Editing The Pen Addict 356/transcript (section)

== Topic Shift - Perfect Pencil ==


'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. So I actually have a real answer to this question, but to stay on the Perfect Pencil for a second. So while you were reading the Moo ad, I really did put in my notes to go order, to place my order, and I'm using the Perfect Pencil today. So it's very enjoyable to uncap my pencil, write my note, and then recap my pencil. I enjoyed that, right? I did. When I put the cap back on, I was like, this is nice. But my answer, my real answer to this question is the Matt Martin Fountain Pen. That has been not only a huge surprise, it has been a huge delight. And I'm working on my review. I've been doing that for a few days. I've had this pen inked up since I bought it at the Atlanta Pen Show. I have two other of Matt's pens that my friends bought at the show that I'm going to do a review on Friday this week. I'm shooting for it. I don't see any reason why I won't get it done by then. But I've got some work left to do on it. It's not a pen for everybody. One, it's a full metal pen. Mine, in the case of mine, fully titanium. Two, it's very expensive. It was $295. But this pen sparks joy, if I may steal a phrase, Myke. Every time I grab it and put it in use, I take a moment to just kind of look at it. And I still just kind of go, huh, at it. Like, this shouldn't happen, but it is happening to me with that pen. It's really great. It's one of my current favorites by a quite large margin. So, yeah. Do you have anything that has surprised and delighted you? Maybe a pen from earlier in the show?

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah, it's kind of a shame because I gave it away. But the Kaweco student is that, right? Like, I kind of bought it because it was fun and came highly recommended. So, I was like, all right, I'll give it a go. But was, yeah, as I say, like, just really just, it was just a great pleasure, again, to use a pen like this. And remember, remember why I liked Kaweco and not like as it's been in my mind for a while of like, I liked Kaweco before I knew better. Right. Which is kind of how I thought about it for a while. Like, oh, I liked Kaweco pens a lot when I was kind of starting out. But because I haven't spent a ton of time with them recently, it's kind of just like, in my mind, it's been like, oh, it was because you were relatively new to quality fountain pens. But no, it turns out that, like, these nibs are excellent. They're very different, very different to Japanese nibs. They feel very different to me. Totally. But still equally very good. So I would say that the nib of the Kaweco students specifically is what has delighted me this week. Miatet asks, do you have any tips for working with titanium nibs? I have had issues with ink gushing and uneven flow. They have both been bock, fine and medium.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I've never enjoyed a stock titanium bock fountain pen nib. Any titanium nib that I like, I've had worked on after the fact. They are extremely finicky nibs. So I've had mine ground down, modified, adjusted for flow. They are really hard to get a good experience right out the gate.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah, I have one. I think it's in the misu. Did I get the misu nova of a titanium nib? Maybe. Probably. I think it was. And it's just really squeaky. I hate that. It's interesting and it feels, because I like soft nibs. I like broad nibs, right? So when it works, and it does work, it works fine for me really. It feels really nice for me to use because it's soft, but it also is really squeaky and I don't like the squeakiness.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. So once I got them worked on, they're spectacular. Like some of my favorite nibs. But the stock experience is tough. It's hit or miss. I found that they dry out a little bit quicker. The lines are a little bit uneven. I don't know. I've just had, you know, maybe that's a Bach QC thing, which they have a history of. I don't know if it's worth it.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Titanium, honestly, I don't know if it's worth it. Yeah. I think that you get, for many reasons, an equally wonderful experience from gold. You know, I know that there are subtle differences between them, but I very rarely had a gold nib that I didn't like.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Right. So I have one, the one titanium nib that I got worked on and adjusted is the one titanium nib I'll use. So I won't order any more titanium nibs, right? I'll just pass that nib around to whatever pen I want to use it in. It's not worth it for me to get another one. So they're finicky. That's the best thing I can say about box titanium nibs. And I generally have only had good experience with them after I've had them worked on after the fact, which is, you know, not always a thing that everyone can do.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Fred asks, how do you get the ink off of your fingers after refilling your fountain pens? I just wait it out, man. I just like, whatever. That's just my life.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, I generally don't. Like, that used to be a huge stickler, sticking point for me, I should say, where I was like, oh, I don't want to get messy with fountain pens. You know, they're going to get ink all over my hands. I just own it now. You know, when I'm done with a big cleaning and my hands will have ink on them, you know, I'll use hot water and dish soap and wash my hands. But that doesn't get it all off. But, you know, I just kind of own it now. I think it's like a badge of honor that I have inky fingers. And there is a product called Amidex that does help get that, that pen retailers will sell. So that's what you want to look for if you really, like, have a huge accident and your hands are, like, completely pink. Looks like, you know, some of our previous horror stories. Where you don't want to go walking around with blood red hands. There's a product called Amidex that does work. But I generally just, you know, use hot water and soap and whatever's left will be gone in another day or two. That's how I do it.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yep. Rastafor asks, are there any purchases that you thought about, decided no, and genuinely regretted refusing?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' This question comes up a lot. Like, the regrets thing. Hashtag no regrets, man. Hashtag no regrets. I genuinely don't. I don't have any. I try to think of things that I've passed up on. Like, there's been some vintage pilot stuff. You know, some of the vanishing points, metal barrels, you know, striped my ewes that I've just never wanted to spend the money on. But don't necessarily regret. They would be nice to have if I was willing to drop stupid money on them. But I don't really have a regret not owning them in the end, right? So those are kind of the only things that I've looked at. You know, vintage stuff that you don't come across very often. Like, if you're a big vintage person. Like, anything modern, I definitely don't have any regrets on. So it would have to be something in the vintage category. And even then, there's always something else. So I don't really have any regrets.

