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From RelayFM, this is The Pen Addict, episode 618. Today's show is brought to you by the St. Louis Pen Show, Pen Chalet, and ExpressVPN. My name is Myke Hurley, I'm joined by Brad Dowdy. Hi Brad. What's up Myke Hurley, how are you today? I'm good man, how are you? I'm good, I'm good. I'm ready to talk about pens. Shocker. I mean, look, here's the thing, I'm feeling a little sleepy today, but I can feel like this first topic is going to wake me right up. Are you still tired from our Lego build? Yeah. Oh, great, yes. Nice, nice, nice. All right, so we have done the Lego build for the year. This is a thing that we do every year for RelayFM members. Boy, have we. If you are a RelayFM member, it's in the crossover feed. Go to relay.fm slash membership to learn more and become a member and support this show. Or if you support any show, you get access to this. So, you know, it's just like a thank you to all of our members. So we built a Lego Spider-Man set. This is the longest build that we've ever done. We built continuously for nearly five hours. And also, different this time to last time, we made a video version, which is in the show notes of the audio. So you can listen, but you can also watch along, as Brad definitely told me to do some things that he refuses that he told me to do. I fully admitted. I admitted. Some of us are able to admit when we make mistakes. Some of us aren't. We'll let you decide, Chad. We'll let you decide. I said that to my wife, that you told me this, and she laughed, and I said, I actually think that this is maybe a good reflection moment for me. But, you know, we'll see about that. So, yeah, that's available for RelayFM members. If you decide to support this show or any show, you will get access to that, and we will appreciate your support for another year. Thank you so much. Yeah, it was fun. It was exhausting. But let me tell you, Brad, it took three days to get the video version to work. Yeah, so this was an on-a-wim thing that Myke took on for all of us. So thank you, Myke, for doing that. Basically, what happened was I realized halfway through that our audio levels were not balanced properly in the streaming system. Because I used my streaming app that I used to stream, because it was just easy to build it. It was OBS. And you have to fiddle with the audio sometimes, depending on what the source is. And I realized you were a bit too quiet. And I was like, well, this isn't a problem, because we're recording our own audio. I'll just swap it over. And I found, like, I used Final Cut because it was a big thing. And also I found Final Cut has, like, an automatic audio sync feature. So if it's, like, takes the old audio and here's the new audio. The problem was Final Cut was effectively refusing to finish the export. And, like, multiple times export in this video, which took, on average, about six hours per export, it would get to, like, 90% and the app would crash. This happened, I think I maybe tried to do this export, like, four or five times over the space of three days. Until I eventually got it to work by exporting it and basically, like, just pure, like, non-compressed. And then I was able to use a tool called Handbrake to get it into a 1080 file to upload. But, like, it was, so it got to the point where it was, like, I had to publish it on Monday. And it was, like, oh, I had left it overnight to do this thing. I even had, like, the non-good audio version, like, uploaded to YouTube. And it was just a case of, like, well, if this doesn't work, I'm just going to have to press, like, publish on this one. But I came into the studio and found that it had happened. Because first I tried to do it on my MacBook Air, and that was not happening. And then I tried to do it. And then I tried a couple more times on my MacBook Pro. But I finally got it there in the end. Final Cut finally found that 1x3 block. Yep. Finally found it. Flat 1x3 with a washing machine. Mm-hmm.
'''Myke Hurley:''' From RelayFM, this is The Pen Addict, episode 618. Today's show is brought to you by the St. Louis Pen Show, Pen Chalet, and ExpressVPN. My name is Myke Hurley, I'm joined by Brad Dowdy. Hi Brad.


'''Brad Dowdy:''' What's up Myke Hurley, how are you today? I'm good man, how are you? I'm good, I'm good. I'm ready to talk about pens. Shocker.


'''Myke Hurley:''' I mean, look, here's the thing, I'm feeling a little sleepy today, but I can feel like this first topic is going to wake me right up.


== Lego-inspired fountain pens ==




'''Speaker 00:''' All right. Are we ready to get into some Lego-looking fountain pens? Yeah, baby, let's go. Because I am. Let's go. I was so confused when I saw a blue and yellow Lamy Safari hit my Instagram feed about a week ago, sometime late last week. It was just this kind of bright blue with a yellow clip from a non-retail account. And I thought, okay, cool. Like, there's Lamy hacks are pretty popular, right? Where people will disassemble Lamy Safaris, especially with the Safari. They can be disassembled. People can swap the clips and the finial caps and the grip sections and just make their own colors. And it was just a single blue Lamy clip, a yellow clip, and, like, a bright blue barrel. I was like, that's a really cool-looking swap. Like, I like this one. And then probably – and I really didn't think twice because this is a pretty common thing in my Instagram feed, as you can imagine. Like, I see just weird stuff like this. And then probably, like, the next day, I started scrolling, and there were more images of this blue and yellow Lamy Safari. And they were coming from, like, real retailers that I follow. And then all of a sudden, there was a pink and red one that I was like, all of these are together. And this is Lamy Safari 2024 Special Edition? Question mark? Because we already had a special edition set.
== Lego Build ==


'''Speaker 01:''' Who says there can only be one special edition?


'''Speaker 00:''' And I'm – yeah, I'm, like, wondering, like, what is happening with Lamy? And how much do I like this? And, you know, do I like these pens? And I'm still, to this day, like, five days later, probably after I saw this, can't totally wrap my head around what we're seeing here. Because it seems like such an outlier to me that they would have a second big release, let's see, four months after the previous big release. Although, I guess these don't have ink related to them. Like, the first big relief with Violet Blackberry and Pink Cliff, like, back in February, March timeframe, those were right on schedule with every other Lamy Safari annual worldwide release limited edition. And both of those colorways came with their own ink. And, like, that was the big release. And Lamy will do things throughout the rest of the year, right? They'll introduce new Safari colors. They'll maybe do some, you know, mix and match thing. And it'll usually just be, like, a singular fountain pen, right? Like, one fountain pen with a neat color. Or they'll do a region-based one. They'll might mix in some all-star colors. You know, they're not – this isn't their one and only release during the year. But I usually don't see – at least it's been a long time since, and maybe never – that they've done a full fountain pen ballpoint rollerball. And, interestingly enough, both of these, both the Pina Colada, which are the names – we'll get to these in a second – and Cherry Blossom both have pencils, which we'll talk about that in a minute. It just kind of blows my mind. And I'm kind of looking at it sideways a little bit. And on one hand, you know I love this, right? Like, this is the style of Safari I want to see more of, right? The color barrels with the bright clips. Like, they've done a good build, right? Like, mixing and matching the parts to make these builds of these pens to where the barrel's one color, is the primary color, and then the additional parts, the clip, the finial, and the grip section, are the alternate color. And both of these kind of fall in the same design. Like, the Cherry Blossom is a pink barrel with red accessories or hardware. And the Pina Colada is a blue barrel. I don't know why it's blue, but – well, that's maybe a different drink. And then yellow hardware. So, I mean, they're gorgeous. I love them. And now Brad flips the worry switch. It's like, Brad, you got exactly what you wanted. Like, 100% exactly what you want.
'''Brad Dowdy:''' Are you still tired from our Lego build?


