Editing The Pen Addict 509/transcript (section)

== Trade Sponsor Discussion ==


'''Myke:''' Coffee break and talk about a wonderful sponsor, Trade. We love here at the Pedantic podcast because Trade is all about making sure that you have great coffee. I have got so much good coffee from Trade. I, you know, one of the things that they, you know, in the in the ad copy that we get, they ask us, you know, like to talk about our experience a little bit. One of the things that it mentions is, were you surprised at the results? And what I'll say is like, at first, I was surprised that when I took the quiz that they have, a really great quiz, you can just start to kind of talk about what you like in coffee and what you don't and then they'll match you up or something. So when I did that and they sent me one, I was like, oh, wow, this is really great. I was no longer surprised with any of the other coffees that came in because I then had complete faith in Trade to deliver coffee to me that I was going to enjoy. And they have every single time. When you become a Trade coffee customer, you can enjoy knowing you have the freshest and best tasting coffee you ever made at home. And the coffee you'll be drinking will be from the country in the US, the best independent craft roasters around, which helps out those small businesses a lot, too, which I love. So one of the things I love about Trade is that they source it from all these small companies. I just think that's so awesome. It's one of the best things about coffee is how many small companies there are doing things differently. And, yeah, I love it. Trade's coffee team, they taste test thousands of coffees to keep 450 different kinds live and ready to ship every single day. And everyone has that one coffee that they just love, and Trade's going to help you find it. Trade is so incredibly confident that they will match you right the first time. If they don't, you're going to get – just give some feedback, right? Contact them. Tell them what the experience is, what you like about it, what you don't. Because one of their actual coffee experts is going to work with you to send a brand new bag for free so you know that you're going to be looked after. Trade Coffee sends you freshly roasted beans from 60 of the country's best coffee roasters, small businesses who pay farmers fair prices to sustainably source the greatest beans from around the world. It takes just answering a couple of questions to get your own personalized variety of coffees delivered fresh to you as often as you like. Right now, Trade is offering new subscribers a total of $30 off your first order, plus free shipping. Just go to drinktrade.com slash penaddict. That's more than 40 cups of coffee for free. Get started by taking their quiz at drinktrade.com slash penaddict, and you can let Trade find you a coffee that you're going to love. That URL one more time, drinktrade.com slash penaddict for $30 off. Our thanks to Trade for the support of this show and RelayFM.

'''Brad:''' Shout out to Portrait Coffee in Atlanta, a new roaster that I found out because of Trade that is making some killer, killer stuff. So definitely love it. Portrait Coffee? Portrait, yes. Like a picture frame portrait.

'''Myke:''' Yeah, I just found their website. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Oh, I like their branding.

'''Brad:''' Yeah.

'''Myke:''' Good stuff. I love good branding on Coffee. It's so important to me. I don't know why. I love it, though.

'''Brad:''' You know what's silly about Trade that I love, as I digress here? Mm-hmm. When I get that little red package in my mail, I don't know if you get the same in the UK, but the bags of coffee are wrapped in this little red cellophane. I know that's a new bag of coffee. That's good, right? I'm like, yeah, that's cool. Like a little simple thing. Like it probably costs them like two cents, and I'm like, it registers with me. Oh, little red bag. That means coffee.

'''Myke:''' It's good. It's a nice little bag, too.

'''Brad:''' All right, Myke.

'''Myke:''' Okay, Brad.

'''Brad:''' Let's have a discussion. All right. I did a thing at the pen show, which I did more than one thing at the pen show, where I just bought things to try. Or I bought things not necessarily on a whim, right? I hesitate to tell people to like don't buy things without like thinking about it or knowing what you're getting into. But what happens with me a lot of times is when I've read a lot about products or researched a lot about products and had a lot of time to think about products and, you know, see how other people use products. You know, you kind of build this little mini database in your head of like, if I ever have this opportunity, would I buy this? Yes or no, right? And you kind of have a little bit of baseline for it. So over the years, the stack nibs and the customized nibs have become really popular in our world from almost like an experimental perspective, right? So Sailor, this is all Sailor's fault because they in-house make some really wild, crazy, customizable nibs. So that now we have enough people in the fountain pen community around the world that can see these things and are talented enough to try to mimic some of these things on their own, different materials, different construction ideas to get these line results that Sailor would get with their custom nibs. And Sailor, I don't know, they probably make 10 or 12 different custom nib shapes and designs. But this has led this kind of uptick in experimentation from a lot of people. And you have participated in purchasing some of these nibs. We've done a show in the past where we talked about stacked nibs specifically because my friend Andrew wrote a post on the Pen Addict blog. He is a huge stacked nibs fan. He has tried to get me into them for years. And when we discussed it on the podcast, our friend CY at Tokyo Inklings got in touch with you, you specifically, because no one really thought that, and myself included, that I would be a real candidate for the big, broad nibs that you ended up getting.

