The Pen Addict 38/transcript

The Pen Addict Podcast Transcript
Episode:	38
Title:	Playing The Role Of My Mother
Release Date:	January 15th, 2013
Hosts:	Brad Dowdy Myke Hurley
Guests:	No guests this episode
Additional Information
Official page:	Episode 38
Audio File:	Audio Episode 38
Podcast page:	The Pen Addict 38
Length:	5252 min <br />0.867 h <br /> minutes
Previous Transcript	Next Transcript

Myke Hurley: Hello and welcome to episode 38 of The Pen Addict podcast, a weekly show where we discuss pens, paper, and the analogue tools that we love so dearly. My name is Myke Hurley and I am joined, as always, by my good friend, the defender of pen justice, that is Mr. Brad Dowdy. Hello, sir, how are you?

Brad Dowdy: Oh my gosh, that's quite the mantle I have to wear.

Myke Hurley: It's the mantle you have assumed this week.

Brad Dowdy: So now, you know, I never want to be that guy for like bad things and I don't know if I'm turning that corner or not. But yeah, I don't think it's a permanent switch. But yeah, I'm doing really good. Are you doing fine before we get into my justice post?

Myke Hurley: Always am, especially when I'm doing this show.

Brad Dowdy: Cool, cool, cool, cool. Well, let's get right into it since we're already alluding to the fact I don't want to beat around the bush. And this is actually a topic I want to discuss and then we can move on for today. And if there's news later, we'll circle back around. But I did a post that I thought long and hard about actually posting. And one of it is, one of the reasons why is that it's not exactly new news. This is around the pen type A Kickstarter project that we've talked about and the difficulties that they've had in the project. And the story is really about kind of the wrapping up of that project and a member of the CW team breaking out on their own and coming out with a similar manufacturing a similar product. Now, this all happened back in the summer, back in August, was when this really mostly, this other pen started showing up on the market. And we'll link my posts on Pen Addict. I'm sure many of you have seen it already. And, you know, I was a little bit perturbed, I guess, in my tone. Because what brought this back up was, you know, the Philadelphia Pen Show, Fountain Pen Show, well, Pen Show, was this weekend. And that's kind of the first pen show of the season. And one of our listeners and followers on Twitter said, hey, I saw this pen called the Tor Pen at the Philadelphia Pen Show. So, and it looked like a pen type A. Do you know anything about it? I was like, oh, yeah, you know, maybe I should write. I never wrote about it. At the time, I didn't want to get into it because I thought, you know, here's the beginning of, you know, there's going to be some back and forth between CW&T, who's the manufacturer of the pen type A, and Tor Pins. And, you know, I thought they'd hash it out. There were some issues. And, you know, it would all kind of, you know, work itself out. And it would, everyone would just kind of move on. Well, ever since August, it was just, it went into silent mode. So, I figured, well, now that Pen Show season's starting, I wanted to make everyone aware when they see a Tor Pen what it really is. So, the issue is, and without belaboring the point too, too much, there was a gentleman, CW&T had a real problem with pen type A. And they did some, they had some difficulties in manufacturing. And I think, honestly, I don't know, I haven't spoken to them about it in the aftermath. But they were generally up front in all their postings about all the trouble they had manufacturing in China. And at one time, they hired a gentleman named Alan Arsenault, I believe as a contractor, to help sort out this Chinese manufacturing problem. Well, this guy, basically, Alan became part of the CW&T team. And there's a link in my article from a blog called Not Caught, which is a really good design blog.

CW&T Pens

Brad Dowdy: And they show, you know, CW&T, even on their Kickstarter page, has pictures of Alan and Alan's wife in the CW&T shop, you know, helping package the pens and helping, you know, clean the pens, you know, back from manufacturing. And this guy was like deep into the CW&T pen type A process. I mean, he had intimate inside knowledge. I mean, he absolutely did. So as CW&T is wrapping up their whole Kickstarter project, there's a site, a shopping site called fab.com that I'm sure a lot of people are familiar with. I don't know if it's, I don't know that it's quite a daily deal site, but they offer short-term discounted products, you know, new products at a lower price. So this pen showed up, and it's, I mean, it is the spitting image of a pen type A.

Myke Hurley: It doesn't look as good in quality, though, to me.

Brad Dowdy: To me neither, and I've never held one, so I can't totally speak on that. But just from the pictures, it doesn't look as good in quality to me either.