'''Speaker 01:''' I just found lots of images of blue Pina Coladas. Really? Yeah. I don't think I've ever had a blue Pina Colada. I mean, to be fair, I did have to say Pina Colada blue. And there's a tropical version which is made with blue Carousel.
'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah. Oh, great, yes. Nice, nice, nice. All right, so we have done the Lego build for the year. This is a thing that we do every year for RelayFM members. Boy, have we. If you are a RelayFM member, it's in the crossover feed. Go to relay.fm slash membership to learn more and become a member and support this show. Or if you support any show, you get access to this. So, you know, it's just like a thank you to all of our members. So we built a Lego Spider-Man set. This is the longest build that we've ever done. We built continuously for nearly five hours. And also, different this time to last time, we made a video version, which is in the show notes of the audio. So you can listen, but you can also watch along, as Brad definitely told me to do some things that he refuses that he told me to do.


'''Speaker 00:''' Yes. That's my expectation. Like, this is a blue Carousel drink for sure.
'''Brad Dowdy:''' I fully admitted. I admitted. Some of us are able to admit when we make mistakes. Some of us aren't. We'll let you decide, Chad. We'll let you decide.


'''Speaker 01:''' I think maybe they just didn't want to do a yellow cream pen. Yeah.
'''Myke Hurley:''' I said that to my wife, that you told me this, and she laughed, and I said, I actually think that this is maybe a good reflection moment for me. But, you know, we'll see about that. So, yeah, that's available for RelayFM members. If you decide to support this show or any show, you will get access to that, and we will appreciate your support for another year. Thank you so much.


'''Speaker 00:''' Like, it would be like a cream or a light tan. And it's like, yes, okay, maybe that's not really. I mean, they could have just gone. I might have even accepted almost brown, like, just from like a coconut shell perspective.
'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, it was fun. It was exhausting.


'''Speaker 01:''' This is more fun though, Brad.
'''Myke Hurley:''' But let me tell you, Brad, it took three days to get the video version to work.


'''Speaker 00:''' This is a killer. Like, this is like, if I'm in the design lab, and I talk about this all the time, if I'm in Lamy's lab, this is something I'm putting together, right? And now, I have quickly gone from, do this Lamy, do this Lamy, do this Lamy. It's like, whoa, whoa, whoa, Lamy. Too much. What are we doing here? Are you going to make me, like, put a moratorium on you, like, sailor, where you're introducing, like, literally all the safaris? Now, we have a quarterly Lamy Safari limited edition, like, I'm not saying they're doing this. What is this for the monkeys, Paul? Like, Lamy, I want you to do more of your designs. Yeah, no, not like that. Every story weeks, there's a new one. Yeah, this is literally a no, not like that. Like, you got what you asked for. No, not like that.
'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, so this was an on-a-wim thing that Myke took on for all of us. So thank you, Myke, for doing that.


'''Unknown Speaker:''' Yeah.
'''Myke Hurley:''' Basically, what happened was I realized halfway through that our audio levels were not balanced properly in the streaming system. Because I used my streaming app that I used to stream, because it was just easy to build it. It was OBS. And you have to fiddle with the audio sometimes, depending on what the source is. And I realized you were a bit too quiet. And I was like, well, this isn't a problem, because we're recording our own audio. I'll just swap it over. And I found, like, I used Final Cut because it was a big thing. And also I found Final Cut has, like, an automatic audio sync feature. So if it's, like, takes the old audio and here's the new audio. The problem was Final Cut was effectively refusing to finish the export. And, like, multiple times export in this video, which took, on average, about six hours per export, it would get to, like, 90% and the app would crash. This happened, I think I maybe tried to do this export, like, four or five times over the space of three days. Until I eventually got it to work by exporting it and basically, like, just pure, like, non-compressed. And then I was able to use a tool called Handbrake to get it into a 1080 file to upload. But, like, it was, so it got to the point where it was, like, I had to publish it on Monday. And it was, like, oh, I had left it overnight to do this thing. I even had, like, the non-good audio version, like, uploaded to YouTube. And it was just a case of, like, well, if this doesn't work, I'm just going to have to press, like, publish on this one. But I came into the studio and found that it had happened. Because first I tried to do it on my MacBook Air, and that was not happening. And then I tried to do it. And then I tried a couple more times on my MacBook Pro. But I finally got it there in the end.


'''Brad Dowdy:''' Final Cut finally found that 1x3 block. Yep. Finally found it.


'''Myke Hurley:''' Flat 1x3 with a washing machine.


== Praise for Mitsubishi Pencil and new product releases ==
'''Brad Dowdy:''' Mm-hmm.


'''Brad Dowdy:''' All right. Are we ready to get into some Lego-looking fountain pens? Yeah, baby, let's go. Because I am. Let's go. I was so confused when I saw a blue and yellow Lamy Safari hit my Instagram feed about a week ago, sometime late last week. It was just this kind of bright blue with a yellow clip from a non-retail account. And I thought, okay, cool. Like, there's Lamy hacks are pretty popular, right? Where people will disassemble Lamy Safaris, especially with the Safari. They can be disassembled. People can swap the clips and the finial caps and the grip sections and just make their own colors. And it was just a single blue Lamy clip, a yellow clip, and, like, a bright blue barrel. I was like, that's a really cool-looking swap. Like, I like this one. And then probably – and I really didn't think twice because this is a pretty common thing in my Instagram feed, as you can imagine. Like, I see just weird stuff like this. And then probably, like, the next day, I started scrolling, and there were more images of this blue and yellow Lamy Safari. And they were coming from, like, real retailers that I follow. And then all of a sudden, there was a pink and red one that I was like, all of these are together. And this is Lamy Safari 2024 Special Edition? Question mark? Because we already had a special edition set.