'''Myke:''' They're like Marcus. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

'''Brad:''' Yeah. So you got two. Is that correct? You have two stacked nibs? Yeah. And both from CY. And are you still using them pretty frequently? All the time.

'''Myke:''' They're in my Sinclair that I take every day. They are two of the six pens I have in the Sinclair constantly. Really? Nothing's going to change it.

'''Brad:''' That's crazy. That's awesome. That's really cool.

'''Myke:''' I just love them. I absolutely love using those pens.

'''Brad:''' So I've been thinking about it and how I would use these types of nibs, right? So that's like the main buying decision anyone should make is not, oh, this is cool or, oh, this is limited, but, oh, how will I use this? And is my money going to be well spent? Because let's be perfectly honest, these nibs, like the needlepoint I mentioned before, are not cheap, not even remotely. Because there is a lot of work that goes into them and sometimes a lot of materials that go into them. There's a lot of cost that goes into this. So I was sitting at the Atlanta Pen Show with Damien from All in the Nib getting a nib grind done. And one of the cool things Damien does is he offers pre-ground nibs for sale, right? So like say you wanted a cursive italic nib, Damien's all booked up for the whole weekend. You can grab like a Yovo cursive italic nib pre-ground that will fit in your Yovo compatible pens and you just can buy it essentially off the shelf, right? So Gina's done that. I've bought some nibs from them in the past. And, you know, Damien has done it. And I like the opportunity to pick up something extra, right? So I'm sitting getting work, I can also bring home, you know, a different Yovo nib for whatever pen I might have in mind to use. So sitting there on his display is a stack nib from a friend of the show, friend of the pen shows, Jim, who is also known as Pen Sloth on Instagram. And he's been dabbling in this for a while now, making different stack nibs, experimenting with, you know, attachments, you know, how to stack the nibs, how to grind the nibs, how to make the proper shapes in the nibs. And it's just sitting there, right? It's like sitting there, Naga Nanatogi, stacked steel Yovo nib. And I'm looking at it. I'm like, cool. And, of course, Damien, being the smart individual that he is, has a different one to test, right? So he's like, oh, yeah, hey, look in this jacket right here. Look at all these watches I have for sale. Do you need a watch? And he's like, hey, you want to try this out? I'm like, you know, while I'm actually sitting there waiting for work, you know, testing these things out. And I was like, oh, that's pretty cool. That's nice. He's like, I'm going to end up with this nib, aren't I? Like, I'm just, I'm buying this nib. And he's like, you know, whatever. You know, it's not cheap. So, yeah, I bought a stack nib, my first stack nib. It's the Naga Nanatogi shaped, like I mentioned, steel nib, double stacked. It's not like a five nib monstrosity that you will see sometimes these nib makers will experiment with. And I'm kind of liking it. Like, I'm not hesitantly liking it. I'm not begrudgingly liking it. I'm deciding that I think this might work for how I use things if I will allow myself to have these wider lines on my page. Right? So, that's the mental block that I have in the how will I use it portion of the program. Right? Like, this nib was $160 just for the nib. Right? And I'm not going to spend that kind of money if I'm not going to use it. So, how will I use it? And I'm still trying to figure that out. Right? I've just inked it up this morning, as a matter of fact, to start play with it. And it took me so long because I really wasn't sure what ink to put into it. But I went with a pretty normal ink with some character. I chose Sailor Yamadori, which is probably like a top five all-time ink because it's got good shading and good sheen. And it flows well. And I like Sailor inks.

'''Brad:''' It's pretty cool. Right? So, the Naginatogi design allows for angle-dependent line variation.

'''Myke:''' Man, if you buy one of these in a pen, it's $600.

'''Brad:''' Yeah. And that's really like those Sailor pens. Is that what you're talking about? Uh-huh. So, and that's like the most basic Sailor bearer. You're really essentially buying like a $600 nib.

'''Myke:''' Yeah. Because it's just a black 1911. Yeah.

'''Brad:''' Yeah, yeah, yeah. Which is fine. But yeah, the Sailor nibs. But the Sailor nibs are also gold. Right? So, the one I bought is Steel.

'''Myke:''' Okay. So, explain it to me then. Is it just Naginatogi inspired?

'''Brad:''' So, it's the shape. Yeah. It's the shape. The nib shape and the writing expectation is the Naginatogi terminology. Right? Okay. So, it's based. It's an angle-dependent to where if your pen angle is very high to the page. Mm-hmm. The line is narrower. And then the line gets wider as you lower your angle to the page. Yeah. In a horizontal fashion.

'''Myke:''' Because the Naginatogi is not a stacked nib.