Brad Dowdy: And that's what kind of got the ball rolling. Everyone kind of flipped at that point. Like, what is this? Who is this guy? Where did this pen come from? Why does it look exactly the same? Most of that is in this Not Caught article that everyone should read. And it kind of sorts, it kind of timelines the whole how did this happen. But to put a bow on this, what I want to do is say that everything I've read and all the research I've done and the people I've talked to, I've actually talked on the phone to some other unrelated people to this project that are into manufacturing and things like that and, like, how things work and, you know, how does the design work and how does the patent work and all this stuff. But what's happened is, in a nutshell, there is an old patent for a surgical device that looks like what the pen type A is now. It was for a scalpel and a scalpel holding, you know, a tubular barrel into, you know, a larger square casing with a ruler. I mean, it's pretty clear that that's where the pen type A got their design from. And Alan and Tor Pen's argument is, you know, pen type A used this patent. I'm using this patent, too. I'm not arguing that Tor Pen's should not make this pen. From all I can tell, they have every right to make this pen until the cows come home. The problem I have is this guy was part of the team that made kind of the first one that came out and then branched out on his own, made the same pen with – and after having, say, the inside information with CW&T and went kind of around and made the exact same competing product. You know, it's kind of like, you know, if Bob Smith from Utah got a hold of this patent and started making this pen, I wouldn't have a problem with it. And maybe that's a flaw in my argument here. But to have someone that's part of a team leave the team and then manufacture an identical competing product, I have a real problem with the morals and ethics surrounding that business decision. And I wouldn't want to give my money to a person who believes that is proper business ethics. So I'm not saying that Tor Pen's should not manufacture this pen. I'm saying that if you buy from Tor Pen's, you're buying from a person who does business in this manner. And that's what I'm trying to get across.

Myke Hurley: I will not link to this in the show notes, but I have been digging around. And Tor have a post on their blog, it's easy enough to find, where they're talking about the inspiration for the Tor Classic. And they mention exactly what you're talking about, the surge and stuff. But the way that they have explained this, they have not mentioned in any way the fact that they worked on the pen type A. Exactly. Okay, so you can say this is where your inspiration came from. But they're referring to the fact that, talking about right after college, I worked in an operating room so I knew how useful it was. And then it just goes straight on to what they decided to do and how to create the Tor Classic. But you would expect that they would... Basically, if they would have said, we worked with these guys on creating this and thought that we could do something similar, and these are the things that we thought we could do better, these are the things that we decided we wanted to improve, etc., etc. It would at least... You know, whether that's right or wrong, but I think that would be better.

Brad Dowdy: Abso-freaking-lutely. I would not be right in this post if that was the case. It's, you know, you've got to be transparent.

Myke Hurley: It's the fact that they're pretending that it never happened.

Brad Dowdy: That's exactly right.

Myke Hurley: Which is... It just doesn't...

Brad Dowdy: So I've gotten several nasty grams on this, which is fine. You know, you can see some in the comments section. There's not a lot of comments on this post yet, but there's one just huge, elaborate post saying, thank you for posting this. And then right behind it is this huge, elaborate post calling me an idiot. And I will say that Alan Arsenault has emailed me directly, and he sent me a very nice email saying, you know, there's more to the story than you know. I'd like to share, you know, what's really going on. And I replied to him and said, you know, Alan, I'd love to talk to you. But really what would be better is if you did this publicly and not just have it a conversation between me and you. I mean, you have the... You have a blog. You have a public forum.

Brad Dowdy: Why don't you, you know, clear the air in that way? And I have... That was only... That was Monday. I haven't heard back from him yet. I haven't heard back from Alan yet. But everyone that's upset at me for making this post, their argument is they have every right to make this pin. And that is not what I'm arguing at all. So everyone's kind of missing that point. I am not arguing that at all. Tor pins, make the pin until the cows come home. Don't care. But you need to be up front with who you are, where you were, where this design came from. And I don't mean from a patent, from an old surgical dual patent.

Brad Dowdy: So that's that.

Myke Hurley: I think it's a fair argument. I read the piece. I thought that it looked really interesting, what you were saying about it. And I was quite upset about it myself.

Brad Dowdy: Right. It's that I don't want to do business with someone who operates in this manner. That's my argument. Right. I believe that they probably have every right to manufacture an identical pin as to the pin type A. I'm not going to argue that at all. From what I can tell, they probably have every right to make that pin. And my intent in this was know who you're doing business with and have all the information before making a business transaction.

Brad Dowdy: So that's why I wanted to share this at this point. So that's my soapbox for today.

Myke Hurley: There you go.

Brad Dowdy: So, and, you know, there might be a little more. I might hear back from Alan. And if he has some more and that I find interesting, you know, I'll post it. But, you know, if it's going to be a big, long story about how, you know, here's the patent and here's how we decided the manufacturer. Oh, God, I just don't want to hear it. I'm just that is not that is not the issue with this at all. Make the pin. I don't care. But, you know, and stop getting Steven Tyler to stick your pin in his mouth.

Myke Hurley: That's weird. I saw that. It's like Pen Tyler smoking a tall pen. Why is he doing that?

Brad Dowdy: God, it's brutal.

Myke Hurley: It's just for the sake of having his face there, I guess. Exactly. How does that even happen? But I don't know.

Platinum Pronunciation

Brad Dowdy: All right. So let's put a bow on that and move on to more lighthearted topics. I got one more follow up real quick. If you got a second.

Myke Hurley: Of course. Always follow up. Always.

