Editing The Pen Addict 151/transcript (section)

== Fountain Pens ==


'''Brad Dowdy:''' All right. So Todd has a really good question here. He says fountain pens, get all the headlines at pen shows other than the Lamy 2k multi-pen that I bought. Any non fountain pens strike your fancy. Do you have anything? Not for me. No. Yeah. I, there really wasn't much. And honestly, I didn't get to shop around that much. Well, except retro 51s.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah. I was going to say. I ended up not buying any, um, for me. Uh, I convinced a couple of people to buy one because there was some really, really nice ones there. Um, I just didn't, I just didn't really want to spend the money on one. Um, sure. But I liked looking at them and that's the only thing that I would have bought anyway.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' There were some really nice vintage mechanical pencils that, uh, were making the rounds. And I know a few people picked up a few. I think Anna might've even picked up one. Um, those were pretty well sought out and available at the show. And those were kind of, uh, neat to see some, some really nice, uh, pencils, but I did not pick anything up. Um, and nothing that I like totally had to have. All right. So Sebastian Morissette asks about bung box inks. So we talked about that a lot and he can, he wants me to elaborate about that brand. Um, I'll do what I can. It's basically sailor. I'm a huge fan of sailor inks. They perform really, really well. And their colors are amazing. Lots of really neat colors that no one else is doing. The problem with sailors main line inks is they're super limited in color, not in availability. They make like eight colors. So what they do sailor back home in Japan, what they do is work with smaller fountain pen stationary shops to manufacture their own lines of inks. And bung box is one of these shops. Bung box is a really, really small store in Japan, but is really well known and respected. And sailor makes a bunch of inks for them. And when I say a bunch, I think we're talking like between 25 and 35 different colors just for bung box. The only place in the world you can get these inks, but what bung box is doing, since they are so nice, such nice inks and have become so popular, they're starting to, you know, work with a couple of people like Van S pens who had them at the Atlanta pen show. And I picked up, you know, a bottle of the one I bought with silent night, which is a dark blue.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' They do this for other companies too. Like they're mentioning in the chat room, Kobe ink. Kobe is another store and they have about 40 inks, different colors than what bung box carries. So, and I have some samples of the Kobe inks that I still have to review. So it's just really a good sailor ink in colors that you can't get regularly. And since I'm such a huge fan of sailor inks, I talk about them all the time because I, I just really like how these perform. And I especially like the colors that you can get them in. So that's kind of my, my short version of the bung box inks. So it's a, it's basically sailor inks made for a specific shop in Japan that is now getting a little bit of availability around. And I know a lot of groups do group buys, you know, different message boards, things like that, Reddit. And so you can always kind of get ahold of bung boxings.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So I need to give you some samples, Myke. I don't think you have any.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah. I don't, I didn't even try any.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. Yeah. They have one of my favorite blue blacks and they have one called Sapphire. That is just top notch. So you'll, you'll, you'll be reading more about them. Um, I still have a bunch I need to review. So I have four bottles now, so I don't have a problem at all.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' All right, let's talk about another one of our, our good friends. He definitely has a problem and it's a good problem to have. Um, he has lots of pins and he needs somewhere to store them. So why don't you talk about our good friend, Myke Dudek and Dudek Modern Goods.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Um, Dudek Modern Goods is a sponsor again for the pen addicts. We're so happy about, we were very lucky to be able to spend some time with Myke Dudek. And if for any reason you haven't yet wanted to pick up one of these products, I'm going to talk about in a minute. Like having spent some time with a guy, like I just urge you to go and do it. Like my dude, Myke Dudek is one of the nicest people on the entire planet. Um, he's so kind and like caring and just a great person. Uh, and he, you can tell whenever you talk to him about his stuff, like, so Myke makes just fantastic pen holders, right? They're all made of like solid walnut. They're just these beautiful things. Um, they're made by somebody who really understands pens. Uh, and like, you know, the Dudek products, for example, they're all big enough to fit any of my pens in because he understands, right? How chunky some of these things can get. Um, but yeah, whenever you talk to him about his stuff and he talks about his work, his face just lights up. Like he clearly loves what he does. And I think he puts that love right back into his products. Myke decided that he needed somewhere nice to put his pens as he was getting more and more into the fountain pen world than just the pen world in general. Um, and he couldn't find anything that he wanted. So he created his own products. He's super passionate about this. He just