Editing The Pen Addict 246/transcript (section)

== Kawekos Pens ==


'''Myke Hurley:''' You will. So last week on the show, you were being super cagey about the Kawekos that you bought, right? You were kind of like, yeah, I got these pens and I'm not really going to talk about them. I don't know what they are. And then refill, refill comes out, your member's newsletter, and you've got all the beans, right? That you're spelling all over the place. Right. So I put in the notes today that I wanted to hear about it. And then I think you took an Instagram photo of them so you could share what they actually really look like. And I wondered, you know, what have you got to say about these vintage Kawekos?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. So I like start getting a story in my head that I maybe want to tell on refill. And if you don't subscribe, like what I do is I, aside from like links and, you know, little short stories and stuff like that, I try to do like one big commentary or review. Yeah. A column, I guess. And it could be anything. It could be editorializing on something. It could be sharing an interesting product. It could just be telling a random story.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Getting all fired up.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. Getting agitated.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Just various different things. And so I always like to have that. And this time I wanted to do it on the Kawekos sports that I bought in LA because I thought it was a good story to tell because it just kind of gives some information about the buying process, which I kind of laid out there and how I bought the pens from Sarge and why did I buy the pens? Why did I pay the price that I bought them and things like that? But what it boils down to is these are some killer pens. So I bought two Kawekos. One is a sport model from 1949. So Kaweko has this great history PDF. We should put this in the show notes, Myke. I'll put it in the chat room to where I could go through and find based on the etching or the printing on my pen, which a lot of manufacturers used to do back in the day, like my Kaweko sport has on its barrel. It says one one two a. So I could take that, go to this document and get it exactly one one two a to know when this pen was made. So this the sport like the Gioche sport was made from 1949 and I could find it exactly from there. It's a piston filler. It looks exactly like the sport classics that you buy today, except the huge difference is it's a piston filler. So that's what I like about these old Kawekos. It has a little green ink window and a piston filler. The piston stopper is actually cork. So it's a really, really unique little pen. The nib is a steel nib, but it's a two tone with like a gold overlay on the nib. This nib is one of the most fantastic nibs I've ever used for my handwriting style. It's a fine nib, but it's kind of sharp. So I get a little bit of edge on the line, like I'm going to take this. I want someone to look at this nib and I want to make all my pens right like this pen. It's really cool. I let Jeff use it on Monday at the shop and he really liked it too because he's a small, small handwriter. It was very, very cool to use. I've been carrying it a bunch. I'm not without it right now.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Oh, really?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' And yeah, yeah, it's great. Like I don't buy these pens, this, you know, I'm not creating a museum, you know?

'''Myke Hurley:''' Well, I know, but like you don't necessarily, every single pen goes into the rotation and stays there and is like awesome. You know what I mean?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Like it's not always like that. Well, and it's still new too, right? So I'm still getting used to it. So I want to carry it.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Sure.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' You know, eventually it'll get uninked and sit for a little bit until I miss it and want to carry it again. But I just love that model of the modern Kawekos anyway, and they're easy to carry in your pocket. And that's what I do. Like, I don't care that I paid like $200 for this pen. I'm going to use it how I want to use it. It's really, really cool for that. Like if you picked it up, you would think it was like a modern interpretation of one of their old styles. But in actuality, it is one of their old styles. The Piston's a dead giveaway for that. The second one I picked up is also a Sport, but it's a thinner profile Sport with a hooded nib. And I've seen pictures of these because the blue ink window is stunning, right? Like I wish the older Sport had the blue ink window instead of the green ink window, but that's picking knits. It just looks cool. So this one with the thinner barrel is also a piston filler, and it's from 1970. So it's newer than the Giosh Sport. And this one is interesting because it's a 14 karat gold nib, and it's an oblique nib, which looking at the Kaweco Sport history, I'm able to pull it up. It says V19 right there etched on the barrel so I can pull out all the details of this pen. They did so many different nib styles with a lot of their pens, all kinds, like three or four different obliques and stubs and italics. I mean, it wasn't uncommon for them back in the day to have 10 different nib styles. You know, like we look at Esterbrook as someone back in the day who had, they had hundreds of different nib styles. You could just buy nibs and swap them out. Well, Kaweco was building pens with way more variety in nibs than they do these days, which you'll find from a lot of, you know, historic models of pens, just because that's what people used every day. And there was more opportunity to sell those than there is today. But both of these pens were pristine, look essentially brand new. They're really fun to write with. They're fun to kind of explore with right now. I actually, I love the fine steel nib in the sport, in the older sport, much more than the gold oblique nib. They just feel completely different to me. Although the oblique nib is really, really cool to have. So yeah, I am thoroughly enjoying these pens. I will carry these with me a bunch because I just enjoy this shape and style of Kaweco. They're both piston fillers. I inked them both with Kaweco blue black. I just kind of want to see how they go so far, you know, but the first time I've had them inked up and carrying them around, you know, make sure they behave well, make sure that nothing silly's happened. I did ink them up with water. One thing you can do with vintage pens, if you're unsure, is I inked them. I filled them both with water and left them overnight to see if anything was leaking. You know, these are 60 and 80 year old pens, right? Just even though, you know, at the time they look good, they look like there's no issues with the pen. I still wanted to be sure because these are pocket pens for me, right? They're going straight in a pocket. I want to be sure nothing stupid happens. So I filled them both with water and left them overnight to see what would happen. And then, you know, dispelled the water, inked them up with ink and they've been good to go ever since.

