Editing The Pen Addict 246/transcript

{{Infobox podcast transcript
| name            = The Pen Addict
| number          = 246
| title           = Bursting at the Seams
| date            = March 1st, 2017
| hosts           = [[Brad Dowdy]]<br>
[[Myke Hurley]]
| guests          = 
| link            = [https://www.relay.fm/penaddict/246 Episode 246]
| audiolink       = [https://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/traffic.libsyn.com/thepenaddict/The_Pen_Addict_246.mp3 Audio Episode 246]
| length          = 76
}}

'''Myke Hurley:''' From RelayFM, this is The Pen Addict, episode 246. Today's show is brought to you very kindly by Pen Chalet, Blue Apron, and Harry's. My name is Myke Hurley, and I am joined by Mr. Brad Dowdy.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Hey, Myke, how's it going?

'''Myke Hurley:''' Very good. We can start focusing on something else now, so the Kickstarter is complete, right? So now we can turn all of our focus towards making the events happen, which is great. So thank you so much to all of you incredible people, you 720 amazing people who helped us raise just over $29,000, which is so much money. Right. We don't have any answers on what we're going to do with it yet. But that's so much money, and you're going to be able to help us do everything exactly the way that we want to do it to deliver the best rewards we can for you. So to everyone who has backed the project, once again, thank you.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, this turned out to be like the hockey stick chart, like based on what we've done in the past. It was like, we're going along and we're going along, and then wham, this happened. And so it's like a huge outlier pointing up in a cool way, like this is going to be awesome. And, you know, this already gives us the confidence to work on something pretty big for next year. And maybe we can squirrel away some of this money for that as well, because it's going to be kind of a bigger deal if we can pull off what we want to pull off. So, yeah, this is – thank you very much to everyone who backed this. It's awesome. I mean, it's like really, really cool to see this. And just the first quick update, I've already got – you know, the production hasn't started, but the order is in for the cases as of yesterday. So we're starting. They're not going to be ready for a few months, but you've got to get this stuff ahead of time. So I don't know when they'll be ready, but just know that the ball has started to roll for this project. And we're super excited. Like I already have some things I want to talk to you about, Atlanta. Maybe we can do a little differently. I have a couple ideas I need to run by you.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Are we going to do the podcast in VR? Is that what it is?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' We're definitely not, because I'll yak.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Oh, you don't think you could do it?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I probably could, but I have no desire to. So there's that.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah, we can finally stop talking about the Kickstarter now.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, no VR.

'''Myke Hurley:''' No VR. All right, well, at least we've established that. We can throw that idea out the window.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' No one wants to see us up close anyway.



== Manal Bag ==


'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah. I've been talking about that bag, the Manal bag that I've had on order, and it came in, and I just wanted to share some thoughts on it.

'''Myke Hurley:''' It looks great. I really love this bag. You know, I was looking around and just looking at some stuff, and there may have been some bags that were better suited to the purpose that I had. But I wanted something that looked good to me as well. And of everything that I found, the Manal daily bag, which is what I picked up, it definitely looks the best to my eyes, you know, like for my aesthetic. So I'm really happy with that. It fits a ton of stuff. Like I basically emptied out my Topper Mountain briefcase. I was able to get everything in, and I have so much space left over. It has loads of great little pockets, and I think it's the pockets that really help with that, right? Because you're able to kind of, even though it's a relatively similar-ish size, like footprint, it's maybe a little bit bigger. There's more stuff going on, right? There's more pockets on the front. It has like more pockets on the back where the laptop holder and stuff goes. Like there's just more happening. And also I bought like this little organizer thing for some cables and stuff. So that's kind of keeping things nice and out of the way. So I'm very pleased with the way that the bag is able to take care of all of my items, like in the way that I wanted it to. One thing that is frustration for me, but I was able to fix quite easily, was there's no real pen storage solution. Like there's no little like little pockets for pens, right?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, I know a guy.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Well, see, this is the thing. So I didn't really have anything that would like, that I could clip pens inside of. Like the Topo had those little, you know, like the little like finger sized pockets, right?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, so like a lot of backpacks will come with like two to three just slots made for pens or flashlights, just, you know, like a little vertical slot.

'''Myke Hurley:''' This one does not. So I decided that maybe I should just grab some of my knock cases, put my stuff in and put the cases in the bag. So I did. So I'm using, I am using a lookout for three of my pens, a little three pen holster. And I'm also using one that I don't know the name of because I don't think you make it anymore. So it's like the Hightower, but it's just got the two big pockets.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. So for notebooks, right?

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. So that was called the Mary Apple. That was probably the simplest case we made in our original Kickstarter. You know, that's something we wanted to do in the beginning. And then we ended up, you know, kind of cannibalizing that as we, you know, morph and change products, which is what you do. You know, things come and go.

'''Myke Hurley:''' It's the least exciting of all the cases, right? Like it's kind of a boring one. It's just like this bifold of two huge pockets, right? Like it's just not, it doesn't have the excitement of some of them. Like it's just, it's pretty, it's very simple.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. That's like our discovery phase. We're getting our sea legs. What do we want to do? What works? What doesn't? And, you know, you learn and get feedback when you, when you produce things like that. So yeah, we ended up discontinued it, discontinuing it because we had other options, but you know, we still get people, you know, asking for that every now and then.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I have realized though, in doing this, that what I actually need is a Sinclair. I don't own a Sinclair and now I'm going to get a Sinclair probably at the next, at the next pen show because really all I need is a place for three pens and a couple of notebooks. So I'm using two cases for that. Well, that's, that is what the Sinclair is exactly for. So I'm going to, I'm going to get one of those.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. You should get one in Atlanta.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Oh, wait, hold on a second. Colt pens to the purple and brown one.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. Yeah.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Hmm.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' That's a good one. I'm just saying you may have to wait until Atlanta.

'''Myke Hurley:''' All right. I'll wait until Atlanta then. Okay. Well, I can wait. I can wait. So yeah, this is the bag I was looking for. Like this is the bag that I wanted. It has so much space left over that I can fill up a bunch of stuff with when I'm traveling. I'm looking forward to putting it through its paces, which will be in a few weeks when I go off to Ireland. So yeah, I'm very pleased. Big thumbs up for this bag. It's very good looking, very comfortable, tons of space, tons of storage. It's perfect for me.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Cool. Yeah. I want to see it. And I want to see, I want to see how all this stuff fits in.