loves doing it. All of the products are handmade. So all of Dudek Modern Goods products are handmade in Arizona from solid walnut. They have a distinct modern and minimal design. Um, are they going to look good on your desk today? Are they going to look good on your desk in 30 years? Because they're going to keep, and they're going to keep that real traditional modern, like it's an, it's like kind of how I was talking about with Harry's, right? It's got, it calls back to the past, but it's done in a modern way. It's really great. He has six different designs, um, that you can pick from with a bunch of different options that can hold, uh, pens and notebooks as well. Um, and I mentioned the cube earlier, which is a project that he's worked with on Karas Customs and they're getting ready to ship the Kickstarter stuff out. So I'm sure you'll have more about that soon if they'll be able to purchase after the Kickstarter. And those ones are made out of aluminium, which is why he worked at Karas Customs. But the stuff that you can buy right now is, is all the walnut stuff, but you should just go and check it out. If you go to dudekmoderngoods.com, that's D-U-D-E-K-M-O-D-E-R-N-G-O-O-D-S.com. Of course, there'll be a link in the show notes. You'll be able to find that there. Um, you can get 10% off until May 8th, uh, of any product on, uh, Myke's store by using the code PENADDICT. So any, any, any product in the Dudek Modern Goods store, you'll get 10% off if you use the code PENADDICT. Myke ships internationally with very reasonable rates. Remember, walnut is heavy, so it's not super cheap, but they're very reasonable. He tries his best to keep that down and he has shipped to over 20 countries so far. Um, so there you go. Get 10% off with the code PENADDICT. Thank you so much to Dudek Modern Goods for sponsoring this week's episode of the PENADDICT podcast.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yes. So I am ordering the daily as we speak. I keep meaning to order that one. And let me type in PENADDICT. Before I forget. Yay. Discount. 10% off. Um, I needed one from, for, uh, my office at, at my jobity job. Um, and you would think I would just steal one from my desk at home because I have three or four of them already, but they have stuff in them that I don't want to, I don't want to unstuff them. So I just want another one. So, um, I'm going to get the daily, which is perfect for the office is three pen holder and notebook in the back. So I, I'm, I'm totally getting this.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I have three Dudek products. Literally every pen that I care about lives in one of these things. Yeah. If I don't care about it, it ain't in one. If I care about it, it's in them.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yep. Exactly. So all the stuff I want to get, um, yeah, if it doesn't, if it doesn't live in there, it can, uh, can go, go hide away in the closet. So yeah, that's a good stuff. Good stuff. All right. Thanks dude for sponsoring us and, uh, look for my order momentarily. All right. So I just talked about Van Ness and the Bung Box inks. So, uh, Lisa Van Ness had, had a couple of questions. One, she was asking about the folded nips, which became a huge deal at most of the, the pen sharing event that you and I missed. So if anyone hasn't seen, um, Matthew Morse's folded nib work, you need to go to his website. We'll have that in the show notes. Um, and I don't know a lot about them. Jeff picked one up with a holder, but, um, check out what Matthew does at his site and, you know, figure out these folded nibs, but it's basically a large dip pen that does some really crazy line width variation. And it's really cool. It's basically like painting with a fountain pen nib. It's pretty cool. And Lisa also mentioned about, um, seeing the older pen people are now acknowledging the benefits of social media, um, including the, the, the guy who runs the pen show there. Um, and she's saying it's about time. So that was a real kind of thing that we saw, you know, it's starting to social media doesn't hit some of these old school, um, things like fountain pen shows very, very much. So I think, you know, maybe we'll start to see an influx of that. Um, if not, I would hope to, uh, at least, uh, see a little bit more, a little bit more change. So, and, and Maury, it says the same thing, you know, how nice it must be for the older collectors and dealers to see passion for pens and the demographic that we brought to the show. And it was obvious. If there was one thing that was obvious throughout the whole show was the younger crowd was out in full force. So that was pretty cool.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Um, bump. Was he in the chat room earlier? No. So, uh, Robert, who made it to the, to the show and into the not party, wanted to know how my new Lamy multi-pin cleaned up. It did real good. Um, I want to get it a little bit cleaner on the inside, but it really, you know, the old ink cartridges I just trashed, the mechanics work well. I have Zebra Sarasa, um, excuse me, Zebra Charbo X gel ink refills in there. Works like a champ. I am having a hard time putting that pen down. It's hard coming back from a pen show, Myke. Like I have like five new pens and at one time, that's really hard to like use and love them all. So I'm still trying to figure that part out.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah. In a way it's kind of a blessing that I can't use the sailor. Yeah. Yeah. So do you know what I have been using? What? So I'm going to totally cut off your story. So in 2011, Thomas Hall sent me two Edisons.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' No, it wasn't 2011.

