Editing The Pen Addict 199/transcript (section)

== Custom Inks ==


'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yep.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Got some ask EPA to round up this week's episode. First off comes from Carl. What do you think about the Tekka custom inks?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I think it's a pretty good idea. We're going to see if they can deliver. What is this? So what Tekka does, so what they do is they basically take a hex code of whatever color you want, and they can match that into an ink.

'''Myke Hurley:''' That seems almost impossible.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' They can do it. And we'll put a link into the show notes of Matt Armstrong's review of the first two Tekkers that he got at Pinhabit. He liked them. He reviewed them. I've been talking to them, and I thought I had some samples coming, and then I hadn't heard from them in a while. So maybe I do, maybe I don't. But I picked out a couple colors for them to make for me. But I haven't heard anything in a while. And now that they're getting kind of out there, they're trying to ramp up production. Just like we always have trouble with production at Knock. Once you get your name out there, you've got to be ready to deliver the product. And they're running behind right now, so that's kind of hitting them. And I haven't bothered to email them. I'll figure I'll get my inks eventually, so I'm not too stressing about it. I think it's cool as long as they behave. I mean, I don't care how cool an ink color is. It better behave, and it better not mess with my pens. And when you're asking some guys to make a product that could be potentially damaging to a product that you own, they better deliver the goods. And that's what I think we're all waiting to see. And I have no reason to believe that they will.

'''Myke Hurley:''' When you say damaging, do you mean because you don't know what the inks might do to a pen?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Right, because they're not a pen manufacturer, right? What is their testing involved? And they've covered all this, and they ensure that. But there's no sense in rushing to get a product that you'll be able to get once people see how this inks behave with different metals and different nibs and things like that. So I think it's a very cool idea, and I think it's a wait-and-see product. And as long as it delivers quality, there's no reason they won't be a huge success. I think it's great.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Cool. Could you get me the link for the pen habit? Because I can't find the review on this site. Yeah, no problem. No problem. I will get that. Thank you so much. So go check that out in the show notes, as always. This comes from Joe. We love old Joe. He's got a little baby on the way. I'm looking for an easy-to-clean, deep, rich black ink with permanent properties optional. Any suggestions?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So we talked about this on Twitter yesterday, and I have a hard time recommending any deep, rich black ink with permanent properties other than the Sailor Nano Black or Kiwa Guro. What the exact name is, I can't think of it, but it's the Sailor Nano Black. It's one of the most smoothest lubricated inks I've used, and the black is pitch black and kind of glossy. It looks really, really nice. It's very easy to clean, but you actually have to use this pen. You can't let this sit for like two weeks and not use it because it will dry up in the nib, which is not a problem. It cleans right off, but you have to use this every couple of days, every two days, whatever. As long as you're using this ink, it's going to be perfectly fine. Your other option is probably something like Noodler's Heart of Darkness, which a lot of people are talking about in the chat room. I just posted a link in the Pen Addict Members newsletter to MyPenJourney, washed one of his Field Notes notebooks, and a bunch of the pages were written with Heart of Darkness, and they looked like they were brand new. So it's proven to hold up through washing, so that's a good permanent property. So those are probably your two choices.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Cool. Mm-hmm. All right, next question is from Shireen. It's Shireen, right? That's the correct pronunciation. Yes, I remember from last time.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I know, she'll get on you.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I know. Favorite grind from Myke Masayama?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' You want to go first, or you want me to go?

'''Myke Hurley:''' I'm going to go with Curse of Italic for me.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' That'd be my number two. Number one, he does extra, extra fine, better than anyone that I've ever used. We used to call it the Thomas Hall Special, basically taking a European nib, or even a Japanese nib, and getting it ground to somewhere around Japanese extra fine, which is .2 millimeter, .3 millimeter. He does that better than anybody. That's my favorite nib grind by Myke. He also does it on the needle point that he provides to Franken-Kristoff on a steel nib. I love that nib. So his extra, extra fine grinds are my number one, and then Curse of Italic would be number two. I have several of his Curse of Italics. He makes a crisp Curse of Italic, so if you're not willing to write on your sweet spot, and the pen kind of turns a little bit on you, you're going to catch an edge. He grinds a very sharp Curse of Italic. I personally like that, especially because I use finer nibs. So in that small space, it's not so bad for me. And, you know, that would be my number two. Those are the ones I get by him far and away the most.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Okay, Joe wrote in and said, The clip on my Brechtra 51 seems to have, the tornado seems to have given up the ghost. Any way to bring its spring back? This might be difficult for me to try to explain, but I have done this. What you could do is try and find something, maybe like a very thin pencil or pen in circumference, and try and stick it underneath the clip and bend the clip back around on itself. So you end up bending the clip, but it will then stay strong. It will, like, be stronger again. It will clip back to the pen. Does that make sense?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, no, that makes sense to me. I just haven't done it before myself, so...

