Editing The Pen Addict 482/transcript (section)

== Sailor King of Pen Price Discussion ==


'''Brad:''' it's 840 pounds. So, the conversion on the site right now is $972. I'm sorry.

'''Myke:''' The, the regular retail price, the RRP, is 931 pounds. Which is,

'''Brad:''' there's a reason Sailor's getting less coverage now because it's a less compelling product from a price, from a price point.

'''Myke:''' the, the RRP is $1,264. Yeah. I mean, it's probably VAT in that, so take 20% off, but, so over $1,000 is what they

'''Brad:''' think this should be. The minus VAT price I, I have converted is $972.30. It's $1,000. Let's just call it for,

'''Brad:''' it,

'''Myke:''' it, it's, I don't think that these are $1,000 pens. Like, I, the Sailor King of pen is an $800 pen.

'''Brad:''' I would, that's even a stretch, like.

'''Myke:''' But that's how much we paid for them

'''Brad:''' in the past, right? 7, 780. I mean, we've paid in the sixes before, but now we're into like a, this is a problematic area. I, I mean, maybe not for Sailor, maybe they're selling them, but, oh boy, like, it's, it really makes me feel uncomfortable.

'''Myke:''' Yeah, no, this is bad. Yeah,

'''Brad:''' so, this is, this is, like I said, this is your standard 1911 King of pen, which I think is a great shape. I have the tangerine in, in this color, and I, I love it, but I don't $1,000 love it. Boy, what could you do with $1,000? I, I'll be interested to see. So, Sailor did that big discount a month or two ago to clear out some of their old stock, I, I'm, which they've never done before. To, have a full, clear product line delineation with the, the new pricing. And I wonder if we're going to start to see some discounting on the new pricing if retailers are unable to move these at, at what they're asking for here. So, we'll see, it's something to watch. It's something I'm watching. So, we'll see. Um, it's, it's a lot. You know, I, I like the color. You know, I love the King of pen. I am not in that market anymore. And it was already like outrageously expensive. I just don't need another one at this price. Right? So, I don't need all the King of pens for a thousand dollars a shot. So, there you go.

'''Brad:''' Speaking of capitalism, wasn't this entire show.

'''Brad:''' I would like to point you to the new spoke icon releases and the new spoke axle releases. We finally got our new color, our barrel colors up. But most exciting for current customers, um, is the addition of our new grips and pin sleeves, if people are so inclined. So, we're happy at spoke to have made kind of a modular fountain pen where you can mix and match some parts. But we didn't have, you know, we're going through a long process, right? Yeah. So, we now can have a barrel with more color choices. So, we've added, um, British racing green. You, you, you're playing right to me there, aren't you? British racing green. Gun metal. Gun metal gray, cobalt blue, and lime are the new barrel colors. And then we added in grips and sleeves, in brass, and in titanium, and in brushed. And, there's different options now for our standard concave grip, which I really like. You can now get that grip with a groove at the bottom to have a better gripping area and less concave. Or, you can get a straight-sided knurled, grip. So, you can buy all of this stuff independently, right? And build, kind of build your own pen. Like, we're setting it up to where you can really customize it. Like, I'm using a British racing green pen with a brass grooved grip and a brass inner sleeve. So, it, like, changes the weight of the pen. It feels fabulous. So, um, people have been asking for these grip updates for a while. Um, some people thought they were a little bit too curved or a little bit too slick. And this is, uh, one of the ways we, we, uh, we changed it up a little bit and let you pick. And they come in a lot of colors, right? You can do different anodizing colors and things like that. So, we're having fun with the spoke stuff and it's looking great.

'''Myke:''' Oh, it's looking really great. Uh, I love these new colors and, uh, offering more, more, more parts for the modularity aspect is really cool. Yep. Really.

'''Brad:''' And now breaking it out so you can buy those things separately, right? Yeah. We had to start to where we could manage it and see how it goes at first and kind of kit everything up. And now we're, we're going to make it so you can customize, um, some different parts and add on some different parts. Um, at the end basically. So yeah, it's cool. So that just, uh, dropped yesterday. I know everyone was excited about these grips. So I wanted to mention that and they, they, they turned out well, obviously. I mean, heck, I mean, I'm part of the company. Of course, I think they turned out well, but they, they really did.

'''Myke:''' Well, you're doing a good job over there.

'''Brad:''' All right.