'''Myke Hurley:''' And the Inky Side asks, I'm currently engaged. Congratulations. Congratulations. And lucky enough to be with a wonderful partner that is a penabler, which I've never heard. I don't know if you've ever come across that phrase. The portmanteau of pen and enabler. Like that very much. We've used it. Have I? Oh, okay. Penabler for my hobby. We have decided to buy fountain pens in the $100 to $175 range for signing our marriage licenses. I'm hoping to get it engraved too. What recommendations do you have? Do you have ideas for matching inks as well? My expensive pens currently include, this is, I guess, just to give an idea, Conklin Nighthawk, a Pilot Custom 74, an Opus 88 demo, and my grandmother's Parker 41 debutante in teal with fish scale cap. I would like to keep this pen for the rest of our lives and pass it on to our children one day. Visionaires.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Two visionaires? Yeah. Coming right up. Visionaires. I think you can get those engraved too. You probably can. That's what you do.

'''Myke Hurley:''' What do you think? So I tell you my struggle when trying to think of like, what do I consider like super important enough? I guess I would maybe struggle in the $100 range. That my brain jumps to other places.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So I kind of have two answers here. One, the vintage Parker 41 debutante in teal with the fish scale cap is a stunning pen. It is meaningful to you and your family. So it has that extra, you know, meaning to it. Oh, Brad, just throwing out the emotion. Yeah, it's a marriage, man. This is emotional time. I mean, if it's not the Visionaire, you have to go family. So romantic. So I love the idea of using that. The second option I would have would be something Pelican. I don't know why I see Pelican either modern or vintage as being just a fantastic wedding pen. That seems to be just...

