Editing The Pen Addict 390/transcript (section)

== Notebook Recommendation ==


'''Myke Hurley:''' He's like 400 hours. But I recently finished using up a notebook of mine that served me for quite a while. And the main issue I had of it is the fact that it had a spiral bound. And that it was hurting the hand. I felt that, too. That's why I have to be very particular about what spiral bound stuff that I do use and how I use it. So, yeah. There you go. What do you got, Brad?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' The Rhodia web notebooks are fantastic. They're in the $20 price range. I know I banged the drum on Lloyd's term. But it answers so many questions. It's a different feel than Rhodia. Rhodia has a more coded page. So, it dries a little bit slower. It's maybe a little bit better for fountain pens. But both of those are going to be exact A5 sizes, which is important. They come in all of the lined options, all of the format options that you can choose from, which, you know, you're not specific. Well, you have all the choices. They both, I think, are the 198 page base model for those. They don't have binding. Importantly, both of those lay flat, which is the mention about when folded out on a table, the pages don't curl up together again, right? There's no curling up in the middle. They have lay flat binding. They are both available in Straya down under. They should both be easily accessible. And, I mean, they're kind of going to, like, tick all the boxes. The Lloyd's term is probably easier to find than the Rhodia. But I like them both. I use the Lloyd's term much more than the Rhodia. But as far as a lay flat option, those are the kind of the two that, like, jump to the front of the queue for me.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Next question comes from Alex. I've been on the hunt for a beautiful royal blue ink with some character. I decided to try Akamon 5 Shocking Blue. But shockingly, it won't flow into my Edison pen, with my Edison pen. Thinking it was something to do with the nib, I swapped out my normally wet medium for an extra fine, but nothing. Thinking maybe I'd left it uncapped for too long, I primed the feed, and for some reason it spewed out at the base of the nib and feed, and they were right tight in there. Thinking maybe it was an issue with the feed being too close to the nib, I swapped out the whole housing unit for another one. I primed the feed, and it still wouldn't write. I then cleaned the nib and feed, and replaced it with Sailor Gento 2 Shoe, and it grew up perfectly. Have you ever experienced this with this ink or any other ink? I've read this happening, but thought it was a myth. Is there any explanation why certain ink will work and others will not? Are there any other deep royal blues that you could recommend?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' This is always a tough question, because everyone has different experiences with ink, and you think that would be consistent, but it does matter what pen and nib you're using in. And like Alex was saying, they tried all kinds of different setups, nib swapping and things, just to get this ink to work. You know, I have not really experienced this, other than I have had inks that do not like the air as much as other ones. And what I mean by that is, not all fountain pens are designed to completely seal off airflow, even if you have them capped. And some inks will handle that differently. So dryer inks, like some of my Oranger inks, may not flow the moment I uncap them in certain pens that do not have like a platinum slip and seal mechanism. That's not a requirement for all pens, but some pens handle that better than others. Whether that's the issue in this case, I don't know. You know, I've had other Edisons that, you know, have worked fine. And, you know, the Yovo nibs tend to work normally fine with that. It could be shocking blue. I've never used it. That's a very popular ink, because of its vibrancy. And I don't know if it's just like a, like the chemical makeup of that blue being such a saturated color that maybe there's some property with that ink that is causing that. I don't know. I, you know, I would, you know, I've sold so much of that ink over the years working with Van S. That's like always our number one seller. And I've never really heard of any specific problems with it. So I, I don't know that it's the ink, but I wouldn't put it past it either. Like it seems like, you know, maybe a more saturated ink. I don't know if it's just the way it's handling, like just the airflow and drying it out more where the, the, the sailor ink is just a little bit more lubricated. It's going to flow a little bit easier. It's going to, it's going to rest in a more, you know, unaffected fashion in your pen when you're not using it, as opposed to drying out like the shocking blue. I don't have a clear answer for this.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I've never had this happen to me either that like, it's just like it refuses to work in one certain pen.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. Yeah. It's a rarity for sure, but it happens. Like people will have this exact same question and it'll be, you know, a different ink and a different nib, right? It's like super hard to narrow down any one thing with this. Um, so I would just say, you know, try a completely different, different pen and nib, you know, and see, you know, you know, what, what kind of answers you get. And then maybe it is, maybe it is the ink, you know, I, I don't know for sure, unfortunately.

