Editing The Pen Addict 316/transcript (section)

== Ink Preferences Discussion ==


'''Myke Hurley:''' How much money will I give them? Oh, hang on a second, all of my money. I mean, honestly, like that's what I would want. That is exactly the pen, right? Like a king of pen, demonstrator, orange. Like if we had the skills, tools, and materials, i.e. if we were sailor pen co, that's what we would make.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, that pen is something else. So yeah. I don't, you know, if we want to get this like on a personal, like one-off, like one and only, and go like ultimate pen, I did answer this on the BYOB podcast the last time I was on there, and I would, I didn't have like specifics, but I would get an artist involved. Like I would pick, you know, find an artist that, you know, I really enjoy and do something, while not like a, like a gaudy art piece, but something subtle, like Nakaya-ish, but with someone that, you know, I support and believe in to, to do the barrel and then just kind of go from there. That would be like if I did that, but if I'm doing a pen to make and to sell, man, give me an orange king of pen. It's over. It'd just be over at that point.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah, I think that's probably the perfect thing.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. Yeah. All right, Daniel, I put in this question. Daniel's in the, in the Slack room and I put this question to call him out because I, I, I copied this exactly how he wrote this. Somebody that listened, did he answer my question about when I can give him money for the 12 pin case? So number one, I'm disappointed that you didn't listen, Daniel, and you're, you're asking for input from somebody that did. And I found that completely hilarious when I was reading these questions yesterday, but it brought up the broader question of pen case design, which is why I put this in there. So we have a 12 pin case prototype we've been carrying around for knock and I don't think we're going to make that case, but the wheels are in motion in Jeff's head to design something for larger capacity, larger quantities of pens. So it won't be like purely a 12 pin case. I don't think, but we have some ideas for different ways to carry large amounts of pens and we're always messing around with things, trying new designs. It's a slow process as anyone who's followed us over the years knows to manufacture something from, you know, a thought in your head to an actual product that other people can buy is an extraordinarily long process, especially for us. so, you know, there's things in the works. I don't have a 12 pin case that's imminent, but we do have an idea for a larger pin case that we want to try. We don't even have the prototype yet, but we've got the sketches and designs and materials and layouts. So we'll make a prototype. We'll be teasing y'all with it at some point, probably later this year, and then see if it becomes a real thing because we do a lot of, we make a lot of prototypes that always don't make the cut. And so the one I'm carrying now for 12 pins may not make the cut, but something else might.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So Daniel also wanted to know, since I gave him a hard time about the beginning of that question, what do you think the ink world is missing? And my answer to that is nothing. I think my stance on the ink world is crystal clear. I get asked to make an ink all the time. There's a reason why I haven't made my own pen addict ink is because I don't think I can do anything new. And that's important to me or different, you know, something to stand out. Can you think of anything possibly that the ink world is missing, Myke?

'''Myke Hurley:''' No, I'm not attuned to it enough. Like there's already too much for me to even begin to understand.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, like I don't feel like I'm lacking anything. Like what am I lacking? And when I look at all the inks that are available to me, do I go, boy, I wish I had X. I mean, I think people would always love like a faster dry time, you know, just in a general sense. But there's technical limitations to that, right? You lose things when you have that. So as far as technical aspects, I think there's done. There's definitely, I'm not missing any colors, that's for sure. That doesn't stop me from buying colors that are close or similar to other things. But I just don't see, yeah, I got nothing for this. So I'm not seeing anything. I'd be interested to hear if any listeners, you know, after they hear this episode, if they think we're actually missing something. Like the only thing I can even think of is dry time. You know, that would be to be able to get dry time in all the inks that ink colors that you love and it to work well. So that would be a technical challenge for someone. All right, Mr. Dookie, I'm having a hard time finding a finer refill for my retro 51s. We get this question a lot, Myke. The Schmidt and retro 51 capless refills are awesome, but I can't seem to get anything thinner than 0.6. Monteverde makes a 0.5 millimeter gel that's super popular. And that's if you want something to just pop right in. If you want to manipulate a refill to where you have to hack it a little bit, some of the uniballs and pilots and zebra refills can be hacked to fit into the Schmidt retro 51 P8127 style, something that'll fit in there. And we'll put a link in the show notes. Myke, I'll add that to the doc here. Anna has a really great refill guide and goes through some of the things that we'll hack into there. So that will be something to check out. We'll put that in there in the show notes.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' E. Scott Mitchell says, my favorite ink is private reserve ebony purple, dark saturated black with a subtle purple secret. lately I've been getting some crystallization in some, not all pens. Can either of you think of another interesting black with a twist or a secret identity?