== Kawekos Pens ==


'''Myke Hurley:''' You will. So last week on the show, you were being super cagey about the Kawekos that you bought, right? You were kind of like, yeah, I got these pens and I'm not really going to talk about them. I don't know what they are. And then refill, refill comes out, your member's newsletter, and you've got all the beans, right? That you're spelling all over the place. Right. So I put in the notes today that I wanted to hear about it. And then I think you took an Instagram photo of them so you could share what they actually really look like. And I wondered, you know, what have you got to say about these vintage Kawekos?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. So I like start getting a story in my head that I maybe want to tell on refill. And if you don't subscribe, like what I do is I, aside from like links and, you know, little short stories and stuff like that, I try to do like one big commentary or review. Yeah. A column, I guess. And it could be anything. It could be editorializing on something. It could be sharing an interesting product. It could just be telling a random story.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Getting all fired up.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. Getting agitated.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Just various different things. And so I always like to have that. And this time I wanted to do it on the Kawekos sports that I bought in LA because I thought it was a good story to tell because it just kind of gives some information about the buying process, which I kind of laid out there and how I bought the pens from Sarge and why did I buy the pens? Why did I pay the price that I bought them and things like that? But what it boils down to is these are some killer pens. So I bought two Kawekos. One is a sport model from 1949. So Kaweko has this great history PDF. We should put this in the show notes, Myke. I'll put it in the chat room to where I could go through and find based on the etching or the printing on my pen, which a lot of manufacturers used to do back in the day, like my Kaweko sport has on its barrel. It says one one two a. So I could take that, go to this document and get it exactly one one two a to know when this pen was made. So this the sport like the Gioche sport was made from 1949 and I could find it exactly from there. It's a piston filler. It looks exactly like the sport classics that you buy today, except the huge difference is it's a piston filler. So that's what I like about these old Kawekos. It has a little green ink window and a piston filler. The piston stopper is actually cork. So it's a really, really unique little pen. The nib is a steel nib, but it's a two tone with like a gold overlay on the nib. This nib is one of the most fantastic nibs I've ever used for my handwriting style. It's a fine nib, but it's kind of sharp. So I get a little bit of edge on the line, like I'm going to take this. I want someone to look at this nib and I want to make all my pens right like this pen. It's really cool. I let Jeff use it on Monday at the shop and he really liked it too because he's a small, small handwriter. It was very, very cool to use. I've been carrying it a bunch. I'm not without it right now.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Oh, really?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' And yeah, yeah, it's great. Like I don't buy these pens, this, you know, I'm not creating a museum, you know?

'''Myke Hurley:''' Well, I know, but like you don't necessarily, every single pen goes into the rotation and stays there and is like awesome. You know what I mean?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Like it's not always like that. Well, and it's still new too, right? So I'm still getting used to it. So I want to carry it.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Sure.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' You know, eventually it'll get uninked and sit for a little bit until I miss it and want to carry it again. But I just love that model of the modern Kawekos anyway, and they're easy to carry in your pocket. And that's what I do. Like, I don't care that I paid like $200 for this pen. I'm going to use it how I want to use it. It's really, really cool for that. Like if you picked it up, you would think it was like a modern interpretation of one of their old styles. But in actuality, it is one of their old styles. The Piston's a dead giveaway for that. The second one I picked up is also a Sport, but it's a thinner profile Sport with a hooded nib. And I've seen pictures of these because the blue ink window is stunning, right? Like I wish the older Sport had the blue ink window instead of the green ink window, but that's picking knits. It just looks cool. So this one with the thinner barrel is also a piston filler, and it's from 1970. So it's newer than the Giosh Sport. And this one is interesting because it's a 14 karat gold nib, and it's an oblique nib, which looking at the Kaweco Sport history, I'm able to pull it up. It says V19 right there etched on the barrel so I can pull out all the details of this pen. They did so many different nib styles with a lot of their pens, all kinds, like three or four different obliques and stubs and italics. I mean, it wasn't uncommon for them back in the day to have 10 different nib styles. You know, like we look at Esterbrook as someone back in the day who had, they had hundreds of different nib styles. You could just buy nibs and swap them out. Well, Kaweco was building pens with way more variety in nibs than they do these days, which you'll find from a lot of, you know, historic models of pens, just because that's what people used every day. And there was more opportunity to sell those than there is today. But both of these pens were pristine, look essentially brand new. They're really fun to write with. They're fun to kind of explore with right now. I actually, I love the fine steel nib in the sport, in the older sport, much more than the gold oblique nib. They just feel completely different to me. Although the oblique nib is really, really cool to have. So yeah, I am thoroughly enjoying these pens. I will carry these with me a bunch because I just enjoy this shape and style of Kaweco. They're both piston fillers. I inked them both with Kaweco blue black. I just kind of want to see how they go so far, you know, but the first time I've had them inked up and carrying them around, you know, make sure they behave well, make sure that nothing silly's happened. I did ink them up with water. One thing you can do with vintage pens, if you're unsure, is I inked them. I filled them both with water and left them overnight to see if anything was leaking. You know, these are 60 and 80 year old pens, right? Just even though, you know, at the time they look good, they look like there's no issues with the pen. I still wanted to be sure because these are pocket pens for me, right? They're going straight in a pocket. I want to be sure nothing stupid happens. So I filled them both with water and left them overnight to see what would happen. And then, you know, dispelled the water, inked them up with ink and they've been good to go ever since.

'''Myke Hurley:''' You know, just a pretty face.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. Yeah. So I will be, these are Kaweco, vintage Kaweco has always been on my radar because it's aesthetically pleasing to me. The piston filling is just, you know, cherry on top of the sundae and I will be looking for more of these. But like I said, you can get them for cheaper online, but you know, you just always run that risk with vintage, not knowing what you're getting. And I felt comfortable paying the prices that I did, you know, because I was able to handle them in person. And I'm going to very much be enjoying both of these pens and you will see them in a lot of my pictures going forward.

'''Myke Hurley:''' They make me kind of sad.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. Why?

'''Myke Hurley:''' I wish that they still made piston filling sport models.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So I said that when I wrote up my article about it, I was like, you know, these were fantastic, but now Kaweco doesn't do that. And they've made terrible converters instead, which is just so far as a bad solution. Yeah.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Um, that converters are just hilarious, right?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Like, uh, oh yeah, they're just awful. Um, I would pay twice as much or more. I don't know what their price would have to be to get a piston in the sport models. Um, it could be pretty outrageous, but it might be worth it. I don't know. It's interesting. I mean, I pay, I paid $200 for one and 125 for another one. So I'm obviously, you know, I would pay 50 or 75 bucks for a regular new classic with a piston. Probably. I don't know. We'll see. I would be curious if they could do that. Um, they've made in the past few years, maybe five or 10 years ago, they've made some special additions in acrylic materials with pistons that I've seen. And I passed on buying them at the time because they were like $600.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Whoa.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Um, with a gold nib. Well, they only, they'd make like a hundred of them and they had a gold nib and like that wasn't my, uh, I think that's out of my price appetite for a Kaweco, honestly.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Like, yeah.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Limited or not. Right. Right. So, so we'll see. I wonder if they, you know, if that was a test run, I've never seen it. I haven't seen anything recent come up with a piston, um, not even on the limited side of things. So we'll see. It'd be, it'd be cool if they kind of experimented with that again to see what would happen. I'm certainly that has to be like in their, you know, planning for the next few years. You would, you would think at least just certainly they're testing out pistons. If, if I was Kaweco and I made pins, that's the pin I'd want to use. Right. Yeah. So certainly they're at least playing around with it and maybe something will happen. Who knows?

'''Myke Hurley:''' All right. Should we take a break? Yeah.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Let's take our first break.