'''Myke Hurley:''' It was. No. Yeah. Hang on. I'm going to go get the letter that he wrote me.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' All right. I think you're looking at British dates. I think it was 2014.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' And your backward date system.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah. 2014.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Okay. It was in January, 2014.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Oh, so yeah. Pretty, pretty long ago.

'''Myke Hurley:''' So you guys had the backward one.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Oh, you heard, you heard all that. Yeah.

'''Myke Hurley:''' A year and a half ago, he sent me these and I've been sitting on them and I was scared to use them. And then do you remember we were talking last week about how like now I have the confidence to use other people's pens? Mm-hmm. Like now I, now if he sent me stuff, I'd be totally fine with it. But before I was worried I was going to break them. And there were two nibs. There was a 0.8 and a 0.3 Masuyama Koso Vitalik. And I can't remember 100% which nib I have now, but I'm pretty sure it's the 0.8.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. You'd know if it was the 0.3.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah. Because I remember, yeah. Because I think I tried one. I was like, nope, can't do it. Can't do it. Yeah. And I am in love with this pen.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So I think you got the Perlet.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah. He gave me the Perlet. Yeah. Which is so nice that he gave me one. I love that guy so much. Yeah. Really. Thomas Hall is one of the, just the best people. Yep. Yeah. And it's, it, it writes like a dream, man. It's just absolutely fantastic. And I've been using that a lot as well this week.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Good. Yeah. That's, um, it's good to try to get all these pens and use what I've started doing was writing out all my thoughts. Cause I haven't wrote, written my recap post yet for the blog. Um, I'm way out of sync on blogging right now. I don't know whether I'm coming or going and trying to get things published, but I'm going to work on my, I'm, I hope to get mine out this weekend cause I have to take pictures, but I was using all my pens to write down all my notes and just rotating like every paragraph, you know, like the four or five pens that I brought home and, uh, just so I can, I can get to use them.

'''Myke Hurley:''' And, oh man, your, uh, black dot dash notebooks. A good. Oh, good. That paper is good. Good. I'm glad you like it. I've been using it for ink tests and stuff. Nice. Nice.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. It's the fountain pen one. It's really, really great. Yeah. I'm digging it right now. I'm using it for our show notes with a needlepoint nib and it's working great. Um, Stuart Hasley asked a question that's kind of related to some of the previous questions.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Did you fully answer the question? Sorry about the Lamy.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yep. Yeah. It's, it's good to go. It's solid. Um, the only thing I wanted to do with the Lamy is try to date it. I'm thinking it's early nineties, but I want to try to figure out how I can, how I can date that thing.

'''Myke Hurley:''' So, well, you know, it's before the wall came down. Right. Right. So that's my only one of the funniest things. Not that there was a wall. I mean, the Berlin wall was a horrible thing. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But the fact that, you know, what did it say? Like, was it a West Germany on it? Yeah. Yeah. It's just funny to me to see that. It's like, oh yeah, there was a West and East Germany. Yeah.