Editing The Pen Addict 152/transcript (section)

== UK Marriage Certificates ==


'''Brad Dowdy:''' Now listen to this. This next topic is right up your alley, Myke. Oh, yeah. This is a this is a UK question.

'''Myke Hurley:''' OK, I love you. I have questions.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. And especially in lieu of listening to the latest episode of Analog where you talked about getting married.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Hmm. Not completely accurate.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' That's not how I went. OK, that's I thought that's what I heard. But anyway, this is about marriage certificates in the UK and the requirement to use a. Permanent ink and not just any permanent ink. There seemed to be from what I could find in some paperwork, at least from, you know, one of the Oxford Anglican Church over there who just performs a lot of the ceremonies. There's very strict requirements on using old school iron gall ink because it lends to permanence in a fountain pen to sign your marriage certificate. Have you heard of this? And is this a real thing?

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yes.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So do you know the specifics? I mean, it's it. Do they provide this for you when you go sign a marriage certificate? Do you have to bring your own? It's the email I got. Let me read it real quick. It says, I want to know if there are alternatives to Registrar's ink for filling in UK marriage certificates and licenses. The standard thing to use is iron gall ink and a fountain pen from diamine or ecclesiastical stationary supplies. But iron gall ink is really annoying. It clogs up pens, etc. So I was wondering if I could use Noodler's Bulletproof inks instead or better still a non fountain pen alternative. Are there indelible ink roller balls or gel ink pens? It's a pen question and an ink question and the UK legal question all rolled into one. You might want to bring Myke in on this one.

'''Myke Hurley:''' My understanding is they give it to you. Like you are given it to sign, but you do need this special ink, I think.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Right. So I wouldn't I would think that they would provide it. You know, that's kind of a annoyance, I guess, to have the marrying couple to provide their own. I mean, I'm sure some people really get into it. Right. And, you know, have their visionaries inked up with diamine registrars and, you know, storm into the to the to the marriage office and sign their certificates. But. I'd imagine ninety nine point nine percent of other people wouldn't have a clue about this, but I am guessing that the offices there would have that for you. I didn't realize it was such a huge thing as a requirement, not.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Necessarily by law, but more by church, it seems like as best as I can gather.

'''Myke Hurley:''' So, yeah, maybe I don't know enough about it.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. But anyway, to answer the actual question, iron gall ink, you should not be too scared about. Now, there's some really serious, heavy duty, old school iron galls, which John, who wrote this email, is probably referring to being about being annoying and clogging up pens. But there's inks now where. You can find an iron gall ink that will have the same permanence and lifespan as these hardcore inks, you know, something like Roaring King cleaner. Salix is one of my favorites. It performs so well. It cleans up beautifully. I've never had an issue with clogging, starting anything. It's a really good blue. Looks like the, you know, the old school iron gall inks and.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Diamond Registrars is actually a pretty good ink. It's a little more severe than Salix in that you do need to clean it like after about a month. I clean that one out. It does a little get a little bit clogged in the tines. If you're using an extra fine nib like I use, that's my recent experience. But it's such a good ink. I don't mind that. And it's certainly not a hindrance to clean out. It's just if you're not using it constantly, you need to clean it. I haven't used the ecclesiastical stationary supplies, but that's actually the link that the church sends people to to buy ink. So I don't know anything about that ink. Non-fountain pen alternatives. Any archival pen, which you'll find a lot in art pens like the Secure Pigma Micron that I talk about all the time, that's an archival ink pen. So that ink's not going anywhere. And there's lots of other options. You could even use a Jetstream. They now have archival ink in their ballpoints or hybrid ballpoints. So there's tons of non-fountain pen options. I just don't know if you're going to get the stink eye when you walk in there with a Jetstream and they're expecting a fancy fountain pen with iron gall ink. But you can get iron gall inks that behave really, really well. So don't be scared of them. I used to be scared of them. And now I hunt them down because I love how they look and perform. So that was my spiel on that. And I find that super interesting that it's such a big thing over there. Although I guess not. You know, the UK is steeped in tradition. And things like that. But I don't recall it being – I don't know what I signed my marriage certificate with. I mean we just walked into the court and we probably signed with whatever janky ballpoint pen there. They probably had like one of those plastic daisies taped onto the end of it so you didn't steal it from the thing. So I have no clue what my marriage certificate signed with. Do you call them daisies? Yeah, those little flowers.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' What do you think?

'''Myke Hurley:''' Oh, I thought you meant like those black – like the things that – like the chains that keep them to the death. Oh, no, no, no, no. Yeah. I thought that had like some name, like a colloquial name that I didn't know.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Have you ever gone to like the grocery store or something and they hand you a pen and it's got like a flower taped on the end of it? Because if you stick it in your pocket or your purse, you're actually going to remember that you're stealing the pen because there's a huge flower taped on the end of it. You've never seen that?

'''Myke Hurley:''' No.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. It's the same thing as the chain. I get it. It's so you don't steal a pen. It's just a little more fun way to do it, I guess. So no one steals your daisy chain pen.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Okay, Mr. Dowdy, let me take a quick break and thank our first sponsor for this week. What do you think?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, let's do it. This is a good one.