'''Speaker 01:''' Well, Brad, this is, look, praise be to Mitsubishi Pencil, you know? Like, that's what's going on here. It's obviously the only way to assume what is happening. You know, praise be to Mitsubishi, we now have some interesting Lamy Safaris.
'''Myke Hurley:''' Who says there can only be one special edition?


'''Speaker 00:''' Yeah, so here's the thing. When the Pink Cliff and Violet Blackberry came out, I bought one of each, right? Like, that's kind of what I do. Like, one of each, like, fountain pen, rollerball, ballpoint, whatever they offered. And, you know, go through them, kind of review them, and then literally give all of it away, and I'll keep, like, one safari, whichever safari I like the most, I'll just keep. So I kept the Pink Cliff one because I like the matte barrel color. These are glossy. Both of these are glossy, by the way. It's hard to tell in some of the pictures, but there's some close-up pictures. These are definitely both glossy barrels and glossy grips, if people were wondering. I have ordered zero of these so far because, like, now I'm just like, well, yeah, what's the rush, right? They have clearly shown that in the span of four months, they're willing to just, like, overload the shelves with these colors. And I think both of these colors, I like these better than the Pink Safari and Violet Blackberry. Pink Cliff and Violet Blackberry. There's too many names here.
'''Brad Dowdy:''' And I'm – yeah, I'm, like, wondering, like, what is happening with Lamy? And how much do I like this? And, you know, do I like these pens? And I'm still, to this day, like, five days later, probably after I saw this, can't totally wrap my head around what we're seeing here. Because it seems like such an outlier to me that they would have a second big release, let's see, four months after the previous big release. Although, I guess these don't have ink related to them. Like, the first big relief with Violet Blackberry and Pink Cliff, like, back in February, March timeframe, those were right on schedule with every other Lamy Safari annual worldwide release limited edition. And both of those colorways came with their own ink. And, like, that was the big release. And Lamy will do things throughout the rest of the year, right? They'll introduce new Safari colors. They'll maybe do some, you know, mix and match thing. And it'll usually just be, like, a singular fountain pen, right? Like, one fountain pen with a neat color. Or they'll do a region-based one. They'll might mix in some all-star colors. You know, they're not – this isn't their one and only release during the year. But I usually don't see – at least it's been a long time since, and maybe never – that they've done a full fountain pen ballpoint rollerball. And, interestingly enough, both of these, both the Pina Colada, which are the names – we'll get to these in a second – and Cherry Blossom both have pencils, which we'll talk about that in a minute. It just kind of blows my mind. And I'm kind of looking at it sideways a little bit. And on one hand, you know I love this, right? Like, this is the style of Safari I want to see more of, right? The color barrels with the bright clips. Like, they've done a good build, right? Like, mixing and matching the parts to make these builds of these pens to where the barrel's one color, is the primary color, and then the additional parts, the clip, the finial, and the grip section, are the alternate color. And both of these kind of fall in the same design. Like, the Cherry Blossom is a pink barrel with red accessories or hardware. And the Pina Colada is a blue barrel. I don't know why it's blue, but – well, that's maybe a different drink. And then yellow hardware. So, I mean, they're gorgeous. I love them. And now Brad flips the worry switch. It's like, Brad, you got exactly what you wanted. Like, 100% exactly what you want.


'''Speaker 00:''' But, like, I'm, you know, I'll probably pick up, like, one or two of these. You know, maybe the Pina Colada Ballpoint. You know I love a good ballpoint. Right.
'''Myke Hurley:''' I just found lots of images of blue Pina Coladas. Really? Yeah. I don't think I've ever had a blue Pina Colada. I mean, to be fair, I did have to say Pina Colada blue. And there's a tropical version which is made with blue Carousel.


'''Speaker 00:''' And so, yeah, like, it's super interesting. It's weird to me that they added the pencil into both of these as a huge part of their lineup because, again, the pencil is the least functional Safari, right? If you don't, like, pencil.
'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yes. That's my expectation. Like, this is a blue Carousel drink for sure.


'''Speaker 01:''' I don't like the knock that they have made for the pencil. It looks cheap. I feel like they could have done a better job there.
'''Myke Hurley:''' I think maybe they just didn't want to do a yellow cream pen. Yeah.


'''Speaker 00:''' Yeah, because the knock on the ballpoint is killer. It should be that. It's a smash. It's a smash little accordion-looking piece. Yeah, and the pencil, the hang-up with the pencil is they insist on using the triangle molded grip section, which should not be on pencils. I fully believe that pencils should not have molded grip sections the way people rotate a pencil, right? The pencil forces you to rotate unless you're a Kura Toga because they get edgy, right? You get a flat spot. And so, having a triangle grip section on a mechanical pencil is no bueno in my opinion. So, anyway. So, like, I'm sitting here. I love everything about this. This is exactly what I want Lamy to do. And now I'm just on edge. Like, in three months from now, like, what else is going to happen? Are they going to make me eat my lunch or eat my words?


'''Speaker 01:''' You know that? This is such a hilarious... You've begged and begged and begged for them to do exactly this. And now they've done it. You're like, I don't know, man. I don't know. This is all over.


'''Speaker 00:''' Well, honestly, what I've begged for is translucent vistas. That's what I've been begging for. Or not...
== Lamy Pens ==


'''Speaker 01:''' Not only are you going to get that, you're going to get translucent every pen now, right? Like, that's what's going to happen.


'''Speaker 00:''' Yeah, that's okay. So, now there's going to be a lot. So, this is an interesting time to be me.
'''Brad Dowdy:''' Like, it would be like a cream or a light tan. And it's like, yes, okay, maybe that's not really. I mean, they could have just gone. I might have even accepted almost brown, like, just from like a coconut shell perspective.