'''Myke Hurley:''' This week's episode is brought to you by our friends over at Pen Chalet. They are responsible for selling you all of the brands that you want and all of the pens and paraphernalia you're looking for. Maybe you want to go and get yourself a Kaweco. I mean, not one of these classic ones, but you can go and get many Kawecos. They have a great selection there. If you want to go and get your appetite. This is a pen that you don't know. I don't know any Kawecos. I recommend to go taking a look because they are really great pens. They're fun pocket pens and you can get them over at Pen Chalet along with many other brands like Pelican, Lamy, Namiki, Pilot, Sailor, so many more. They have all of the types of pens you're looking for, all of the refills, all of the carrying cases, the pen holders, the converters, whatever it is that you're looking for. They've got it. They have great and fast, reliable customer service. They do loads of discounts. They're on special discounts twice a month. They have closeout specials every two weeks. At Pen Chalet, you will get free shipping on orders of over $50 in the United States, but they also sell internationally as well with very reasonable shipping rates. And Pen Chalet, as with all of their stuff, they offer high quality with a 100% satisfaction guarantee. You want to go head over to PenChalet.com right now. It's P-E-N-C-H-A-L-E-T dot com right now. Click the podcast link at the top of the website. Enter the code PENADDICT for this week's special offer and you'll get what you need, the special discount code to get 10% off anything at Pen Chalet. You'll find there once you use the Pen Addict secret word to get into the Pen Chalet secret area for Pen Addict listeners.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Along with the code you need to save 10%, you will be able to take advantage of this week's special offer just for Pen Addict listeners, which is 40% to 50% off all Monteverde tool pens and pencils, which is a huge discount on a line that I'm not very familiar with, Brad.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, I am. This is a legitimately cool pen. I have the yellow ballpoint on my desk right now and I haven't reviewed it yet, but it's like in the review queue. These are like one of my favorite non-fountain pen pens, but surprisingly, and I didn't even know this, you can get it in a fountain pen. So this is the pen that you see online with the kind of the ruler marking up and down the pen. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.

'''Myke Hurley:''' This is a great, oh my God, the orange and black one?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So yeah, I didn't get the, didn't the orange and black one wasn't available at the time. I bought my yellow one. I want the yellow one because that's kind of the traditional one for this style. They also do copper, which I didn't even know was an option. I've never seen this pen before today. It's the Monteverde tool 60. It just comes in a ballpoint. The one with the one touch stylus comes in ballpoint fountain and roller ball. Oh, and mechanical pencil, which that might be the most useful of the bunch. This is a very, very cool pen, pencil, fountain pen. The price is outrageous and the colors available are really, really awesome. I might have to get another one. I haven't seen these copper ones, so I want to look at these. But this is one of those pens like you just kind of want one of to have because they're really nice. They write well. They have a little bit of extra functionality. They have the hex barrel style. It's just an all-around good-looking, good-performing pen. I highly recommend these.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Ron at Pen Chalet also wanted me to give a shout out for their pen ink, for their ink rewards program that they do, which I didn't know about. So it's probably good for me to mention it. So if you sign up at penchalet.com, I'll put a link in the show notes so you can go and take a look at the Pen Chalet ink rewards program. Basically, you sign up and you earn points for every ink that you buy, and then these points will then be converted into more ink.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Nice. I like that.

'''Myke Hurley:''' So it's like a true rewards program. I had no idea they were doing this, but yeah, you can go sign up. I'll put a link in the show notes so you can go and check it out for yourself. But as they say, it's a fast and easy way to earn yourself some free ink. You order your favorite pens and inks, you get one point for every $10 you spend, and you cash in points for free ink on your next order. Pretty sweet. Wonderful. So even more reasons, even more reasons to shop at Pen Chalet. Thank you so much for the continued support of this show. Thank you, Pen Chalet. So last week we spoke about the crazy coloring webpage that our new friend of the show, Alexander, put together. And I just wanted to put a link in the show notes to three of the weirdest and most wonderful that we got in from the listeners of The Pen Addict, from Lydia, Glenn, and Sean. I'll put some links in the show notes to their incredible artwork so you can check it out for yourself.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So I want to mention one thing. If you scroll all the way to the bottom of Alexander's page, like I was making a comment how I thought the version 0.1 was funny.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' 0.2 is already listed as upcoming in the release notes. So the new features for the upcoming crazy coloring is color book print option, fill and line color options, sponsored tool set. I don't know what that means. Easter eggs and wider color selection. So this is serious business now, Myke. This is going to be a thing. So this is wonderful. So thank you, Alexander, for putting this together. And apparently he's going to keep going with it. So this is hilarious. And the images we got last week were awesome. And like you said, you put them in the show notes. So go check those out. And keep sending them to us. It's amazing.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yep. Talk to me about Lamy, man.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. So I don't know where to go with this. I kind of almost didn't want to mention it because I've only seen it once. But there was some confirmation. This came up on the Slack channel. And there's a UK company called Pure Pens. And they shared a notice in their newsletter that Lamy is discontinuing them. So let me just read this from Pure Pens. And we'll take it from there. It says, we were extremely disappointed. This is from the Pure Pens newsletter.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So it says, we were extremely disappointed to be informed by Lamy that in their new terms and conditions for 2017, sales of their pens would be restricted only to retailers with a presence on the high street. Unfortunately, as an online retailer with a limited amount of calling in-person customers, this means that once our current stock of Lamy products have been exhausted, we will no longer be able to order any further items from their range. So I don't think we need to. The rest of it's just saying we have a bunch of Lamy in stock and no worries. So this is interesting.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' You know, like Goulet Pens chimed in on the Slack saying we've reached out to Lamy. This doesn't affect us at all. So this is the Mont Blanc way of retailing that you have to have a brick and mortar store to carry our products, which coming from Lamy is extraordinarily strange.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Why doesn't it affect Goulet?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Well, I wonder if Lamy is beating around the bush with Pure Pens directly. I think that they're like... Like it's a one-off thing. Yeah. And that was the reasoning they gave them, except that reasoning doesn't apply to everybody.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I feel like it is a reason they might throw out when they want to get rid of a specific retailer.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Right. Right. Which I don't know anything about Pure Pens.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Tony is saying maybe it's UK only.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, because I mean, I don't know if, you know, I don't know if Pure Pens directly translated Lamy's, but they say High Street. I don't know if Lamy came out and said High Street, you know, which is, which would, you would say that as a, UK. Number one, brick and mortar physical store location. Number two, in a, you know, retail shopping area, essentially. Right. Right. Yeah. So it's just a super weird email. It feels very one-offy to me, not a Lamy policy thing to me. So, and it could just be country-based like you're saying, but for a brand like Lamy, that just makes zero sense. So I don't know. I don't want to say too much about it.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I will say that in the UK, Lamy have very strong presence in High Street brands. Very strong. If there is a store that sells any type of half-decent pen, they always have a huge Lamy collection.

'''Myke Hurley:''' So like, like department stores, like John Lewis and such, you've got stores like WH Smiths, which are like a stationer and like a magazine store, that kind of thing. They will sell them card stores, like fancy greetings card stores, like Paper Chase. They will always have Lamy's.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So like- Oh, interesting. Because like our Paper Chase type stores usually don't.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah. Lamy are all over the place on the High Street here. So it could be, it could be that they want to restrict and try and do something there. Or as we say, it could be, which it feels more like to me, like for whatever reason, and I don't know Pure Pens. Yeah, I don't know. I've never heard of them. So unfortunately, I hope that they continue to do well. But maybe they were trying to get out of that relationship for whatever reason and are using some kind of like arcane use it when you need it policy, which also wouldn't surprise me.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. So interesting. I wonder if, does Lamy have new management or something? Because they've been doing some weird things recently. Could be. I don't know. Like in the past year, they've been a weird company. Like we usually don't have to talk about them unless they're introducing some new product that we want to talk about. But they're doing weird stuff here.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Well, they could just be going through some stuff we don't know about. Right? Yeah.



== Lamy ==


'''Brad Dowdy:''' So I don't want to make too big of a deal of this. But I thought it was interesting to at least mention. But it doesn't sound like it's a sweeping kind of thing. It just, like you say, it sounds like we have this thing that's here when we need it. And in this case, we're implementing it.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Because it would be crazy for them to do that, right? Like that would not be a good business move.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' It would not be a good business move, even remotely.

