Editing The Pen Addict 660/transcript (section)

== Discussion on Nakaya and Nibs.com updates ==

* And they were continuing to collect money for products. And in the case of a lot of Nakayas, people are not getting their products. So I can't really speak with more detail than that because I haven't been involved in that, right? It didn't happen to me. So I don't want to speak for anyone else. But check out all these articles. There's several anecdotes that you can check out in this. And do you have any input on this or anything you wanted to say about this?
* Actually, yeah. As of today, Nakaya has a post on their website informing them that they are no longer working with Nibs.com. So this is an official thing literally just came out today. I did send you the link, Brad, so you can include that in the show notes for everybody to read. But basically, you can order Nakaya directly through them or one of their authorized retailers.
* Yeah. So I have not looked on Nibs.com site. But as of like a couple weeks ago when this was coming out, they were still offering Nakayas for sale. I would avoid that. Like I would not put my money there right now. And, you know, that might be, you know, borderline getting me in trouble to say. But like that's okay. Like I feel pretty safe in that this is a situation I personally would not want to be involved in and do not want to see any of our listeners get caught up in. So check out all the links. And I'll add Kimberly's link. I did get that from you right now. So put that in the show notes. Educate yourself. Like it's hard to know, right? Like this stuff just happens. And, you know, we're as big as we think our community is. It's super tiny and super small. So I appreciate everyone sharing their information and giving us their input on this situation, which honestly, it just stinks. Like, you know, we all hate having to discuss this. But I think it's fair to put this forth at this point. All right. Next up from Jim. Hey, I have a Pilot Custom 823 that I'm currently having a love-hate relationship with. It's a beautiful pen and I love the nib. However, it has a tendency to hard start and or just stop flowing while writing. Yes, the back cap is slightly opened. I'm using well-behaved ink, usually a Roshizuku Shinkai. So even Pilot ink and a Pilot pen. For the price of this spin, I expect flawless performance. I'm using good paper, Apica CD. Is it time to see a nibsmith? What are your thoughts when you read this? Hmm.
* I'm glad he included the fact that they did open the back cap.
* I am also assuming they've cleaned out their pen more than once. And it's not like, you know, either manufacturing oils or whatnot that is preventing that from happening. I haven't actually used Apica CD paper. So that would be my next question as to whether or not it behaves like this only on that paper. Because some papers, for whatever reason, just are finicky. But Jim does say that, you know, it has a tendency not only to hard start, but to just stop flowing. Which feels kind of weird to me. I'm a little bit surprised. So if it was me, I would try to see if I could pull the nib and feed out. Just pull it out straight out. But I'm actually not able to do that on all my A23s. So that would be my first thing to try. They're difficult.
* Yeah. And just to see if there's either something stuck in the feed or, you know, that's kind of preventing that. Sometimes it's just that the feed and the nib are just pressing too tightly against each other. And pulling the nib and feed out, cleaning it and reinserting it. Sometimes it's all it needs to kind of get it kickstarted again. But I don't know if it's time to see a nibsmith yet. But that's kind of what I would try is to see if I could get the flow going a little bit better. I might also try, the other thing is, try different inks and different paper. Yeah. So I'm pretty much along the line of Kimberly. Number one, Jim, this is like a perfect feedback because you included the pen, the ink, the paper, and like all the things you've tried. So like, it's like, yes, you're doing all the right things. Your expectations are correct. Like this should work really well. I have used Apica CD. I've actually used a full notebook of it. It's really good paper. It's at least as good as life paper. Like the bank paper, just a nice smooth Japanese paper. It's not the paper for sure.
* If you can't get the feet out, I'm probably letting someone else look at the pen at this point. With my 823, that's actually one of the few pilots I was actually able to get the nib out because I like cleaning it a little bit more. You know, getting in that vac and cleaning it out because it's just a pain to just constantly run water through it. But if you can't, don't force it, right? Their pilot makes it really, really tough to get those out. I think you're probably at the point where you want someone else to look at it. If you've done like the cleaning and if you're putting an email together or a message together like this, I'm assuming you've cleaned it well. So I think it's probably time. So there you go.