'''Speaker 01:''' Hilarious.
'''Myke Hurley:''' This is more fun though, Brad.


'''Speaker 00:''' Because there is a balance in the force, right? And, like, once you feel this disturbance, it's like, oh, no. Are they becoming what I hate?
'''Brad Dowdy:''' This is a killer. Like, this is like, if I'm in the design lab, and I talk about this all the time, if I'm in Lamy's lab, this is something I'm putting together, right? And now, I have quickly gone from, do this Lamy, do this Lamy, do this Lamy. It's like, whoa, whoa, whoa, Lamy. Too much. What are we doing here? Are you going to make me, like, put a moratorium on you, like, sailor, where you're introducing, like, literally all the safaris? Now, we have a quarterly Lamy Safari limited edition, like, I'm not saying they're doing this. What is this for the monkeys, Paul? Like, Lamy, I want you to do more of your designs. Yeah, no, not like that. Every story weeks, there's a new one. Yeah, this is literally a no, not like that. Like, you got what you asked for. No, not like that. Yeah.


'''Myke Hurley:''' Well, Brad, this is, look, praise be to Mitsubishi Pencil, you know? Like, that's what's going on here. It's obviously the only way to assume what is happening. You know, praise be to Mitsubishi, we now have some interesting Lamy Safaris.


'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, so here's the thing. When the Pink Cliff and Violet Blackberry came out, I bought one of each, right? Like, that's kind of what I do. Like, one of each, like, fountain pen, rollerball, ballpoint, whatever they offered. And, you know, go through them, kind of review them, and then literally give all of it away, and I'll keep, like, one safari, whichever safari I like the most, I'll just keep. So I kept the Pink Cliff one because I like the matte barrel color. These are glossy. Both of these are glossy, by the way. It's hard to tell in some of the pictures, but there's some close-up pictures. These are definitely both glossy barrels and glossy grips, if people were wondering. I have ordered zero of these so far because, like, now I'm just like, well, yeah, what's the rush, right? They have clearly shown that in the span of four months, they're willing to just, like, overload the shelves with these colors. And I think both of these colors, I like these better than the Pink Safari and Violet Blackberry. Pink Cliff and Violet Blackberry. There's too many names here.


== Lamy and Ink House collaborations ==
'''Brad Dowdy:''' But, like, I'm, you know, I'll probably pick up, like, one or two of these. You know, maybe the Pina Colada Ballpoint. You know I love a good ballpoint. Right.


'''Brad Dowdy:''' And so, yeah, like, it's super interesting. It's weird to me that they added the pencil into both of these as a huge part of their lineup because, again, the pencil is the least functional Safari, right? If you don't, like, pencil.


'''Speaker 01:''' Well, there may be more evidence for this. Once again, praise be to Mitsubishi Pencil. We now have a Lamy and Ink House Hong Kong collaboration for a very special-looking Lamy as well that you put in the show notes.
'''Myke Hurley:''' I don't like the knock that they have made for the pencil. It looks cheap. I feel like they could have done a better job there.


'''Speaker 00:''' So, along the lines with what I mentioned, as I was doing my research and just kind of poking around, kind of getting the scope of what Lamy has just done with the Pina Colada and Cherry Blossom, I run across a more limited edition store edition from Ink House, which I believe, yeah, Hong Kong. So, they're in Hong Kong. And we have seen over, I would say, like, the last five years or so, we've seen Lamy Safaris and some All-Stars appear in the Asian market as either, like, they've done a regional All-Star before. They did that red one with the yellow translucent grip. That was, like, Asian market release. And then they've done some store exclusives. Like, I have a Safari that was only available in Atoya in Japan. Then they have another one. That was a gray one that I got. Then there's a green and gold one here that's been recent. And now these ones that are, and we've obviously seen the Pokemon ones, right, that were hugely popular. All these special editions. They were with Ink House as well. Yeah, with Ink House. So, this is, like, I guess we could call this a classy upscale edition. Yeah. Even though it's still a Lamy Safari, but they have done these add-ons. I want to say, like, this is killer. Yeah. Like, I am madly in love with both of these pins.
'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, because the knock on the ballpoint is killer. It should be that. It's a smash. It's a smash little accordion-looking piece. Yeah, and the pencil, the hang-up with the pencil is they insist on using the triangle molded grip section, which should not be on pencils. I fully believe that pencils should not have molded grip sections the way people rotate a pencil, right? The pencil forces you to rotate unless you're a Kura Toga because they get edgy, right? You get a flat spot. And so, having a triangle grip section on a mechanical pencil is no bueno in my opinion. So, anyway. So, like, I'm sitting here. I love everything about this. This is exactly what I want Lamy to do. And now I'm just on edge. Like, in three months from now, like, what else is going to happen? Are they going to make me eat my lunch or eat my words?


'''Speaker 01:''' It looks like the Lamy body is textured, too, a little bit. Or maybe it's just the photography.
'''Myke Hurley:''' You know that? This is such a hilarious... You've begged and begged and begged for them to do exactly this. And now they've done it. You're like, I don't know, man. I don't know. This is all over.


'''Speaker 00:''' It's probably, it's a matte body. Let me look at the blue one here. Like. Yeah, so it's blue. So, these are matte bodies. The blue one's matte for sure. Let me look at the white one.
'''Brad Dowdy:''' Well, honestly, what I've begged for is translucent vistas. That's what I've been begging for. Or not...


'''Speaker 01:''' Some of the shots, it looks like it has a more intense texture than usual, but maybe it's just the photography.
'''Myke Hurley:''' Not only are you going to get that, you're going to get translucent every pen now, right? Like, that's what's going to happen.


'''Speaker 00:''' Yeah. No, that's the matte. That's the matte finish. The white is the same way. The white is also matte.
'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, that's okay. So, now there's going to be a lot. So, this is an interesting time to be me.


'''Speaker 00:''' So, yeah. Like, so this is. It's store exclusive, right? And, man, do I love. I like these more than the.
'''Myke Hurley:''' Hilarious.


'''Speaker 01:''' Me, too.
'''Brad Dowdy:''' Because there is a balance in the force, right? And, like, once you feel this disturbance, it's like, oh, no. Are they becoming what I hate?