'''Myke Hurley:''' And I feel like that they would know that, right? Like this is the thing, right? This is the thing that I think about a lot. You know, like a lot of what I do for a living now is critically looking at other companies and trying to understand the way that they do things that they do, right? And I often think to myself, like, I'm sure they know, right? Like we can look at it and be like, oh, this is what we think would be a good idea. This, what would, it wouldn't should be a good idea. But honestly, like they know their data. And as long as they're a half sensible company, they should be able to make decisions based on that data.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yes. Yeah, like I say it all the time that the companies know better than I do. You know, it doesn't mean they're making the correct decision in my mind or, you know, whatever. They have more information. Based on my analysis, but they have the information. They know better than we do what their business is. So we can, you know, postulate all we want. We don't know. We're just guessing, you know, but they've just done a lot of weird things recently. So I'm guessing this is just like a one-off, not a big deal kind of thing. It doesn't suit Lamy as a brand to move to strictly brick and mortar operations based on the volume of online sales for their price points around the world. It makes no business sense, but whatever.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah, I do apply that like company knows best thinking to anything that would be data related. So like I do this for companies like Apple. But when it's like an idea of taste, then I sometimes will think that I know better. Like, for example, using Lamy, right? Their anniversary 2000. Well, I think they made the, I think we all agree here. They made the wrong decision there. Right. Just making it that darker silver color.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. And that bore out in the end. Yeah. Right. They can't sell them. So, which surprises me, but doesn't surprise me at the same time.

'''Myke Hurley:''' As Glenn says, they may know their data doesn't mean they know how to read it. Yeah.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. So, anyway, I just thought that was interesting. It was worth pointing up, but I don't think it's worth making a big deal about until they really take some aggressive actions. And I don't see that happening.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yep.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So, this next one, this one looks right up your alley. It's right up my street. Yep. I've seen this this week. This is really cool. Yeah, we got this link a bunch. The new Statler stylus in the traditional pencil designs. Why don't you talk about this real quick?

'''Myke Hurley:''' So, Samsung have, I love this headline, by the way. Samsung's Statler stylus is roughly 5,000 times more awesome than the Apple Pencil. I'm going to take that straight up with a grain of salt. Like, that is a very opinionated headline from The Verge on this one. Especially considering Vlad, the writer of the piece, says that he sees no interest in using any of these types of products. But, like, hey-ho, we'll just overlook all of this. Yes. Samsung, they have announced a couple of tablets this week. And with these tablets, they have a stylus that they call the S Pen. Well, they've been working with Statler to create a limited edition S Pen that looks just like the classic yellow and black Statler pencil, which is called the Norris. Norris. Norris. So, this stylus that they've worked together to create will be called the Norris Digital. And it's colored black and green rather than black and yellow to differentiate it, which I found interesting. At first, I thought they just got the color wrong, which is kind of funny because it's not a massively different color green. I feel like they maybe should have tried to differentiate it a little bit more, but this is where they went with it. It looks good, though. Apparently, it's the same size and weight as the pencil. They've taken some time in trying to get the balance in it. Again, I really want to see some technical specifications. I can't imagine it's the exact same weight as the pencil. It may be weighted like a pencil in some way, but I can't see how this thing, which is going to have a battery in it and some electronics, could be as light as the pencil. So, again, I take so much of this reporting with a grain of salt. But what I can say is that it does look awesome, and it's a really fun thing. I would love something like this for my Apple Pencil. I already put decals and stickers on mine to give them a little bit more life because it's just more fun. And this is more fun than the Apple Pencil because it looks like an actual pencil. And, yeah, I like it. I think it's a really good idea. I think it's a fun thing to do as a limited edition. There's no details on price or availability, but it comes in a package with two actual pencils in it as well.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, I think it looks super cool. I mean, how can you not like something like this? I mean, it goes back to what we're saying about analog tools in this digital age. They're still very important. And just to have that aesthetic and a partnership with a traditional brand like Statler that's been making products for who knows how long. It's just absolutely freaking cool. So, yeah, love it.

'''Myke Hurley:''' So, I've put a link in the show notes to Dbrand and to Slick Wraps because they are the companies that I buy my decals, the decal stickers for my Apple Pencils, where I have one that looks like a HP Pencil, like the yellow with the pink eraser. And I have one that looks like a green Crayola crayon for my Apple Pencils. So, I'll put those in the show notes if you do want to add a little bit more fun to your Apple Pencil if you have one.



== Leather Notebook ==


'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, so please don't buy that stupid leather one that came out last week. Or, like, I just know it from Tools and Toys, which I love those guys, and this is a knock on them. The product looks ridiculous. Like, this is like hipster gone too far. It's disgusting. With your dumb leather holder for your Apple Pencil.

'''Myke Hurley:''' This is the something and quill. Pad and quill. Is that the name of the company? Sure. I don't even care. And people were sending me this, like, oh, look at this. Like, it is ugly as sin. Yeah, it's hideous. I don't know why anybody would want to put this on their Apple Pencil. Like, oh my God. The leather Apple Pencil clip. It's like these two pieces of leather with a clip on it. Like, it is not, it is, no, it's just, no way. Not for me.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, I thought that too. I was like, first I was like, oh, this is awful. And then I kept looking at it. It's like, I'm missing something, right? Yeah. And then the more I looked at it, I was like, nope, it's just legitimately awful.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Like, I don't know why people would want this. Like, it's huge. Like, bulky. Yeah. Not for me. Not for me. I appreciate what they're trying to do. This is the thing. Like, all of these products, like, all of the products that I've seen for accessories for the Apple Pencil, they're usually not very good. Like, people that try to make, like, clips to go on it, they tend not to be very good quality. Like, this is just a product that I think is fine on its own, right? Right. I mean, I add my own little touches to it, which I think work perfectly. So, like, I add a Leuchtturm clip to it, which I'll put in the show notes. And that is, that solves basically 90% of the problems. It gives you someone a clip that stops it from rolling. Right. And I also, you know, I attach the, oh, no, it's a Fisher Space Pen clip. I've used a Leuchtturm pen loop. Gotcha. To attach it to my iPad. So, yeah. I'll tell you what I'll do. I will put a link in the show notes to the blog post that I wrote, which has all of my little additions.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Gotcha, gotcha. I thought you were going to say you were going to link to this leather abomination.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Oh, I have linked to it so people can go and see it. But I... Oh, that's fine. I really don't want people to buy it because it's... Yeah, it... Not for me. I'm afraid. I'm sorry. I guess at some point soon, the Apple Pencil 2 will come out, right? Like, there will be another one. And you're going to let me write a review for you again?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Of course. But, I mean, okay, let's sidetrack this whole entire podcast right now. What would you change?

'''Myke Hurley:''' What's going to make it better? Sure. So, personally, for me, I would like some design changes. So, I think they really should find some way to stop the thing from rolling. The weight that they put in it is not good enough. So, I think they could put a clip on it or they could put a flat side on it or they could just put a roll stop on it, frankly. Okay. You know, like the little metal band that they put on the top could have a roll stop on it. I think, honestly, I still stand by this. I think that they should make one out of aluminium. And they should still have a plastic one available, but there should be a more expensive one made out of aluminium. Because it would look amazing. And why not? I have so many pens made out of aluminium. I think they could do with making it a bit shorter. I actually think... I personally think they're going to make two models. I think they're going to make a tall one and a big one. A tall one and a small one, I should say. Because I think they're going to introduce it for the iPad mini. And I'm still kind of holding out that they might use it on the iPhone at some point. I don't know.