'''Myke:''' All right. Let's take a second break and then I'm going to get into talking about, about something that I've been up to. Yep. Sound good. Sounds excellent. All right. This episode is also brought to you by our friends at Harry's. If you're heading back to the office, you know, maybe it's time to start thinking about getting back to that fresh, clean business. Look, Harry's can help. If you don't know Harry's, it's time that you do. Harry's was created to be different from other shaving companies and they craft high quality, long lasting blades, durable weighted handles that make a close, comfortable shave, quick and enjoyable. And because Harry's insists that you shouldn't have to choose between a great shave and a fair price, they just give you both. With refill blades starting as low as $2, it's an easy decision. And new Harry's customers get their starter set, which includes a five blade razor, weighted handle, foaming shave gel with aloe and a travel cover. So a $13 value, you get all of that for just $3. Plus Harry's offers a whole range of amazing face and body care products all delivered right to your door, right to Brad Dowdy's door, right?

'''Brad:''' The blades are the best. Like that's the key, right? They give you this awesome shave. I, I mean, here's, here's what happened in my house just yesterday is I'm, I'm in the other room and I just hear Brad. And it was my wife. She was, um, you know, in, in the bathroom preparing, you know, for her day or about to take a shower. And she needed a new blade for her handle. And I stashed them because, you know, they're so good. Like you gotta, you know, you gotta, you gotta treat these blades with the respect, right? You can't just be flinging blades around everywhere. So I had to, I had to get her one out of the stash and then she was, she was very happy about that. But yeah, they're, they're the best. That's why the, the entire Dowdy household is, is all about the Harry's blades.

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'''Brad:''' Ooh, boy.

'''Myke:''' So some time ago, some time ago, I think this was actually back in January. a friend of the show, CY, Tokyo station pens, wrote a great blog post called the anatomy of a stacked nib. I don't know if we spoke about this in January, but we, this is, we spoke about this post, right? Like we went through, spoke about it and linked to it.

'''Brad:''' Yeah. Then I think they talked about it, uh, him and Jacob on the Tokyo Inklings podcast. And, you know, basically the, the question came up about our, what are our thoughts on these stacked nibs? You know, would they work for us personally? So, yeah, that's kind of how it got started. Just us thinking about them commenting on their blog post and podcast, and then us thinking about it.

'''Myke:''' And I think we were talking about some of the sailor ones.

'''Brad:''' Yeah,

'''Myke:''' for sure. And so, you know, at that point I was intrigued because I, I've always seen these and I wasn't too sure about them and was like, Oh, you know, one day I think I would like to try one of these things, but I, you know, I don't really know where to start. Um, I think it was back in June actually, maybe.

'''Brad:''' Yeah, it was, I know the, the, our discussion wasn't back in January. That's when his, like the original, one of his posts.

'''Myke:''' You know what? I just, cause I Googled the pen addict stack nibs as well. I was talking there. And this was an Andrew Kuhn wrote a blog post. That's what it was. The blog post. Yeah. And then we also started the ball rolling. Yes. So all of these things have been spoken about before. Uh, but this was, this was, uh, some months ago. And I was saying that this would probably be something that I reckon I'd be interested in. Cause I do like, like broad nibs. I like stub nibs, that kind of stuff. And I was intrigued about a nib that could write, you know, both sides, different, uh, line widths and stuff, but kind of came down on the fact of like, I'm too nervous to, to just go ahead and buy one of these things, especially when I can't see them, can't try them. So it was like, you know, maybe later on some point in life, uh, I will come back to this. Right. And take a look at it again. Uh, maybe when I can go to a pen shop, then, uh, some days later, uh, CY, the aforementioned CY of Tokyo station pens, uh, ended up reaching out to me and offered to be both my guide and enabler in stack nibs. We went back and forth a bit over DMs, trying to work out a little bit of what I might be interested in. Then CY went ahead and got to work on making a selection of nibs for me to try. So, uh, CY, uh, I have some quotes from CY, just, I wanted to make sure I got all the, the technical parts, right? So, uh, CY said to me, all the nibs are welded using a jewelry welder. Uh, I weld the nibs only at the tines, just like how sailor has always done it. And I do so by cutting away the rest of the nibs. The first step is to shape the two tines to be the correct shape while also making sure that the nib can stack flush to the bottom nib. So that's how they kind of put together. And so CY put together a selection of stacked nibs from scratch that I could try. Ultimately he sent me five, five, five. Well, I mean, I guess it's kind of like 10 nibs total, um, to try out. And so I received this package, which I was pretty nervous about. Yeah. Uh, it came over to me and I, and I, I kind of sat down. I was pretty scared of it, to be honest. I think I had all these nibs and they were, it was in a, uh, I think too small of an envelope really like in my mind, but they were nicely packaged.