'''Speaker 00:''' Than the Pina Colada Cherry Blossom.
'''Myke Hurley:''' Well, there may be more evidence for this. Once again, praise be to Mitsubishi Pencil. We now have a Lamy and Ink House Hong Kong collaboration for a very special-looking Lamy as well that you put in the show notes.


'''Speaker 01:''' Yeah, me, too.
'''Brad Dowdy:''' So, along the lines with what I mentioned, as I was doing my research and just kind of poking around, kind of getting the scope of what Lamy has just done with the Pina Colada and Cherry Blossom, I run across a more limited edition store edition from Ink House, which I believe, yeah, Hong Kong. So, they're in Hong Kong. And we have seen over, I would say, like, the last five years or so, we've seen Lamy Safaris and some All-Stars appear in the Asian market as either, like, they've done a regional All-Star before. They did that red one with the yellow translucent grip. That was, like, Asian market release. And then they've done some store exclusives. Like, I have a Safari that was only available in Atoya in Japan. Then they have another one. That was a gray one that I got. Then there's a green and gold one here that's been recent. And now these ones that are, and we've obviously seen the Pokemon ones, right, that were hugely popular. All these special editions. They were with Ink House as well. Yeah, with Ink House. So, this is, like, I guess we could call this a classy upscale edition. Yeah. Even though it's still a Lamy Safari, but they have done these add-ons. I want to say, like, this is killer. Yeah. Like, I am madly in love with both of these pins.


'''Speaker 00:''' But they've also done more with these. Ink House, specifically. Ink House has made a box for these, which I don't want to oversell because, like, I'm not anti-packaging, but, like, what am I going to. This box is gorgeous. What am I going to do with it once I ink up the pen? Well, you know what I'm going to do with it, Myke? I mean, it's a. Yeah. That's a keepsake box. It's a keepsake box. I'm going to put it in the killer sleeve that it comes with. Now, that is dope. Yes. Like, these sleeves. Like, this. Y'all need to go look at both of these images in the juxtaposition of the Pina Colada Cherry Blossom set versus this Ink House set. I am just blown away with this Ink House set. But, again, we now have 10 Lamy Safari pens I've just talked about in the last five minutes, 10 minutes. Like, in the span of five days, and this is the stuff that, like, starts to put me on edge. I'm like, I get the store specials. That's, like, you almost can't control, like, the release dates on those. That's just, those things happen when they happen. But then, like, the Pina Colada is like, this would have been great for next year's special edition. The 2025 release, I would be through the roof, right? If that was this, that was 2025's release. And now I'm like, oh, no. What's going to happen in September? What's going to happen for December?
'''Myke Hurley:''' It looks like the Lamy body is textured, too, a little bit. Or maybe it's just the photography.


'''Speaker 00:''' You know, it's cool. I like it. Like, I mean, like I said, if I was in those walls, I'd be jamming these colors and send them out the door. But we are, Lamy is, it's a situation I am monitoring now. Let's put it that way. We are monitoring the Safari situation.
'''Brad Dowdy:''' It's probably, it's a matte body. Let me look at the blue one here. Like. Yeah, so it's blue. So, these are matte bodies. The blue one's matte for sure. Let me look at the white one.


'''Speaker 01:''' We come at this from such different perspectives. Like, I look at this and it's nothing, to me, it's nothing but good news. It is. More product means, like, better health for the brand.
'''Myke Hurley:''' Some of the shots, it looks like it has a more intense texture than usual, but maybe it's just the photography.


'''Speaker 01:''' Allegedly. I mean, you can get to a point with that, right? Of course, right? But my assumption is these people are smart enough that they are producing as many as they think they can sell. And if they don't sell, then they'll change course. You know what I mean? Like, I'm just going to take it as these are intelligent people that understand how to run a business. I'm just going to take that as a beginning point. And then just assume that this is an example of that, where even though you're now unhappy about it, this is literally the thing that you've been asking them to do. I'm not unhappy about it. You're nervous, let's say, about it. It makes me ask. Yeah.
'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. No, that's the matte. That's the matte finish. The white is the same way. The white is also matte.


'''Speaker 00:''' Yeah. Now I'm asking a different question. I'm like, what are we about to witness? Yeah. Right. It's the same. Because I've seen this before.
'''Brad Dowdy:''' So, yeah. Like, so this is. It's store exclusive, right? And, man, do I love. I like these more than the.


'''Speaker 01:''' You know what this means, right? Like, you know, you wanted them to do this. You wanted them to produce more designs, more product, more interesting stuff. They're doing that. So if we assume that they're coming at it the right way, the way that you would hope they would have in doing it, then this is golden. And I think that they're more likely to... I don't think it's a very complex thing that they're doing here. You know what I mean? Like, you're producing more and you're selling more would be the assumption. If that's not what's happening, then they need to address that. But...
'''Myke Hurley:''' Me, too.


'''Speaker 00:''' Yeah. Like, you've talked me down a little bit. You know, just trying... All right. Chill out, Brad. It's okay. Let me ask you a question. Can you name the current base stock inventory of the Lamy Safari? What colors they offer? Like, if you went into the Lamy, one of the flagship stores.
'''Brad Dowdy:''' Than the Pina Colada Cherry Blossom.


'''Speaker 01:''' Absolutely not. No.
'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah, me, too.


'''Speaker 00:''' Yeah. Neither can I. So...


'''Speaker 01:''' I mean, I can take some guesses. You know what I mean? They probably have a blue one and a red one. They probably have a clear one and a black one. Yeah.


'''Speaker 00:''' I think they probably have a white one. Maybe have a white one. But this is the same thing, like, when we talk about Sailor. It's like, what base Pro Gear is there, right? Every once, every couple of years, they'll, like, re-up. They'll, like, redo the black and gold trim one. Like, it's like, okay. Well, maybe this is just what they are now. Like, and that's cool.
== Ink House ==


'''Speaker 01:''' Yeah. I mean, because I can see the scenario where it's like, they have those products, right? They have the, oh, here's the stuff that goes on shelves that me and you and people listening to this show are maybe not that fussed about. And then for people that enjoy the brand or, like, finer things, they create these special editions. Yeah. Which can also sell to people going to a pen website or whatever and taking a look and being like, oh, there's a blue one, like, with yellow clip on it. But also, it can fit with us. Like, I think that this, for a brand like Lamy with a product as iconic as the Safari, I would wager the most iconic modern fountain pen design. This is maybe a conversation for another time, but I'm just going to put that out there. That's something to think about, sure. Yeah. This is the thing that, as I say, I'm not sure about it, but I could also, I think I could argue it if I had to. That they are now using that iconic design to produce more product. And I just think this is exactly what I would do. It's exactly, obviously, what you would do if put in that position. But the concern is you've got to bring it home because if you don't, then that's bad. You should have stayed as you were.


