Editing The Pen Addict 615/transcript (section)

== Attending the 2018 Baltimore Pen Show ==


'''Damien Alomar:''' Uh, so I went to the 2018 Baltimore pen show. Okay. Um, and I, I was clueless. I didn't know what I was getting into. I didn't know what was going on, anything. And I got to the show and just was like completely overwhelmed. And I had a couple of things on my sort of checkbox, uh, but I really didn't buy anything at the show. But when I got back home from the show, I had been looking at a nemesine fission. Uh, which was their metal bodied pen. And it actually had like a screw to post type thing on it. And it was $30. And I was like, am I really going to spend $30 on a pen?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' This is like twice as much as the Metropolitan.

'''Damien Alomar:''' Oh my gosh. I was like, you know, I I've obviously since like.

'''Damien Alomar:''' We're going to tell stories later. Yeah. It's like, you don't even want to see what's in my pen case right next to me right now. But, um, yeah, so that was, that was the first time where I'm like, oh my gosh, I can't believe I'm spending this much on a pen. Um, and of course, $30 now. I don't, I don't, I don't.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Right. Right. So, so what do you like now? So you mentioned like, so maybe the definer Japanese steel nib in the Metropolitan maybe wasn't a thing. What is like your kind of writings, your preferred writing setup now and even like a specific pen or ink or paper? Like what are your kind of, what's your go-to style? Like if you have, if you have a style of pen that you use, what, what fits the bill?

'''Damien Alomar:''' Well, I think pen is all over the map. Yeah. Um, paper is the easiest for me to say like, this is my thing. I'm a B5 user. Okay. Um, which doesn't leave me a ton of options, uh, in terms of notebooks and things like that. But the one B5 notebook that I, I mean, I probably have about seven or eight of them stashed away, uh, is the Stalogy 365 B5. Um, I really, that one is always getting cycled in. Um, and basically if I find other B5 notebooks, I'll try them sort of in between, uh, rotating with the Stalogy.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Are those grid or dot?

'''Damien Alomar:''' They are a very, very light, uh, grid. So I'm not usually a grid person. Um, so like Rodeo grids, they really kind of stand out. Um, but the grid on the B5 Stalogy is, is very light. It's like a gray. Um, and it also has, um, I think it's like a five millimeter grid as well too. And so I write fairly large. So I usually need like an eight to 10 millimeter, um, line spacing. Wow. So most, yeah, most, um, most papers are actually sort of lined a little bit too fine for me. Um, it's like six or seven millimeter, like seven millimeter kind of cramps things a little bit.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Dang. Yeah. All right. We, we, we would be on the opposite ends of the paper spectrum.

'''Damien Alomar:''' Oh yeah. You're, you are very much the opposite in terms of pen and nibs or nib and paper.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I'm listening to someone who went to architecture school and it's not a fan of graph paper. It's like, how does that even happen? Maybe you just have like.

'''Damien Alomar:''' I don't mind graph paper. Um, it's just that for writing, uh, it tends to be a bit much.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. What's your go-to pen these days or what's your, what's a couple of your favorites?

'''Damien Alomar:''' I never, I never have like one, one pen that I go for that. I mean, I have, I think about 150 pens now. Um, and they're all over the map from, uh, Italian pens to Japanese pens, Urushi, um, custom work. Still, I still have several Chinese pens in my collection as well. Um, all over the place.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. So, um, do you have a favorite brand?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' See, I'm, I'm, I'm really trying to pin you down here. I'm working here.

'''Damien Alomar:''' I have a love, hate relationship with sailor. Uh, that's fair. That is completely fair.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' And that should be their new slogan. Like sailor, like just get a t-shirt sailor, uh, love, hate relationship. Like I'm, I'm down.

'''Damien Alomar:''' That's a whole other podcast itself. Um, I don't know. Um, I mean, a sailor, Nakaya, uh, Leonardo, if I had to pick three, those would be my go-to.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Let me ask you this. Um, I, I'm, I'm trying to connect all the dots here. Sailor King of Pen nib. You like that? Do you have one of those? Oh yeah. I have one. Okay. Yeah. That sounds like you. That sounds like you.

'''Damien Alomar:''' I have, so I'll at least show the one that I have inked up. Uh, this is the, um, uh, King of Pen, uh, Seki. Yeah. Which is the gray ebonite that they came out with last year. Um, and I, this ebonite is just absolutely fantastic. I absolutely love it. Um, and this one has the Naginata broad nib on it. Yeah. I have, um, another King of Pen that's going out to Bokamundu right now. Um, I have one that Sean Newton. He did a complete rebody on for me in, uh, Brooks Cooltone primary manipulation. Um, that's super fun. I love that one.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So I have, see, I did my job. I, I pulled it out of you. I did it. I do. I feel successful now.