* All right. John asks, I've been a pen on it since childhood and that was a long time ago. I feel that, John. Enjoying pens, inks, and new planners was a useful and fun part of my career. I love taking notes with my fountain pens. Somehow the stationery made work a bit easier. But I recently stopped working full time and now I don't need a planner and I have way too much stuff for my volunteer work. My question is how might I rekindle the flame of my stationery passion? Love these questions, Kimberly. What do you think? Well, I don't have a normal job either. One of my not normal jobs is writing for you. So that's where I do a lot of my writing. We are very abnormal over here. Yes. Yeah. And I was never a traditional planner either. And so I do have a combination of things that I use. My bullet journal is one of them. But when I'm not doing that, I kind of find things to write. I love writing poems or not my own poems. I should say copying poems or writing out song lyrics, quotes, things like that. I also really like to copy people's books that I either really liked or want to read a little bit more of. So I recently finished The Little Prince last year. I'm currently working on copying some Italian children's books because it helps me with my Italian vocabulary and, you know, helps some of that sink in a little bit more. I've also been writing out Marcus Aurelius' Meditations because it is very meditative since I'm writing it in typewriter font. So that allows me to be a little bit creative because I don't normally go around writing in typewriter. And then a few weeks ago, eventually I'll write a TPA article on this. I started a book journal basically documenting the books that I read for 2024. Yes, I know it's 2025 now.
* So, you know, and in that book journal, I'm including quotes that I have either highlighted on my own in the Kindle app or that other people have mentioned in Goodreads, etc. And I'll write those out as well. So it gives me a good way for me to look back at the books I've read and go, oh, yeah, right. I remember this one was about this and I really liked this or didn't like that. So I basically find ways to use the pens that may not be your typical use them for work or use them for planning type purposes. Yeah, so I do similar to you in that I'll write lyrics or songs or book passages or quotes. And I'm writing just because I'm writing that because I like I like what they've said or I've enjoyed the lyrics or something like that. And one of the things and you mentioned what you do, you do it like you do two great things with this. One, you're learning a new language. So this helps. And two, you're practicing your handwriting in whatever specific font you want to to work on. You know, maybe it's typewriter, like you're saying, or just in your general handwriting. Like you also teach a handwriting class that I've been to. So like the handwriting practice is very important to you. So an additional thing I do is I've started to color with my fountain pen inks a little bit recently. You know, there's a dominant industry ink book that's out. It allows you to use your inks a lot more. Kimberly does this too. You color a lot with your inks and use them for a lot of extra things and mixing, you know, a water brush with color and changing the color of these inks and seeing how these inks behave. We all have more inks than we need, even more so than pens. And getting to use those inks for, you know, other things. I've actually bought watercolor paper for the first time in I don't know how long because I want to play with my inks. So that's something I'm doing that's, you know, outside of what we'd call a work usage situation for the pens.
* Also the reading, like I would love to see, you know, an article from you someday about this because I write, like literally I was sitting down last night. I keep articles I want to read and Instapaper. Open up Instapaper was just firing through some a bunch of articles. And like I'm looking at a page where I wrote three different quotes from an article or from three different articles, three different quotes, just in a field notes with a Copic multiliner, like sitting on my lap. I could, I don't even know if I could reread these again, but it's just using, finding other ways to use your pens. I think that's going to be like a big focus of mine over the next like five or 10 years, right? I think that's kind of the phase of the hobby that I'm in myself, even though I literally use them for work all day, every day. But finding the ways to use them that would not be a traditional, hey, let's write something for work type of situation.
* I realized there are a couple other things that I do that didn't come to mind until you were talking. With respect to coloring books, I used to have, and I still have way too many what they call adult coloring books with all these intricate designs and whatnot. And I realized that I couldn't use, I just couldn't color in them because there were too many choices of inks or pens or pencils to choose from. So I don't do that kind of coloring anymore, but I started doing these things called spiroglyphics. And basically all you're doing is you're just coloring between these lines and it goes into a spiral pattern and it eventually, you know, something will show up in, you know, like a city or a monument or, you know, some design. So that's kind of cool because it doesn't actually take brain cells other than pick one pen and just start coloring.
* And then the other thing that I completely forgot about is pen palling. So I am way overdue on my letters to pen pals, but that's a really, really good way for me to use up my pens because I try to use a different pen and ink combination on every page.
