The Pen Addict 158/transcript

The Pen Addict Podcast Transcript
Episode:	158
Title:	The Topic of Stuff
Release Date:	June 8th, 2015
Hosts:	Brad Dowdy Myke Hurley
Guests:	No guests this episode
Additional Information
Official page:	Episode 158
Audio File:	Audio Episode 158
Podcast page:	The Pen Addict 158
Length:	5757 min <br />0.95 h <br /> minutes
Previous Transcript	Next Transcript

Myke Hurley: From RelayFM, this is The Pen Addict, episode 158. Today's show is brought to you by Pen Chalet. Great deals on high quality pens, with a 100% satisfaction guarantee, MassDrop, an online community for enthusiasts of all kinds, and Field Notes. I'm not writing it down to remember it later, I'm writing it down to remember it now. Hey Brad Dowdy.

Brad Dowdy: Hello Michael Hurley.

Myke Hurley: There is this thing in me, because Field Notes is sponsoring a bunch of our shows over the next couple of weeks, which I'm so excited about. Every time I say it, I just get overwhelmed with happiness.

Brad Dowdy: It's true, it's one of those brands that elicits that response from everybody, or everybody who's into them anyway. There's some brands that have that, there's some that don't, and there's some that's kind of up and down in between. Field Notes always elicits the same response. There's always a lifting of the soul when you talk about Field Notes. It's legit.

Myke Hurley: I love all of our sponsors, and the sponsors for this show are special, because they're actually, you know, there's a lot of small companies, and I really love them. But, you know, Field Notes is one of the reasons, and we'll talk about this later on, but Field Notes is one of the reasons that I became a pen addict, so it's just nice. It's all coming back around again, so it's making me happy. Plus, it's the first time I said about them on this show, so they're a new sponsor for The Pen Addict.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, that's true.

Myke Hurley: How are you, buddy?

Field Notes

Brad Dowdy: I'm good, I'm good. We're going to talk about the new Field Notes today, because I got mine in hand. I'm so very jealous. It's pretty impressive. We're going to talk about that later. And we're going to talk about just stuff in general, and as a topic, just the topic of stuff. Because I've had an interesting week in my mailbox, like, the past five days, so I kind of want to talk about that. And it can take on a lot of different forms once we talk about that. Cool. But we have some killer follow-up this time, though, because our hashtag AskTPA worked like a champ. See, I told you. Okay, I am so happy about this hashtag, because I am very guilty on this podcast of losing track of things I want to talk about. But especially communication that comes in via form of a tweet, an email, some other kind of message somewhere on Instagram or Slack. And, you know, I have a document I can put all these things in, but I have to go manually. Number one, I have to remember to do it. And then I have to copy it into the place where I'm going to keep it. And, you know, I am bad about forgetting, you know, I just, my mind's going a thousand miles an hour, and I just forget sometimes. So this hashtag AskTPA, I went and looked last night for the spreadsheet, and you would put it in there, because we hadn't even talked about, how am I going to get these out? And I looked, and I saw you had it all set up. It's got everything right there that I need to just grab from and go for. So I appreciate everyone who's using the hashtag AskTPA on Twitter. It really works well.

Myke Hurley: I'll give you a top tip as well. Okay. When people tweet questions to me, and they don't use it, I reply to them and use it. So at least my tweet comes up, and then I can follow the conversation chain, because it has the link in the spreadsheet.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. Yeah, that's a really good idea. So keep those questions coming via AskTPA. If you send one in, and I don't get to it, that doesn't mean I've ignored it. It just means, you know, there's some days I can go through some quicker than others. Some result in larger topics, so it might come down the line. So this is a really, really good thing for us to, you know, kind of stay on top of the things that you guys want us to hear us talk about or questions you want us to answer and things like that. So it's very, very good. So how about we get into some AskTPA follow-up?

Myke Hurley: Sounds like a great idea.

Brad Dowdy: All right. This one's for you, Myke, because I already know the answer. This is from a real Leah to Z. All right. First question. When will we have the Pin Addict with video?

Myke Hurley: Maybe once a year.

Brad Dowdy: Really? I was going to go with never. Well, I mean... Because I know you.

Myke Hurley: If, you know, if we do Atlanta again, then I would like to film it. We probably wouldn't have the same production that we had this time.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, that was serious business. Yeah.

Myke Hurley: Because it's unlikely. I don't know, but I feel like it's unlikely that we would do a Kickstarter. Maybe we could do a Kickstarter every year. I don't know that yet. I haven't made my mind up about that. We haven't even spoken about that. But I would like to do the video. You know, it might even be that we sell the video every time, so we don't do the Kickstarter, but we pay up front, then we can pay the video production. But if we ever do shows in person, me and you, then I think it's nice to video them. I don't feel that way about my other shows. So we're recording this a little bit early, but I'm in San Francisco, as you are hearing this. And I'll be recording a bunch of shows in person with people, but we don't video those because there's nothing to get out of it. But with the pen addict, you get to see the stuff that we're talking about, the pens and that kind of thing, and we can do all the extra stuff that we did with the Atlanta videos. So I think it makes sense there. If I was ever going to do video components to a show, the pen addict would probably always be first because it makes the most sense. But, I mean, I have absolutely no plans of getting into video podcasting. Yes. Like, just full stop. I just have none.

Brad Dowdy: Yes, there will never be a video podcast. There might be bonus video footage or something special we do once in a while. This will never be a video podcast ever, ever. Just because, yeah.

Myke Hurley: It would have to change so fundamentally it would be a different show at that point.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. I want to backtrack a little bit and rewind because you mentioned it. We're actually recording early, and this will be heard by everyone on Wednesday. So I want to congratulate you on the podcast you launched last week with John Syracuse and Merlin Mann doing Reconcilable Differences, which was killer. I listened to that last night, and then I chimed into the new CGP Grey and Myke Hurley. What's that one called? Cortex. Cortex. I wanted to call it chronic, which you kind of need to be onto that. It was amazing. And I actually sicked the pen addicts on CGP Grey this morning because he posted a picture of his Retro 51, which I think you got him to buy.

