal launched. Both of us backed it. Both of us didn't realize it was a Kickstarter project. I was taken aback when I saw this on my list. I remember most of the things I backed. Not that one, but it was cool to see. I enjoyed seeing that. But the version 2 Bullet Journal, which I have yet to send you, was not launched on Kickstarter. The writer just launched that directly. And I think it's still sold out. So there you go. Maybe you should have done a Kickstarter. You might have had better numbers in the beginning to work off of. This is an interesting one, Myke. And I didn't realize you were a backer of it as well. It's the Pen Show PENXO 2mm Lead Holder. Yep. How could you not back this product if you're a pen and pencil and stationary fan? So what it was, was a lead holder. But it was basically a single piece lead holder. And if you're not familiar with this, you should go look at the link we're going to put in the show notes. It looks awesome, right? It looks like this is the coolest lead holder I've ever seen. It's won all these design awards. It's reasonably priced. I think it was like $29, something like that. They raised $334,000 in June of 2015 and 5,764 backers. Like, that's nuts.

'''Myke:''' Stunning design. So good.

'''Brad:''' Turned out it didn't work very well.

'''Myke:''' Well, it works fine. It's just a little fiddly. Yeah. It's hard to use. Because you have to kind of pull it apart. Like, you have to kind of separate it to get the lead to come out. I found mine recently and gave it to Adina. Because she was using a lead holder for something else. And I was just like, hey, I have this one. I like it in the sense of it's funny, very beautiful. But I don't use it. Do you want it? So I've been seeing it mucking around on her desk recently. But yeah, I don't think she's using it that much. Because again, it is frustrating to use. But I just think it's a very nice object.

'''Brad:''' Yeah, it is. And like, that's okay. I was like, even when I was backing it, I wasn't really a lead holder fan at the time. But I am now, like I'm a huge Caran D'Ache fix pencil fan. But that's got a mechanical part to it. Where this is just a physical splitting of the barrel to extend the lead. And I don't know. It ended up, you said it right. It was just fidgety. And it's not as beautifully functional as it is just straight up beautiful. Right? The functioning is a little bit awkward on it. But I just wanted to bring that up because I forgot how much money they raised on that. Which is just nuts. Because it was a, for Kickstarter purposes, it was a low dollar project. Right? For 29 bucks. That's a very, very high volume for a $29 project. It's crazy. And they executed pretty much perfectly, I think. I don't remember any issues with that campaign. So yeah, very, very cool. The next one is the CWNT Pintype B.

'''Brad:''' This is what happens when you believe in what you're doing. And I have that belief from Sayway and Taylor. No matter what happened with that first campaign, the CWNT Pintype A, and how, I don't want to say disastrous. Because they got all the products out there and people liked them. But just the drama. I would be exhausted from that. I was like, I'm never doing this again. But they came out with one of the all-time great designs for me, at least. I'm speaking from my perspective. All-time great pen designs in the Pintype B. To this day, I have two of them that sit on my desk. They raised $171,000 November 2015. Yep. And it's just amazing. I didn't bring it in here so I could pop it off in the microphone, which I'm prone to do. It's just awesome. I'm just happy for them. I was very happy for this.

'''Myke:''' It's going to be pretty rare that a company's second Kickstarter would make less money than their first.

'''Myke:''' I don't know about that. You think that's the way it would be? I tend to find that your first one, you're establishing yourself. And then the second one, you make more money. Especially if it's the same kind of product.

'''Brad:''' Yeah. I don't know. The prices are different. I don't know. There's a lot. A lot of people were maybe turned off from the Pintype A situation.

'''Myke:''' I know that that would be the reason. So in this situation, it'd be like, well, they had a struggle the first time. And also, there are similarities between the products. Maybe people don't feel like they would need both. But it wasn't so much a criticism on them in any way. It was just a thought. I can't imagine that that is a very typical thing.

'''Brad:''' Yeah. I see what you're saying. And I think as a creator, I think that's how I'd be looking at it, too. I was like, well, I did X the first time. I should do X plus this time, right? And it didn't. It did, what, maybe two-thirds of that or so. But still, it was a big number for... You got to remember, these are, I guess, not mass market products that they make, right? These are very unique, highly specific products that they're making. And this one just, it came off flawlessly, right? They, from funding to fulfillment, was six months. Like, boom. So, you know, they, I guess they learned what they needed to learn through the trials and tribulations. I guess it's no coincidence that these campaigns were four years apart. Because that first one probably took about, probably took them like two years to manage and then recover from. But yeah, this one, this is the one that really set them down the path as, like, kind of great makers and creators, right? The first one got them on the radar, good or bad. But this pen has carried them, I think, to this day to allow them to keep doing other cool stuff. And it's one of my favorites. I love it. Love it to death.

'''Brad:''' The next pen was a mistake by me. Not this campaign, the clip pen by Schoen Design, but me not backing Ian Schoen's first campaign. And I've talked about this a lot in the past. When I first reviewed Ian's first pocketable ballpoint pen, he launched it on Kickstarter. I hemmed and hawed about backing it. I was like, you know, like, I'm trying to be responsible, you know, and like, maybe it's not for me. So let's not just back things willy-nilly. And I didn't. And then Ian went on to fulfill it. And a lot of people bought it. And I got to use it and try it. And then I eventually, Ian sent me one and I got to review it. And I was like, huh. I think I missed out on this one. So I didn't miss out on the second one, which was the same pen as the first one, except Ian added a clip.

'''Brad:''' I'm glad I got in on that one. Yeah. And Ian's been one of the awesome creators to follow ever since then. Like, he's really doing weird and wild stuff now. I love what he's making. He's really flexing his brain muscles these days on the stuff he's creating. And I'm glad to see these successes that he had on Kickstarter back in the day. I kind of forgot about this one a little bit. But as soon as I saw it, I remembered, I was like, oh, this was his second project. I did not back the first one like I did on some of these other ones. I wasn't first on that one.

'''Myke:''' I mean, for me, Ian's pens really took seeing in person to understand.

'''Brad:''' Yeah, exactly. Like, once I got it in hand, I was like, oh, okay. This is pretty great. And, you know, I didn't really, you know, think that at first on the campaign. I was like, oh, cool. But I think maybe I have this already or it's not, like, super crazy inspiring to me. But once I got it in my hand, like, all bets were off. And now I own, I don't know, five or six of his pens. So, it's pretty great. Pretty great. Like this next product, Myke. I'm not saying this to butter these guys up. I'm not saying this because they're my friends. I think this is kind of like a Hall of Fame stationary product. And by that, I mean the Studio Neat Pano book. Yep. I think what it encompasses, what the decisions were to make it, and then the actual product itself, all of those things together could not have come out any better for Studio Neat in coming up with this book. It's a notebook, right? It's hard to make a good quality notebook product that's different from every other notebook product on the market. Notebooks have a much lower barrier to entry than pens. So, you have to be that much better than the other products. And the Studio Neat Pano book was.

'''Myke:''' And the idea of a unique selling point in a notebook, that is a difficult thing to achieve today in format. But they spotted a gap in the market, which was a notebook that lives between you and your keyboard. Super simple, but makes a lot of sense.

'''Brad:''' Which, from their perspective, is that technology buyer that was already their customer, not necessarily our stationary customers like us that listen to the Pen Addict podcast. Yes, there's some crossover, but they weren't looking at it from that perspective. But they took that idea of a good notebook and learned what made a good notebook and really worked hard at making a good notebook. And then also were able to sell it to people who work at a computer the whole time as an accessory. And $187,000. I didn't remember that when I looked up the campaign. For a notebook product, that's astonishing to me. And I really think it's just one of the great products that have come out of Kickstarter. And one of my favorite products Studio Neat has ever made. And I think I've... I was looking back. I had the Simple Bracket app in there. Myke, I was a backer of that. Of course, the Glyphs, the Cosmonaut, all the things. I love the Pano book. They did such a good job on that.

'''Myke:''' I use it every day. I mean, I would just say for Studio Neat as well, kind of changed them as a business. Yes. The success of this product. Because now... Yes. They make so many wonderful stationary items as well.

'''Brad:''' Yeah. I was going to mention that. Thank you for saying that. Like, it was... It gave them some insight. Like, hey, we have something here that was maybe different. And then they've obviously gone on to make some other cool things, which we're going to talk about here in a minute. I want to slide one in here, though. Real quick, Myke. This is kind of the opposite of the Studio Neat Pano book. But it's also kind of why Kickstarter exists. And this is the Tutu Pen.

'''Brad:''' This is an amazing product. I absolutely love it. I want this to exist. I want this to be a thing. And I literally never use it. But I am thrilled with it. But the Tutu Pen, if you recall, we covered it a bunch on the podcast. It's this very tiny acrylic... I don't even know what you call it. It's not even a pen barrel.

'''Myke:''' It's just a holder of two refills.

'''Brad:''' But at the same... To be used at the same time. Or, you know, you flip it over and can use it. It's an uncapped, uncovered D1 refill holder. Dual refill holder. Like, it's ridiculous. It's ridiculous in every way, shape, or form. But I want this product to exist. Like, listening to the maker and seeing how the maker thinks about it. Oh, Mario, I think was his name.

'''Brad:''' And it was astonishing to see. And, you know, it raised $9,000, right? March 2019. Like, it's not... Like, people obviously didn't, like, latch onto this as a thing. But I liked it. Because he used, like, fountain pen acrylics, right? The barrel looks like what it would be, like, a fancy fountain pen acrylic. Like a Leonardo. If they made this weird bookmark-looking pen. And I just love it. I have two of them. I just stare at them. I love them. I'll fidget with them. I never use the darn things. But, my gosh, I'm glad they exist.

'''Myke:''' I wanted to mention... I know we just spoke about Studio Neat. But I wanted to mention the Mark 1 Apollo. Because this is one of my favorite kind of, like, ideas for a campaign. So, the original Mark 1 was a big success, right? And, you know, now they do a bunch of pens. But this is, like, a special edition version of the Mark 1. Which is made out of stainless steel and PVD coated. But what I liked about it is it was... The pen's existence was to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing. And the campaign was only available for the eight days of the flight plan, the mission. So, it launched at the time that the Apollo mission began. And ended when it ended. So, they only did an eight-day campaign. And it was beautiful. And I absolutely adore the pen. It's the best Mark 1.

'''Brad:''' It is. It's the one I'm using it today. This is the pen I chose to use for the Kickstarter episode. It is the best Mark 1. Agreed. And, yeah. It's fantastic. And that's one thing that Kickstarters improved over the years. Is they became a little bit more flexible in what creators could do. Like, I don't think you could have picked a start and a stop time a few years ago. To be able to tell the story around the campaign. So, that's a cool thing to see. And, yeah. To see it raise that much money. It obviously resonated with people. It's really cool. It's a great pen. Like I said. And you said it's my favorite Mark 1. One of the projects that I backed but did not succeed out of that list. So, I guess there was only like six of them I guess I had. There might have been a few more. The numbers on Kickstarter were not. Depending on which button I clicked. It showed me one number. Then, other page showed me a different number. But, anyway. This was one I wanted to exist, Myke. That did not exist. And we talked about it on the show. So, it's the Vitae Dual Nib Fountain Pen. And the idea of this is that the maker was going to use Lamy Nibs. And if you think of the tip of the pen. The Lamy Nibs were going to be face to facing each other. So, you would have these two nibs. And the actual writing of the nibs would be closer to the center line. You know, you could still only use one at a time. But they would be kind of back to back. They would be close to each other. The interesting thing was not necessarily putting these nibs together. But there was going to be a dual reservoir cartridge kind of thing that you would have to fill. Like a split in between it. That was the ink reservoir for these two refills. I wanted this to happen. I don't know that it would have been good. Right? I don't know that it would have been changing anything. And I think, obviously, it didn't fund. So, they were asking $28,000. And it raised like $17,000. And had 153 backers. Like, this was one of those way back in the day Kickstarter ideas that you like to see pop up. And you're taking a risk. You might just be throwing your money down the drain on this one. But I was in. I wanted to see this exist. Because of what maybe it could be. And it could have been garbage. But that's what Kickstarter was for. It's for someone like me to see a project like this that looks interesting. Send the creator some money to see if they can make this thing. And this one didn't happen. And I wish it did.

'''Myke:''' I saw this category. And this would have been my answer, too. Because as I was going through my list, I saw it there. And I was like, oh. Oh, I wish that had actually come to pass. Right? Very, very similar.

'''Brad:''' And the backer. I mean, excuse me. The creator. And pardon me. I don't have their name pulled up in front of me. Like, took this dead seriously. Like, there was tons of notes. Tons of information. Like, here's how we're going to do this.

'''Myke:''' I don't know if this is going to work. Right? Right. So, is it intriguing in that way? It's Kevin Sinclair. That was the creator of the project. So, I was very intrigued to see how he would go about making it work. But unfortunately, it didn't.

'''Brad:''' Yep. Yep. So, that was one I would have liked to see and seen what happened from there.

'''Brad:''' That's kind of the list. But we'd, of course, be remiss if we didn't mention some of our own projects. We are also Kickstarter creators. We've made some things. I launched with my partner, Jeff Notco, on Kickstarter. October 2013, Myke, we raised $78,000 with over 2,000 backers. This was a crazy, crazy time in my life with me and Jeff making all of this by hand. So, 2,000 backers, when we did the math, it was somewhere over like 6,000 cases. It's one of those where we definitely, I wouldn't say we got in over our heads, but it's one that like, wow. We now have to make a lot of cases. Yeah.

'''Myke:''' You have one of those like, okay, we're going to do this thing and it's going to start us off. But it kind of got out of hand. And I mean, looking at it now, it's pretty easy to see why you had too many options.

'''Brad:''' Oh, yes. Yeah. That's like people who come to me for Kickstarters now, that's my number one tip is limit the amount of backer levels.

'''Myke:''' Options and configurations. So, you had both production and inventory issues to deal with.

'''Brad:''' Yep. So, I remember spending weekends, spending the night in Jeff's apartment on his futon. The second bedroom was the sewing shop. We had like three machines in there and we'd just be covered in like strings and fuzz all day long. And then I'd sleep there on the weekends and Jeff would just be hammering away making. I would, you know, when I was QCing the cases and finishing the cases, I'd have like a pile like as high as my waist of like cases that I'm just working through. It was crazy good times. I mean, it was a lot. It was a lot of work. It was crazy. And we'd definitely done things different since then. But that was a wild campaign. I remember that. It was pretty mind-blowing, pretty eye-opening. But I'm glad it happened, right? Like all these things happen so you can get to where you are now. And speaking of which, our first Pen Addict Podcast Project, Myke. Yep. This was February 2015 to bring you to the Atlanta Pen Show and the first time we would meet in person. Yep. So we raised $13,500 to bring you over to the Atlanta Pen Show. You and I get to meet and then do a live show at the Atlanta Pen Show. So I didn't know what would happen when we did this.

'''Myke:''' No. We had no idea, did we?

'''Brad:''' Mm-mm. No. It was just like, well, let's try this. And so we can raise funds for travel, but we will give people a thing, right, for backing us, right? That's what we didn't want to do. We weren't just going to take money for travel without people getting something. So we made a case from Nock, one of which I do not have. It's a beautiful high tower in Kelly Green and yellow with a Union Jack tag on there. It's just really, really great.

'''Myke:''' It's the Australian case. I think we've called it many times.

== Australian Case Success ==

'''Brad:''' Yeah. It kind of did turn out that way. But I love that case. I haven't seen one in years. I would love to see one. And that kind of kick-started, no pun intended, I really didn't mean that, it kind of kick-started what we did for the podcast and gave us ideas to be able to do more, right, in the future and go bigger and add a second show to the calendar and, you know, bring you over here twice and do second. And a third show. Yeah. Yeah. Do all kinds of things. So it really opened the doors up for us. So I just wanted to say thank you all for that, all you podcast listeners and supporters. Like, that's a big deal. Like, a big deal that you would support us in that way. So that was pretty cool. So we've done five of those.

'''Myke:''' Five-year run. We're taking a break this year. Because that's how time works.

'''Brad:''' Yes, yes, yes. And no Atlanta Pen Show this year. It's officially off. Not that we didn't think that already. But I did get the word this weekend that it's officially going to be canceled.

'''Myke:''' Leaving it late there.

'''Brad:''' But, yeah, a little late. But that's okay. We weren't planning on coming anyway. So it kind of worked out. But it kind of worked out this year. No traveling anytime soon here. So, wow. That's a bunch of Kickstarters, Myke.

'''Brad:''' There's one we can't forget. But there's one more. There's one more, Myke.

'''Myke:''' Because if we don't talk about it, we're just going to ask about it. We're going to just very briefly touch on the Scribble pen. Yeah. So the Scribble pen was launched in August of 2014. And this was a pen that included a sensor that could detect any color that you press the pen against. And mix ink inside of the pen to let you draw with that color. The product was written about everywhere in a display of the harm that what I would consider predatory marketing can do. Because this was an absolute fake. And anybody with even the smallest amount of understanding for pens, technology, or physics could see that this product is not possible to do within the confines that they created. It was all in the pen. All the technology was in the pen. Both the sensor and the mixing of ink somehow that you could then just draw with that color. And because they made a video which is full of bad editing and cuts, which you never actually see the pen working the way that they say, every single tech website wrote about it. Look at this amazing pen. And you can go and look at the coverage of the campaign. And you will see the logos of all the companies that legitimately wrote about this product. And you can go and you can click on the links that will take you to the websites that wrote articles about it. And it was just a fake. And it was through people like us and other people in the community raising concerns to Kickstarter. That Kickstarter got in contact with the scribble pen people after they'd raised $366,000. This is still during the campaign. And they said to them, okay, we're not canceling you, but you need to make a new video and send it to us to show this product in use. They went away. They canceled the campaign. It's come back a couple of times. On Indiegogo. Not on Kickstarter. And nothing has ever come of it. I mean, people have given their money to this company and it's an absolute scam. And we can't really talk about it much more than that.

'''Brad:''' Why can't we talk about it, Myke?

'''Myke:''' Because you've received a cease and desist from them. In the past.

'''Brad:''' Like, that's going to prevent me from talking about them. I'm kidding. I know. We're joking. So, yeah, we'll have a link in the show notes to a cease and desist I got from the air quote lawyers from the scribble pen. It's a great email if you want to go read it and you can read my reply to them. I was very concise in my reply.

'''Myke:''' But my favorite thing in this is they're asking you to remove links to content that is deflamatory or defamatory.

'''Myke:''' Defamatory is not a word, right?

'''Brad:''' No. Okay, cool.

'''Myke:''' I was just, it's deflamatory is what they're looking for.

'''Brad:''' Inflammatory? Or now you've got me confused. Never mind.

'''Myke:''' Well, anyway. And one of the links is to episode 156 of this show. What I kind of like there is they consider this episode of the pen addict 156 to be deflamatory, but they never contacted us about it, right? Right, right. So, they're contacting you and saying, don't link to this, but they never contacted me and said, you should change this. I just found that funny.

'''Brad:''' Yeah. It's good. This has been one of the more infuriating projects, honestly. Like, it's funny and it's a joke, but it makes me mad. It really makes me angry.

'''Myke:''' Defamatory is a word. I just checked it out.

'''Brad:''' Okay, all right. So, it's all those things. But, yeah, I was, like I said, we joke about it, but it generally makes me angry that it won't go away. It's just a big scam. About every other year, maybe it's not every year, it seems like, about every other year, this will pop up on Indiegogo. We'll start getting links about it. They had a mailing list for a long time where you could just preorder. Like, they were asking people to, like, send them $150 ahead of time and just weird, weird stuff. No one that we know has ever fallen for that. But it's just a running joke right now and not a good one. So, I hate to say it, Myke. We're probably not done with the scribble pen in our lifetime. So, yeah, we'll see. Just keep on sending us those links and we'll keep calling them out. So, that's it? I think that's it. I can't believe the number between us, like 200 projects backed in almost 10 years. It's crazy. It's crazy. And I love Kickstarter. There's obviously been ups and downs over the last decade. There's been good projects, bad projects. There's been good Kickstarter leadership. There's been bad Kickstarter leadership. Right now, it's different than when we started using Kickstarter where some of the early joy has been taken away as things get popular. It becomes more businessy. So, you do your research. You do a little bit more diligence. And, you know, make sure you're, you know, not putting money out there that you can't risk losing because people do forget what Kickstarter, what the platform is, right? To this day, people don't totally get how Kickstarter works. So, we love it. Obviously, it's been a great platform for some of our stationary makers in this community, myself included, Spoke Design included, you and I included. So, yeah, it's great. And, you know, maybe we'll do this again, you know, when we each have backed another 100 or so projects. Well, episode 900 of the show, we'll come back to this. I don't know. My pace is slowing down, Myke, on how many. I don't think I can back another. Let's see. That would be like, how many years more podcasts is that? 10 more, nine more years of projects? Could I do another 100? That'd be tough. We'll see. See what we can do.

'''Myke:''' If you want to find links to these campaigns that we've spoken about, maybe you just want to check them out, they're all on our website. You can go to relay.fm slash penaddict slash 450 or should be in your podcast app of choice. You should find the notes there, too. If you want to find Brad online, you can go to penaddict.com. You can also check Brad out at knock.co.com. Knock.co. They both work, right? Both, yes. Both work. And Brad streams live on Twitch at 10 a.m. Eastern time on Tuesdays and Thursdays at twitch.tv slash penaddict. You can find me. I'm at imike, I-M-Y-K-E. And I'm going to be streaming again. I attempt to stream on Fridays now at 10 a.m. Eastern on Friday at mike.live. And Brad, spoiler, I built a new PC. Ooh, nice. And so I am streaming with power this week, which I'm excited about. Awesome. Come check out the stream on Friday.

'''Brad:''' I'll get Tyler on that. He's your biggest fan.

