Editing The Pen Addict 163/transcript (section)

== Retro 51 Pens ==


'''Myke Hurley:''' That's great. That's going to help me out a lot. And also, like, why did I not know about this, like, this Retro 51 with, like, so it looks like a piece of wood with the heart in it?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yep, yep. That's you, man.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I didn't even know anything existed.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. That's a really cool one, Juliet. That's a really neat design how they did that.

'''Myke Hurley:''' That's probably not limited because it's a metal one. It's not. I don't know what you want to go out and say. Yeah, it's a standard one. I might grab one of those in the future. That's a quite nice looking pen. Yeah, yeah. See, this is what happens when I don't see your website for as much as usual.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Hey, Myke, FYI, I write a blog called PenAddict.com. I don't know if you've heard of it. I don't know if you've heard of it. Not sure if you've heard of it. On this blog, I wrote a review today of an ink I'm really happy with, a new brand for me, a brand that I've been watching online for a year or so called KWZ. I don't know if it's supposed to be Quiz or if it's just KWZ, how you exactly pronounce it. But it's a gentleman in Poland who's making these inks and he's been on Fountain Pen Network selling these inks for a year or two and they've gotten popular enough. He does a good enough job and the quality is high enough that he's starting to sell these inks to shops and Vaness Pen's got the KWZ inks and a good friend of the show, Lisa Vaness, sent me a sample of one called Gummy Berry in their Iron Gall ink lineup and it is spectacular. It's like the perfect shade of purple for me. It's like it's deep, but it's not black. And even when it dries, you can still kind of see the depths of the purple. It behaves really, really well. I love how it looks in my pen. I love how it looks on the page.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I'm extraordinarily happy with this ink and I'm going to get some more in DC when I go to the DC pen show because there's not a lot of Iron Gall inks that come in different colors. Black, blue, black and blue are the standards. Roaring Cleaner makes Scabiosa, which is one of my all-time favorite inks and it's kind of a purple. But KWZ makes turquoise and green and orange and all of these great colors in Iron Gall, which I do like. I like the lightness that goes on the page and then dries darker. I think that's a neat feature. Plus Iron Gall inks are waterproof. They really bond to the page as they dry. And so far, this ink is extremely well-behaved. It feels like a Diamine ink would in a pen, which is a high compliment. Diamine is a very standard ink. It's kind of, you know, the... I don't know, kind of right in the middle. It's the most moderate ink out there, probably. Most of their standard inks, anyway. There's some special cases to that, too. But I'm really, really happy with this ink. And how can you pass up an ink that's called Gummy Berry, Myke?

'''Myke Hurley:''' I like the look of this. It's a nice color. Yeah.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. So I definitely want to try the turquoise. The orange is actually pretty much brown, but I think it's kind of a neat color. I want to try that. It's just colors you don't see very often, and that kind of gets hard in inks, you know, when you're an addict like myself, and, you know, you have 20 different blue-black inks. Finding something different to make you branch out from your wheelhouse is hard to do. So I'm happy to see these different colors from KWZ, and I will be looking for more. So it's great. Very happy with it. I'm also very happy with our friend of the show, John Bemis. Another post you missed on the blog I write called ThePinAddict.com. Why are you being this way?

'''Myke Hurley:''' I explained the reason to you.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Now I have identified a problem. I will fix the problem.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Because it's fun.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' And I've had a lot of coffee, so, you know.

'''Myke Hurley:''' So I can tell something's going on over there.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I haven't been drinking like you and Casey.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Everyone check out the latest analog. You'll get the joke then. Mm-hmm. John did an awesome post called The Black Wing as a Gateway Drug. And I'm not going to bother recapping or reading any of this to you. You have to read this. John is a fantastic writer. Way better writer. Better storyteller than myself. Like, I can write about products. John can tell stories and anecdotes. And he did a really good job with some black wings in his office. And, you know, getting someone else involved into this pencil thing. And I think it was really cool. And it's worth pointing out in the podcast if you haven't seen it on the blog prior to this. Because it's really, really great. I read this several times over just because I like John's writing. And he's done some poems. And he's made some. He's done some other stories on the blog. So you shouldn't miss it at all. It's really, really great. So thanks, John, for allowing me to post your prose. It's wonderful. Thank you.

'''Myke Hurley:''' All right. I've got it as a tab now. It's an open tab here.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' All right. Cool. You can check that out at your leisure.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Or leisure.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Uh-huh.

'''Myke Hurley:''' That's what I would say.