Brad Dowdy: So our follow up to our last week's follow up. So it's a follow up of the follow up. This is about the Platinum pronunciation. Our friend Hugh, he manned up and sent inquiry straight to Platinum, which I guess. Why did we just do this? Yeah, I know because I'm lazy and we're going to get into that. So let's table that topic for a second. So Hugh's the man and he knows it and I've told him he was. And so he sent an email. It looks like the PR group, whoever's handling their account emailed back. So let me read this email real quick. It's pretty short. It says, Dear Hugh, thank you for the email. The subject of Platinum and its pronunciation is a longstanding question. From what we know, the brand was conceived because it was at the time against trading standards to call the company Platinum. But the slogan was at one time as good as gold. Therefore, the owners added a silent G to Platinum to bypass the law. However, there are regional differences in terms of pronunciation of Platinum. And in the north, the G was usually stated. Hope this helps. And many thanks for your interest.

Myke Hurley: That hasn't helped me at all.

Brad Dowdy: No, no. Thanks for nothing. Thank you to Hugh for driving this email and getting an answer. But the answer is call it whatever you want.

Myke Hurley: Excellent brand building.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. So our problem, me and you, our problem is there's two Platinums. So when I say Platinum, how do you know what I'm talking about? So I thereby decree that these pins shall be called Platinum. And the ones from Asia, I think they might be Korean or Platinum because I knew of them first.

Brad Dowdy: So let it be written. So let it be done.

Myke Hurley: There we go.

Brad Dowdy: All right. So we're clearly from the north. And we're going to lay in on the G.

Platinum Brand

Myke Hurley: Well, I guess we're all north to some part of the world. What does he even mean by that?

Brad Dowdy: I don't know. I guess it meant northern Britain.

Myke Hurley: Oh, you're thinking that he means...

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, because I'm assuming it was a... Since it was a British-originated pin, I'm assuming he means the north of the country or she or he. I don't know. Alex.

Myke Hurley: Knowing what I do about my own country. There's no specific reason why in the north they would put a G in it.

Brad Dowdy: That's the way I read this.

Myke Hurley: Yeah. The brand owners added a silent G to Platinum to bypass the law. What was the law anyway?

Brad Dowdy: Because it was... Something about the... The...

Myke Hurley: From what we know, the brand was conceived because it was at the time against trading standards to call the company Platinum.

Brad Dowdy: The slogan was at one time... The metal trading board in the early 1900s.

Myke Hurley: Because he's kind of confused me in the email. I mean, obviously not everybody can see the email, but he's put the G in the word when he probably didn't mean to.

Brad Dowdy: Exactly. Exactly.

Myke Hurley: So the way that me and Brad are reading this, he's saying, from what we know, the brand was conceived because it was at the time against trading standards to call the company Platinum. But the slogan was at one time as good as gold. But I assume that what he's saying there is... He means to write Platinum. Right. So it was against trading standards to call the company Platinum. But the slogan was at one time as good as gold, which is actually quite a good marketing slogan. So from what I can understand, it's meant to be Platinum. Yes. But they put the G in there. But they still can't tell us a definite way, so we're going to call it Platinum. Because it's easier for our purposes. Simply because the company themselves can't give us a definite answer, which I believe is something they should really work out. I mean, how do they answer the phone?

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, I got nothing. It was a pretty odd email. I mean, it's not the first time he's answered this question, but it's not a great answer.

Myke Hurley: No. No. I just imagine, like, you just call them up. Hello, Platinum or Platinum? Like, you know, you've got to surely have an idea. I don't know. Never mind. Nope. I know. It will be the long-standing myth of the Pen Addict podcast will be how do you pronounce that name. And again, you know, if you've got any ideas as to how we do this, other than the excellent detective work that Hugh attempted to perform for us, please let us know.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, the only thing that's going to do is make me hang up on it every time I say it now. Go on, am I saying it right?

Myke Hurley: Yeah, it hasn't helped us at all, really, has it?

Brad Dowdy: Thanks for nothing, Alex.

Myke Hurley: Yeah, but thank you for everything, Hugh.

Brad Dowdy: Oh, he's awesome. Yeah, shoot. He sent me some other pictures of some other products and stuff like that, some older Platinum products that were pretty sweet. He sent me some good stuff.

Myke Hurley: Oh, I can kind of get a look. I understand a little bit more now. The person who sent it, they work for the parent company that bought that brand.

Brad Dowdy: Mm-hmm.

Myke Hurley: So Snowpake is the owner of the Platinum brand, and Snowpake do lots of different stationary stuff over here, mainly like folders and stuff. Okay. So they've obviously bought that brand.

Brad Dowdy: And they're trying to revitalize it.

Myke Hurley: Yeah.

Brad Dowdy: Maybe they should revitalize how to pronounce the name.

Myke Hurley: That's why I think that they actually haven't decided yet.

Squarespace

Myke Hurley: Dear, oh, dear. Interesting. Anyway, shall I talk about Squarespace, and then we get into the main topic of this week's episode? How does that sound?

Brad Dowdy: Sounds great.

