Editing The Pen Addict 247/transcript (section)

== Ask TPA ==


'''Brad Dowdy:''' So we like to do this part of the show is usually reserved for our Ask TPA segment. And we always have lots of questions to get to either through Twitter or through snail mail. This time I had a rash of email Ask TPA and not just standard email Ask TPA, Myke. These are several hundred word emails. So I'm calling this the huge emails edition of Ask TPA. There's a few shorter ones, but we got some monsters in here, but they were so good. I wanted to read them or read parts of them and for us to discuss. What do you think about that?

'''Myke Hurley:''' That's a great idea.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, so I think there's some really interesting topics. And this first one is a little more than a topic. It's asking you to do a little more than just listen. We want you to go take a survey for our friend Stephen Moy, who's in the chat room today. So this message is from Stephen. He says, we met at the DC Pen Show. I'm currently doing a study on fountain pen weights. Would it be possible for you to make a quick mention of it on the show? I only have 90 responses so far, which to me for fountain pen weights, that's a lot of responses. Yeah, I wouldn't say only 90 to be surveyed. Yeah, that's what I thought too. He said he's active in Reddit, in the Reddit community. And he has a link in the show notes to take this survey. He says, the study is looking at the weight of the established fountain pen users most frequently used fountain pen and the number of pages written daily as a primary focus. So he's doing a study on weights in writing. And this is really cool. And hopefully Stephen will share the data with us, the results, and see what he finds out at the end. But we'll have a link to this in the show notes. And y'all should all go take this. I haven't done it yet, but I'll try to do that this afternoon. Because I think it's nothing I would have ever considered, right? No. We talk about weights when we're writing. This pen's light. This pen's medium. This pen's super heavy. This pen's too heavy to write with. But I've never considered, like, out of my most used pens, where do they lie on that spectrum. Yeah.

'''Myke Hurley:''' And if and what effect that could have on the amount of time that you spend with them. That kind of thing. Right. Interesting.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Right. Right. So he says he's looking at about three months to get all the results tabulated and come up with his conclusion. So we will be talking about it later. And we'll get the results from Stephen then. All right. So this next one, before I get into the long reading ones, I'm going to have to have a drink. I'll have another short one here. This is from Simon. Needs an all-weather pen. And I wanted to put this just because of the first sentence of this email, Myke. It says, hi, I'm going to be trekking in Nepal for a month and want to take some supplies for writing. If you want me to answer your email on the podcast, that's how you started.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I tend to be scared to give people advice in these situations. You know, it's not like, oh, I need a good pen for the high school graduation or need a good pen to take notes in the office. Like, if we recommend something to him and it doesn't work out, Brad, then we're in trouble.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I know. I know. But this is actually easier because the answers are fewer, right? It really narrows the focus. So he says, the Fisher Space Pen Bullet Space Pen seems like a no-brainer, but I have big hands and even posted, I can't really use it. I know the refill is kind of key, but I don't know what barrel it fits in. Any recommendations for a barrel model or general alternatives? I think this is actually a very easy question to answer. So yes, stick with the Fisher Space Pen refill, but get a County Calm Embassy pen. It is a capped pen. It's not retractable. Heck, you could maybe, if you want retractable, you could probably go for one of Michael's pens. That would probably last a month in there and it'll fit the Fisher Space Pen because it uses Parker refills. But I use the County Calm. It's a capped pen, but it's big, sturdy. You can even get, I have an aluminum model. They do a stainless or titanium model that's heavier and it will take any beating you can throw at it. It's one of the best pens I own, an all-time favorite of mine. So look at County Calm, the Embassy pen. We'll put a link in the show notes. They are fantastic and they're going to be able to withstand a trip like that without question.

'''Myke Hurley:''' And if push comes to shove, you can use it as some kind of attack weapon.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. Yeah. It's not super tactical. This is not a tactical pen. Although it's tactical in style, it does not have the glass breaking throat slashing features.