'''Speaker 00:''' Yeah. So good timing on these colors, late spring, getting into summer. Like, this is what people want to see if they're just browsing. Like, if they're going to buy their first Safari, boy, these are going to really pop off the shelves, right?
'''Brad Dowdy:''' But they've also done more with these. Ink House, specifically. Ink House has made a box for these, which I don't want to oversell because, like, I'm not anti-packaging, but, like, what am I going to. This box is gorgeous. What am I going to do with it once I ink up the pen? Well, you know what I'm going to do with it, Myke? I mean, it's a. Yeah. That's a keepsake box. It's a keepsake box. I'm going to put it in the killer sleeve that it comes with. Now, that is dope. Yes. Like, these sleeves. Like, this. Y'all need to go look at both of these images in the juxtaposition of the Pina Colada Cherry Blossom set versus this Ink House set. I am just blown away with this Ink House set. But, again, we now have 10 Lamy Safari pens I've just talked about in the last five minutes, 10 minutes. Like, in the span of five days, and this is the stuff that, like, starts to put me on edge. I'm like, I get the store specials. That's, like, you almost can't control, like, the release dates on those. That's just, those things happen when they happen. But then, like, the Pina Colada is like, this would have been great for next year's special edition. The 2025 release, I would be through the roof, right? If that was this, that was 2025's release. And now I'm like, oh, no. What's going to happen in September? What's going to happen for December?


'''Speaker 01:''' Oh, yeah, definitely. Yeah. If they even make it to the shelves.
'''Brad Dowdy:''' You know, it's cool. I like it. Like, I mean, like I said, if I was in those walls, I'd be jamming these colors and send them out the door. But we are, Lamy is, it's a situation I am monitoring now. Let's put it that way. We are monitoring the Safari situation.


'''Speaker 00:''' Yeah. I know they might make it to some pen shows here coming up, you know, maybe even this month. What do you think?
'''Myke Hurley:''' We come at this from such different perspectives. Like, I look at this and it's nothing, to me, it's nothing but good news. It is. More product means, like, better health for the brand.


'''Myke Hurley:''' Allegedly. I mean, you can get to a point with that, right? Of course, right? But my assumption is these people are smart enough that they are producing as many as they think they can sell. And if they don't sell, then they'll change course. You know what I mean? Like, I'm just going to take it as these are intelligent people that understand how to run a business. I'm just going to take that as a beginning point. And then just assume that this is an example of that, where even though you're now unhappy about it, this is literally the thing that you've been asking them to do. I'm not unhappy about it. You're nervous, let's say, about it. It makes me ask. Yeah.


'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. Now I'm asking a different question. I'm like, what are we about to witness? Yeah. Right. It's the same. Because I've seen this before.


== St. Louis Pen Show details ==
'''Myke Hurley:''' You know what this means, right? Like, you know, you wanted them to do this. You wanted them to produce more designs, more product, more interesting stuff. They're doing that. So if we assume that they're coming at it the right way, the way that you would hope they would have in doing it, then this is golden. And I think that they're more likely to... I don't think it's a very complex thing that they're doing here. You know what I mean? Like, you're producing more and you're selling more would be the assumption. If that's not what's happening, then they need to address that. But...


'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. Like, you've talked me down a little bit. You know, just trying... All right. Chill out, Brad. It's okay. Let me ask you a question. Can you name the current base stock inventory of the Lamy Safari? What colors they offer? Like, if you went into the Lamy, one of the flagship stores.


'''Speaker 01:''' Well, let me tell you about one. It's the St. Louis Pen Show. And listeners of this show, you understand and feel the love of writing with a great pen, with a fountain pen. Whether it's documenting your thoughts and ideas, maybe you're journaling or just doodling. If that's you, the 2024 St. Louis Pen Show is the place for you. It is happening from Thursday, June 20th through Sunday, June 23rd in the suburbs of St. Louis at the Sheraton Westport Lakeside Chalet on beautiful Westport Plaza. And there's plenty of free parking. And it's only 10 minutes away from which airport, Brad?
'''Myke Hurley:''' Absolutely not. No.


'''Speaker 00:''' Crevcourt.
'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. Neither can I. So...


'''Speaker 01:''' Crevcourt Airport. That's how you say it. And there's so much to look forward to at the St. Louis Pen Show. You've got Trader Day on Thursday, which includes a party on the plaza with a live band. Friday has an event called Vintage Pen Panel and a pen tasting followed by a free dessert party. You're probably not having the pens for dessert. On Saturday, you can enjoy an evening pen show after dark in the hotel bar. And on Sunday, uninterrupted browsing time for over 85 vendors from 42 states of the U.S. and Canada with a great mix of products. There will be new modern vendors like Tachia. Is it Tachia? T-A-C-C-I-A? I say Tasha. Tasha. Right. Right.
'''Myke Hurley:''' I mean, I can take some guesses. You know what I mean? They probably have a blue one and a red one. They probably have a clear one and a black one. Yeah.


'''Speaker 01:''' There are no paychecks taken. They just do this for the love of the game. Get all the details right now at stlpenshow.com. You can buy tickets. It's $5 for day admission, $30 for a trader pass for all show access, or $10 for a weekend pass. You can discover and sign up for classes, see a complete list of vendors, get information on Westport Plaza and things they do in St. Louis. Plus, check out the link on the website to book hotel rooms at a special rate of $141, but that is while they lost. These blocks fill out quickly. So to get yourself a fun-filled, exciting, and educational weekend, get your tickets to the 2024 St. Louis Pen Show at stlpenshow.com. Thank you so much to the exposition, the Stilo St. Louis, for their support of this show and all of RelayFM. Man, I want to go to this pen show so bad. It sounds like such a good time.
'''Brad Dowdy:''' I think they probably have a white one. Maybe have a white one. But this is the same thing, like, when we talk about Sailor. It's like, what base Pro Gear is there, right? Every once, every couple of years, they'll, like, re-up. They'll, like, redo the black and gold trim one. Like, it's like, okay. Well, maybe this is just what they are now. Like, and that's cool.


