Editing The Pen Addict 334/transcript (section)

== Field Notes Year Review ==


'''Myke Hurley:''' An absolutely excellent year. Like, easily for as long as we have been covering them on this show, this is the best year that they've had. There has been no, like, addition this year. You know? Like, and again, like, End Papers isn't for me, but I dig it in a way. You know, like, it's not a notebook that I want to use, but I can appreciate what they did with that one. Right. But all of the other ones are like, yeah, okay. Like, Coastal is one of my, probably one of my top five. Like, I absolutely adore that notebook. So, bravo, Field Notes. Bravo. You're going to get another renewal out of me. My renewal's coming up.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yep. I just did it for End Papers. So, yep. I think I've only gone, like, one year without doing it. So, yeah, I'm still on the train.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Although I am thinking about just buying one edition every day. Because I've got so, they're just, it's building up.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' It's, I need to work out what I'm going to do with all my extras at some point. We're going to talk about that come January-ish. Yeah. I've been working on something in the background.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Okay. Okay, cool. That sounds great. Talking about January-ish, the holidays will fall between now and January. And I have a great gift idea for you. Brad, should we talk about Harry's? Of course we should. Harry's knows, and we all know, that finding gifts for your loved ones is difficult. Do they really want more socks or pajamas? Why don't you get them something that they'll use every day, that they're going to love, and that they'll really want? You should buy them a gift from Harry's. Harry's razors and shaving products make the perfect gifts because they're super practical. And once they get immediately hooked on the product, it will cost them less than $2 each per razor because it's really fairly priced. You can personalize your Harry's razor to make the recipient feel extra special. You can choose from multiple razor handle colors and even have the option to engrave it for them, which is super cool. And the Harry's gift sets come in ready-to-gift, wonderful gift boxes. Now, Brad, these Christmas sets, these holiday sets, are amazing. So they've got a new color of the razor. So it's red on one side and blue on the other, which matches the box, which is super cute. The box, it's got like a foily look to it, but it's got like a nice kind of tartan pattern, which is super cool. They have really gone all out on these ones. These are absolutely beautiful. I love it. And I think it's going to make fantastic gifts for people. So this is some real good stuff this time. They always do like a special razor around the holiday season. And this red and blue, this double color one of the Winston, this is, I'm all about it. Like this one is my jam. I think this is a great color combo.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Did you know that Harry's makes bath products as well? I did know. Bath soap and body wash. And they are used every day, which is 50% more than I use their shaving products. I don't know if I did that math correctly. I'm not really a math person. But they get used every day. And my razors only get used every other day. So that's a lot more times I use them. So their soap is awesome. That's probably my favorite product of the bath products. But they smell great. They feel great. They are lasting a long time. Like this soap has lasted me for, I don't even know. I should have put a calendar date on it because it's lasted forever. It's a big chunky bar of soap that does not disappear quickly. And, you know, keeps me fresh like Harry's always does.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I know our listeners are going to hear about this. And it's a special offer for listeners of this show. We've partnered with Harry's. This is a special deal. And you do this at holidays. You can listen up. You can get $5 off any gift set, including their limited edition holiday sets, when you go to harrys.com slash penaddict and you'll get free shipping. But this offer is for new and returning customers, only available for the holidays. Every Harry's shaving set comes with an ergonomic weighted handle with an option to engrave, German-engineered five-blade cartridges that provide a close, comfortable shave, foaming shave gel for a richer, lathering shave, a travel cover to protect your blades, and a handsome holiday gift box. Or if you're looking to treat yourself, you could redeem a Harry's trial offer and experience the quality of a shave before committing. Get your holiday shopping done early. Free shipping ends on December 12th. So act now. Go to harrys.com slash penaddict and you'll get $5 off a gift set while supplies last. That is harrys.com slash penaddict. Our thanks to Harry's for their support of this show and RelayFM.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' You ready for this, Myke? Maybe. This next topic? Mm-hmm. The Kickstarter Vitae Dual Nib Fountain Pen. Yep. We're going to talk about this. We do not have one. I don't have one coming. I don't know much about it, but we've gotten lots of links sent to us by our listeners. And we've had both independently had a little bit of conversation with the creator. So if you're not aware what this is, let me explain real quick what we're looking at. So this is a, what you'd consider probably a traditional style metal fountain pen barrel. You know, not a traditional acrylic barrel, but like if you were looking at a machine fountain pen barrel. But the nib unit are two back-to-back Lamy nibs, like the safari size nib. And the feeds, I mean, excuse me, the nib tines face each other. So the feeds are outwards, kind of, I guess is the best way you would explain it from your writing position. And the nibs are inwards. But this is only because one nib's kind of stacked on top of the other one. What this is designed to do is for you to have two separate inks inked up at the same time. So there's a chambered style converter that's being custom built for this. And a custom built feed to allow for basically two different ink flows in a single pen unit. Two different nibs, two different ink colors. All in one pen. I don't know if I explained that correctly, but we'll have a link in the show notes. You can go get a visual of it. So do you want to say anything about what I've left out just from that description?