'''Myke Hurley:''' It doesn't have any blades or like you can't shoot anything out of the side of it. You know, you can't do that.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Not this one. Not this one.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Maybe. That's a whole different type of scenario. scenario that you might be looking for. I don't know.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. If you want more on that, go listen to my episode of Gear Geeks Live with Tony. We talk about all those silly pens. That's a whole thing that I just can't. Oh, it's a thing. It's a thing. That's for sure. All right. This next one, Myke. It says, hey, Brad and Myke, my name is Connor. I live in Portland, Oregon. And today I met a fellow pen addict for the first time. His name is Zeb. And he spotted me literally from across the room because I was riding with a Kaweco Lilliput, inked with black swan and Australian roses, in case anyone was wondering. That's a true pen addict right there. He gives you all the details. Because we want to know, right? Yeah. What's the point?

'''Myke Hurley:''' It's like, oh, I have blue ink in it. No, that is unsatisfactory.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. In case anyone was wondering, yeah, all of us were wondering what ink you were using in your Kaweco Lilliput. But so Connor says, I've turned several friends of mine, but I haven't met someone else out in the wild who has the same love of pens as I do. It was a really neat experience to be able to break out all my pens that I had in my bag and share them with a total stranger. In parentheses, he says, I didn't realize I had eight inked pens with me. That's all of us, Connor. So you're in good company. He was super nice, super enthusiastic, and turned me on to trying Orochizuku Siuro. I wanted to give him a shout out on the podcast if I could. He said he's a fellow listener, and I thought it might be cool for him if he heard his name come up on an episode. You guys read an Ask TPA I submitted once, and hearing my name on the show gave me a huge grin. I thought I could do the same for Zeb, and this would be more of a surprise. So if I could, I'd like to give Zeb from Ridgefield a shout out. It was super cool to meet you, Zeb. So welcome, Zeb. Glad you're a listener. Glad you and Connor found a mutual love of fountain pens out in the wild. We talk about that all the time. Like, I don't live in a big town, so I don't get many out in the wild experiences. But I think it's cool when you see someone using something that you know is not a normal thing. Like, seeing someone out in the wild using a Kaweco lily put, you know they're dialed into this thing that we're into. They're dialed into what you're into as well. And this is why, like, we talk about pen shows and meeting people for the first time in person. It's, the connection's automatic. It's not forced or difficult. It just happens. It's like instant click. And it's easy to have those conversations. It's fun. It's something we all enjoy doing. And, yeah, I just think, I just thought this was a great email that I wanted to share because this happens. And this community is so great that, you know, anyone can just walk up to anyone else and have these kind of conversations. And, you know, hopefully you've made a new friend. So it's very cool.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Zeb and Connor, if you two have never been to a pen show, you need to go to a pen show. Because you had a mini pen show. That's what it's like for the whole time. So get yourself to a pen show.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Are you saying that because you use the Kaweco Lilliput?

'''Myke Hurley:''' No, just because they enjoy kind of like showing things to each other, right? Like, and like enjoying trying other stuff out. Like, that's what a pen show is all about, right? And so if they've never done that, they clearly enjoyed that experience. I think that they would get a real kick out of going to a show.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, I was making a mini pen show joke, but I fell flat.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Wow. No, I didn't get that. I thought that you were saying I was criticizing his pen usage or something. That will not be the title of the show. We can at least agree on that one.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' All right. So maybe the intro to this email, you know it will. So this is for, this is Ask TPA, Best Fountain Pen, Inc. And the message is, Dear Anna's Husband. So that that has become a thing, warms my heart to no end. Anna and I love it. I got it in LA. You know, I'm going to see Anna and her real husband next week. So this is going to be, this is going to be fun. So the Little Rock Pen Show is going to be fun with Anna's husband, her literal husband being there. So it'll be fun. But me and Bob get along super well. So it's going to be fun. So this email says, thanks a lot. After listening to your podcast for a year and catching up on all the old episodes, I finally got a fountain pen, a Pilot Metropolitan, followed quickly thereafter within a week by a TWSBI Eco and then a Lamy Safari. Yep. You did it.