'''Speaker 00:''' I literally have the FOMO, was what I was going to say, before you even said that. I've only been to one show this year, driven to Atlanta. I'm getting the serious FOMO for St. Louis. One of the things I did yesterday, which has given me the FOMO, is I built my ink sample. So you mentioned there's going to be an ink testing station there. So I'm going to have a row of samples there. Myke from Ink Dependence, Anna from Well Appointed Desk. We're all sending samples to the show. So you're going to be able to test out some stuff. I'm sure there's a bunch more people that I just heard Myke mention in this yesterday. So I built 10 orange ink. So I was allocated 10 inks to use, and I did 10 orange ink. So there's some fun stuff, some cool stuff. So it's going to be very cool. So yeah, y'all go check out the St. Louis Pen Show if you're available that week. It sounds like it's going to be a blast.
'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah. I mean, because I can see the scenario where it's like, they have those products, right? They have the, oh, here's the stuff that goes on shelves that me and you and people listening to this show are maybe not that fussed about. And then for people that enjoy the brand or, like, finer things, they create these special editions. Yeah. Which can also sell to people going to a pen website or whatever and taking a look and being like, oh, there's a blue one, like, with yellow clip on it. But also, it can fit with us. Like, I think that this, for a brand like Lamy with a product as iconic as the Safari, I would wager the most iconic modern fountain pen design. This is maybe a conversation for another time, but I'm just going to put that out there. That's something to think about, sure. Yeah. This is the thing that, as I say, I'm not sure about it, but I could also, I think I could argue it if I had to. That they are now using that iconic design to produce more product. And I just think this is exactly what I would do. It's exactly, obviously, what you would do if put in that position. But the concern is you've got to bring it home because if you don't, then that's bad. You should have stayed as you were.


'''Speaker 01:''' You're saying you haven't been to a pen show this year. It's nearly been five years since the St. Louis Pen Show.
'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. So good timing on these colors, late spring, getting into summer. Like, this is what people want to see if they're just browsing. Like, if they're going to buy their first Safari, boy, these are going to really pop off the shelves, right?


'''Speaker 00:''' Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's crazy. Five years, man. That doesn't sound right when you say it that way. It's like, no. But now if I think about it at all, it's like, oh yeah, that's exactly right. So maybe we can fix that next year.
'''Myke Hurley:''' Oh, yeah, definitely. Yeah. If they even make it to the shelves.


'''Speaker 01:''' I think it's been as long now since my last pen show, since when we started the show to my first one, I think. No. Interesting. There's some weird stat in there, right? Where it's like, we've been doing the show for like 10 years, and I haven't been to a show for five years.
'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. I know they might make it to some pen shows here coming up, you know, maybe even this month. What do you think?


'''Speaker 00:''' Yeah. Yeah. So we'll have to fix that. Maybe next year's the year we fix that. So we'll figure it out. Busy year this year. That's for sure.
'''Myke Hurley:''' Well, let me tell you about one. It's the St. Louis Pen Show. And listeners of this show, you understand and feel the love of writing with a great pen, with a fountain pen. Whether it's documenting your thoughts and ideas, maybe you're journaling or just doodling. If that's you, the 2024 St. Louis Pen Show is the place for you. It is happening from Thursday, June 20th through Sunday, June 23rd in the suburbs of St. Louis at the Sheraton Westport Lakeside Chalet on beautiful Westport Plaza. And there's plenty of free parking. And it's only 10 minutes away from which airport, Brad?


'''Speaker 01:''' Yep.
'''Brad Dowdy:''' Crevcourt.


'''Myke Hurley:''' Crevcourt Airport. That's how you say it. And there's so much to look forward to at the St. Louis Pen Show. You've got Trader Day on Thursday, which includes a party on the plaza with a live band. Friday has an event called Vintage Pen Panel and a pen tasting followed by a free dessert party. You're probably not having the pens for dessert. On Saturday, you can enjoy an evening pen show after dark in the hotel bar. And on Sunday, uninterrupted browsing time for over 85 vendors from 42 states of the U.S. and Canada with a great mix of products. There will be new modern vendors like Tachia. Is it Tachia? T-A-C-C-I-A? I say Tasha. Tasha. Tasha. Sailor. Pens Empire. You'll see artisan pens and pencils from brands like Hardy, Right Turns, and Country Made. Not to mention ink journals, paper stationery, clothing pen storage, and vintage pen dealers featuring show circuit favorites. Plus, there is a free ink testing, a silent auction, and so much more. The St. Louis Pen Show is a 501c3 organization with a mission statement to teach adults and children how to read and write in cursive. It's entirely run by volunteers. There are no paychecks taken. They just do this for the love of the game. Get all the details right now at stlpenshow.com. You can buy tickets. It's $5 for day admission, $30 for a trader pass for all show access, or $10 for a weekend pass. You can discover and sign up for classes, see a complete list of vendors, get information on Westport Plaza and things to do in St. Louis. Plus, check out the link on the website to book hotel rooms at a special rate of $141. But that is while they lost. These blocks fill out quickly. So to get yourself a fun-filled, exciting, and educational weekend, get your tickets to the 2024 St. Louis Pen Show at stlpenshow.com. Thank you so much to the exposition, the Stilo St. Louis, for their support of this show and all of RelayFM. Man, I want to go to this pen show so bad. It sounds like it's such a good time.


'''Brad Dowdy:''' I literally have the FOMO, was what I was going to say. Before you even said that, I've only been to one show this year, driven to Atlanta. I'm getting the serious FOMO for St. Louis. One of the things I did yesterday, which has given me the FOMO, is I built my ink sample. So you mentioned there's going to be an ink testing station there. So I'm going to have a row of samples there. Myke from Ink Dependence, Anna from Well Appointed Desk. We're all sending samples to the show. So you're going to be able to test out some stuff. I'm sure there's a bunch more people that I just heard Myke mention in this yesterday. So I built 10 orange ink. So I was allocated 10 inks to use and I did 10 orange ink. So there's some fun stuff, some cool stuff. So it's going to be very cool. So yeah, y'all go check out the St. Louis pen show if you're available that week. It sounds like it's going to be a blast.


