Editing The Pen Addict 41/transcript (section)

== Ink Reviews ==


'''Brad Dowdy:''' Luckily, there's lots of reviews out there these days, and you can search some of them out and see what is the dry time like. Again, this is getting on to the other topic that I want to discuss. But you can read – you need to realize – you need to figure out what's important to you in your ink. Like for Myke, dry time is hugely important to him because there's going to be some smearing if his hand drags when he writes, which he just can't get around it. And unfortunately, he's a lefty, and they're at a huge disadvantage when it comes to wet inks like a fountain pen ink, especially a water-based ink.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' There's going to be different properties that are important to you. You have to decide what those are and go from there. And if you want to switch it out, you might find something better. You might find something that flows better, that has a darker color than the black you're using. The black you're using might be watered out in relation to a different black ink that dries the same amount in the same amount of time, but is a deeper, richer, more saturated color. So it's not an easy – I can't say – I can't tell you which ink to go try, but I can say that there could be better things out there than what you're using. But you've got to determine what's important to you in ink performance.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' And those are the kind of things I'm trying to figure out when I'm doing these ink reviews, Myke. So we've talked about how I've bought a bunch of samples from Goulet pens and subscribed to the ink drop, and I have my rainbow of colors that I want to test out. And part of that was – okay, that first step was that fountain pen cleaning discussion that we have is, I'm worried about how fast can I move from one ink to the other just from a testing perspective, and do I want to, and how fast do I want to move? For one, do I want to give it some time? Do I want to spend one day, three days a week with an ink color? Or do I want to do a review in an hour, spend a good solid hour with the ink, clean my pen in 15 minutes, have another ink in there, and do another review? I'm trying to figure that all out, and I'm having a difficult time. So what I've been doing, there's a lot of great ink reviews online, and I've been trying to see what aspects from those reviews that I enjoy and see what things are important to me and then kind of apply all of that into my style of review. You know, I do a lot of handwritten reviews, and it's generally just simple text-based reviews. I think there's a little more that can be done with ink reviews, right? Because you want to show the range of colors that a single ink can have, whether it's, you know, in a fine nib, a wide nib. And I think that's exactly why I got this Twisby with a wider nib, so I can show the ink better on the page. The first amount of testing I've done, and I haven't even released these reviews yet, I did with a Lamy Vista medium nib. And it was fine, but I didn't think it photographed well enough to show the qualities of the ink for an ink review purpose, if that makes sense. Like, I thought I was stretching it by not using my fine or extra fine nib. I was like, oh, I'm going to go to a medium that's going to show the colors really well. And I was pretty unhappy with that. So that's what the impetus was for getting this Twisby 1.5 stub nib. And I'm real happy with that so far. I think it's going to photograph well. You can see the color variation in the line, which is the shading I talk about in our notes. If you're just looking at the ink, you see a flat ink color. But by the time you spread that ink out on the page, there's a variation in the color shading in there. So that's a big deal to a lot of people. Is there shading or is there not any shading in the ink color? And if you go back to that picture that I linked, which is the Pilot Orozuzuku Kanpeki, which is one of the most popular blue inks around. I mean, everyone seems to love this Kanpeki color. Or what I've tried to do is I put the ink on my – I did my pocket knife in the ink and just spread it across the page. I've seen a couple other people do that, and I thought, wow, that's a really good idea. You can just see just the range of ink from like a heavy blob that gets on the paper to where it thins out to where the blade really scrapes most of the ink off the page. And there's this huge variation in color, and you can see that.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' And then I've also done just some basic writing samples, some basic overlay of colors, one pass of the color, two pass of the colors, three pass of the colors. And I'm not sure what else – I haven't figured out what else I'm going to include or how I'm going to really present these ink reviews. I'm still delimited. What I've taken here is I have a little notebook that I haven't been using. It's called the Rhodia Unlimited. And I don't think we've ever talked about this one before. But it's a pocket Rhodia with a band, and it's fully perforated throughout the whole notebook. So I thought I could keep all these ink samples. You can kind of see the show through of one I've done on the page before in that image. I'm going to keep a running book of all my inks, which I think is a good idea. So I can reference back when I've used up these samples, which are – the samples are usually about two milliliters. So that's – you can get maybe one and a half, two fills, more than enough to sample an ink to see if you want to buy a bottle. But I wanted to have a record of it because that amount of ink is not going to last me forever, right? So I wanted to make sure I got a record of it in this format. But this isn't the format I want to present in my review. So I'm still trying to work out the details on how exactly I'm going to do it. But I think it's going to be easier now that I have this stub nib to just do more of my basic written review with a couple of extra samples, maybe a second picture like I've shown here of the Oro Shizuku as a second image with the ink spreading and things like that. So it's a work in progress for me. It's been a challenge in getting this started. I already have about 10 inks or so to sample, and I haven't gotten started on any reviews yet. Well, I've had some attempts. So anyway, that's kind of the place that I'm at on these ink reviews. And I need to get cracking on them because I'm going to get – aside from the inks that I want to try on my own, I'll be getting this subscription service from the Ink Drop, which gives me five new inks per month. So I need to get going on this. But I'm enjoying playing around with them. I just haven't been happy with how I want to present them yet. So it's enough of me rambling about my ink reviews. Do you have any suggestions? What do you need to know? I mean dry time is really important to you, right? Do you have other things you look for in an ink?

