Editing The Pen Addict 55/transcript (section)

== Nibs ==


'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, I do, but I don't reuse it for a while. I bought the wrong nibsets.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Okay. What did you buy? Medium?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Uh, yes.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah, that's what I thought.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I should maybe try and go back and try that again. I haven't.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah, I mean, medium still, it's pretty fine and that's a, that's a whole topic we'll cover. We'll maybe save, uh, we have a whole conversation around nibs, um, that we'll do, we'll save for maybe next week, something like that. And we'll have a long discussion about nibs and just to reiterate some points that we've made in the past. But, um, the Prera, the Prera has come in fine, medium, and broad nibs for years now. And they just introduced, well, I, JetPens just started carrying. I don't know when Pilot actually introduced it. It could have been in Japan this whole time. And it was just never carried in the States. But they introduced, JetPens now carrying a nib called the Calligraphy Medium nib. And this piqued my interest big time. One, because I don't have one of the Prera clear body pens, you know, the demonstrator type, the see-through. And I've always thought that was a beautiful looking pen. And I've never bought one. I've just held off and held off because I've already got two. I've already got a fine nib Prera and a medium nib Prera. I didn't necessarily need, it would have just been another fine nib in the, the clear body. But once the Calligraphy Medium nib came out, I was like, oh, that is really cool. I got to have that. Because as I've found, the more I've gotten into fountain pens, I'm liking the, I can't use a broad nib, a standard broad nib. But I love stub and Calligraphy and Italic type nibs, you know, that kind of squared off nib.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' You're crazy.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I think, and it is crazy. It works well with my print style handwriting. That's a good, you know, one of the challenges that we all have when we're trying to buy pens and why I get so many emails is what's the best pen for me. Sometimes it's, it's trial and error. I would have never thought that a stub nib or a Calligraphy nib would be a really good fit for my style of handwriting. I was always extra fine, fine. And now I love writing with this type of nib. So when this one came out, I definitely had to order one. So I've just got it. It should be here. Gosh, it might be here today. It should be here soon. And I'll talk about it more once I get to use it. But I'm excited about it because it looks like a pretty narrow nib. They call it a medium nib. It looks pretty, compared to the other stub nibs I've used. Like I've got a TWSBI 580 1.1 millimeter stub. And I've got a TWSBI mini 1.5 millimeter stub. This looks smaller than the 1.1 millimeter. So I'm really, really anxious to get it in my hands and see what it's all about. So have you ever had the opportunity to use a different type of nib? Like a flat nib? Like a stub or a calligraphy? Anything like that?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I haven't. It's making me feel like I should try it out. These Prera... I mean, but the thing is with that, though, I don't really do a lot of ink testing. So I probably wouldn't use the pen very much. I can't imagine you would use a pen like this as a daily driver.

'''Myke Hurley:''' You would be shocked. Oh, really? You'd be shocked. Yeah, I got my vanishing point, my old school vanishing point modified at the Atlanta pen show. It was a medium nib. And I got Myke Masuyama to turn that into a stub nib. I use it constantly. It's one of my... It's one of the top two or three pens I use on a weekly basis. And I use it just for regular writing. You would be shocked. Especially... You wouldn't want to use... I wouldn't want to use a super, super wide one, like the 1.5. Even the TWSBI 1.1, it's too broad for just regular writing. But the smaller width ones, I think, work well for everyday writing. And I'm thinking that's along the lines of what this one might be. When I get it in my hands, I can't wait to see.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' These clear Preras are even nicer looking than the original ones. And they remind me a lot of TWSBI's.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah, I think they're beautiful. For years and years and years, I've always wanted one of these. It was really difficult to pick which color I wanted because they all look great. Which color would you have gone with?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I would go for either orange or green. Yeah, gosh.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I couldn't narrow it down. I had orange in the cart for a couple weeks. Ever since it came out, I had orange in the cart. Then I switched to the light blue. And then I ended up going with the darker blue. So I couldn't make up my mind. They're all really good looking. I didn't want to go with the black just because that one really looks like the TWSBI's that I already own. The green I considered too. So it was a tough call. But I went with the darker blue. What do they call it? Clear blue instead of the light blue. So we'll see. Because I use so many blue inks and blue-black inks. I think it'll look good in there. So that was kind of a consideration. The vanity consideration, if you will. How good is it going to look?

'''Myke Hurley:''' Do you match your inks to your pen barrel?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I don't yet. I mean, because another thing for me is really... I don't really use a lot of inks.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah, that's true. That's true. I don't necessarily try to match them. But on the clear barrel pens, I do consider how it's going to look in the pen. So I won't have something really off-putting in the pen. I know a lot of people do that. Match their inks to their pens. Even if it's just like the chestnut brown pen that I got, they would use brown inks for that pen. I won't go that far. But I do find it hard to use a really different ink color from the pen barrel color. I don't know. Sorry. I'm getting weird on you. But it's a consideration. And it's amazing how many people think that way. I bought this pen, so now I have to buy an ink to go in it. That's going to be the ink for that pen. And I get these emails all the time and read all this stuff. So yeah, we have problems, dude.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Oh, for sure.

'''Myke Hurley:''' And the worst problem is I could sit here and talk about ink colors and pen colors for another 30 minutes, and that's what's scary.

'''Myke Hurley:''' And we didn't even have that. That's not even a discussion item. But I know people take that stuff seriously about how they match up their inks to their pens. It's all good. It's good stuff. But now I got to – did you have something you want to talk about or do you want me to switch it up real quick? Because I got a real outlier here for me.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' No, go. Keep going. Keep going.

'''Myke Hurley:''' All right. So I did something crazy, and I've kind of alluded to this on Twitter at least, if not app.net, that I might have a new problem coming up. I don't think it's going to be as bad as the fountain pen problem that I have going right now. I don't think it's going to be quite that bad. But I'm starting to get fascinated a little bit and wanting to learn a little bit more about woodcase pencils. So JetPens, you've probably seen on a bunch of our friends' blogs, they've been talking about the new Blackwing Pearl.

'''Myke Hurley:''' JetPens is going to have those coming out this week. And they sent me a box to check out. And knowing that I had this new woodcase pencil come – and I've reviewed the old Blackwing, not the original Blackwing, but when Palomino Brands came out with the Blackwing last year or two years ago. I reviewed that one. But I've never had – I thought I needed a better pencil sharpener to do these. I've just had the little handheld pencil sharpener or something you used in first grade or elementary school. And I never felt I had anything really nice. So I looked at my friend – I talked to my friends, Andy from Woodclenched and Johnny from Pencil Revolution. They're the woodcase pencil gurus that – my go-to guys for when I have questions about woodcase pencils. And we'll link to their sites in the show notes. And I asked them – I said, I want like a desktop sharpener, something that you would find like in elementary school, like the one that was attached to the wall or to the desk, that was bolted down. Just a little bit more serious than a little pencil sharpener you hold in your hand and throw in your backpack, something like that. So they both pointed me to this product. It's from a company called Classroom Friendly Supplies, which makes sense. And it's just a – some of these pencil sharpeners can get seriously expensive. Like some of my friends, like Topher and – I forget the guy's name that writes this site called – I'm going to butcher the name – Blystift.de. I link to him all the time in Ink Links. There's this Fabric Castle pencil sharpener that's like $350.