Editing The Pen Addict 412/transcript (section)

== Unboxing Arushi Lamy Safaris ==


'''Myke Hurley:''' I will say as well with like the neon orange, it looks bananas in this pen because it's all clear, right? Like it looks like I have some kind of like radioactive material inside of this pen.

'''Myke Hurley:''' All right. We have a very exciting thing to talk about, which is the unboxing of the Arushi. Arushi Lamy Safaris. It's been done. We're going to talk about it. But let me take our second break first and thank Squarespace for their support of this show. You can make your next move with Squarespace and create a wonderful looking website to showcase your idea or project. Squarespace give you everything that you need to put your thing, whatever it is, online and all of the tools that you want to make it the best it can possibly be. Squarespace is an all-in-one platform that will let you enable store functionality, blog functionality, portfolio functionality, and so much more. You can create sites for your business, sites for your artwork, sites for your band. They have all of the types of functionality that you're looking for to make that website the best it can be. And they have tons of other stuff too. You can even send out email campaigns to Squarespace. When I say they're an all-in-one platform, I mean it. There's nothing to install, patch, or upgrade. They've got you covered and they back it up with award-winning 24-7 customer support. I've been a Squarespace customer for 10 years now because of this kind of stuff. When I have a project that I want to do, I just go for it, right? And I open up Squarespace, I set up a website, and then I can get going. I don't have to spend two weeks trying to get things off the ground because I'm working out how to code this or code that. I don't want to do any of that. I just use Squarespace. And you should too. Or maybe you have somebody in your life that you think could benefit from having Squarespace. And I think everybody knows people that they have a website or maybe they're using a social media company instead, right? Like, oh, my website just directs to my social media page. No, no, no. If you're trying to be professional, you've got a little business going, set up a website of your own. And it's so easy with Squarespace. You can go try it out today. Go to squarespace.com slash penaddict. And you can build your website. You don't have to give them any credit card. And you can try it all out and make sure it's right for you. Then when you're ready to set it live to the world, your plans start at just $12 a month. But you can get 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain and show your support for this show when using the offer code penaddict at checkout. That's squarespace.com slash penaddict and the code penaddict for 10% off your first purchase. Our thanks to Squarespace for the continued support of this show and all of RelayFM Squarespace. Make your next move. Make your next website.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' If you think I ramble a lot as it is, like as I've done this entire show, I don't even know what to say or how to start with what Jonathan Brooks, Carolina Pen Company, did for us with these Lamy Safaris.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yep. So in the show notes, there's going to be a bunch of things. There's going to be a YouTube video where Brad unboxes the pens and then a bunch of photos of the pens. I thoroughly recommend that before you continue listening to the show, you go and look at at least the images, but preferably the video, I feel like. So you can get an idea for what we're going to be talking about today.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. So just the quick, you know, high level recap for those who might just be joining us today. A year ago or more than a year ago now at the Atlanta Pen Show, we were, Myke and I were joking with Jonathan Brooks because we had seen some pictures of a Lamy Safari that had Arushi and Rodden and all kinds of crazy stuff on it. And it's like, well, I have a Lamy Safari. I wonder if Jonathan wants it to just experiment on. Like, I couldn't care less. Like, I just wanted to give him the pen so he could go experiment on it. Right? Like, I don't ever need the pen back. I don't need anything. And he was like, well, yes, of course. And then he was like, well, Myke, do you want one too? And Myke was like, well, duh. Yeah.

'''Myke Hurley:''' And then I went and found and bought a safari at the Pen Show.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Do you know what safari did you buy? That's the one thing I don't know you're underlying.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I have literally no memory of it. Like, I just went, just the first Lamy Safari that I found, I bought it and just gave it to him.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' We'll have to ask Jonathan what's the underlying pin on that. He's going to do some things with this too. So, and then, well, if it's me and you, we had to get Anna in on the action, right? You know, because, you know, Jonathan's been a live guest at the Atlanta Pen Show podcast with the three of us. And Anna always has her competition with me about the Lamy Safari versus the Lamy All-Star. So we got, Jonathan got an All-Star for her. And so we had these three pins that Jonathan had and to experiment on and see if he could apply Arushi lacquering techniques and Rodden to these safaris. I'm going to keep calling them safaris, even though it's a safari and an All-Star. I will mess that up plenty of times. But I just thought it would be an experiment if he was up for it, like in his spare time. And you know Jonathan and I know Jonathan. Nana knows Jonathan. He takes his craft very seriously, right? Like the expectations I had for this pin was almost that I would come back in parts in a box saying, F this, it can't be done. Right? That was my going expectation.

