Editing The Pen Addict 157/transcript (section)

== Sponsor Announcement ==


'''Myke Hurley:''' We have a new sponsor this week. And that is Dunn Paper. Grid and Lines. Stationary goods and accessories. I think maybe from like episode one of the Pen Addict, we've been talking about Dunn Paper products. And, you know, I'm going to hand over the mic to Brad in a minute so he can just talk forever about Dunn Paper. But it's because Chad makes amazing stuff. Chad Dunn makes fantastic stuff that we both use every single day. He has an absolutely fantastic sense of design. Like all of Dunn Paper's products look great. And I say like Dunn Paper. That's the name of the company. I don't know like a ton of other stuff, which I'm going to get to in a minute. But like the design across everything is so well thought out. And it's really nice. It's all super useful stuff. It's all really well made stuff. Father's Day is just around the corner. And Dunn Paper is a fantastic place to start if you're looking for a gift for the Pen Addict in your life. Or if you just want a great gift for yourself. Or maybe, you know, you've got any reason to buy a gift. Whether it's for you or someone, Dunn Paper is a great way to go. But Father's Day is a perfect time. Products like the Topo and DP bag. All of the Winter Session and DP Leather goods. And the Dunn Paper six-color utility notebook pack. The six-color utility notebook pack. They are all fantastic gift ideas. I have used and own a couple of Dunn Paper stuff. I mean, I've used the notebooks and stuff and they're great. But my real love for Dunn Paper products are in the bags and stuff that they make and collaborate on. I have one of the pen holders, the Winter Session and DP Leather good pen holders. It's like a three-pen holder. It's like a brown leather with blue stitching, which is just stunning. But for me, you know, the Topo briefcase. Topo mounting briefcase. I love this bag so much. It's one of the best purchases I've ever made. Like, just flat out. Like, I've never had a bag this good. I was saying this to Brad recently. I am able to get more stuff in that briefcase than I could get in my North Face backpack. I don't know how it's possible, but I somehow managed to do it. I think everything just fits really nicely in there and it stays in place. Get my laptop in there. Like, I'm going to America on Friday for 10 days. That is the bag that I'll be taking on my back. That's where all my important stuff goes. That's where all my carry-on, all of the things that I really care about will be going in that bag. I can put it on my back. I can carry it in my hand. I can put it over my shoulder. I love it. I love the way it looks. Like, the color and the blue. I just love it. Absolutely love it. Now, Brad, tell us about Dome Paper Products.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So, I've known Chad for a long time in internet years. Probably right after I started the blog, I found Dome Paper. And it became part of me and part of the blog right in the early phases because I'm a huge grid person. And then when I saw his grid plus lines design on the paper, you know, it was one of those head exploding type of things. I was like, this is absolutely perfect for me. I've never met anyone. And I say met. I talk to Chad online all the time. I've talked to him on the phone plenty of times. I've never met him in person. I've never met anyone whose design aesthetic matched more perfectly with mine. The things he is into outside of Dome Paper, the things he designs for Dome Paper, every one of these items is, like, straight out of my brain. I was like, this is exactly perfect. My favorite all-time Dome Paper item is the large idea journal. It is, I'm not a, what do you call the people that, you know, like, for the zombie apocalypse, you know, like, the people that, like, stalk their.

'''Myke Hurley:''' It's not hoarders. It's not a hoarder. It's like a specific. Is it? Oh, it's something like.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, so if I was stashing away, like, a doomsday prepper, a prepper. Yeah, yeah. If I was a prepper and had to have a notebook, it would be this large idea journal. This is an awesome notebook. It's one of my favorites. The chipboard cover is so thick and durable. The paper is awesome. I absolutely love this notebook. Just when I pick it up and, like, if I'm carrying it across the house from one place to the other or I use these a lot at my office at work, you know, if I'm just moving it around, I just, I love just, like, holding it. And when I pick it up, I'm like, oh, this is great. This is a really nice notebook. I just love it. And I'm pretty much a dome paper fanboy. I buy everything that Chad does. I also have the Topo Mountain backpack in the first version, which is the brown version. And it was funny when we were at the Atlanta Pen Show. How many of those do you think we saw there? Like, five?