Myke Hurley: Excellent. So this episode is, of course, brought to you by those fine folks over at squarespace.com, who give you everything you need to make an amazing website. Both myself and Brad use Squarespace for our sites because they make it really simple to put your site online. And they give you all the tools that you need to make your home on the internet. Whether you want to build a site for a blog, a portfolio, a business site, whatever you want to make a website for, Squarespace can allow you to do that. And they allow you to do it with ease, I would say. It doesn't matter how experienced you are when it comes to building websites. You can put something amazing together in minutes. They take care of hosting, scaling, integration with social services like Twitter and Facebook. You can get iOS apps that allow you to post on the go and manage your site. You can also see your statistics in these apps. They have real-time analytics built right into Squarespace's platform. So it can tell you who's coming to your site and how they're getting there, things like that. They have fantastic, beautiful templates. You don't need to worry about getting a designer. They're very clean. They let your content do all of the talking. And they have responsive web design built in. So your site will restructure automatically to fit on any device and maintain the beauty of the site's design without throwing up a standard mobile view template which rips out all of the nice stuff. You can easily edit your site and change colors and you can make amendments to the templates in a WYSIWYG environment. So what you see is what you get.

Myke Hurley: That's what WYSIWYG stands for. So you can edit all of the things in a web browser. You click and drag. It's a very nice system. It's very, very attractive. And really, you can listen to me talk about it. And I can talk about it until the cows come home because I love Squarespace that much. But I think the best way for you to understand just how great this great the system is is to go and try out for yourself. There's no credit card required to try out Squarespace. Just go to squarespace.com forward slash 70 decibels. You can start your free trial. If you then decide to sign up for a plan, Squarespace starts at $10 a month for the standard plan and $20 a month in a limited plan. If you sign up for one year up front, you'll get 20% off that monthly price. And if you sign up for two years, you'll get 25% off. But I can give you an additional 10% off so that it can be off your first month or on top of the annual plan discounts if you enter the code 70decibels1 below the pricing information at checkout. And that also helps Squarespace know that you found out about them through us. So go check out Squarespace. Everything you need to make an amazing website.

Brad Dowdy: So, Mr. Dowdy? Yes, sir.

Myke Hurley: What are we going to talk about today? What's the main topic 20 minutes into the episode?

Brad Dowdy: I know. I knew the first topic might take a little bit. So, well, before we get into that, I'd like to issue an apology.

Myke Hurley: Oh, dear.

Brad Dowdy: And I would like to apologize to you, Myke Hurley.

Myke Hurley: That's okay.

Brad Dowdy: You know, I have a tough time coming up with topics sometimes. And, you know, sometimes, you know, weeks in advance, I know exactly what I want to talk about and I have all the details planned out. And then sometimes I have half-fleshed out topics that I'm really excited to talk about, but I don't have all the details sorted out yet and haven't had the time to finish my research and things like that. So I'd like to apologize for on Tuesday mornings when I'm coming home from work saying, hey, what do you want to talk about today?

Myke Hurley: I think that we should also apologize to everybody that follows us on app.net as they got to see us have this conversation today. I don't know why we decided to have it there. We could have had this conversation anywhere.

Brad Dowdy: I know. I think it was my fault because I had a couple of errands to run when I left work. So I was just sitting there waiting, you know, just, you know, getting, you know, my glasses fixed and some other things like that. So I had some idle time between leaving work and getting home. So we started this conversation on app.net. It's like, oh, I really don't know. You know, I know I need to cover this Tor Pins thing, but then I really don't know what I want to talk about. And then all of a sudden playing the role of my mother, Michael Hurley says, have you looked in the future topics document?

Brad Dowdy: It was like, man, just scold me right there. It actually wasn't meant to be like that. I know. I was. I know. Nearly asking. You're like, hey, it's more like, hey, buddy, go take a peek over here. See if there's something you want to talk about. It wasn't like, listen here, pal. You listen here, sir. We keep a document for this reason. It was just funny. Have you looked at the future topics document? So then that just spawned, I don't know, God, probably 20 more tweets.

Myke Hurley: Then the listeners started to get involved, which we always love. And we've got some things added to that future topics document.

Brad Dowdy: Yes, I'll be adding some things into that. And I've definitely made some notes. But when I asked for topics or other listeners to give us some ideas, you came up with a really interesting question. And I said, yes, let's go with that. And it's a subject we've covered many times about, you know, what pens do you carry every day? Everyday carry type of pens, pens that you always want to have around. But the way you worded it, I was like, this is a really interesting way to word it. So let me read what Michael said. He says, what does a pen have to do to make it into your daily carry? Then how do you decide what's replaced? And I thought the way you worded that, I was like, that's a really interesting way to look at it. Because we haven't.

Pen Case Contents

Myke Hurley: Would you like me to tell you why I have asked this question?

Brad Dowdy: Yes, because I think you asked it in a very specific way. You didn't ask. Let's talk about what your daily carry pens are.

Myke Hurley: So this might help a little bit.

Brad Dowdy: Okay.

Myke Hurley: That was my pen case. I brought, I have a pen case. Okay, good.

Brad Dowdy: I'm glad you clarified what that was.

Myke Hurley: Exactly. I have a pen case that I keep in my drawer at work. And in this case, it is the, there goes some pens on the table, sorry. The Lahit Labs, is it Teffa? Teffa, yeah. Teffa case. I have that case. I've spoken about it before on the show. I have in it a selection of pens. And at the moment, I have five pens that are not in the case.