'''Myke Hurley:''' Oh, I like that phrase, secret identity.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, so that's good.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So a couple of things on this. One, private reserve is kind of known for weird ink effects, which is honestly, I don't use them because of that. two, if you want to keep that purple flavor in there, Monteverde has come out with a new ink lineup. I don't exactly recall the name, but they started to do some black mixtures into there, into those ink colors. You know, green blacks and purple blacks and aside from blue blacks, which pretty much anyone, anyone can do. And the third one, which I'm vamping here, Myke, trying to find the ink name is the one I use. It's a black ink that doesn't necessarily have a hint of another color in, but it's just a shade of black that seems it has more character than any flat black would. And it's the, the, from the, the Kyoto no Oto ink lineup. And I can't remember the name off the top of my head and I am searching. Uh, someone can tell me in the chat room as I search for this. Let's find it here. Almost there, Michael. So it's the Nure Biro ink. So we'll put this in the show notes. It's like a raven's wing. Like you see the iridescence of, you see a black raven, right? And you can see kind of those, uh, iridescent colors on their wings or their feathers. It's a really, really neat black, ink. It's one of the most enjoyable black inks I do. I use, um, cause I don't use very many of them cause they're mostly boring. This is not a boring ink, but it's pretty much black without any undertones. It just has a little bit of extra character to the, to the sheening of it. And it makes it look really cool on the page.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' All right. Mia Thet. You were just discovering stationary and jet and jet pens and want free shipping. How do you allocate your $25? This is an easy question for me. And it's pretty much a repetition of things you could pull off my top five pens list. You're getting a Uniball Signo DX. You're getting a Uniball Kurutoga. You're getting a Rodia A5 pad of some shape or form, you know, probably, you know, either, you know, blank or lined or gridded.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' You could pick out a highlighter. The Kukuyo Beetle Tip is like my highlighter that I pick in like this $25. Yeah, it's a great like you kind of get like the one of each thing. You get the Kuretake Zig Mangaka drawing pen. You go down my top five list. You pick the top one item from each of those lists like the non-expensive fountain pen lists. And those are the things that build out your little kit there and you get to $25 like no problem. You get the Zebra Superfine Brush Pen. You kind of just do, it's a one of each thing, gets you like right at $25. I should just do a post for this little kit and put that out there because it's super simple and you get really, really good stuff and you get to try a bunch of different things. So it's a good question to make me remember to do a post about it, but it's real, real simple to build. So just hit that top five list, go off the, pick the top, the top choice in each of the low end categories and you're set.

'''Myke Hurley:''' So my recommendation would be to go wild building out some high-tech C-Coleto stuff.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. You can lose yourself in that. Yeah. Those are really cool. Like I love those pens. The three and four color ones. I don't go for the fives. Those are too wide.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' All right. Doc Ketchup wants to know, I just got a Pilot Falcon and I'm looking for a blue or blue black ink that will sheen when I flex the nib. What are your recommendations? I go straight to Robert Oster for this, even though there's more sheeny blue blacks out there, but like you can get Lake of Fire from Robert Oster, which is pretty easy to get ahold of. It's really well priced and you're going to get, it's like some bright blues in there. Then you're going to get a great red sheen. And even though the Falcon is not a crazy flex nib, there's enough line variation in there to where you're going to see that those characteristics with something like Lake of Fire and a lot of his blues and blue black inks have good shading. So just check out the Robert Oster inks and they're not like hyper shading. Like if you want something that's really, really crazy, you're going to look at organic studio like nitrogen, but I think that's a little bit of extreme. I don't know if that's exactly where you're going out with this question. So more shun Grieg wants to know, is there a planner with a layout comparable to the Hobo Nichi Techo cousin? I adore the look, but don't want to stumble over a better alternative after getting it. The one that people compare the most to the cousin is the Jibun Techo by Kukuyo. So I think those are your two options for the massively huge all the thing layouts. in a planner. So the Techo cousin or the Jibun Techo. And we'll put a link in the show notes to that.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yep, found it.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' If you're not going to do those things, then you're probably looking at something Rodia does, which is a completely different layout, more simpler, different paper. But the Techo cousin and the Jibun Techo are the ones, are kind of like the one and two for that type of planner. You know, that's not a planner for everyone by any stretch of the imagination. They're very, they can be overwhelming and complex. But those are the two in a category all by themselves. And Myke, we made it. I win. We're going to get all the questions in.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Actually, do you know what? We're going to finish the episode right here. Thanks. No, we'll do this last one. Go on.