* And I don't try to practice handwriting on it. I'm just there to get thoughts down and, you know, I'm messaging with people from around the world. And it's just a lot of fun to talk to different people from all sorts of cultures and backgrounds and walks of life and talk about whatever. So pen pals are a great way to use your pens as well. Yeah. And like I do postcards, right? So like I don't do like the full letters. Like it's a big joke that Brad doesn't write letters, but I scratch that itch with postcards and it's fun. So yeah. And I love this conversation. If you have any more questions, John, you know, definitely email me or, you know, let me know what your, what products you have and what kind of things you want to use. All right. Next up, Kimberly, before I read this question, are you a severance watcher on Apple TV?
* We have only watched, I would say five, four or five. I want to say four or five episodes of the first season. So I'm familiar with it, but I don't, I'm not remotely caught up. Okay. So you, you, you were involved when we talked about this earlier, but this is follow up from the severance fountain pen, the, the, what is that pen that they're using? So I'm going to read this email from Fox because this actually blew my mind. It might be a little bit spoilerish for you. I don't know. I, I, I can't remember where exactly in season one, this came up. That's okay. So, okay. So Fox says, Brad on the severance pen, I definitely thought of you and initially was like, so fountain pens are torture now because it was shot to emphasize the unforgiving tip of the really dark and forced left-hand writing on a right-handed Gemma. But as far as a brand, there's a clear answer. Lumen or Lumen. I should, it's not Lumen. I was reading, I was reading this literally Lumen. Since all of the stuff in that world is Lumen Industries branded, I suspect that the testing floor uses Lumen pens. That has to be the answer. That's the canonical way I'm going to think about this. I brought this up on stream and everyone's like, yes, it's optics and design. It's an optics and design pen. Optics and design, sorry for spoilers. If you haven't watched season one, they make everything that's in these facilities, like, like from paintings to computers to chairs to like literally everything. There's no way that canonically this is not a Lumen optics and design pen. That's what I'm going to go with. And I think Fox, that is super smart. And I think that's, that's where I'm at with this. I really like that idea. Yeah. Lumen pens with Lumen ink, of course, on Lumen paper. Yeah, totally. Like, I mean, they're literally on a Lumen set when they're doing, I know you haven't seen this scene, but they're like in a Lumen created room. It has to be a Lumen fountain pen. It just has to be. They have a Lumen, like, what is it called? Like when you have like a, well, I guess their version of the Closet of Doom where you can go get notebooks. Exactly. Like I just remember that one episode where she goes and she gets a whole stack of notebooks. Yep. Like that's probably where she also gets their Lumen pens. Yep. Yep. So I'm going to go with, this is an optics and design pen, created pen. And that's, that's what we're going to go with. So thank you, Fox. That just like the little light bulb went off in my head and we don't have to figure out what it is from there. But if you're wanting pens, maybe not Lumen pens, I know you can get them over at Pen Chalet. So let's hear from our good friends and sponsor this week, Pen Chalet. This episode of the Pen Act is brought to you by Pen Chalet. They sell authentic, amazing roller balls, fountain pens, ballpoints, mechanical pencils, and so much more. They have all of your favorite brands like Monteverde, Pelican, Lamy, Pilot, Namiki, Sailor and Kaweko, and of course, an authorized dealer of all these great brands. They have very fast and reliable customer service. They run special discounts twice a month, including closeout specials every two weeks. They're always adding new styles of pens every single month. As well as the brands I mentioned earlier, Pen Chalet sells limited edition pens and all the pen accessories you ever need, like pen carrying cases, pen holders, refills, fountain pen converters, and so much more. This week for the Pen Addict over at PenChalet.com, you click the YouTube radio podcast button, type in the code Pen Addict, and you'll get to our podcast deals page. And let me tell you, they have a crazy fun pen ready there, right at the top of the list. The Pelican Twist fountain pen. It is such an enjoyable, fun, great pen. I love writing with this pen. They have some new colors out. These yellow and green colors look spectacular. I'm a huge fan of the Pelican Twist, and at this price, it makes it easy to pick up. They also have the new Monteverde MP1 piston filling fountain pen. They have the Pelican 670 warm gray, which is a stunning and interesting Pelican fountain pen. And there's Aurora Inks, and then there's the Le Bon Jonathan Brooks limited edition pen. They have all kinds of amazing pens for Pen Addict listeners out there. So head over to PenChalet.com, type in the code Pen Addict, and yeah, take a look at all the fun stuff they have.