'''Myke Hurley:''' But I think if you... I don't think that the big Apple Pencil would work very well, like aesthetically, with the mini. So, I think there might be a couple of versions. But yes, better battery life.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Because it needs a lot of charging. Because that's what you do. Yep. Better battery life. I think they should have some aesthetic changes. And honestly, I would like to see them maybe go a little bit further. And maybe actually add an eraser on the thing. You know? Like an extra capacitive button or something on the end. Which can function as an eraser. So, I think there's a lot of places they can go with it. Yeah. But from a design perspective... I'm glad I asked you this question. Yeah. From a design perspective, I think they mostly knocked it out of the park first try. But I think there's just some tweaks they could make.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Maybe so. Maybe so. So, staying on the digital path. Maybe eventually you can use your Apple Pencil with the new Bullet Journal Companion app. As I sat down to get ready for today's show, I was scrolling Twitter because Myke was late. I was not late.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I was not late. Like maybe like 30 seconds late.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So, you were late.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Oh, come on. Really? So, like in the 30 seconds that I was late, you decided, oh, let me go and open Twitter and start scrolling through Twitter. And oh, here's the thing. And I can... No. I will not accept this.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' No. I was like 10 minutes early. So, I set up and I started scrolling through Twitter. And I saw a post from Ryder Carol. Hey, we just launched the Bullet Journal Companion app. I don't have a lot to say about this yet because I don't... I haven't looked at the details, but I did buy it. It's $2.99. Cool. Just to play around with it, see what it's about. So, maybe we'll have some more on that next week. And I didn't forget that I promised to get Ryder back on the show. So, while I was waiting, while I was early and Myke was not late, I made a list of all the people I need to have interviews with on the show. So, when I'm done today, emails will go out and I will start scheduling this because I'm being asked a lot to get certain people on. And I've been promising, you know, like Ryder and CW Pencils and Matt Armstrong. And we got to get Ana back on before the Atlanta Pen Show. So, I have a lot of interviews to schedule in the coming months. So, I'm going to start working on that. But I just want to throw that out there for all you bullet journalers. There is now a companion app for your digital lifestyle as well as your analog. Look at that.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Beautiful. All right. Let me take a break. By the way, we do still have Brad's review of the new Field Notes coming up. That is coming up. Don't worry. Yes. We haven't forgotten about it. It's happening. It's going to happen. Don't worry. It's going to happen. Just chill. All right. Just chill. This week's episode is brought to you by Harry's. Harry's was started by two guys, Jeff and Andy, who were fed up of being overcharged for razors. So, they decided to go out and fix it. They bought a factory with 100 years of blade making experience so they could make their own high quality product and sell it online and then ship them direct for half the price. With Harry's, you pay just $2 a blade compared to the $4 that you pay elsewhere. Especially at the drugstore. Harry's razors include everything you need for a close, comfortable shave. They have a weighted ergonomic handle, five precision engineered blades of a lubricating strip and trimmer blade. And they also come with a travel blade cover as well. So, you've got everything you need to take your kit on the road. They also sell all the extras that you want, like amazing shave gel or cream. Now, before the show, Brad said, is Harry sponsoring today? I have a story. So, over to you, Brad Doughty.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So, you think I make this stuff up, but this is how my life is. It's just funny. Like, I get the biggest kick out of it. So, yesterday afternoon, I'm getting in the car with the kids. One's going to guitar practice. The other one's going to baseball practice. So, Tyler is my son. And he just, like, we're in the car, still in the driveway. He goes, Dad, how old do you have to be to start shaving? And I was like, okay, this could be interesting. And I told him, I said, I don't know, 15 or so? It just depends on, you know, when you're starting to get, you know, the little fuzzies on your chin and you want to shave them off. And he's asked a couple questions about that. He's like, do you think I can get a Harry's shave kit when I'm ready to start shaving? Like, he literally said, Harry's shave kit. He didn't say, can I get one of those razors that you use? He said, when can I get a Harry's shave kit or can I get a Harry's shave kit when I start shaving? And I just started busting out laughing. I'm like, yeah, buddy, you can get one. He's like, cool, I'll start saving now. So, I'm like, you don't have to do that, buddy. I'll get you one when it's time for you to start saving. He's like, okay, yeah, I want one of those Harry's shave kits. So, I mean, it's just hilarious. I mean, I just find it so funny. But, you know, Harry's is part of my life now. When it's that good of a product, you know, I'm just going to use it.

'''Myke Hurley:''' And so will your children. Yeah. My daughter already does.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So, my whole family is in.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Look at that. The whole family, the whole family clan is in on the Harry's brand. And Harry's is so confident in the quality of their blades that they want you to go out and try it for yourself for free. Just go to harrys.com slash penaddict right now and you'll claim your free trial set that comes with a razor handle of your choice, a five-blade cartridge and shaving gel. All you need to do is pay the shipping. That is harrys.com slash penaddict to claim your free trial set. Thank you so much to Harry's for their support of this show and RelayFM.



== Reddit Subreddits ==


'''Brad Dowdy:''' So, one thing before we get on to this next topic, we have the Jack M4 in the chat room today. And he mentioned something to me that he's working on. He asked me if he could work on it. And I'd like to get your feedback on this, Myke. There is a penaddict Reddit board. Okay. Reddit channel. What do we call these? Like, I'm not like a super reddit. Subreddit. There is a penaddict subreddit. And he has put a lot of work into, like, skinning it, redesigning it, getting it ready. He puts, like, you know, he posts the show recaps on there. He'll post other things. Oh, that's good. And I haven't. Yeah, it looks great. He did a really good job. So, I wanted to throw that out there that there is a penaddict subreddit. I haven't been very active in it. I'll pop in maybe once a month. But if this becomes a thing, I'm happy to, like, get in there and mix it up. I know you've found, you know, a little bit with this with Cortex, right? I mean, because CGP Grey has such a massive following. And you've kind of gotten into the Reddit thing. Reddit's not been one of those things that I get into. If someone sends me a link, I'll go look. And I always enjoy, like, bouncing around. The subreddit for fountain pens is awesome. I mean, it's got a huge, huge following. So, you know, we could make the penaddict Reddit a thing. I think we should. And I'd be happy to get into it.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I just described to the subreddit. So now it's one of, like, the three subreddits that I'm subscribed to. It's all I do. Yeah. I look at my own subreddit that I'm subscribed to. That's my only thing with Reddit. Right. So, yeah. Yeah, this is great.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So, yeah. I should start doing that more. So, thank you, user sort of bravos. Which, you know, that immediately. When he emailed me, I'm a Game of Thrones fan. And speaking of which, I have something to tell you offline about that. Sorry, listeners. I got something cool to say about that. But he sent me a message in Reddit that probably sat there for, like, a month before I responded because I never log in. And so, yeah. He's got this going. So, thank you very much. And, you know, if this becomes a thing, it would be cool.

'''Myke Hurley:''' And you're a moderator of the Reddit, right?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. Yeah. So, I created it back in the day. Ah, okay. So, like, a lot years ago. But never did anything with it. It's just one of those things where you do, you know, claim your name kind of thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, I was like, oh, I should do that. So, I did it and then never really did anything with it. But, yeah. It's cool. So, yeah. Everyone's talking in the chat room. I'm not, like, ignoring the Game of Thrones Montegrappa pins. But we'll talk about those another time. But it's actually something more awesomer than that. So, I should move on before I get in trouble.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I'm making a note to ask you about this later on. I don't know what's going on here.