'''Myke:''' Oh, God. He's a great kid. He understands. He gets it. He gets it.

'''Brad:''' He gets it.

'''Myke:''' Thank you so much to Pen Chalet for the support of this show. Thank you for listening, especially if you've listened to all 450 episodes of this show so far. You're a very special person. Until then, say goodbye, Brad.

'''Brad:''' Goodbye, Brad.

[[Category:Podcast Transcripts]]
[[Category:The Pen Addict Podcast Transcript]]

The Pen Addict 444/transcript

2026-06-23T15:58:25Z

PencilBot: fixed spelling

{{Infobox podcast transcript
| name = The Pen Addict
| number = 444
| title = Complex Complicated Colours
| date = January 13th, 2021
| hosts = [[Brad Dowdy]] 
[[Myke Hurley]]
| guests =
| link = [https://www.relay.fm/penaddict/444 Episode 444]
| audiolink = [https://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/traffic.libsyn.com/secure/thepenaddict/The_Pen_Addict_444.mp3 Audio Episode 444]
| length = 62
}}

'''Myke Hurley:''' From RelayFM, this is The Pen Addict episode 444, and today's show is brought to you by ExpressVPN and Pen Chalet. My name is Myke Hurley and I am joined by Brad Dowdy. Hi Brad. Blaze it. Is this a Blaze it number? No, that was like 24 episodes ago. Mmm, 444, it should be something. It should be something, really. It kind of makes more sense to me than 420, but I know there's like a whole thing. I did a whole episode of Ungenius about 420, and I don't remember why.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Way to go, way to go. So yes, how are you, Michael?

'''Myke Hurley:''' Good, man.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Good, good. I'm good too, I think, question mark. You know, in the general sense, in the worldwide sense, I don't know that I'm good, but that's a different podcast. But I wanted to do a quick recap or commentary on last week, some feedback from talking about planners, and theme system journals, and habit tracking, like all the feedback was super great, but I was taken aside a bit for my comments on the habit tracker, my comment about I don't want to track my water drinking on the habit tracker, and that I was like, that made me anti-habit tracker, and that is just not the case at all. I am very pro-tracking your water, I just want to do that digitally, right? I don't want to put that in my notes.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah, I think we said that on the show.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I know, I know, but...

'''Myke Hurley:''' And it's also, these things are different strokes, different folks, right? Yes. I expect that there are a lot of people that are like, why do you need to have a habit tracker to make sure that you're a good husband today? Because that's just a thing that I need to make sure that I'm paying attention to, and I fully understand that I shouldn't have to have that, but I'm a human being, and sometimes I think about myself too much. And so that's one of the things that I track every day.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, like my things wouldn't work for you, and your things wouldn't work for me. That's the beauty of the whole thing. And I have a habit tracker now, outside of my theme system journal. I have an actual requirement for some type of daily tracking of a thing, multiple times a day, Myke. I am now in active physical therapy for my wrist, which means I have to do a set of exercises, five exercises, five different times a day. So it's a big batch of exercises, and I have to do those five times a day. So now I have in just my regular everyday notebook, I have Tuesday, and it has five boxes in it with little check marks in it. And now I'm on Wednesday, and I have one check mark in it so far. So I have, I am now tracking, tracking the random things, but it's just the temporary thing. I'll probably have like one page of it. I'll probably have to do this for like six weeks, so I might have more than one page. But anyway, I'm now officially checking off boxes in like what you would think the water drinking habit tracker would be. So I'm now officially that guy in the span of a week. So there you go. So that was a quick turnaround.

'''Myke Hurley:''' How the turntables.

== Original Lamy Safari ==

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yes, how the turntables. Speaking of how the turntables, Myke, we're turning it back 40 years to the original Lamy Safari. Have you seen what Lamy is releasing this year? I want to say for their 40th anniversary, but it's actually now 41 years since the launch of the original Lamy Safari. So have you checked out Safari Green and Terra Red?

'''Myke Hurley:''' Lamy Safari original, Savannah Green and Terra Red. I don't know what the, I know that these were the original ones. Why are they calling, do you know why they're calling them original? Is that just like the name?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I don't. And I wonder if that is official marketing or not.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Or if it's just, because we've got all of our information so far from Fontaplumo, who are very reliable with this stuff. They always have this information. But you're right, we haven't seen like what are Lamy actually calling these yet. We don't know.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, I think this is going to be the name though. I think they'll just be, I don't know if they'll have the original in the title or not. They're starting to put up pre-sales on other sites, which means information is now like spreading. Like last week, it was just on the European sites. Now it's starting to get to the US site, so I could probably poke around those real quick and see how they list them. Because in general, sites are going to list it exactly as the vendor says to list it. But this is a blog post, so it could be a little bit of freedom in that. But were you aware of these pins, the original colors of the Lamy Safari? No. Did you have any concept? Okay.

'''Myke Hurley:''' No, because this was the funny thing to me. As soon as I saw this, I was like, I have never once considered why they're called Safari.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So back, I was trying to figure it out yesterday on stream. It was probably like 10 years ago when I was getting into fountain pens and started, you know, had my Lamy Safaris. And then you get into, hey, there's limited edition Lamy Safaris. Like, you know, there's been different orange ones and there's been like one, a blue one with a red clip that people called the Smurf Safari and things like that. And you tried to, you know, there was a whole, like a Field Notes thing, right? Got to catch them all. Here's all these limited editions that happened. And could you acquire the very first Safaris, which were the most rare, which were the Safari Green and the Terracotta Red?

'''Myke Hurley:''' This really reminds me of Field Notes.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, it really is. And like, this was like 10 years ago when I was looking at this, they were impossible to find. And they were several hundred dollars if you could find them each. And, you know, they, you know, couldn't find them in original packaging, couldn't find them in original boxes, anything like that. So I'm pretty excited that these are going to exist. It does bring up a lot of questions like, you know, should they rebuild or reissue the old original? Like, very close. There are obviously some differences, some tiny, tiny differences in these models than the original. Like, the nib markings are different and things like that. They used to not mark on the nibs way, way back in the day, but that doesn't really matter. They're pretty close. So I'm certainly pro.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I can't think of any reason why not.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, I can't either. But I think, I don't think they'll have any pushback or anything like that. I think this is just kind of exciting for Lamy. To be honest, Myke, I'm a little bit surprised and shocked. Like, I didn't know they had a reissue in them. I thought they might have a continuation special edition. Like, if they're going to do 40th anniversary, do something just really wild and funky or something meaningful that relates to the entirety of the 40-year existence of the pen. Not, here's the first one again. But, like, I'm happy for it. I think these are amazing looking, right?

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah, they don't really feel like that kind of, like, nostalgic company.

'''Myke Hurley:''' But 40 years is a long time, so I could imagine them doing it now. Like, I don't really imagine that, like, next year they're also going to plumb the debts of the back catalog to release something that they've done before.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, that was one of my follow-up questions. Should we expect more from Lamy's back catalog in the future? I agree with you.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Because they're a very creative company, I think. I believe their intent. And I think that they like to try and stay modern.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Because these colors are definitely not, they don't look of the now as such. Right, right. And so I can imagine them, like, continuing down their current path. Like, I think this is, you know, you said it's 41. I'm sure they probably meant to release these last year. Sure. Or, you know, it's just like, what you're going to do.

== Future Lamy Releases ==

'''Brad Dowdy:''' We're going to get to that in a minute on another product, yeah.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Right. And so, like, it's just where they are with it. I think it's super cool. I will be keeping my eye out for when they become available. I would like to pick up both of them. I'm really keen to see what the inks are like, if they have matching inks.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' That was a big question. Because these are ideal for that, in my opinion. Yeah. Right? These are not complex, complicated colors, I don't think, to make some cool matching inks. But I haven't seen anything pop yet. But if they're doing most of a lineup, right? They're not just doing fountain pens. They're doing roller balls and ballpoints. No pencils. I would think they would pop in some inks. But it's a little interesting. They usually, historically, have sold those together. Right? They come out as a group. So, why would they release the pens and then the inks, you know, two months later? But, I mean, that wouldn't stop them from selling the heck out just because people would buy it. I mean, myself included. So, I found it interesting that there's not inks yet. But I would love to see inks for both of these because I think they would be fantastic. In the show notes, we'll put some links to someone who had the original terracotta and Savannah Green that I found on Flickr, which is a name I haven't heard in quite a long time. But I found a cool photo set with some original pictures. They are, I mean, they look brand new, right? They look exactly like these. They really do. If you had to pick only one color, Myke, which one would you go with?

'''Myke Hurley:''' I would probably go with the Savannah Green.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Why is that? Because I think that's exactly right. I think that's, for some reason, this Savannah Green really sticks out. It seems more vintage-y now, 40 years later, than the Terra Red.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Safari, I think of green, that green, right? Like, that is the Safari color, right? Like, if you're thinking of safaris, like what you imagine is like a Safari outfit or a Jeep. It's that kind of green color. And also, while I am like maybe more drawn to the terracotta, I have a lot of orange pens. Like, if I'm only, even though like, I don't own a straight up orange Safari. Safari. Same. Which is funny, because they don't, you know, I don't remember them even making one recently.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' They've done one a long time ago. Yeah. But it might have been special edition.

'''Myke Hurley:''' But so it's kind of like, I would want to, if I'm only going to buy one of them, I would get one that is really different to the pens that I own. Yeah. I don't own a color even closer to the Savannah Green. But my intention will be to try and pick both of these up, because I don't expect them to be very expensive, because they're still safaris.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' They are not. I have pre-ordered mine.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Oh, okay.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' And I paid, so I bought.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Oh, yeah. Look at that. They're on Fontapulma. They're like 20 euro. Yeah.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. I bought two green and two orange. One set for me, one set to give away. And I think I've paid total international shipping and everything less than $100 US. Like, they're just, they're inexpensive pens. That's what's so beautiful about the Safari. It's just a dang good pen. Yeah. And it's funny you say that about the green, too, because I feel exactly the same way, and I can't pinpoint why. But that Savannah Green is killer. They're obviously both going to, they'll sell out. They're both killer. I mean, it's like 1A, 1B, right? But they're fantastic. So shop around. They're at, they're starting to pop at all kinds of retailers now.

== Pre-order Details ==

'''Brad Dowdy:''' And they're looking at a release in February. So some sites do pre-orders. Some will just release them when they have them in stock. And yeah, the news is starting to spread. I'm thrilled with this. I think it's going to be great. I like the fact that they're the same standard price as the traditional Safaris have always been. There's no price increase, which it would be valid. In this particular case. So thank you, Lamy, for holding that line. I think that's pretty cool.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Question.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah.

'''Myke Hurley:''' On these. I don't think that people would feel this way, but I wonder anyway. Do you think that there is any kind of like frustration amongst collectors?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' That was kind of what I was alluding to in the beginning. Yeah. In this exact, very specific case, I would say no. Yeah. Because I don't know anyone that has them. Like there's so few. But even if you did. If you did, you still have. You still have the original version. Especially if you have the original boxes and packaging. They had some unique boxes back then and packaging. If you had all that, I think it's still an extremely special edition. Does it maybe take the luster off it? Maybe a little bit. But that's from someone who wasn't going to buy the original anyway. Right? Someone who wasn't going to pay. Like we found one online yesterday that is actively for sale. One of the green ones for $750. And it has a cracked cap. Like that's how hard these are to find. They just don't exist. So I don't think the collectors would be too upset. Right. Especially if you have the full packaging. It doesn't lose its luster at all, I don't think.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Because you still have the.

'''Myke Hurley:''' You still have the original, right?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Like if for some reason I was that person that decided. Like I'm this Uber collector. And one of the great pens that I want in my collection. Is the original Lamy Safaris. I would be 100% still like willing to pay. If I could track down like that mint condition. You know, 1980 release. With the packaging and stuff. And pay like a large premium for that. Despite these new models being out.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah, because the reason that they're like sought after. Is not because of what they look like. It's because they're old and rare. Yeah. And reissuing them doesn't change the rarity. Yeah.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. Yeah. And it was the first safari. Like you can't say that about these. You can say these are the colors of the first safari. But they're not the first safaris. And that's a big gaping chasm of a difference.

'''Myke Hurley:''' All right. Let's take a break. And thank our first sponsor of this week's episode. And that is Pen Chalet. They sell authentic, amazing roller balls, fountain pens, ballpoints, mechanical pencils, and so much more. And they sell from your favorite brands in order the types of products that you're looking for. They also sell lots of extras. You can get inks and converters, pen holders and carrying cases from Pen Chalet. And they stock brands like Pelican, Estabrook, Lamy, Pilot, Namiki, Sailor, Kaweco. So everything you're looking for, go to Pen Chalet to try and find it because they're always adding new products. Every month they're adding new styles of pens. They're adding lots of different accessories. And they do great discounts on them as well. Every two weeks they're doing great discounts which you can go and pick up. Pen Chalet have fast and reliable customer service. They do free shipping on orders of over $50 in the United States. And they also sell internationally with very reasonable shipping rates. Shipping's great too. That Estabrook that I ordered two weeks ago arrived today. Which is kind of funny really because I've just been having, just like everyone, shipping is a nightmare right now. So I was very surprised it showed up. We're going to talk about that. Yeah, we're going to talk about, that's the topic for later on in the episode. Pen Chalet have low prices on high quality pens and offer a 100% satisfaction guarantee. So go to penchalet.com and click the podcast link at the top of the website and enter the password penaddict for this week's special offer. And to get the code that you need to save 10% on anything at any time at Pen Chalet. What has caught your eye this time, Brad?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' There's something in here that I don't recall seeing before being available. On Ron's Pen Chalet Pen Addict page. And it's the Caran d'Ache 849 Claim Your Style Ballpoint Pens. Those are generally pretty expensive. You know I love the 849. I have my own 849. And, you know, they aren't inexpensive pens to begin with. But the Claim Your Style Editions even have a premium. Just like the Nespresso Editions have a premium. Anything above their stock level 849s is at a, for Caran d'Ache, is still a pretty good premium. And this is a discount on the Claim Your Style Edition 2 colors. Which I don't have any of those colors yet. I have one of the Edition 1 colors, which I love. Which is one of the reasons why I wanted to pursue making one myself. And it's odd. Not odd. It's good to see a discount on those. Because you rarely see it. So if that's something you're interested in. Also the Conquerant Duraflex with its flexible nib has been pretty popular. It's an inexpensive way to get into, you know, kind of a soft, a little bit more flexible nib. And the Diplomat Esteem Mad C. I have seen pictures of this. And I keep looking at it going, what is this pen? What is this pen? It's at a really, really crazy good price point right now.

'''Myke Hurley:''' That's a wild looking pen.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, very unique stuff. You know, I like my bright bold color. So it's no doubt that these stand out to me.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Ron did also want us to mention a Retro 51 that they have had available. But I think it's sold out now, which is a Retro 51 Hubble, which was an exclusive to Pen Chalet. So when we were talking a couple of weeks ago about the belief that we'd seen the last general Retro 51. There would still be some exclusives coming out, which I guess is clear in the backlog. This is one of them. And it was on sale, but I think it's gone now.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, it was only 500. What's the distance here? I'm going to get it wrong and I'm going to get yelled at. Let me pull it up. 547. 547 kilometers high. So there were 547 issued. I love the design of this one. I didn't order it. I don't know. It's very nice. But it's got the different color nose cone. It's different color hardware on the front end and the back end. And you don't see that very often. So I think that's a really, really unique look. Obviously, it was going to sell out very quickly. So I love it. But too bad it's already gone by now.

'''Myke Hurley:''' The space ones have always sold fast.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' That's kind of what they do best, right? The way they design their pens, space, aerospace, anything mechanical. They look like rockets anyway. Yeah. Anything mechanical is just always, always looks exceptional. And having almost like a window into space on the front end and the darkness and depths of space and the things you see with the panels and hardware of the machinery of the telescope. I don't know. It looks awesome. Like if I was into this, that would be an insta-buy.

'''Myke Hurley:''' But not. It isn't because you can't.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' It has launched and it will not be returning from orbit.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Go to penshalet.com. That's P-E-N-C-H-A-L-E-T.com. Click the podcast link at the top of the website. Use the password penaddict to get your hands on the code that you need to save 10% on anything at any time at Penshalet and to see this week's special offers. Our thanks to Penshalet for the continued support of this show and Relay FM.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' All right, Myke. I'm going to talk about this article. It's like one of those things that I have balance. I was like, should we talk about this? Should we not talk about this? And the answer is always to talk about it. And this is the 87 best pens, Blaze It by Strategist UK. Myke, 87 best pens by Strategist UK. If this sounds familiar, Myke Hurley, did you know that we had covered the Strategist US version of their top 100?

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah, I remember this.

== Top 87 Pens List ==

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, all the way back in 2018.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Didn't they choose the Baron Fig pen right up there? Was that that one?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yes. So that was the one with the Baron Fig squire was number one. And that was pretty much the only good thing about that list, right? Like that was the thing where the squire was number one. And I was like, okay, cool. I get that. Like that makes sense with what you're trying to sell me here on this list. So everything else about the list, right? Yeah. Yeah. Exactly.

'''Myke Hurley:''' If you're in New York, you work in New York, you're in New York, you always get covered by the New York media. This is something that you see all the time. And this is the way. Great pen because there's a great refill, great body. We are eye on a couple. I love them. But it's just, I think that New York bias played, helped them out. Absolutely.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' But that was the least problematic part of that list. And I thought this was last year. It's all the way back in 2018, episode 335. I'll put a link in the show notes.

'''Myke Hurley:''' The reason you're thinking this is the same reason I'm thinking it is we just did like the wire cutter or something. Yeah, probably. There was one very recently that we'd just gone through and we were equally, I actually think more frustrated with that one than any of the others.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Well, this one might win, Myke, for frustration level. It is one of the most scattershot lists that I have ever seen.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I don't get the point of 87. Not just the round number, but just the number as high as it is. Number 86 is the Lamy Safari. These things, we're never going to be happy about them, right? They're never going to be what we want.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Because they're made for a specific reason.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah, which is why the top 10, by and large, I'm actually pretty good with. Because I can kind of see how they've gotten to it. Yep.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So the top 10, I'll run them down real quick. So from 10 to 1. So number 10, the Parker Classic. That is essentially the longer, skinnier version of the Parker Jotter. It will make sense why that's number 10 when I get up to number 5 here. Number 9, Stabilo Perfect Glide 0.3 millimeter. It's a rollerball. Number 8, Stabilo Exam Grade. Number 7, Muji Gel Ink Ballpoint 0.38 millimeters. It's not a ballpoint, but this is part of the larger, broader issue. Number 6, Tombow Fudenosuke Brush Pen. We'll come back to that one. Number 5 is the Cross Classic Century. That's the standard issue gift pen by Cross. You know, the skinny ballpoint pen. That's the graduation gift. That's why the Parker Classic, I'm assuming, is in at number 10. They lean towards those pens. Number 4 is the Edding 1255 Calligraphy Pen. We are definitely coming back to that one. Number 3 is the Edding 55 Fineliner. It's your traditional Fineliner, you know, drawing pen. Number 2, Muji Gel Ink 0.7 millimeter. And number 1, Stabilo 0.88, which is another Fineliner. So, oh boy, I don't want to spend too long on this. But when you have your number 4 pen, the Edding 1255 Calligraphy Pen as your number 4 overall pen. And it is a chisel tip marker.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I don't know what you're doing with this list other than just farming affiliate links, which is totally fine.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Well, I think it's like we tried it and this felt really fun. But no one's actually using it to write with every day. And, like, it's totally fine to try that out and be like, oh, this is fun. But nobody's writing with those. They're not for writing with. And you're not doing calligraphy. I don't care what you're saying. You're not doing calligraphy. Right.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' And that's not the premise of this article, I don't believe. So, that's why, like, having the Tombow Brush Pen at number 6, that's a favorite pen of mine. Like, it would never be anywhere around, like, some of these other pens. Um, the Muji Gel ink pens are funny to read, number 2 and number 7, because they talk about how well they write without mentioning that it's the same Pilot and Uniball refills that are, like, ranked in the 40s and 50s and 70s of this list. Yeah, but that's, we all fall for that. It's, like, you know. Um, the biggest outlier, the biggest thing that just makes you go, what is happening here with a list like this other than, like, I wouldn't even read it if we, if we, if I didn't want to discuss it on the podcast. Because they put in something, like, at number 20, they put in the Molotov one-for-all marker. This is a paint pen, Michael. This is a paint pen. Like, shake up with the agitator in the barrel paint pen.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' It boggles the mind that this exists in an 87 best pens. Like, it may be the number one paint pen right on the market, but that, this just shows me they're just throwing stuff together. Like, the paint pen is ahead of, like, the Pilot G2 and the Uniball Vision and, like, every other good pen ever. Like, a paint pen. Who is going to use a paint pen to write with? And that's the way they presented this list. Nobody is. Because that's the thing.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I believe they've used these pens. Sure. But they've got the pen and they've been like, oh, that feels nice. Uh-huh. And then.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Anyway.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So, that's about all I have to say. It's funny.

'''Myke Hurley:''' What bleed through? What do they mean by this? Bleed through. I don't know. Like, does it mean, does a five mean it doesn't bleed through?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Um, that's correct.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Right.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Which, a paint marker, I don't know if you're reading that one, but, like, a paint marker is designed to bleed through.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Wait, I haven't seen what they gave the score for.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So, they go through their whole system.