'''Myke Hurley:''' I mean dry time is important. And then color. They're kind of the only two at the moment because I'm very new to it, even newer than you. So dry time I wouldn't even think about if it wasn't a necessity. The other is just the way it looks on the page. And also as well, I mean I don't know if you're able to show this, the difference between the ink wet and the ink dry because obviously the color does change. Right. And that's something that I've been noticing with some stuff that I've been trying.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, that's absolutely the case. And I've noticed it in just the two J. Urban ink reviews I've done. And one's really old and one's recent. Both of those are very highly shaded ink. And they're very watery. They're very liquid. They're very wet on the page. So when I'm right with them, they look one way. And when it dries, it looks completely different. And that's what you're talking about.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I mean what would be awesome as well, I mean I don't know how you could do this. It would take a lot of logistics. But how the ink color changes over time would just be a cool thing to know. Like does the ink fade after six months?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Right.

'''Myke Hurley:''' You know?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yep. No, that's a great idea. That's a great idea.

'''Myke Hurley:''' That's important, isn't it, I guess? Mm-hmm. How they present themselves after a period of time. Right. I mean like you start getting into them things like how they react to sunlight and all that sort of stuff, which is important but really deep into the review. You know, if you leave it in the sunlight for an extended period of time, does it fade? All that sort of stuff, which could be really important to someone.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Right, right. And that's a level of detail I probably honestly would never be able to get into.

'''Myke Hurley:''' You shouldn't. Okay. We'll never see you again.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' No, but here's the thing. I mean if that's important to someone, they know that up front, right? I'm not going to come – me personally, I'm not going to come after the fact. I was like, you know, I bought this ink, but boy, I wonder how is it going to resist fading. It's going to be, okay, I'm shopping for inks. I need something that's really, really fade resistant. What are my options? You know, and I would approach it from that aspect. I don't think I would be able to test something like that out. I would go – I would cut straight to the chase and go, okay, these inks say that, you know, they're fade proof, waterproof, bulletproof, whatever proof. And try – and go from there and trust the judgment of the manufacturer or anyone else that's reviewed the pen. But yeah, I mean there's – that's the thing is there's – when I review a Pilot Hi-Tech C 0.4 millimeter, there's not a lot of options. When I review a fountain pen or fountain pen ink, there's practically infinite options, right? So it's where do I want to draw that line? And not that it has to be a hard, fast line, but what's my starting point that I want to present? And am I presenting it accurately and informatively enough? And, you know, I think I've about got it, but honestly, the ink reviews have been a little more challenging than I thought they were going to be.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Here's a question for you. I don't know if you know the answer to this. Same ink from a bottle in a cartridge. Would they have any differing properties?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' That's a good question. I don't want to say no because I don't know. But – okay. Now, are you saying – you're saying if I bought Lamy blue ink cartridges and I bought a Lamy blue bottle ink? Same color. Same color. Same manufacturer.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Same manufacturer. Do they differ in any way? Yeah.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. I don't know. That's a great question.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Like, do they do anything different to the cartridges to keep the ink more cartridge friendly? Does that thing – I mean, I don't know.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. If I'm a betting man, I would bet there is some slight variation, but I certainly don't know.

'''Myke Hurley:''' That's why I ask.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. That's a great question.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Because then, you know, once you start getting into that, like, is it best for me to use a bottle or is it best for me to use a cartridge? Personally, I prefer cartridge because I don't like the amount of mess that you can get into and I do get into filling pens. Right. Same here. And – I just get myself into a state with it. Like – and it doesn't matter how careful I try to be. Ink just goes everywhere.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. And what I try to do, what I have been doing recently is saving all my old cartridges and cleaning them out. And I have been syringe filling some of these test inks.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' And that works well. It's a lot less mess involved and I can use a smaller portion of the ink to do my testing with.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Plus, there's a couple of other things, like a couple of other things with that. So I have found any converter to be less reliable from just a sort of flow and stuff like that. Okay. Just personal experience. But also as well, cartridges are so much more convenient in the essence that if my pen runs out of ink and I am out of the office or I am somewhere, I am in a meeting, I can have another cartridge stored away in the case or something. I can't carry around the bottle of ink.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Right.

'''Myke Hurley:''' And I can't – and if I do carry it around, I can't fill that up in the meeting. But I can easily unscrew my pen and chuck in another cartridge.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yep. And I think that's why I chose the Vanishing Point as my workhorse pen because it does take a cartridge and I keep those extra cartridges in my pen case or in my backpack or in my desk or wherever.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Those cartridges are good as well, like those in the Miki cartridges because they're like double the fill of a standard cartridge.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' And I actually had issues with the Vanishing Point converter in the beginning. I wasn't getting a good enough fill. So I was like, forget it. I don't need to run out of ink at work. And so I used that cartridge.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Because the J. Herbin inks that our show mascot sent us – sent to me, sorry.

'''Myke Hurley:''' They – they're international. International isn't it? I'm sorry, Clark. Short international. Yeah. They're short international and they're going a bit quicker. Although, yeah, I haven't – I'm about to finish the first one, the blue, the light blue. So for the next episode, I should be using – or should have at least used one more color. Okay.

'''Myke Hurley:''' There you go. Cool.