'''Myke Hurley:''' It's just got an elegance about it that would really fit that environment. I think Pelican is a really good shout.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. So you can find some, like the modern ones in the 205, you can find plenty of in that price range. And you can find lots of vintage, really classic looking ones, depending on what ink color you want to go with. And that's the only thing we're missing from this to pin down the ink is like, is there some type of color theme we need to work with? Otherwise, I'm seriously going with Iron Gall, like document blue black. As lame as that may sound, it's so traditional. But if you want to go with a pop of color, let us know, like if you have any like color preferences, we can narrow it down. But I'm going with the Parker or I'm looking at Pelican, maybe even vintage Pelican. Which you can do a lot of work with vintage Pelican in that price range.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah. That's really great. I would say that I think using the Parker would be beautiful too, though, right? Yep. That's really nice. All right. We have some more RSTPA, but let me thank our final sponsor for this episode. And that is ExpressVPN. We all think we're immune to cybercrime. It's hard to imagine someone getting a hold of your information. But here's the bad news. Stealing data from people like you and me using public Wi-Fi is an easy way for bad guys to make money. If you leave your internet connection unencrypted, your passwords and credit card numbers could be vulnerable. There's something you can do to protect yourself from cybercriminals. And that is to use ExpressVPN. It works by securing and anonymizing your internet browsing, encrypting your data and hiding your public IP. You can turn on ExpressVPN protection with just one click. And then you're free to safely surf on public Wi-Fi without being snooped on or having your personal data stolen. ExpressVPN is rated the number one VPN service by TechRadar and comes with a 30-day money-back guarantee. I love that I can have it on all of my devices, on my iOS devices, on my Mac, just one subscription. And I have it everywhere that I need. For less than $7 a month, you can get the same ExpressVPN protection that I have and use. If you ever use public Wi-Fi and want to keep the bad guys away from your data, you need ExpressVPN. So go to expressvpn.com slash penaddict to learn more and protect your online activity today. Find out how you can get three months free at expressvpn.com slash penaddict. That is expressvpn.com slash penaddict for three months free of a one-year package. Our thanks to ExpressVPN for their support of this show and RelayFM.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' All right, so Scott has an interesting question here, and it's kind of backwards from my traditional thinking. So he says, I've typically preferred broader fountain pen nibs when printing and recently changed my handwriting style to cursive, where I find I like finer nibs in Field Notes memo books. What kind of nibs do you like for all different writing styles and situations? So big question, I generally think of it backwards from Scott, you know, I like broader nibs for bigger loopy style writing and finer nibs for print style writing. But, you know, we all have our own individual handwriting styles to manage. So Myke generally likes finer nibs in Field Notes. I never use fountain pens in Field Notes, so we'll eliminate that. But I'm, the way I write is a block print style. So I like nibs with an edge. And that's generally why I don't like broader nibs, because they usually have some type of round tipping, you know, when you're in medium, medium and broad size nibs. So I like something with an edge, whether that's extra fine, just because it's sharper and doesn't roll around the edges when I'm writing as much as a medium nib will do. Or something that has, you know, a real sharp edge, like a cursive italic or stub nib, which you can get plenty of stock options for those. TWSBI, Lamy, Pilot. I use all of those with regularity. I enjoy them all. So those are kind of the styles. The two different styles I prefer to write in are extra fine and stubbish, cursive italic-ish. And those could be any size from fine all the way to, you know, 1.5 millimeter, depending. So I just need something with an edge on it to make my handwriting look the best that it can be. So, you know, it's hugely dependent on, you know, everything from your grip to the angle and all kinds of things. So we can't get super specific, but that's what I like. How about you, Myke?

'''Myke Hurley:''' I mean, I'm going to say, honestly, I feel like I'm not discriminatory. I will write on anything of anything. Yeah, you pretty much are. I mean, that's true. It's honestly, it's just what do I feel like today? And I have got much more of a breadth of a collection now between, like, fine and broads, right? Like, I have way more of them. I used to be, like, all broads and all mediums. Now I do have a bunch of, I have a selection of fine sailor nibs. Because as far as fine nibs go, sailor nibs work very well for me. Because they're all gold, so they're softer anyway. And that works really nicely for me. Even though the Japanese fine is finer than the, like, the German fine. But the sailor nibs work very well. Plus, because they're so reliable anyway. So that's why I've been willing to kind of branch out a little bit more there. You know, I say all the way up to, like, 1.5 stub nibs. I have quite a few of those, too. Right. So really, because of the fact that I do tend to lean, typically, towards more ink, I cannot really be discriminatory of what I use. Because most of my pens are too inky for the paper that I'm putting them on. One way or another. Especially because I'm left-handed. So I kind of just roll with it. I don't really think about nib too much when I'm picking up a pen. I think about, do I want to use this pen today? Like, I forget what nibs I have in a lot of my pens. It doesn't matter to me. It's more about, like, is this pen, does it have the feel, like, that I want today? Like, does it look the way that I'm feeling? Like, or do I have some particular draw to this one for whatever reason?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Right. And I probably put more weight on the nib, or at least a 50-50 weight on the nib when picking out which pen I'm going to use. Or the type of refill that's in it, you know, if it's not a fountain pen. So, yeah.