Editing The Pen Addict 503/transcript (section)

== Shown Design Pens ==


'''Brad Dowdy:''' All right. Next pen, Myke. Just unboxed yesterday on the Twitch stream. And, actually, I need to see if the for sale link is live. The shown design 10th anniversary ballpoint. I can't believe it's been 10 years since. I don't believe that. Oh, that's so true. Right? Right? That can't be true. Well, it can't be true because Ian's only 10. Right? Oh, don't do that. Like, he didn't make these. He's young. He's a young lad.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah, but, you know, people that are younger than you don't want to hear you say their children. I'll tell you that. Right? I haven't been that person.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So, I'll never forget. And I wrote about this when I finally reviewed my first shown design ballpoint pen. That the original Kickstarter I passed on because I didn't think the pen was necessarily, like, perfect for me. Like, you know, I really think about, like, I buy a lot of stuff. Like, I don't want to, like, say, like, I have some form of restraint. I really don't. But I do try to consider, like, hey, if I'm going to buy this, am I going to use it? And I thought at the time, it's like, well, you know, it's got, you know, uses the Fisher Space Pen Refill. And I've got a space pen. And I kind of have some other pens that are this, like this. And, you know, I thought at the time they were going to be a little bit heavy. Right? They were, you know, a lot of brass. And I don't know if aluminum was part of the first one. But then I finally got an aluminum version of it. And I think it was maybe, like, brass and stainless at the beginning. I can't remember. This is terrible content because I should have looked it up beforehand. So I finally got an aluminum one to test. And I was like, oh, this is what I want. But now the way Ian is manufacturing these brass pens, which I have this 10th anniversary ballpoint in my hand. He sent it to me ahead of launch, which is today. We'll put the link in the show notes if it's up.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' It is lighter than I expect from a pocket brass pen while still having a good heft. Like, I don't even question the weight of this pen when I use it. So what the 10th anniversary ballpoint is, I guess I should explain. It's a little more than a ballpoint. And it shows, you know, the steps Ian has made to build and improve shown design. You know, he's into fountain pens now. And he's using different materials than metals. And he does a lot of really cool experimental stuff and does a lot of really wild anodizing. And that's where we first, like, really went off the deep end. You and I at that DC pen show when we bought the Dexter and the Lisa Frank and all these pocket pens with these wild anodized. So what this 10th anniversary is, is it comes with basically three different front end sections. So it's the traditional ballpoint pen shape, right? So the small pocketable ballpoint pen comes with a ballpoint grip, comes with the Schmidt Easy Flow refill, the Parker style refill. That's a really great ballpoint. But then you also get a front end section. You just swap these at the grip section. You just unscrew them. That has a rollerball tip, which is the fountain pen compatible rollerball tip that Schmidt makes. So I've talked about these on the show before. They are a rollerball front end, but the back side of the refill has an international cartridge fitting. So this fits short international cartridges. You just pop them on there. That's what I was most interested in using. It also comes with a fountain pen front end, right? So it's got a concave brass section with a number six size fountain pen nib. So it's got all these different parts. Like he went all out for making this pen. And it's all brass materials. And again, just kind of hot swappable sections. I went for the rollerball mic because I have not tested one of these in a while. And in general, this is a very tough sell for a lot of people. In the past, and I don't know what other companies use, but like Kaweco, for example, made a rollerball classic, like the pocketable plastic sport