'''Myke Hurley:''' So you kind of distort it, right? So it's at your own risk, I guess, for if you want to do that.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, I haven't seen if the end of the pen's, like, screw all the way off, or to where you can pull off the clip separately and bend it back into shape. I don't even know that, because I've never had to do it.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So it's something to look at. But what you're saying will work. It'll be a little bit off shape, but the tightness will return.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah, that's it. So you end up, you know, it doesn't look as good, but if what you need is the utility, then you're going to get that back again. Right. So that's something that I've done in the past. And Sarah has written in, what's the best shopping day for the Atlanta pen show if I can make only one day? This is a difficult question, right?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' It's not an easy question. It's not straightforward at all.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Because there's multiple answers to it.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. I would say Friday, probably around noon, even though there's going to be people in there earlier than that, probably between 9 and 10 o'clock, people will start going in. Not all vendors might not be set up by that time.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So Saturday is the most busy day, and everyone's there. Everyone's shopping. Everyone's best goods are out. If I could only go one day, I'd probably try to go Friday afternoon, to be honest.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' You should be able to see everything without the massive crowd that'll be there on Saturday.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Most people are going to be there, and you're more likely to get things that haven't sold out yet. You know, because in theory, if what you're looking for is just what's the best time to browse, maybe Sunday morning, right? Because there's nobody there, but everything's sold out. Right?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Right. Let's be clear. They won't be sold out, but if two people are looking for a pilot Murex and there's only one, it's going to be gone Friday. It won't be there on Sunday.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I'm thinking quite a lot about just Franklin Kristoff for some reason. They were, right? All their stuff is sold out.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. I don't want to put words in their mouth, and I don't know this to be fact, but I think they will hold some stuff back for at least Saturday. They'll put out stuff Friday, limited stuff, but I think they'll hold a little bit of it back for Saturday as well. I could be wrong.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I would be surprised. If Saturday is known as the busiest day, you don't want to have nothing to sell.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Right. Right. So don't quote me on that, but that's kind of what I feel. But otherwise, I mean, Sunday is the most comfortable shopping day. You can take your time, spend some time wandering around the show, spend some time talking to the vendors, fondling the goods, if you will, and if you just want a more relaxed day. Saturday, you might have to elbow in to some of the tables and you might have to wait a second to get in there and get the goods. But if there's something that's not like a new modern pen that you know is going to be around Sunday, probably Friday afternoon, I would say.

'''Myke Hurley:''' And what if people want to see us?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' We're going to live there. Oh, yeah. I'll show up Thursday night. I probably won't leave the hotel until Sunday morning when I have a thing over at Nock with the Goulet. Jeff and I are going to take them around, give them a shop tour Sunday morning. So I bet I will be at the hotel from Thursday night all the way until Sunday morning and then back during show hours all day Sunday. Can I come on that tour?

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah. We will be at the Nock table. Basically, if you want to find me, look for Brad. I'll be next to him.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So we'll either be at the Nock table, wandering around in the show, or we'll be at the Waffle House. Or we'll be at the bar. And the best part about that is all of those things are probably within 100 steps of each other. Yeah. That's why I love this show so much. It's not overly gigantic and everything is right there.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yep. We will be at the Nock table. I hope you've got one of those lovely Nock t-shirts for me so I can make my body your billboard.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. Jeff is picking them up today, so I'll make just see how they turn out. I think we... Man, I'm so busy. I forget what exactly we did on this. I think we did a little bit different design last year, or we either did the exact same thing. So how's that for helpful? Was that helpful? Perfect. That's all I need to know. It's either the same as last year or it's different. One of the two.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Very excited. So excited to see everyone that's going to be there. It's going to be a great time. You'll be looking out for episode 200. The audio of that episode will be up next weekend. We're recording on Saturday, so it'll be either up on Saturday or Sunday. Sunday the latest, so you can look out for that. We will be streaming live. We don't know of the time yet, but that will be on Saturday. But you can rest assured that we will be tweeting about it and posting about it in the Pen Addict Slack when we know the time. So you can come and listen to the three of us, me, Brad, and Anna, live on the show. And as we've mentioned before, there'll be a bunch of extra video footage along with the video that will come out in the following weeks for our Kickstarter backers. We will do this again next week, but I just want to thank everyone who makes this possible for us to do this every year. And I'm so excited that we'll be having our first ever RelayCon event as part of the Pen Addict live in Atlanta. So I think that about wraps it up for this week.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' You believe the next time we talk,

'''Myke Hurley:''' we'll be in person, right? It's going to be pretty beautiful, my friend.

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

'''Myke Hurley:''' And I run into your arms in Atlanta Airport.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' That's right. I'll make sure to park at the International Terminal this time. Thank you. So we don't have to bus it back over. One more thing before we go. Benham in the chat room wanted me to mention the Pen Addicts Worldwide Facebook group. So if you're out there, we'll have a link in the show notes. If you're on Facebook and want to go talk to a bunch of pen people all over the world, I was prompted many, many times to set this group up. So I have, and there's like 500 people already joined it. So it'll be out there. And thanks for the reminder for mentioning it.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Go get involved. Mm-hmm. All right. If you want to find our show notes, as always, head on to relay.fm slash penaddict. And this time it's slash 199. But how could you forget? If you want to find Brad online, head over to penaddict.com and knock.co. If you want to find me online, I am on Twitter. I am at imike, I-M-Y-K-E. Brad is at dowdyism, D-O-W-D. D-Y-I-S-M. And we'll be back next time. Thanks again to Harry's, Squarespace, and The Timber Twist for making this episode possible. Until then, until Atlanta, say goodbye, Brad.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Goodbye, Brad. Goodbye, Brad.

[[Category:Podcast Transcripts]]
[[Category:The Pen Addict Podcast Transcript]]