Editing The Pen Addict 482/transcript (section)

== Stack Nib Experience ==


'''Brad:''' So you can see how they look. I think that's important. What you mentioned, right? You just don't want this to be like a flood of ink. You actually want to write with it. Yes, it's going to be larger and wetter than like some of the lines I'm used to, but you also, it's not like you're dipping a paintbrush in a can and just throwing ink on or paint on a page. You know, you want it to be usable and manageable. And it sounds like that's exactly what you got.

'''Myke:''' So, and it just, it feels just like, it's so smooth. smooth and it's just like a dream to write with. I think it's amazing. It's really great for me. Like, you know, I like, you know, I quite like a fountain pen that almost feels like a felt tip pen, you know, like it's a permanent marker. You know, it's just like this huge nib. I like that. I think they're fun to have. They become like statements, you know, like I do, you know, like I've said this before, like I try and use a couple of pens a day. And sometimes I use just a pen as like to write a headline with like the title of a page. Sure. And this is like perfect for that. But I also, I've written in my journal in this, like I've done all my daily journaling with this pen. If I did like, it's, as I say, it's very manageable, even in its chunkiness.

'''Brad:''' I love it. I love, I love how excited you are about this. Also, I'm using it right now. Yeah. You chose, you chose a great base pen, like both of these base pens, like they, they deserve like these types of nibs, right?

'''Myke:''' Yep. Yep. I'm very, very happy with it. I'm now trying to remember how to spell the word silhouette. Oh, yeah. It's like a whole different issue that I'm dealing with.

'''Brad:''' Yeah.

'''Myke:''' So that was the first one. And so very, very happy with it. It's a beautiful, beautiful pairing. And I love this ink, by the way, this Sailor ink studio ink.

'''Brad:''' Yeah, that's cool. Like if you can find a good, like yellow ink, those are not easy. Like I have one kind of go-to, um, that I love. And it's amazing how much you, you don't think that it would work, but it actually turns out to be exceptional.

'''Myke:''' Yeah. Like yell. I struggled with yellow, finding a good yellow ink for a while. So I was happy when, uh, I didn't know found this one because she was going through it all. So nib number two is the one that is in my 3776 galaxy starlight, uh, which is a very special pen for me. Uh, I have more of a description here from, uh, straight from CY. The second nib is a standard cross point, which I made by stacking two coarse nibs. I use the hook method here, grinding the top tines into a hook shape and the bottom tines into a block shape. So I think this is made for this flipping around, right? This is how sailor makes their cross points too. And it's much more difficult than the flat method. This gives for a natural variation for Chinese, Japanese, but it's also designed for, to be smooth for Western writing. So I was, one of the reasons that I chose the canalea was because the caps are large. Mm-hmm. Because one of the things that CY had mentioned to me of putting a stacked nib, uh, into a regular pen is that the cap might not fit. And right. He warned me to be careful when I was trying them out, you know, cause I could damage something. Right.

'''Brad:''' Sure. And like some caps have inserts in them, like some platinums, you know, have like the, the seal in there too. And, you know.

'''Myke:''' So this one actually does have. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The little insert in the cap. So I was, I was pretty, but I was pretty nervous to, to try it out, but I wanted to give it a go. Right. Um, and I also, when looking at them physically, this is the smaller of the two nibs, you know, which, which kind of makes sense. Uh, so I figured, okay, this one will probably, probably go pretty well. Uh, and so I think this ended up being the better choice of the way that I've done the two of them anyway, because the music nib makes a much larger line. So it felt right to me to be in a physically larger pen. Yup. Right. So there was just like a, something in my brain that make, made sense of that. Now this nib, this, the, the cross point nib that we've got here, um, you'll see in the writing sample, I've used it on one direction and then the other. So nib two cross point is written in the, standard kind of direction. And I flipped it over and wrote down 3776 galaxy starlight with the nib reversed.

'''Myke:''' This nib is the best nib I own by far of anything. This is going to be an expensive episode. Oh, it was for me, my friend. We are two of these things.