'''Myke Hurley:''' Oh, yeah, they were everywhere.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' It's that good of a bag. It is a legit good bag. Like, I find different bags to carry. I'm kind of a bag junkie, so I find different ones to carry to work. And I'll buy other bags since I've had this dome paper bag. And they don't last more than a day or two before I switch back to this bag. It's that good. And, you know, I've got so much stuff. I even bought the dome paper Ebbetsfield flannel hat. I wear that in the winter. Keeps my noggin warm. And I'm just a huge fan of Chad. He's a legitimately good guy. He does great work. So if you're not familiar with dome paper, check it out. If you are familiar with dome paper, check it out and see all the new goods that Chad has. And thank you, Chad, for supporting the podcast. We really appreciate it.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yep. But there is a little bit more. So you've heard us talk about these guys, right? Which is fantastic. But, you know, we say this. These are the exact type of people that we love at the pen addict. So you should go and support him. But to give you even more of a reason, if you go to domepaper.com, that's D-O-A-N-E-P-A-P-E-R.com to take a look. If you use the code pen addict, you can get 15% off anything in the store. So go check that out. Wow. 15% off with the code pen addict. Thank you so much to dome paper for supporting this show and helping us out. The pen addict from Relay FM.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Awesome. Thank you, Chad.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' All right. So Edison and Newton are companies I have a familiarity with just from talking with them, purchasing from them, and things of that nature. But there's others that I follow online, be it through Instagram, their blogs, other people sharing their work, that I want to share because they're probably going to be in line next for me to order. Ken Cavers is one I've heard about a lot. And the pictures I see of his pens, and I'm not even sure where most of these people get their acrylics, but all the acrylics that people like Ken and some of the others I'm going to mention here, it's just so pretty. It's like hard. Like he just posted one on May 28th, this Cosmos cigar fountain pen. It's just I've never seen anything like it. And that's what you're going to get from custom fountain pens. You know, someone like Ken, he's putting these up. He's showing the work he's doing for other people. He's not putting this up because this pen's for sale. This is one he made from someone, so he's showing his work. The swirl I've seen on this is just mind-boggling. And, you know, Ken's set up the same way that everyone else is. You know, you pick the acrylic. You know, you pick the shape, things like that. But like a lot of the people I'm going to talk about now, they don't do this as a full-time job. So Ken's backlog is like a year and a half. He's shut down new orders. He's got so many orders. His wait list has gotten so long. His wait time is now a year and a half, and he's not taking new orders. But he's constantly pumping out pens, so you should always pay attention. And if that's something you are interested in, his work, you know, keep an eye on what he's doing. Because I'm seeing some pens in here that I've never seen anything like before. And, you know, that's some of the difference that separates a lot of these people. So, you know, a lot of the designs are similar, but they all have some kind of similar, some kind of different shapes and designs that they're kind of known for or that's their best work. And you can kind of tell by the results from what people are ordering. So, you know, check out what Ken's doing. Another one that's really a long line with Ken is Renee at Scriptorium Pens. Her work is awesome. She's super active on Instagram, by the way. I see her stuff in Instagram constantly, and it's always so cool. It's always showing her, like, turning pins and doing things like that. She just has a really, really wide range of designs. She does dip nib holders, which, you know, I talked about with Sean. He did a specific nib holder where I could screw in an Estabrook nib.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' What Scriptorium does is gives you, like, the dip nib holders. Like, if you see, like, the art nibs, right, that you buy, like, 12 packs of nibs and things like that. It's just really, really cool stuff.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I actually got in a conversation with her on Twitter yesterday because someone mentioned that Scriptorium is about four weeks out. What they meant to say was four months out. So you'll see this is a common theme if you're getting into custom pens. You're looking at four to five, six months, sometimes even more. And Renee even put up, after our conversation, she said, I went and put up a wait time thing on my, on my, on her homepage. And she sure did because it wasn't, it wasn't clear up front. So she has a current wait time on her front page now after our conversation. So that was cool. But it's just beautiful work. And I'm really impressed, you know, at everyone doing this, you know, as a business and, and turning these pens and sharing them with all of us. Now, the Carolina Pen Company, Myke, that's a new one. And we actually met Jonathan and his wife at the Waffle House at the Atlanta Pen Show. And we were looking at his pen folder at the Waffle House and checking out some of his pens. Do you remember that? Yeah.