Editing The Pen Addict 419/transcript (section)

== Cleaning Pens ==


'''Brad Dowdy:''' To start things off, and maybe I need some Blaze It 420 for what I'm about to say is, I really think a lot about pens, Myke. I'm not sure if you're aware. Like, I think a lot about how I use pens and how I handle pens and what I'm currently using and things like that. Maybe I could use some 420 enlightenment to help me out here. So, you can clear your mind a bit. Yeah, yeah. So, you know, I go in these constant cycles, and anyone who's been a long-term listener has heard me talk about this before when I clean my pens about how I generally go, like, just full scorched earth and reset the entirety of what I have inked up. So, I was trying not to do that a few weeks ago when I cleaned, like, six or eight pens, and I still found out, you know, earlier or, like, last weekend that I had 11 fountain pens still inked up. I was like, wow, that is just too many. How did I clean some and still end up with 11 fountain pens ink? That's just too many for me. Like, I don't use them enough for that to be a healthy practice to have that many inked up. You know, it's just wasteful, basically. So, I did the thing where I just go, screw it. I'm just gonna clean them all out, right? So, I hunted down every fountain pen I had inked up. I had more than... I thought, I was like, oh, here's these four pens that I know I'm really... Like, they're kind of my favorites right now. Like, the 823, and the Sailor Fujiyama, and Brooks Arushi, Lamy Safari, and things like that. You know, these, I'm loving using these, having these sitting on my desk, laying around. But, you know, they're just not getting enough individual love, so let's break them down, start from scratch. And then I started looking around my desk, and oh, there's another fountain pen inked up, and oh, there's another fountain pen inked up, and it just kept going and going, and finally it was 11 pens. But it's not surprising. Not surprising, really, is it for you? Not even at all. Like, I tell myself it's not that bad. And then, when I actually go to do the thing, I was like, hmm. Like, 11, for some people, is not bad. For me, that's too many. So, I got them all down. And the only fountain pen I didn't clean was the Platinum Curie Doss.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Because you didn't know how to clean it?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' That is so true, my God.

'''Myke Hurley:''' How do you clean that pen?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I don't know. I don't know. I think I'll just, since this one has the cracked feet, I'll just send it back before cleaning it to get the replacement. Replace it.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Every time I need a new Curie Doss, I'll just replace it.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' But I'm still, I still, I'm planning on doing my review soon for that, right? So, it was pointless to clean it, because I still use it. I've put my thoughts together on the Curie Doss enough now to where I feel good reviewing it. So, that one stayed inked. Everything else went. The other thing, the other reason why I chose to go ahead and clean out all these pens is that 10 out of the 11 pens had some form of blue ink in them. And that's just lame. That frustrated me. Since they were inked at all different times, right? Like, the Fujiyama blue comes in, and, well, of course, I'm going to ink that with, like, some bright sailor blue. I put sky high in it. Like, that's the perfect thing. Like, that's what you should do. I had 10 variations of blue ink and one purple ink in the dark lilac Urushi Lami Safari. So, that was another thing that frustrated me. I was like, well, I want to use orange or green or yellow or whatever it is, pink, but I don't want to ink up another pen to add on to these. So, now the challenge is, how long can I go without getting out a new fountain pen to ink?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I'm on, like, two days now. And it's going okay because I've had a rash of new products come in that, you know, I'm not strictly a fountain pen user, right? I, that's probably one of my least used pens on a day-to-day basis. So, having 11 inked up is too much, and then having all these other options that I love to use now has me thinking, can I get away with, how many days can I get away with not inking up a fountain pen? And let me just be perfectly clear. It's not going to be many days. Like, there's no, I'm not trying to say, you know, I'm going to go a month without inking up a fountain pen. That's not going to happen. If I made it to this weekend, it would be a miracle. Right? So, my question to you is, how long could you go without, if you started from zero with your current fountain pen staring at you and none of them had ink in them, how long could you go without inking one up? Like, when would you, would you have a breaking point, like, pretty quick, or do you think you could go pretty long without using it?

