Editing The Pen Addict 93/transcript (section)

== Custom Pens ==


'''Brad Dowdy:''' I know. I know. Now, you want to see some other good photography and some lustworthy pins. Our pin blog of the week is Write to Me Often. So this is a blog I've only been following maybe a year, maybe not too much longer than that. And it's a girl named Zanyab. And she is Turkish. And the blog is she actually does a great job of making it accessible to everyone. She writes her blog posts in Turkish. And then I guess she just translates them herself or rewrites them completely in English. So there's basically two phases to each blog post she does. She's got a killer collection of pins. And not only has she been doing a bunch of awesome reviews for all of her fountain pins, she started into, in the past month or two, starting to do some kind of fountain pen tips. You know? Like she's doing a series on pen cleaning here recently. She's like on her third post for pen cleaning. But yeah. You want to be jealous of someone's photography and someone's pins. Go take a look at what she's doing. So, you know, that's a blog you guys should definitely, definitely be checking out. So we'll have that in the show notes if you're not familiar with this blog. Add it to your RSS reader. Add it to your bookmarks. Do something. Because she actually posts quite often. I mean, several, several posts a week. Very in-depth. Very beautiful. All kinds of pins that I just lust over and some great reviews. So definitely check out. Write to me often.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I like the backgrounds that she picks.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. It's all different. That's one thing, you know, I want to work on. Sometimes I get stuck in ruts because I'm so, you know, photo averse, I guess, that, you know, sometimes I get stuck and I need to change it up more. It would probably, you know, suit the blog better to have it mixed up quite often like she does. She does a great job.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' All right. So like we mentioned before, we didn't have a specific topic. So we reached out to our Twitter friends who within like five minutes gave me just like, I don't know, every question under the sun that was like every question was awesome. Like there was no like throwaway questions. Like every one I had to write down and I don't know if I'll get to all of them on this episode or not. But, you know, one of them we already handled talking about the NotCo idea doc we're doing for the index cards. You know, right after I opened up the floor for questions, Toffer said, talk about that damned idea cube that you won't let me give you money for yet. Mostly talk about how I can give you money for one. I know he's an index card fan. So hopefully we answered his question already. But a few of the topics were kind of pertinent to some things I've been working on recently.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' And just Davey B, who does, who is another pen blog we'll probably feature as a pen blog of the week, one of these days, he asks, custom grind fountain pen nibs, are they worth it? So this is a discussion, I think, more than just a one-off topic. And, you know, it may be something we have to revisit down the line. So the basic answer, I think, is yes, they're worth it. And the reason why is the reason why it's the same answer that people like to ask, why fountain pens? Just in the generic sense, as opposed to, you know, a gel ink pen or a ballpoint. Why fountain pens? And the answer to that, I think, is customization. I think the amount of customization you can do with fountain pens is endless. You know, I don't want to say that gel ink pens or ballpoint pens have been solved because they haven't. There's still new things coming out. But there seems to be a limit. There's only X amount of stuff you can do with a gel ink pen. You know, get it in a few tip sizes, get it in a few different colors. Then maybe, you know, in a couple years, they'll come out with a different barrel. You can put the same refill in.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Fountain pens aren't like that because of the, number one, just the range of inks you can put in.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Number two, the modifications you can do to the pens you already have. So this is where the custom grinding comes in. And to me, it's worth it because I have very specific things I like when I'm writing. I like two things. I like either a very, very fine line or I like a very blocky squared off line, like from a stub nib. So I have certain pens that I like, you know, whether I like, you know, if I like their barrel type or they're comfortable to hold, you know, they're great looking and it's a pen I want to use. But I may not necessarily like the nib that much. Well, I can get someone to fix that for me or not fix. Fix isn't the right word, but I can get someone to improve that experience for me. You know, take a pen I already like and make it even better for me personally. And that's what it boils down to. The custom grind thing is a total, totally, you know, personal thing. It's not something I recommend people just doing, you know, randomly. You know, just, you know, if there's a reason that you want a pen and a specific nib to write a certain way, then yeah, that's something you should look into.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I don't think everyone needs to do it. I mean, there's certainly a lot of, there's certainly not a lot of need for that. But if you're obsessive like me and I want certain things to write certain ways or feel certain ways, then it's something you should look into. And you can take a pen that you have that, you know, may not be, you may love how the pen looks and how the pen feels, but you don't love with how, you're not in love with how it writes. You know, for probably around $30, that's just a ballpark, what seems to be kind of a general fee for a lot of these guys that do nib work. You can completely change how that pen writes and change what you think about that pen. And so, are they worth it? To me, they are. But it's a very personal thing.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So, you know, that's something I think we'll continue to explore, Myke, on the podcast and on the blog. Because, you know, a lot of people haven't had the opportunity to do that.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Well, I haven't. I haven't done it yet.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Right.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Because I've yet to find, for me, I haven't found a justification, in all honesty. Like, I don't feel like I've purchased a pen that was expensive enough that I loved so much and didn't love the nib on enough that I wanted to change it. Right. You know? Yeah.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. And, I mean, that's totally valid. I mean, and that's how it should be. I mean, and a lot of people will say, well, I bought a pen for this reason and, you know, there's no need to change it. And that's, I mean, geez, that's completely valid. But, you know, if you want to, you know, kind of try some different things and, you know, see what other options are out there for nibs, for me, it's been absolutely worth it. And, you know, I've, I mean, it's really a small majority of my, a small number of my pens that I've had worked on. It's just a handful of pens. So, it's not like every pen that I get gets sent out for work. Actually, most of them don't. And, you know, a lot of times I will buy a pen specifically that I know is not the perfect nib for me. And with the intent to have it transformed into something else that I know is perfect. Like I just got a Pilot Custom Heritage 92. This is one I bought back in December. I bought a bold nib with the intent to make it into like a fine cursive italic nib. So, I purchased it with the intent of having it modified before I even inked it up for the first time. So, I bought it with a bold nib. So, when I sent it to Myke Masayama, I knew. I mean, I never even inked it up when I got the pen. I bought it. It arrived. Didn't ink it up. Packaged it up. And sent it to Masayama. Said, hey, here's what I want. And I just got it back yesterday. And it's really nice. So, I'll have more on that later. So, that's one thing. That's one option that I knew ahead of time that I wanted. Right? So, I planned on that. Now, the second thing, you know, I got a Lamy Studio, which I reviewed on Monday. So, I got that from JetPens. And I got an EF nib. It's a 14-karat gold nib. I didn't like how the nib rode. It was way too wide for an EF nib. I mean, it wrote like a bold nib. And I didn't like it. So, I knew. Well, that's a different scenario. This pen, I wanted fixed, basically. I wasn't going to use it in its current state. So, I sent it off to Sean Newton, who I wrote about in the blog. And asked him to turn it into like somewhere around a Japanese fine nib. So, that completely changed that pen for me. Right? Because it was a pen I was barely going to use before. And now, it's turned into a pen that's awesome. So, those are the type of things you have to consider.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Maybe part of it for me is that I don't have somebody that I know to do this. Like, you know, you have Masuyama, who you know is a good guy for this stuff. But I haven't. Just, I mean, I haven't looked. But I've, you know, I don't know the names of anyone. Yep. And that's. Because I would, you know, I would want to send it in the UK, obviously.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, for sure. And that's a big thing. You know, people doing it for the first time. They definitely want to have, you know, someone vouch for whoever's doing the work. Right? Someone with a good reputation. Some experience doing it. Someone that, you know, other people have used. And you can see what the work's like. And I think that's a lot of it. And, you know, I didn't. The first time I had any nib work done was at the pen show last year. The Atlanta pen show. So getting to do that in person for the first time that I had anything done was very helpful for any future, you know, any future work I've had done to where I've mailed off to certain people. And I would definitely recommend that if, you know, if you have the opportunity. Not everyone has the opportunity. But there's lots of people who do nib work. And you can get lots of good recommendations online, like on Fountain Pen Network and things like that, just to see, you know, who's doing good work for this style of nib that you want. So that's, I don't know. I feel like that's just barely scratching the surface of the topic. And we'll put a link in the show notes. It's Ivan from Inktronics just put a post up yesterday, as a matter of fact, called the DIY Dibmeister Part 1. So a lot of I haven't done this yet. And I don't see me doing it. But you never know. I've learned to never say never.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yes.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Especially on this show. But a lot of people do their own nib work, smoothing and adjustments. And this Ivan started a post to do a series on how he does some of this nib work himself.

