Editing The Pen Addict 218/transcript (section)

== Fountain Pen Entry Level ==


'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah. So, the reason why I don't put it ahead of the Metropolitan and even the Safari is because for someone who's never used a fountain pen and wants to try one, there's a little bit more of a normalcy, if you will, in the Metropolitan as far as feel goes. Right? You don't... The Plaisir is so light. You don't have that sturdy feeling that makes you feel like, you know, when someone's just trying a fountain pen, $15 is a lot of freaking money to try this out. So, you want it to feel something substantial. And if you spend like $20 on the Plaisir and you feel this lightweight thing and you don't really know what you're getting or what it's all about, I could see a little bit of a hesitancy. So, that's why I put the... I really put the Metropolitan, the Eco, and the Safari ahead of it. But it's also one of those pens where it could be my favorite one out of all four. Right? That's where the difference lies.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Of the ones that I have, I definitely like the 05 the most. It's smoother. Which makes sense considering my tastes over the years, you know, going for mediums and broads. And I really like it. I did want to just point out a couple of things that you wrote in your original review of this pen in 2013. You said, not only does it feature a lightweight, silky smooth aluminum body, it also has an innovative cap that allows the pen to be stored for a year without drying out. What's happening there?

'''Myke Hurley:''' So, they have a... It's just like a seal that's built inside of the cap. And other companies do this too. To where... So, you have your external cap. And then inside, you'll see a lot of times, especially in demonstrator pens, you probably can't see it in the Plaisir. You'll see like this clear little cone that's in there. So, that's made when you push in the pen to the cap. They actually have a spring in the top that's in the very tip of the cap. And it locks in that internal cone like around the base of the nib section. You know how that's like a flat part around there? So, it seals all that together and puts pressure on it so no air gets in there. It's like an airtight seal.

'''Myke Hurley:''' And if you look at some of Platinum's, like the 3766, you can see the spring in the cap to where you're pushing it in. And it just really locks down that seal to prevent the air from getting in there and drying out your nib. And it flat out works. I use, I've seen that happen just many, many times from picking up a Platinum pen that I haven't used in ages and it just writes right away. It's great.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I think that's one of the other benefits to like a kind of a starter pen, you know, that it can just last and it doesn't dry out. That's true. I think that's a really good benefit to people that maybe don't use them very often.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah, that's a good point.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' You also said, I've been very happy with the Plaisir and it will continue to see frequent use. So that was three years ago. Has that been the case? No, I think I gave it away.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' And I guess that's just because at that time you were very green on fountain pens. So I guess at that time it was like, this is perfect. But now you have, you know, you're not a beginner anymore.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I will say this. I have a O2 Preppy on my desk that I use constantly.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' What's the difference between the Plaisir and the Preppy?

'''Myke Hurley:''' The barrel. It's the same nib.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Okay.

'''Myke Hurley:''' So that's also why I, that's also why the Plaisir comes in in a weird spot. Because the Preppy is about $4.

'''Myke Hurley:''' It just looks like it has a $4 barrel. It doesn't have the fancy barrel.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So it's like the middle, it's like a step up from the Preppy, right?

'''Myke Hurley:''' Oh, definitely. Okay. Just in barrel zone. You're going to get the same nib experience from them. Huh. But that's how good their nibs are. That I use the Preppy all the time. It sits on my desk.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' And they're cool little looking things. But they are cheap looking things.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Oh, I love them. They are. They have the standard tacky printed barrels. But that's fine. You know, what do you want for a $4 pen?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' At least the nibs are color coded. I like that.

'''Myke Hurley:''' They are. They are. So my blue-black has like a blue-black anodizing on the nib. It's killer.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' That seems like a feature that's a little bit more advanced than $4.

'''Myke Hurley:''' That's why they sell so many of them.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' There you go. There you go. So yeah, I give the plays here a big thumbs up from me as a beginner pen. I will recommend this to more people, I think.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah. No, it's definitely something to look at. And if you want to surprise your office with a bunch of fountain pens, I know the Pilot Varsity is a choice for a lot of people. I would go with the Platinum Preppy.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. Definitely.