'''Myke Hurley:''' I mean, it's like, this is a need-want thing, right? Like, I could go forever, right? And my life isn't going to be, like, badly affected. Not like if you said to me, you can't use your phone, right? Like, then we're in a different world. I mean, honestly, I would probably, at max, go, like, two days before I would want to have a new pen inked up. You know, because I could use, for a couple of days, my non-fountain pens. But all of my favorite pens are my fountain pens. So, I would only go for a couple of days maximum before I wanted to do that.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, that's what I put in the show doc for myself. I said, I think I could go about three days. Because I just, I have these fountain pens because I love how they feel, how they make my handwriting look, how I get to use unique nibs and unique barrel styles and sometimes pieces of art, and get to put unique ink colors and use them on fun paper. Like, I can't always get that with the ballpoint. Like, we're going to talk about the Rotring 600. Like, that's fine. Like, I could use the Rotring 600 for weeks at a time, but I want something different. You know, and that customization that I always talk about with fountain pens, it's going to mean that I can't go very long without inking up a new fountain pen. So, the other reason why I just kind of scorched earth again is so I can get some new pens into the rotation. Like, this is part of the bigger project of what pens make the cut for continued use and what pens need to be sold, right? That's just, that's the overarching theme here is eventually I'll have pen sale round two, which I probably need to have, you know, like, pretty soon. Probably like this fall because I've bought a bunch of pens without selling pens here recently. And it's time to go through that again. So, I'm breaking it all down and having a fountain pen reset right now. But that's, it's totally cyclical for me. Like, this is a conversation we've had a million times. But the thing that struck me this time was how many blue inks I had inked up and how much that annoyed me because it prevented me from going to 15 inked fountain pens just so I could ink a green and a pink. I was like, that's dumb. You need to clean out these pens before you start doing that.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I seem to remember it was like a goal for you this year to stop using as many blue inks as you're using. And was, you wanted to be more experimental.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. So, two years ago, my theme was experiment. And I get frustrated when I don't allow myself to do that, right? It becomes a frustration point when I just want to throw a blue black ink into a pen, right? Right. And I'll actually sit in front of my inks and I'll probably have 200 inks and just be frustrated trying to decide what non-blue black ink I am going to use. I don't know why that just makes it's one of those sticking points for me, you know, because you have to go for me. It's a it's a going outside of my norm thing. You know, if I'm going to put the effort in using this pen and putting this ink in it, am I going to enjoy it or am I wasting my time in filling it and committing to it? So, like, I get stuck on those types of things, which is is ridiculous when you say it out loud. But those are the things that, you know, I get stuck on sometimes. So that's why I'm trying to have this cleanse right now so I can have some enlightenment when I go to ink up the next pen. So I already I already kind of know what the next next couple of pens I want to ink up. I just haven't figured out the inks yet. So we'll do that soon. So in lieu of any fountain pen use, Myke, I've been using some other things of note recently. One is the brand new Rotring 600 colors. Were you going to try to get any of the pencils for you? I know you like the 600 pencil. Did any of the color pencils speak to you in any way, shape or form to try to order them for yourself?

'''Myke Hurley:''' Of memory tells me that I liked the green one. But I think it was a case of really wanting to actually. Yeah, if I remember right, it's like, yes, I would. But I want to wait to see it in person, which could be who knows when before. Because, you know, it would purely be seeing one and be like, oh, that color, I really like it. Like, that would be the only reason that I would do it. So I think I would just I would need to see all the colors in their glory before making that kind of decision.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. And I will say a couple of things. One, it looks like they're going to be pretty wide release. Like this looks like going to be a mainline Rotring release. They seem to be even though they've sold out a lot of places from the get go. So they're at least accessible from a lot of places. Right. Like people, if people want these, they should be able to get what they want. We were worried in the beginning, not knowing what the release was going to be. Was it going to be a regional type release? Are we going to be able to have to fight to get these? Because I really wanted the blue. So I was able to order something from each color so I could look at them and see. And I'm definitely the blue person. And so I got the 0.5 millimeter pencil in blue for myself. And I got I matched that up with the ballpoint, the 1.0 millimeter ballpoint in blue. And that's what I've been using. Like the last two days exclusively, I've used the Rotring 600 ballpoint in blue. I forget the they call the red matter red, which is a weird name. I don't know what the blue and green are called. And they're great. Like I think you will really like the green, the green, any of the marketing. And we just we talked about this when the marketing first first launched. You can barely tell it's green in the marketing photos. It looks very black. And they call it camouflage green, which makes me think, you know, a brownish blackish green. And it is definitely more of the British racing style green. It has a little metallic. Like, yeah, so I think people who want the green are going to be pretty happy with it in person over the pictures. It's got a little bit of metallic to it. Like all the red and the blue both have like a metallic sheen on the barrel. And the green is better looking in person than in pictures. So I will say that the ballpoint that I'm using takes Parker style refills. It's a Rotring branded refill. I'm wondering if it's like the Schmidt 9000. But I don't know, maybe it's just Rotring's refill because it does say made in France on it. So I don't I don't even know what's going on here. But it's a really nice refill. It's smooth, dark black ink. And you can change it into the, you know, the Jetstream SXR 600 refill that I like so much. That's the Parker style Jetstream. I'll end up putting one of these, one of those refills in this pen eventually. And it's just really well done. Rotring did a good job. You know, the only knock that I'll have on any of these new Rotring products is the back end of the pencil with the with the cutout in the eraser cap. That just does not make any sense to me. But, you know, it is what it is. And you don't really notice it that much. But I was like, that is just a weird design choice for someone who makes such clean pens like Rotring. That is just the strangest design choice. Aside from that, I'm using the spoke pen in cyan, which is the bright kind of turquoise blue. And this has been so every week I pick a pen for my William Hanna journal. So I switch that up every week. So this week it's the it's the spoke pen in cyan. And I use the Uniball Signo DX lavender black 0.38 millimeter gel. That's my favorite refill.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Lavender black. Mm hmm. What color is that?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' It's a darker. It's basically dark purple.