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* All right, next up we have Scott. Scott says, I'm going through the back catalog of the podcast and have heard Myke compare pen resin to glass techniques several times. It got me thinking about beach glass and whether anyone makes a pen with a clear material and matte finish. I love finding it at the beach and think of it would be a fun aesthetic for a pen.
* For a simple question, this is quite complex, at least how I think about this question. So the short answer is no, right? No one's making like a sea glass.
* I'll put a link if you're not familiar with what sea glass is. Are you familiar with what sea glass is? I am. I'm assuming. So yeah, it's basically just polished rock essentially that is made into this finish and a lot of it's translucent, like translucent green or translucent blue. There's a lot of pen acrylics that can be made to mimic this style, but never with the actual product of what we would call, quote, beach glass. Is there something that you could think of that would be possible? The closest I can think of that is, I mean, yes, not with actual sea glass and not with actual glass either. But I think Kakimori has a new fountain pen that's kind of frosted, which is kind of in that aesthetic.
* But yeah, I think most people that are making pens, they tend to polish them up so that they're nice and shiny and not what I would think of as sea glass. And even Franklin Kristoff's antique glass, it's polished on the outside.
* And so I don't think of sea glass when I look at that either. But the first thing that came to mind was the ones from Kakimori. Yeah, so they have like an external frosting. They're lightweight because they're plastic, right? So you're not going to get... You can get glass dip nib fountain pen. Not, excuse me, not the same word. Glass dip nib pens that have a glass nib. Those are not like a glass pen with a nib unit in it. Like it's literally like a glass tip nib that you just use for dipping. And there's not like a filling system in there like you would think of like a traditional pen. And the frosted designs that someone like Franklin Kristoff might make give you a little bit of that aesthetic, but not the feel, right? Because like a lot of that's internal, right? Like you were saying. There's one pen I'm thinking of, which I didn't grab beforehand. And it's not sea glass. But there are a lot of interesting materials that pen makers use. So I know Adolphus from Derail Pens uses a certain type of rock recently that he's been making the pens. And I'll have to find the link in the show notes for that. Or maybe, I don't know if you can grab it while I'm vamping here. Because I also wanted to talk about like a Fordite material that some companies use.
* Which is a really... You're not going to get the texture, but you're going to get this weird kind of like rock internals that could be polished. So like I'll put in a link from Right Turns. I know Right Turns does some Fordite pens that are really, really beautiful.
* One of them even used like some surfboard resin and some things like that. So you can get some cool material pens. I don't know that we're going to get anything with like, you know, like a beach glass. But man, it's something to think about because like beach glass is really, really cool on its own. So yeah.
* All right. So Scott, I will add some links to the show notes for a couple of like really unique pens that may be something for you to look at. All right. Next up. I think this might be Kimberly's favorite question we're going to get today.
