Editing The Pen Addict 125/transcript (section)

== Edison Menlo ==


'''Myke Hurley:''' I do have a very special pen here. It's one that I've been talking about for a little while, and it's been in the making for months, I think. How long have we been working on these? Months?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Oh, six months, I'm guessing.

'''Myke Hurley:''' So this is due to the help of our friend Thomas Hall, and Brad, can you help me tell the story a little bit leading up to this? Sure, sure. So we got an email from Thomas about six months or so ago, and he said to us, look, guys, I've... It all sounds so shady when you say it out loud. I've been able to obtain some material. Or I'm in the process of being able to obtain a special material called Tibaldi. I assume that's how it's pronounced. It's T-I-B-A-L-D-I? Yes. I'd never heard of it before. I'm not 100% sure what Tibaldi is, but it is a type of material of some description, and its pens are frequently made from it. But there it is. It comes in these rods.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, it's a fancy brand with a fancy material.

'''Myke Hurley:''' So it's... And he said, yeah, I've come into these rods, and if you want to purchase them, let me know, and I'll buy some for you, and we can have pens made out of them. So he deliberated over it a little bit, and he sent all over some pictures of other pens that have been made out of Tibaldi. And, you know, he said, please, you know, just be aware, they do not photograph as well as they look. So I looked at it, I thought, it looks quite interesting. And it seems interesting to have a pen of my own made from a raw material that I also purchased. Something quite romantic about that. So we purchased, we've all purchased the Tibaldi rods. And then what kind of followed is pretty much weekly emails from a collection of yourself, myself, Thomas, and Brian Edison, because we had the rods sent to Brian Edison at Edison Pens.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Brian Gray.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Oh, I always do that. Brian Gray at Edison Pens. Oh, dear. I've got, I refer, I had colloquially referred to him as Brian Edison, right? There's a comma there. There's a comma there that I couldn't quite pronounce. It's Brian at Edison Pens. And so basically we was talking about it a lot. And then Thomas got his and he was sending us pictures of it. And he basically went with a, I can't remember what his setup was.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' But so he went with the Menlo model, but in an eyedropper version without the filling system.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Right. Okay. And I think he had like, he didn't have the pen completely made out of the Tibaldi material. He had like, I think the ends of it were black. Yep. Like black acrylic. So I was deliberating on it a little bit and I was going backwards and forwards with Brian about what I would have done. And I pulled the trigger on easily the most expensive pen I've ever purchased because I kind of decided to go a little bit all out with it. So aside from the cost of the material, which is just like $50 or something. I don't think it was too expensive, the cost of the material. Yeah.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I think it was like $40 for the rod. Yeah. Of material.

'''Myke Hurley:''' But I went with a, I went with the Menlo pump filler.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Ooh.

'''Myke Hurley:''' And I also got a, it may have got an 18 carat gold nib.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Man, you're a pimp.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I know. And I also got it ground to a 1.1 stub. Yeah. You'll like that. So I, I've had it. Oh, and then also, oh God. So, so it was, it was expensive, right? These, these things are relatively expensive. Uh, just everything, you know, the, the nib and the work and all of that. And then I got hit with another $100 in customs fees.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Oh God. I always forget about that. That's brutal.

'''Myke Hurley:''' So this was like a, I think it came in at like all in all, probably close to about $700.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Oh man. I know. And it's kind of exactly what I wanted it to be. So I tried taking pictures of this, but there's not really any point in me doing it because the pictures that I can take don't do a good enough job. So I don't know, Brad, if you know of any good pictures of, of pens made of this kind of material.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, I can get some. I've seen some that are really, really good.

'''Myke Hurley:''' And we'll put those in the show notes because I, I tried taking pictures and I just couldn't get the right light to, to show off this material. It's basically like predominantly like dark blue and black, but it has flecks of like light gray and blue, kind of like a marble like finish really. It's probably the closest that I would compare it to. And I have like silver accents, like the clip and the ring. What do we call that? Is it dressing? No. What's the word? Furniture. Furniture. That's it. Not dressing.

'''Myke Hurley:''' And I'm, I'm super happy with it. It's, this is not a pen I would use every day. And that was kind of the intention. Like I didn't expect to buy a pen like this and spend that amount of money and then use it every day. It just felt like it was going to be, and I kind of bought it that way, right? A 1.1 stub nib is not necessarily a daily use. It can be, but I don't think in all instances it is. Um, but this thing is, it's really special. It's, you know, it's both smooth and scratchy depending on how I use it, right? Depending on how I hold it. Um, I've, I've got the Roshizuku ink in here and I'm, I'm just very, very happy with it. It's more than anything. Like it's a, I wanted a pen that was kind of just like a, a beautiful piece in and of itself. And I kind of purchased it as like a, um, congratulations on starting relay. This is the last pen you'll be able to buy. You know? And that was kind of like how I set it up. Like a pen of this amount of money, I can't see myself purchasing for some time. Um, you know, anything over the $100 range might be over my price range at the moment, at least for the next few months. So I had a little bit of money saved up in space credits.

'''Myke Hurley:''' So I decided to just go for it.