Editing The Pen Addict 618/transcript (section)

== Pen Refills ==


'''Brad Dowdy:''' There's nothing here. It's air. So the biggest flaw in this design isn't the size. It's how you get the refill in. So this is a D1 refill, right? So if you're listening to this, you're probably familiar with a D1 refill. But you, being the now owner of the EDCS pen, literally has to cut the refill to size. Usually in the middle of where the ink is exposed in the refill, you have to cut this.

'''Myke Hurley:''' You're wasting a refill, right?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' You're wasting more than half of the refill.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Like four fifths of a refill maybe? Or like three quarters of a refill?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' You're making an absolute mess and you're now exposing the ink to the elements from the end of the pen. Attaching that to anything, you're just asking for so much trouble. I can't even imagine the amount of ink getting everywhere.

'''Myke Hurley:''' If you are two millimeters off, right? Which means that the refill is not protected by the back of the thing. That is just spilling. It's just spilling out.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. Right. So a lot of these inks are made with like little stoppers in the inside of the back of their refill, right? To not allow the ink to come out. And you're just cutting it. Like I'm watching the videos of them cutting the refill right in the middle of the ink. And I'm just losing my mind. I was like, there's no way this is like good. Like if you're going to do this, I don't even know how much this was. It couldn't have been that expensive. But like just buy a Fisher Space Pen, throw it in your pocket, throw it in your bag. You're going to be so much happier with this.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Then just, you know, okay. It's $15. $15 was the early bird. So $17. So just buy a Fisher Space Pen. I mean, buy. I mean, I would rather just use a full size pen. Buy the G2 Mini if you need a smaller pen. For like $3.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Genuinely, Brian, cannot imagine the scenario where this is the solution. Yeah. I just cannot fathom what that is.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. There's some smaller products. I think a Pico Pen is one of them that are keychain pens. Those at least have like proper termination to the refill as to where you're not going to have a leak situation. Right. This just seems like you're setting yourself up for a bad time. Yeah. With this product. And I am. And I don't even. I don't know where you would enjoy using this. Where this is going to be functional and not just having like a space pen in your pocket. Or like literally. I would take a bank ballpoint pen over this. Like honestly, just throw it in a bag and just be done with it. Like this is not solving any problems that I can think of and actually causing more problems than it solves. So there. I got it out of me.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah. This is nothing. It's nothing. Like this isn't a product.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So there we go. EDC is pen. I at least appreciate the name. They're at least trying to be like funny about it. And I was like, okay. Yeah. The name is actually good.

'''Myke Hurley:''' It's the 3D printing of it that frustrates me. Yeah. That you would. Why does it need to be a Kickstarter campaign?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. I mean, they only raised $9,000. So this wasn't like one of those campaigns that went ballistic. Yeah.

'''Myke Hurley:''' But you know, they wanted it to. Right.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Oh, of course.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I mean. Yeah. Yeah. I just, I don't understand this one. I really don't. Let's do some ice TPA.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Let's do it. We got a bunch.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Ross writes in and says, I've had two or three experiences recently where I forget the filling mechanism for a pen. And wind up spilling ink kind of all over the place because I do it wrong. I pull something out and ink squirts out is the most common mistake. This sounds ridiculous.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I got a product for you, Russ.