'''Myke Hurley:''' You know, just a pretty face.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. Yeah. So I will be, these are Kaweco, vintage Kaweco has always been on my radar because it's aesthetically pleasing to me. The piston filling is just, you know, cherry on top of the sundae and I will be looking for more of these. But like I said, you can get them for cheaper online, but you know, you just always run that risk with vintage, not knowing what you're getting. And I felt comfortable paying the prices that I did, you know, because I was able to handle them in person. And I'm going to very much be enjoying both of these pens and you will see them in a lot of my pictures going forward.

'''Myke Hurley:''' They make me kind of sad.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. Why?

'''Myke Hurley:''' I wish that they still made piston filling sport models.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So I said that when I wrote up my article about it, I was like, you know, these were fantastic, but now Kaweco doesn't do that. And they've made terrible converters instead, which is just so far as a bad solution. Yeah.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Um, that converters are just hilarious, right?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Like, uh, oh yeah, they're just awful. Um, I would pay twice as much or more. I don't know what their price would have to be to get a piston in the sport models. Um, it could be pretty outrageous, but it might be worth it. I don't know. It's interesting. I mean, I pay, I paid $200 for one and 125 for another one. So I'm obviously, you know, I would pay 50 or 75 bucks for a regular new classic with a piston. Probably. I don't know. We'll see. I would be curious if they could do that. Um, they've made in the past few years, maybe five or 10 years ago, they've made some special additions in acrylic materials with pistons that I've seen. And I passed on buying them at the time because they were like $600.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Whoa.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Um, with a gold nib. Well, they only, they'd make like a hundred of them and they had a gold nib and like that wasn't my, uh, I think that's out of my price appetite for a Kaweco, honestly.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Like, yeah.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Limited or not. Right. Right. So, so we'll see. I wonder if they, you know, if that was a test run, I've never seen it. I haven't seen anything recent come up with a piston, um, not even on the limited side of things. So we'll see. It'd be, it'd be cool if they kind of experimented with that again to see what would happen. I'm certainly that has to be like in their, you know, planning for the next few years. You would, you would think at least just certainly they're testing out pistons. If, if I was Kaweco and I made pins, that's the pin I'd want to use. Right. Yeah. So certainly they're at least playing around with it and maybe something will happen. Who knows?

'''Myke Hurley:''' All right. Should we take a break? Yeah.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Let's take our first break.

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'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, I am. This is a legitimately cool pen. I have the yellow ballpoint on my desk right now and I haven't reviewed it yet, but it's like in the review queue. These are like one of my favorite non-fountain pen pens, but surprisingly, and I didn't even know this, you can get it in a fountain pen. So this is the pen that you see online with the kind of the ruler marking up and down the pen. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.

'''Myke Hurley:''' This is a great, oh my God, the orange and black one?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So yeah, I didn't get the, didn't the orange and black one wasn't available at the time. I bought my yellow one. I want the yellow one because that's kind of the traditional one for this style. They also do copper, which I didn't even know was an option. I've never seen this pen before today. It's the Monteverde tool 60. It just comes in a ballpoint. The one with the one touch stylus comes in ballpoint fountain and roller ball. Oh, and mechanical pencil, which that might be the most useful of the bunch. This is a very, very cool pen, pencil, fountain pen. The price is outrageous and the colors available are really, really awesome. I might have to get another one. I haven't seen these copper ones, so I want to look at these. But this is one of those pens like you just kind of want one of to have because they're really nice. They write well. They have a little bit of extra functionality. They have the hex barrel style. It's just an all-around good-looking, good-performing pen. I highly recommend these.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Ron at Pen Chalet also wanted me to give a shout out for their pen ink, for their ink rewards program that they do, which I didn't know about. So it's probably good for me to mention it. So if you sign up at penchalet.com, I'll put a link in the show notes so you can go and take a look at the Pen Chalet ink rewards program. Basically, you sign up and you earn points for every ink that you buy, and then these points will then be converted into more ink.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Nice. I like that.