== Ink Samplers ==


'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, yeah, yeah. The JetPens Blue Black Sampler. You put this in the show notes. Actually, I meant to put this in the show notes. But I was kind of surprised you did. So, what do you want to know about this review I did on Monday? Because this is something, like, I can really get behind.

'''Myke Hurley:''' So, from what I can gather, you basically, you pay and they send you a bunch of pens, right? Right. Like, just a whole big bunch of pens. And I wondered, like, if you could explain why you think someone should get something like this. And if they're good value for money.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So, to answer the second one easily, it's definitely a good value for money. You're not saving a ton. But you do get a little bit of a break if you buy, like, a batch of pens together. But what JetPens has done, and a lot of companies do this, is they curate a set of pens that meet a specific parameter. It could be a very broad parameter, black ink pens. Or it could be a very specific parameter, sketchnoting pens. And there's a whole range of these things. I, of course, am a blue-black ink fan. And so, I thought it would be cool to see what I thought about one of their blue-black ink samplers. And there is actually a separate blue-black gel ink sampler that's only gel pens. But the one I have is just the regular sampler, which has liquid ink pens, art pens, fountain pens, different things like that. So, it's cool to see what types of pens are out there that you may have not used before that may suit your needs. Getting a range of this might make you understand the different properties of gel ink and rollerball liquid ink.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' You know, and this is just, I think it's a neat way to just try a bunch of things. It's like, you know, this is how I started, you know, figuring out what I liked. I would just, I would go and buy, you know, 10 or 15 different pens. Because you can get them for like three bucks each. You're not out of a lot of money if there's one you don't like. And then you might discover something that really, really suits your style. Yep. So, you know, if I was putting to, like, I took this sampler kit from the aspect. If I, you know, reviewed everything in it as it related to everything else in it. And then what I would do to change it. So, I thought it was really well done. You know, if I was making my perfect blue-black kit along these guidelines of the JetPens Blue-Black Ink Sampler, I would have changed a couple of things. But overall, it's a really good kit. It has some of my favorite pens on it. You know, I've always wanted to do, like, the top five pen sampler kit. You know, I think that would be a cool thing to do. I've talked about doing that for years. It's just hard to put that all together. And it gives people an idea. This is what you should expect from a good pen. And you can measure those things with other pens that you may already have. And figure out the differences. Because there's so many minute differences between individual pens. Like, that's something I focus on. And that's something I can see, like, really quickly. What's the difference that not, you know, just anyone who's not into pens, they would think it's just a pen. I can see, like, the minutiae in it. Like, everyone who's listening to the show can probably see the minutiae in. And what makes these tiny differences between pens that may work better for you than certain other pens. So, I just, I'm a big fan of this kit type of setup.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah. So, I wondered, though, when you're done with this, do you not just end up with, like, a bunch of extra pens you don't want?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Uh, kinda. I mean, in all these cases, I mean, there's so many good ones. I'll use all these, and there's maybe, like, two or three that I won't necessarily use frequently. Okay. Like, the Micron is such a wide-tipped Micron, which I made a point of talking about in the article. Even though I love that pen and love that color, I'm just not gonna use it because it's so wide. But, like, it has a juice. It has two high-tech Cs. And it has a DX. And even if I don't use those pens, I'll use all those refills in something.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Okay.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Right? I will use the Platinum Preppy all the time. I keep a Platinum Preppy on my desk because it always writes whenever I want it.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I'll tell you what interests me more from these, like, what I think is maybe cooler than just the pure, like, I wanna get a blue-black pen, is, like, the brush pens or the drawing pens sets. Yeah. Because there may be, like, it's less color but more, like, the performance that you're looking for. Like, what type of drawing pen am I interested in? That kind of thing. And they do those as well, which I think is maybe more interesting, at least for me, if I was, you know, if I wanted to get a pen like that, this is a great way to get that. Right.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So the brush pen one is cool because there's such a wide range of brush tips from super fine and firm to just very, very soft and flexible and wide. So there's a huge range in brush pens. And the one I mentioned earlier, there's actually a sketchnote one that comes with a notebook. That's, like, brush pen, gel pen, pencil. Like, it's a really well-done kit. So, yeah, things like that I really enjoy. Yeah.



== Field Notes ==


'''Myke Hurley:''' Cool. All right, then. Come on, let's do it. Let's talk about the Field Notes, any Field Notes. So the utility edition. I don't have mine.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Okay. That was my first question because we didn't talk before the show. I didn't know if yours arrived yet. So the utility edition has caused lots of conversations on the internet from all the fans of Field Notes, myself included, about some quality issues. So what I noticed, all the pictures of were kind of blown out corners on the exterior cover, usually on the bottom, but some on the top as well, where you see the cover splitting. While essentially the notebooks are still in the package or freshly unpackaged, you see some damaged corners where on the staple side of the cover. And it's unmistakable. There's definitely an issue with a lot of these notebooks that I started to see pictures of. So, and everyone's kind of on the same page as the cause. Like the first thing that comes to mind is the 70-pound paper. So when you put that thick of a paper in a paper cover with three staples on it, you're getting close to like the maximum stress point of a 48-page staple-bound notebook. So they've done this in the past, and it wasn't as noticeable as this time. And I'll never forget when Chad Doan first started making his pocket notebooks. Like the first product he came out with was his large legal pads. Then eventually he made a pocket notebook. The first ones he'd made were 70-pound paper. And he immediately switched on the next run because it's just too darn thick. And it causes these types of issues, essentially bursting at the seams. So, Field Notes has gotten away with this in the past because the covers weren't as delicate. It's not the right word. But when you print black ink over a bright yellow color, any flaw is going to be glaring. So I don't mind like the fuzziness of the corners like you see in notebooks. You've probably seen it in past editions. You've probably seen it for years. That's just going to happen. What I do mind is when people's covers are split like up to the staple from the production. That's a definite problem. And those are not notebooks that I felt should have shipped from the printer. Which brings along the second issue. They made 105,000 notebooks for this print run.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' To quality control that, it's probably... I mean, I don't want to say it's non-existent. But it's very minimal for that quantity, I'm guessing, from the printer's perspective. They're printing. They're stapling. They're shrink wrapping. And they're going. And unless there's some hugely out-of-line flaw, they're probably going through. It's a crap ton of notebooks. And that's not an excuse. Right? It's definitely not an excuse. Because along with the corners blowing out, along with the increased print run and quality control, they've increased the price. So, I've been saying this ever since their first price increase. When is the price increase going to become a thing? Because no one cared until now. Now people are seeing, hey, my notebooks aren't as nice as I'm used to seeing from field notes from a quality perspective. And I'm paying more. So, like, the and I'm paying more didn't matter when everything came out really nicely. So, it's like a culmination of things. So, not only were people seeing the corners split, the rounding of the corners was not as clean as they're used to from field notes. I think that's an issue. I don't know what your opinion is of this, but I'm in agreement with the people who have problems with this particular release not being quality controlled. Like we would expect from a brand that has built a certain level of confidence in their quality in all of their customers. So, what do you think?

'''Myke Hurley:''' I don't have them. Right? So, I can't express my feelings about the notebook itself. I've seen pictures. I've seen your pictures.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, so mine, I had no issues with mine.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah, the pictures that you have, that doesn't bother me. So, like, you can see on the four corners picture, like, it's frayed at the end. It's like, okay, whatever. And as you say, like, you're only really seeing it and paying attention to it because you're seeing yellow pop through the black, which isn't a thing that they usually have, right? So, they may be done like that. 105,000 notebooks. I mean, my thing about this is the quality control.