or classic, whatever they call the model. And you just pop in the international cartridge. And it was a bad experience for me, right? The fountain pen ink and the ball in the rollerball tip were not really compatible as far as smoothness, skipping, all of that stuff. So a lot of people are always looking for these type of pens. And Jay Herban made one. And Jay Herban. And it was generally poorly received as well. And I don't know who their tip manufacturer was. And this is years ago. And then recently, Monteverde started using this. And people started liking them again, saying, hey, these actually work. And I haven't gotten around to testing one of those. You know, it's actually a good experience using a fountain pen ink cartridge and a rollerball tip. So these Schmidt front ends, I've had one sitting at the house for a couple of years that Jonathan Brooks gave me at one time. And just never really was compelled to use it. So this was my opportunity to say, and Ian sent me this for free. I had no charge. Disclaimer.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So I, you know, I use Ian's ballpoints and Ian's fountain pens pretty regularly. So like I'm covered on that. This was a newer experience for me. I popped in a Faber-Castell olive green short ink cartridge, short international cartridge in this pen. It writes wonderfully. Like I am, it's one of those ones. I was like, okay, let's see how this goes. And I popped it in and go, huh, like that's pretty good. Like it is really smooth. The line is good. It's like a, you know, it's like a 0.7 millimeter line, something like that. Even like there's a couple of different tip sizes. I haven't explored them both. There's a 0.5 and a 0.7. They're not marked. I was like trying to inspect them to see if I could tell the difference and even got my loop out to try to see if there was a tip size difference on the front end. It was really, really hard to see.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' But so I just went with whatever this one is. It writes about, I don't know, it's probably between a 0.5 and a 0.7 line. I'll try the other one later. It is shockingly good. Like I'm going to do a post just to talk about this tip. And who makes it? Much less Schmidt. It's a Schmidt one. It is a Schmidt part that a lot of companies use that you can just buy to build around. You know, just like the Schmidt knock that we all dislike, right? Yes. That a lot of companies use. You know, they make other mechanisms and parts for people to use to build things around, right? So this is just like a front end tip. And it has to have, you know, it's not hot swappable with like fountain pen sections and other random things. It has to be built, you know, for the diameters of this little part. Yeah, I am into this. So now I have like a rollerball pen with the fountain pen ink colors. Like we talk about this from time to time, how people would like that experience and to have something good.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I am in. Like I will be, I am compelled to review not just this pen because it's the 10-an anniversary pen or because Ian gave it to me and expects me to review it. He does not. He doesn't care. He's just a nice guy. But I am actually compelled to discuss this Schmidt mechanism because so far it's only one ink and one test. It really works well. And I would be interested to see if it continues to work well with other inks, right? There's definitely going to be some question whether, you know, did I just get like the accidentally make the perfect ink selection, right? With the ink formulation to roll smoothly from the ball tip. But yeah, like I'm thrilled with how this is. And by the way, I get to use it in the really cool shown pen that I have, right? Yeah. So like that makes the experience like even better. Like if it was just in some random plastic stick, you know, I don't know that it would be cool, as cool or as enjoyable as this. But, you know, this great brass barrel with a, you know, a great grip section and just cool design and just exquisitely made. And Ian's doing the stamping now, the name stamping on the barrels. It's really clean. So congratulations, Ian. Yeah. Amazing.