Myke Hurley: They are kind of sort of just, they're not like clipped inside of it. They're just loose inside. And I need to remove some to add one or two of these pens in there. And this is including some Zebra Sarasa pens. I bought a Zebra, I think it's, I can't even say it. It's Derfit?

Myke Hurley: Airfit? Airfit. Airfit. What a weird, it's written very peculiarly on them. I bought an Airfit, a Sarasa.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, and that's the one that calls, it says gel with a J.

Myke Hurley: It's a G here. Oh, really? Yeah. Then I've got the Zebra Sarasa and the Zebra Marathon.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. I'm not familiar with the Marathon. I do have the Airfit. I like that one. Yeah. It's got the good squishy grip.

Myke Hurley: It's a nice grip to it, yeah. So I've got those. And then I also have, I bought my Lamy Ale Star. And then I have some of the Pentel Tredios that I was using recently. So they're loose in the case. And I've been trying to work out what to take out. Now you can imagine. So this case opens up into like a book and you have two sides. Now, as you can imagine, one of these sides consists of one, two, three, four, five, six, seven of my Retro 51 collection. Wow. It's not the whole lot. It's just part of the collection. And then the rest is an assortment of pens. So I've been trying to work out what to remove. And I wondered from you, Brad, what does it take to, what is your justification for when something can enter your daily carry and then be removed from it?

Brad Dowdy: So I used to do almost exactly what you do. I would, in my backpack, I would carry sometimes two full pen cases of pens, of varying everything. And then in the pockets of that backpack have, you know, five pens stuffed in this pocket, three pens clipped in here. Because I never wanted to be without a pen I wanted at the time. So I did that for years. And it worked fine. But what I found myself doing is switching from pen to pen too quickly and worrying about what pen I was using than actually what I was doing, you know, writing, whatever, taking notes. So that lasted for quite a long time. And I still do, I still find myself falling back into old habits. But I'm trying to work on some things to narrow that down. And to answer the question about what does a pen have to do to make it to your daily carry, I go in phases of pen usage. And when I pick a, and it's not even a specific pen, but it's more a type of pen, like either, you know, like a fine tip gel pen. Those would all be. When I'm in that kind of mode, I'll use any of them, like a high tech C or a Sino DX or a Sarasa clip. You know, that's all kind of in one grouping. And that's all I'll use for a couple weeks, it seems. I just kind of get in this groove and that's all I want to write with. And then it'll change. And then, you know, all of a sudden one day I'll pick up a Sharpie pen. And I was like, oh man, I forget how much I like writing with these. And my handwriting looks so good with these. And I'll start using a Sharpie pen and a Secura Pigma Micron and a Copic multiliner, things like that. And that'll be all I write with for a couple weeks. The phase I'm in right now is I'm full bore into fountain pens. And I've actually, with all of our Lamy talk here recently, I've broken back out my Safari and inked it up with just a regular Lamy blue cartridge. And I've been using my charcoal Lamy Safari. I bet for two weeks straight now.

Brad Dowdy: Maybe not quite that long. Maybe a week and a half. Week, week and a half. And even though I, the pen case I'm using right now is the Alter pen case, Alter manufacturing that we've talked about and I've reviewed before. And I think I have nine. All I'm carrying now is nine pens in this case. I haven't used anything but this Safari for a week, week and a half. And so I'm asking myself, well, why am I carrying around all these other pens? You know, I do like having the options available to me. Like if I wanted to switch to, you know, a gel pen, I have like a 0.3 high tech C Cavalier refill in my titanium pen. I have one of the Moleskine stainless steel pens with a 0.5 millimeter Moleskine gel refill that I love. Love that pen. You know, I have a Render K, an orange one that I have a 0.4 black high tech C refill. I use the, I prefer the 0.3 blue high tech C and the 0.4 black high tech C. So I always carry them both. But what I'm finding is basically these pens are just sitting looking pretty in my pen case.

Brad Dowdy: So how do I decide how to swap them out is recently I haven't been. I've just been taking my whole pen case, but I've been using one pen for weeks at a time. Before that, before the Safari, I was using my vanishing point because I traded with one of our listeners and followers. I traded him a pen for, he has an EF nib for the vanishing point. The one I bought came with the F nib, which is awfully fine. And I tested out the EF nib months ago and I was like, oh, that's awfully fine. I don't know if I can use that every day. Then we made a swap. I traded him my Kaweco AL Sport ballpoint for his EF nib. Well, I got it in, inked it up with a black Pilot Namiki ink cartridge. And man, I loved it. It's a bit, I've been, there'll be another review on the blog at some point just about the nib. And for about two weeks, that's all I used. And then we got talking on the Safari and I was like, well, you know, I haven't used my Safari in months. So let me just swap it out.