'''Myke Hurley:''' This sounds ridiculous. But I actually like to buy pens with different filling mechanisms. It's one of the things that I enjoy. But when I'm using them and they run dry, I am always in the middle of something. And I just want to get ink back into them. I have a homo sapien, a pelican 800, a lami 2000, a mold block 149. And I keep forgetting which one has the filling mechanism. How do you keep track and not mess up with far more pens than I have? Can I just take a stab at this first? I have two suggestions. The first one, I'm only slightly joking, which is just slow down, Russ. I'm sure it's not that urgent. Let's just take a second. If this keeps happening to you, let's just take a second. My next solution is you probably keep your ink in the same place. I feel like that is a typical enough thing. You have a drawer you keep it in or a box you keep it in. I feel like that's relatively normal. I think most listeners would understand that. You have the place to keep your ink. Make yourself a nice little index card that goes with the ink. It's very visible, very clear to you. If you're using this pen, it's this. You know? Let's do that. Right.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Once you fill it up, write it down. I'll keep the little card in the area. You know, and I don't know Russ's full situation. I mean, if you have 20 pens filled up at one time, that could be more of a problem. But, you know, if you have a handful, you're like, I think you can track it pretty well. Like, literally writing it down. So, I don't track anything, pretty much. As far as, like, that goes, like, what's filled. Like, I will just kind of do some ink samples. Like, okay, what do I have currently ink? So, I know what's what. I'm literally doing the write it down thing. That's how I keep track of it. As far as, like, making the mistakes of the filling systems. I mean, it looks like Russ has mostly pistons. So, you just have to, like Myke says, you just have to be a little bit careful and thoughtful with the Lamy 2000 or the Mont Blanc or the Pelican, right? Those are all piston fills. So, if you twist the knob, like, you're only twisting the knob to either fill it or to clean it, right? So, just don't twist the knob. The only situation I've ever run across where I've had, like, the mistake, and even Alan mentioned this in the Discord, is that I have opened up a barrel of an eyedropper pen thinking it was a converter pen. And luckily, I was in a protected area. I think I was actually, like, on my desk on top of a notebook, right? So, it hit the notebook, like, before I could close it, before I could tip it back in the right place. Like, that's a mistake that I've made by going too fast. I don't think there's any, like, true solution. It's like, hey, do this so you're not, you know, like, ejecting your ink from your piston fills. Like, I just think you just have to, you know, keep a note of what you have filled. Be thoughtful about the processes that you're using. Don't do anything silly. Or thoughtless, like I did with an eyedropper. And a lot of us have done that, made that eyedropper mistake. Because an eyedropper is not a majority filling system, right? Like, if I have 10 pens inked up, you might have one eyedropper. You know, I'm not going to have 8 out of the 10 are going to be eyedroppers. So, I could accidentally grab that eyedropper or open it up for some unknown reason. Especially if it's not transparent. Like, I have some eyedroppers that you can't see the inside of. So, yeah, thinking about that and being careful how you open them. You know, otherwise, just if you're not sure, if you're not sure, do it in a safe space. Like, over a sink or over a notebook you don't care about. So, you're not making messes. But literally, it boils down to just, like, writing down what you have going. And being patient with your filling and cleaning and manipulations of your pens.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Rebecca asks, I'm relatively new to fountain pens. I'm in the course of exploring them. And I've ended up with an extra Kaweco Sport nib and an extra Schmidt nib. Could you recommend what I could buy, like, pen-wise without a nib so that I can use these extra nibs?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' This is such a good question that I don't think we've ever been asked. And unfortunately for Rebecca, there's not an easy answer, right? Like, extra nibs, buying a pen without a nib or almost something without a nib is pretty tough unless you're going. And it's going to cost you more than. The reason why you have extra nibs is it's going to cost you more to buy a barrel for one of those nibs than to just buy a new pen with a nib. To be completely frank. Like, I could tell you, like, I have pen barrels made by custom pen makers that fit random nibs. But that pen, I paid a lot of money for, right? Because I'm getting a one-off barrel with a neat material and someone hand-making this barrel to fit, you know, the threading of whatever, you know, section I have to fit in there. Or whatever extra nib I have to fit in there. So that's going to be, you're talking like, you know, a three-figure proposition, like over $100 to get, like, just some random barrel to fit a Kaweco Sport nib. You're just better off buying another Kaweco Sport if you want to use the nib. And that's how you end up with extra nibs. And I wish I had a better answer for you. So what I would say, Rebecca, is going forward is I would, as you get more experienced with these fountain pens, I would get one of your Kaweco Sport nibs or one of your Schmidt nibs ground into something else. And now you have one pen with two different nibs, but the nibs write differently. So that's the way I would look at this, right? So that's one thing that I do with the Kaweco specifically. I have several Kaweco nibs, one that's a needlepoint, one that's a cursive italic. And I'll use the Kaweco pen barrel I want and swap the nib into it. So think about this in reverse. And, you know, maybe that's not something you've explored yet because you're new to this. But over time, if you continue liking fountain pens and you maybe want a stub nib, you know, well, you have a nib here. You could get the nib ground and then now you have, you know, maybe a medium nib for your Kaweco Sport and you have a stub nib for your Kaweco Sport. And that's kind of the way I would look at it. Then finding, trying to find a barrel that's going to be probably like a fruitless endeavor to do any kind of reasonable thing with that.