Myke Hurley: Yeah. I made him buy it, and he had some things that he wasn't sure about. So I actually – he is currently the owner – not the owner, but he is the caretaker of one of my Karis Custom inks. Oh, okay. I gave him the one with the Retro 51 refill in it. There you go. He felt the Retro 51 was a little short, but the fact that he posted a picture of it today tells me that he still maybe prefers that to the Karis.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, so I gave him a thumbs up on the pen and a thumbs down on the legal pad he was using, so we're going to have to work on that. Oh, I'm working on all of that.

Myke Hurley: Don't worry. Yeah.

Brad Dowdy: I sicked the pen addicts on him unknowingly this morning. And so anyway, congratulations on a big week, and it's really amazing. Happy to be a part of the Relay family, seeing stuff like that, that you and Steven are kicking some butt. So I should have dropped that in at the beginning, but I forgot. All right. Back to the Ask TPA follow-up, and this is also from Aurelita Z. Just wondering why you guys never mentioned John Mottashaw or Richard Bender when talking about nib customization in the pen show, because they rarely come. Mottashaw, I think, does like two shows a year, LA, maybe DC. His work's awesome. When I buy from nibs.com and get something modified, he's the one who does it, so he's wonderful. Bender is, he might even be retiring. I know he went to Raleigh this year, but he rarely goes to a show, and I've never had any work done from him. And, you know, there's just plenty of other options that are easily, more easily accessible and do just as good as work as Mottashaw or Bender. And I have talked about Richard Bender two pen shows ago where he worked on one of my nibs just to adjust it, and I didn't like it. But that wasn't really a customization. That was just a tweak.

Custom Pens

Brad Dowdy: All right. Althaven wants to know, how does a custom pen compare to a pen like Nakaya? One can be made to your specs. The other is the pinnacle of workmanship. I had a tough time deciding whether to include Nakaya in last week's podcast because I had people saying that. You should, you know, or is Nakaya going to be in there? Or Nakia? How are we saying it? Nakia?

Myke Hurley: Nakia? Nakia? I don't know, man. Anything.

Brad Dowdy: Just like I say Sino still. I'm just not going to say Signo. So, it's... Wow. How do they compare? That's like... It's almost an unfair comparison to both sides of the ledger because they're very different. Nakias are very... I don't want to say they're a work of art to denigrate the standard custom stuff because those are works of art too, but this is on a different level of craftsmanship. The craftsmanship behind the two types of pens, either a custom pen or what you're getting from Nakia, is really different. And I don't think they compare at all. There's really nothing... There's no similarities about it. But you do have the benefit of knowing when you buy something from Nakia that it has been worked on by hand the entire way. You know, they take months to make. So, you know, how do they compare? I don't think they compare at all. They're just two totally different animals and two, you know, very, very fun, good, valid stuff. So, yeah. I don't know. All right. NetBui wants to know, giving a fountain pen as a gift for my son's graduation. Was wondering if you knew where I could purchase a good pen and get it engraved. There's two pen companies that I work with that do engraving very well. One is Vaness Pens. Another one is Goldspot. We'll put both the links in the show notes. They both have a huge lineup of pens and they both do in-house engraving. So that's where I always send people for a graduation gift. This always comes up this time of year. This one's for you, Myke, from Outer Nerd. What kind of tea do you drink and why do they call it English breakfast tea? And what do they call English breakfast tea in England?

Myke Hurley: English breakfast.

Brad Dowdy: Okay.

Myke Hurley: Like, if you want that kind of tea, we call it English breakfast. I don't really tend to drink tea, but if I ever do, my preferred tea is Earl Grey. I am a coffee drinker.

Brad Dowdy: Okay. Yeah. I actually broke out some tea when I was sick a couple weeks ago and I quite enjoy tea, but I haven't gotten into the whole fussy tea thing. I could see me doing that just because I enjoy the taste and flavor of tea. I just tend to lean more towards coffee just for the full caffeine punch that I need. Like today, I woke up, so we're podcasting at 4.30 Eastern time today. I woke up at 3.47 is when I got out of bed and just, it was like a blitzkrieg for me to get ready for the podcast. So, um, I definitely had to make some coffee when I get up, when I get up and, uh, I don't know if tea would have had the same effect that it had on me right now.

Myke Hurley: I could also see myself becoming a fussy tea person. I, uh, we have a tea sponsor, um, on a couple of shows in a couple of weeks time and I'm very much looking forward to digging into some stuff that they're going to send me. So maybe, maybe I'm going to be a convert yet, but I'm a fussy coffee guy, you know?

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I go either way on the coffee. I, sometimes it's just out of necessity. Sometimes I get fussy with it, so it just depends. But, uh, I love tea. I just, I, uh, I just haven't gotten, um, knee deep into it. So Brody McDonald asks, uh, can you please start a wishlist service so my loved ones, uh, can buy me a cool fin, a cool pin I want and feel awesome about it. I think that's a really good idea. Um, I have lots of services that people want me to start, um, in my little notebook of ideas. I don't know which one is, if any of them are ever going to happen, but I, it's funny how many, um, how many things, uh, um, how many services that people ask me, hey, you should do this. And I'm like, I don't really have time right now to do that for you, but you know, I'll keep that in mind. So, uh, yeah. So, um, will you work on that for me?

Myke Hurley: Yeah, you bet.

Brad Dowdy: I'll just assign that to you. I'm all over it.

Myke Hurley: Yeah, that's, you can leave that one with me.

Brad Dowdy: All right. I'm going to assign something else to you right now.