'''Myke Hurley:''' And I have a final question from Rob. First of all, I want to say a huge thank you for introducing me to a wonderful hobby. With a lot of my other interests, they involve prohibitively, uh, while a lot of my other interests involve prohibitively high costs, my guitar collection, for example, grows perhaps by one purchase every five years, you have opened up a world of exciting products to try that are a price point that I can accommodate alongside the expenses that come with a new baby and other life commitments. While my early forays into the world of fountain pens was so, uh, through what were through so-called luxury lifestyle blogs, which only dealt with the likes of Montblanc and Montegrappa. It wasn't until I stumbled upon your website and later your show that I realized just what a wealth of quality pens, paper, and inks there are at the entry level price point from brands I previously never heard of. I love that you can talk as passionately about a 30 pound Tosby as you can about a 600 pound Nakaya and discovering my likes and dislikes through modest purchases. Don't break the bank has been great fun. I love that. Yeah. Here's the question though. I'm currently studying for a professional qualification and my style of learning is to make a lot of handwritten notes like three, a four Rodeo dot pads filled cover to cover so far. And I'm not even a quarter of the way through the work. That's insane. That's a lot, a lot of notes. I don't know what qualification this is that requires that many notes as a little reward. And to keep me motivated, I treat myself to a new ink and occasionally a new affordable pen. Every time I start a new module for the next one, I would like to try an orange ink, preferably one with some nice shading. I know of an ink like that, but I can use to full effect in my Tosby Eco with a 1.1 millimeter stub. The really important thing is it needs to be very legible as I am taking notes that I will later need to reread in preparation for my exams. Can you recommend an orange ink with a nice amount of shading? It's easy to read in large boxes of text without straining your eyes. Does such a thing exist? Straight up, Brad Dowdy's Fire on Fire created by Robert Oster fits the bill. It does.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I mean, it does. It does. So the one conversation I want to have about this answer, and I would like, it was hard for me not to say something besides that. I do have an answer besides that, but that's really fits the bill. But it does,

'''Myke Hurley:''' because it is shading as shading to it. And it's not too bright. It's got a bit of darkness to it, which makes it legible.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So the catch with orange is you can have shading, but it ends up being lighter, right? So if legibility is very important, that's where you can't go into like Sailor Apricot, right? Which is like one of my all-time favorite inks. I would never recommend that for that. The Robert Oster Fire on Fireworks, my other choice would be the Ackermann Orange Boven, which does not shade as much, but it is going to be highly legible because of its brightness. So it doesn't have the yellow aspects that you get in a lot of shading orange inks.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' But, you know, if you want, you know, I think it might, I think Fire on Fire is the answer, to be perfectly honest. And then I would look at like Orange Boven, and then maybe, oh shoot, what's the Edelstein? Mandarin. So those are kind of the brightness and a little bit of shading, even though the Ackermann doesn't shade as much as the Fire on Fire. But that's kind of like the level of orange you want. You don't want to get into the yellow oranges like Sailor Apricot.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Did we get that?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' We didn't.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Good work. Ask TPA, ask TPA. I love, I love that we have the opportunity to do this.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Mm-hmm. If we can be helpful, like what a great thing to be helpful with.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yep. Yep. So we have, we have cleaned it up for the year. We have caught up on all the Ask TPA. It took us to the end of the year to get there. Some of these questions I've had for a month or two. I'm not going to lie. But you know, there's a shocking amount of stuff to talk about in the pen and paper world, Myke. And we're here for it.

'''Myke Hurley:''' There most certainly is. And we will be, well, we'll be here for it again in a couple of weeks. This is our last episode of the year. Yes. So we're going to be back now in the first week of January. And I believe, well, is it the first week of, yeah, we're going to be back in the first week of January. We're going to be recording on Thursday though. So the Thursday the 2nd, if you do listen live, or if you're expecting the episode to come out on Wednesday, it'll be out on Thursday. We are going to talk journaling, our journaling plans for the year.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. Big episode. People have been asking for this for a while. We've, we've gone on and on about, you know, teasing it. We've been both been holding our thoughts until the first of the year, which I think is the right time to do it. So that's going to be a fun episode. I really look forward to that.

'''Myke Hurley:''' So if you want to find out more about this episode, go to relay.fm slash pen addict slash three nine zero. You can find Brad online at pen addict.com and he is dowdyism on Twitter. You can go to twitch.tv slash pen addict as well. It's a great place to find Brad's work. Anything else? That's it, buddy. All right. You can find me on iMike, I-M-Y-K-E, and we'll be back in 2020. Have a happy holidays. Happy new year. We'll be back soon. Until then, say goodbye, Brad.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Goodbye, Brad. Brad.

[[Category:Podcast Transcripts]]
[[Category:The Pen Addict Podcast Transcript]]