* Via Enid. I love fountain pens, but every now and then I reach for a good refillable ballpoint pen. Is there any website where I can find which refills work with a specific pen? For example, if I have a Parker Jotter, I would like to know which other brands and point size carry refills that will fit that pen. Should I even throw this over to you or are you just going to yell at me? No. I think, I mean, well, why don't you start and I'll yell if I have to. So as a well-known ballpoint pen lover, you can find reasonably easy what will fit like your Parker Jotter. And there's a couple of ways to do that. So one, there's a website called Refill Finder that is put together by our friend Tom Otto from who also works at Gold Spot. But there's that site will allow you to kind of learn about the refills, see what shapes you have, see what refills are similar. And, you know, if you need like replacements and things like that, it's pretty comprehensive. Our friend Anna at the Well Appointed Desk also has a refill reference guide that I'll link in the show notes that you should just go see. It's kind of like a general idea of what's compatible, what's not with each other. But what I like to do the most and what works the best for me, and I do this probably weekly because I use so many pens, is you go over to JetPens.com. You look up, in this case, Parker Jotter, right? So you click on the Parker Jotter, and then there's a link that says Compatible Products or Compatible Refills. And you just go look, and you see everything listed that is known to fit that pen. That's how I figure out which, if I want to get some different refills for my pen. So like, recommended refills or parts for the Parker Jotter is 67. So you click on that, and you go, and it's got the Oto Flash Dry Refill. It's got the Uni XSR Refill. All of these are going to fit in your Parker Jotter pen. So that's the easiest way that I find to kind of get to an end point of, hey, I have this pen. If it's something, you know, that JetPens might carry, you can go that way. Or if you don't know and you just have the refill, you can kind of backtrack it through Refill Finder and see what fits. See, I learned something too, because I didn't know about Refill Finder, but I already have my favorite refill for the Parker Jotter, because I am a Parker Jotter girl. Oh, nice. I cannot stand the Parker Jotter ballpoint. Yeah. So as soon as I get one, I basically swap it out for the Parker Jotter refill. So easy peasy. It works great. That's my default pen when I'm working, because I'm a clicker fidgeter. Yeah. And it's my favorite, I guess, technically ballpoint, but I put the gel refill in there. So that's what I use pretty regularly. Yeah. The Parker gel refill is much better than Parker's ballpoint refills. I never use, I always switch out any, I love the Jotter. Like, it's awesome.
* That's an instant change refill for me. I think that's one of the poorer ones. But it's funny, like, I'll stand for the Lamy ballpoint refills, and people don't like those either. So, like, you know, we can question my taste on ballpoint refills. Well, we already do, Brad. Yeah. Yeah. Definitely. Definitely. All right. Scott has a really interesting question, and I think a lot of people will get something from this. So, I have noticed larger dynamiter and length pens lately and picked one up at the Philly Pen Show last month. Some use a number eight nib, which is new to me. So, besides the obvious size difference of a number five, a number six, or number eight nib, or others, if they exist, they do, are there any other differences or characteristics about the nib size that we should know about? How do you want to tackle this one? I would say the biggest difference that I know of is often in the feed.
* The smaller the nib, the smaller the feed, and related to that, you're going to get a little bit less ink flow. Yep. That's an average. It's not always the case. But, you know, for example, a size three pilot nib is just not going to be as juicy as a size 15 or a size 30 pilot nib, even if they're both mediums. You're just going to get a bigger feed, bigger channel, bigger everything to go with that bigger nib. And that's kind of what I also see at the Franklin Kristoff table where we have testers for the number five and the number six, is that you just get a little bit less ink flow. It's not that it's, you know, it's not starved for ink. It's just not as juicy. So if I'm using a number five nib, I try not to use my dryer inks as an example. And you definitely don't want to be putting like a shimmer ink in a five. You're probably going to have a bad time, right? Just there's not enough room there, right? It kind of, you as a fountain pen user, it's like, oh, I've got this great pen and all this ink. And like, I do this all the time. I'm just going to put this in here and we're going to go to town. It's like, well, that's not really a great match just because of how it's going to flow with a number five nib versus a six. And then the eights will just give you, you know, they're just a larger nib. Like you can still get like a point size on an eight. Like you were saying, you know, a medium is going to write kind of the same, right? Like they're relatively close as far as what you're going to get for nib size, but they're going to give a lot more flow. As far as like point size, like a line width on the page, a medium five and a medium eight, probably going to be in the ballpark. At least on steel nibs, like gold nibs, you can get some differences because the larger nibs, generally speaking, will have a little bit more bounce to them, right?