'''Myke Hurley:''' 4.8! Come on! Come on! It doesn't bleed through when you do on a canvas. It's an emoji.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' They did them all in a emoji notebook writing the quick brown fox mic. And the Molotov paint marker is at number 20. This slimmer, thinner, and more functional pen still requires shaking like a can of spray paint. And the strong scent, as well as the satisfying rattle, is quite fun. It's not an everyday pen.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I don't disagree with any of that. But also, the calligraphy pen is going to bleed through. And they gave it a five. Like, I'm sorry. Like, look. As I said, I don't have an issue with a lot of the stuff in the top ten. No. Because, like, the Stabulo Point is a really fun pen to use every day. There are multiple of these in my home. Oh, absolutely. Because they're great. Like, the same as the Muji pens. Like, also great. Like, I don't like Cross, but I know why it's in here. The Parker Classic. I can kind of get on board with that because, like, you know, it's fine. Like, 11, the B-roll handwriting pen. Fantastic. Fun pen to use every single day. You get real consistency. Like, I understand why there are so many, like, brush pens in this list. Yeah, they're fun. They're awesome. Because they're great to use. The same as the felt tips. Like, 24, Paper Mate Flare. Oh, so good to use. Like, if, you know, you're not necessarily like us. It's like, yeah, I get it. But I do have an issue when just, like, these random things come in here. Oh, come on. They put the BitCrystal at 32. I mean, come on.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I mean, that's, yeah. So, anyway, it's fun to poke fun at these lists. I mean, we're not taking it too seriously because it's just, it doesn't, it starts, it stops making sense when you see some of these things and you just kind of go, yeah, whatever. Like, and it's penless after about five or ten rankings. Like, it's just, like, a crapshoot. Like, it's all, they're all the same at some point.

'''Myke Hurley:''' What's the difference between the Fisher Bullet Pen and the Fisher Space Pen?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Nothing.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Right, because they're both on this list.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, I know.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Fisher Bullets at 34 and Fisher Space Pen is, like, at 20 or something. Shape of the barrel, Mabel.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, shape of the barrel. So, I don't know what they're doing.

'''Myke Hurley:''' So, there's some differences. It's not the exact same pen.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Same refill.

'''Myke Hurley:''' There's good stuff in here, for sure. It's not the worst list that we've seen by any stretch. Yeah. But it also has its own set of eccentricities.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yep. Yep. That make you, as pen addicts, you have to, you quite, we look at it differently. Like, you have to question why is a paint pen ahead of, like, the G2 and the Uniball Vision.

'''Myke Hurley:''' It reminds me of the Visionaire being filled with that ink.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, the India ink.

'''Myke Hurley:''' The India ink, yeah.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Higgins. Higgins, India ink. All right. So, that's enough of that list. I thought that was, that was fun. It came up a bunch in my Twitter feed. I wanted to point it out. And then, I was like, do I even want to click this link? And, you know, I was going to click this link. And if I click the link, you know, I was going to have to talk about it. So, here we are.

== Stationery Trends for 2021 ==

'''Myke Hurley:''' I have a question for you.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yes, sir.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I just started a new year, right? Right. And I just wondered if there were any trends, like, stationary trends or, like, predominant ideas that you were expecting to see picked up on in the community or by larger retailers this year. Like, have you spent any time thinking about that? Is there stuff that you think is going, we're going to see in 2021, like, along those kinds of lines?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. That was on my task list this week, honestly, to write about in depth. So, I haven't put all my thoughts in. It might be better to, we can explore this further or recap this next week when I, like, put together everything. But I have some high points that I wanted to discuss. And it ties in, one of them, the main one, or the obvious one, ties in with what we talked about in the beginning with Lamy and the reissuance of the Safari. And then I've gotten a bunch of tweets and emails because the Parker 51 that is being remade and reissued that we learned about last fall, then it got pushed into February. That's starting to come back around again. So, people are wanting to know our opinions on that. So, I gave my opinions on the Parker 51 in episode 423. I'm not going to, you know, re-litigate that whole thing. But I got some grief for it. I thought I was very fair in what I felt about the pen. And my stance is that it's perfectly fine. I wanted to see more, right? Like, I thought there was a letdown.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I just got distracted by Chris in the Discord. I have to read this. I'm sorry. I'm really sorry. Strategist's top five cars. Number one, Tesla. Number two, a bicycle. Number three, Ford F350. Number four, Toyota Yaris. Number five, Ferrari LaFerrari.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' That's exactly right. That is how the, it's a non-context-based list where, like, none of this relates to each other. So, that's perfectly said. I apologize. I love that. That's really good. So, you know, with the Parker 51, it's about to come back out. And, like, I'm for it. Like, I just, it doesn't excite me, right? I wanted, this was an opportunity for Parker to push the 51 forward was my stance, not re-litigate the old version. But here I said at the top of the show, I'm pretty happy that, you know, Lamy's reissuing their pen. So, it's a little bit of a hypocritical stance for me. But I just think that there's an opportunity.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Right, but this is a hundred dollar pen. Yeah.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I think it's going to end up being just a little bit under a hundred, probably like 80 to 90.

'''Myke Hurley:''' And also, like, we expect a new color from Lamy every year. And so, like, really all they've done, like, it's not like they've reissued a specific pen. It's just they've brought the color back for this year. So, I do think that there are quite a few differences between the two's approach.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, and I just think Parker left a lot on the table. I don't think Parker tried hard enough for this, is my stance, right? Like, I think it's going to do fine. I think people are excited about it. It will probably sell well. But it's traditional colors with less features than the original. That's it. Yeah.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I mean, I know we said this before. And I'll just say it again, I guess for the people in the back. Like, I don't know why you would buy this new one when there are a million old ones to buy.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, I mean, a new market, you know, to get into, you know, people don't necessarily want to go for a vintage pen, you know, and rightfully so in a lot of occasions. Yeah, but I don't know. They don't know how they work.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I don't know who's, like, new to pens and is like, ooh, give me that vintage looking pen. Like, I don't, I'm not sure that that market exists.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I don't know. I think you might be short selling. I think it's going to bring back a lot of good memories for a lot of people and sell very well. Oh, okay. Okay. The problem is. Memories. I hadn't thought of that one. Is what is it going to feel like? Is it going to feel like a $90 pen? And that's where my concern lies. When you don't have any of that hardware in the barrel of the pen, like the old vacuumatic filler mechanism. The feel of the pen, it has to be recalibrated. And we'll just have to see if they did that for this. Or is it just going to be, you know, a very air light pen. And what I wanted to see. So, I want to give them a little bit of slack. That it's, this release is less important than the next release of the Parker 51, in my opinion. Because I want to see, okay, this is the introduction. The reintroduction of the 51. What's next? Is nothing next? Well, then I think it was a letdown. And I think Parker is missing an opportunity. If there's something next that takes this, what they're re-releasing, and then moves it into 2020. With, give me an all black Parker 51.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Why not? You know? What can you do with the barrel materials? Give me a striped barrel with the chrome cap. Give me something that says the Parker 51 is just as cool in 2020 as it was in 1950. And then I'll get excited about it. Right now, like, I'll try it. I'll test it out. But I'm not, like, you know, jumping through the screen to grab one. It's, I just think, I don't know. I personally wanted more from this. That said, I think it's going to do extremely well.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So, back to your question. 2021 trends. Well, there's two pins right there, Myke, that are pulling from the archives. The Lamy Safari, the Parker 51. We're seeing Estabrook with the JR. So, when they recreated and rethought the brand, they took the brand and made a modern pin in the Estee. Now, they're looking back saying, okay, what can we do? Like, we did good with the Estee. It's a completely new reimagining of the Estabrook.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' What can we do with the JR? And they made some night. They made four of the JRs designed to fit the old vintage nibs. And they made them in a modern style.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I just always assumed it was Junior.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Maybe. Well, I call it JR because the original was the J.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Hmm.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So, I'm continuing that. Yeah, that makes sense. But I could be incorrect. So, I think it's J reimagined is actually maybe what it's supposed to mean. So, again, this is like what I said with the Parker 51. I want to see what round two for this pin is going to be. Because it's fine as it is, but I think there's room to grow there. And there's options to have there. So, I would like to see that.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' The next thing, I haven't thought out completely. And it's a little bit controversial. And it goes a little bit against the things I believe in. And I think, God, I don't know how to say this without getting in trouble. I think I'm going to get yelled at for this. Awesome.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I love my wild pens as far as colors and materials go. But I think we're getting close to saturation.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Oh, definitely.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' For everything is wild. Yeah. And I'm a proponent of everything is wild. Like, that's what I like. Give me all your wild materials. Give me all your primary manipulations. Give me all your glitter pens. Give me all your neon pink pens. But now it's everywhere.

'''Myke Hurley:''' At a certain point, wild becomes lazy.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Right. So, I don't know if there is...

'''Myke Hurley:''' There will be a new wild. Like, that's what you've got to look out for. That the people that are truly skilled and talented in these fields of, like, coming up with these really interesting barrels. Yeah. So, like, here's one I'll give as an example. I know I mention them a lot. But it's just... Like, the most recent canalea pens have that depth to them. Which is new. Right? And I wouldn't say that that is, like, oh, that's completely wild. And, like, you know, it's going to change the industry. But my point is that, like, they are, like, materials, blanks, that have a different look to them than some of the other stuff that I've seen before. And I expect that that is just... That's what has to happen. Right? That, like, when Jonathan Brooks came on the scene, right, it just upended everything. Because it was like, what is going on over there? And then that became, like, a trend in our part of the industry for a while. And whether it's Jonathan or someone else, there would need to be a change. I mean, like, for Jonathan Brooks specifically, I think that, like, Arushi is where he is doing his interest in work now.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Right. Right. But that doesn't scale. Doesn't scale.

'''Myke Hurley:''' No.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So, wild scales. And it has. And I think... I don't know that we're at peak yet. But I think we're going to start... Someone is going to have to come in and do something different. Yeah, you gotta, like, turn it. It can still be wild. Yeah. But there's gonna have to be... And there's a lot of makers on the market now that I think have the ability to lead us into, like, the next design features or the next materials. So, I think this might be a reckoning year. Like, I have enough wild pens, right? I can only get so many more unique material pens. And probably... But, like, probably three out of the last four or five pens I've bought have been, like, what I would consider, like, the wild pens. You know, just the crazy materials, you know, whether they're from Montegrappa or from Leonardo or from Brooks or anything like that. Like, that's cool. That's what I love. But I think we're gonna hit a cap here on that. But so, 2021 is gonna have... I'm hoping it brings something new as far as... And it could be a small change, right? These things don't move, like, in wild directions, right? We're not gonna, like, have an upheaval. But what is going to be the thing that's going to push those a little bit further? Yeah. Because we all enjoy seeing them. We all enjoy using them. They make the best Instagram photos. Because at some point, I have five of them and I don't need any more.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah, yeah. The original reason... One of the original reasons that these things became so popular is because they were so different. And if we have too many of them, it's not different anymore. Right. It's different for people coming in to the hobby, right? Absolutely.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' And you have to think about that. That's why the Parker 51 is gonna do well.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Okay.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Because one of the traps I fall into is just looking at it from my perspective and not a universal perspective.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Right. Because you're, like, oversaturated in general. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Mm-hmm. So, those are the two main 2021... I don't even know if you'd call them trends, but, like, the everything old is new again. Like, that's always a common trend, right? And a lot of times, it's really good. Like, I like the everything old is new again, right? I like the vintage stuff and modernizing that type of thing. And then discovering, you know, is 2021 gonna see a corner turned in extreme materials? And I still have to work on how to expand on those thoughts. But, yeah, I think you got the gist of what I was getting at today.

'''Myke Hurley:''' All right. This episode is brought to you by ExpressVPN. How did you choose which internet service provider that you would go with? Unfortunately, some people have very little choice because ISPs have a lot of controls in the regions that they're in. And then, without that choice, you kind of lose some control. And this is where you could end up having things that you don't want. So, like, data caps, throttles on streaming, and even logging your information to sell to companies to advertise against you. This is a thing that happens. And you can protect your devices with ExpressVPN, which means that ISPs can't see your activity. I use ExpressVPN. I really recommend it. It's a very, very great service. I've been using it for years. Whenever I want to use a Wi-Fi connection and want to make sure, like, if I'm not sure about it, then I will use ExpressVPN. And if you are in a situation where you feel like you're unsure of what your ISP could be doing, this is a great use of ExpressVPN. So, the way that it works is it encrypts all of your network data and tunnels it through a secure VPN server. This means that nobody can see your activity. It's super simple to use. You can get an app for your computer or smartphone. You just one click and you're connected. And it's also simple for you to change the location. So, like, you can basically trick the internet in making it think that you're somewhere that you're not. And that means you could access content that you might not otherwise be able to access and get around geo-restriction stuff, which can also be a great use. Just think of how much of your life is on the internet. Every site that you visit, every video you watch, it could all be tracked by ISPs or other tech giants who could sell your information. You don't want that, right? If this is something that you want to prevent against, you should use ExpressVPN. It is the best way to hide your online activity from your ISP. Just download the app, tap that one button on your device, and you're protected. ExpressVPN does all of this without slowing your connection. This is why it's rated the number one VPN service by CNET and Wired. So stop handing over your personal data to ISPs and other tech giants who may mine your activity and sell off your information. Protect yourself with the VPN that I trust to keep myself private online. That is ExpressVPN. Go to expressvpn.com slash penaddict. That's expressvpn.com slash penaddict to get three extra months for free. That's one last time, expressvpn.com slash penaddict. A thanks to ExpressVPN for their support of this show and RelayFM.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' We have some interesting Ask TPA this week, Myke.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Okay.

== Ask TPA Segment ==

'''Brad Dowdy:''' The lead question is interesting. And then we have some more in-depth traditional Ask TPA.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Okay.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' But us makers and retailers in the US were caught off guard by some postal service changes, and we have questions about that, specifically from the aforementioned Mr. Jonathan Brooks. And then I copied in an email that I got. Yeah.

'''Myke Hurley:''' So Jonathan's question is, do you think that the new UK VAT system will have an effect on small makers selling to the UK? So basically, in a nutshell, there are some new rules around customs and tax here. And anything under the value of 135 pounds, makers from outside of the United Kingdom now need to start charging tax. VAT is value-added tax that we pay on everything in the UK. The government, our government wants companies from overseas to be collecting this tax and then paying it to the UK government on a quarterly basis. Now, a lot of people don't want to do this because they're kind of like, I don't care, right, about you and your rules.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Ultimately, I think what we're going to see is a lot of people moving to larger platforms. So if you use something like Etsy or eBay to sell your products, you don't have to worry about this because Etsy and eBay will do it for you. I could imagine companies like Shopify trying to find a way to enable this if it becomes a problem in the future. There is actually, I think, a pretty understandable reason for this because obviously we've left the European Union now, right? So everything coming into the UK now has to go through customs. So I think what the thinking is, is they put this in place to try and stop a lot of stuff going through customs because the idea is if you are charging VAT, it doesn't need customs inspection. It just flies through. And then anything over £135 will still go through the customs route to make sure that everything's been done all above board. So I think that's why it's happening, right, that this has been put in place so it reduces the amount of increase on the Border Patrol and the customs force because otherwise nothing's ever going to get through, right? Like literally every parcel is now going through this system.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I think in the short term there's going to be some disruption. I think companies will stop shipping to the UK. I've already seen it, honestly. There are some companies that I've seen, smaller companies, that basically have, and I don't mean this in a bad way, but have decided I can't be bothered to read this or to deal with this because a lot of these are admittedly very small makers. So it's kind of like I don't want to have to deal with whatever this new stuff is, so I'm just going to turn it off for the foreseeable future. Like you can't ship to the UK.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So let me simplify what this new stuff is from the perspective of a small maker. So let's take Nock, for example. And Myke goes to Nock and Myke would like to purchase a Sinclair. That's $40 US, which is well under the 135 pound limit. So Myke has already been paying shipping, which has increased in the last couple of years. So that $40 product is going to cost him at least $15, $16 to ship. And then I have to tax him 20 more percent on that $40. So he's going to pay additional 20% and he's going to pay the shipping. Or he's going to think about paying 21% and think about paying the shipping. So then on my side, so Myke completes that transaction. He gets his case. I ship it. So on my side, I will have a bucket of funds of 20% that I've charged to the UK that I now have to send to the UK. I have to go register my business with the UK, collect these funds at the time of purchase, and then ship off those funds to the UK VAT registrar each quarter. So that's an additional overhead for me to track and me to siphon off. There's no cost to me other than Myke deciding not to purchase. That would be a cost of a lost sale. And then the time it would take me to manage the books, which in my case would actually be pretty small. But, you know, when you tack on lots of pretty smalls onto something that's already got a lot of pretty smalls, you know, it's just more things. The other issue is we weren't made aware of this until like two days ago. Like this was news to me. I didn't realize this on January 1st until I got an email from stamps.com. On two days ago, on January 11th, I get an email that says, effective January 1st, you need to be collecting all this stuff. I was like, whoops.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Well, there was a lot of obviously to the minute. I mean, I will say that there is also an element of like people, companies in other countries just not like caring to pay attention because there was going to be changes, right? And anyone that was aware of it knew that something was coming, but it is not your, well, it kind of is your responsibility, but not like emotionally or logically your responsibility. You have to care about what's happening in every country all over the place. What I expect will happen is like it really is up to the maker. If you sell to the United Kingdom a lot, you should do this because otherwise you're not going to be able to do it. If you don't.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' And hope your customers are going to want to pay the tax.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yes. Well, but the thing is though, Brad, we already are, right? In a lot of cases. Like when you're hearing people complain to you about customs fees, it's this 20%.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Gotcha. It's just coming later in the chain. This is now it's coming earlier in the chain.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah. But also it could be, I mean, I don't know how it's going to go exactly, but could end up being less because we won't have to pay the customs handling fees anymore on these items. Right. Because they won't be handled by customs.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So from your perspective, you would not necessarily consider me charging you the 20% VAT because you're assuming you're going to get it somewhere. I might as well just get it now.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah. And also, I mean, as someone from the United Kingdom, I see VAT on everything. Right. Right. Like I go to stores and it's like, here's the price. And then you go to checkout sometimes and it tells you plus 20% VAT or you see it on the product page or whatever. Like we're used to paying VAT, right? Okay. And if it does mean that you don't have to pay the customs fees and I don't have to wait the extra time for these items, like that feels like a net win to me as a customer. Okay. Because like I'm still paying the same amount of money that I'm paying. And so, you know, it's just like I, as a person in the UK, hello, here's me. I really want all of the companies that I buy from, please do what you have to do here. I know it's frustrating. I know it's annoying. And I do expect over time it's going to get easier for a number of reasons. I think the process will get easier or the process will change. The process will probably change. And or there'll be companies, platform vendors that try and make it easier for their customers. Because like eBay and Etsy, I've already seen a lot of makers move stuff over to Etsy for the UK, for like the UK stores, because they will take it as part of the payment processing. So I would really, I would be surprised if a company like Shopify or Stripe didn't just do, come up with a product for this, where they're just like, hey, you as our customer, don't worry. We'll charge the 20% and you'll just never see it. And we'll just pay it to the UK government for you. Yep.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So here, that's what I would like. Here is my thought that I think this is not going to be as big a deal in the end. Number one, your statement on you're going to pay this somehow. That makes a lot of sense. Number two, the companies in the US already pay state taxes individually by county. That is far more complex than a single VAT tax collection. So for example, Nock is based in Georgia. For each county in Georgia, Georgia has the most counties in the US. It's like 153 counties in the state. Each of them has a different tax rate that since I'm a Georgia business, I have to file individually. I only have to do it annually. Thank goodness. So, and not every county buys from me, but by the end of the year, I'll have, say, 30 individual county taxes that I have to file specifically. If you tell me I have to file one VAT tax quarterly, that's nothing. So imagine a larger company, how much they're already filing. This is not going to be a big deal.

'''Myke Hurley:''' No, because I'm only hearing this as an issue from small companies. Like large companies, there's not going to be a change. I expect this is going to be very bumpy for the next couple of months because there's going to be stuff that's sent before this happened, even though technically that's okay. But when did the purchase occur? I'm in on a bunch of keyboard products that I bought like six to eight months ago. What's going to happen more? There's going to be issues for a while. I know this. There's going to be a bumpy period where like, like you or like many people now listen to the show. This is the first time they've ever heard of this. Yeah.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I haven't turned anything on on any of my sites yet.

'''Myke Hurley:''' No. And so like there's, and my understanding is the process to apply is not that simple. Surprise. Oh my God.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' It's, it's terrible in Georgia. So I wouldn't expect anything less. And I imagine it's getting overrun right now. Yeah. And I actually need to start collecting any fees.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yep. So you can do all of the registering and I don't mean, I don't know. And I assume it's going to be tricky and it's not going to be simple and you can have to provide all this documentation and blah, blah, blah.

'''Myke Hurley:''' But it's just going to become part of doing business with the UK. It's up to you as a maker if you want to do that. But I, you know, we're a decent economy. I know it's annoying. It's annoying for all of us. But as I said, I think, I think you as a company, you already know if it's worth it for you. Right. Do you have a lot of UK customers? If you don't, then what's the point? Don't worry about it. If you do, it's probably time to start talking to your accountant and doing some filing.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Right. Right? So, yeah. Yeah. So I was thinking at it more from a negative from the UK customer base when in fact.