Myke Hurley: Okay.

Pen Chalet

Brad Dowdy: That's our first sponsor at Pen Chalet.

Myke Hurley: This week's episode of The Pen Addict is brought to you by our friends at The Pen Chalet. You know these guys, The Pen Chalet. They sell authentic, amazing rollerballs, fountain pens, ballpoints, mechanical pencils, and so much more. They have all of your favorite brands. They have Pelican, Lamy, Pilot, Namiki, Monteverde, Sailor, Kaweco, the list goes on and on. And they're an authorized dealer of all of them. They run special discounts twice a month, and they're always adding new styles of pens all the time. Every month, they're adding more and more and more to their fantastic collection. And as well as all of those pens, the stuff that they're adding to the site includes carrying cases, pen holders, refills, converters, and so much more. They do free shipping on orders over 50 bucks in the continental United States, and they also sell internationally with very reasonable shipping rates, and they back all of this up with not only their 100% satisfaction guarantee, but very fast and reliable customer service. If you need a pen of any kind, you should always go to The Pen Chalet first because they have great deals, they do great pricing, and it also can help support this show. If you go to penchalet.com, that's P-E-N-C-H-A-L-E-T dot com, and use the code PENADDICT, not only will you be supporting the PENADDICT podcast, you'll also be saving 10% on your order. Or you can click the podcast link at the top of the site when you go to penschalet.com, and you enter the password PENADDICT there, and you will find this week's special offer, which is pretty awesome. It is the Pelican 200 in cognac. What a beautiful colour. Mainly we've got fine or italic nibs on that, and we're looking at it retails at $200, with 25% off, taking it to $150, but then when you put the 10% coupon on top of that, the PENADDICT coupon, you can pick it up for a cool $135 for a beautiful Pelican 200.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, this is a really great looking pen. I've had my eyes on this one for a while because Pelican, their 200 series demonstrator pens, are really cool, like the highlighter pen that we've talked about before. They've made a blue one here recently. The cognac, I think, is the newest one. It's a light brown, caramel-y, cognac-looking color. It's got gold trim, which is not my favorite personally, but it goes well with the brown. I would totally use this pen, and I don't think I have a stock Pelican italic nib, which is an interesting option for this size Pelican, so that's got my interest peaked. I will definitely be checking this one out, and I'm debating this as we speak because every time I see this pen, I always think about it because I actually like the 200 size, which is the same as the 200, 205, 400, 405. They're all the same size pen. It's the smaller Pelican, but it fits my hand really well, and the piston filler is great, and the nibs white right wonderfully, and yeah, the Pelican 200 cognac. This is a solid effort here by Ron. I love this pen. It's a beauty, so definitely check this out.

Myke Hurley: Cool. So, thanks so much to Pench LA for sponsoring this week's episode at the Pen Addict Podcast, PenchLA.com.

Brad Dowdy: All right, let's get back into the Ask TPA. Sherry Nichols, is this the biggest ripoff since the Scribble Pen? And it's five pounds, and I'm going to post this in the chat room, and they're going to take a look at it, and I looked at it last night, and I'm... So, what it is, and Sherry, I'm going to have to say yes, to be quite honest. So, what Bic has done, this is a Bic Retro Pack. The original, the Bic 4 color, the original orange barrel, the original soft feel, and looks like two of the original crystals. Total scam. Bic, if Bic wants to do something retro, they need to reintroduce something like the Accountant Pen. That would be a non-retro ripoff. This is just the same stuff they always sell. There's nothing in this pack that you can't get today, except maybe the yellow barrel, which I think you can find.

Brad Dowdy: It's so ridiculous, and yeah, this is a ripoff.

Brad Dowdy: That's a weak job by you, Bic. What are you thinking?

Brad Dowdy: All right, so we tricked our friend Dan Bishop this week. We are recording early, so he's not in the chat room to ask him this question. M.A. Wolf wants to know if Karis Customs is ready to get into the custom fountain pen world.

Myke Hurley: Oh man, I would love that. Something to think about.

Brad Dowdy: And M.A. Wolf also asked me, what do I think about the wink pens? Do you recall this from Kickstarter, where you can put like wine and blood and whatever you want in the pen? It's like a glass nib pen, right? But you can put juice, wine, tea. They just hit their goal on the last day of their project, I think, like 60,000.

Myke Hurley: Why do I remember this?

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, we talked about it kind of in passing. I just don't have a lot to say about it because I've never used one and I have no need for one. What do I think about it? I mean, I think it's cool if you want to write with wine, juice, tea, or blood. I just don't have any... Why would you want to do that? I just don't have any interest in doing it. So a lot of people do this. Do people really want

Myke Hurley: to write in blood?

Brad Dowdy: I'm joking about that because we've seen some of the blood pens before, right? But I say that. But it's a liquid pen to use your liquids in that aren't ink. I mean,

Myke Hurley: I don't even really understand why you'd want to write in anything other than ink. Like, I don't get it.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, just for fun, artistic things. But it's, you know, it's basically a glass nib pen with a converter on the inside. So hopefully it works out well for everyone who bought it and I'll be interested to see some reviews once people start getting them.

Brad Dowdy: So this next one's a good question. Also from Oralita who had the first questions. I was told not to let anyone use my fountain pens because they'll ruin the nib. I know friends having to rework their nib after lending your pen your thoughts. I think this is an old wives tale for the most part. I would let anyone use my pen anytime. There is one caveat. If the person is not familiar with fountain pens at all, I always tell them you want to use very light pressure to write with. Yeah. I don't want them picking up a pen and start jamming things with it. So that's the only caveat I use. Otherwise, I'll let anyone use any pen anytime. And they're not going to, in the short time that they're going to use the pen, they're not going to change anything. Even you continually using the pen, it's going to take months if not years for any noticeable change in the nib to happen. So I have no problem letting anyone use it with that one caveat.

