Editing The Pen Addict 107/transcript (section)

== Pilot Urushi ==


'''Brad Dowdy:''' What else was in here? He brought back a really interesting – like, you know, I found the Pilot Urushi pen, which is, you know, $500 or $600. Very interesting. And then he brings back a Sailor multi-pen, like a ballpoint multi-pen, which was probably $5, which I find just as interesting as the Pilot because I've never seen a Sailor – a non-fountain pen Sailor pen. So I thought that was kind of interesting. And he bought a beautiful Nakaya. So, yeah, go take a look at his blog, The Unroyal Warrant – or excuse me, it's UnroyalWarrant.com. It'll be in the show notes. We're at 5x5.tv slash penaddict slash 107. And, yeah, he does a great job, great reviews, great photography, amazing pens. I'm just kind of jaw-dropping type stuff. He must have had quite the wallet stash heading over to Japan to come back with the pens that he came with. So it looks pretty good. All right, so Myke and I discussed this – was this last week where we discussed this? Possibly redoing the glossary edition, glossary from episode one of the podcast. It was within the past couple weeks. And I thought about it, and I wasn't sure how I wanted to do it. But I thought about it over the weekend, and I definitely want to break it down into a couple of different topics. Like fountain pens, they're going to have their own show. So we're going to hold off on that until maybe a week or two down the line, and I'll work on the fountain pen show. So I'll talk about them a little bit in this, but we're going to call this glossary version two. And we're just going to cover the general pens, you know, your standard off-the-shelf, from-the-store pens. You know, a lot of people are new to this podcast and are new to the pen world in general. Or, you know, they have an affinity for pens, and they're using pens like the Pilot G2 or the Uni Sino 207, and they want to find something different or better, but it's similar. So I wanted to do an episode where we kind of recap and reset the glossary and talk about some of these pens and talk about what you can expect and things like that. How does that sound, Myke?

'''Myke Hurley:''' Sounds like a great idea.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' All right. So the way I looked at this, at resetting this glossary, I wanted to come at it from the perspective of someone, what someone would consider or needs to consider when they're making a purchase. So that's most of the questions we get, right? So I get the question, hey, I'm a student. I'm taking a test, and I have to write an essay, and what type of pen do I need? You know, it's like we're like the beats music, that little, what do they call it, the list where you pick out the things?

'''Myke Hurley:''' The sentence.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, the sentence. I'm in the club. I want to get crunk with Myke Hurley and drink girly drinks and listen to indie music.