'''Myke Hurley:''' You are going to have to do some customer education, Brad. Sure. Sure, sure, sure. And we do need to see that I'm right in my theory. But what we're not going to, there may be a customs handling fee still, but you're not going to have to pay the VAT. Because that's what we're paying. And people complain to you about customs. They're paying the VAT and then they're paying a fee on top of it. And, you know, so you might have to explain, well, like, you know how you have VAT on everything you buy in the UK. Well, it's the same here now, too. And my thinking on a lot of this sort of stuff remains anyway, that, like, once you've done the currency conversion, because of the way that our economies are structured, the price is, like, the same as if you were a UK company selling it here anyway most of the time. Right? Like, what is a $20 case is a £20 case if you were based in this country. Right. And so considering that there is differences between the currencies of the countries, like, a lot of the time, not all the time, but a lot of the time, it comes out in the wash. Right? Whereas, like, if you want to see what I'm saying, look at, like, technology products. They're always more expensive here. And that's why. Because they're adding the taxes on and adjusting for currencies. So, you know, it's a short-term frustration. But, you know, this is the world my country is in now. Like, we are our own island again. And I was going to say for good and ill, I don't know if, I don't think there's any good. If there's any good, it surely hasn't shown itself to me yet. For ill and ill, this is just where we are. And we're going to, I guess, have to drag everyone along, kicking and screaming now if people want to continue doing business with us.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yep. So, this is a bigger conversation and a good conversation for this show because of how Pen Addict shop. Right? We shop with a lot of smaller businesses and larger businesses and have a lot of UK customers if we're businesses, you know, around the world. So, yeah. This might be boring, but I think it's an interesting conversation because we're seeing some changes just in how these types of things are handled. And you might see some changes on your favorite websites. So, just, it's more of a heads up. I have some work to do on my side. I'm not pulling anything. I will just eat whatever taxes I have until, you know, it's completely set. It's not that big of a number to have to worry about for me. But other people might need to, like, step it up and do something quickly because, honestly, these types of things usually don't catch me off. Usually, I'm usually, like, ahead of the game on this one. This one caught me off.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Well, yeah. It's because it was, like, something was going to happen. Right? Because it had to. Because, you know.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' It's not good. But it's not going to affect my numbers enough for me to panic and, like, pull down UK sales. Like, I can deal with UK sales until, like, I put in the 20% type of things. Not a big deal.

'''Myke Hurley:''' It's just the case of, like, if you're a company and you sell, well, maybe stop for a bit. Work out what you could do and then resume it.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yep. Yep. Yep. But anyone in the U.S. who deals with state sales taxes, this is no different. In some cases, like in mine, it'll be simpler. In some cases, it'll be exactly the same. Like, a one-stop shop. Right. Okay. Well, that's good. I feel a little bit better after talking to you about it and, you know, realizing how it affects me directly. Because that's really what it's all about, Myke.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Of course. It's the pan addict. You are the pan addict. And so, like, it's just how are you doing, you know?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yep. Yep. So, part of the pan addict is answering Ask TPA. I think we're just going to have to take at least half an episode next week to handle our Ask TPA questions. Because we have some really good ones that I want to spend some time on. Yep. So, I think we're at the point now where we just move these to next week. And then I'll probably build up a big batch of Ask TPA. Nice. And just do one of our big catch-up episodes. Sounds good to me. For Ask TPA next week and some follow-up on some other things. Some new product talk, I'm sure. And all that good stuff.

'''Myke Hurley:''' If you do have a question that you want to get in, there's a bunch of ways to do it. You can send out a tweet with the hashtag Ask TPA. If you're a RelayFM member, you can use the RelayFM members Discord. Just use question mark Ask TPA and you can submit your question anywhere. Probably in the Pen's channel is probably the best place for it. But you can choose. It's up to you. You can email us at hello at PenAddict.com. I say us. I mean Brad.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' True. That is true.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah. Those are the ways you can get in touch. If you have any questions you'd like us to ask, any topics you'd like us to expand upon, send them in. We'll do some. We'll do many more next week. We were supposed to do a lot today, but then Jonathan sent me this question and then Brad pasted all that stuff in. And then I spent more time than I would have wanted to over the last 12 hours trying to make sense of this. Same. I think we kind of got to a point where I've been able to work it out.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Until then, you can find our show notes for this episode at relay.fm slash PenAddict slash 444. You can find Brad at PenAddict.com, knock.co, spokedesign.com on Tuesdays and Thursdays at 10 a.m. Eastern Time on twitch.tv slash PenAddict. Brad is PenAddict on Instagram. Dowdy is on Twitter. I am iMike. I-M-Y-K-E. Thank you so much to Pen Chalet and ExpressVPN for the support of this show. And most of all, thank you for listening. And we'll be back next time. Until then, say goodbye, Brad.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Goodbye, Brad.

[[Category:Podcast Transcripts]]
[[Category:The Pen Addict Podcast Transcript]]

The Pen Addict 443/transcript

2026-06-23T15:58:15Z

PencilBot: fixed spelling

{{Infobox podcast transcript
| name = The Pen Addict
| number = 443
| title = Notes Passing Through the Night
| date = January 6th, 2021
| hosts = [[Brad Dowdy]] 
[[Myke Hurley]]
| guests =
| link = [https://www.relay.fm/penaddict/443 Episode 443]
| audiolink = [https://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/traffic.libsyn.com/secure/thepenaddict/The_Pen_Addict_443.mp3 Audio Episode 443]
| length = 71
}}

'''Myke Hurley:''' From RelayFM, this is The Pen Addict, episode 443. Today's show is brought to you by Squarespace and Harry's. My name is Myke Hurley. I'm joined by Brad Dowdy. Happy New Year, Brad. Happy New Year, Myke Hurley. Wow, is this our first episode of 2021? Yes. Well, I mean, it's only January 6th, so... The number day of the week is... I only know it's Wednesday, like 30 minutes before the show. Actually, that's a lie. I know the day before when I have to write the notes, but then by the time Wednesday morning rolls around, I'm still like, what day is today? Like, you know, it's been like that for months, so, you know, that's just the way it is these days.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So we got a pretty big episode today. Okay.

'''Myke Hurley:''' It's an interesting episode. Am I... Let me ask you this before we explore this. Am I... And I'm purposely not saying what we're talking about, even though I've already said publicly what we're talking about. Am I crazy for being nervous that this episode doesn't fit in the grand scheme of Pen Addict podcasts? Yes.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' We're literally talking about journaling. I know. So I don't really understand how... I mean, look, what we're going to talk about today is not just what you're using for your journaling this year, but what you're putting in it, which is maybe a little bit... You know, it's more along the lines of a focus or cortex, you know, one of those kinds of shows. Yeah. But, no, I don't think it's an issue.

'''Myke Hurley:''' And I think I see it that way because I'm talking about me the whole time. Right, right, right. Like, this whole thing is about, like, hey, here's how I do the thing, and that's not normally a thing for me. Like, we'll do that in small bits and, you know, have a segment here, segment there, but this is, like, literally how I'm setting up my theme system journal and what my yearly theme is going to be. How I set up my planner and what planner I'm using. And then, like, what other stuff do I use? So this is a little bit... It's... The question was partially a joke because it's totally right in line. I'm also a little bit uncomfortable about talking about myself for, like, a straight hour, even though I've probably done that for 442 episodes. But it was more, you know, around, you know, product-based stuff. And this is a little bit more touchy-feely, Myke.

== Themes ==

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yep. So, yearly themes. Yearly themes. This is a concept that was created and adapted by CGP Grey and myself. So, creation by Grey, adaption by me, is in the idea of having a theme for the year. If you want some background on this, I will put in the show notes episode 110 of Cortex, which is the most recent yearly themes episode. From there, you can find previous episodes about themes. I will also put in a link to a YouTube video that Grey made about yearly themes themselves, like, just as a thing. And then I'll also include in the notes a link to the themesystem.net where I kind of explain how yearly themes, the idea of having a theme for the year, can then be translated into journaling. And I will just, you know, state for the record, we sell a product sometimes. We like to try and have a product all the time that you can put this in. But look, this is, we created a product that I think is a great product, but it doesn't hold any special keys to anything. You can use the theme system in any notebook that you want to.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Absolutely. Absolutely. Okay. You ready for me to? Like bullet channeling. Yeah, absolutely. Like, this is a system that can be used in any notebook product and probably even digitally. Oh, definitely digitally. So, yeah. And I know a lot of people are doing that.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Oh, it's the themesystem.com, not the themesystem.net. I always say the themesystem.net, which I think I own that URL and I should just move it. It's themesystem.com, themesystem.net.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah. Yeah. There you go. All right. So, I have to give a little bit of background in the beginning on why I'm actually using the themesystem journal and just themes in general. I've never been a resolutions guy. Like, I've never been a New Year's resolutions guy. Never in my life. Like, you know, you have a good theory about it. You know, when you're younger, it's like, oh, this is the year I lose. You know, my New Year's resolution is to lose 20 pounds and to stop doing this and to start doing that. And I've just never been that person. And so, the idea of themes actually kind of stuck with me in how I think about things. So, like, that idea appealed to me. And if it didn't, we wouldn't be talking about this book. I mean, like, to be honestly with everyone, you know, Myke and I have been friends for a decade now, pretty much. And, like, if I didn't, you know, if the notebook wasn't for me, I'd tell Myke and, like, Myke would be cool with that, right?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' No, I wouldn't be cool. I'd be heartbroken, but I wouldn't have a problem with you.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right? So, but I happen to find personal value in this, regardless of whether, you know, Myke and Gray and my friends made the thing, right? So, like, I'm pretty upfront about that. So, the idea of, like, having a yearly theme really stood out for me because I'm working for myself. Yeah. And I think it's really designed for that. Like, if I was in my old job, like, I don't, I wouldn't have, I wouldn't get the value from having a yearly theme that I think I get now, right? So, that's just the way I personally look at it. Some people do use it for their day jobs and their regular work. But I feel like I wouldn't have used this product in the beginning, in the early days of the pen addict as much as I would now. Because back then, I was never a journaler to begin with, right?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Right, okay.

'''Myke Hurley:''' So, and people who were journalers and, you know, would find a way to use it. But now, it fits into my, the way I work. So, my first theme, I haven't told Myke what my theme is.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Just real quick, real quick before you do this. So, just to give a very brief overview. So, the idea of having a yearly theme is instead of picking, say, I want to do this by June, which is a resolution, or I want to do this specific thing this year. You come up with a word or phrase that can guide you through the year. So, for example, my theme this year is the year of reinvention. Because I'm taking things that I did last year in a panic because of the pandemic and turning some of those things into permanent parts of my life going forward in a way that I feel like I'm reinventing myself, my career, and how I approach certain things. So, then, when I think about what the year of reinvention is for me, I can have loads of little things, little projects, little ideas that can all ladder up to reinvention.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So, I just wanted to give that overview. Like a theme is like, it's an idea that you carry with you through a period of time, whether it's three months, six months, nine months, a year, longer, that you are focusing towards. I've come up with the phrase, it makes sense to me a little bit, of calling it like a north star. It's the thing in the sky that you can see and it guides you. And that's what yearly themes is all about and what kind of differentiates it from resolutions.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yep. And I've kind of like bought into that idea, right? And I still, just from my perspective, I still, it's mostly work focused and a little bit life focused. So, my 2019 theme was the year of experimentation. I remember this came about because I was getting actually frustrated with the stationary market of being overwhelmed with things, right? So, I would have, and I would be, and me not wanting to be flexible as, you know, a product reviewer and as a stationary commentator. To want to look at all the things, I was frustrated that I was not interested in all the things. And so, I tried to reach out and, you know, broaden my horizons, experiment in things, get out of my comfort zone. So, that was 2019. So, 2020 was the year of ideas. And the concept behind that was I didn't feel quite productive in my different workflows that I have for coming up with new things to move these things forward. New ways to write on the pen attic, new products to make with Nock, you know, new ideas for spoke design, anything, you know, just completely, you know, trying to figure out what are these ideas and do I need to spend some time on coming up with these ideas. So, oddly enough, I didn't think of these two things. Like, I didn't go back and review my previous two themes when I had this year's theme, but it actually ties in. It's like round three of this exact continuation of themes. So, this year is the year of creating, right?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So, I actually think that that's not rare. The idea that you can see a through line of your themes because it's you, isn't it? It's your journey through what you're trying to achieve. And I think it's pretty normal for things to adapt. Like, that's literally my theme this year is an adaptation of some of the stuff that I did last year, but looking at how I broaden them. Like, what did I learn from needing to shift the way that my business worked and what are the things that I would take from that and adapt in the long term or what things about that were good, but I would want to change in this way or that way. So, there's a through line from these things from year to year. And as well, like, I think it's very rare for somebody to complete every part of their ideal theme every year. So, some things may just move over because you didn't do enough on them or you want to complete them. So, I think it's pretty normal to have a good through line from year to year.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah, because I never thought about that and it just kind of happened that way. Like, I didn't even – once I saw it, I was like, oh, crap, all of these work together. And that doesn't mean, like, any of those other themes have to end. Like, I can still be experimental and I still have to come up with ideas on the regular. But now, this year, I want to put those – I want to implement those ideas, right?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah.

'''Myke Hurley:''' So, that's the year of creating. That sounds better than the year of implementation. That sounds like I'm working for Toyota or something. So, I'm going with the year of creating where I want to bring – use this experimentation I've had and use these lists of ideas that I create and turn them into, like, real things. You know, whether – that can be a blog post or it could be a physical good, right? It could be all of these things. So, that's my theme, which, honestly, that topic, for those who aren't familiar with Cortex, that's mostly what you and Gray talk about is the themes and how you implement the themes into your life. And that's kind of where we're going to stop with, like, the theme part and we're going to get into the how I use it part and how it, you know, makes me, you know – how the theme system journal works within my life. Yeah. Just trying to, I don't know, clear my head, honestly. It really works for that. So, we're going to talk about the layout of the theme system journal. So, do you want to break down the overall parts just real quick? You can do that better than me. It's just a real short overview of, like, the general sections of the book.

== Journal Pages ==

'''Brad Dowdy:''' There's three main sections. You have the pages where you write down what your yearly theme or your theme is. So, you just have, like, some boxes to fill it out and some ideal things that you want to achieve from it. Then you have the daily pages. This is where you do your journaling. It has a bunch of boxes of varying sizes where you would give yourself some prompts and you'd fill in that every day. And then you have what we call the daily theme pages. People think of these as habit tracking. But it's basically a list of things that you want to achieve on a daily basis, typically like a word or a phrase, things that you want to just move along. Like, for example, I think about this of having – let me get mine. I can give you what mine say. So, every single day, I want to achieve something in the realm of creation, advancing, revenue, teamwork, marriage, relationships, engaging, health, relaxing, or learning. And every day, I give myself a little mark as to if I've completed something that could fall into those buckets. Because for me, if I do all of those things in a day, it's probably a good day.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, I took the – I'm glad you did that because I couldn't remember the names of any of the sections.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' You know, because as well, I mean, I have names for them. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But people think of them in their own way. Like, you know, you would call – maybe call it like a diary page, a journal page, and habit tracking. Yeah. You don't need my names. It's just what we call them because it's the product, right?

'''Myke Hurley:''' Well, that's what's important about what I did for what I call the journal pages. Like, the real – the diary pages of the book is I remember when you first came out with this and you sent me the book that I would not use the book until I came up with the appropriate section titles for me. Like, do you remember this conversation? It was a couple years ago. Like, I would not start the book until I was content with how I was going to name every section. Oh, yeah. Yeah. So, what I came up with were, you know, different things I wanted to capture on a daily basis. So, my first – my top section is called stoked because I like, you know, fun and funny words like that. Like, so, like what made me happy and excited today? What can I put in this box that I was stoked about? Well, the next section I call joked because I think you need to have an opportunity to bitch and complain in your journal. And that gives me that option. So, I have, like, my positive thing. Like, what's the cool thing that happened to me today and what made me mad today, right? Those are my top two sections in the journal. I put an image up on – well, I have in the show notes of – I put these images on my Instagram page this morning for y'all to see. I just wrote, like, a general index page. So, those are my first two sections. They're usually only, like, one sentence or one statement, right? It's just, like, the happy thing. And for me, it's the mad thing, right? Like, I need to put my anger down on paper.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So, my top two boxes of the four main boxes that you would track every day is good and bad. So, I write a good thing and a bad thing. Yeah. What was good today? What was bad today? Yeah.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah. So, my main section is called moments where, you know, that's the – okay, let me elaborate on what made me happy. Let me elaborate what made me mad. Let me, you know, notate what made me – you know, what my wins were today. Like, I hate that term. But, like, you know, what was I productive about today that I feel accomplished about? And, you know, so, I have a reminder of that. And then I can write any personal notes I have there. And, again, this is a very work-focused product for me. Like you, Myke, I only run this Monday through Friday. And if I'm on, you know, vacation or a holiday, it's not happening, right? I would fail if I tried to do this seven days a week, 365 days a year. I would absolutely 100% fail. So, this is – Working days only for me. So, that's why this tends to be more work-focused for capturing my day. And then I also, in this moment section, I note, like, what pen or pencil. If I'm using a fountain pen, what ink, I'll talk about that. So, I like to keep track of that. And I purposefully use something different every day. Yeah. Like, I don't have, like, a theme system journal pen where every page is in because I'm just surrounded by this stuff. And I want to use something different every day. That's part of, like, just the exploration of stationery.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. I – this main box, which you have the moments, I used to have proud. So, I would write what I was proud of in a day. But for this year, I've changed it to just, say, thinking. So, like, what am I thinking about? And I've actually got some real use out there. I've enjoyed that a lot. For the first time ever this week, I moved – I used two pages instead of one. Oh. Because I had so much on my mind that I ended up just using another page. And one of the good things about the journal is because the pages aren't dated. You date them yourself. They're numbered now, but they're not dated. You can do that. And we encourage that. And I ended up using multiple days for one day. So, I was actually really proud about the fact that I had not dated the pages because I got to use that feature for the first time.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I was like, oh, thanks, me. Good job by you. So, yeah, that's the thing is sometimes my joked section, like something that made me mad or was frustrated or bummed me out or I was sad, sometimes there's not something there, right? These all don't have to be filled out. Sometimes my moments section is full. Sometimes it's one sentence or two. Like it just, you know, it's rethinking about my day and what I took out of it is what goes in this. And, you know, not every day is going to be chock full of goods and bads and wins and losses. And sometimes day is just a day. So, that's, I don't worry about. I always have something, joked is the only one that just generally, that might have a chance of not being filled, right? It's generally filled, but, you know, once every couple weeks, I might be just sit there and stare at that. I was like, you know what? Really? Nothing really bugged me today. And that's the same for me, too. Myke was all right. You know, Myke didn't do that.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, Myke wasn't too annoying today. He was just on the regular level.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yep. So, and then my last section, this was actually the hardest section for me. And you and I had to sit and talk about this. You know, it's this thinking forward section. And I never really do that, right? That's never, like, been a thought process of mine. So, I titled my section, Let's Go. It's like, you know, what am I getting hyped about in tomorrow, the next week, the next month, whatever. Whatever in the future am I excited about, it's going to go in that little space right there. Sometimes that's hard for me. I will be perfectly honest, you know, because, like, I don't know. I tend to not work in that space in the future a lot. So, I have to think about that section a lot. But I always make myself put something there. I never, I always have that filled out. So, I just do. So, that's kind of, like, my general layout. And I started doing this when I was, last year, I do my, I try to make my theme system day end at, like, 4 or 5 o'clock in the afternoon. Kind of like, hey, my workday is over. And since it's generally a work-based notebook idea platform, my workday is ending. I should recap the day right then. Well, as anyone who works for themselves know, your day is never the same two days in a row. So, I would miss, like, 4 or 5 o'clock. And sometimes I do it at, like, 8 o'clock the next morning. Or, you know, after dinner, like, 8 o'clock at night or whatever. And I just dumb lucked into a new time frame where this works absolutely perfect for me. And it's right before I go to bed. So, I would have never picked out this time on purpose. Right. But I have this routine now. So, like, I'm a well-known early to bed, early to rise person, right? I don't stay up late. I'm not a night owl. So, like, 9, 9.30, 10 o'clock, I'm, like, yawning. I'm, like, ready to, like, think about going to bed. But I can never just get straight into bed. But I'll always, you know, go in my bedroom and we have a chair in there. And I'll sit in the chair and read. That'll be, like, my reading time. My decompression time. Well, it turns out that's the perfect time for me to do my theme system journal. Right. Because that's something I do every single night just by accident. Like, I didn't set up the schedule that way. That's just the way I wind down for the night. Because I don't like reading my phone in the bed or reading a book in the bed. Right. When I get in the bed, I go to sleep. So, I don't ever, you know, carry over any internetting or any kind of that stuff when I'm ready to actually get in the bed. So, I'll do this sitting next to the bed. And it's kind of the perfect place to just kind of recap my day. And that was just dumb luck. And I was like, wow, this is really kind of perfect. And I've been pretty consistent with that so far. So, I like it. So, yeah, that's what works for me.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Do you have any kind of reminder or anything of this? Or do you just, you know you're going to do it? Because I have a daily repeating reminder at 5 o'clock to fill out my journal. Right. I think some days I wouldn't remember to do it if I didn't have that reminder. Like, I'd just be busy and not get to it. And I like to do it kind of 5 o'clock, depending on the day, will either be the end of my work day or the middle of my work day. And that works really nicely for me as a time to do it. Yeah. Because that is a time of the day when I usually would have a bit of free time. And so, I like to sit down and write it then. But without that reminder, I would definitely forget some days.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah. When I was doing it at 4 or 5 o'clock in the afternoon, I had a reminder. Right now, I do not have a reminder. And I'm thinking about adding one. Because we'll talk about other things later. Like, in the planning stages, you know, I do implement some digital tools into that. And they would work well for a theme system reminder. But I found the 4 or 5 p.m. didn't work for me. Like, if I wasn't around or if I wasn't at home or I was doing something with the kids, like, I would just, you know, complete that reminder and then just completely forget about it.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Right.

'''Myke Hurley:''' So, right now, I don't have one for, like, 9.30, let's say.

'''Myke Hurley:''' But I'm not opposed to doing that. And I've been thinking about, you know, do I just need to go ahead and do this? Or am I going to remember every night? Like, Friday night. Like, am I going to remember every Friday night to do that? Right? Who knows?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Maybe if it's, like, do you keep the journal, like, by the bed? Like, do you keep it by that chair?