'''Myke Hurley:''' So I can't imagine anything more terrifying.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I can't either. I don't want to put that on myself. I don't trust myself that much to be able to do that. But check that out because that's, and I just saved another post, I don't know, right before we started the podcast. Another blogger was doing some DIY nib work out there today. I'll put that. I've got it saved off for Inklinks this weekend. I don't have the link right in front of me. But, yeah, this is a popular thing because a lot of fountain pen stores sell, you know, little kits for you to at least do some smoothing and some cleaning. Maybe not some hardcore reshaping of nibs, but just some basic work. So, anyway.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' The next question is from Brian Schenker. And this one comes up a lot.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Gold versus steel nibs. Major difference. And are there circumstances to choose one over the other?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I still, to this day, even though I've been using fountain pens, I'm, in the grand scheme, I'm not very experienced with fountain pens. But I definitely feel like I'm still not able to completely articulate why you should choose gold or steel. So, from my experience, I've found there's not that much difference depending on the pen. Like, with gold nibs, you'll get a little bit more flexibility in, like, the full-size nibs.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' That's kind of about it. I mean, if you have a good quality steel nib, it's going to write just as well as a good quality gold nib. You know, when people ask me this question, I always send them the same link. And it's from Brian Gray at Edison Pen. And he has a post called In Praise of Steel Nibs. And it's worth reading. So, we'll put that in the show notes. And what Brian's saying is, you know, this is a guy who is in the fountain pen business. And, you know, he puts down the points of why you should choose steel or why you should choose gold. And, you know, he doesn't necessarily see lots of reasons to choose gold nibs.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' You know, he goes into a broader explanation in this article. And everyone should definitely read this. But just in my experience, I don't necessarily pick up a pen.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I don't choose a pen based on whether it's a gold or steel nib. I choose a pen based on whether it writes well, whether that nib writes well. Like, I would just as soon use, you know, a TWSBI EF steel nib as my Pelican gold nib. Because I like how they both write. I mean, there's no – I don't see that there's a huge benefit to having that gold nib necessarily.