Editing The Pen Addict 388/transcript (section)

== Jonathan's Crafting Process ==


'''Myke Hurley:''' We just need, we need gifts of that.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I was thinking about making one. He, there's like in these molds, these silicone molds, and he sprays compressed air into the mold and the rod shoots up into the air and he catches it. Over and over again. He doesn't, like, so he has four in the mold and he catches each one without putting any of them down. So he ends up with four in his hand. Just, that's skill. That's skill right there. But what that shows you, though, is how much he does this.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yes.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Right? That he is at the point where he's realized for the milliseconds of time that it saves me, I won't even put these down. Another thing that this video showed me was I was surprised at how quickly he can make a pen. So it took two days, right? Mm-hmm. That tells you how many pens he must make if he is as backordered as he is. It's like if you say to Jonathan today, I want a pen, it could be, it'll be months until you get it, right?

'''Myke Hurley:''' I think we're at least six, if not pushing 12. I don't know. Right.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So let's say it takes best part of a year before you'll get it. But it takes him a few days to make it. That shows how many pens he must be making. Right?

'''Myke Hurley:''' See, I kind of, yes, I thought along the same lines, and I think I thought of it differently than you, that just how long it actually takes. And what they accomplished took, say, maybe eight hours, but that was like four rods and two of them got turned into a pen. And that was like, you know, eight hours worth of work. That's a lot of work for like singular type of product. Now, I know he can batch make bigger processes and things like that.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' It is because of that, which is why it takes so long. But it was still just a surprise to me that like you can't give him money and get one in two weeks. Yes. That's not how it works. Even though he could make it in that time. Yeah. If you said go, he would have it done. But the point is you put an order in and he has so many other orders to fulfill. Yep. That it will take you a year, maybe, until you get it.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah. So the thing I took away from the video was two primary things. One, Jonathan's attention to detail. When I notice someone making things, I tend to notice the smaller things. Like when he was mixing up the materials and he was pouring them from cup to cup. And then he was kind of wiping the edges with the cup. So it was like clean around the edges. And he would just do that out of habit, like every single time, instead of just kind of like splish splashing things around and things dripping. Like I noticed his particularness in the way he was handling his materials. And like, that's the person I want making my stuff, right? That they're that meticulous. Because you know, at the end of the process, if he's put all this time into it and it fails, you'll never see that product. Like he would never send out anything that hasn't met the high standards that he has for himself. And he's kind of, he talked about that a little bit in the video as well. Which like, I noticed the way he wiped the edges of the cups, like over and over again. I'm like, like, I get it. The second thing I noticed was how anxious I got once the timer went on. Yes. For, at least on the first one. On the second one, I wasn't as anxious because I'd already saw it once. And I was like, okay, they made it. But he starts a 15 minute timer when he starts mixing the first rods, which ended up being the Padre Sunset, which I think is just beautiful. Came out really good.

'''Myke Hurley:''' And so he starts this timer. And if you don't hit all these marks throughout the 15 minutes, you're basically wasting your time because your product will have to go in the garbage. And for that first pour and mix and build, I was stressed out watching it. Like my eyes, I was like affixed to the screen. I was like, I almost wish David put up a timer overlay on there. Although that probably would have added more stress to me. I was so stressed during that first 15 minutes. But Jonathan's like, man, we got a couple minutes to spare. Everything's good. We can go ahead and do this now. He was so calm and like chill. He's done this with thousands and thousands of times. So he's got it down to an exact science and you can tell. So it was a fascinating watch. So thanks, David and Jonathan, for doing that. I love seeing it.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, I was really pleased to see it. It's just a nice thing to see. There's still stuff that I want to see. I want to see the Urushi. I want to see how he does that. And maybe that's one of those things. Maybe he doesn't want to show that. I don't know. Right, right.

'''Myke Hurley:''' That's like a monstrous time lapse.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, and it's a newer thing that he's doing. There's one other thing I would have wanted. I would have wanted more slow motion shots of the pen. Yeah. Because slow motion shots of material being removed from other material was very satisfying to me. Yes. Yeah. So that was a really great video. And so thank you to David and Jonathan for putting the time and effort into showing that off. It's just a real fun thing to see.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yep. Yep. So this next product I want to talk about, Myke, is completely random that I popped it in here because I totally forgot that this product exists. But a lot of people love this product. And I wanted to mention that the 2020 standard memorandums are available. So this is a collaboration between John Contino, which is how I saw it. I follow his work online and I saw that he posted it. And Word Notebooks, which everyone knows about Word. They've been making notebooks for a while. And this product, I don't know, it launched five or six years ago. Every year they make this tiny little thing called the Standard Memorandum, which is based off a traditional like old like jacket pocket planner type thing. And I've had these and given these away. Like I could never use this product, right? It's too small. The format doesn't fit how I like to use things. But people live for these little books and they sell out all the time. So I just wanted to kind of flag this as a note that, hey, these things are available if you're into the Standard Memorandum. You probably already found out that it was available yourself. I did have to go off the Word Notebook site to find an interior picture to share with everyone to show them what they're about if you haven't heard of the Standard Memorandum. And it's a cool little layout. But I thought it was weird that Word doesn't take a picture of the inside of the notebook on the thing. So anyway.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Isn't that what you want to know? Kind of.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Because it's really it's a neat, lovely product. I would never use it. But I absolutely adore it. So like it's one of those weird. It's in that weird space for me. It's like I want to see this every year. And I want to stare at the pictures of it and go, ooh, I enjoy this. And let's see what fonts, you know, Contino designed for it this year. And okay. That's it. I'm done. I don't need it. Because I'll never use it. I think I've had one of these on my desk, you know, like years ago. And I was like, nope. I don't know that I ever got written in. Yeah. It's very cool.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' That product type just isn't my type of product.