Brad Dowdy: So it's a roundabout way of saying there's really no tried and true method for me to do it. But the way that I write, I tend to go for one type of pen all at once and not use anything else for, it seems to be like a two-week period. I don't know. There's no start and stop date. That just seems to be about the time I'm ready to switch. So I've actually made a purchase recently because I've seen myself going this way to where I'm using fewer pens on a daily basis. I still use lots of pens and different things. But as far as like, say, going to work and carrying my pens around, do I need to be really carrying all these extra pens that I'm not using actively, even though I want to have them handy and get to them? So what I did is because I think my – as I get more experience with certain types of pens, my philosophy is changing where I don't need ready access to 30 pens in my backpack. Like you have probably 20 pens handy between your case and just within arm's reach at your desk. So what I did is – and I've seen this product for a while and always hesitated on buying it, but I just got to thinking again. I was like, let me go look at this case again and see if it might be a fit. And it's the Doan Leatherworks four-barrel holster. And so I went on Chad's site and it was – he had it marked at half off because these are expensive cases. I mean it's like a $70, $65 case, something like that. And he had it marked down to like $35. I was like, well, that's obviously a sign. That's my opportunity. This is the case I want. I thought paying upwards of $70 was pretty expensive for me at the time. But I thought $35 was awfully reasonable and was exactly what I was looking for. And before we get too far and I forget to mention it, it looks like they were – he had marked down the price because he's sold out of them now. He was closing those out. They're not available for sale right now.

Leather Supplier

Myke Hurley: I think I got an email or saw something from him that they've got a new leather supplier.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, so he's going to be doing some new things. You know, I'm not at liberty to discuss, but I've had conversations with Chad separate from this. But yeah, don't think that because the leather works are not available right now that there's not new and different things coming. He's going to have some new releases this year of various things. And I've done some product testing for him too. So he's got some cool things coming this year.

Myke Hurley: I'm sure you've done some product testing for him. Of course you have.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, but no, I bought this case because it holds four pins maybe, right? I mean if your pins are really big, they're going to – it's like fountain pins tend to run large barreled. So I think I can – I just got it last night in the mail, so I haven't even put pin number one in here. But I'm actually looking to lower the number of pins I carry with me.

Myke Hurley: Yeah, do you know what? Looking at that and seeing that image – there's a flicker image of Chad's that I've put in the show notes. I now want one of these for that reason. Like just limit the amount of stuff. Like I never use more than four pins in one day. Right. So to find the best of each, like to really decide. I mean I would probably use – I mean I would find a fountain pen, definitely a Retro 51. And then I would probably go for a multi-pen and a gel pen and have a pencil in the multi-pen. I mean that's probably what I would do. I mean I don't know what – definitely what ones of each I would use.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, I think that's the exact right way to look at it. And that's what I did with my Alter pen case is I wanted to have kind of one of each class of pen represented. If I wanted to do something that required that tool, I had it. So I did carry two high-tech Cs and a couple of fountain pens in there. But I made sure I had a liquid ink pen, a drawing marker type pen, a pencil. So just the only thing I think I didn't have in there was like a highlighter. Like if you were putting together a kit where you want to have everything covered, I did not have a highlighter.

Myke Hurley: Make sure that when Chad is selling these again, you just tell him to hurry up.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, well, I don't know the specifics. I mean maybe he's not – this specific one may not come back out again. I can't answer that question. And that's because I don't know, not because I know something and I can't talk about it. It's because I flat out don't know. So I mean I just know that it's not available on the site right now because I think he was wrapping up that series, if you will. But I think it's going to work out well for what I'm trying to do. And it's funny. I saw – there's a guy I've been talking to recently that started a really, really good blog. His name is Ed Jelly. And he's got – he's a huge – he's a big fountain pen fan. He's got some really nice fountain pens and does some really nice things. And it was funny. He posted his weekly loadout. And, you know, a load – from my definition of a loadout and the way fountain pen people talk about a loadout is what pen and ink combinations do you currently have loaded into your pens? What ink is loaded into the pens and what pens are you actively using?

Myke Hurley: That is some beautiful photography.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. He does – his handwriting and his photography are top notch and I've really enjoyed his blog. I've talked to him several times. He's a nice guy. He does a really good job. So definitely hit our show notes and check out Ed's blog. He's new on the scene but he's already done fabulous work in my opinion. So what made me think of it is I saw – I had already ordered this case and then I saw in his post that he has like a four-barrel case himself but it's like sleeved, right? It's got four individual sleeves where Chad's is a pocket. So that's another option for that type of carry. But I found myself using a smaller number of pens on a daily basis. So I'm trying to limit how many I carry around with me just because there's no reason to.

Brad Dowdy: And these four-barrel type holsters, I mean I've seen other fountain pen.

Brad Dowdy: Levenger has maybe a two-barrel case, something like that. I didn't look at that before doing this. Two or three barrels. So there's – if you look at different pen stores, mostly higher-end stores like Nomadic makes pen cases that I love, the nylon pen cases. They don't make very many small capacity cases. They're making larger capacity cases that we use and carry probably upwards of 10 to 15 pens. Whereas vendors that are selling fountain pens and higher-end roller balls, they're selling smaller cases just because people aren't carrying around a dozen Mont-en-Blancs or something like that that they need a case for. So I wanted to – I'm going to attempt this case. It's an experiment on my part to carry fewer pens. I think in this case, I'm going to – honestly, I think it's going to be three fountain pens in my Render K. I think it's going to be my Vanishing Point, my Safari, which I've been using a bunch of. And I will say I'm switching over, and this is an update, big update, big news here. My Lamy 2000 is performing pretty well after an ink change. So I'm wondering if the ink that I used the first time was not flowing as well as it is now. So I put a new ink, cleaned it out, put in a new ink in my 2000, and it's working better than anticipated.