'''Myke Hurley:''' No, I expected that he was going to make it work. Like that, for very similar reasons to what you're saying, like I know how serious he takes it. This was a challenge. And I knew he would find a way to do it.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' He fought and fought and fought with these pins to get them right because it's like he didn't want to let us down.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I have so many questions about how he got these to work. Yeah.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. And we'll talk with Jonathan more about this. We'll have to get him on or do a video or something. He's going to share a bunch of the behind the scenes pictures on making them. But in talking with him on the phone, these were extraordinarily challenging to make. Like he doesn't want to do these again because it was so difficult. He had to get parts remade for these pins because they were that difficult to work with. Like removing the parts so he could lacquer them properly and not being able to put them back on. Like it took him like forever and a day to put these, put these pins together and the results, they exceed any expectation. Like I could have had, like, there's no, there's no way to describe what Jonathan did with these pins without handling them yourself. And luckily for me, Myke, I have all three of them sitting right here in front of me. I hate you so much. So that was the impetus.

'''Myke Hurley:''' So the three different pins themselves, do you want to try and describe the look of each of them?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Sure. So I provided much to some of my friends consternation, a Lamy gray safari, I guess it's Griso. It's what our friend Ink Dependence Myke is saying in the chat. It was a limited edition way back in the day. It's a light gray barrel with black clips.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I still hate that you did that.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I'm super, super, super fan that I did that.

'''Myke Hurley:''' You took a, I mean, limited edition Lamy safari, which was a great safari, the gray one, and you just like cover it up.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, that's pretty fun. I didn't mind. So mine, so what Jonathan has to do is he has to disassemble these pins completely and his real difficulties were with the clip and then the top finial on the safari caps and the all-star caps. They were just very, very difficult to get off, remove, and replace in a completed fashion. So he had to actually remake the top caps on all these safaris. So mine, I'm calling it, I don't know, well, I'll have to think of a name for like the color of it, but it's basically like the dark lilac of colors for the Lamy safari. It's almost like a Lamy safari, dark lilac, a rushi. The thing that amazes me the most, Myke, and the thing that I think you will get, the most joy out of and Anna will get the most joy out of is that when you pick up this pen, you know it's a Lamy safari. Like I didn't expect that feel when I got this pen back. I thought it might feel like a different pen with a Lamy safari as a base.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I was wondering if he would end up observing the design of what the pen is, right? Like maybe he would fill the hole, right? Like somehow, or maybe it would be round when it came back and not having the flat sides anymore. Like I was really intrigued to see what the process of a rushi lacquering acrylic, especially, which seems difficult.