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yes. Okay. So, that's part of the process is there's a table. Next to this chair. And on that table is my theme system journal. A few pencils that I will rotate in and out. I'll just, like, grab a handful of pencils, throw them on there because I'm using a different pencil every day. And then my box of coloring pencils, which I use for the daily theme pages, which we'll talk about in a minute. So, my book and my colored pencils and just pencils are all sitting on the desk. And then I have a lap desk, which is really just, like, an art board, just like a physical board. It's not one with the pillows on it that I use because I don't really have any, you know, a book or anything to, like, press down on. And I want to make it, you know, somewhat legible. So, I do keep that. That just sits, like, leans up against the chair on the side of the chair. So, yeah. I have all my crap there to my wife's frustration.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' You know, this at least might serve, though, as a kind of reminder system for you anyway, though. Because if sitting in that chair is something you do every single day, you've got that visual reminder for you. You know, I just do my journaling in my office and I'm in my office all day, so.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah, my coloring pencil box is bright orange. So, I can't miss that. So, I always see that. I was like, that triggers me more than seeing my journal or seeing the pencils. I was like, oh, there's my colored pencil box. And it's, like, really in a place it does not belong whatsoever. So, I always notice it.

== Daily Theme Pages ==

'''Brad Dowdy:''' All right. Let's take a break and we can get back into this because we should talk about the daily pages, too, and how you have those set up. This episode is brought to you by Squarespace. You can make your next move with Squarespace. They will help you create that website for your next idea or project. And maybe the beginning of a new year is the time for you to finally set that project up that you've been working on. You know, like, people, we're talking about it, right? People like change. It's a time for reflection. Maybe you have something you've been wanting to get into action this year. Or maybe at some point over the next few months, you know, part of your yearly theme will enable you to need a website of your own. Well, let me tell you why Squarespace is the best place for that. But if you want to create an online store, a portfolio, a blog, maybe you want to create a site for a business or maybe an online event that you're running, no matter what it is, Squarespace is the all-in-one platform that will let you do it. You don't have to install, patch, or upgrade anything because they've got it all covered for you. Squarespace really do take care of everything you're going to need with building your own site. And if you do have any problems at all, you can reach out to their 24-7 customer support team for help. I was talking about the themesystem.com earlier, which is the website where I've laid out kind of what the theme system is all about, included images, videos, links. I did all of that on Squarespace. So easy. And if I want to update it or add anything to the site, I can do that on my iPad now. The fantastic iPad app that they have that allow me to manage my website and give me some real great tools to be able to update it and all that stuff. It's super awesome. Squarespace plans start at just $12 a month, but you can sign up for a free trial today with no credit card required. Go to squarespace.com slash penaddict. When you're in that trial, you can build your entire site. And then when you're ready to launch it to the world, you just sign up one of their plans. But if you use the code penaddict to check out, you'll also get 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain and show your support for this show. That's squarespace.com slash penaddict and the code penaddict for 10% off your first purchase. Our thanks to Squarespace for their continued support of this show and all of RelayFM. Squarespace, make your next move, make your next website.

'''Myke Hurley:''' So the daily theme pages are what a lot of people would consider or call a habit tracker. Yeah. Never in a million years would I thought I would enjoy using or would actually use a habit tracker.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' No. Never.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Never. Because habit trackers, Myke, in my head, were for tracking how much water I drank today.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yep.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Tracking how much I stood. Tracking how much I ate or what I ate.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' It's stuff that I wouldn't do or I would want technology to do for me.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Right. Right. So just like the journal pages, I had to rethink if I'm going to use this, what would I make this into that would work for me? So again, I had to sit and like really think. And once I started to realize, okay, what constitutes a good day for me? Mm-hmm. What are the things that I do every day or want to do every day or come about naturally every day or think about every day personally? Do I want to track? So I came up with eight things. This list has been pretty consistent through my journals through the years. I think I maybe tweaked one or two things over the years, but it's never been much different. So the eight things I track are love. You know, this is kind of like the one personal. Well, I guess there's probably more things in there. But this is kind of like the personal family, you know, life related thing where a lot of the journal pages are kind of more business related, but they do get personal sometimes. So love, you know, was, you know, did I share the love? Did I have love in my heart today? You know, did, you know, do I, you know, live that, you know, life that I want to live? And the second one is laugh. You know, did I smile today and laugh today and giggle today and like not take myself too seriously today? The third one is create. Did I make something today? And that could be, you know, just it could be anything. It could be writing a blog post. It could be, you know, deciding on a product color, you know, that type of thing. So that's important to me, you know, because I'm like I've said before, I'm only as good as my next ideas, right? So did I make something today? Refresh. Did I take time for myself today? Like did I, you know, just take a break for a while today? Sometimes you just get head down for hours. And did you just chill out and, you know, watch the Premier League today for a while or, you know, do something like that? Play a video game. Those types of things. Self-improvement. That is did I further my education today kind of topic, right? Did I when I read, did I am I reading for refresh like the entertainment, which is one part of reading books? Or did I read to like figure out and like maybe learn some different things today? So the self-improvement is did I work on myself today? You know, that could be cover a lot of different things. The next one is share. Did I share other people's work today? So I'm a big promoter of everyone. Like I like to share others work. I like to raise people, raise people up and, you know, make sure they're getting, you know, their work shared. You know, I have a platform that's large enough to be able to make a difference. And did I use that in a valuable fashion for others?

'''Myke Hurley:''' The kind of the counterpoint to that one is the next one, which is promote. Did I share myself today? Right. So like part of my job is promoting what I do, whether I like it or not. Right. So I think it's good to have a dedicated line for, hey, did I, you know, share enough of myself today? Like, don't be shy about promoting your own work. And the last one is ideas. Did I come up with anything new today? Right. Did I come up with, you know, a product sketch, blog post idea, like all these things that we've covered. But like, did I did I come up with anything new today? So it's those eight things and those work really, really well for me. They're kind of ranked in importance. Like, by default, I didn't really think about that until I was looking at it last night. And I've been doing this for a while. I was like, you know, love, laugh, create, refresh, self-improvement. Those are kind of all the top ones. And then the share, promote and ideas are kind of all the businessy ones, you know, like down below. And that's kind of the kind of the right order, I think. So that's what I do. And then for each circle. So Myke has designed the circle. It's a circle with a line through it. So I either have zero, basically unfilled, half filled or completely filled. So completely filled is I've done the best job. Half filled is like I did something for that. And blank is I didn't do anything towards that. So I have I'm looking at so I started this theme system journal on December 14th. And I have not done a lot of self-improvement. And like that's something like you can see visually because every day I use a different colored pencil to mark these in. I'm use the the Tombow Erojitin, one of the sets. I forget which volume I have. So it's 30 colored pencils. So I have a system in my colored pencil box to make sure I don't use the same one twice until I get through all of them. So, you know, I'm just weird that way. So every day is in a different color and you get a pretty good grasp of like, hey, wow, like the self-improvement stuff I am super lacking in, you know, like that's not cool. But it was also a lot around the holidays. Like there are definitely days where like over the past few weeks where I haven't I haven't done theme system journal because I was essentially off. So that's part of it. But as we go into, you know, our normal workflows in January, I have a feeling like I will be more consistent in some of these things than I have been over the past couple of weeks of tracking. So that's kind of my daily themes. I can't believe how much I enjoy this stupid page because I thought I was going to I thought there's no way I'm going to do this. There's no way I'm going to do this. And I love it. Like this is my this is my favorite part of the book, to be honest, because it causes me to grade myself on a day and to think back. I was like, dang, I did really good here or dang, I did really poorly here. And can I do better? Like, can I change tomorrow? And I think that's important. I think that's important way to look at yourself where I wouldn't get that value if I said drink 60 ounces of water today. And I saw that across the chart that would not be valuable for me. This is valuable for me.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So one thing that I really notice in doing this type of stuff is sometimes I'll be like towards the end of the day and I'm in a bad mood or whatever. Like I'm just not feeling I'm not feeling good. Just like not feeling very engaged or motivated. And I fill out my journal and I mark off the things and I'm like, oh, I didn't do the stuff today that I'm supposed to do to make me feel accomplished. Right. Right. And so and look, and there are some days where it's like it's like a chicken and egg thing where like maybe I'm just not feeling my best. So I don't do them. And then I know that. I'm like, yeah, of course, I didn't do this, this and this today because I had a bad day or something big came up. And I couldn't put any time into this. But there's also that other thing.

'''Myke Hurley:''' But you could go back and reference it in the daily page.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yep. And I do. Yeah. And so like there's a link there with those things. But like it's just funny to me where sometimes I'm like, I'm not feeling great and I don't know why. And then I realized that it's because I didn't do any of the things that I have deemed for myself to be like pivotal to having a day where I feel accomplished. And so it's just like it's a nice it's a nice way of doing that. And I agree with you. Like that's the type of stuff that works for me. Like read 20 lines, send four thank you notes like that. I'm not knocking that if that works for you. But that is not the kind of stuff that works for me in this category. I like it to be nebulous. And I like it to be like, you know, so so one of the phrases that I track is revenue. And that can be so many ways I can consider that a success. And I like that. Right. Like, you know, I could say I could change. I could be like seller sponsorship. Right. I mean, that's very specific. But it's also not the only way that I can generate revenue. Like promoting the membership can be revenue generating or selling some merch can be revenue generating. So like I like it to be more open ended than that. So I'm not kicking myself at the end of every day. Right. Like, right. I'm setting myself up to succeed with this stuff. And that's something that I really recommend people do. Like, don't make this hard for you. Give yourself like and it's this. Honestly, this ladders up to the theme thing in general. Like, and why themes are better than resolutions is you're not setting fail states for yourself with this stuff. Right. You've got kind of going easy in yourself and using it to help guide you towards where you want to go. And not being super bummed out about the fact that you didn't do the thing that you said you were going to do. Like, I don't really think that that's super valuable in our lives.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Right. Right. And I just want to be clear. Like, I fully agree with you that, you know, like I'm super pro like tracking like your input and output and your exercise and those types of things. That's just not what I use this book for. There's other things where I feel like digital is a lot better for that.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Like, you know, like if I want to track how much I'm standing up, I can put on my Apple watch and it will do it for me. Right. Like there's apps like apps like water minder and stuff. If I want to be tracking my water intake. Like I feel like digital is better because as well, like it's always on me. So I don't have to like remember how much water I drank every day and then write it down in my book when I'm done at the end of the day. Like, you know, I feel like that digital and analog tools should work for what they're focused on as opposed to like trying to shoehorn everything into everywhere.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yep. And, you know, that's why you got to something like the theme system journal you can tailor to yourself. And, you know, that's what I found worked for me. And, you know, I had to sit with it for a while, just staring at it, not using it until I was committed to the things that are going to be most beneficial for me. Sometimes like this thing arrives in the mail and you throw it open and you start writing and it's like I don't have as much chance of success if I just go at this haphazardly. Like I have to make things that were meaningful for me. So and I think I did a good job on that because I haven't changed much. But don't be afraid to change the headings and the habits. Yeah. Yeah. Don't be afraid to change, though, if you need to.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. Sorry, we haven't got them in stock. Like some point soon. I'm hoping should be maybe end of February, early March will be when they'll be back in stock again. That's not bad. But again, it's like you can you can do this stuff in any book. I think I've made the best book for it. But it's like the bullet journal, right? You can bullet journal anywhere. But probably the best book to bullet journal in is the bullet journal book because it's built with the system mind. Right. But you can do you can adopt this type of thing in other planners and other notebooks if that's your bag.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Right. Like I personally would not be as successful if it wasn't laid out for me where other people are the exact opposite. They need to roll their own, make their tweaks as they see and use this as a baseline.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I mean, my book is opinionated, right?

'''Myke Hurley:''' Right. And that's good products.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' There was somebody saying to me that they felt that the dot grid was too tight. You know? It's like, okay, but this is the size I wanted. You know, so it's like, right, right. I agree. Like and some people don't like dot grid or they want lines or some people want plain or whatever. Right. Right. And like or some people like the paper, they would want it to be different or whatever. Right. But sure. Sure. Or they want different sizes. I mean, this is just what all of these products are like every every decent or good product is just a set of decisions that were made that ladder up to it being a completed item. Um, these were my decisions. This is the result of it. Yep. All right. This isn't the only planner that you're using, though, is it?

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah. I don't even call this a planner. I don't even call this a planner. So that's a whole topic we can hit on this.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Well, yeah, I don't call it a planner either. It's a journal. But journal planner, I think for a lot of people, those terms are interchangeable.

== Planner vs. Journal ==

'''Myke Hurley:''' Which is why we have a podcast to discuss all the nitty gritty on why they're different.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Well, let me take our second break and we'll get into your other product that you're using every day this year. We'll say maybe say it that way instead. But let's talk about Harry's. It is a new year. So it is the time that you could be making some changes in your life. Maybe you want to smarten up your image. Why not do it with Harry's award winning razors and grooming essentials? Why not look best for that next Zoom call that you're on? If you're looking to save some money with Harry's, you'll pay as little as $2 per blade, which is surely better than what you're paying right now. And if you want to do a bit more giving in 2021, Harry's helps there as well. Because every year, Harry's donates 1% of their sales to nonprofits that provide mental health care to men in need. And in 2020, they helped half a million people access these services. So why not start the new year with some savings? New customers can redeem a Harry's trial set for just $3 when you go to harrys.com slash penaddict. Harry's is a return to the essential quality products at a fair price. They have combined simple ergonomic design with their five sharp blades in one razor. And they source their steel from Sweden and manufacture their blades in their world class factory in Germany. They cut out everything in the middle. They ship directly to you. So they save you money and a trip to the store. With a 100% quality guarantee, Harry's stands behind the quality of their blades so much that they have a 100% money back guarantee on harrys.com products. If you don't love your shave, let them know and they'll give you a full refund. Brat, tell me something about your experiences with Harry's products.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I put my money where my neck is, Myke. All right. So I... You could have said mouth.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I mean, I understand why you went with neck. Yeah, sure. I guess. Yeah.

'''Myke Hurley:''' And if I say I put my money where my cheeks are, that's a different perspective. I like that less. You actually did make the right choice.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I've retracted my complaint.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Thank you. So, yeah, I was thinking about this today when I listened to other podcasts and I listened to the ads on other podcasts because I think we do some of the best ads in the business because we really believe in all these products and we use these products. And sure, Harry's sponsors this, but I spend a ton of money with Harry's because I love the product, not because they sponsor the podcast. It is the best shaving product I've used in my life. It's... That's it. Like, I cannot give any higher praise to Harry's and I really appreciate their support and I just love using the product every day.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Harry's has a special offer for listeners of this show. New customers can get a Harry's starter set for just $3 at harrys.com slash penaddict. You'll get a five-blade razor with a weighted handle, foaming shave gel with aloe, and a travel cover all for just $3. Get everything you need for a close, comfortable shave at harrys.com slash penaddict. Go there and claim your offer today. Our thanks to Harry's for their support of this show and RelayFM.

'''Myke Hurley:''' It's not a planner, Myke. This is a planner. Oh.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Oh, yeah, okay. Good reference there. I like that. Call that a planner?

'''Myke Hurley:''' So, yeah, so I guess the theme system journal, I do refer as a journal. I'm not sure, like, that's the proper classification for me, but that's, like, another podcast another day. Like, to me, it's the theme system journal, right? It's not my journal, right?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' No, you couldn't really use it as easily because it's, as I say, it's kind of purpose-built.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Right. So, it has a job, and therefore, I still use a planner, like what people would think of as a traditional planner, even though mine's kind of far from it, but it's general planner aspect. So, I'm using, for the past, I think, two years, I've used an A5 ring-bound planner from William Hanna.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' The William Hanna planner. The William Plahanna.

'''Myke Hurley:''' The William Plahanna.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' William Plahanna. William Plahanna. William Plahanna. Yeah.

'''Myke Hurley:''' So, we'll-

'''Brad Dowdy:''' P-L-A-N-N-A-H.

'''Myke Hurley:''' So, Dave, my contact over there, we won't charge you for that. That's on us.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' That's a freebie.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Freebie. So, we'll see that on their daily post. But anyway, disclosure, they gave me this product for free a couple years ago. I built it. They just, you know, allowed me to build out and customize a planner, which you could do, too. Like, I picked out this exterior leather of purple, this interior suede of Kingfisher blue, lime green stitching. So, I got to customize my planner cover. Planner. And it's a ring-bound system. So, you can do different things. What William Hanna offers is a lot of different formats for different types of planners. This is their whole deal. The way you work. Right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. This is their job.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Is customizing. So, like you, as you say, you can build the cover, but then the insides you pick from a selection of pre-printed page options. Right? Right. It's basically, do you know Filofax? Yeah, sure. Right. It's like bespoke Filofax, right? That's a good way to put it. You've got the sections. You take the sections in and out. You can add in different sections. Organize it yourself. There's a bunch of accessories. You're off to the races. But it's like quality products, though, right? Like nicely made, good paper, that kind of stuff.

'''Myke Hurley:''' This is expensive. Let's just get that out of the way. This is a very expensive product. But so far, like I'm at least two years into it, I feel like I've gotten great value out of it because I'm using it consistently on a daily basis. It lives on my desk. It moves around with me. The reason they got in touch with me in the first place is because they wanted to print the insert layout that I wanted to use, which I appreciated them doing that. And now it's just the regular product. And it's not some super special insert. It's just the calendar, excuse me, the planner layout that I prefer where it's a two-page per week layout where the left side is seven days, Monday through Sunday. And they each have their own, say, like, I don't know, six or seven line section on the left page. And then the right page is blank for notes. So this is not an uncommon layout in the Japanese market. The first one I used was Midori. And it was one of my favorites. They did it in the Travelers. And then now they do it in their A5 notebooks as well. A lot of other systems use this type of layout. Like I said, it's not like something super crazy or super special. But I found it works best for me because I don't need, like, an entire page for Monday. But I need more than a little square calendar block, right? So, for example, like my Monday says, you know, I'll just put on the tasks that are due that day. So I won't, like, plan ahead on Monday. I don't say, okay, do this for Wednesday. That doesn't go on Monday. If the thing's due on Wednesday, it goes on Wednesday. So, like, Monday, pay bills, update my accounting, pay the writers, write the Energel giveaway post, things like that. And then I can also have a little section where I have, you know, my wife's work schedule and my daughter's, you know, like she had a doctor's appointment that day. Like all those things go on Monday. And they each have a little checkbox by them. And I either check them off as I go or I'll follow up the next day and just check off, you know, whatever box I need. And that has worked for me for so long. I don't ever see me kind of changing this type of system for me. It's the best way that I work. I can see my whole week. A lot of it is repetitive, right? This is a very, this would work very well digitally. And it does, which we can talk about that. That it's kind of in conjunction with Todoist. And maybe we can talk about that at the end. But, you know, it works for how I work because I basically need task list reminders. I need big picture idea of what I'm doing for the day and the week so I can plan for it. And then I need a space being the right hand side of the page where I can just do notes. Like I have a one, two, three, four, five, six, seven note list for the podcast, right? So earlier this week, you know, as I would come up with podcast ideas for what we need to talk about, they just go on this page. I have a 16 item list of albums I've listened to this week, right? So I just write all this stuff down in the right hand side of the page.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' It seems like a lot that's going on that page, though. Right?

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I think you might be losing me a little bit.

== William Hanna Planner Usage ==

'''Myke Hurley:''' That's on the right hand. That's on the blank page. So the left page is just tasks, works, to-dos for Monday through Sunday because I have something to do every day. The right side of the page is open notes. Right. It's like a notebook page, and that's where I'll just write down other things. A lot of times, like, you know, if I'm working on production for Nock, like this, like I'll have, you know, say like a list on Tuesday. I'll have a checkmark on Tuesday to, you know, Nock manufacturing call. Okay. But then on the right side of the page, I'll have, okay, here's all the tasks that go into that, you know, for that particular thing. So I can expand on that on the right side of the page.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Okay.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Not tracking. It'd be easy if you saw it. I didn't take a picture of this.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So if it's the one that you put in the link, the six-month weekly diary with notes, right? Yeah. So you've got on the left-hand side, you'll have whatever, but then on the right-hand side, it's just like free form. You'll just put anything there. Yep. Okay. All right. Fine.

'''Myke Hurley:''' A lot of, like I said, a lot of times it's expansion to the things on the left.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Right.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Like I have the task, right? The task is usually like a one-line item. But then if that task has, so like one of my tasks every Tuesday is podcast prep. Okay. Okay. That's just a checkmark that that has to get done Tuesday, by Tuesday afternoon. Okay. But that task might involve a random set of notes that's on the right-hand side of the page.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Okay. But what I mean is like on that right page, it doesn't necessarily live in a specific place, right? Like you'll just put anything there, but you just know what it is. Yep. Total free form. Cool. Cool. Cool. That's just double checking.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Just more of an, like an in the moment note, if you will.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Not like any type of long-term journaling, planning. I'm not writing down thoughts or ideas. I'm writing down just like random bits of information. Yeah. That I'm, that pass through my head that I want to collect for whatever reason. And that gives me the space to do it. That's tied in a lot of times with what's on the left-hand side of the page.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Right. Okay. Okay. Cool.