Myke Hurley: Because you were significantly upset with that pen.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, and I think I'm still going to get it worked on. I've been talking – I've sent an email to one of the popular nib grinders and adjusters. His name is Myke Masuyama. I think his website is called Myke at Work, M-I-K-E-I-T-E-W-R-K. I believe that's the website. I didn't put this in the show notes because I didn't think I was going to be mentioning it. But he's actually in Georgia where I am, and he goes to the Atlanta Pen Show and works on pens. But you can also send pens to him. And I think I'm still on my 2000. I'm going to get the nib ground down to something even finer. Myke at Work. Myke at Work.

Myke Hurley: Which is an excellent – that's such a great brand name.

Brad Dowdy: I like that. Yeah. And apparently – I'm not going to profess to know the history, and I'm sure I'll get a lot of emails and comments on this. But this guy is in the upper echelon of the respect levels in the fountain pen community. This guy is like in the top tier. Like everyone in the fountain pen communities knows a lot about a gentleman named Richard Binder who does – I think it's Bender. Actually, excuse me. Richard Bender in New York who does – who's got a big pen shop and does elite repair work. And Myke is along those lines as far as the repair work, and he works with a lot of major companies. And he's trained under some of the most respected and well-known Japanese nib makers and nib repairers and things like that. So I think this guy has got like an elite reputation. So I just got to find time to send off my pen, and I am going to get it adjusted. But I am happier with the 2000 now that I've swapped inks in it.

Myke Hurley: I want to talk about that when you get it done because I don't really understand what an adjustment would be. But we'll wait until you get it done, and then we'll maybe go into that. I'm adding that to the future topics.

Brad Dowdy: Okay, yeah, and that will definitely be in the future because even if I send it today, he's eight weeks out in work. So put it down because that will be a long time out before I actually get the work completed because I'm not going to send it yet.

Myke Hurley: Send that.

Everyday Carry

Brad Dowdy: So yeah, I hope that – I mean I hope I kind of answered the question about the hows and whys of my – the pens I carry every day. It's in constant flux, and over the years, I've really – my philosophy has changed, and it's constantly changing. And I could go back the other way to where I'm carrying 30 and 40 pens with me at a time. But right now, it seems to be that this is working better for me to carry fewer pens. And I've found myself constantly ticking down a step here, a step there every few months, and I'm down to fewer and fewer pens I'm carrying. But yeah, and then what happens is it's like, oh, I miss writing with that pen. So it finds its way back into some random pocket, and the next thing you know, there's five of them, and then I've got a big pen case back out, and then I'm back to square one. But anyway, that's how I do it.

Myke Hurley: So now I – basically, you've given me what I wanted from this episode, my selfish reasons for wanting this episode. So I've now decided that I want something where I can carry four pens or something. I think four is a good number at a time. So I'm now on the lookout, lovely ladies and gentlemen listeners of the pen addict. Please send me in your suggestions. I'm looking for something like the Doan four-barrel holster. So something nice. I mean, leather is good. It's not definite, but it's something that looks nice for pens is what I'm looking for. So please, please, as always, send your suggestions in to us. I'll talk about how at the end of the show because I still think there's a couple of things that we want to talk about. I know you've got a couple of quick mentions, and then I've got a point that I want to bring up at the end.

Brad Dowdy: You want to go first or you want me to – I think I'm good on the everyday carry topic, and I just did have a special shout-out. You want me to go first? Yeah, do that. I wanted to thank David Sparks and especially Myke Rohde who was a guest on the Mac Power Users podcast with David and Katie, Katie Floyd. They do it – this is a long-running, very well-respected Mac podcast that's on the 5x5 network, and I've listened to it for a long time. They had Myke Rohde on who's been on our podcast talking about a sketchnote handbook, and they had a great conversation, went over lots of things. Towards the end of their show, they were discussing some of the pens that Myke used, and Myke gave a plug and a shout-out to the pen addict. I just wanted to tell him thank you and thank David and Katie for the mention, and I really appreciated that. Cool.

Myke Hurley: Cool. And I thought – and I noticed whilst going to the site to pick up the link to put into the show notes, Myke is also on another 5x5 show this week. Where? He's on Systematic with Brett Terpstra.

Brad Dowdy: Oh, well, I'll have to look for a mention in that one too. There's a lesson there too. Actually, maybe I'll tell him in advance. Make sure you get my plug in, Myke. It's already there. It's done. Oh, it's already done? Mm-hmm. Oh, see, I missed that one then. It was released today. Okay, so I've only been up like two hours, so I haven't caught up with that yet.

Myke Hurley: Yeah, I think it was just before we started. Oh, there you go. He's taking a picture. Where are you taking a picture? Did you hear that?