Brad Dowdy: And our last Ask TPA follow-up of the day. And we'll have a lot more because you guys are sending these in so wonderfully. Where does one start in the realm of folded nibs? You start by going to Twitter and looking up Hey Matthew and asking him because he's the guru. He has the company he uses that he buys this from. I can't remember off the top of my head. But we'll link to Hey Matthew and his website so you can get the folded nib questions because he is the guru at that.

Custom Pens

Brad Dowdy: So we did do the custom pen episode. We got a lot of good feedback on that episode last week, Myke. I was pleasantly surprised. No.

Myke Hurley: It was great because you did all that incredible work getting it already.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. It was a good episode and in retrospect I didn't miss too many but I did get an email from Derek who is a long-time listener and he has actually had experience with almost all of these. He's bought from Scriptorium, Edison, Carolina. Man, what does Derek do for a living? Sean Newton, Ariel Kulak who we didn't talk about who does like custom like retrofits like Parker 51s which are really really beautiful and sent me the names of a few other links. One's called Phosphor Pins another one's called Jeb's Pins and another one this last link I sent you like.

Myke Hurley: Oh my word.

Brad Dowdy: I have no clue what this is. It's called Weiland or Wieland. Holy crap.

Myke Hurley: That is a work of art.

Brad Dowdy: So I think that's what it is. This site hasn't been I was browsing through this site very hardcore to just try to get more information. It's kind of a very old site. Not old but new. It hasn't been like it's not totally current up to 2015. Like there's lots of 2012, 2013 active stuff on there. But I just wanted to link this pen in the show notes because I haven't seen anything like it before and it is so beautiful. Alright.

Myke Hurley: The show notes are at relay.fm slash penaddict slash 158. It's called the Weiland W-I-L-A-N-D. Somebody needs to tell us where we can get these.

Brad Dowdy: It looks like only from them. The way I'm kind of reading it last night it's I yeah I don't know. It's

Myke Hurley: to place an order or for more information please contact us.

Owl Inc Blog

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. I would like to find a little bit more out about this pen. Maybe I will get in touch with Derek because he actually has one in progress. Okay. So if Derek you're listening hit me up with some follow up of your own on that and let me know what's going on. So yeah the custom pen stuff is great. We'll have more on that as more people listen and are interested in that and you know a lot of people enjoyed that conversation about the custom pens. All right. So our pen blog of the week tripped me out Myke. It is called Owl Inc which you can go to owlinc.com.

Myke Hurley: Is this what you put in those glass pens?

Brad Dowdy: The blood of owls.

Myke Hurley: For the wisest of writing. Oh poor Owl Inc we've we've put this on them.

Brad Dowdy: No but I will make it up in a big time way because the proprietor

Myke Hurley: Oh my

Brad Dowdy: word. Yeah so the proprietor of Owl Inc is our very own Elaine from Jetpens. This is her personal site she's just launched. So she does awesome like calligraphy work and and lettering and writing and her photography and everything is awesome. She's just getting this blog started and she's going to do a lot of different things than just like pin reviews. She's going to be talking a lot about design. Hey look at that the inspiration of the logo. I know I saw that that was really cool.

Brad Dowdy: And she's so she did this whole piece on how she came up with the logo for the blog and this whole thought process and design process. So you're going to get some cool stuff out of this blog. I love Elaine. She's just legitimately good people and she just started this blog. She's got a few posts up. It's stunning. She does amazing work so you should all go follow owl-inc and tell Elaine you heard it here.

Myke Hurley: Do you know if Elaine has a Twitter account?

Brad Dowdy: It's a good question. I don't know.

Myke Hurley: I'm struggling to find it.

Brad Dowdy: I'm sure there's an owl-inc one I would wager.

Myke Hurley: I haven't found it yet because you know I'm like if Elaine on Twitter I just don't find it.

Brad Dowdy: Yep. Yep. So we'll look for that and I'll ask her because I actually have an email in my inbox. I need to reply to her as well. Did you see how on the owl has the little fountain pen nib is like the time? Oh it's so good. So good. So I love Elaine so you guys need to check out her blog because it's really really impressive. So I expect big things. No pressure Elaine. All right Myke. Before we get into the kind of nutso topic I've got going on here we have a new sponsor to the show. And it's kind of a big deal.

Myke Hurley: Yeah so like I have a whole script like that I'm reading on the other shows but like we may as well just throw it out the window. This week's episode of the pen addict is sponsored by Field Notes. Like I don't know what more to say like you know you guys listening know how much we love Field Notes right and they have been awesome enough to sponsor a bunch of Relay FM shows this week because you know they want to get the word out about the new Workshop Companion edition which is a six book set comes in a custom sleeve of a set of stickers and each book is themed to a common project to be done around the house like electrical work plumbing painting gardening automotive and woodworking they have these beautiful new covers that are on a brand new French paper co they have a new line of paper called craft tone they're using those to create these books the covers are some of the most beautiful that I've seen the graphic design that's on the front of them is just pure magic if you're a color subscriber like me and like you are a color subscriber right yes sir you also get a workshop reminder magnet as well I think that these are absolutely stunning I have my subscription coming I have ordered another set and a friend of mine who lives in Chicago is going to be in San Francisco next week is picking me up a set to bring because I want to have a bunch of them because we spoke about this before right now we love the editions that are six yes and you know this reminds me of national crop which is one of

Notebook Editions

Brad Dowdy: the best so the six color six notebook editions and six color editions or any you know I even like the you know the three color editions like um it's like drink local is probably my favorite six color edition or national crop is actually probably my favorite six color edition um unexposed is a six color edition those are always like my favorites and this is right up there because what they did here the exterior cover design is unlike any other book that they've done you'll notice with field notes I have a lot to say about these is that okay