* Yep, exactly that. And that little bit of softness from some of the other materials like gold and whatnot can lead to a slightly broader line. But all things, everything else being equal and we're just talking about the size difference, it's a lot of it comes down to the feed. Yeah. Yep. So Kimberly referred to other nib sizes, like companies will make specialty nibs, say like a Sailor King, a pen nib or a Pilot, like Emperor nib. Like, and they like Pilot has their own numbering scale. So like a number 50 nib is like gigantic. It gets much bigger than a number eight nib, right? So like you can look at that, but that's not going to be something you're going to see on the regular, right? You're going to see, I'd say six, you're going to see most of, and then five, and then number eights are starting to become popular over the last couple of years as stock nibs become available from different makers like Bach and things of that nature. So yeah, I haven't quite gotten on the number eight nib pen, Myke, and someone got me an extra fine one and I had to admit it's pretty good, but I tend to not use the large pens anyway, but a lot of people love them. So definitely something to look for. Yeah. For me, the number eight nibs and similarly the, you know, Pilot 30s and King of Pen and those type of nibs, they're too long for me. And I have a very steep writing angle and I don't have gigantic hands, so I'm actually unable to write with my angle without propping my hand on my other hand, which is not comfortable for writing. So it thankfully saves me a lot of money because all of those options are out the door. Not even, they're a no-go. Yeah, that's a great point that we didn't bring up. The distance from the page on a number five versus a number six is noticeable. And then if you go from a number five to an eight or even a six from an eight, you're gaining quite a bit of distance from your finger, from the grip of your fingers to where that nib hits the page from the grip section of that pen, right? So you got to think, how does that work with my writing angle? Like I'm a low gripper, so in a small writer, so a number five nib that I grip low works really well for me, right? In this style of writing, someone who writes in cursive with their hand a little bit farther back could probably use a number eight nib a lot. Right, and even, you know, most of the time I'm perfectly fine with a number six nib, but there are some pen designs I just can't use because the grip forces me too far back. So one example is the, like the Kasamas. I wish I could use them. I've owned two and instantly sold them both because the grip sections are further up. And as a result, it means I'm too far away from the paper and I can't use it comfortably. So it's not even at that point, not the nib size, but also the combination of the nib and the grip. Yep, yep. All right, next up from Tomos. Simply, why is the Lamy All-Star not called the Lamy Safari AL?
* I laughed so hard. This is such a good, this is such a Brad question. Tomos, you were so right. Why isn't it the Lamy Safari AL? I don't know. Can I give the Brad answer? Okay, yeah. The Brad answer would be because Lamy's gonna Lamy. Yeah, it's exactly right. There's no shape difference on those pens. The grip, the triangular grip is the same. The front end section is the same length and diameter. The clip's the same. The finials are the same. The barrel diameters are the same. The only difference is the weight, right, with the aluminum barrel versus the plastic barrel. But they're still both lightweight. Why isn't it called the Lamy Safari AL? I don't know. I'm gonna start calling it that now and just make Anna mad, I think, is probably what I need to do. I kind of get it because it is a completely different material. So, you know, size and everything else being the same, it is a completely different material. So I could see that they would want to call it something else. What I don't understand is why they have the Lamy Vista, which is the same weight and plastic and whatnot as the regular Safari. But no, they have to call it Vista because you can see through it. That makes even less sense to me. But like I said, Lamy is gonna Lamy. I don't even want to. Yeah, that's an entire episode. And I've done many of those episodes already. But the great question. I like that. I like that. So I don't know if you need to buy pens from Germany. Maybe you need to use a VPN service like our friends over at ExpressVPN. So let's hear what they have to say this week over at ExpressVPN. So this episode of the Pen Addict is brought to you by ExpressVPN. Going online without ExpressVPN is a bit like not having a case for your phone. Most of the time you'll probably be fine. But all it takes is one drop. And you'll wish you spent those extra dollars on a case. I believe that. When you connect to an unencrypted network in cafes, hotel, airports, your online data isn't secure. Someone on the same network could gain access to your personal data, including passwords, bank logins, credit card details, and other things you wouldn't want in someone else's hands. ExpressVPN stops hackers from stealing your data by creating a secure, encrypted tunnel between your device and the internet. There are loads of reasons to choose ExpressVPN over other VPNs. It's super secure. It would take a hacker with a supercomputer over a billion years to get past ExpressVPN's encryption. It's easy to use. Just fire up the app and click one button to get protected. And it works on all your devices, phones, laptops, tablets, and more. So you can stay secure on the go. Plus, it's been rated number one by top tech reviewers like CNET and The Verge. So I've used ExpressVPN for years. I'm getting ready to do a bunch of traveling this month in April. It is already loaded on all my devices. I use it in hotels, in, you know, Airbnbs, wherever I'm staying for the next few weeks when I'm traveling. And I just think it's important to, like, keep my address hidden, keep and stay protected. I don't know what's going on on these networks. And I just like ExpressVPN to put a little block there for me. Plus, I can use it to change my location when I need to watch things like MLB TV or F1 when I'm out of the country. So that always works really, really well for me. So secure your online data today by visiting expressvpn.com slash pinact. That's expressvpn.com slash pinact to find out how you can get up to four months, four extra months of ExpressVPN for free. ExpressVPN.com slash pinact. Our thanks to ExpressVPN for their support of this show and Relay. All right. Let's hit a few more here. So this one from Flynn. This is an interesting question. I value open formats and interchangeable, replaceable, repairable parts highly in my tools. So when it comes to fountain pens, I've settled into the Yovo No. 6 as a good size feel for my writing style and preferences. The question is, why are there not more Yovo No. 6 adapter fittings for mainstream pin bodies like Platinum and Pilot? But I can find many of the reverse to get proprietary nib formats into Yovo No. 6 sections, but not any simple ways to get the reverse done. Am I going to need to find a machinist to get these made custom? This is tough because, like you've said, the magic word, which is proprietary.