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'''Brad Dowdy:''' I used them last night, Myke. I was at Starbucks. You pop on ExpressVPN. Very good. Because I didn't have, like, good, like, cell service where I was at. My son had a tennis match. It was too far away for me to, like, drop him off and drive home. So I went and found Starbucks, popped in, popped on the ExpressVPN, sat and chilled for a bit, and easy peasy.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Moises writes in and says, I now realize I urgently need an answer and detailed response to Myke's beloved shacket. What brand is it? What makes it so great? I ask because I recently fell for a denim work shirt from Filson that has an interior left breast pocket big enough for my EDC, and it's changed my view of shackets. As a stationary nerd, in the surface of the sun, summer climate of Texas, I had never considered an overshirt with shacket features as an alternative to carrying a small bag. So a shacket is a combination between a shirt and a jacket. It's basically like an overshirt. I'm just going to say, Moises, I do not acquire shackets for features. They are for fashion. I'll just say that to start with.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I'm a feature guy, Moises. Okay.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I have two shackets that I like, and then two overshirts, like overcoat, like, you know, like work shirts that I like. The work shirts are both Paul Smith work shirts. I'll see if I can try and find a link for them. But they are old. I've had them for years and years. The one that I was talking about recently, which I was wearing at Apple Park Battersea, well, Apple Battersea is from a company called Wax, which is a London-based company who I've been getting really into recently. I love their style of clothing. It's suitably flamboyant for me. Like, I like to stand out when I buy things that I really want to wear, that I really like. And I think they do a really good job of that. But they also have more regular pieces that are made of fun colors, like the orange one that I have. And then I also have a Paul Smith one, which Adina bought me, which is a very similar style, but in more muted tones, like blues and brown. So they're the things that I like.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, so I'm like Moises, I don't have the opportunity to go full shacket all the time, given the temperature here, right? Because they're long sleeve and they go over what you're already wearing. Like you could just wear a t-shirt, but still, like you're adding on heat layers. So a lot of the popular shackets are even like flannel or fleece lined. So they're like double walled. But I do have more of a work shirt style that I wear as a shacket. It's like the duck canvas. Like if you felt it, it's like, oh yeah, this is pretty uncomfortable. Like you wouldn't want to wear this as just like a shirt, but it's like an over shirt. And, you know, they always have like pockets or pin loops and they're useful for carrying stuff around. And like, yeah, I'm a big fan. But me only like for a couple of months of the year, just because of the heat around here. So, you know, I would implore Moises in Texas to, you know, maybe check out some anoraks or maybe even some popovers, which you can get short sleeve. We'll have to figure out some recommended companies on our new fashion blog podcast.

'''Myke Hurley:''' The, what would it be? The shacket addict?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Mm-hmm. Shacket addict.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Nick writes in and says, I often journal over breakfast. So there is always a chance that a crumb or another piece of debris on my paper could be picked up by my fountain pen nib. This is something that I worry about that then dipping my nib into my ink bottle could leave the debris behind where it could later get into another pen and cause it to clog. So I avoid piston and vac fillers and I only use cartridge pens refilled with a syringe. Am I being excessively cautious here or is this a valid concern about cleanliness and cross contamination that you have considered?