Myke Hurley: I want you to well look we would have done this yeah

Brad Dowdy: yeah this would

Myke Hurley: have just been part of the show it actually was and I told you they were sponsoring this week so now like we're just gonna Brad's just gonna tell us how much he loves them and so and then we'll round off of a thank you to field notes

Brad Dowdy: so I literally just got them out my mailbox 30 minutes before the episode right so I've just opened the uh the the cellophane number one they ship in a box like you know you're used to getting your field notes in an envelope the way they design this slip case on them which this slip case is really thick and strong like if you're actually putting in this in the garage like and using this for all the uh intended uses this slip case cover is going to last uh it's gonna it's gonna take a beating it's designed uh that way um the what I was what I was saying before was the cover design is something they don't do very often in general terms and if you look back through all of field notes uh custom lineup the covers just say you know field notes 48 page memo book durable durable materials made in the usa they're embossed they're um

Myke Hurley: unless it's a custom right

Brad Dowdy: yeah unless it's a custom yeah they're they're embossed they're letter pressed they're things like that um the two rivers had a really wild cover america the beautiful had a very non-traditional cover i can think of very few editions that aren't just that don't just say field notes on the front and these the graphic design they did on this is the highlight for me the design of these notebooks it it's like right out my dad's garage in the 70s it's really really cool um the way they did it the each book is a different color like woodworking is brown automotive is yellow gardening is green paintings red plumbing is blue electricals orange and you know these colors kind of relate to things you see in in that space uh for the most part um the plumbing might be my favorite color out of the six with the orange uh electrical maybe second but they're all just so sharp looking and the new paper they're using mike is not just the cover paper it's also the interior so the cover is the craft tone 100 and the inside is the craft tone 70 so this is the thicker paper it's the 70 pound weight paper give me it

Myke Hurley: um i'm gonna have to buy another two packs aren't i um i haven't

Brad Dowdy: i since i literally just opened them up before the show i haven't had a time to test it but if you're if you're a subscriber um i also got the workshop reminder magnet which says measure twice cut once and what they did there's this little um six i guess what would you call i don't know if you would even call this a hexagonal logo it's

Myke Hurley: like a honeycomb

Brad Dowdy: yeah honeycomb so the honeycomb's on the magnet but if you notice on the each book the honeycomb is colored in its respective spots so it like rotates around so like the woodworking is in the top right and then the automotive is in the middle right and it just kind of rotates around and then also in the um in the workshop um companion slip case you have a peel and stick toolbox ornamentation kit so it's little stickers with those little logos that are on the front of the cover

Myke Hurley: when jim told me they were doing stickers i nearly did a backflip you know how much stickers and i've always wanted them to do them and the closest they ever got was the window transfer which is difficult to apply to a computer i tried uh but i'm i'm so happy that i'll get to put stickers on these now

Brad Dowdy: right so so did you see my instagram picture i put up right before the show i put added in the show

Myke Hurley: notes no i am gonna go look at

Brad Dowdy: it now go look now and tell me if you see something that i haven't mentioned yet

Myke Hurley: take a look no i don't i don't see oh wait what is that that would

Brad Dowdy: be a field notes notebook sticker it's this little teeny field notes craft cover style sticker that was in my envelope oh my god that's amazing

Myke Hurley: basically it's like i don't know like a third of the size and it just looks like a little craft that is

Field Notes Stickers

Brad Dowdy: awesome so that's a sticker i don't know if that was just like my one of my add-ons right you know how they just throw things like i got a pen also sometimes you get a band of rubber sometimes you get a pencil things like that right um the sticker's dope i'm pretty happy about that

Myke Hurley: wow

Brad Dowdy: um so yeah back to the notebooks they're they're the thicker size so shelter think shelter would think america the beautiful so they're a little bit uh more stout sturdy which is good you know for these durable books and there's no um there's no surprise they put these out around father's day i mean this is like the perfect father's day gift i'm gonna give my parents some because i've given them they always ask me for notebooks when they come into my house anyway so this is like a perfect set uh for my dad

Myke Hurley: this is this is a set that's perfect for us it's got all the things that we love thicker paper it's got great design the six varied but this is a field notes edition where you could buy these for a father's day gift like and it would just seem like a really nice thoughtful gift which is smart that they do it around this sort of time it makes the perfect sense but i'm really excited about these when when mine come in i'll probably well once i get mine next week i'll probably order another couple of sets as well because i love the thick paper ones i just love them so much and there's this looks like a really really great edition i'm so excited about this and i'm so so happy that they decided to sponsor us uh this week and i think they're sponsoring us next week as well so we i can tell you what i think about them yeah

Brad Dowdy: yeah and i'll be able to use one uh between now and then a couple more quick things on this mike i've never seen them do a spine print um on any of their editions before so this has a spine print so when it's in the slip case you can see what each book is like on the spine it says field notes workshop companion series number one

Myke Hurley: little details man yeah

Brad Dowdy: and they're all different colors you know all the colors of the notebooks um are matched on the spine and then they have all the um extra like things on the back cover like electrical painting plumbing um this is great um she roho in uh on ask tpa and on the instagram page asked how much of the notebooks are facts on the topics versus page use pages you can use not really clear from their video every every centimeter of notebook paper is blank there's no printing on any of the notebook paper any printing um related to any of the tasks are done on the cover only the the notebook paper is 100% free and ready to use um and it's a dot grid it's a like a craft brown dot grid it's really pretty it's really fine so yeah i think i've rambled on these enough this week mike um because i know i'll be able to talk about them more next week too and uh i'll be able to use them the problem is going to be deciding which one to use first i think um i know my friend uh and friend of the podcast john bemis um who does some writing he um is in the plumbing industry so he has asked uh if anyone has spare plumbing just spare plumbing sorry that was that cracked me up uh to send to him so i might send him the plumbing despite the fact that that might be my uh my favorite single uh color i might use the orange electrical so that's pretty sweet so yeah good job field notes um as usual they did a really excellent job today or this week on this