'''Myke Hurley:''' So yeah, don't over, don't overcomplicate this. This, it's a pretty dead simple system. So, um, the William Hanna, since it is a ring bound system, it does allow you to punch your own pages. So I have, my front section is the calendar section. Right now I have six months of the weeks and then I have like the other six months in the closet. I'll go replace them when, you know, I fill this up. The middle section are the William Hanna, just dot grid pages. You can get those customized to the colors. So I have like the Kingfisher dot grid, which matches the interior of my notebook because I'm fancy that way. And the back section, I do have some punched pages of different papers. Like I have some bank paper and I have some, uh, Claire Fontaine paper just for random notes. I don't use that that much. I really, I use this a lot for the planner. And then I'll do things like in the middle section, like I've done like our Kickstarter budgets and things like that, you know, project budget planning, you know, just like a note. Like as I'm sketching down the ideas, I'll transfer that over to like a digital file later. But like, cause I'm laying things out.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' You say Kickstarter budgets, like we're not thinking about one right now. No, no, no, no, no. I don't want that. Yeah. You know what I mean? Like this is usually a time of the year where we're like, I'm like, Brad, get the, I gotta get the video. I'm usually in. Yeah.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah. I'm usually in full panic mode right now because I haven't written the Kickstarter, even though we know what we're doing, but this year we're not doing one. We've said that. I hope everyone recalls that we've said that we'll, we'll bring it up here as we get into like pen show season that how sad we are that we aren't doing one, but we won't go there

'''Brad Dowdy:''' today. But it's just a funny thought of like, it's usually this time of year where we're both like hair on fire trying to get it done.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah. But I have a page, like if I opened up my middle section where it's just notebook pages, I have a page that says retro 51 Kickstarter and it's got all these numbers and figures and all kinds of crap on there. You know, it's just, it's basically, basically just random notes that don't need to, that are really honestly kind of ephemeral, right? They don't need to be in a journal that I'm going to keep for review later. They're just kind of like, you know, notes passing through the night.

'''Myke Hurley:''' So that's what I use for the planner. I will say I do use this in conjunction with Todoist, which is kind of a task manager app on the, uh, in the Apple ecosystem. So I use that on my, my phone and my laptop. And then I also like when I'm setting up my day on Monday, I fill out the week on Monday morning, like I'll pull up my calendar too, which is mostly like family stuff. I can put my, uh, uh, my wife's schedule, any kid stuff I have going on. So those go on the, this'll just confuse you. So these go on the right side of the left page, right? Left. So Monday it's a, it's a, you know, width of the page section, right? So on the left side of Monday, I'll have all my tasks, you know, the pay bills, the pay the writers. Then on the right side of the Monday section, but still on the left hand page, Myke, I'll put, you know, my wife's work schedule and my family schedule and things like that. So, you know, it's basically just, I'm making, creating my own columns within the single page.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, no, I get it.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Do you though?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' No, no, that one I do get. Cause I also saw on the website that they, they kind of do it like, like how the panner book works, right? Where they put some dots in so you can divide it up.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yep. Yep. So you can, uh, you know, segment these off however you want. I generally keep them open. I don't have any extra lines. I just, it's just, you know, kind of like a invisible line column.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I have a question about the Todoist thing. No, no, I'm intrigued about the Todoist thing. All right. Hit me. How, so like what, so you, you have all your tasks in Todoist and then what, every day you sit down and write out the tasks into the book? Like I'm intrigued about the reconciling of all this stuff. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Okay. We can do this. Monday morning. Right. The entire week of stuff, I pull up Todoist and write it in my notebook.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Okay.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Okay. So, but sometimes it doesn't reconcile because Todoist might have more things that aren't repetitive tasks, aren't repeating tasks. Like if I get an email that I will then send to Todoist to do something extra on, that will never hit my notebook.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Right. Okay. Okay. So you write in to the journal. So into your planner, your William planner, the things that are kind of life events type stuff.

'''Myke Hurley:''' And repeating tasks. And repeating tasks. And repeating tasks.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Okay. Yes. All right. Well, that makes a bit more sense then. Because what I was wondering is like, do these systems not get out of sync? You know what I mean? Like where are the tasks being entered? And are you having to constantly check the paper and check Todoist and make sure that they're all lining? Because that would drive me bananas trying to do that.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Right. Right. What the planner does is really just gets me a good view of the week and make sure I do all the things that are definitively scheduled. Yeah.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' You've got your milestones in there and stuff, right?

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah. So I'll give you a perfect example. Cool. I was sitting in the bedroom last night, you know, probably like 930. I was like, oh, I need to email this person tomorrow. Right. So I grabbed my phone, added a task in Todoist. That will never go in the notebook.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Right. Right.

'''Myke Hurley:''' You know, unless I might open to the notes page and say, oh, here's a couple of things I want to make sure I ask this person. But I've actually already written that in the notes section of Todoist. So that will never see the notebook. So I don't have to reconcile it in the notebook. Does that make sense?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. It's almost like not all, but a lot of the stuff, maybe most of the stuff that goes into the William Planner could be like calendar events, really. Yes.

'''Myke Hurley:''' That's very accurate. And look, there is a lot of redundancy here and a lot of duplication. Yeah. But it's how, it's what works for my mindset for getting things done during the week.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Right. Okay.

'''Myke Hurley:''' So, and the, putting those things into the William Planner gives me the option to expand on them a little bit further, more so than I would, even though I have that capability in Todoist, more so than I would there. Gives me a little bit more freedom. So, there you go. Those aren't the only notebooks I use, Myke.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Of course not.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I think there was a time in my life I thought I could do everything in one notebook, right? Like, you know, one notebook to rule them all. We've had these conversations in the past.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yep.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I am really happy with my setup right now. As happy as I've ever been with my theme system journal, my William Planner, and just an extra notebook to write more things down, right? This is where the personal stuff goes, the ideas go, the long form writing goes. There has to be a spot for that. And neither the theme system journal or the Planner are for that. They just would not work in this. Like, I have tons of sketches in here. Like, I have a Midori book that I've been trying to finish for a month now, but I'm kind of milking it because I'm not really writing that much these days with my hand situation. But it's got like three or four pages left in it, and I'm just like kind of slow playing it because I want to start my new notebook, which is a Misubi notebook, when my hand is healed. So, that's like kind of my goal. So, I've been slow playing this notebook. But this notebook has just, this notebook is whatever, right? And you need a place for that, I think, that's outside of the theme system journal because it doesn't have the space for it or it's not set up for that and it's not what its intent is. My Planner has, it's really work-based in my Planner. And then my notebook, which I don't have a name for, which is just my notebook, is everything else, right? It's just whatever doesn't have a home in these other two notebooks that I carry, which happens to be a lot of things.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I would expect this is a changing notebook as well, right? Oh, yeah. That means you get new products and stuff.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yep. So, this is a Midori MD that I've had for most of 2020. I started it in April. And it's full now. But aside from these last few pages, I'm just going to finish here at some point. But I've kind of been avoiding it because I'm not liking writing right now. and yeah that's it like I could use the William Hannah for that but it's a mentality thing right like you and Gray talk about that all the time is like you like things have purpose and meaning and adding that purpose and meaning into the William Hannah even though I have a section that's completely blank full of cool notebook pages it doesn't have the same intention when I go to use it so I know this notebook is basically it's the freedom notebook Myke and anything goes everything goes like I'll do ink testing or I'll write a two-page story you know I'll do product sketches and I'll do you know just random notes on the day it's just all of that stuff needs a home and I'm using one notebook for that at a time right so it's basically a three notebook system even though you know I could use the William Hannah for more of that that's just not what its intended use is and it would not work otherwise

'''Brad Dowdy:''' okay I have a couple of questions for you yeah please where do these notebooks like live so the the I know where the theme system is right and yeah William Hannah and the third notebook

'''Myke Hurley:''' like yeah where do they live okay so my desk my work desk is also in my bedroom so we have a bunch of space in our bedroom to where it's set up so my work desk is on one far side of the bedroom and then like this chair that I talk about where I sit and write a lot is on the opposite side that's where the theme system and the colored pencils are and I will go get it like if I need to like reference something in there I want to think about something that I wrote and things like that but it stays on that table for now the William William Plana it stays on my work desk 90% of the time okay maybe 99% of the time so it stays near where I will dock my laptop and my keyboard and mouse and my monitor and like I'm doing the work and like where all the worky things happens and then the notebook it goes wherever it generally like when it's not in use it lives on the work desk but you'll find it in the living room you'll find it you know where I stream you'll find it me taking it out like in a backpack it's the one that leaves the house the most probably when there is you know leaving the house to do like I won't take my planner or my theme system journal on vacation but I take my notebook right or on a trip right I would just forego the planner and the theme system like if I was taking a vacation or like a work trip those

'''Brad Dowdy:''' would stay at home but the notebook would come okay that help any yeah it does I was also intrigued if you

'''Myke Hurley:''' were traveling what would go with you yeah so just the notebook I you wouldn't take the William Planner no because if there was something that I didn't want to forget I still have to do list right so that is with me so I'm not going to miss out on what I would use the planner for in general right right so I still have access if you will to my planner because it is duplicated essentially but when I work at home like that duplication works but when I'm on the road I can eliminate that duplication and be okay right and then this theme system journal would absolutely stay at home because I think I would just forget or I just think it would be extra like that since it would be like strictly work-based like the the theme system journal like I'd be okay leaving that home but then my my singular just open freedom notebook would just would go with me wherever that that would absolutely go on wherever I was going work trip vacation trip

'''Brad Dowdy:''' any of that if you're gonna call it freedom notebook you've got to put like an eagle on it or something

'''Myke Hurley:''' yeah I hate that name but I can't think of a better name it's because it's just my notebook but it needs a better name than my notebook freedom notebooks just like a joke that's that that will

'''Brad Dowdy:''' not stick but that's gonna stick if you keep calling it that though well it happened today so it's stuck

'''Myke Hurley:''' um we will just go with free form that would work yeah you know what the reason here's the challenge what I have is called a commonplace book and I hate that name right but I don't have a better name everything book what it literally is is my commonplace book all right but I I I I'm really against that name I don't know why I shouldn't be it's a fine name but it's it's just 18 it's 1800s version of a notebook I don't like saying this is my commonplace book yeah yeah I would rather just go with like the everything notebook or like the notebook of randomness is what I call it sometimes random book

'''Brad Dowdy:''' commonplace book is very descriptive but it is a bit like you're getting ready to draft the constitution

'''Myke Hurley:''' yeah it's like I have to dust my wig when I yeah when I'm ready to use it it's like what is that

'''Brad Dowdy:''' thing that people use that like productivity system created by one of the founding fathers or something isn't that like a thing I don't know I just know the Ben Franklin there's like some note-taking system or whatever that was created by George Washington or something who knows like I think there's something like that someone can maybe someone will know in the discord and can let me know what I'm talking about here but I know there's something like that and and that kind of sounds like

'''Myke Hurley:''' you would do that in your commonplace notebook but that's a hundred the definition of commonplace notebook is what I have yeah like this is the dictionary definition of a commonplace book I just refuse to call it that that but it's it's really just my notebook and it's probably just kind of cool

== Commonplace Notebook Discussion ==

'''Brad Dowdy:''' to go with that so who knows this is the perfect way to begin the show for the year yeah good I I am

'''Myke Hurley:''' glad we did this um I felt a like I was a little little rambly little little incoherent uh some of it but like this if anyone has any questions or follow-up you know let me know I've got some pictures on Instagram how I use the theme system journal um I've got some older pictures of my planner I didn't take any new pictures of that right now because it's like my left-handed writing so janky like I I it drives me crazy to share that but I put a picture up on Instagram of what my people were asking the pictures I shared of the theme system journal was was wow your left-handed writing is good I was like no I forced myself to write right-handed with my brace on and it's very painful to do that but I wanted it for the clarity of the picture so I put up a picture of my full left-handed writing

'''Brad Dowdy:''' it's like oh okay I was wondering how you produced those very beautifully brad written pages

'''Myke Hurley:''' yeah it's uh it's uh it's like this right-handed overhook kind of move that I have to do um to to get that done so it's it's passable but I can't write much more than I wrote on those pages without it hurting and it's not hurting my wrist it's it's the brace like digging into my thumb while I write right I'm not hurting my wrist when I write like that it's just uncomfortable in general with the brace on yeah but you also ain't resting it though are you no I got deers I got deers you know me yeah yeah me my hello kitty pins and the the 12 point buck I'm about to take down in the

'''Brad Dowdy:''' backyard you're not taking a 12 pound what was it again what was the quote that the doctor gave you

'''Myke Hurley:''' he says basically you're you're not out you don't look like the type of person that's out in the woods shooting shooting a 12 point buck and dressing it down in the woods or something to that effect basically not just killing it but um like field dressing it if you know what I mean it like he said I don't look like that type of person I'm like okay

'''Brad Dowdy:''' that was a thing I'll never forget that yeah you should write that down somewhere all right if you want to catch some notes we've got a lot of notes today uh lots of links go to relay.fm slash pen addict slash 443 thank you so much to squarespace and harry's for the support of the show if you want to find brad online go to penaddict.com knock.co spoke design.com uh brad streams live on twitch on tuesdays and thursdays at 10 a.m eastern time brad is uh pen addict on instagram he's twitch.tv slash pen addict that's where you go for that dowdy is him on twitter i am i'm mike i am y k e i'm going to be streaming as well on twitch this week uh not at the times that brad is because he'll kill me uh i'm going to be streaming on friday the 8th at 1 p.m eastern time nice and i'm doing that from home i've got a kind of setup at home now uh which oh nice yeah i saw that i need to tune in and and see the setup it's most of the same stuff just not as well lit that's

'''Myke Hurley:''' the spoiler alert for you all i'm working on it i'm working on it happens hey we gotta do

'''Brad Dowdy:''' what we gotta do gotta do what you gotta do um thanks for listening to this week's episode of the pen addict we'll be back next time until then say goodbye brad goodbye brad

'''Myke Hurley:''' you

[[Category:Podcast Transcripts]]
[[Category:The Pen Addict Podcast Transcript]]

The Pen Addict 433/transcript

2026-06-23T15:58:05Z

PencilBot: fixed spelling

{{Infobox podcast transcript
| name = The Pen Addict
| number = 433
| title = Why would you do that‽
| date = October 21st, 2020
| hosts = [[Brad Dowdy]] 
[[Myke Hurley]]
| guests =
| link = [https://www.relay.fm/penaddict/433 Episode 433]
| audiolink = [https://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/traffic.libsyn.com/secure/thepenaddict/The_Pen_Addict_433.mp3 Audio Episode 433]
| length = 72
}}

'''Brad Dowdy:''' From RelayFM, this is The Pen Addict, episode 433. Today's show is brought to you by Harry's and Pen Chalet. My name is Myke Hurley, I'm joined by Brad Dowdy. Hi Brad.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Hey Myke, how are you? I'm good, how are you? Good, good. Word on the street is that there was a big package delivery at your house recently, something you may have been waiting an extended period of time for? Yep. This is the word I'm getting, the pigeon carrier told me that the delivery arrived.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yes, finally.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Hey, settle down over there. Yeah, finally I got the parcel that I was waiting for, which was the parcel from you.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Mm-hmm, mm-hmm, mm-hmm. The Retro Celebration parcel, which you had never, I'd never sent you a prototype of the pen, right? No, it was the first time I got it. First time. All right, so what do you think about this pen that we designed?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I think everyone involved did a great job, because I think it's very fun, it looks really nice, and I'm very pleased with the design. I think that the, I'm surprised by like how much detail there is in all of this, including the fact that there's actually some silver, like there's quite a lot of silver ink in the pen, which I think is fun in the design. So I'm like, I don't know if that came through in the images that I'd seen, especially in the prototype. So yeah, I think it's really, really great. I'm very, very happy with the design, and it feels like the good celebration that I was hoping it would be.

== Package Arrival ==

'''Myke Hurley:''' Exactly, yeah, yeah. You know I'm super happy with it, and the poster came out great as well. Like it's letterpress, it's nice, you know, it's super quality. I've already gotten pictures of people framing them on their wall, which is cool to see. Oh yeah, the poster is fantastic, it's so good, it's so, so good. It's so good, so good. Yeah, good, I'm glad you approve of the product that everyone else in the world has that you were yet to have. Did you know, Myke, I'm going to get in trouble here, are you ready for me to get in trouble? Yeah. Because I'm preempting future trouble, but there's already been one of these that sold on eBay and Retro 51 sent me the link. Do you want to know for how much?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah.

'''Myke Hurley:''' $500. You're kidding me. I was shocked again.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Why would you do that? Who did that?

'''Myke Hurley:''' People don't, it was a completed, it was a completed sale. Like people don't even have all these in yet, in their hands yet, and I don't, I still don't get that. I don't have a problem with the seller, I have a problem with the buyer.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Because surely the, you'd only, well, I don't know if, actually you probably wouldn't just buy it if you knew who we were, right?

'''Myke Hurley:''' Sure, yeah, you may not know. It just may be like a Retro 51 collector that doesn't know about us or whatever. Who knows? But I was stunned. I was like, is that, because I went after they sent me that link, I went and looked for it and it wasn't there. That meant that it was already completed. So I asked him again, I was like, wait, did that, that was actually a sold one for that price? And he was like, yeah. I was like, wow, it's crazy.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' That is really bananas.

'''Myke Hurley:''' So yeah, good, good. You got the package. I'm glad it sailed right through customs with no charges and like no further issues for you. That was awesome, huh?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' No, of course I got charged customs on something that I didn't pay any money for.

'''Myke Hurley:''' So I did something this time, not just for your package, but for all international packages with Kickstarter. Since you're supporting a campaign, I mark these as gifts, right? Like not merchandise, because you didn't necessarily pay for the merchandise. You know, it's a, it's a Kickstarter gray area, right? For, for shipping. But I have no qualms shipping these internationally marked as gift, which puts a, you know, it should give the parcel a pass, right? Because technically that means you didn't pay for the goods. But you still have to put, you know, you have to put in like small fees for that. How did you manage to get charged customs for this? This is what blows my mind. I don't, I'm guessing you don't know. Like it just happened.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' No, the, the, what they've done is, I mean, this is what's so annoying to me. Like they, they look at the insured value and they charge me customs on the insured value, which doesn't seem correct to me.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Like. What's the insured value? It was like $30 or something.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' No, I think it was more than that. I think you put it in the hundreds.

'''Myke Hurley:''' No, absolutely not.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I don't still have the, I don't still have the box. But there was an insured value, right? On the, on the parcel. And that might be the, you know what it might have been? Like a standard insured value based on the method of postage or something. That could be possible. But that, I just find it so annoying because like I'm, it wasn't just handling. Like I also paid taxes and I just, it just is, it feels like a joke to me because I didn't give you any money for, like me specifically. I gave you no money. Right. For this. Um, so just you sending me a gift, which is a lot of this is, is actually just a gift from you. Yeah.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I like other things in the box. Yeah. Yeah. Like I gave you, like, there was a couple more pins in there. I give you some stuff from, um, listeners that had mailed that I needed to send you.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I paid 11 pounds in import VAT and a 12 pound clearance fee. That's insane.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yep.

'''Myke Hurley:''' That's crazy. Yep. For something you literally did not pay for any of.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' No. Where no money changed hands between the two of us. Wow. Yeah. So, Matty is saying in the chat that there's like built-in insurance. So, I reckon that that's what I was charged on. But I. Sure. And just because something is worth something doesn't mean that, you know, I, it's so annoying. It's so annoying. I hate it. I really hate it. I have no problem paying taxes, right? Sure. Like, when I do a lot of stuff that I buy from overseas, uh, I have no problem paying the tax on it. The handling fee gets me annoyed sometimes because I don't know why it requires that amount of money. Like, I wouldn't have paid it anyway. But, like, whatever.

== International Shipping Issues ==

'''Myke Hurley:''' But you know, you usually know ahead of time, like, I'm assuming I'm going to get hit for something if I'm ordering it from out of the country.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' You know, me buying it from overseas, it is cheaper than if it was something I bought here because there isn't any tax on it. So, like, you know, you just like, right, well, I know I'm going to pay the tax on it. But then there are times like this where it's, it's just, I shouldn't have had to pay. It was incorrect. So.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah. Yeah. So, well, at least you got the package. Everything that was supposed to be in it's in it. And we can now move on with the rest of the show, right? We're all good.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' No, because you forgot some stuff again.

'''Myke Hurley:''' What? So.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' That's not possible. You included in quite a few extras in this package. So, one, there were two Retro 51 celebrations in my package, which I was not expecting. So, one, which I will keep closed, is my one, number two. I'm actually not going to open it. And then you also sent me number 807, which is one I'm using today. I got my bump in the night, Retro 51, that you procured for me. Nice. I really like the new stickers. Yep. They're bananas. They help my eyes. I don't know how you do that from a sticker. You sent me, there was a lovely letter, which I need to go through in more detail. I've just skimmed that so far from a wonderful listener. Yep. You sent me two of your great Caran d'Ache pants. Mm-hmm. You did not send me the spoke roadie that you had agreed you would send me. Son of a... And also, we had a conversation about you procuring some Califolia in Trenopel for me. Oh, yeah. I like that you immediately remembered both things. So, it wasn't one of those situations where, like, I was expecting something that you were just not aware of. So, I'm not upset at you. I was expecting it. But I'm actually kind of happy that you did forget something because then I get to needle you over it.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah. Which spoke roadie color did you want? That's what I don't remember. Was it Gecko?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I need to look at them now. And then I'll remember.

'''Myke Hurley:''' The only one that would come to mind was Gecko, which were sold out of. I think it might have been Gecko. Yeah. So, that's why I didn't send you that.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' No, it's not why. That wasn't why. Could be. The reason you didn't do it is because you forgot.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Because, like, I would have asked for it before it was sold out, surely. Possibly. But, you know, why would I send you one for free if I can sell it, you know?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. No, I think that that's a very...

'''Myke Hurley:''' I thoroughly agree with that. Secondly, Califolia in Trenopel, you can get at Cult Pens for, like, mega cheap.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I said all of this, but you were like, don't worry. I've got an order I need to make and I'll just get you some. Yeah, that didn't happen. No. But now I will go to Cult Pens and get it for myself.

'''Myke Hurley:''' It's all vaguely. It sounds familiar.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' No, Cult Pens doesn't have Califolia.

'''Myke Hurley:''' They did when we were talking about it because everyone emailed me afterwards, like, just tell Myke to order from Cult Pens.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Oh, here it is. For some reason, it didn't come up when I searched Califolia. Yeah, probably you spelled it wrong. Yeah, I think I spelled it with one L. So there we go. I'll make that order later on today.