'''Myke Hurley:''' How can you do that? Like, it's not possible to check all of these notebooks. So, I'm kind of at the feeling of, like, I can't be mad at that, personally. Because it's impossible to do, right? Right. Like, you can't have someone checking every notebook that goes out. Now, there are, clearly, there have been some issues where the notebook is effectively ruined, right? The cover. Yeah. But I believe that Field Notes would replace those without a question. Yeah. And they have. Yeah. So, in that instance, I'm like, well, I can't, I'm not mad about that, right? Right. Right. And I think to myself, okay, so the price has gone up, but, like, I don't really have an opinion on it. I mean, I'm not annoyed about it. Right. It doesn't frustrate me. The price has gone up because it's a supply and demand issue. They always sell out. So, why would you not put the price up? They're still being as ambitious as they ever were. And maybe in this one, they made some decisions that maybe have highlighted some things that are always there, but people don't usually notice it. But now they're noticing it. They think it's a problem. And I get it. Right. Because if people don't feel like they're getting what they're paying for, fine. But, like, just looking at what I've seen, I mean, I love Field Notes. I love the Panadic community. But there are parts about the Field Notes community that really gets me sometimes. And I get frustrated about it.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I do, too. I mean, but I do see when, like, it's hard. Like, my quote all the time is, manufacturing is hard. Yeah. But you also don't want to make excuses for companies either, right? No. Like, people who get a ripped cover before they even open their package, that shouldn't happen.

'''Myke Hurley:''' No, it shouldn't happen.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' But at what point, yes, it will.

'''Myke Hurley:''' But it will happen with 105,000 notebooks. Like, your averages go up.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Right. Right. I guarantee it's going to happen. So, the things that we get bent out of shape about are funny, right? And I'm as guilty as anybody. And, you know, but it's, yeah, I don't have an answer. But I think this was just a culmination of a lot of things coming to a head. Like, it's not one thing. It's a lot of things that made this one stand out. You know, I did want to link to a really good review at leadfast.org. Kind of says kind of everything that we're talking about here. You know, it's just when you get this thickness of paper with this color of cover, with this level of print run, and price increase on top of it. All those subscribers don't have the price increase thing. But it's used as a thing. You know, it's like the spotlight. They just have the spotlight on them now, right? So, it's, yeah. I mean, I laugh, but then I also get agitated, too. But it's funny. So, on that note, let me just talk about the book itself from a usability perspective.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Just quickly before we move on. Yeah, yeah. I just want to state, like, Field Notes is one of the companies that I love the most. I have an incredible bias for them. Like, I just want to say that, right?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Well, so do I, but that doesn't exempt them from, you know, being called out when they need to be.

'''Myke Hurley:''' It doesn't. But I just wanted to say it, because, you know, I don't know if I'm less harsh on them.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Well, no. I mean, people will say we're biased because we're friends with them. But, like, I want to be able to have difficult discussions with my friends and remain friends. I think that's what makes a good friendship.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yep.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So, I mean, if you and I disagree, we're going to fight about it. But it doesn't mean we're not friends anymore. No. Yeah.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Well, I mean, we do disagree on things. But I just feel that, like, at the end of the day, if you have a problem and they don't fix it, then that's a problem. But if you have a problem and they fix it, then it's fine, in my opinion. Sure. I think it's fair. And knowing them, knowing that company and the way they operate, I'm very confident they will fix any problems. Yes. And, you know, 105,000 of anything is a lot of something. And there are going to be problems when you go to that sort of level.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Right. Right. Right. So, all right. On to, like, the review proper. My notebooks had – I didn't feel my notebooks had any issues whatsoever that's being discussed online. That's why I wanted to post my pictures. Like, I'm not hiding anything. I ripped open both of my two-packs and posted all the corners of them. Are they, like, laser-cut clean? Of course not. But – and should you have an expectation of that? No, but you should have an expectation of they're not damaged before you start using them. You want to damage them yourself. You know, we're all going to use these. So, that's why I threw it immediately in my back pocket. Carried it in my back pocket for two days. I mean, aside from the butt curvature, it looks exactly like I took it out of the package. There's no, you know, no additional tearing, ripping, anything going on. The back cover is weird in this instance. And they had to do it for this pop-out ruler design that they did. So, there's, like, a 1-8 inch indent or shortness of the back cover. So, the back edge of the notebook is exposed.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I don't think it's going to make any difference. It's a little weird looking, but I don't have an issue with it. The ruler's cool. I do – like I said, I've used the ruler in their regular notebooks before. The paper, I don't like as much as I thought I would like reading the specs of it. It's a little rougher than I thought. It's got some tooth. It's great for pencil. It's actually decent for fountain pens. Like, my fine nib fountain pens work really well. And it can handle a decent amount of ink. That's what the 70-pound paper is going to get you. But what I didn't like was my micro gel ink pens. When you have a toothier paper, those really micro-tip gels don't work as well, in my opinion. So, this is a good addition.



== Field Notes Standard ==


'''Brad Dowdy:''' Not going to be like an all-timer. Like, that's the standard that we hold field notes up to, right? Which is unfair. Like, what's the best addition ever? But it's really good. I love the colors. The colors came out great. The – I'm using the graph one. I may not even use the ledger one. I don't know. I'll probably give this to my kids or something. But, yeah. It's a good addition. Like, Jenny, who is in the chat room, and I commiserated on Twitter. Like, why is Shenandoah still available? Like, I would pick Shenandoah over this. Like, I know me and Jenny are in the minority on that one. But Shenandoah is kind of like my field notes expectation, right? Anything else I get is a bonus. And when they blow my mind with, like, a lunacy where they've taken all these extra details and, you know, built something great. That's, like, the mind blower. Shenandoah is my expectation of what the field notes brand is. So, the issue at the end of the day is, am I going to use this notebook? And that's where the trouble lies for me just as a field notes fan. I have other compelling notebooks now to use. That doesn't change what field notes are going to do. But when I have an exquisite product, like the Right Notepads in the Pines, which I haven't shut up about since it came out, and it's sitting right next to my utility, I'll never pick up the utility. I just won't because I have an option.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' It's the Right Notepads. We use these notebooks because they give us a sense of enjoyment. So, when I pick up a notebook, I want to enjoy using it for what it is, and then I don't want to have to think about the notebook while I'm using it. I just know it's going to be an enjoyable experience for what I'm throwing at it from an ink perspective and out of my head. I love what Right Notepads is doing. And they have that refinement right now that a smaller shop allows you to have. So, you know, you can't compare a one-on-one issue. You can't necessarily compare companies. But I do have a choice. And, you know, when I get the utility and see it, and I like it, and then I have In the Pines sitting right next to it, I'm not compelled to pick up the utility edition. So, I don't know what that means. I do know that there is this competition out there from all other makers, too. I mean, Nock makes notebooks. That's my favorite notebook, personally. But it doesn't have, like, the exposure that the subscription services do because we don't do that. But, you know, like, I'm not jumping up and down to use this utility edition like I was, say, Lunacy or, say, some of these other ones. But I don't expect to either, right? There's also an expectation.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I buy a quarterly subscription, and I expect to adore to like one and kind of be like, okay, I'm the other one. Yeah. And that's kind of how it's been, and I'm cool with that, right? Because, honestly, like, I could just buy all the packs, but I like the surprise, you know?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' That's what's the most fun about this. What Fields Notes does is fun. And it's, we've said it since probably the beginning, since we started this podcast, they're not necessarily making products for our stationary needs. Like, our, as in, like, the pen addict community. Because we use lots of weird pens and pencils and things. You know, they package a big stick, you know, with their product. That's what they believe. That's the, you know, the origination of the product. And they ship pencils with their product. Those are the things that, those are their goals in making a representative notebook to their brand. And Utility really nails that. You know, people's quality issues aside. Utility is a very Field Notes release, right? I mean, I think it's kind of, like, their aesthetic, their style, their feel. That's why I referenced back to the Shenandoah last episode. And in this episode, it's very, very cool. But, am I going to use it? Like, what am I going to do with this notebook? I don't know. So, but I do like the risks that they take. And I'm thankful that they exist as a company. And they do such good things. And they do really good work. I think we're, I don't know that we're hitting peak field notes. And that may have been long ago. But these print runs keep getting huger. And you wonder, you wonder, you wonder what's next. But they do keep delivering so far. Like you said, three out of the four times, we're usually pretty happy.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I'll let you know when I get mine, what I think.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yes. Yes, I would like to know what you think. So, hopefully, you'll probably get them this week. Maybe. So, unfortunately for all our listeners, we're going to have to hear this again next week. But that's what we do.

