Editing The Pen Addict 56/transcript (section)

== Fountain Pens ==


'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, I finally got around. I don't even know what episode we, we talked about this in, but we've, we've mentioned it several times about doing some fountain pen ink testing and, and field notes, notebooks. And I've also done it in, um, done paper books. And I finally posted that on the blog last Friday, just kind of a, you know, kind of a quick and dirty sample, um, of what some of the fountain pen inks that I had loaded up. And the, the question came about is because, because the field notes, America, the beautiful edition came with the, um, the 70 pound density paper. And we were commenting on how much thicker it is. And is it nicer for fountain pens and things like that? Um, the short version is, it definitely is, um, which we would have expected. That was kind of the expected result, but I really wanted to, to put some inks and some pens to the test just to see really how it did perform. Um, it did great on all my extra fine, fine nibs, um, lots of different inks at it. And we'll, we'll have, obviously have the link in the show notes where you can go look at the pictures. Um, I tried to expand them a little bit, um, so you could see them, um, on the America's, the beautiful edition, it handled the inks wonderfully. I thought it was, it absorbed a little more ink than the standard, um, than like, um, the dome paper notebook did the utility journal. Um, and it may be even, except for one pen, maybe even bled, it bled a little bit. Um, I'm sorry. Yeah. It, it feathered a little bit on the page, meaning the ink kind of spread, but it really wasn't bad. And especially due to the thickness of the paper, it didn't hardly come through the back of the page at all. That was the most impressive part. Um, you know, I thought my wider nibs, um, and some of those inks didn't work as well. They, they, they spread and bled too much on the page. Like I wouldn't feel comfortable with writing with them in there, but all of the fine nibs that I like, I thought they handled it wonderfully. And especially the bleed through on the back of the page, even with the wider nibs and heavier inks, it, you could, you could probably use the back of the page to write with on the America is beautiful edition with fountain pens, depending on which ink and nib combination you use. I thought it, it did exceptionally well. Um, and you know, field notes might ought to consider using that paper going forward as a stock edition, but I think there's, there's lots of ramifications in, in doing that. Um, I compared it to the field notes, red blooded edition, which is one of the base, um, edition memo books with just the standard 50 pound, uh, paper, the Finch paper, 50 pound bright white. And this is what you'll find in just, you know, the standard craft paper memo books. And then lots of the other more basic, uh, straightforward memo books. Um, there was a few differences in the, some of the color subscriptions additions, but this was, this would be your standard field notes paper. Um, I use this the most with, you know, my extra fine nibs again, and it did bleed through a lot on the back of the page. Um, one particular pin that stood out on the field notes, red blooded edition was my pilot, pilot Falcon, which is a soft extra fine nib. It's got some flex in the nib. So when I'm writing the nib flexes and therefore more ink gets on the page, well, that just bled profusely on this paper. Um, you can see it's, it's obviously legible, but it looks kind of ridiculous on the paper. And of course they bled through to the back a lot. Um, they didn't really transfer to the next page. Um, some people worry about that. I do, um, that the ink actually transfers from one page to the writing side of the next page. You could never use the backside of standard field notes, um, with most of these fountain pens. Although I've talked to other people that use, you know, wide broad nib fountain pens and inks on their standard, um, field notes journals without any issue. Um, do you, do you use many fountain pens in your field notes or do you have something specific you write in your field notes with Myke?

'''Myke Hurley:''' Um, I don't really have anything specific. Um,

'''Brad Dowdy:''' but you don't really use fountain pens though, do you,

'''Myke Hurley:''' I tend not to use fountain pens on them historically because the, the paper is thinner, has been thinner. Um, and I knew what would happen, you know? Right. Right. Especially as I have many broad fountain pens, I knew that it just was a non-starter. So, you know, I typically will grab something like a retro or, you know, something like that. Um, I bought a Sharpie pen the other day, you know, I don't know why I was in the, there's a new supply store, and I went, um, near the office. They don't really have a lot of great stuff, but they had buy one, get one free. So I was like, okay, I'll do that. Um,

'''Brad Dowdy:''' had you ever used one of those before?

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah. Yeah. A long time ago.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Um, I love those pens. Those are fantastic.

'''Myke Hurley:''' This is one of the aluminum ones. As you'll hear.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. Cool. I like that pen. It's refillable too. So I have,

'''Myke Hurley:''' I have a question about, sure. Well, I have one question and before though, I want to call foul actually on this review, I think that you cheated, um, Oh yeah. For the dome paper, um, test because, you know, you love dome paper so much and you only tested four pens and inks. That's what I'm going to say. Apparently you washed out the other pens. I'm not sure if I, if I agree with that. I think that you may have, uh, have cheated.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I know it wasn't, it wasn't a fair test. Was it?

'''Myke Hurley:''' No.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. And I called, I called myself out on that because I was like, I did the first two at the same time one night. And then somehow I, I think that's about the time where I was talking about, um, uh, reducing the number of fountain pens I had inked and I inked them. And I was like, I mean, I, I cleaned them. And after that, I realized that I hadn't done the, uh, the dome, uh, ink testing yet. So yes, it is not a match. Um, I think you did,

'''Myke Hurley:''' I think you did what people wanted out of this though, what people would want, which is just to compare field notes to field notes. I think that's the most valuable test out of it. Anyway, to my eyes, I mean, this is again, the actual, the, the, the real paper themselves might, might be different, but from the images, it looks like for bleed, the field notes did better than, the dome just from the ones that you tested.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' the Americas, Americas is beautiful. Yeah. Not the standard.

'''Myke Hurley:''' No, not the standard, not even close. Yeah. But it did look like that, that did better than the, than the dome. But, um, one of the thing, the thing that I wanted to ask you the question is your Pelican M405. It's an EF nib, but it looks like the thicker than your stub nib. And I don't understand why. So from looking at the images, it's extremely thick. And I don't understand.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' You don't know how good of a question that is. And let me explain to you why. Um, it's an awesome question. And you're not the only one that has mentioned that. Um, um, I've had someone else on Twitter mentioned that, um, our Canon P on Twitter who I talked to a bunch, he's in Atlanta. So we, we, we chat a bunch about pins and inks and he made the very specific comment that you did. Why? He said, is your Pelican seriously an extra fine nib? And it looks like that. And I said, yes, it is. And that's why it is at Myke Masayama's house right now. That was my answer to him. It's broken. It is not broken, but I did not, I did not elaborate on why it's the way it is. And there's a very specific reason.