'''Myke Hurley:''' No, I don't think so. I mean, like just from a basic level, imagine taking two fountain pens and putting the feeds on the outside, right? Two nibs in the middle and they're back-to-back. That's kind of what's going on at a very basic level here.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Right. So once we got this tweet over the weekend, I hadn't heard of it at all. No pre-information or anything like that.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I knew about it from a while ago. So a couple of months ago or something, one of the guys involved in this project reached out to me. Kevin. Yeah, they reached out to me to tell me about this pen and they were going to be in London and they wanted to get my... They wanted to see if I could come and take a look at it. But I was traveling at the time. But I asked Kevin to... This was back in July. They sent me the information about it, right? But I was just like, you know, let me know when you've got it kind of to this level and I'll take a look. And so, yeah, I've heard about it. I've known this project was coming for a while. When he first told me about it, I was like, oh, I don't know if you're going to be able to make that work was like my thinking. I was like, go for it. But it seems like a tricky prospect was my initial thought. But now that I've seen the design, I mean, I think I can see how this would work.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I don't know about the internals. You know, my main question, I think, outstands is like, what is the feed system? And how is that going on inside of what looks to be not a huge barrel, right? Yeah. But just the idea of putting one nib on top of each other back to back. I mean, the theory holds true to me. Like, I see how it could work. Not easily, but I see how it could work.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So, I went into it not knowing anything and went through the project. And initially, I was very skeptical. Anything that's multi-pin anything on Kickstarter immediately raises my red flags, like immediately. And then, like, I went through the pictures and I'm, like, scrolling through the pictures. I was like, you know, I always want to see it in use, right? Show me the real action. And there was a lot of, you know, Photoshop pictures and, you know, graphic design type pictures. But the video showed the pen working. And it showed more design elements of the pen. And the more I got through it, I'm kind of like you. As I went through the project just for my sanity checks, I could get there, right? Like, I could see how this could work. I don't know if it will work, but I could at least imagine this working. So, then it happened over the weekend. Kevin, the project creator, reached out to me. Said, hey, I'm doing this pen on Kickstarter. And, you know, would love for you to check it out. You know, take a look at the project. Let me know what you think. At that time, I was like, oh, as a matter of fact, I have some questions for you. So, I asked him, this pen is 100% based on the feed and cartridge system on how this is going to work. So, I asked him that. Like I said, the questions we're getting are around the cartridge and how durable is it going to be if that's your only filling mechanism and you have to keep refilling the same cartridge. And, you know, are you going to eventually wear down that seal on that? So, I kind of asked him that. And I'm going to read part of the email that he sent me back. And I think most of this is pretty evident or mostly evident in the campaign. But he wrote back, he said, there's a shot of the cartridges on the main page and a glimpse of the feed section in the video. It is, in effect, two feeds back to back in a single part. I have more shots to take over the next few days. The reason there are limited shots of the ink wells is that these will be subject to change once the tooling is complete. The overall footprint will stay the same with the hemispherical shape being used to optimize the space inside of the body. So, just, I'm going to stop right there. The cartridge is basically two D-shaped parts.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah, it's two semicircles.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, two semicircles where the center is separated, right? It's chambered off.

'''Myke Hurley:''' So, you could take them out individually, fill them with different colors individually, and load them back into the pen.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yep. So, he continues, as you know, this means they will not be a standard size, but will be robust and be designed to be refilled repeatedly. I'm considering including a small component which houses two spare inks for traveling. This would allow the D-shaped cartridges to fit in either side and then be deployed when needed. The way that reads is this is two separate D-shaped cartridges. I pictured it as one unit chambered off.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Okay, no, I always saw it as two separate cartridges. But it's just, you know. And I have, as long as it's built well and made of a relatively durable plastic, I don't have a problem with this. Like, I've never had a converter, like, wear away or anything. Yeah. Like, I'm sure on a long time scale, like, it could happen. But I would expect that for as long as someone is probably realistically intending to use this pen, as long as the cartridges are made well enough, it should suffice.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Right. So, I mean, that's the gist of the email. So, I went ahead and backed it.