'''Damien Alomar:''' The King of Pen is like my second favorite, uh, nib in my collection. It's like King of Pen versus pilot number 30. Those are, those two are up there.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. So that makes a lot of sense given your writing style and just like how great it is. And, uh, yeah, so cool. All right. I, I feel accomplished now. I did it. I got, I got that pen for you and you had it right at hand too. Yeah, I know. All right. Let's get to what people, this is like me and Damien hanging out at the, hanging out at the bar and after show, like, Hey, tell me what you're like. People are like, Hey, get to the nibs, Brad, get to the nibs. Damien. I want to, I want to learn about nib grinding, how, how you got started, what I'm supposed to do when I go to a pen show to get a nib ground. So let's get into that. Let me talk about our first, uh, sponsor this week. And that is factor. This episode of the pen attic is brought to you by factor warmer, sunnier days are calling fuel up for them with factors. No prep, no mess meals, meet your wellness goals in time for summer. Thanks to the menu of chef crafted meals with options like calorie smart protein plus and keto factors, fresh, never frozen meals are dietitian approved and ready to eat in just two minutes. So no matter how busy you are, you'll always have time to enjoy nutritious, great tasting meals. Make today the day you kickstart a new healthy routine. So I have been able to use a factor for many months. Um, and the meals that take two minutes to make in the middle of my day, really complete like my, my eating goals for the day. They are wonderfully delicious. They are flavored extremely well for a meal. That's not frozen. You get out the fridge, pop it in the microwave. It's ready in two minutes and you just have this wonderful meal. So they've been super convenient, super easy to make. And I'm straight up delicious to eat. So there's so much to love about factor with 35 different meals and more than 60 add ons to choose from every week. You always have new flavors to explore. You can reach your wellness goals this may with dietitian approved meals and ingredients you can trust. And why not treat yourself to restaurant quality meals that feature premium ingredients like filet mignon shrimp and blackened salmon. You can keep kitchen time to a minimum to factor meals are ready in two minutes, no shopping, prepping, cooking, or cleaning up. So enjoy effortless support to your lifestyle. Choose from six menu preferences to help you manage calories, maximize protein intake, avoid meat, or simply eat well balanced. Head to factor meals.com slash pen addict 50. That's five Oh, and use the code pen addict 50 to get 50% off your first box plus 20% off your next month. Active. Our thanks to factor for their support of this show and all of relay FM. All right, Damien nib grinds. What made you start working on nibs? Did you have a problem yourself? You want to try to fix it? Are you that type of person that's like, Hey, I got a problem. I'm going to try to fix it myself. Or did you see something that made you say, Hey, that looks pretty cool. I think I'm going to do that.

'''Damien Alomar:''' And so, as I said, I kind of went in and bought a bunch of Chinese pens very early on. And as you can imagine, those nibs are a little bit hit or miss. And I got a pen that was very much a miss. And so I started to kind of figure out if I could actually sort of tune it and make it right better. If anybody remembers Matt Armstrong or the pen habit, he had some great videos on how to tune a nib. And that was really kind of my gateway. And he still has those up, by the way, which is nice. I'll link to them. Yeah. Yeah. And so I had like a $4 Bauer 388, which is like a Parker Sonic clone or something like that. And it wrote horribly. And so I figured might as well try. At worst, I'm out $4. And was able to get that writing much better. But that pen still didn't work for me even after it wrote better. But that at least kind of got me started. And so when I went to the Baltimore 2018 show, one of the things on my list was to sort of figure out what this nib grind thing was all about because I had heard people online talking about it. And I did not do that. I was overwhelmed with the show. I think I sat down at a couple tables like Franklin Kristoff and maybe one of the other nibmeisters there to sort of try some of their grinds. And it didn't click for me at that point. But it was still something that was in my mind and I don't know, kind of somewhere there. And so I learned more about stub nibs and I had heard about these architect grinds. And so that NemoSign fission that I was mulling over, I did buy it. And for whatever reason, I decided that that would be, I wanted to put an architect grind on that. Dang. And I don't know if I found something online because there's not very many resources online for nib grinds or things like that or sort of how to do things. But I knew sort of what it needed to do in terms of how it was actually working, you know, putting ink to paper. And so I did that as my first grind and I enjoyed it. And a little bit after that, I went to my first DC pen crew meet him and I didn't know what to expect. And I walked into the room in the library and there were all these people there. They had, you know, like notebooks full of pens and all of these pens that I had only like heard of, hadn't even seen. And it wasn't just one person. It was, you know, at least a dozen and a half people there. And so I was very overwhelmed. I grabbed a chair in the corner, coincidentally sat next to Evan of Penquisition. And that was the first time I met him. And there's, you know, a lot of pens going around. I was very overwhelmed. I really didn't have very much to show. I think I had sort of my top tier pen at that point might have been like a diplomat arrow or something like that. And I didn't have anything interesting, but I at least had this nib grind. And so I handed it to a couple people and they were like, oh, this is really interesting. And I think that is really sort of the moment where it just went from the sort of thing I was randomly interested into to maybe there's something else here.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, I'm going to kind of jump ahead before we jump back and thinking about your architect grind. What tools did you use for that very first architect grind?

