Editing The Pen Addict 239/transcript (section)

== Fude Nib ==


'''Myke Hurley:''' Last week on the show, I mentioned that I purchased a, what you corrected me to say, a Fude nib.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Mm-hmm.

'''Myke Hurley:''' It has arrived. Oh, nice. And I have done as promised. And I have put it into my previously inksploded Franklin Kristoff to give it a new life.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' And that Franklin Kristoff is an O2. I always call it the 20. You know, I get those transposed all the time. It's a model O2 Franklin Kristoff, which is the Pen Addict style, which is awesome. So, I'm shocked you got this nib. Like, this does not seem like a Myke nib.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I tell you why I like this nib, because I do freaking love this nib.

'''Myke Hurley:''' A lot of these types of nibs don't work for me. Like, I can't get them to work in the way that other people can get them to work. And when I say other people, I mean right-handed people.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' That's what I was going to say, yeah.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I seem to have a problem just with my left-handed writing style, getting a lot of this stuff to do the fancy stuff. You know, like, I really struggle with, like, flex nibs and things like that. Like, I just can't seem to get them to work in the way that everybody else can. But I can totally make this work, the few-day nib. Like, I can get, like, all of the three different line variants that it will give. And it can do it really easily. And it feels really smooth. So, I bought this after trying it. You know, like, I tried it. Like, I mentioned that Tiff Arment had it. And I tried it. And it's arrived. And it's just incredible fun, like, to make these super thin lines and then these huge fat lines all with the one nib. And, like, you write with it upside down, which obviously works with me very well, to do some weird stuff. Yeah, I really, really like it. I really, really like it.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' That's really cool. I am very impressed at you. Like, you are going in deep on this one. That's impressive.

'''Myke Hurley:''' It's great.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I recommend it. What ink is in this now?

'''Myke Hurley:''' Andronople.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Andronople. That's what I thought you put in there. Yeah.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I put it in there immediately. But it just wasn't right. And it was basically, instead of pink, it was purple. Because I had blue ink in it. Or before, I just couldn't get, I just could not get the blue ink out. But obviously, when I switched over the nib and the feed, it just worked perfectly.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. Well, on the pink, purple, blue train, I saw this blog post from my friend Bert Ozer at Bertram's Inkwell. And Bert's one of the awesomest guys you will meet at a pen show. He's just a really fun, positive guy. Runs his store in Baltimore.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' You know, he's been around for a while. He promotes a couple of shows. I know he does Miami and Baltimore pen shows. So, he's a really, really cool guy. And I saw this link. I think I saw it on Facebook called Fantasy Vanishing Point Pens. I was like, well, this is up my alley. Let's see what we got going here. And I saw the pictures. I was like, whoa, these look kind of cool. So, what's happening here is Bert has a friend that messes around in this type of thing. And this friend, his name's Richard. He makes some type of material. What are they calling this material here? It's like a special flexi-gran. So, it's this kind of acrylic, thin, strong acrylic. It says, it's more dense and stronger than acrylic. And best of all, has a density that allows it to be machined thinner than celluloid. Which is a quality needed to replicate the thickness of the brass body on the Vanishing Point Pens. So, I'm kind of fascinated by this. Number one, because I love the Vanishing Point. Number two, this flexi-gran material is really pretty. Like, he's got some nice swirl patterns, some really bright colors. And interestingly enough, I don't know if you caught these at the bottom, Myke. Did you see the demonstrators?

'''Myke Hurley:''' Oh, I'm very interested in the way the demonstrators look.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So, Bert has, he even wrote in the thing, he's already sold the silver-plated demonstrator. If he hadn't, I would have sent him an email. I think I would have to have that.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Because whilst it's obviously you're never going to eyedrop a Vanishing Point, watching the mechanism do its thing, that's cool. That's like when you used to get, like, Nintendo controllers made out of clear plastic. Right. It's that kind of idea.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Right. Like, I'm not buying this to see the ink slosh around, which I do for most eyedroppers. I'm buying it to see the mechanisms, which is just, this looks cool. Like, the gold one's too much for me. Like, I couldn't handle the gold. Even though it's funny, the gold one looks like it's eyedroppered. It looks like there's ink in that barrel section, the way it's, like, kind of plastered on the wall. But that silver one, oh, man. If, I might hit Burt, you know, maybe by DC. Maybe I can get Richard to make me one. But, it's, these patterns are really cool. And it reminds me of, you know, there's several other people that do this in different ways. One of them is Matoshi from Stylo Art. I couldn't find a link on any of his pages that showed a picture of one of his Vanishing Points. But, I've almost bought one of those at every show I've been to. Because they're really, really fantastic. You know I love his pen and his handiwork. It's amazing. He gets, he'll bring about four or five Vanishing Points where they'll have some kind of wood grain or ebonite or some kind of thing that he puts them, he puts them around the barrel. So, and I think he just does them at pen shows. So, you know, there, you'll have to go to get them there. And there's a few others that do that as well that I've seen. But I'm always on the lookout for, like, if you like something like the ones at Bertram's Inkwell, the Fantasy Vanishing Points. Pilot is actually doing more and more with some of the vendors in Japan. Like, Bung Box where you can get these great orange limited edition Vanishing Points that I didn't get. You know, and Pilot's actually getting into doing more with the Vanishing Point as kind of their playground for special editions. So, I wouldn't be surprised for me to end up with one or two of these in the coming year. You know, if I can find something, one, I like. And number two, I can buy fast enough before they sell out. So, yeah, that's very cool. Very cool stuff.