'''Myke Hurley:''' All right. So you got the majority of the things. The vast majority.

== Retro 51 Market ==

'''Brad Dowdy:''' And some extras. So you came out ahead.

'''Myke Hurley:''' You know, I sent you those extra pens, like the extra Celebration and the extra 849s. I thought maybe you'd have one for you, one for Adina, but apparently it didn't go that well for her.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' The 849s, yes. But the Celebration, no, I want to keep mine all sealed up. That just feels like the right thing to do for me.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah, it's for eBay later.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, so I can sell it for 700 pounds on eBay. Right. I mean, it's 002. If number two pops up, you'll know it's mine.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Oh, no, it's been stolen. Someone broke in and stole just that pen. Well, currently it's one of the most valuable things in this office.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah, true.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Those kind of prices.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Right. Yeah, the Retro 51 market's pretty crazy. I still don't know what's going on with them for the rest of the year or in the future. Like, no clue. So who knows? All right. I guess that's a good lead into our business topic with Retro 51. We don't know what they're doing. And this is going to be a very kind of businessy, stationary businessy heavy episode because there were a couple of emails that I received and some notes that I received from other people. You know, did you see this? You can talk about this. You know, what's going on? And there's kind of like three or four separate topics I want to hit just on the business of stationary. And we can talk about how, you know, what we do and how it relates because I find all this stuff interesting. So the first one, I think it's the biggest one. It's from CW Pencil. So Caroline Weaver put out a huge blog post and an email. The title is Big Changes Ahead. The short version, it's a very long and detailed email, which we're going to get into some of it. But I want to read one specific little section, if you will allow me, and then use that as the jumping off points. Just bear with me for a second here. So this is, again, from Caroline Weaver. This is her writing. Six years ago, when I first put our website online, I had the goal of opening a shop that specializes only in pencils. Emphasis Hearst. The products on the website were extremely edited and carefully selected through the lens of a person who wanted to convince New York City that pencils are indeed an object that deserves more appreciation. Since then, we've moved to a bigger shop, multiplied the number of products we offer, and navigated our way through a global pandemic so far. The thing is, I don't feel like I need to convince anyone of anything anymore. And as I spent months working alone in my shop this spring, just trying to figure out how to save my business, I realized that since this website went live in November 2014, the thing that had become most important to me in my business over the past six years is not the concept itself, but the community built around it. So there's a lot to unpack. And that is like 100 words in an 800-word blog post, right? But that, I think, gives you the gist of what's going on here. So, you know, Caroline, what CWP started as was like a pencil-specific shop. Like, that was our go-to pencil shop, right? That's what they carried. They carried pencils. They did it very well. Caroline and her staff curated it perfectly. And it was beloved, right? Or it is beloved. I shouldn't. There's no was. It is beloved. You know, we have obviously met Caroline. We've been to the shop. You know, my thoughts on how she does her work and how, you know, she presents the store and everything. Like, I think she does great. And, you know, reading this, a couple of things. One, this last year has been a bear. You know, that's me reading between the lines. And that goes for all of us, especially us in the stationery industry and especially us in the niche stationery industry. You know, I've had, we've struggled with Nock, you know, over the past year or two, just trying to get things right. You know, this is hard to do correctly, right? And especially Caroline with a physical storefront in a city like New York. You can just imagine. And then having to rely on a lot of tourism to sustain the physical storefront. So I find it all interesting, you know, about that and the challenges. But what she gets to here at the end where she mentions the most important part is the community built around the shop. That's the most important thing to me when dealing as a business myself. You know, whether it's Pen Addict, Nock, SpokePen, whether it's working with other companies, you know, and choosing who I work with is that they are mainly community focused. But that's not something you necessarily see, like visually. Like we don't say we're community focused. It's how we act and how we present ourselves and how we approach our customer service and how we do our marketing. And the respect towards the customer is paramount. So that's going to allow Caroline to fully reboot what CW Pencil Enterprise is into a more local office supply shop first and foremost. And you can read all of this in her explanations in this wonderful blog post that we'll link in the show notes to build a place for the needs of the neighborhood around her and the city. Right. To build an office supply destination for the people locally that need her. So it's number one, not so heavily, heavily reliant on tourists and number two, not so heavily reliant on what's really, I don't want to say a small margin product, but a low sales product and a single pencil. Right. If you go in there and buy even a handful of single pencils, what are you, you're getting out there, you know, for 12 or $15, which is great. Like you feel awesome about your purchase and like, you know, they've made, you can't sustain on lots of, you know, $5 profits throughout the day. In New York City. Right. So there's a bigger opportunity to broaden the office supply space and destination for office supplies for local businesses.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' At a time when, especially in a city like New York, people need to get their own office supplies more than they ever did before now. Right. Because our homes have become our offices for many people.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Right. So she's going to use her experience in curating CW pencils to do that for a broader base of goods and have a focus on, you know, local, you know, smaller businesses, transparent businesses, sustainable businesses, ethical businesses. And pulling in these type of goods and then hopefully, you know, bring in a wider local commitment to the, to help the shop and then still have this great online business that she has. So there's a huge amount of changes that, that come into that. And she's working through those. And I just could not appreciate a post like this more. And we're going to talk about several other options like this in throughout this show. Like I have other things I want to talk about, but I just wanted to shine a light on this. Going back to her community statement and her transparent statement. Like I, I am very adamant in my stance on transparency with businesses I work with and for them to come out for Caroline to come out and say like, this is like the challenges that we've had. This is, you know, why we've had problems. Here's the changes we're going to make. And here's what we're trying to do in the future. That builds community around a product. That's something that the community can get behind that have supported CWP in the past. And it makes you want to support them in the future where companies that are not that way and hide behind marketing and hide behind, you know, obfuscation. It's harder to support them wholeheartedly when you don't feel like you're part of the business. And you don't have the commitment from the owner that they're putting the customer first. And that's what I see with Caroline. That's the way Caroline's always been. So I just appreciate this type of thing. And this is how I try to run anything that I do with just 100% transparency and openness. Because while, you know, these ideas may not be the most profitable, I think they're going to be the most sustainable. If you build that customer base, that's going to return because they believe in you, not necessarily the product, right? They believe in the person behind the product. And I think that's the most sustainable form of business. But it doesn't mean there's not challenges and there's not growing pains. But that gives you the opportunity like CWP has to make this pivot. And I am convinced it will be successful. I just know it is. But it's not going to be without challenges. And it's not going to be without the need of support from the community that Caroline's built over the years. And I just look forward to seeing what she's going to do in the future with this. And the continuation of the open, transparent conversation that she's having with all of her supporters. So I thought it was very well done.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. One, I wonder if Caroline will rebrand. I wonder if that is in the future.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I think that in a parallel unit. So I think that the idea of going from expanding from just pencils to all types of stationery and general office supplies is a very logical next step for Caroline and her business. One that you could imagine she would have eventually made because people want to grow. Right? And this is a growth. I would imagine in a parallel universe, she would have opened a second store. Right. We're not in that parallel universe. And business is trickier to manage a little bit right now. Right? So I could have imagined a world where if the pandemic wouldn't have happened maybe in a year or two, she might have been like, I want a second location. And I want it to be a general office supply store. Right. But this time she has decided, no, I'm going to take what we are good at and apply it to a wider field. And I know that for me personally, I will be even more interested in CWPE because of the fact that I like pencils, but I'm not big on pencils. But I always really appreciate the team and their ability to curate. So taking that superpower and applying it to a wider space is very intriguing to me.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah. I think that's the right word. It's interesting to me to see what they can do because I already believe in them wholeheartedly as it is. And now you're going to mix it up, not because you want to, but honestly because you need to survive and already have the utmost faith in them to begin with. So to be able to see what they do next is going to be cool. So one of the bits of fallout from the changes is their pencil box subscription is being discontinued.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Right.

== Subscription Services ==

'''Myke Hurley:''' And this kind of segues into the next topic that I want to talk about is just subscription services in general and stationary. Stationary subscription services. Over the years, like you and I have subscribed and unsubscribed and re-subscribed to plenty of stationary subscription services. And in general, I think it's a great idea. Right. But I had wound myself down to subscriptions. This was my last remaining stationary subscription. Right. Like I no longer subscribe to Field Notes or Blackwing. And we're going to get into that in a minute. But the CDW pencil box was a cool one for me because it allowed for discovery. So I got to thinking about, you know, why do I or don't I subscribe to some of these popular services? And who does it well and who does it right? And I was just trying to think big pictures, like what makes these services successful and what makes them, you know, I don't want to say fail, but what makes them like be discontinued or have to be stopped? Or change. Yeah, or change. You know, just in the general sense, it is an extremely difficult thing to do. Again, like that's going to be the common theme of this show today is business is hard. So any subscription service, man, what a challenge that has to be to come up with a new product every month, every quarter, every six months, every year, however you do it. It doesn't matter what the time frame is.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' You're asking people to blindly give you money for and you must delight them every time.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Every time, whatever your date is, every time. And the stress of that would freak me out. Like I could never be like a subscription person. Like I would just be in anxiety attacks like all the time, just trying to fulfill those needs. All right.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Let's put a pin in this for a second because there's more talk to have there, but I want to take our first break. Okay, sure. This episode is brought to you by Pen Chalet. They sell authentic, amazing rollerballs and fountain pens, ballpoints and mechanical pencils, and so much more from your favorite brands. Pen Chalet are always adding new products to the site and they're also running special deals very, very frequently indeed. Every couple of weeks, you're going to find new deals at Pen Chalet as well as new products. They also sell accessories. So if you need a carrying case or you want some refills or some ink, maybe you need some converters. Maybe you need some general stationary items. Go to Pen Chalet because they do great prices and they give a satisfaction guarantee. 100% is what they guarantee. They want you to be happy with the products that you buy. If you are in the U.S., they do free shipping on orders of over $50 and they have great and fast shipping for overseas orders as well. So go to Pen Chalet.com, P-E-N-C-H-A-L-E-T.com and click the podcast link at the top of the website and enter the password Pen Addict for this week's special offer and to get the code that you need to save 10% on anything at any time. Pen Chalet. Now, Brad, what do we have as a special offer from our friend Ron at Pen Chalet this time?

'''Myke Hurley:''' There's two sneaky things in here. Number one, the Diplomat Traveler fountain pens. So we talk a lot about the Diplomat Arrow and how great that pen is. And that's what kind of put Diplomat as a brand on everyone's radar. But their entry-level pricing pens have gotten rave reviews. And this is like the one up from the base entry-level pen. So this is the Diplomat Traveler. And it's in this cool like flamed finish barrel. And it's a thinner profile than the Arrow. And it gets rave reviews. And it's like half off of what it normally is. So like if you're, you know, kind of figuring things out as far as fountain pens go, that's a great one. Oh, one I missed here. The Cross Townsend Rollerball is always a good choice. It's a classic design that everyone's going to like. And this is like a crazy price off of the MSRP. And it's a really sharp looking pen. But the one that was snuck down here and jumped out to me is the Monteverde Engage One Touch Ink Ball Rollerball pen. Do you know what this pen is, Myke?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Is this the one where you can fill it with fountain pen ink? Ding, ding, ding. We have a winner.

'''Myke Hurley:''' This is a very cool pen. And this is a hard thing to get right. Pens that you try to be a rollerball pen to use with fountain pen ink. This is one that does it well. This is the one that gets recommended a lot. There's a few different colors of this, including like a gradient rainbow and an all black and then like a transparent one. So it's basically a rollerball with a converter in it. So you can use your fountain pen inks in it. And this is, Ron snuck that one in there. And I think this one's going to do very well.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I think that there's a very, very good price on a Pelican M120, which is just above it. And the M120 is a shape of Pelican that I'm not personally that familiar with. It's actually shaped a little bit more like a Sailor 1911.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah. It's more of their retro throwback type of design. It's not a current line that they've done a special edition on. It's a bringing back something from the past shape. That's not as part of their regular product lineup. So those always do well. So they're great.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' All right. If you want to go and get your hands on these special deals, just go to penchalet.com. That's P-E-N-C-H-A-L-E-T dot com. Click the link at the top of the website for it says podcast and enter the password pen addict. Our thanks to Penchalet for their continued support of this show and Relay FM.

'''Myke Hurley:''' So back on the subscription services, I think there's a couple in, I'm just talking really in our realm in the stationary world because there's a lot of options. I think there's two or three subscriptions that get it really right. And you can tell because they've been around a long time. Obviously Field Notes. They do one thing. Yeah. They're the OG, right?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' When it comes to stationary subscriptions, they are the OG. They innovated. Many of these other services have emulated what Field Notes have done. And companies will continue to do it in this space forever because not only do Field Notes create this idea in this space, they continue to execute at a very, very high level.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Right. And to me, it's the epitome of doing one thing and doing one thing well, right? Even though it's different every quarter. Not just well. It's right. It's not just well. It is premium. Like it is the best service. Blackwing falls right in line with Field Notes using the Field Notes format. You know, it's identical, right? In the idea of what a subscription service should be using that framework that Field Notes built. And, you know, it's a great product and it's no doubt that they've been successful.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Are one of the very few companies that have taken the Field Notes model and actually lived up to it. Yes.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Not everyone can do it. No.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Because it's really hard. That's why. It's not that people are not up to it, right? Yeah. This is such an incredibly difficult proposition. Yep.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Mm-hmm. Yep. And then I think Art Snacks does it extremely well. And that's more of a discovery base.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. This is more of your, like, typical curation box. Yes. Like how you would see in different worlds, like in the makeup world, in science, in tech communities, all that kind of stuff, right? Yeah. It is another example of a subscription thing, but it's totally different in the sense that, like, Blackwing and Field Notes, they are making the products. They are coming up with the ideas. They are producing the products. They're sourcing them and they're shipping them. They have to come up with the whole story around them. Where for something like Art Snacks, which is a more typical subscription box, they come up with the idea and then curate and source the products to go in an addition. Difficult in its own right, but different.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Absolutely. Absolutely. And they've been one of the few that's been able to curate the right products. They've been able to get the quality, the delightfulness, and the usability. I can't even fathom the logistical.

== Curation Challenges ==

'''Brad Dowdy:''' It's a magical nightmare of pulling together 12 items or, like, say, 6 to 12 items from 6 to 12 different places at the same time.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yep. Every month. I think it's monthly still. I'm not. So I'm no longer a subscriber to anything. You know, Field Notes, it doesn't mean I don't love them. I just don't use the Pocket Notebooks as much. Blackwing, I have too many pencils and I'm fine just buying the one-off stuff that I've seen. Like, I've bought two dozen Blackwing pencils for the first time in, like, a year. And then Art Snacks, there was actually too much art for me, right, when it starts including, like, acrylic paints and paintbrushes and things. Like, which is the focus of the box, right? There's lots of markers and pencils and erasers and cool things that I love. But it got to be more stuff that just didn't fit for me, but that doesn't mean it's not great. So I think it's that it's really kind of these three main ones. There's lots of other subscriptions that have come and gone. There's some that are active right now. And I just feel that that's kind of the best. And then this whole topic hit not only because CW Pencil was discontinuing my last remaining sub, my favorite box. I got an email from TI2 Design, whose pens I love and have consistently loved. And who Myke has been a good friend over the years to myself and to us at Spoke Design. And he's come out with a new club. And it's a pen of the month club. And this is a different category, I think, than the subscriptions. This is more... This is an aficionado super fan club, right?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' This is more like a Patreon.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So there is a mug maker that I like. His name is Brian Giniuski. And he makes mugs. His company is called Drippy Pots. You may have seen these online. And he has a Patreon campaign, which has a limited amount of people that can subscribe to it, I think. Where he will make you and ship you a mug every month. Right? So like this... And that is if like you are a big fan and you just want loads of their products. And you'll take a new product every month. And that's your thing, right? So this is the same with the TI2 Design. It feels much more like I am the biggest fan of this brand. And will just take whatever they make me. Yep. It's slightly different than what we're looking at with the... And I think part of the reason is it's a scale thing. Right? Where like if Field Notes did this today, what they do, we would call it this. Yes. But like if TI2 Design scale up to the point where they're selling 20,000 of these pens every month. Right? Which who knows, right? Who knows what the world can give you. Then we wouldn't call it that. But we will naturally assume that these are probably quite small numbers. I believe that there is limited slots. So this definitely has more of that like super fan feeling to it.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah. Which I like equally as you know, all of these other things. Like if you're a TI2 Design super fan, I would sign up immediately. I think Kara's Customs does something similar or at least has some type of club type of aspect as well. So it's cool to see these brands being able to commit to a pen of the month club, which honestly blows my mind. I mean, Myke Bond is crazy prolific as it is. So it doesn't surprise me that he wants to give this a shot. But, you know, it's also probably over $100 commitment every month for a pen you don't get to see ahead of time. Which is like scary if you're not into TI2 Design, but perfect if you are, right? It's like sign me up today, right? So I think it's pretty cool. So all of these things kind of got my wheels turning a little bit. Not that I have any more to say about these topics, but I think it's always cool to think about the subscription services as part of businesses, you know, where the CW Pencil Box was a subset of the business where Field Notes, it is the business, right? I mean, they have retail, you know, where they just send the extra netbooks to retail partners and retail partners.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' It's a way to get rid of the stuff that didn't sell.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Right. You know. Yeah, but it's kind of their primary. I guess Blackwing, it's not really their primary, but like Field Notes it is. Where CW Pencils, it was, you know, it was down the list of things that were important to them. So it's not a surprise that this eventually, you know, had to head to the chopping block, especially as they transitioned. So, and then right at the same time, I'm thinking about this. I get the TI2 Design mail. I'm kind of like blowing my mind. It's like, do I need something like this? I don't. I'm definitely not subscribing. But it's cool. I like it. So there you go. That's my, that's my treatise on subscription services. It's very hard. All of this is very hard. All right, Myke. We're going to stay on the main topic and we're going to talk about another item in the stationary business world that I got an email on. I actually got forwarded this from a reader because I'm not on all the mailing lists. Like, there's a lot of mailing lists. I love mailing lists. I'm a fan of mailing lists. I subscribe to a lot. I don't subscribe to a lot. So sometimes I get forwarded things. And this one I got forwarded from Galen Leather. And this is more of the transparency aspect, how to run a business aspect. Like we talked about the Musubi email. Like, I love talking about these things because I'm involved in running a business. You're involved in running a business. And I appreciate when companies see a problem and attack it head on. So let me, this, I am actually going to read this entire email, Myke. It's not that long. But I think the whole thing needs to be read so we can discuss it. So here you go. So this is from Yusuf at Galen Leather, the owner. So it says, as you know, as being part of a commercial business, we are part of a pen and paper community. There's that word again. Maybe this is not a written rule, but we believe in our community transparency, honesty, and integrity coming first. We would like to inform you about elastic issues that reported first quarter of this year. So if you, if, for those who are unaware, um, Galen Leather is based in Turkey. English is not Yusuf's first language. So just bear with me as I go through this. He's done a fantastic job at putting this together and explaining the situation. So he says, what happened in March? A user reported that one of our pen cases, elastic stained her Lamy and pilot MR pens on social media. Actually, we were shocked by this news. We have been in pen case business in the last, for the last eight years before a public statement, we decided to make an investigation. Once we contacted the user to understand the issue, we discussed with our elastic supplier about, about the possibilities. They point out that the problem may only be due to moisture, wet hands, et cetera. Then we started to make a detailed test with a wide range of pens, different brands, materials from ABS plastic, acrylics, celluloids, copper, modern pens, vintage pens, from $10 pens to $1,000 pens, light colors, and dark colors. It took six months to complete our own tests. Finally, we can't see any stain, discoloration problems on the pens. So there's more I'm going to read, but just to recap, they had a problem or saw a problem from a customer who shared it on social media. They went through the work of trying to figure out what the problem is. They ran their own test over a six-month period of time to figure out what the problem is. And so far, I haven't come up with anything. So now I'm going to continue the mail. There are many different situations in daily use. Sometimes we touch our pens with moist or creamy hands. Maybe apply disinfectant during the pandemic season. Sometimes pen holders can be exposed to the sun and the outside. We can even write when we are by the sea. To eliminate all these risks, we decided to produce our own elastics some times ago. Our new elastics produced of only cotton and rubber are more softer and safer. They are more resistant to possible problems and not dyed. It is only woven from the thread of the same color as the pen case. As we mentioned in particular, we could not detect an important problem with our previous elastics. We only made this change as a precaution to the problems caused by different usage patterns in daily use. We're always grateful for your support and understanding. Thank you, Galen team.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I'm kind of taken aback by this whole thing.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' A little above and beyond feeling, really.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Honestly, it is. That's why. Because I think this is superior, right? This is what you want to hear. Okay, a customer reported a problem. Let's try to figure out why that happened.

