Editing The Pen Addict 2/transcript (section)

== Mechanical Pencil ==


'''Brad Dowdy:''' It is. You never would have thought mechanical pencil technology there would be that much cool stuff going on. But what they've done with this Kuro Toga is it has an auto-lead rotation mechanism in the tip. And what that means is every time as you lift your pencil up and down from the page, when the pressure releases from the lead on that lift up, there's a tiny tick inside that you – it's really not – it's not noticeable when you write. That rotates that lead for you, just the smallest fraction. And what that keeps the pencil from doing is getting – we all know what it is when your mechanical pencil gets a flat lead and you're always twisting the pencil in your hand to get that sharp point to write with and things like that.

'''Myke Hurley:''' It gets worn down on one edge, like the edge that you're writing on.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, and your lead color will go from dark to lighter as it gets flatter and flatter. Then you turn it over and you're back to a dark, sharp tip and your line width is always changing. This solves it and it works. I mean, you would think that there's no way that this would work. It absolutely works. And this one I have actually done testing with. I've written pages of the same sentence over and over, keeping my hand still to use the same position, you know, not rotating the pencil in my hand. It absolutely works. It kept a nice, sharp, rounded point the entire time. It's crazy. I don't know how they do it. And it's pretty cool technology.

'''Myke Hurley:''' When I bought my first Kuru Togo, I only wrote in pencil for about three days. And I probably would have stuck to it for longer if I could actually write in pencil in my day job. I just was so impressed by something so relatively cheap and simple that it produced such consistency. Yep.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' And the strangest thing that I had to get used to is, I mean, for 20 or 30 years, there's a habit of turning the pencil in your hand when you lift it up. I mean, that's not a habit that goes away lightly. With the Kuru Togo, you're actually defeating the purpose. If you twist the barrel in your hand, you're not letting the pencil do its work, and you kind of have to in this case.

'''Myke Hurley:''' What's cool with the Kuru Togo is you can get it in loads of different styles as well, can't you? Like, you can get the regular plastic bodies, but they also do, like, metal bodies and that sort of stuff.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. My favorite one is the – so there's the regular plastic barrel ones. They come in a lot of different colors, and they also come in two different lead sizes. You can get a 0.3 millimeter and a 0.5 millimeter lead. Then they make what's called a high-grade, which is like an aluminum barrel Kuru Togo, which it's really a half aluminum barrel. The top half is always going to be plastic, and then the bottom half is aluminum, like in the grip area. Then they make a roulette model, which is the one I have in my hand right now, which is – it's got an aluminum grip, but it's got some knurling on the grip, which is those little metal ridges kind of machine cut into there. And it looks really, really slick.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Roulette's a clever name.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, I like that. It's always going to spin. It took me a while. I was like, roulette? That's kind of weird. Oh, I see what you did there.

'''Myke Hurley:''' You don't pull the war over Brad's eyes.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, it took me a minute, though. I won't lie to you. But, yeah, that's a list of my current favorite pins. We'll have to do this again in four or five months and see how much this list changed because it always does, and I always talk about that on my blog. There's always a new number one pin for me, and that's part of the fun of this for me. There's always something new to try out.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Maybe by that time I'll be able to join you with recommendations on each level as well.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Cool. I think we should work on that. We should do how all the other podcasts always talk about what they're drinking or what their coffee is or what their whiskey is that they're drinking. We need to talk about what pin we're using today.

'''Myke Hurley:''' What are you using today?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Today I've used pretty much all day. I've used the exact gel pin that I put down in my favorite pins, the Pilot Hi-Tex C .3 millimeter black. I had a lot of note-taking to do today. I wrote about three or four pages worth of notes, handwritten, which I want to do on occasion, and that's the pen I used, and I just cruised right through it.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I'm using a Zebra Sarasa clip today. It's actually my favorite show notes-taking pen. That's a good one. What's the tip stats on that one? 0.4. Okay, cool. It's the one you sent me. Okay, great. But at work, I use a Pilot G2 .7, which makes your toes curl, I think, in blue.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' No, no. See, that's a big misconception about me. I like to give people a hard time, but I also like people to use what works best for them. And if that's what gets the job done for you, then I'm a happy pen addict.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I like it. We've quailed your addiction for another week, right? Yes, yes, for sure. Thank you, Phil. So once again, mate, where can people find you?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' You can find me at penaddict.com. That's my website where I blog about all this stuff that we talk about. I do pen reviews and all kinds of other crazy stuff. And I'm on Twitter at dowdyism, D-O-W-D-Y-I-S-M. And if you want to send myself or the show an email, you can do so at thepenaddict at gmail.com. And I think that pretty much covers it.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Cool. All right. So until next week, thank you very much for listening. From me, it's a goodbye. And from Brad, I'm sure it's a goodbye, too.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yes, goodbye, everyone. Thank you. See you. All right. Bye-bye.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Bye-bye. in conjunction with Brad Dowdy. Brad is an employee of JetPens.com, who do not have any affiliation with this podcast.

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