'''Myke Hurley:''' It's very tiny. Like they took a picture of it next to like a tactile turn click pin. And it's almost like the click pin dwarfs it. You know, it's a weird little product. But super useful for some people. Some people swear by these. So it's very cool. I just thought I'd point that out.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, definitely.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' All right. Should we take our second break? Yeah, let's do it. All right. This episode is also brought to you by Pen Chalet. Pen Chalet have all of your favorite brands and all of their best products. We're talking about Pelican, Lamy, Pilot, Namiki, Sailor, Kafeco, Monteverde, and many more. They're an authorized dealer of all of them. Pen Chalet believe in giving you the best experience possible. They do fast, reliable customer service. They get their shipments out as soon as possible. And they do free shipments on orders of over $50 in the US and great shipping rates overseas. Pen Chalet has low prices on high quality pens and offer a 100% satisfaction guarantee. And it's not just pens. We're talking about everything you need in your stationary life. Carrying cases, pen holders, refills, ink, fountain pen converters, and so much more. And because Pen Chalet are amazing, they always have wonderful offers for Pen Addict listeners. If you go to penchalet.com, P-E-N-C-H-A-L-E-T.com and click the podcast link at the top of the website, use the password Pen Addict for this week's special offer and to get the code you need to save 10% on anything at Pen Chalet. And we have a selection of items this week, Mr. Brad Dowdy.

'''Myke Hurley:''' We have a wide and varying selection from the Conklin No-Sack. The materials on this look very cool. I haven't seen this before. It's this really pretty blue. It goes along with the silver trim. The Platinum Double Action Multi-Pen, which we've reviewed on the Pen Addict, which is a great multi-pin at a really good price. I noticed at the bottom, the Platinum President is also in here, Myke. That's kind of the bigger brother to the 3776, a little bit larger pen, a little bit different nib style. The price is really good. And they also have it in rhodium trim, which I didn't think was an option. So now I'll have to look into that a little bit further. So we'll see. There's always great stuff over at penchalet.com, especially this holiday season. So make sure you go check them out.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Go right now, penchalet.com, click that podcast link, use the password penaddict to get your hands on these offers. Our thanks to Penchalet for their support of this show and RelayFM.

'''Myke Hurley:''' All right, Myke. We finally happened. Finally happened. Did it. The Spoke Pen is now available at spokedesign.com. We finished our Kickstarter campaign, we being Brian Conte and myself. Early, mid-November-ish. Took a few weeks to reassess, rebuild the inventory, see what we had available, and got them up on the site, including, Myke, a few new colors and configurations for the Spoke Pen since the Kickstarter launch. So I just wanted to, one, say, hey, they're available, because I know a bunch of people are asking. And two, say thank you for everyone who supported not just the Kickstarter campaign, but getting these pens launched on the Spoke Design site. The biggest problem I have right now is I don't have all these for myself. I get true enjoyment out of using this product. Obviously, I'm biased because I helped make it, but I made it around what I wanted to use. It just makes me smile, Myke. And I'm not going to lie about it. I love this pen. I'm really desperate to get the new cyan and gray colors in the Crush series with the silver trim. So if you've ordered those and your package goes missing, just email me directly, and I'll take out the one that I'm using and put it in your box because I've stolen it, because I don't get one until you get them first. So is that fair to say?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' That's very fair to say. The Classic series has the black trim, so the black clip and the black inside. The Crush series has the silver trim, silver clip, silver inside. And then you have the Jet series, which is a colored body and a matte black cap, right?

'''Myke Hurley:''' And black grips. So it's not on the outside picture, but they have black grips as well. So like the Crush grips. The Crush has the titanium grips. So yes. And then we have a special edition, the Joker. We had some left. That one sold out quickly. We only had like a dozen or 15 or so of those. This is the best one. They went quickly. They will be back. All of the products we're selling right now are going to be stock items. Like if you missed out, like I know people missed out on certain colors, sold out quicker than others. You will have a chance to buy these. It's just we're selling these as we build them. We're not selling pins and then making the pins based on your order. We're pre-building the pins, putting up the inventory, and then selling them. So the inventory will be constantly rotating. Stock levels will be changing. So just stay tuned to the site. Follow the email. Get your notifications set for anything you're interested in. And thanks again. I know Brian and I really appreciate everyone's support. The kind words we've gotten throughout the campaign about people enjoying their pins and how much they like them has truly, truly been special to us. And we really appreciate it.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. I'm really pleased to see that it's moving on.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yep. Yep. It was time. We, you know, had a rush to get them ready. Get them ready for the holidays because we were a little bit behind on our Kickstarter. You know how that goes.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Shocker. Shocker. Right?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I've been in that situation.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Manufacturing is hard, Michael.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Please don't. I can't. I just...