'''Myke Hurley:''' We can't figure out why. Look, we did six months of tests. We ran every combination of elastic with every combination of pen. And we couldn't repeat what's happened. Most companies would have just stopped there. But they said, well, just to give everyone peace of mind, we're going to make our own elastics with another partner where we can guarantee that this thing that didn't happen probably will never happen. It's kind of mind-blowing what they did here. I think it's fantastic. I just wanted to, like Galen's, again, to be clear, Yusuf's a good friend of mine. I support Galen Leather wholeheartedly. You know, but I like to think, you know, with my level of transparency that, like, I will call it as it is. If one of my friends does something bad, I'm going to say it equally as praise them when they do something good. But this caught me as such an outlier, Myke, that you just don't see this, right? This felt, this was just kind of a cool thing to see, like, I don't know, in how they chose to handle a problem. Because this is not the first time that they've had production issues. Like, do you remember the warping issue on their writing box? Like, they had many, many issues getting that problem solved. And, you know, they've always been good to handle it. So I just wanted to point this out as a small business owner, looking at other small businesses, the way they handle the customers, you know, during problems, like, tells you a lot about how businesses are run. And I'm prideful in how I handle things. Am I always right? No. But do I try, you know, my best, you know, to do the right thing by the customer? Always. Always. And when you see someone like Galen Leather or CW Pencils, like, lay it out there, like, you just can't help but respect them even more for how they handle their business.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. As a counterpoint or an additional point, which is in a slightly different vein,

'''Brad Dowdy:''' the lengths at which Galen Leather have gone to is also, or could be seen as also, the potential downside of the small close-knit community that the pen and paper wall is in. Because one could argue that the lengths that they went to were not necessary for one solo complaint.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I see where you're going with this. Yes.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' But because the community is so tight-knit, one person can make a bigger impact on the overall feeling of everybody towards you. So if it got out in the community that Galen Leather's leather was destroying people's pens, they would be a bigger call for that company to explain themselves. Right. Where if we were talking about, like, Moleskine, they don't care. Right. Because why should they? They have so many millions of customers. Right. One person having an isolated incident or seemingly isolated incident, it's not really worth it. You know, you kind of just, if you want to give that person a refund, do it. But, like, they're not going to affect your brand, most likely. Right. But because the community is so small and your reputation is only as good as the perceived reputation by the community itself, you are held to a higher standard. Like, I am, like, the same with a lot of the ways that we run RelayFM, right? Like, our audience treats us much, would treat us much more harshly than a wider audience of a larger podcast network. You know, like, we are put under a microscope. I like that personally because it keeps me honest. Right. So, like, there are, we turn down certain types of sponsors because we know that our community would not like them. But these are the exact sponsors I hear on shows that are much larger than ours or more mainstream. You know, like, there's a, we get, like, lots of requests for, like, medical stuff that we don't do. Or, you know, like, for example, there is a company that does, like, hair loss stuff and men's health things. I won't go into much more detail than that. But we don't feel like it's a fit for our audience and we feel like our audience would be quite critical of it. So, we turn down deals like that. And it's, like, a similar thing of, like, because so much, because our entire company is built on the back of having such a strong and engaged community, that is what makes us able to do this, right? It's why we're so thankful to people because our communities enable us to produce this content and enable us to have homes, right? Right. But if you want to have that type of community, you have to be honest to it. And that means you must be willing to be scrutinized. And the other side of having that willingness to be scrutinized is you need to make decisions and the outcomes of those decisions could be seen as, in typical business circles, a wild overreaction. But it's important to our community.

'''Myke Hurley:''' That's exactly right. And that goes back to, to put a bow on it, it goes back to my point where these decisions and more the way that you run a business, like you being you and myself and Caroline, and there's ways to make a lot more money than we make. Oh, yeah. But that is a choice to not because it compromises something about us. Your integrity. It makes us successful in the first place, right? We wouldn't be successful in the first place by compromising our morals and our integrity, like you say. So, yeah, I fully support these types of businesses. And that's why we have, you know, these great communities that we have and super supportive communities and wonderful listeners and fans and readers. Like, it's great. Like, I'm thrilled.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, because I just think it's like one of those things where it is worth noting the other side, right? Yes, that is a good point. But like, Galen clearly went to that level for two reasons, I would assume. This is my assumption is one is they were confused about it because they'd put the work in in the first place to make sure something like this wouldn't happen. And then two is they don't want to be seen as producing a product that would be seen in the community as damaging to expensive products, right? Right. I guess one of the worst things you can do in our subsection of the community is to make a product that damages your $1,000 Nakaya. Right. You're done, right? Like, if that's the type of product that you make.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah. So, Galen, a lot of these companies that we love, they have a lot of give a damn. And that's not every company has that.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So, it puts you in the fight in the first place, though.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yep. All right. Let's talk about one of our favorite advertisers.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Definitely one of yours. Yeah. One that you treat your own face to. That's our friends over at Harry's. You know Harry's by now. Well, I want to tell you about their sharpest blades ever, which is something that Harry's has recently brought to the market. Unlike some other razor companies, they don't charge you more for their product improvements. Harry's new sharper blades are still as low as $2 each. And new customers in the U.S. can redeem a trial offer of Harry's new sharper blades right now by going to harrys.com. Harry's blades are delivered directly to your door on your schedule with or without a subscription. These new blades are so sharp that in a study with people shaving four times a week, they reported that Harry's new blades, their eighth shave, was as smooth as their first. Harry's is able to do this because they own their own factory based in Germany that's been honing razor blades for 100 years. They source their steel from Sweden and own the entire manufacturing process from research and development to the factory floor, which allows them to keep those prices low and lets them confidently stand by their quality with a 100% quality guarantee at harrys.com. So, Brad, tell me something about these Harry's products that you love.

'''Myke Hurley:''' So here's the thing. Okay. We've been talking about these new blades for a little while now and I don't have them yet. So I'm going to go order. I just made myself a note while you were talking order Harry's blades.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah.

'''Myke Hurley:''' The reason why I don't have them is because they already make the best blades I've ever used in my life. They last forever and I don't burn through them. Right. I just don't have the opportunity to constantly churn through blades because they're so good to begin with. And now you're telling me that the one that's available now is even better. So I'm going to have to just go order these, keep these separate from my existing sash, you know, make sure I know which one is which and do a little comparison. You should shave one half of your face.

'''Myke Hurley:''' See how that goes.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' You can give Harry's sharpest blades ever a try today because they have a fantastic offer for pen addict listeners. New U.S. customers can redeem a Harry's trial set at harrys.com slash pen addict. You'll get a five blade razor featuring these new sharper blades, a weighted handle, foaming shave gel with aloe and a travel cover to protect your blade when you're on the go. Go to harrys.com slash pen addict and redeem your trial today. Today, our thanks to Harry's for their support of this show and Relay FM.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Continuing our theme of businessing, Myke, let's talk about pen shows. What do you say? What are they? Exactly. The definition of a pen show has changed. Like we haven't had any. Yep. Physically in a long time. There hasn't been many opportunities virtually to have them. You know, some there's been some pop ups and some individual things. But the Detroit pen show coming up on November 13th, 14th and 15th is going to be completely virtual. So they are planning on holding the Detroit pen show as scheduled, but with all virtual vendors all online. So you'll have to go to we'll have the link in the show notes to the Detroit pen show because I want you to go see and I'm involved and we're going to talk about this in a minute. But I am anxious to see. If this can be pulled off. Because it's different, right? It's like I'm I'm very curious about how the show organizers are going to make money, right? Like that's a thing that I can't not think about, right? Because you're losing the gate, if you will, right? You have two sources of income as a show runner is your vendor tables and your attendees. So this is all free for attendees. Vendors, you know, obviously have a table fee, but it's all going to be managed online. There's going to be vendor kind of meet and greets. And then there's going to be the availability to book a time with these vendors that are part of the pen show to have basically a one on one session to see their products, learn about their products and decide if you wanted to make a purchase of their products. So I'm interested to see how this all plays out. And I definitely am going to participate in some of that. But aside from that, I'm doing a virtual meet the makers panel, which I did in Baltimore and in person. And this one's going to be online. So I'll be have four makers with me will be I'll be, you know, hosting and moderating the panel discussion and I'll be asking questions and things like that. So we're doing that on Saturday. And I'm just anxious in a good way, not anxious, nervous, but anxious to see is this going to be a viable option for future pen shows to take on now?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' What is the pen show aspect of this?

== Pen Show Adaptations ==

'''Myke Hurley:''' It's going to be the scheduling of time for vendors who are participating. Like you'll say, hey, I want to I'm looking for or I want to find out more about Edison pens. I'm going to book I'm going to pick the schedule for Brian and Andrea Gray from 10 to 1015 or 10 to 1030. I don't know what the time slots are and do virtual shopping with Brian as my guide. Oh, OK, so and then so the vendors will have all of these time slots Friday, Saturday and Sunday, essentially is my understanding.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Right. Where you are as a vendor having the opportunity to talk to someone. This is an interesting.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' All right. I want to preface all of what I'm about to say here by saying you've got to try something, right? Don't know what's going to work. Don't know what's not going to work.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Oh, I have one big issue we're going to get to. So we'll see if you say it.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' OK, I think that this is something to try, but it doesn't sound like the right thing to me. Because one, it sounds absolutely exhausting to the vendors because you are needing to be available to have conversations for that entire amount of time, which is not the way that pen shows go. Right. Right. So where you have downtime and someone's booked out the entire time and also like there's no walk by traffic. It's also as a purchaser, quite intimidating because I like to just look at the tables. I don't want to talk to people unless I want to talk to them. Right. I want to just browse most of the time, although arguably you don't need to browse because you can just look at the websites already. So in theory, you have if you want to be a browser, just look at the person's website. If you want to ask questions, book one of the time slots. Right.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I'm just not convinced that this is.

'''Myke Hurley:''' The thing. So you've kind of hit on what I see is the problem and I boil it down to volume. Yeah. Right.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' It's impossible for you to get even close to the amount of people that could come and look at your product on a daily basis.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Because your time commitment is enormous. Yeah. Which at a pen show, your time commitment is enormous, but you're there. You're physically, you know, you physically chose to be available for anyone who walks by to sell to. Mm-hmm. And this is a little bit more direct. It's going to be a challenge. There's no doubt. I am so glad that they're doing this and I want to support it.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' This is what we have been talking about the whole time. Someone's got to try something. It has to be done. Because no one was doing anything. And from this, I mean, understandably, because what are you going to do? I mean, I have my, I think we've spoken about it. I know what I would do. We can get to that in a minute. But even if this overall doesn't work, I guarantee people are going to take away something that they've learned. Something did work or like now I've done this. I could see doing it another way. Because I kind of can understand the idea of like allowing for these people to be available to answer questions is an important part of the process. I'm just not sure that this is the way to do it. But I also don't have off the top of my head a better way to do that.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Right. And like the people running the show, this is a lot of work to manage this. This is probably as much work as doing a physical show. Because once you get everyone's table set up, you know, at a physical show, you're pretty set for the rest of the weekend. You know, you have to, you know, put out fires that come up and take the gate attendance, you know. But this, managing a digital thing, I don't know how many vendors are participating. This is a lot of work. I'm very interested to see how this goes. And I hope everyone who listens participates. Let me ask you.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' You are a pen show vendor. Would you do this? As a vendor.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I would not commit Friday, Saturday, and Sunday in my house to sit in front of a computer to have 15 to 30 minute sales block windows. It's not worth my time.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Because it's a hard sale, isn't it? Right. On your perspective.

'''Myke Hurley:''' But I would be available for four hours on Saturday afternoon. And I don't know if that's what they're asking. Like, I don't know that level of detail. Right. But if my availability has to be Friday, Saturday, Sunday, open to close. It wouldn't be worth it. But if I could say, okay, Nock is available from 12 to 4 for questions, you know, maybe that and maybe that's how they're doing it. I don't know totally. So then I would say, hey, that's a great time block for me.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yep. So if I was doing a pen show right now, I would steal a little bit of what Detroit is doing and what you just mentioned. I think that that is an interesting idea of like products are available. But if you have questions on a product, these people will be available from this time to this time. But bear in mind that the product may have sold out by then, you know, like whatever. Right. My way of doing it is basically just a glorified online store, but it enables these people to sell the product that they otherwise would have made just for the pen show. So basically, I would work with a lot of vendors. So, you know, it's what I would want to do. And you have to achieve one of two things. Prices you cannot get elsewhere or limited edition product. They are the two things at the virtual pen show. And so as a consumer, that's what you know you're going to get. Because a lot of the time, that is what you get at a pen show. So, you know, it would be one destination and we would have brands of different kinds, including a lot of small makers. And it's a case of like you know that you're either going to get limited edition products from makers like woodshed, makers like Carolina pen, right? Like this is what you expect to get at a pen show. So, or larger companies that have larger stock options or like even like a Frank and Kristoff as well, right? So you get limited. Or companies that come, you know, like say like a Drumgools or Vaness or Andersons and say like you have to offer a discount, which you don't have to say up front. But there is a meaning that if you come and buy the stuff, then people are going to get a price discount. And that's why they're doing it. So that's kind of like the bones of what I think an event like this should be. But you've got to get a lot of buy-in and that's really tricky. And there would be an element of wanting people to be around. But I think that you could combat, I don't know exactly how you would combat it, but there is something to be said for these makers to be able to be able to answer questions for people. And maybe, like for all I know, maybe this idea of slot booking is the way to do it because you only have to be around at the times you've gotten booked. But that could get a bit out of control. I don't know. I'm happy to see someone trying something because up to this point, nobody's done anything compelling, understandably. And then hopefully as we move into the end of this year and into next year, there'll be some more options. Because basically, I don't think that we're going to be having any pen shows for...

'''Myke Hurley:''' First half of next year? Maybe longer. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So I'm thrilled that this is happening. I want to be part of it. I want to participate in it. I want to support it because they're putting their necks out to do this. And we'll see how it goes. We obviously have a lot of questions. I have a lot of questions. I have a lot of things to think about. But we have to start somewhere. And I'm glad that Dale Pencala has said, hey, we're going to give this a shot and to do this. So I think it's great. And we'll be anxious to see how it goes. And I'll see if I can get some feedback on the show. I'm sure I can. And we'll see what their pros and cons and their takeaways were from doing this. And once they get feedback from all the vendors that are participating too, they'll be able to find out like, hey, what worked for you, what didn't, things like that. So good stuff for sure. All right. You want to wrap this up on a couple of products? Yeah. That have passed through my hands that I have lots of questions about. But these are kind of like the first look. And you're going to be hearing some commentary on these products. Yep. First up is the AutoHut Design 03. This is one of the pens, the newest pens that I've gotten for myself to review. Our friend Dries at the Pencil Case blog did this review of this AutoHut pen. And I was like, man, that is a perfect pen for me. It looks amazing. It's really cool design. It's kind of basic but kind of complex at the same time. Huh. It's not crazy expensive. AutoHut has been around for, I don't know, a century. But they're kind of modernizing their lineup now recently. You know, they've been very classic German-styled pens. And now this one is kind of like this modern take. To me, they're like a mashup of Lamy and Faber-Castell, right? It's like this kind of perfect mashup between those two companies. So it's totally German, right? Like it is the perfect German company. And I ordered this pen because I wanted to see. Like I've never reviewed an AutoHut pen before. And I'm going to have a lot of thoughts on this pen. I really like it. And I really am really confused by it at the same time. So I just wanted to put this on your radar. Because I'm not sure how familiar with the brand you are. But they're making some changes to their styles. to their product offerings that I think might push them up a notch from where they've been in the past. And I want to take a look at what they're doing.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' The one that you're looking at is the Design 3?

'''Myke Hurley:''' Oh, 3. Yes, it's an all-black, kind of long, slimline, cylindrical pen. Black nib. Actually, black everything. Black accessories. Black clip. Black nib. All of it.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' But they don't just do a black one, though, right? They also do rose white, dark gray, light gray. The rose white is nice. It's rose golden white. Yeah. This is an interesting looking design. It kind of looks like the Apple Pencil a little bit.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Mm-hmm.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. It's got that band on it, hasn't it?

'''Myke Hurley:''' So they've always kind of done these metal shapes before. But they've always just been, like, if, you know, stock photo fountain pen styles. You know what? I don't mean that in a bad way. But it was just never my style, right? I don't need, you know, your basic cross or your basic shaper. And that's what I felt like the auto hut was. And now... Yeah.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Well... They have other designs that are more on their page. Like Design 1 and Design 2, they're kind of a little bit pedestrian.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Which that doesn't mean they're good quality or bad quality. I mean, you know, sure, they're perfectly fine. Yeah. But now I'm interested. Okay. Now we're talking modern styles, you know, PVV-coated nibs, you know, all black looks. You know, it's very interesting. So I'm looking forward to review this.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Do they make their own nibs?

'''Myke Hurley:''' I don't know. That's a good question. I don't know.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Because they're branded with their own branding.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yes. They're like fully... It's not just like a stamping. It's like a fully designed nib. It's designed. Mm-hmm.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' At least from my experience, fully designed tends to mean it's your own. Mm-hmm. I mean, it depends on the scale that you're buying at. But I can't recall a brand that had such heavy, unique branding on a nib that they didn't make themselves. Yeah.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Well, I don't know if I can... It might be on their product pages, you know, if I dig a little bit more into their history. I can find it. You know, this is... Like I said, this is a company that's been around since the early 1900s. So who knows? They very well could. Very possible then, right? So... Yep. The second product that I just got in... I got in last week, but I didn't open it until yesterday, is the Sumkin Weekly Planner. So you know from a couple years ago how much I loved my Sumkin Planner.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I just found it, Brad, on their website.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Products by Otto Hart have a stylized logo engraved into the nib, which is inspired by the Bauhaus... Oh, it just says it's engraved. I didn't find what I hoped I was finding. They just talk about the fact that they engraved the nibs. Yeah. Sorry.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah. No problem. No problem. It's interesting. Maybe we can find out. So we'll do a little research on that. But this is... It's a really good nib. Like, it's a very German fine nib on this. And, you know, it's just... It writes well. It flows well. So this Sumkin sent me a couple of paper goods. Sent me a notebook, a standard notebook, a Slim Traveler's notebook, and then a 2021 weekly planner. This planner is awesome.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Very pretty.

'''Myke Hurley:''' It's also awesomely expensive. It's 70 euro. Woo! So... Wow. I have a lot to say about that. And this is a product we're going to talk about more.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Going through this yesterday, it is all of the things planner, right? It is the full service planner. It's got every calendar layout, every style. It's got habit tracking. It's got, you know, the world map. It's got blank pages in the back. Like, a lot of blank pages. Like, 40 or 50 blank pages. So, like, this is a thorough planner, right? It doesn't just do one thing as a planner. It does all the things as a planner, which is good for the price point. And if I was walking down the street in Paris in front of the Sumkin shop and walked in and saw this planner and saw it was 70 euro, I probably wouldn't blink, right? But in relation to, like, what we're used to as planners as the expensive ones being half this price, right? You know, you question, like, well, what am I getting for this? And, you know, that's what we're going to explore, right? Sumkin's making all of these products in-house. They're basically a printer who's making these products. And, you know, I say it's 70 euro as thinking it's expensive, but I'm also saying that as someone who is about to crack open a $130 Misubi journal. That's just a journal, blank page journal, right? So, you know, buying products, stationary products that are expensive takes a lot of thought. And I'm going to be checking this one out. I'm probably going to be giving this away, but I really want to put some thought into what are we getting here for the price? Does it feel right? And if you're going to make a commitment to a single product and you like this style and format, I wouldn't have a problem paying 70 euros. But I say that knowing that you can buy a Hobonichi Techo for half of that. You can buy a Jibun Techo for half of that. And then you can buy, you know, Leuchterms and Midori's for a third of that. So, you know, it's just what you're liking, what you're looking to get out of a planner, what type of style and aesthetic, quality features and things like that you're getting. But I wanted to point that out because I kind of can't stop thinking about it yet. Like I could never use this planner, right? It's too much for me. I need a more simple planner, but like I get it. It's kind of good and kind of expensive.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' It's beautiful though.

'''Myke Hurley:''' So yeah, it feels great. The fit and finish of this is killer. Like they've done a good job with it, but it's expensive.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Can I just mention that the theme system is on sale at the moment? You may. When I mean on sale, I mean on sale. It's $15, which is a 25% discount. We have some stock of version one that we would like to sell off before version two later on this year.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Any day now I will have final prototype, which is nerve wracking. But the current journal is on sale for $15. It's worth remembering. The layout and the system itself is unchanged from version one to version two. Like when it comes to how you write your themes, how you track everything. I've just made some tweaks to the design and I've added a few features for the next edition. And version two will be more expensive than version one was. So because we're putting more into it, the product will be a higher quality product than the original one, provided everything goes the way that I'm hoping. So we'll be increasing the price because it's actually becoming more expensive for us to make it. So if you want a theme system journal, if you love the theme system journal, you can pick one up for $15 over at cortexmerch.com right now.

'''Myke Hurley:''' So this reminds me, Myke, and I won't extend this too long because I was going to put an entirely new segment in this episode on the Zettelkasten. I listened to the Notes Cortex podcast finally yesterday, not realizing that the Zettelkasten was mentioned in there. And I have gone through this and have a lot of thoughts on that. And I wasn't going to torture you. I would really like to know more about that, but not today. Not today. And it's a whole 10-minute, 15-minute topic to discuss that. But being an index card user, obviously, it's very interesting to me. So you should put a link in the show notes for anyone that wants to go find out about this note-taking system called Zettelkasten. And as you say, I have no clue if I'm pronouncing it right, but I'm sure we're here from the audience.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' From the Germans.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. As we do. All right. That's it for today, Myke.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Okay. All right. If you would like to find links and information about this episode, you can go to relay.fm slash penaddict slash 433. If you want to find Brad online, you go to penaddict.com. He is also at penaddict on Instagram and at dowdyism on Twitter, D-O-W-D-Y-I-S-M. I am at iMike, I-M-Y-K-E. Both Brad and myself are Twitch streamers as well as podcasters these days. Brad has an official schedule. It's Tuesday, Thursday, 10 a.m. And Eastern, twitch.tv slash penaddict. I'm a little bit more higgledy-piggledy right now as my streaming setup is in beta, but I stream maybe once or twice a week at mike.live, and it's mostly keyboard-related content. And that's probably the plan. But I'm working on stuff. I just got affiliate, Brad. Nice. Got affiliate last week. And I'm working on visual design and emotes and all that kind of stuff now. That's my next big project. Cool. You can go and check those out if you like, too. Thank you so much to Harry's and Pen Chalet for their support of this episode, and we'll be back next time. Until then, say goodbye, Brad. Goodbye, Brad. Goodbye, Brad.

[[Category:Podcast Transcripts]]
[[Category:The Pen Addict Podcast Transcript]]