Myke Hurley: release so remembering this is still a sponsor you can go to field notes brand dot com slash workshop you can find out more uh you can buy the packs individually if you if you want they're going to sell out super fast but if you buy a year-long year-long color subscription starting with the workshop companion and use the code relay r-e-l-a-y you'll get three carpenter pencils and a three pack of pitch black memo books totally free field notes i know uh do you know jim emailed that to me like 20 seconds ago field notes i'm not writing it down to remember it later i'm writing it down to

Brad Dowdy: remember it now that's pretty killer uh that's a good deal thank you jim

Myke Hurley: yeah yeah because you know you should buy them you should subscribe you just should because they come to you you don't even have to worry about it you pay once you get a whole year i just love them love them yep love

Brad Dowdy: them all right so we're going to talk about more stuff and i want to preface this um there there's a little background i need to have here i think um but i will probably um intersperse it throughout this little conversation we're about to have so i've had a big week say from last friday up through today um as far as things arriving in my mailbox things that i've ordered um things that i am a customer of things that i've paid my own money for um that i enjoy and the more stuff that came in the mailbox the more i kept questioning myself like do i need all this stuff and the answer is clearly no right i mean there's there's no point in asking that question do i need all this stuff the answer is no do i want all this stuff that's a tougher question and probably really hard to answer do i want all this stuff that answer is probably no also right because that ties in in with the whole need aspect of it if i don't need it why would i want it but i'm an addict mike um i write a blog called the pen addict i have a podcast called the pen addict i have a little bit of a stationary problem and that showed itself um in my mailbox this week and that's why i was um posting it on instagram more of a holy holy cow this stuff keeps coming in what am i doing um so it that's like a kind of a meta topic to think about maybe one of these days you know why we do the things we do and and purchase things we do and you know i have no intention of stopping i mean i love this stuff um the the thing that i always you know about once a year maybe twice a year is okay how am i going to use all this stuff that's the biggest challenge right like because i'm spending my money on this stuff like everything we're talking about here is nothing's no one sent me any of this stuff this is all stuff i'm paying for full price just like everybody else you know i've used the coupon codes that uh our our our lovely um sponsors have offered to to purchase a lot of this stuff and uh it's a little bit weird though seeing how much like how much stuff just came in this week that's going to take me forever to even consider like even opening to you so it's it's quite a dilemma so um i'm not complaining i'm a little confused when i see what what actually happened in my mailbox this week like holy cow what have i done so but uh oh that being said let's talk about how awesome this stuff is so the first up i'm an art snacks subscriber are you still an art snacks subscriber you used to for a minute but you may have only done like a couple months maybe yeah i did

Myke Hurley: a few months and then it was building up i dip in and out like yeah i do it for like a few months

Brad Dowdy: every year yeah and that's a good thing that's a good thing to do with art snacks because it is very art based right like i just subscribed two months ago so this is my second kit um and it is very art based if you're not an artist you may not get the the full use so i've got links and we'll have links in the show notes to all this stuff but i love what lee does at art snacks the stuff he provides is very cool it's stuff i would never buy for myself in a million years like crank when i saw the crank stuff come crank is uh very well known in like the um um graffiti scene um it was cool to see these paint pens and this cool crank sneak crank sticker that's hard to say um in in the kit and i was like oh man that's just cool that's stuff that i just don't have access to or seeing in the kuma multi-size pencil sharpener is really neat the fabric castell a huge big brush pen is pretty awesome i will actually get some use out of this but my favorite thing is this caran dash pencil um i don't even know what this model's called oh the graphic g-r-a-f-i-k it's turquoise with pink dots on it i am i gotta find more of this pencil i'm fascinated by this pencil um i haven't

Myke Hurley: oh i've seen these before i haven't seen

Caran D'Ache Pen

Brad Dowdy: how it writes yet but um it's really really good looking so um i i'm gonna i'm gonna dig more into uh maybe that uh caran dash uh pencil and and see what i like the another thing that arrived uh from another spot another past sponsor note geist i i like to use our sponsors might not just i mean for obvious reasons they're sponsoring our show because they carry awesome stuff so of course i'm gonna buy from them um but i also want to be able to talk to our customers uh or our customers our listeners about the experience of being a customer of these people that you know are sponsoring our show right they want to know our feedback on that so i placed an order on saturday from gary at note geist i ordered these palomino graphing flex notebooks which i had never used before um they're like a standard memo book size and i wanted to try those out they're really beautiful um so i ordered those or a pack of black wing erasers because i wanted some orange erasers in my black wing pencils that i use i also ordered the cole usa cap which i didn't put in the picture um which gary had that on closeout it's always like half off something like 18 bucks so i bought that and then gary threw in some other cool stuff for me to try the uh adventure log from word um one of the paper o mini notebooks um that's the black and red dotted one and then gary has these uh wooden pencils that he throws in um threw into the order it's just like a a naked wood uh note geist pencil which is really really nice so what i found ordering from note geist and and maybe gary uh did me a solid because you know he threw some extra stuff in there i ordered it on saturday it showed up monday which is just sick that's awesome um shipping time is is is crazy good uh from gary so thank you for getting those out so i used uh whatever our we had a pin at it code for that one um i use that um art snacks i pay full freight for that just like any other customer note geist i use the coupon caris customs i also use one of their coupons to order the iron man inc which i've been waiting on good luck so i i keep when they sponsored us and this last time i kept saying okay now is the time for me to order because you know i can get a little bit off on it and i kept forgetting kept forgetting and it finally got right down to the end of the month i'm like oh crap i need to place that order and luckily they still had them in because they're really sold out on a bunch of these um a bunch of the inks and uh i got it in yesterday so i haven't even had a chance to ink up ink it up yet but it's there it's really pretty too the red their anodizing is just it's killer they should