'''Brad:''' This writing sample, um, really helps. So I, I implore people to check out this writing sample in the, in the show notes, even like the really large one in the canalea that I would never under any circumstances buy for myself. I like how it writes. Like I'm looking at your letters in this and I'm like, that doesn't look like it came from a fountain pen. No. And I mean that in a good way. Yeah.

'''Myke:''' That's what I want from it. You know, it's weird and different in that way, but you're right. This one, it kind of does look like it came from a marker pen.

'''Brad:''' Right. But nib number two is like, okay, I can see fountain pen in this and I could see, okay, that could be something that I would use with the two different, um, you know, the two different, um, you know, writing styles and angles. So gosh, ah,

'''Myke:''' because what, what I love about the, the, the cross point one, which is in the 3776 is both like, uh, sides of this nib, the front and the back in case, you know, I didn't explain this correctly. You have the regular way that you write with a nib, but then with pens that are made to do this, this nibs that are made to do this, this is one of them. You basically turn the nib upside down right on the opposite end of it. And so you end up with a large, uh, side and a fine side, like a broad side and a fine side. Right. So those are amongst the best writers that I have.

'''Brad:''' Yeah. So real quick for people who, who are not necessarily totally into the fountain pens, what this does is gives you a, gives the maker enough area on the, on the nib, right? There's a large enough platform to essentially have a double sided nib. So when you turn the pen upside down, there's enough room to have had that part of the nib managed to write in a different way than it does if you were writing with it normally. So, yeah, that's so cool.

'''Myke:''' These are really amazing. I'm so happy that I did this. These two pens right now are like my, just my favorite pens to use that I own. Yeah.

'''Brad:''' Yeah. That's the ticket. And, uh, see why does amazing work. And this is just, yeah, I'm, Myke, I, I had no interest in this whatsoever. And like this, this is not a bit. And I, I, I think I'm, I probably need to try one for myself.

'''Myke:''' I mean, those look great. They look great. I don't know. Can you do like two different fine ones? I don't know.

'''Brad:''' Do you want that? I would do there. There's some styles in some of the sailor styles that have a real kind of a turn down. I don't know the names of them. I won't pretend that I know them without looking them up, but there's one where like they, they really kind of hooked down, not like a posting nib, but really more like a, almost more like a beak style. so yeah, I would look at something like that. And then you, that would be like your primary writer. And then you would turn it over and that would be your wide line, right? To where like, you think of it pointing down, holding it in the normal shape, then you flip it upside down. That's going to be your wider, almost like an architectural style with line on the top. So yeah, I can't think of the name, but they're out there. I'm interested.

'''Myke:''' I'm interested. These are expensive. Yeah. As you would imagine. The cost is the price of materials. And for CY, it was $200 per welded layer, right? So you're buying two or three gold platinum nibs. And then for each welded layer, you would play, you pay an extra $200 for the time. Cause this is a, which I actually think is worth every penny because yeah, this cannot be easy by any stretch of the imagination to achieve. Yeah.

'''Brad:''' Yeah. I have no issue with the cost of what these are. Like it's a very specialty item done by, you know, someone with a specialized skill and, and then just a flat out material cost is expensive. So yeah, these are no joke. So I'm glad you did this. I think it's a really great platform, like nib platform for you in particular. And now I think I might have to think about dabbling myself. I need to, I need to, I need to do some more research on like writing styles, right? Like I'm not going to get it to not again. Like we talk about this. I have too much stuff. We all know this, but you still like your, your, your buying decisions. You can't be spending this kind of money if you're not going to actually use the thing. So, you know, consider, consider your purchases. And that's what I'm going to be thinking about.

'''Myke:''' So I tell you like what it's done for me, which maybe this resonates with other people like that. The 37 is 76 galaxy starlight was a special pen to me, but it, it wasn't one of my best writers. Yes. One of my favorite writers, but it was a pen that was very special to me. This has now elevated that pen more like this very well. I mean, I don't want like a recency bias thing to affect it. So I'm not going to say it, but this could be now contender for my total top spot. Number one pen.