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Like Matthew Morse and his wife, they were there to meet them. And Matthew introduced us to him. And we were actually walking out when they had come in. And we looked at the, the whole lineup of, of Jonathan's pens. And I was not familiar with him before the pen show. Matthew told me that he was coming and showed me his work. I really like the designs that he does. And I like the fact, I, I'm a big fan, obviously with Nock, we, you know, name our, our designs, you know, regionally. And he has a lot of, you know, local names and Carolina type names for all of his pens. And I like that a lot. So, um, I'm not sure. The only thing I couldn't find with the Carolina Pen was the timeframe on that. So, um, you'll have to, you know, if you're interested in what Jonathan's doing. And I think you can probably check out Hey Matthew's blog. I think he's probably, um, he's done a, um, a review or two of them. I'm not sure. I'll, I'll see if I can find the link for the show notes, Myke, for you. But, um, it's some, some really nice work. Really nice guy. And, um, it's some really cool looking pens. Now for all of our UK listeners, Myke, this is something you need to look into. I got like, I got the most, well, I asked for what custom, I got all these custom pen vendors I'm putting together for the show. Who am I missing? And twist pens like filled up my feed. Um, I was familiar with them, but I couldn't remember the name of them to save my life. But, um, all of our, uh, UK listeners chimed in with twist pens. And I know, um, like Ian Headley and Stuart Haisley and, and a lot of the, uh, other, uh, pin bloggers that are in the UK have purchased, um, twist pens and they rave about them. They talk about them as their favorite pin. Um, I think, uh, is it John? I think it's John twists who, who makes the pens. I think it's his full-time job. He's retired and he just makes pens now and you can do all your custom orders through him. The ones I've seen from Stuart and Ian that they reviewed are beautiful. Um, if you go through, um, the twist pens website, you can see, um, you know, everything he offers, he offers, and a lot of these do, a lot of the other ones do, they offer roller balls, ballpoints. He does pencils. And I noticed he does wedding pens over there in the UK. So you can sign your register, right? And, and pass down this heirloom, uh, registry signing pen. So, um, if you're, uh, UK based, definitely check out twist pens. I haven't heard anything about twist pens except raves. So I, I've never used one, but I've never heard anything short of just complete raving, um, on the pen. Now this, these next, these last two are really, really different from the mainstream. And the first one is from Silverhand Studios. And I know Chris, uh, follows us on Twitter and listens to the podcast. So, hey, Chris. And, uh, he chimed up when I was looking at, uh, custom pen makers, uh, yesterday on, um, on Twitter. And what he does is more from a jewelry based aesthetic. He will work and make just a fully custom pen for you with rare metals, you know, silver, gold. You know, it's a really, uh, very artwork style of pen. Um, if he does make like a stock pen to sell, he'll make 10 of them, right? Like it's the maximum of 10 from what I was reading on, on all of his blogs. But most of his orders are strictly custom. Like you'll never see it again. Um, you know, and he just, you know, he's got a whole list of materials that he uses. And it's some really pretty stuff. And if you're looking for something like that, Chris seems to be the go-to person for that. Um, you know, it's, it's really kind of a knockout the way all the, he, he handles this work. So it's, it's pretty cool. And the last one is one that took me a while to remember the name, but I'd read about him a couple years ago. And I don't know if I'm pronouncing this right, but it's Hakase. Um, it's a Japanese manufacturer. And I first ran across them on Fountain Pen Network when people were, I was, there's a Japanese sub thread, which of course is my favorite sub genre of pens that people were waiting like a year or two for their Hakase pens. I'm like, what are y'all insane? But it's this wood, it's these wood turned pens out of these rare Japanese woods. They're super expensive. They take a year or one to two years is their waiting list. The prices are, you know, upwards of $2,000. I mean, I think you can get into them for like about $500. Um, they're really beautiful. I've never been like a wood pen guy. And so I would probably never order something like this, but I know, you know, this is a, a lot of this is a, it's a grail pen type of thing for people who are really into Japanese pens. I think they might have like a small store somewhere in Japan where you can actually buy things or you can at least walk in and place your order to arrive, you know, in two years type of thing. Um, it's, it's pretty intense. Um, what, what they do and you, I can't quite translate, um, all their things on the blog, but, um, it's really pretty to look at. You know, I love that kind of stuff. So, and, uh, it's, it's, you go to that site and we'll have that link in the show notes. It's stuff you've never seen before in your life. I certainly haven't. It's a really, really wild, um, wooden pen. So, you know, I, that's kind of my, my primer on custom pens. I hope I did it justice. You know, I, it's a commitment to get a custom pen, not just monetarily, but from a timeframe and a personalization thing. Um, it's kind of a big deal. So, you know, if anyone has questions about it, I'm open to discussing anything about the process, how it all works. Um, you know, any, anything you want to know about getting a custom pen made and I'm going to work my way over the years. It's not a quick thing. I'm going to start, I'm going to try to get something from everybody that I can. That's at least, you know, four to six months out just so I can talk about them better and, and have a, um, you know, so I can answer questions about the experience and the quality and things like that. So that's something I can work on. I've got, I've got two down, Myke. So I'll have to start checking some other ones off the list. How about you? How many are you going to order now?

'''Myke Hurley:''' Oh, hundreds.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I don't, I don't. You're going to get a Hakasi, aren't you?

'''Myke Hurley:''' No, I don't even, I looked at the website. I don't understand what's happening.