* And I wonder out loud without having any data, would someone get in trouble for making these replacement parts?
* Unapproved replacement parts for Platinums and Pilot? I don't think so. In our case, there are places where you can buy different types of feeds and different types of fittings. But what do you think about the idea of making it easier to swap nibs into more what I consider proprietary pens like Platinum and Pilot? Should it be easier for us? Or do you think Platinum and Pilot and Sailor would say something and have a problem with this?
* There's a couple things. I know specifically Flynn's talking about making it so that he can use his Yovo 6 nibs in any of these pens. But even just to make it more broadly, you know, maybe I love the Sailor nib, but I don't like the Sailor body or vice versa. I think you're going to run into issues of potential invalidating your warranties because the nib housing might cause a crack or have some issue with the grip. Hard to say. I can't imagine any of the three brands be happy about that. I don't think any of the brands honestly would. Whether they do anything about it, I don't know. It's hard to say. Specifically to Flynn, who really enjoys his Yovo 6, he's probably more on the minority. I know more people who are like, I don't want any more Yovo 6 nibs, but I love this pen body. I need to put something else into it. And that's why there are plenty of housings that fit Yovo 6.
* But not the other way around. Most people just don't love Yovo 6 enough to want their Platinums to write like a Yovo 6. And I think you've gotten to the real reason as to why Flynn's not finding what they want. It's a small scale problem, right? This is not a big scale issue where someone's trying to solve for this, right? It's a niche within a niche, right? We have our very niche hobby. We have our changes we like to make to our pens and modify them and customize them as much as we can. And then we keep going on down, trying to find more things to change. You're going to start to find less opportunities and availability of these things that we want. So, yeah, I think it's just not something a lot of people are asking for. And it's going to be, yeah, it's going to be a very custom, very specialized type of situation. So, I like the idea, though. Like, I think it's a great idea. And I think now that there are more and more 3D printers out there and people who are experimenting with 3D printing, it is certainly something that, you know, if you can find the right folks who want to tinker with that, might be able to figure out something to work for you. But it's probably harder than it sounds, I think. It is. Maybe it just seems hard to me. Yeah, me too. Like, I'm not a big tinker. But, like, to your point, like, I got a feed in the mail from someone that's testing something out. It says, hey, try this. Let me know what you think, right? So, these things can happen. But, like, it's just a very small scale. And we'll see what happens. Continue to watch because people like to fidget with this stuff.