'''Brad:''' Um, and I was like the, uh, briefcase, like handcuffed to the person who flew them over here. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

'''Myke:''' And it was like one of those things where like, I was excited, but intimidated. Like I put it off for a couple of days to do anything with them. You know, like I kind of looked at them and didn't know what to do. Cause it was, it's a lot of work gone into it and a lot of cost of material. We know we're talking, I believe it was like a selection of platinum. And I don't know if there was sailor nibs. They might have been platinum nibs, uh, but varying like shapes and sizes, you know, all like gold nibs. So that's a lot of expense,

'''Brad:''' right? It's a lot of materials expense and a lot of time expense. We're talking, like just the, these nibs, I mean, or, you know, three to $500 per nib, I would say something like that.

'''Myke:''' There's something I wanted to check now, which I'm going to look through the DMC. I want to see like when CY started on them and when they were shipped out to me. I think that would be interesting. So I'm going to scroll back. Yeah. DM says probably going to take a little while.

'''Brad:''' That's all right. Just so Myke told me this was happening and I said, okay, don't tell me anything else because I want you to talk about this on the show because I'm curious because this really isn't for me. Like I would test them and review them, but I really don't have any space in my library to acquire one of these pens. Cause I, one of these nibs, because I wouldn't use it enough to justify the cost, right? It's not my writing style, but the people who do enjoy these nibs, like Andrew, who wrote the post on the pen, I like that we'll link in here. You know, that's like his style. Like he loves exploring this type of writing, this type of nib, this type of technical work and craftsmanship. And like, it's a very unique thing. And I was glad that Myke kind of leaned into it a little bit because I don't think that I would have done it justice because it's not really like, I know me and my writing style. And it was like, you know, I don't think I would do it justice to talk about it.

'''Myke:''' So the process that the conversations began in the beginning of July and they were shipped out at the end of August. So it was the best part of two months for this whole process. Yeah. And there was one nib in here, at least I'm going through it now, which was a triple. Most were doubles, but there was a triple. Okay. And I do think that they were, were platinum nibs. They were all platinum nibs. CY. I just remembered, CY actually asked me whether I would want to try sailor or platinum or I said platinum, which I think he was happy with because I think it was, it was better for him to work on those.

'''Brad:''' Yeah. I think he has better access to them. And plus he wanted to know, Hey, what's like, if you did like these, what type of pin is it going to go in? And you kind of had an idea.

'''Myke:''' Yeah. And so we went through that together just to make sure that it would, work out. So I had these five nibs and I didn't really know what to do with them. Like what I knew I didn't want to do was put them all in pens. I knew I didn't want to do that because I wasn't confident that I had five pens that they would go in well and work well. And I didn't want to ink them all up. I was worried about like damaging them, honestly. Right. Sure. Sure. Because I had to ultimately put these things into pens. Right. So I was pretty nervous about that. Like I know how to do it. I don't have a ton of practice with it, but I also like, I don't know, like are these more delicate? Like I didn't, I didn't want to mess around with it. Right. Right. So what I ended up doing was I, I took the nibs themselves and I just bit them into an ink and used to hold it. Cause they all came in nib units. Right. So they were all like, you know, they were all with, with nib units and I would just drag them across the page.

'''Brad:''' They had like the feed and the collar and the housing was all there. So yeah.

'''Myke:''' Yeah. So I just like dragged them across the page and like checked it out. Right. Like how does this feel just from a basic level to like, does this feel like something I might enjoy using? Right. So I did that a little bit as if they were kind of like dip nibs that I was holding in my fingertips. Right. Sure. And I, and I settled on a couple that I, that I really liked. I think there were three in total. And so I put them into pens, properly ink them up and gave them a fair shake and then ended up settling on two that I liked the most. And what I wanted to do was to like really give them a try over a couple of days of usage to see if I would like them or which I would like. I ended up going above them. So I have two. I bought two of them. Nice. I think it just makes more sense for me to say that now so I could talk about the rest of what I did.