'''Brad:''' Right. And these are the, these are the types of things we talk about once we get into right. Once we get past the basic, you know, stationary talk, you know, is this a good gel ink pen? Right. The elevation of a product like the jet stream edge for me is a big deal, right? It's taken something that I love, changed it, modified it, and made it even more special, even though that comes at a cost. And even though the costs are wildly different between that pen and something like this nib, that's what these types of things, this is what I think about, you know, as we, as I go through like my day to day stuff, like what changes are being made out there. That's interesting to talk about, you know, what kind of, who is, you know, pushing things forward with like design and feel and elevating the things that we already love. So there, there's a lot of that in this community and that's what I love about it so much. That's what keeps me going.

'''Myke:''' Yeah. I'm so pleased I did this and I am so thankful to see why for being so patient with me and the amount of like handholding that had to be done, honestly, like to get me to understand what on earth I was getting myself into, uh, was very, very kind of him. Uh, and also as well, of course, the work is amazing. Yep. Um, uh, honestly, I don't know if this is something CY wants to do.

'''Brad:''' Yeah. I'm, I'm like, uh, like, should we tell people to email him or tell them to not email? Well, I mean,

'''Myke:''' the thing was like, he didn't, basically, I would just say if you, if you were interested, reach out to him and maybe, uh, maybe he will. I don't know. Who knows? Who knows? I mean, he didn't, I did ask him, can I say you did this? And he said, yes, please do. So my assumption is, uh, I reach out and then maybe if he has the time and, and the, the inclination, uh, maybe, maybe he could do that for you too. Yeah. Yeah. Probably not going to get all the handholding that I got though. I mean, to be fair, uh, you might have to go in on your own a little bit.

'''Brad:''' You are a special case.

'''Myke:''' I sure am.

'''Brad:''' Oh man. I am awesome. This, this worked out great. I didn't know where this was going to go and I, I loved every minute of it. So yeah, fantastic.

'''Myke:''' Yeah. I really recommend people go and check out the images that are in the show notes, uh, which will be, if you know, your podcast app of choice should have the links in there. If not, you can go to relay.fm slash pen addict slash four, eight two. I recommend I've got images from the front of the nibs and the side of the nibs and the writing sample. I think it really helps for this discussion to, to go pick, take a peek at those as well. I think it would help understand what's, what's going on with those. And there are three more of these things that got passed along to somebody else here in the United Kingdom. I had a forwarding address to send them to.

'''Brad:''' So maybe we'll see, maybe we'll see some, uh, further content created around, uh, those nibs. Who knows? I have a guess. I have a guess.

'''Myke:''' I was pretty pleased to send them just in the UK because I knew I could send them like, and I sent them like really like to, to be carefully handled kind of thing. I wasn't super excited about like sending them overseas. I was worried. Cause these things are so scared of them.

'''Brad:''' Just what I talked about in the beginning is like, man, shipping right now is a mess. Yep. I think shipping's a mess. So yeah, good deal.

'''Myke:''' All right. Thanks for listening to this week's episode of the pen addict. Uh, I would like to thank, uh, both Harry's and Pen Chalet for the support of this episode. And of course, thank you for listening. Uh, if you want to catch Brad elsewhere, you can go to pen addict on Instagram. Dowdy is on Twitter. He is Brad on micro. Blog and twitch. TV slash pen addict, uh, Tuesdays and Thursdays at 10 a.m. Eastern and Wednesdays, kind of just after we finish our live recording a little bit after we finish. So you can check him out there, uh, on Twitch. You can go to knock.co spoke design.com and check out all those wonderful new colors. Uh, if you're not a fan of me online, I'm I'm Myke. I am Y K E. And you can go to cortex, much.com to buy yourself a theme system journal or a subtle notebook. Go check them out. Uh, we'll be back next time until then say goodbye, Brad. Goodbye, Brad.

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