* All right, next up, Daniel from Sweden. I recently acquired a Kaweco AL Sport Rollerball. It is awesome. And because I value stability and reliability over anything else since I do a lot of writing for work, I immediately swapped the standard Kaweco refill with one from Fisher Space Pen. My question to you is what your thoughts are on reliability over other aspects you look at in pens, inks, and refill. And then the important part of Daniel's message. Thank you for the best podcast around and have a nice day. Thank you, Daniel. I really appreciate that. So, Daniel is basically asking, what's the most important part of the writing experience for you? And I think mine is how the refill itself writes on the page. And that will sometimes be ahead of reliability, right? Because I'm willing to have, to the shock of no one, multiple pens if needed. Like, if I have a failure in Daniel's situation, the Kaweco AL Sport Rollerball is awesome. So, I actually, the one that I have, I swapped in a gel ink refill into mine. I can't remember which one. I don't have it in front of me. But it's because I value the line on the page more than anything over reliability, you know? So, that's kind of the thing in a standard pen that I like for, I like to look for. It's probably the same with fountain pens, right? I buy a nib size, you know, whether I like, I have to like the pen, how it looks. But to me, is the nib going to put down a line on the page that is most suitable to my handwriting? More so than, is the pen going to last me for 20 years or 50 years or whatever? Or what filling system is in the pen? That's one thing I almost couldn't care less about. But, you know, if I have this epic filling system and don't like how the pen writes, like, what good is it? So, the actual nib to the page experience is the most important thing for me. What about you?
* Yeah. I mean, considering we were just talking about swapping out refills in the Parker Jotter, absolutely. You got to put in what works for you. And whether that's the most important thing is reliability or maybe it's line width or the type of line because maybe gel feels different than ballpoint or maybe fountain pen ink, wet fountain pen ink feels different than dry or whatnot. You got to do what works for the situation that you want to use your pens in. And like Brad, I also have more than one pen inked up at any time and more than one non-fountain pen at my disposal at any given time because I use them for different things. And there are times when I reach for my G2s or my Sarasas or my Jotters and other times when I'd much rather use my shown design rollerball and other times when I'm picking from various fountain pens. And for me, fountain pens are both a combination of like the aesthetic in hand, but also I know that some of my pens are going to dry out sooner than other of my pens. And so I am more mindful of either how much ink I'm going to put into it or am I going to use this enough that I should ink it up now or no, I'm not going to ink it up until after I get back from vacation because it's just going to dry out between now and then. You know, those kinds of questions are what I ask myself when I'm figuring out either what I'm going to ink up or what I'm going to be using at any given moment. Yep. And a couple other things that people might look for besides us and besides Daniel is comfort, right? Some people might have to have a certain level of comfort for their grip or how they write. Weight and balance of a pen might be what someone looks for for, you know, the very first thing. You know, if this isn't balanced in my hand, how I hold the pen, you know, it's out, things like that. So we all have the aspects and I thought this was a good perspective from Daniel that like reliability is the main thing for Daniel and I think that's pretty cool.
* All right. This question kind of encompasses a lot of questions and I left it there on purpose via Grizz. So hi, Myke and Brad. So today you're Myke, Kimberly. I didn't know if you knew that. I am Myke. Okay. Also, you can't spell. Sorry, Myke. You can't spell Kimberly without Myke. So I feel like this was a pretty good guess. Wow. Yeah. I know you're thinking about that now. So there you go. So hope you guys are well before listening to the show. I was very happy about my Energel 0.3 and want to use it forever. But after a few episodes of this show, now I want to have some fancy looking pen that could fit in the Energel refill. Could you please recommend some? Could the Rotring 600 ballpoint fit? Many thanks for your help and support. So Grizz, number one, go through the refill links that I answered up above for the previous question for Enid. There is a way to kind of like backfill and see what the Energel refill fits. You're in luck that it is the most compatible with anything that fits a Pilot G2 refill. Those refills generally match. There's some slight oddities and some slight differences. But a lot of the Pilot G2 pens will, things that fit a Pilot G2 gel ink refill will fit the Energel 03. And you're in luck. I know of a company called Spoke Design, which I'm a part of, that makes fancy pen barrels specifically for the Energel. And we ship the Energel refill with it. And all the Energel refills are hot swappable. So, for example, I have one of our Spoke Rody XLs, which fits the Energel. And I'll put a link in the show notes to that. And I swapped it out into a needle tip 0.5 millimeter Energel refill. And it's just glorious. So, yeah, there's some. So look through those links that I shared earlier for the previous response. And I'll put in a link to the Spoke Design pen, which I make because the Energel refill rules. All right, next one, Kimberly. I won't put you out on this one if you don't have an answer. But I thought this was an interesting question from John. Again, fellas, you're not the fella that they were looking for. Myke's not here today. I'm Myke today. Today I'm Myke. So I'm a fella. I'm an honorary fella. And you can tell how behind I'm here. Literally 20 episodes.