'''Myke Hurley:''' 10 years. I cannot believe it. I know. Also, it's an achievement to have built this business and it's still be around for a decade. That's a really special thing. Yeah.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Ian's a special cat. And this is just shows like he's got what it takes to make a success out of this business. His head's in the right place. His designs are elite and the quality is phenomenal. And I just can't praise him enough and all the products that he makes. I'm a super fan. So thank you, Ian, for sending me this. Congrats on your 10th anniversary. And I will be talking about this ballpoint, this rollerball tip regularly. So, yeah, we'll have to put the other, the ballpoint and the fountain pen tips in storage here for a minute while I play with this rollerball. Who knew, Myke? Who knew?

'''Myke Hurley:''' All right. We've got another sponsor for this week's episode. New sponsor. It's Topofolio. This is a Kickstarter project. It's called the Topofolio that we're talking about today. It's a tech case designed by a fellow pen addict listener and stationary blogger, Myke Lynn. The folio style case includes very unique and fun, I think, magnetic inserts. They come in a variety of styles that are designed to help your analog and tech gear all be both interchangeable and neat and orderly. It is designed with input from hundreds of tablet users. It's made to adapt and carry almost anything you might need in your daily working life. It's made to adapt and carry almost everything you might need in your daily life. It's made to adapt and carry almost everything you might need in your daily life. I think the adaptability of this case is so smart because you could have a bunch of these inserts and they're all set up, ready to go. And depending on what you're going to be doing in a day, you can just grab the ones you need. They're magnetically attached within the folio bag case and you're just ready to go. I think this is super cool. Right, Brad? I know that you were really excited about it. We were talking about it before the show today.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. So I saw this. So Myke and I don't necessarily, this is behind the scenes. We don't necessarily discuss like all the ads that are in there. Myke goes and puts like the details we need in the show notes. I'll write the show doc and then Myke will circle back around and put in the links. And I saw this link in there this morning. I was like, hey, what's this? And I was like looking at the link. And I had found this independently just yesterday or maybe it was Monday because I follow Myke and I follow original content books in my RSS feeds for all my pin blogs that I talk about. And I'm always linking to original content books because, you know, they do great reviews, product reviews and fun stuff and always do a nice job. And he posted about this topofolio and I spent some time looking at this. I'm like, yeah, yeah, I like this. I'm going to back this when it comes out. And, you know, it looks like something interesting. You know, I like bags. I like, you know, this type of construction. I like these types of ideas on how things work together. So it's like, yeah, I'm totally in for this. And independently from that, by the way, they were sponsoring this show. So I had no idea that these were going to be co-joined, if you will, Myke. But I'm a backer. Yep. I think this is interesting. I like the size. I like the adaptability of the inserts. Each insert kind of has a different purpose. You know, I think just looking at it, you know, I will have favorite inserts as opposed to like, you know, like the standard pen and notebook type of insert as opposed to like, say, the 30 pencil insert. But that's the cool part about it is I'll use it my way. You'll use it your way. And someone else will use it their way. And I think that's the interesting piece of the topo folio is that if you're an urban sketcher or something, you load this up with your pencils and paints and your notebooks. Or if you're me going to work at a cafe, I'll load it up with, you know, my iPad and, you know, my journal and then some pens. It's the pens and notebooks. Right. And all I have to do to change these things out is just kind of pop them out like they're magnet type of a folio insert. So it's really cool. I like seeing Myke do this. I like seeing people in the community make things. And I'm very, very interested in this. So I have backed it myself. So, yeah. And that was pretty cool that they chose to advertise on the pen addict. I had no idea. So this was cool to see today.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah. Obviously, because Myke is a pen addict, you know, there's tons of great, well-engineered space for all of your favorite pens. You know, you've got that taken care of.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' All you got to do is look at the product shots of these products to know if they're a pen nerd or not. So hidden in the very top left corner of, like, the main image is a Kuhn masterpiece, which is, like, a very unique and expensive sharpener. There is the James brand click pen, which is the white pen you see in here with the little lanyard attachment. So, like, these are the little nerd-level high things that I notice when people are doing products. And, like, I really, really appreciate that. So it's cool.

'''Myke Hurley:''' The case uses recycled plastic bottle fabric called Reprieve. This has an exterior slate gray color with a bright orange interior. You know we love orange. These colors were inspired by perfect sunrises to capture some of this early morning feeling into the case design. You can support the Topofolio Kickstarter project right now by going to originalcontentbooks.com slash topofolio. That is originalcontentbooks.com slash topofolio. There'll be a link in the show notes as well, so you can go and check it out for yourself. Our thanks to Topofolio for their support of this show and RelayFM. All right. We're going to hit some ass TPA this week. You bet. You bet. The first one comes from Tom, who says, I finally found a fountain pen that plays well with my field notes notebook. A fine nib, Kaweco Sport, and I'm using a Midori blue-black cartridge. There's no bleeding, feathering, or anything like that. Is it the pen or the ink that is making the difference?