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'''Brad Dowdy:''' So, we ran a little bit long last week. And we're heading down that path this week. But we had some STPA that we didn't get to last week. And I want to make sure we do it. And these aren't very long ones. So, I think let's knock these out. And we'll call it a day. How does that sound? Sounds good to me. All right. So, this is one I've been wanting to get to. And Michael says, when we were talking about the professional easy-to-use fountain pens for under $100, it was for a graduation present. Too much present on my mind. Graduation present.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' The Lamy Studio, I got like three emails on that. I was like, oh, I'm such a dummy. That's the perfect one. That should be like the answer. That should be my go-to answer. Instead of like being challenged to come up with like the perfect pen for that price range. Like in the $50 to $100 price range. I think the Lamy Studio will please just about anyone who you purchase it for. It's a really, really quality pen. Made well. Writes well. Great nibs. You can get them a bottle of ink with that. Or you can use the Lamy cartridges. And it just looks like the graduation gift type of pen. But it's still like a step up from say like, you know, your traditional cross roller balls. Things like that. That's a good shout. Yep. So this question from Nick I thought was super interesting. Do you dial up a piston filler as the ink gets used? I would like to hear from the chat room if you do that. Because I understand maybe the theory why. But I don't see. There's no need for it. Your ink's going to flow normally. If you do that, you're going to have to have the blind cap loosened as you go. And it's just going to be, you know, more chance for damage. There's no need to ever do that. I'm just wondering if people do. I don't know anyone that does. There's no technical reason why you should. Vacuum fillers are a different story. But just a traditional piston? No, you don't need to do that. And I'd be surprised if we found out anyone who does that on a regular basis.

'''Myke Hurley:''' No, I would be just terrified that I'm going to spray ink everywhere.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, right, right. So there's just no need for it. And you're just causing an extra point of failure or two when you do that.

'''Myke Hurley:''' So stop it, Nick. Stop it. He didn't say he did it.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Just in case. Stop it. Stop asking.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Stop thinking about it. Don't do it.



== Pen Clips ==


'''Brad Dowdy:''' Don't do it, Nick. Yeah, no need. So Chris wants to know, what's the best pen clip holder to attach to a notebook or a traveler's notebook? So you use, which one? The Leuchtturm for like your Apple Pencil?

'''Myke Hurley:''' If you're talking like pen loop, then yeah. Yeah. And I love those things. They are super sturdy. The stick, like the glue on them is super strong. Like I thoroughly recommend that product. Like I have had one. I've replaced one once on my iPad Pro and I've had it for 18 months.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah.

'''Myke Hurley:''' So yeah. And they're like super cheap. Like yeah, I really, really recommend the Leuchtturm pen loop.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. So I don't use any. If I'm using like a traditional travelers, I'll just take one pen, stick it through the exterior, or I will clip it to the leather. I don't necessarily go for the exterior pen clips. So it's kind of not my thing. So I'm designing something to where you won't have to ask this question again, Chris. Look at you.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Look at you. Keep that hustle going, buddy.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So Ron wants to know, are there any papers that work well with both fountain pens and pencils? The Knock Note books really do.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Keep that hustle going.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Full disclosure, I make those. It's my company. The right notepads really do. Like my fountain pens and these right notepads work great in their more recent editions like In the Pines. And they work awesome for pencils. Basically, you just don't want to use something with a glossy texture like Rhodia. Generally, those aren't the best for pencils. There's a little bit more smudging. It doesn't feel as nice.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So yeah, that's what I would go with. Knock and write notepads. All right. Last one. Jonathan says, I recently struggled to write on a plastic luggage tag. Hotel ballpoint worked best. What traditional ballpoint should be in my EDC? So you go first because you're wrong.

'''Myke Hurley:''' All right. Great. I personally just don't like ballpoints, right? Because they tend to be, in my opinion, boring. So don't go boring is what I say. You can just get yourself a retro 51 slim, which is a ballpoint. And then you've got fun and they have some great designs in those. So that's what I'm going to say. So you're wrong.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' No, that's a great pen. I just don't use it because if I'm going to go ballpoint, I want more useful ballpoint. And I'm going to go to a Fisher Space Pen refill. And because of the utility of that, if you're writing on a plastic luggage tag. I love the Fisher Space Pen as well, right?

'''Myke Hurley:''' Like I'm a big fan of the Fisher Space Pen. Like to the point that we even bought a bunch and laser engraved them to be gifts. Yes. Right? Like, I like them a lot, but it's still not my go-to.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Right. So my go-to is actually that refill in the shown design pen, which I just, I can't get enough of that pen. That's my pocket pen of choice when I go out to just have in case I need it. Like if I go to baseball practice and, you know, we need to write something on some kid's glove so he doesn't leave it behind or in his hat, I can break out that pen. And I know it's not going to get damaged while I'm out there running around on the field too. And I just like to have the utility of a Fisher Space Pen refill. Not the best writer in the world, but definitely the highest utility value of any type of ballpoint. And that's what I would recommend.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Good recommendation. Yep. Yeah. I know you really like that shown design pen. It's just a little bit like too aggressive for me, you know? Sure. Oh, I totally understand.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. Yes. And in the chat room, this is something I very much believe in. They mentioned, I always use the Fisher Fine refills. They always ship with mediums. I keep a stock of fine and just swap them right out. Fine blue Fisher Space Pen refill is the Fisher Space Pen refill that you should use, in my opinion. But hey, I have opinions. They often get me in trouble.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Could you say, maybe you have opinions?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Oh, God. You're terrible. We should end the show now.

'''Myke Hurley:''' If you want to find our show notes for this week, go to relay.fm slash penaddict slash 246. You can find Brad at penaddict.com and knock.co. He has dowdyism on Twitter, D-O-W-D-Y-I-S-M, and penaddict on Instagram. There's also a link in the show notes if you want to go to the subreddit now. This is a new thing. You go to reddit.com slash r slash penaddict, and that's the subreddit, which is a thing that apparently we're going to be hanging out in. Thanks again to our sponsors this week, Blue Apron, Harry's, and Pen Chalet. Most of all, thank you for listening. I'm imike, I-M-Y-K-E on the social places. We'll be back next time. Until then, say goodbye, Brad.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Goodbye, Brad. Thank you.

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