'''Myke Hurley:''' So when I talk to you at the beginning of this episode about what we'll talk about in the future, like in a couple weeks from now, we're going to be talking about journaling and planning and diarying for 2020. So we'll get... So be prepared. I'm going to give you a couple weeks to get prepared for that.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I have to get mentally and emotionally prepared for what is going on in my life right now in regards to the physical journals that I'm producing.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Well, we won't pressure you at least until the next five questions, five seconds when I ask you a question about the theme system journal in this wonderful, glorious segment of Ask TPA. Mackie wants to know, I'm trying to get my life in order and have recently received in the mail two planner types. Number one, the theme system journal. Thank you, Mackie. Still sealed because I'm intimidated despite Myke explicitly telling me via podcast to just use it. We will elaborate on this in a couple weeks because I've been using mine still. And then the Hobonichi Techo Weeks in Houndstooth, baby. So we'll get to Mackie's questions, but great choices. This is my exact setup. So even if I... I haven't read the rest of this question yet, Mackie, but I will be talking about both of these products in depth in the coming weeks. Mackie continues. I'm relatively new to the pin hobby. A little over a year since I bought a Pilot Metro off the small box online retailer and have embraced fountain pens and inks in a bro hug. I like that. Not such a deep embrace that my wife monitors every purchase on the credit card, but a deep enough embrace that I have to check myself when I think I could just buy a Progear Vanishing Point and Lamy 2000 to see which one I like the best. This all seems random, but it does have a point. When I ramp up that courage to crack my theme system, I'm not worried about what I'll use to write in it. I have a lot of great options that I enjoy writing with. My question is here. For my Hobonichi 2020 weeks, I need a pen. I've considered a lot of different options from a Vanishing Point for clickability all the way to just a normal Jetstream for reliability. I keep coming back to the Tactile Turn bronze bolt action as a potential EDC, but since I haven't really explored the world of machine pens and gel refills, I'm worried I'll make a $100 mistake. I'm looking for something I can throw in a pant pocket or a bag, will be reliable when I need it to be, is interesting and fun to write with, and if I fall off the planter wagon, will still be in the regular rotation because it's awesome. I've been looking at things in the $100 range like the Tactile Turn and the Mark 1, but I'm definitely open to stretching the budget when it feels right. So, after all that long-windedness, what's your go-to planter pen? Is there a good way or a good place to pre-test refills before committing to a machine pen body? Is there something obvious I'm overlooking for an EDC planter pen that will work in the supermarket as well as the cube farm I work in? Finally, is the Schmidt Easy Flow 9000 that comes with a Tactile Turn 5.1 version a good refill? Thanks for your help. So, big question, but it boils down to simply this. I need a good EDC pen for my planner, for my Hobonichi Touch-Up. So, that's Tomoe River Paper, and right now, I'm using a spoke pen with a Uniball DX gel refill, .38 blue-black. I'm using a Pilot Hitec C, .3 blue-black. Both of those are gel pens, and I'm using a fine-nibbed fountain pen by Namiki Milky Way. So, you'll notice with those choices, I'm looking for small writing, because this is not a big format planner. The 2020 weeks is not, and I'll dig into more of what I'm using it for later. But with this planner, I'm okay with using your basic ballpoints, like the Jetstream, or your basic gel pens, like the ones I mentioned, or Zebra Souracic Clip. I would not overthink what body you're going to put those refills in, especially at first, if you're not sure. You can get a wide sampling of refill types for, you know, $10 to $15. Test those out in the basic model pens, and then we can determine if you like the tactile turn. Well, you can get the bolt action with the Schmidt Easy Flow is a great refill. You can get the tactile turns that fit the Pilot G2, which also fits the Pilot Juice. If you have, if you go with the one that fits the Easy Flow, it fits the Jetstream SXR. So, we can answer all of these questions, and I know I'm not giving you a single direct answer to this, because I don't think you should just like drop into the tactile turn and see until you figure out what pen type you want, and then we can figure it out. Maybe it's a fountain pen that you want because it's a Tomoe River paper, and that works great with fountain pens, and the ink looks very cool. So, maybe the answer is like a Kaweco AL Sport, which is like $60, $70, and you can use some cool ink colors, and it's a good throw-it-in-your-pocket EDC type pen. Or, you might end up falling in love with a .5mm Jetstream that you buy, like that's $3, and maybe that's the one that ends up working the best. So, yeah, I think I would work on trying to figure out which refill you want the most, because you've listed a lot of different options here. Then we can pick a pen to go straight into it. I wouldn't necessarily go right to the tactile turn or the Mark I and figure out what pen you want best.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Please use the theme system, John, if you own it. Yeah, totally. It is built to help you in that regard.