'''Myke Hurley:''' You 100% did it.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So that's the entry trifecta right there. Yeah. All with fine nibs. And I love them. As for inks, I'm with Myke loving the Pilot Orochizuku Fuyugaki, which is great for my personal notes. I really love it for how fine it writes and then it doesn't bleed or feather, no matter the paper I put it to.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Oh, and also like, I think you missed this line in there that they said, and it's the best ink ever made. And Brad is silly. Yeah. I didn't miss that part. Thanks for putting that in.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Because I really appreciate it. Some different, you know, alternate show document that you're looking at. No, no.

'''Myke Hurley:''' It's from the original email. Like he copied me in. He blind copied me into it, but you thought I didn't see it. Gotcha.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So here's the real issue that I need to bring up to the listeners because what he tried was what I would have recommended. So he says, but blue ink is another issue entirely. I bought a bottle of Pilot Orochizuku Kanpeki and I love the color, but no matter the paper, it bleeds and looks sloppy. I tried Noodler's Bernanke and had the same problem and the color wasn't nearly as pretty. So here's the catch. I want a bluish ink that stays fine no matter the paper. I'm a litigator and I use a lot of legal pads in preparation for hearings and depositions. Despite the illustrious title, I can't afford to buy the amount of Rodeo legal pads that I would need to have nice paper to write on to prevent these issues. So what say you, Mr. Dowdy? What's the best bluish ink for my situation? Thanks for all the knowledge and enjoyment. Keep it up. Very truly yours, Curtis.

'''Myke Hurley:''' It's a shame that he's having bad luck with Kanpeki. I have not. You know, I found that ink to be great. One of the reasons I ended up picking it was because for me, I didn't have those issues, right?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Right. But the paper is the consideration here, right? Exactly. So if he's using a legal pad, that's a very fibrous, not really accepting of fountain pen ink. So just on the paper side of things, if you can find at one point Staples carried a sugar cane paper in the legal pad size, that's going to handle fountain pen inks better. So on the paper side, you could try that. But really for the ink, the first thing I would have recommended was the Bernanke ink. And if that doesn't work, I'm a little bit at a loss. But the only thing I would go to next, and it's not going to necessarily give you the solution for the best looking blue inks, but I think you're going to want to try Stock Pilot Blue or Blue Black or Stock Pelican Blue or Blue Black. They might can handle those papers better, but I don't have a really awesome answer for this. So hopefully listeners can email me with any answers of inks that they use on legal pads, traditional legal pads, you know, tops, am pad, any of those, any of the type of the ones you find at the office or find in an office supply store that you can buy, you know, in like five, ten packs, things like that. So fine nib, blue ink, and has to handle the legal pad paper very well. And I think, and maybe Lamy. I might throw Lamy in as that ink too. I'm not sure how the turquoise would handle that ink, handle that paper, excuse me. So yeah, that's a hard question because I thought Bernanke ink would be probably kind of a good shot there. There is a Noodler's ink called X Feather that doesn't feather or bleed, but it only comes in black, I think. So I'm not sure what else. So any other thoughts? I would be open to legal pad inks that work well. And speaking of the aforementioned Tony, I'll have to ask him because he's a lawyer and he writes on legal pads a lot and I know he uses fountain pens. So I'll have to figure out what ink he uses. I think he might just use the Pilot Blue cartridges. So that's what made me think of that. All right. You ready? Yeah. You ready for this one? We're going to wrap it up with the big boy here.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Okay. Oh, wow. Yep.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' And these are the kind of emails I like though. We've gotten these before and I just like, so we're going to have a little story time here because this is a monster email, but I like reading the whole thing because it kind of tells a cool story about people who have found this podcast and who have discovered the love of writing and pencils and things like that. So I love these stories. Keep them coming. And this one's from Joseph and the subject line is, where do I go from here?

'''Myke Hurley:''' Depend. That's the answer. Depend.