Myke Hurley: give apple a lesson or two i think

Brad Dowdy: yeah yeah so i'm i'm gonna enjoy using that pen um that's the thing you know get i get all this stuff and then i it's sometimes it takes me a few weeks to get to get them in the rotation because you know i try to use the other things i have in the rotation like if i have pens inked up i'll try to you know not waste ink and and run through them so i got this caris custom ink in and it might be a couple weeks before i get it even inked up because you know i don't want to be wasteful and and uh dumping out of some of my other fountain pens that are inked up and i don't need 20 fountain pens inked up exb pen wraps is it's elizabeth bowling she's uh since she's out of nashville she makes these uh these very unique a lot of japanese fabric pen wraps that thomas hall got me into um he when he would ship me his pens he would send them in elizabeth's wraps because they help protect the pens and they roll up really nicely so i have ordered like four of them from her now they hold well there's like three slots they could hold more than three pens uh depending you know how much you wanted your your pens to touch but i just use them for three they roll up real nice um it's beautiful fabrics and this last time i ordered from her mike she threw in an extra one that's going to be headed your way probably this weekend oh that is that is not pictured she said she wanted to do that for you and uh i said i will get it to him so um look for one heading your way uh hopefully i will get that out to you this weekend but if y'all haven't if you're looking for a pen wrap i know i sell pen cases at knock this is a very complimentary product you know it's it's a very soft pliable wrap um it's very different than like what we sell at knock so you know if you're looking for something like this definitely check out what elizabeth does she just she just does it as a hobby um she has a website you can check out and um and look at all the fabrics and things and uh she does a really really good work and uh i i love these wraps so my mailbox uh my ups driver is probably pretty ticked at me because that's like half of what i've got uh just in the past like four days so let's talk about what else i can order mike before i before i uh wrap up this uh this whole mailbox uh issue i'm having right now

Myke Hurley: it's a good idea this week's episode is also brought to you by our friends over at mass drop mass drop is an online community for enthusiasts of all kinds from audio and electronics to quilting and cooking it's a place for you to connect with people like you to discuss your favorite products and activities and buy them together mass drop represents a new type of online experience that combines community content and commerce mass drop offers its users a place where people can meet and connect over the products that they love it also offers you a forum where you can vote on and discuss the products that you're passionate about and also provides you with a platform to connect directly with manufacturers and this allows you to buy products together with people to get great pricing and everybody can work together to get just great stuff that they want right it brings everyone together and it gives them good prices and everyone's happy mass drop are not a flash sales website or a deals website they believe in the community that builds around the products as well as helping people with getting the products at good prices they're here to help you by making the products that you care about more affordable and accessible but also provide you with a platform to connect with other like-minded enthusiasts to share the stuff that you love and also you know to be part of a great community group buyers are really important to this community because some of the stuff that we buy can be really expensive and buying in bulk can help with that this is where a service like mass drop can come in and they can be the facilitator they can be the middleman and it's something that's really cool for the community they have great deals they can get you up to 20 30 percent of brands like pelican and franklin christophe have seen that on there before but we have a featured drop uh this week which is the stipula passaporto original reproduction i don't know this pen brad but it's a real beauty

Brad Dowdy: yeah it's uh stipula is a an italian manufacturer and they make a uh it's like a mini fountain pen um say think like the uh caveco sports caveco classic caveco al sports it's like a uh it's about that size pen i've never used one i think i i've held one and and and looked at one at uh pen show before and you know i was thinking they're usually like a hundred and something yeah they're usually like 105 um and you know depending on how the drop goes you can get it down to 64 99 which is is pretty sweet so i i would look into this um you know if you're looking for like a a small portable fountain pen it's uh yeah it's about the size looks about the size posted of a of a caveco al sport but unposted it looks a little bit shorter um i haven't used one more than that um can i riff on this for a second i'd love you to one of the things that mass drop does that we don't talk about uh or haven't talked about before is they sell a lot of paper like they do a lot of rhodia stuff where you can buy like if you're a rhodia fan they have like the webbies like two packs of webbies and and three packs and all these different kinds of paper packs um that are really good deals too so if if not just into pens but if you're into paper um they do some do some good deals on that so keep your eye keep your eyes peeled for the paper drops as well because they have some they have some rhodia stuff up there right now that looks pretty good

Myke Hurley: awesome yeah that's great if you want to find out more about mashup in general sign up and also uh get all of the details on our deal for this week our feature drop the stipula pasaporto you want to go i like saying that you want to go to dro.ps slash the pen addict that's dro.ps slash the pen addict sign up right now thank you so much to mass drop for continuing to support

Brad Dowdy: the show so you need to get uh federico to uh to edit that in yeah she just dove him in yes all right so today was the day of my pending arrival of my franklin christoph amber ice model 20 that i teased last episode um and i got it also about 30 minutes before we started recording this podcast so i haven't had a chance to ink it up just had time to take a picture and throw it on instagram it's uh it's pretty much all all i expected it to be it's a really cool barrel um i love the shape and the slip cap design of the model 20 marietta which is what this is this is a new design for franklin christoph and in talking with laurie they were experimenting with this amber color ice and this is a prototype of that and they may not be coming to market with it they don't know yet she was kind of leaning towards no that it wasn't going to exist um so i i'm super happy to get my hands on it um i paid full price for it and in uh disclosure but she did throw in some uh ink samples and some paper for me um which was nice thank you laurie so um what do you think about this pen mike

Myke Hurley: i'm so jealous of you what a color like it's i mean i guess if we talk about it enough and like maybe we can bully frank and christoph into making it more so we can all buy them i don't know but

