Editing The Pen Addict 375/transcript (section)

== Sailor Nib Discussion ==


'''Brad Dowdy:''' My experience with sailor nibs and one of the reasons that I will continue to buy all sailor pens that I want and most of the time don't even bother really feeling anything about the nib is because I know that every experience will be good. And so I feel like I noticed the difference between fine, medium and broad in sailor nibs, for example, to be way less of a surprise to me because even a fine works well for my needs where other pens are not. That's not that case.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Do you see a wide difference in line variation from... Do you have any EF sailor nibs? I don't have any EFs, but I have a fine. Okay. So I can speak about this a little bit. And the reason I keep questioning you is because I think, Michael, that this is a little bit of a thing only with sailor's extra fine nibs. They, in my experience as someone who uses sailor extra fine nibs, they tend to have more tipping than their fine and medium counterparts. Like I feel that sailor fine and sailor medium nibs, I get a very clean, sharp edge line with with the sailor extra fine. It's almost to me, and this is just purely anecdotal, non-scientific, me just riffing off the top of my head that the nib is rounder and the line is not as sharp edged. And therefore there's not as much line variation. And therefore I don't adore the extra fine nib as much as I do the fine and medium from sailor, which is why, you know, I got my sailor Rialo ground to a needle point. Then I can tell the difference, which, you know, that's even more extreme. So yes, I kind of agree with what you're saying, Michael. Like there's not a, I see more, I see difference from the medium for sure, but the fine sailor nibs are almost equivalent to their extra fines in my experience.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Interesting. Yeah. I don't have any extra fines.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Alexander wants to know, I'm looking to spend 300 to $500 on my first more expensive pen. And I've got my eye on that sailor 1911 large stormy sea. That's a beautiful pen by the way, but there are other pen. Are there other pens you would recommend in that range? At the moment I'm rocking the pilot Falcon and the Lamy studio, all of which are great pens. So like the entire listenership of this podcast is yelling, Brad's going to say pilot custom 823, which is right in that $300 range. And I think that's a great, a great pen. I would probably lean towards something like a Pelican M600 or probably 800. You can get at the upper end of that price range in one of their limited materials, which they're limited editions. Aren't extraordinarily limited. They're very accessible. I think the Pelican experience is amazing. If you like a wider nib, like depending on how you, how you like to write, if you like the pilot Falcon, um, like a sailor medium nib, you're probably not going to enjoy as much. So it depends on your writing experience. It's a very wide, wet nib, um, from Pelican, even their extra fines, um, which I enjoy, but that's all like, for example, with sailor, I can use their entire range of nib sizes with Pelican. I only use their extra fine nibs just because they're, they get too wide for me. So think about that. Um, after that, you know, I guess you're looking at something like Aurora who makes some nice piston fillers in that price range. Um, and that's, that's kind of my list there. You know, I think, um, you know, pilot eight 23, um, Aurora Optima Pelican M six or M 800, depending on the style and color you're in nib you're looking for. So that's, um, that's kind of that range where you can get some really good stuff and, and definitely shopping around. There's plenty of other things I haven't mentioned. See if something catches your eye, feel free to email me to elaborate. All right, let's do two more quick ones, Myke. Um, and then we'll call it a day. So from coma Dell, any, is there anywhere one can purchase or view Franklin Christophe pens in the UK or Europe? It's a great question. And I don't think there is, you know, unless you go to a pen show and you happen to luck into someone, they don't have any retail presence anywhere for one. And then they do special editions on and off for different companies and brands. Um, you know, in different parts of the world, but I don't know that they've ever done one and for a European brand, I'm sure I'm probably missing something, but as a general rule, they're a manufacturer, but not a retailer, right? They don't sell, they don't wholesale their pens to retail markets. So you're, unless you go to a pen show and they're there, you're going to have a hard time, um, seeing like what their lineup looks like.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I do often wonder if like, I know these companies are not, they're not vendors, you know, they don't, they don't sell wholesale. And I understand why they wouldn't do it in their home country. But like, I do wonder if there could be a benefit for a company like Franklin, the size of Franklin Christophe to, to make a UK vendor hold a small part of their range. Yeah.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I could totally see that. Absolutely. Absolutely.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I know it's, I know there were like a million logistical challenges, like logistical challenges that I literally have myself with the products that I sell, but it's just, it's just a thought.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yep. Yep. Yep. No, that, the way that market is growing, I wouldn't be surprised if we saw some type of partnership, uh, at least a small partnership, uh, you know, in the, in the coming years, like I could see the possibility of that. Last one for today. And I apologize if we hadn't gotten to your questions. We have a bunch of great ones and this one I wanted to get to, it has come up before and I answered them directly the moment they sent it to me because I was concerned. And Harry asks, if you still have ink in your pen, when you go to clean it, do you squirt it back into the bottle or down the drain? I worry about contaminating the bottle with tainted ink. And that's the exact reason why you don't do that. So Harry was on it already worrying about contaminating the bottle. Um, you know, if you only ever use one ink and you want to dump it back in the bottle for whatever reason, I guess maybe, but even then with it being more exposed to the elements and temperatures, and even though you might not see things immediately, I never put ink back into the bottle from a pen that has been filled. Like that just seems like just in general, a bad idea, but like, that's the kind of question we need to answer frequently just because people don't know like who are getting into fountain pens. They're like, well, I don't want to waste all this ink. I have all this ink, but I really want a new color in this pen. What should I do? Um, the answer is dump it. Honestly. Um, even though that doesn't seem like the right thing to do, like you should, I want to save it somehow. That's generally going to not work out well in the long run more times than not. So, um, you don't do that. Do you, Myke?