'''Myke Hurley:''' And just leave those around the office and let people pick them up and go, oh, what is this? Because once they start writing, they're really not going to stop. I mean, I've had this thing sitting nib up on my desk. I can't tell you how long and every time I pick it up, it writes.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So last week we spoke about the DC Pen Show. There was one more company and product that you got some time with that we didn't cover last week. Do you want to explain that a little bit?

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah. I wanted to give them kind of a special shout out. But I met Vito with Story Supply, which we've talked about them before when they launched their Kickstarter for their notebooks. And he sent me a bunch of notebooks. Super nice guy. And he told me he was coming to the DC Pen Show and that we had to meet up. And I was super anxious to meet him. And he's just a fantastic individual. They launched a new product at the show, which I wanted to be sure to pick up. But they launched a dot grid pocket notebook. And their previous pocket notebooks, they're really good. They have like this ivory paper. They were like somewhat fountain pen friendly. Like they weren't like amazing, like rodeo fountain pen friendly, but like really good fountain pen friendly. And, you know, everything else works well, you know, with if it's fountain pen friendly, pretty much everything is going to work well with it. Sometimes, you know, when you get into Rodia and it's too slick, you know, graphite doesn't work well on that. But that's not how these are. So they came out with the dot grid. And you were funny, you were talking about like the linen covers with the what's the E.E.K. Is that where we're going with matches the Raven's wing? So these have that linen cover, too. It's the Nina Royal Sundance linen cover. And the paper is 70 pound Cougar natural smooth paper. I'm using the fountain pens that I bought at the DC Pen Show, the Optima, which has a fine nib. And the I'm sorry, the Optima has an EF nib and the Omos 360 has a fine nib. And I'm getting no bleeding or feathering on these dot grid papers. It's called the Edition 407. I love their their tagline is strong enough to hold big ideas, small enough to fit in your pocket.

'''Myke Hurley:''' So they launched those along with the notebook covers, which are really good. They're just your standard leather fold over cover cover that you see a lot, but they fit the pocket memo size. So I have I bought two notebook covers and two sets of notebooks. And I'm going to give some of those away. You know, I like to buy some extra things to give to give away. So I bought one to keep for myself and one to give away. So I just thought meeting, hanging out with Vito was very, very cool experience last week. And I wanted to give him a special shout out. And, you know, thanks for buying me a beer video. I appreciate it.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So I wanted to just reference something that I thought was quite quite funny to me. And it's a little bit of follow up as well. People have been asking me a lot recently, like, what pens are you going to use to sign X paperwork with? You know, because buying a house means lots of paperwork to be signed. I mentioned last week about my insurance thing. I just need to sign insurance paperwork and I need to, you know, we're looking at getting married at some point in the not too distant future. And thinking, you know, me thinking about that. And we spoke about that, right? Like I wanted to see if I could try and as the time comes look into what ink I would need to get and if I could use my own pen to sign with. But I wanted to just go over some of the stuff that I've been doing with the paperwork that I'm doing in the interim. So one thing that I'm doing a lot of is using my iPad and my Apple Pencil because nothing needs to be printed. Nothing needs to be scanned. So I'm like using apps like PDF pen or whatever, and I'm just filling out and signing it all that way. Like that has been kind of the main way that I've been doing this stuff at the moment because it means I can get things done quicker. But I don't have a printer and scanner at home. So I need to be able to use these tools. And it's actually been for me really good because then I can save the PDFs and all that stuff and send them back. And it's been really good. But there is some stuff that has to be on paper. So I was signing some accountant's paperwork the other day. And I realized that every pen that I picked up, which is like one of my lovely fountain pens, had ink in them that was unsuitable for the job. Because it was either bright orange, bright blue, highlighter ink, green with gold flakes, blood red or bright green. And I realized, oh, none of my pens have suitable ink for signing stuff like my fountain pens. So I ended up going with my trusty Retro 51s, right? Because they've always got blue or black ink in them. And I mean, and they're great for that sort of stuff. But, you know, I was thinking about like, what special pen? Oh, I'll use my Edison or something to sign all this stuff. I was like, oh, no, the Edison has red ink in it. So that's no good for the job. And I just thought it was really funny that I have all these pens, all these fancy pens. People keep asking me like, oh, what are you going to sign with? What are you going to sign with? But I can't use any of them because all the inks that I own are more exciting than just a regular blue black or something.