Brad Dowdy: that's kind of my uh beauty that's kind of what i'm thinking i'm thinking along the same lines because they actually had some pictures up from the uh raleigh pen show where they had this for sale at their table and they just didn't sell it um so she told me if they didn't sell it she would get in touch with me and sell it to me um they also had some other like prototype type colors that they were doing in other models in ice and like one of them they did so the same amber ice but with like a red i don't know is it finial the right words like the end caps on it so it'd be like a solid end cap on it um that looked pretty neat too so you'll see you'll see a lot more about this pen just because i have to ink it up and and get it used um and i'm i'm sure pretty sure i'm gonna love this one and um hopefully we can twist their arm into making this a real thing yeah i'm very jealous of you yeah friend of the show and i can't believe i hadn't i keep forgetting to photograph these friend of the show ben quok who made us the fiend notes remember that back in the day mike you bet oh man that's such a ben is such a legitimately good guy he like he saw some like stickers i had like the sassafras and you know the pen addict stickers and things like that he's like hey do you want to do a sticker exchange i'm like sure ben you know i i love you and your work is awesome and i have one of your stickers on the front of my laptop right now so i sent him like these little small stickers that i had and i was like here you go and like two weeks later which was like a couple days ago i get this package from ben and it's like a half inch thick full of his stickers so um if anyone uh is getting something from me in the near future i'm going to be sure to uh slip in some of ben's uh stickers in there because these are not stickers in the traditional like two inch by two inch stickers these are like five inch by four inch stickers i mean you see them right i've got some on my laptop yeah they're about the size of your hand right about the size of your palm and fingers these are and not just that ben's work is spectacular oh gosh it's mind-blowing um so if you're not familiar with it go familiarize yourself with uh bioworks.com in atlanta um when we had the party

Myke Hurley: people were doing a field note swap and i brought my fiend notes that he made people were going crazy

Brad Dowdy: for it i didn't even know you brought that that's awesome very cool very cool um so i i put the field notes up there so that image is up there which we we shared a little bit ago and then the last thing i got which is the most frivolous the most non-analog the most thing i least needed is that even english is that a proper sentence we'll go with that it's the apple watch yeah you go on this isn't the show for this but i'm pretty i i had no intention of buying one yet i i knew i would end up with one eventually maybe whether it was next version whether it was down the line whatever i wasn't like super interested like in being like a first um what do they call it early adopter yeah early adopter on the watch i'm an early adopter on lots of things um the watch i felt like i could wait on and then our friend jason snell um being the apple fiend that he has is he ordered two to see which one he liked best so i got his i bought his uh the one he didn't like which actually would have been the one i ordered the uh sport um and uh i'm really impressed with this thing so i bought a green band a couple of days ago i like it so i said if i was gonna buy one myself i would have bought the aluminum sport with the white band i think the green band was actually the better choice i like it um i think i would have liked i like it better than the white and i would

Myke Hurley: have ordered the white if i was ordering crazy thing buy some more because this is madness the bands the different colors they feel different huh they have different properties to them so like the i find the green i have a green blue and white now the blue is the softest the white has a really interesting texture feeling to it which is really comfortable feeling and the green is the most sturdy it's the most rigid okay and apparently from people that i know they say that everyone says that the black one feels the best so i am going to pick one of those up as soon as i can

Brad Dowdy: track one down so they clearly need an orange one that's what they're missing well there's this picture

Myke Hurley: floating around i don't know where it came from but it's legit of an apple store and they've just got this like array of colors nice yeah you figure you gotta figure that's coming they're gonna have tons like don't do them all at once you know you can piece it out yeah so that's my that's my digital

Brad Dowdy: uh digital foray into this analog uh do you like it do you like it i way better than i thought i would and not that i would thought i would dislike it i was like what you know what my hesitancy was is how i'm going to use it what am i going to use it for and do i want to spend the money um and i find myself using it way more than i thought um for texting alone the voice recognition is impeccable i text from it constantly with uh with a voice you know just dropping a hey siri on it you know text my wife whatever or replying to text she sends or anyone sends it's and people don't have a clue that i'm you know texting from my watch and that's all uh voice recognition and a text and uh i've used the heck out of that so i am more than i'm way more happy than i even thought i would be i knew i would enjoy it and i knew i would you know be able to tell time with it um i'm actually using it um more than i anticipated so far and it's only it hadn't even been a week yet and i really really enjoy it very happy with that um so that kind of wraps up i it's weird talking about this a little bit right because it's like talking about spending money and like you don't talk about spending money it's just one of those things you don't like it's a little bit weird when i look back at myself like what did i do to myself this past week but you know i'm having fun i i enjoy using all this stuff i will use all this stuff i may not uh get to all six field notes in the workshop companion you know but i will be using some i give i give lots of stuff away that i purchase you know to you know i throw things in envelopes when i'm shipping stuff to people and give lots of stuff away so i use it for that and um you know i'm i'm happy to get all this stuff and uh even though it's stuff you don't need to live by right it's a hard it's a interesting it's an interesting meta conversation like i said earlier like how do you balance like what you need um with uh you know spending the money and uh just buying it out of uh frivolity which i i try not to do but damn it i'm an addict mike it happens there's the best of us yeah is there a winning the 12-step program or something all right i'm i'm in rambly phase so uh why don't you get us out of here if you want to find the

Myke Hurley: show notes for this week you want to head on over to relay.fm slash pen addict slash 158 if you want to find us online i am at imike i-m-y-k-e on twitter and on instagram brad is at dowdyism d-o-w-d-y-i-s-m on twitter and pen addict on instagram and of course he writes the great pen addict dot com where you can find all of his writing as well uh thanks again to our sponsors this week mass drop pen chalet and field notes and we'll be back next time until then say goodbye brad

Brad Dowdy: goodbye brad