'''Myke Hurley:''' So it's like a true rewards program. I had no idea they were doing this, but yeah, you can go sign up. I'll put a link in the show notes so you can go and check it out for yourself. But as they say, it's a fast and easy way to earn yourself some free ink. You order your favorite pens and inks, you get one point for every $10 you spend, and you cash in points for free ink on your next order. Pretty sweet. Wonderful. So even more reasons, even more reasons to shop at Pen Chalet. Thank you so much for the continued support of this show. Thank you, Pen Chalet. So last week we spoke about the crazy coloring webpage that our new friend of the show, Alexander, put together. And I just wanted to put a link in the show notes to three of the weirdest and most wonderful that we got in from the listeners of The Pen Addict, from Lydia, Glenn, and Sean. I'll put some links in the show notes to their incredible artwork so you can check it out for yourself.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So I want to mention one thing. If you scroll all the way to the bottom of Alexander's page, like I was making a comment how I thought the version 0.1 was funny.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' 0.2 is already listed as upcoming in the release notes. So the new features for the upcoming crazy coloring is color book print option, fill and line color options, sponsored tool set. I don't know what that means. Easter eggs and wider color selection. So this is serious business now, Myke. This is going to be a thing. So this is wonderful. So thank you, Alexander, for putting this together. And apparently he's going to keep going with it. So this is hilarious. And the images we got last week were awesome. And like you said, you put them in the show notes. So go check those out. And keep sending them to us. It's amazing.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yep. Talk to me about Lamy, man.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. So I don't know where to go with this. I kind of almost didn't want to mention it because I've only seen it once. But there was some confirmation. This came up on the Slack channel. And there's a UK company called Pure Pens. And they shared a notice in their newsletter that Lamy is discontinuing them. So let me just read this from Pure Pens. And we'll take it from there. It says, we were extremely disappointed. This is from the Pure Pens newsletter.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So it says, we were extremely disappointed to be informed by Lamy that in their new terms and conditions for 2017, sales of their pens would be restricted only to retailers with a presence on the high street. Unfortunately, as an online retailer with a limited amount of calling in-person customers, this means that once our current stock of Lamy products have been exhausted, we will no longer be able to order any further items from their range. So I don't think we need to. The rest of it's just saying we have a bunch of Lamy in stock and no worries. So this is interesting.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' You know, like Goulet Pens chimed in on the Slack saying we've reached out to Lamy. This doesn't affect us at all. So this is the Mont Blanc way of retailing that you have to have a brick and mortar store to carry our products, which coming from Lamy is extraordinarily strange.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Why doesn't it affect Goulet?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Well, I wonder if Lamy is beating around the bush with Pure Pens directly. I think that they're like... Like it's a one-off thing. Yeah. And that was the reasoning they gave them, except that reasoning doesn't apply to everybody.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I feel like it is a reason they might throw out when they want to get rid of a specific retailer.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Right. Right. Which I don't know anything about Pure Pens.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Tony is saying maybe it's UK only.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, because I mean, I don't know if, you know, I don't know if Pure Pens directly translated Lamy's, but they say High Street. I don't know if Lamy came out and said High Street, you know, which is, which would, you would say that as a, UK. Number one, brick and mortar physical store location. Number two, in a, you know, retail shopping area, essentially. Right. Right. Yeah. So it's just a super weird email. It feels very one-offy to me, not a Lamy policy thing to me. So, and it could just be country-based like you're saying, but for a brand like Lamy, that just makes zero sense. So I don't know. I don't want to say too much about it.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I will say that in the UK, Lamy have very strong presence in High Street brands. Very strong. If there is a store that sells any type of half-decent pen, they always have a huge Lamy collection.

'''Myke Hurley:''' So like, like department stores, like John Lewis and such, you've got stores like WH Smiths, which are like a stationer and like a magazine store, that kind of thing. They will sell them card stores, like fancy greetings card stores, like Paper Chase. They will always have Lamy's.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So like- Oh, interesting. Because like our Paper Chase type stores usually don't.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah. Lamy are all over the place on the High Street here. So it could be, it could be that they want to restrict and try and do something there. Or as we say, it could be, which it feels more like to me, like for whatever reason, and I don't know Pure Pens. Yeah, I don't know. I've never heard of them. So unfortunately, I hope that they continue to do well. But maybe they were trying to get out of that relationship for whatever reason and are using some kind of like arcane use it when you need it policy, which also wouldn't surprise me.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. So interesting. I wonder if, does Lamy have new management or something? Because they've been doing some weird things recently. Could be. I don't know. Like in the past year, they've been a weird company. Like we usually don't have to talk about them unless they're introducing some new product that we want to talk about. But they're doing weird stuff here.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Well, they could just be going through some stuff we don't know about. Right? Yeah.