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. I'm taking a picture of the holster, so I'll send it in Twitter. Twitter. Send it to me on the Twitter. Send it in Twitter, and you can grab the link to see what my holster looks like loaded out. So my Render K, I was actually using it earlier, so it's not in the room where I'm sitting. So I put in my Vanishing Point Safari 2000, and I have the shiny Kaweco AL Sport in it right now, just so everyone can see what it looks like.

Handwriting

Myke Hurley: It's awaiting. I've already got it ready for the show notes. So there was one thing that I wanted to bring up before we finish today. Now, many, many episodes ago on the PanEdit, episode 26.

Myke Hurley: It started in episode 25. We were talking about handwriting. Me and you. And then I went on holiday, and then you hosted an episode of Stephen Hackett, episode 26 of the PanEdit, called It's Got Little Curves to It. And at the start of the episode, you berated my handwriting image that I put in the show notes of the episode previous, saying that my handwriting was terrible. I don't recall this. You don't remember that? How convenient? How convenient that you don't remember that. Just as a quick aside, and I'm going to put a link in the show notes to the image again. It is my most viewed image on Dropler, because they have stats. By like 25% higher on the previous one. Of every image I've posted to Dropler, this image is the highest. Now, I was thinking earlier about handwriting, and I can't remember how I came to thinking about it. But it's something, you know, we all think about these things, I'm sure, as pen nerds. And I love pens, but my handwriting is terrible. It is just horrible. But I was thinking about something, right? Some people love music, but they're not necessarily good at singing. That was all I wanted to say.

Brad Dowdy: You know what? I agree with you. And, you know, it's... Handwriting's hard. I mean, it's a challenge. And it's a challenge for me, and everyone does it differently. And, you know, I like picking on you because you can take it. Unlike some people.

Myke Hurley: I know I can be neat. I know I can be neat. And if I was writing something like you do for the blog, I would take my time and be neat with it. But I understand my own handwriting, so I just get it down on the page. Why waste time?

Brad Dowdy: That's right. You accomplish the task you set out to do. No, and hey, I appreciate that you're owning your handwriting. I mean, that's your handwriting. It shouldn't change. And, you know, everyone's child is beautiful in their own eyes.

Myke Hurley: I like that. I take that that you're calling me beautiful in some way, and I'm happy with that. It makes me feel better.

Brad Dowdy: Well, good. Good. But, no, I do give you a lot of grief over that because it seems to come up all the time. We get asked about handwriting a lot.

Myke Hurley: Yeah, we do.

Brad Dowdy: And, you know, so people will tweet, both you and I, you know, as hosts, they'll tweet us and just say, you know, my handwriting is horrible.

Brad Dowdy: And, you know, how can I make it better? You know, what are you doing or what pens are you using? And my first comment is back is always, you probably shouldn't be asking Myke for handwriting tips.

Myke Hurley: Either you say it or somebody will talk to us both and say, well, I don't really want Myke's advice, but, you know, do you have any tips?

Brad Dowdy: And then my second response is the answer. But, yeah, I always have to get that shot in just because I – it's just one of those things I've latched on to. Sorry, mate.

Myke Hurley: It wouldn't be right if it wasn't in there.

Myke Hurley: Wow, 50 minutes, this episode. It's funny how some of our longest episodes are the ones where we don't know what we're going to be talking about.

Brad Dowdy: And, honestly, some of the best. I've thoroughly enjoyed this episode. I thought this was a good episode, not to pound our own chest and, you know, this is something we normally talk about off the air afterwards. But I like this episode. It was fun and it was probably one of the least planned episodes. And, honestly, with us, that happens a lot. Yeah. And those end up – those tend to be some of the best episodes.

Myke Hurley: That's just how we roll. Yep. But, of course, you can always send in your suggestions. We love suggestions because we like to talk about the things that you guys want to listen to. And you can get in touch with us in a couple of ways. Go to 70decibels.com forward slash contact and fill out the contact form there with The Pen Addict in the drop-down list. Or you can contact Brad directly. You can email him at thepenaddict at gmail.com. Or you can get in touch with us on Twitter. I am iMike and Brad is Dowdyism, D-O-W-D-Y-I-S-M. I am also iMike on app.net and Brad is Dowdy, D-O-W-D-Y. Thanks for having a different name there, Brad. It just makes it that much quicker for me to explain at the end. But you are within pretty much the majority of most of the hosts on the network. App.net just doubled the amount of usernames I have to read.

Brad Dowdy: Yep. We just wanted to extend these podcasts out as long as possible.

Myke Hurley: Just that little bit longer. But, yeah, so please get in touch with us. Thanks for listening every week. If you enjoy the show, rate us in iTunes. We love to get ratings. Five stars are best. But, you know, you can feel free to be honest. Absolutely.

Brad Dowdy: And, you know, leave us feedback if it's there. I do check in and read things. And if there's, you know, areas where we feel we can improve, absolutely tell us. I'm always open to feedback, criticism, tips, tricks, anything. So, please, let us know.

Myke Hurley: Exactly. Thank you very much. So, yeah, thanks very much for listening to this week's episode of The Pen Addict. As always, I am Myke and he is Brad. And until next time, bye-bye.

Brad Dowdy: Bye-bye.