'''Brad:''' Right. Generally not. From Sailor. Generally not. Yeah. Right. So, the Naginatogi, you can get a ground. You can get one of your nibs ground into a Naginatogi, which we'll speak about here in this segment. Also, but you generally need super large tipping, like from a Sailor Zoom nib level of tipping to get a true full scope Naginatogi. Right? So, what I did separately from this nib, which we'll get back to in a second, is I bought a broad nib from Jonathan Brooks when I bought a pen to take it over to Matthew Chin at Matthew's Nib Works to get what he sells as a mini Naginatogi grind. I'm like, yeah, that's the one for me because I can take a broad nib, which has a good amount of tipping, but it's not enough for any type of what you would call a pure Naginatogi grind. It's just not a big enough platform for him to make the full shape to get the full scope of what a Naginatogi should be. So, he does a mini one. I was like, oh, this is really great. I actually did that first before I decided to buy Jim's nib. And I liked how I wrote with someone else's. I like the idea of it. It's basically, like, if you think of it like an architect style nib to where your horizontal strokes are broader and your vertical strokes are thinner.

'''Myke:''' Yeah, one of my stack nibs is in this style. So, your left or right lines are wide. I don't know if it would be exactly considered the same. Like, we'd need to check to see why. But it has that kind of hook on the end of it, right? So, like, you can get multiple line variation from the way that you hold the nib.

'''Brad:''' So, someone described it like a spear tip. Like, it's kind of rounded to the point. And if you hold it, if you point it up, it's a thinner line horizontally. And if you lean it back, it's a wider line horizontally. So, it's really enjoyable. I've sat here trying to see how many different, like, line widths I can get. Then you can flip it over, right? And write really, really fine with it. So, like, it's got that added bonus. So, I got that from Matthew. And I really enjoy that. I've been using that since I got it, right? I inked that up immediately, been playing with it. And I was a little more hesitant. I was like, what am I going to do with this stack nib? Am I going to, like, at worst case, I'm going to test it out and try it. And that's what I'm doing right now. I'm enjoying it. I can envision how I'm going to use this as not just a complimentary pen to what I'm using. Kind of like you, right? It provides a compliment. Even if it can be your main writer. But it can also compliment what you already have on the page and how you do your work. And I am really, my mind is kind of refreshed on giving this a try and seeing the different things I can do to enhance my writing. As opposed to just saying, hey, this is a big marker. I don't need a big marker, right? I'm trying to be very open-minded in my usage of this. So, I'm really going to, I'm really happy so far. Even though it's really only been literal hours since I've used it. But it's making me smile. And that's always a good start. And changing my perspective and openness of, like, not shutting off things immediately that I don't think were going to work for me. Like, there's things that won't work for you, right? Like, we talked about you and a needlepoint. It is absolutely not going to work. And I wasn't sure that these type of nibs were going to work for me. And there is a limit, right? I'm not going, like, I don't envision necessarily going bigger or wider with something like this. Because, like you said, it is a marker style. But I'm enjoying it. You're going to see a lot more of me talking about this, right? I don't think this will become a new thing for me. Like, I'm not all of a sudden going to need, like, five shapes of stacked nib grinds for marker pins, right? But I like this. Like, I'm enjoying this. I kind of have two now, even though only one's, like, a big stacked experimental type nib. And I guess it's more a story of me experimenting and seeing how it goes. And so far, so good.

'''Myke:''' I'm very happy.

'''Brad:''' Yeah, I am too. Like, in a confused way. I was like, huh. Maybe, like, I am definitely open-minded about it. I'm definitely enjoying it. It's, I like, I do like the story aspect of the level of nerdery that this is in an extremely nerdy hobby. Like, this is, you know, nth degree type of nerdiness. Yeah. And I'm always here for that type of stuff. So, yeah. It's making me happy for all of these things, including the usage of it. So, more experimentation. More show and tell. I'll be talking about this pen or this nib specifically a lot going forward. And same with the mini Naganata Togi, which I actually have used for just basic writing. Like, it's at least half the line width of this stacked one that I have. So, they're two very, actually, very different pens besides having the same idea for both of them. They're very, very different and unique.

'''Myke:''' You can't make fun of me here, all right? I can't. That's not what I'm about to say. Okay. So, because I know you're going to jump to the immediate joke. So, as somebody who's used stacked nibs very frequently for the last nine months, one thing I will give you as a piece of advice is cleaning the nibs is more complicated. Okay. Because, like, if you, you know, I don't know if you ever, like, use a cloth or tissue paper or something to, like, clean the nibs or you want to dry it or whatever. Or you say you've got ink, an excess of ink on the nib or something. Mm-hmm. Because what I have found is there are more places for, say, a cloth to catch on the nib. Mm-hmm. Right? Because you've got these two surfaces on top of each other. So, just something to watch out for. Like, it's just something that I have to be pretty, pay attention to, right? Because imagine, like, you know, you've got, like, the stacked part one on top of the other. Right. So, if you were to clean down from the body of the pen, like, downwards, like you would on a normal nib, right? You just go down. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's going to catch.

'''Brad:''' Right.