'''Myke Hurley:''' What is happening?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So people want to know what pens are going to be the best for their writing situation that they're in. So I kind of took it from that point, and I just want to go over the basic ballpoint, the basic pens, starting with ballpoints. And I just want to go over some general assumptions that you can take with you. You know, you can listen to this episode, and if you're trying to find a pen that fits your needs, you can say, okay, here's the things that I'm interested in. What type of pen is going to fit those needs for me? You know, these are not necessarily facts. There's always exceptions to all these rules. But you can take these general assumptions about all these pens, and that's going to handle about 95% of the situations you run into. So for ballpoint inks, ballpoint pens, it's an oil-based ink. So it tends to get a little bit messier than some of the other inks we're going to talk about, like liquid in comparison to liquid ink or gel ink pen.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' You know, a lot of people don't like ballpoint pens because they get messy around the tip, right? You're writing lines, and you get like a little blob of ink. That's the way a lot of ballpoint pens are. They're just the consistency of the ink makes that happen. It ends up getting messy, sticky. But on the flip side, a lot of people swear by ballpoints because they're probably the least finicky writing instrument. They're going to write in a lot of situations. You know, like if you're working outside or something like that, you know, a liquid ink pen is probably not going to do as good a job as a ballpoint pen. And it's going to handle the elements a little bit better.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' And, you know, it dries quickly in general.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Most of them are pretty smooth writers. You know, you think of something as famous as like the Bic Crystal or the Bic Stick. Those are the main ballpoints that I think of when I think of ballpoint pens. Those are the classic all-time great ballpoint pens. But they really offer, if you're doing a lot of writing, they offer actually a poor writing performance just because they're a little bit messy. The ink gets on your hands because it blobs up and you run your hand through it. So it's not the best for long writing. But I actually had a conversation with our friend Dan Bishop this weekend. He was actually giving me grief before he even knew I was doing this episode about my hate for basic ballpoint pens. And it's true. I mean, I personally don't have a lot of use for them. But Dan's point was, and I was actually well aware of this fact, is that many artists use ballpoint pens and many industrial designers use ballpoint pens because they can get a huge range of shading with them, almost as much as a pencil, if the artist is good enough. So you'll see, I don't know if you've ever seen, Myke, where like concept car designs, you see a lot of those type of designs. A lot of them are done in ballpoint pen. I've seen a lot of that happen. Or then you'll have artists that only work in ballpoint or mostly work in ballpoint like my friend Andrea Joseph, who is a fellow Brit like yourself. She does amazing ballpoint pen artwork and she's just perfected the art of getting all a huge range of color out of a single ballpoint pen. She's really amazing. So there is a lot to be said for ballpoints for different use cases. I think just for general writing, they're a pretty poor choice. But if you have very specific situations, they're a decent choice. You know, the refills last a long time compared to liquid and gel ink pens. It's probably the longest lasting refill out of the bunch. When you go to the store, the standard size you're going to run into is a 1.0 millimeter tip for ballpoints. That just seems to be what the majority of them are. You can find smaller. Sometimes you'll that's what most ballpoint pens. They'll call it the medium size and the medium will be 1.0. And then they'll offer a fine in some pens. That'll be 0.7 millimeters. So that's ballpoints in general. Next up is liquid ink pens, which a lot of people refer to as a rollerball. And this is a completely different ink composition. It's a liquid-based ink. And its benefit is that it gives you a really dark line. The ink soaks into the page, sometimes negatively. You know, they're definitely prone to bleeding and feathering. But it's a very deep, saturated ink color. It dries quickly or sort of quickly. A lot of left-handers use liquid ink pens because they do dry faster than a gel ink pen and are less messy than a ballpoint pen. So a lot of left-handers use liquid ink pens.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' But they do have a bleeding feathering problem if you're not careful about what paper you're using. And we'll have a whole other episode on paper coming up soon. And we'll talk about how specific pens react on different pages. But in general, liquid ink pens are going to bleed and feather more than gel or ballpoint ink pens. But if you're a fast rider or you're a lefty, this is something you probably want to look at. Because they do dry reasonably quickly. And they're not near as messy as some of the other pens can be.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' There's not a huge range of colors offered in rollerballs for some reason. I mean, they're there if you look hard enough. But there's not a huge range like you're going to find in gel ink pens. And even a little bit ballpoint pens. I'm not sure why. But if you go to the store, you're just going to see the basic colors. And the standard liquid ink pens. Like a standard liquid ink pen that I think of is the Uniball Vision. That's a classic one. And also the Pilot Precise line. The Pilot Precise V7. And the Pilot V-Ball. Those are all liquid ink pens. You're going to find them mostly in the 0.7mm tip size.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' And very few. Like the Pilot will come in. Pilot has some that come in 0.5mm tip size. And you're not going to find any that are... I don't know that I ever see liquid ink pens in 1.0mm. Just because it would just be a flood of ink onto the page. I guess Uniball Vision does a 0.8mm. And it's just... It's like you're writing straight through the page onto the next page. It lays down so much ink. Do you have a... As a lefty, if you're not using a fountain pen, what types of pen are you using? I know you use gel pens. But have you seen a difference, say, like between a liquid ink and a ballpoint ink? Do you have any experience with that?

'''Myke Hurley:''' I don't know if... What... Give me something that I have that has liquid ink. Like the Oter?