'''Damien Alomar:''' I think it was. I don't know if I had actually gone out and bought some micro mesh. I actually think I did because I think I had some for tuning. And so I think I used that and did everything by hand.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Okay. So you just worked it on the mesh until you got what you wanted.

'''Damien Alomar:''' Yeah. Gotcha. Which doing grinds completely by hand without sort of grinding stones or anything like that, it takes a while.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. That's a commitment right there. Okay. Okay. So we're going to get back into tools and things like that later. But I was curious on this first one, like how did you jump into that? So that meeting made you want to do a little bit more and start to experiment a little bit more? How did that track take you from there?

'''Damien Alomar:''' Yeah. So as I mentioned, there are a lot of members of the DC crew that have already had a lot of interesting nib grinds. And so I realized that a lot of these meetups are very hands-on. Yeah. If somebody brings something and you want to take a look at it, if you want to write with it, most of the time people are bringing them to share. Yeah. And so as I got a chance to write with a few more, you know, look at them under a loop, I sort of began to study more of other nibmeister's work and try to figure out how I could actually start to go through and grind that myself. And so I think somewhere in there, I actually went out and got a Dremel. So I was working with, you know, power tools instead of just doing things by hand, which helped make things go faster and destroy some nibs faster. Got to destroy some along the way.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I imagine so. And is this, are you just buying like practice pens, like off eBay or wherever, like, like, like bulk Chinese pens, or are you just kind of like, you know what, I'm just going to go for changing the writing experience on the pens I like to write with?

'''Damien Alomar:''' I bought like, I think probably about 30 or 40 Chinese nibs, you know, just Jin Hao nibs that are 50 cents each, not even to go through and practice with. And that's definitely sort of where I started. And when people ask me, that's where I recommend they start to. I've had some people sit down with me and say they just started messing with their Visconti. I do not recommend that.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' But so how did, how did, how did you like focus on learning more? Did you were just, you know, watching videos? Do you sit with anybody? Like, how did, how was your learning process like? Because I say this out of just being like completely impressed by all nib grinders for the ability to take someone's precious writing implement and not screw it up. Like, that's a lot of pressure. It was like, and you eventually put yourself out there. It's like, I'm going to work on these other people's nibs. So what was your, what was your learning process like?

'''Damien Alomar:''' So I kept on grinding a lot of those cheaper Chinese nibs. And what I would do is I would basically kind of bring them to meetups and sort of lay them out there and have people try them and sort of give me some feedback.

'''Damien Alomar:''' And that was really kind of my early sort of process of learning. Yeah. So you got some great hands-on feedback. Yeah. And I, at that point I didn't get a chance to really, I didn't have sort of another nibmeister to look at my work or anything like that. The first time I really kind of got a chance to do that was at the Baltimore Pen Show in 2019 the following year.

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

'''Damien Alomar:''' So there was, there was a lot of very, very helpful feedback from those, from those initial meetings of having people try things and saying what they liked, what they didn't like. There was, I probably wouldn't have gotten nearly as far without those early experiments.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. That's, that's a pretty valuable tool in the, the, the availability of like your, your local pen group. So that's a, that's another great shout out to anyone who is fortunate enough to have local pen groups to get this type of feedback from, especially when you're doing something, you know, as, as delicate and precise as, as grinding nibs. So you mentioned this 2019 Baltimore Pen Show. And apparently that's where we first met, first met, allegedly, I think. Was this at the, was this at the old, the downtown location?

'''Damien Alomar:''' So the 2018 show was like the one show that I think was like downtown. Okay. And then the 2019 show is when they were back by the airport. Okay. Gotcha. So at the 2019 show I had, I brought a couple of my grinds with me. Mm-hmm. And I think by the, you know, towards the end of the day, Saturday, I was kind of looking around and Linda Kennedy didn't have anybody sitting at her table at the time. And so I just kind of sat down in front of her and said, I was like, do you mind if you take a look at a little bit of my work and give me feedback? Because other than, you know, an average pen user, if you will, kind of giving me that feedback, I hadn't really gotten feedback from anybody who was really knew what they were doing. Mm-hmm. Really great feedback in a very short period of time.