'''Myke:''' Yeah. And so I had like the three that felt good and I ended up picking two of them after a day or two. Okay. And I, and I picked a couple. So the pens that I decided to put them in, I really wanted to put one in my fancy, my fancy platinum, my 3776 galaxy starlight. this is the one that had the broken nib. And it was always a nib that I was never as pleased with as my other 3776. The nib was really nice, but I believe it was, it may have been fine or medium, but it just didn't feel as good. Like it just wasn't a smooth feeling. It was great, but I preferred my nice LILAS to the galaxy starlight just from a, just a pure performance of nib. Yeah. You know what it was? That was medium because my nice LILAS is a broad and, and I think that it was a medium, but it was like a, uh, like a firm medium. I think that's, is that what the, the platinum have that where it's like,

'''Brad:''' not medium fine. They have a soft fine. I don't know if they have a medium. I think they, they might have a medium fine. I don't recall. Right. But anyway,

'''Myke:''' it's like a medium nib. I don't, obviously don't have it in front of me now because it's got this stuff and they've been it instead. Um, and so, and then I also went with my canalea Haleakala silhouette, which is the yellow and black and gray. Nice. Uh, because I knew that these would fit both, uh, both platinums and also the, the whole nib unit itself would, would be YOWO compatible. So I kind of decided to just choose between the two of them. Uh, Tony's saying they do not have a medium fine nib. I don't know. It's a medium nib. It's fine, but it's, yeah, as in like, it's okay. Yeah. It's not, it's not as nice for me as the experience I get from my broader one. So nib one. So I've got, uh, I've got images in the show notes. I took some photos with the new macro option on my iPhone. Uh, nib one. I've got, let me, let me, uh, explain to you. This is some information that came, uh, from CY. because basically I, I said to him, like, I'm not going to accurately understand or like accurately describe these nibs. Mm-hmm. So I asked if he would help me with a description of them. Like, I can tell you what they feel like to write with, but I, I didn't, I wanted the like recipe as it were. Yeah. Right.

'''Brad:''' Cause I'm looking at the side shot of this nib and I have no idea what's going on. Exactly. It's amazing.

'''Myke:''' Right. Yeah. They, they, they are serious, but I don't, I can't really explain to you how they're made. So that's why I asked for help. So this is the first one. This is this one, uh, with the music nib as a base is tentatively called the pyramid of Mount Fuji. This was fun for me. Cause I put it in the silhouette, which is a mountain in Hawaii. Nice. So it had a kind of mountainy vibe. It's made by layering a coarse nib onto a music nib. The stacking method is done by flattening the top of the music nib and flattening the bottom of the coarse nib. The difference in the number of tines creates a maze like stacked tipping, which gives ample area for ink to pool between the tines. The triangular shape gives some variation when writing quickly and is well suited to create the teardrop triangle shape for Chinese or Japanese characters.

'''Brad:''' I mean, this has me more interested than I ever thought I would be in getting a big, broad stack nib like this. This is fascinating to me. I mean, I know we got a long way to go in this, but just like, see why. Thank you for giving us like the time to, to put this together and all these descriptions and just to help us learn about this. It's like my head's exploding over here in like a really good way. Like I, I am now like starting to see what's happening here and it's really kind of blowing my mind.

'''Myke:''' So you'll see there's a reason that I ended up choosing the two that I've chosen because they have slightly different characteristics. So this nib for me, I don't know if it's intended to, to do this, but for me, it doesn't really work very well flipped over because, you know, like a lot of music, like stacked nibs. They're like made in such a way that you can use them all both sides. Right. I'm not sure if that was an intention of this or maybe it was never intention of CY for this to be done. But what I like about this nib specifically is it lays down the chunkiest of lines. It is amazing. I currently have it inked with Sailor Ink Studio 141, which is a really great yellow. And it, I believe this will be like, if I ever got an ink and I want to show some shading in that ink, it's this one. Yeah. Because it, it lays down a lot of ink, but not in an unmanageable way. Right. Like it really does a very nice job of giving me a controlled thick line. Like it's not like the page isn't soaking wet afterwards. Right. I can still write in a normal notebook with this. You know, it's got much more control to it than even say a stub nib. But at the same time will give me a lot of ink variants. So I think it looks fantastic. People in the discord are asking for an example of what it looks like on a page. I will do that in a little bit. So I'll show you like both, both of them. So I'll put a link to that in the show notes too.