'''Myke Hurley:''' The, I was wondering how it would end up shaping out, you know?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' It's a hundred percent a Lamy safari. That's my favorite thing about this because I love the safari as it is, right? So it's already one of my favorite types of pens and then to have basically a piece of art Lamy safari now, it's just, it's crazy. He kept everything that makes the safari a safari. So the clip is there. The ink window is there. Even the Lamy etching in the barrel, which on the safari is basically like in your printing terms, debossed, right? It's sunk into, it's stamped into the barrel. So he took out that part, he had a real difficult time doing that. He's thought he might just cover it up, right? And just, you know, make it a flat side, like the backside of the pen would be. But he thought, no, that wouldn't make it a safari. So he figured out how to do that and then put like this powder, this black powder. I don't have the note in front of me of what exactly he called it. So he could keep the Lamy stamping on the barrel to make it a safari. Right. It's, it's fascinating. And then, you know, the end, the top cap and the barrel end have, you know, big hunks of rotten in there for like their, their finial designs, if you will. And the grip sections done in the same material, like, you know, but it's still got the, the Lamy rubber ring across the middle of the pen because you can't really lacquer over that. And, um, you know, that would change how the pen fit into the cap. Like if you change that, so like the cap has, I don't know, some kind of coating in here. I don't know what he's done inside the cap. So like even the inside of the cap is done. Everything about this just fascinates me. I don't get it. Um, but I love it and it's completely, completely a Lamy safari. So I'm looking at mine. So it's like purple. Uh, it's like a deep purple. It's a, if you get it in the right lighting, it's got this real kind of, um, space cloud kind of look to it. Like it looks solid in one aspect. Then if you tilt it, you can see there's almost like a, a darker purple underneath it. And then it's got a rotten flake, uh, all scattered throughout. So that's mine. So it's basically like the, the dark lilac. It's funny that you inked up a Lamy petrol because yours, which I now have in my hand, Myke is very much a Lamy petrol blue color, which I found, found kind of funny when you mentioned that. So yours is a little bit different. And then yours has, in that yours has larger circles of Rodden. And this looks like he's something he's like cut out or done. Um, it even has, I'll have to get you a better picture of the grip. It even has a set of, uh, Rodden shapes down the, the raised part of the grip section, you know, the middle part of the grip section, it goes from bigger, big to smaller, to smaller, to smallest. Oh, I can see it in one of the pictures. There's like four dots. I didn't, yeah, I didn't notice that until just now. So that's like on purpose.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I noticed that a moment ago and it's set my mind on fire how like good that is. Like, I am so, I cannot tell you how happy I am with this design. Like, they're all amazing. I got my favorite of the three. Uh, this, I cannot believe what he has done here. I feel like, I feel like for mine, especially just from the way it looks, it looks like he's gone way above and beyond with the amount of work that I assume it takes. Because my assumption is with yours and Anna's with like the fleck that's in the body, it's part of the material that is, I don't know how it's made. I don't know. But like, it's, it, it feels like at least for what he's done with mine that some manual placement was needed. Yes. Yes. And that's what I'm so like, can't believe, like so freaking excited about.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Um, so like the flat sides of your safari have the large discs of rotten in a more dense pattern than the rounded sides. They're more spread out. And all of ours kind of have this under layer of the primary color and then like a kind of like a darker color underneath, which is hard to show up in the pictures, but you can really see it in the light. So like there's blue, then there's like a deep blue kind of like cloud cover or fog going through there. So yeah, it's really pretty. Um, and yours has the same Lamy, um, you know, where the stamping is and the, the black powder coating in there as well. And then Anna's, Anna's is so stunning to look at hers is different because it's on the AL star barrel. It actually feels different than both of ours. And it honestly, I'm going to say this, and this is not a negative. It feels nicer. I don't know, but that does, that's not a fair term to use, right? They're all incredible, but it feels like maybe like the finish applied to this in a more consistent manner. We'll have to ask Jonathan if it's different on an aluminum barrel than our plastic barrels. Um, maybe it's just because they feel different for me weight wise or something like that, but we'll have to ask him if somehow the lacquering process, um, was performed differently. So Anna's is very similar to mine. It's kind of a peachy pink color, same type of rod and flakes kind of, uh, scattered all over the barrel and really cool finials. And the only difference between hers and ours being the all-star model is the Lamy stamp on the all-star models is not stamped in. It's basically like a, um, I don't know. It's like, uh, it's basically just an outer border. So that he did have to cover. So hers does not have the Lamy on there. Interesting. And I would bet she likes that better because it looks really, really good. It came out really well.

'''Myke Hurley:''' There are going to be differences because it was a, uh, different base material, right? Right. Right. So that's what I want to change.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So like, I can look at the, look, if I look at the finials, like her cap is much thicker, uh, around than, than the safari cap on the all-star. So it's, it feels different in the hand in a good way. Not that ours feel any way bad. They're fricking amazing, but I can tell it, it feels more refined on her pin. And I think it's maybe because of the, the way the barrel is, but I'm also holding mine. That's got an ink cartridge full, a converter full of ink and hers is empty. So it feels, you know, the weight is different as well, but it's just spectacular. I, I, I pretty much just giggled every time I opened one of these and, um, they're, they're just fascinating. I, I, thank you, Jonathan. I don't know. I like, we can't thank you enough, um, other than to tell people, don't ask him to do this for, for you because he's going to tell you to go jump in a lake because they were so difficult. Um, and there was something else in the box, Myke, that, uh, I did, do we want to talk about that? I like, I don't know what to do.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I opened this box on the video.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I opened the box on the video thinking I'm going to open my pin, Myke's pin, Anna's pin. And there was a fourth pin in there. Um, we each had our names on the box and then there was a fourth box with a question mark. And Jonathan failed to mention that to me, that there was a little something extra in there. And, um, I'm pretty sure I'm going to be able to give away one of these pins. I didn't take a picture of it yet just because I want to check with him. It might be my favorite of all of them. Like, but that's like picking between like one, a one B one C one D, right? It's pretty amazing. I haven't even showed it to you yet. I haven't taken pictures of it yet, but you saw it in the video, right? I think it's pretty amazing. Um, yeah. So yeah, we're going to talk to Jonathan, see what he wants to do with that. I'm assuming it's to give away. We have some ideas already that we're talking about, but, um, it's pretty great. I love it. It's a, it's a black and Brown. Um, you know, how I was trying to explain how yours and our three pins have this kind of cloud cover, like feel like the dark purple, light purple than dark purple. It's like, that's the two different colors on the black and Brown of, of that Safari. It's that same effect on ours, except with the same color, if that makes sense. Right. So you can see how it's kind of in the video, it's all kind of, uh, weaving through there, almost like a cloud or a fog. Ours are like that, except with just the similar colors where those are two completely different colors. So it's pretty wild.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah. I, I, I, I'm blown away by these pens. They're incredible. I can't wait to get mine. You've got to put it in the post.