Editing The Pen Addict 671/transcript (section)

== Challenges with paper availability and collaboration ==

* And now they're taking it away from us, Blake. Why can't we have nice things? I know it is. It was so, so brutal. Yeah. And yeah, I had, I know we talked about doing a collaboration at one point and I think this was like the third to last production run of bank paper before they canceled it. Yeah. And there was something went wrong. There was too much humidity in the paper. Typically paper needs to be dried to like 15% or 5% humidity. And so we bound these notebooks and they were like all wavy. It was, it was, it was a mess. And they only set up like the super old machine to make bank paper once a year. And we're like, will you remake the paper? And they were like, nope. We're done. So it was, yeah, I was like, I can't do a collaboration with Brad. Yeah. Don't trust the product. Yeah, for sure. And it's like, I'm like, yeah, it's like we could pick something, we could choose something else, but like my long-term experience has been with like Mitsubishi's classic bank paper, like, which is what most people, you know, use when they're using the bank paper is the Mitsubishi. Yeah. You know, Taizo Yamamoto has made, made some other options now actually using those facilities, print facilities, but it's, it's not the same type of paper. It's a very different paper in my book. It's enjoyable, but it's not the same as the original. So there's still stock out there because like, again, it's never been like the fountain pen paper, but it is for like a certain type of, it gives you a certain type of feedback on the page, whether it's feel or color. And just like you mentioned the crispness of it, like I didn't go out and hoard any, I haven't like, you know, loaded up on any. Do you still, do you still have some bank paper notebooks in stock? Oh yeah. Yeah. Well, not, yeah, I do have stock. I think we'll probably, I mean, I tried to make as much as I could. Yeah.
* So I think we probably have stock throughout the year and then I have my own private stash of it, but. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. So, and that's the thing and you brought it up earlier and this is kind of what I want to transition to next. Like the paper industry is, I don't even know if consolidation is the right word. A lot of it's just going away, right? Like stuff's just vanishing into thin air. Even stuff that fountain pen users have discovered, say like in the past five years, like, you know, three years into that run, it's like, well, that we can't get that anymore. And, you know, like Cosmo or Light was a great example of that as a paper that like came in gangbusters into the community and then poof, like you get rug pulled. So how has that challenge been for the paper mind and how do you go about sourcing like new types of paper? Yeah.
* So, I mean, I've tested like hundreds of paper and yeah, I mean, I made two different types of Cosmo Air Light notebooks and yeah, that's gone. And then I also made this really nice, like super smooth, uncoated paper notebook with Passipede cream that's gone. So, it's like, you know, I have like a lot of papers sort of in the back of my mind that I can use. So when the ones that I love go away, I can get another one. I mean, that's basically how it's been going. But I also, yeah, I mean, I have like tons of like books from mills. Like I have this beautiful book from Arjo Wiggins, which is like this Scottish mill from like the 1700s. And, you know, they went out of business, of course. So I've just like, oh man, it's really, yeah, it's tough. But there still are a lot of papers out there and you just have to find the ones that I think maybe have still like a lot of commercial use. Like, you know, Cosmo Air Light was a catalog paper. Like they wanted to be able to like just dump ink on the page, like full color, you know, both sides.
* And, you know, like catalogs are disappearing.