'''Myke Hurley:''' All right. Let me take a break. Thank our second sponsor for this week. And that is Fracture. Fracture is a really great company that have a really great product. And I think that you pen addicts are going to love it. Fracture is transforming the way that people print and display their favorite images. And they do it in a really, really unique way. What Fracture does is very simple. They print your photo onto a piece of glass. Now, this isn't even necessarily as it may initially seem as to how fantastic this is. This is what you do. You go to their website, which is fractureme.com. And you upload a photo. You select the size that you want. They have a bunch of different sizes. They have five rectangle sizes that go all the way up to 21 by 28 inch. And they also have three square sizes as well. They use Instagram photos and stuff like that. You upload your photo to them. You choose the size that you want. And then they will print it. And they print it onto a piece of glass. And they're all printed in Gainesville, Florida by a small team there. And they're all checked for quality. Every single print is checked to make sure it looks fantastic. Then this thing will arrive to you. I've had them shipped from Florida all the way to my home in the United Kingdom. And I've had about six or seven. Every single one of them has come through fine. Not one problem. And what you get is a beautiful piece of glass with a picture that is printed directly onto it. So it is right on there. Right? So this doesn't look like when you put a picture in a frame. It doesn't look like that. Because this is like something completely different. It's like how if, you know, like maybe with your nice cell phone that you have, it looks like the screen is directly onto the glass there. And it looks like it's right there. Like it's all one thing. And that is exactly what fracture prints are. It is an absolutely beautiful way to display your photos. You don't need to put them in the frame because it is itself the frame. It comes with everything that you need as well. It has this nice foam back. And it comes in the box of everything you need to mount and display it. If you choose one of the small square ones, you can get a little optional stand that you can put the thing in. So you can display it on a desk. Otherwise, they will send you a screw and everything that you need right in the box. So you just put the screw in the wall. And you can just hang the picture straight on it. Right done. Just perfect. And these things are absolutely fantastic. I love them. I have bought them for myself. I bought them for gifts. I've had them sent to me as gifts. It is a completely unique and awesome way for you to display your own pictures. You will not have seen a picture displayed like this ever before. It is super, super awesome. And really, seeing it is believing it. And I want you to trust me on this. I know you guys, you buy stuff that we tell you to buy. Trust me on this one too. These prints are fantastic for pictures of your family, your friends, pictures of things that you make. I have podcast artwork and stuff like that I have as a fracture print. And these are great gifts for other people that you care about as well. Their prices start at just $15. And you can get 10% off your first order with the code PENADDICT when you go to FractureMe.com. And you can get started there. Trust me, go and get just one of these to start with. And then you're going to be hooked. Trust me, they're absolutely fantastic. You will want to put all of your favorite photos as Fracture prints. Thank you so much to Fracture for supporting this episode of the PENADDICT.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, I'm all over this. This looks awesome. And plus, you know, I need to go take a tour of the Fracture facilities. They're only about three, three and a half hours away from me. I can hook that up for you if you want. Yeah, we'll go take a tour, do some video, do some advertising for Relay.fm. But yeah, I'm happy Fracture is on board. And, you know, all of our internet friends talk about getting their podcast artwork done by this. I'm going to do that. And I'm going to get some stuff for Knop done for the shop. And I can see all my wife's beautiful photography getting Fractured as well. So this is sweet.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I love their company name.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I do too. They really killed it on that one.

'''Myke Hurley:''' It's just so funny because it's like, you know, Fracture is maybe a name you shouldn't choose for if you make things out of glass. And that's why it's so perfect.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yep. Yep. All right. Tease time, Michael. I got pinged a bunch of time on Instagram over the weekend that my friend Myke Bond that makes the TI2 Techliner that I enjoy so much. He's making an orange edition of the TI2 Techliner in a limited model. And they were only available. He put them up over the weekend. I don't know how many he had. Maybe 20 or so. But it's the TI2 Techliner orange crust. We'll put a link in the show notes. But we almost shouldn't because it's sold out already. And I did get one. I really like this pen a lot. And the orange looks really, really sweet. So I wanted to get that. I need to get you a Techliner one of these days. I've got one. You do have one? Did we give you one before?

'''Myke Hurley:''' One from Myke? You compensated my hard work in Atlanta by giving me one of the special camo ones.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Oh, you got the sweet camo one. Yeah. I don't even have one of those. But you know what? We have a new one of those coming out maybe this week or next week. It's going to be awesome.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Look at you.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So this is what your Uniball 307 refill can go into, Myke. And I use the Uniball RT1 refills. I'm actually using my Blackwash Techliner today. Myke was mad at me playing with it before the show started because it's kind of loud with the magnets. And I have the 0.28 millimeter blue-black refill in this Blackwash edition. Works great. And I'm excited to get this orange edition. It's got some special coating on it, which I don't even know what it means. Or the paint was done some special way. I don't know. Some kind of fancy.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Cerakote. Cerakote painted titanium pin body. So we'll go with that. But it's Orange Crush. And I'm happy I got one. So thank you, everyone, for sending it my way. All right. We got a pen blog of the week. And it's our friend Harry Marks at Curious Rat. And I wanted to point this out because Harry's not a pen blogger per se, but he's a writer. And writers know the value of pens and pencils. You know, they probably learned it when they were in school, Myke. And, you know, with the greatness of using a pen and pencil to get your thoughts down on paper. And Harry made a great post called Penciling and a New Passion just about more so the community around pens, pencils, and paper than the actual products themselves. And it's a really great read. And I wanted to point that out if you hadn't seen it. And he gives a shout out to us and the podcast and, you know, all of our online friends, Ed Jelly, Stephen Brown, all of our sponsors, and a bunch of the, you know, all the pencil guys at Erasable and Caroline Weaver. It's just a really, really great post about community. And that's something we very much believe in here at The Pen Addict. And it really is something special. And I thank Harry for writing this post because it was really, really good. So check it out if you have not. We will have the link in the show notes.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' All right, Mr. Hurley. I bought a lot and I've done a lot of reviews here recently. But you have something new you would like to talk about as well.