== Endless Pens Captiva and other stationery products ==
'''Myke Hurley:''' You're saying you haven't been to a pen show this year. It's nearly been five years since the St. Louis pen show.


'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's crazy. Five years, man. That doesn't sound right when you say it that way. It's like, no. But now if I think about it at all, it's like, oh yeah, that's exactly right. So maybe we can fix that next year.


'''Speaker 00:''' Endless Pens, Myke, has been busy making interesting and unique stationery. The latest is the Endless Pens Captiva, and this came across my desk yesterday.
'''Myke Hurley:''' I think it's been as long now since my last pen show, since when we started the show to my first one, I think. No. Interesting. There's some weird stat in there, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. We've been doing the show for like 10 years and I haven't been to a show for five years.


'''Speaker 01:''' I saw this on the Pen Chalet Instagram account. Yeah. And I was hoping you were going to bring it to the show, and when I opened the show notes today, it was in there, because it was good, because I wanted to ask you about it. I don't understand what this pen does. Okay.
'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, yeah. So we'll have to fix that. Maybe next year is the year we fix that. So we'll figure it out. Busy year this year. That's for sure.


'''Speaker 00:''' So in a nutshell, if you have a pen with a converter, right? So you take off the barrel, you have a twist in your converter, okay? Sure. And that's how you fill the ink. So now you put the barrel on the pen, and take your standard converter pen that you have, and sometimes you'll get a pen where the back end of the pen comes off, and you can actually access the converter without having to disassemble the pen, right? So that's called a captured converter system, where the converters on the interior are almost built into the pen barrel. And...
'''Myke Hurley:''' Yep.


'''Speaker 01:''' What would be the benefit of that?


'''Speaker 00:''' Yes. Okay. So that it's there, right? So that you don't have to take the... You don't have to disassemble the pen. You don't have to take the pen apart or unscrew the barrel. Oh, I guess you could fill it, right? You could just fill it without unscrewing it. Okay. Yeah, you just take a little piece off the back and twist the knob. That's what you normally see. And this is just kind of building it in to where you don't have to take it apart. You don't have to remove a cap. You're just twisting it. You're almost kind of like flicking it with your thumb to move the converter mechanism.


'''Speaker 01:''' I would say, well, I mean, obviously we're going to talk about this a bit more, but like, while I don't think I want this idea of like not being able to fill up a pen so fast, right? Which I guess is what's going on here. Unless you're going to tell me otherwise. This makes more sense to me than just having access to a standard converter, which is built into a pen. Like at least you're doing something with it from a design perspective. Yeah.
== Endless Pens Captiva ==


'''Speaker 00:''' Think of it. It's essentially kind of like a piston filler, right? Yeah. So, but it just has a different type of build. It almost has like a sleeve on the interior, like a converter is generally how these work. I don't, I can't tell if this one has it like that or not. Um, the questions I have about this, like it seems completely fine. Like I would actually like to test this out. Um, I think the marketing of using the word torque filler is something I want to, to see for myself because torque me to me, and I have not looked up the dictionary definition of torque, but it means to me, there's like some type of type of resistance and like, there's like a, a tightening and a releasing of a resistance. And to me, this just seems like a passive, like you would twist a converter anyway. Like I watched the little video on it and there's no, it's no, like you're, you're winding it up and then, and then sucking in the ink kind of thing. Right. Like that's what I think of like what torque would enable, but I don't know that this does. I could be wrong on this. And I watched the video. It didn't look like it because it looks like they were just passively, um, just kind of twisting as they go. Right. Like you, you know, those windup cars that you pull back and they, they like ramp up all the way and then like shoot off in there. I like, that's what I think of. If I was looking at a torque filler, like there's some type of resistance that's going to like shoot the ink in here. Once I like twisted in enough, right? Like, like twist, twist, twist, twist, fill kind of thing. So it just does, it seems like a, I don't know, it seems misleading, at least a perception wise, maybe not in technical terms, but in the perception wise.


'''Speaker 01:''' I don't think anybody wants that mechanism that you described though. I'm not saying that you're saying that either. That's like a vacuum filler.
'''Brad Dowdy:''' Endless Pens, Myke, has been busy making interesting and unique stationery. The latest is the Endless Pens Captiva. And this came across my desk yesterday.


'''Speaker 00:''' A vacuum filler kind of does that.
'''Myke Hurley:''' I saw this on the Pen Chalet Instagram account. Yeah. And I was hoping you were going to bring it to the show. And when I opened the show notes today, it was in there because it was good because I wanted to ask you about it. I don't understand what this pen does. Okay.


'''Speaker 01:''' But the speed part, like that just seems like you're asking for trouble, right? Like I don't, you know, do we, do we really need like, like speed? I could imagine like taking what you were saying about those kind of windup cars, maybe something along the lines of, as you fill it up, the tension increases. So you know that it's full, like that, that would make sense to me if that's what it did. But I would say all of, all of that's marketing. It doesn't matter. Like, yeah. You know what I mean? Like whatever, even as a, as a function perspective, even if it did what you said, nobody needs that. It's just marketing, right? Like, you know, you, you, you will like wind the pen and then it will do something quick. Like, you know, it's just like, you maybe think that that sounds cool. And that's like the, you're kind of designing the product around the idea that you've had this mechanism. My money would be, this is just, they've decided to name their system. Yeah. And they're calling it.
'''Brad Dowdy:''' So in a nutshell, if you have a pen with a converter, right? So you take off the barrel, you have a twist in your converter. Okay? Sure. And that's how you fill the ink. So now you put the barrel on the pen and, you know, take your standard converter pen that you have. And sometimes you'll get a pen where the back end of the pen comes off and you can actually access the converter without having to disassemble the pen, right? So that's called a captured converter system where the converters on the interior are almost built into the pen barrel. And...


'''Speaker 00:''' I agree because, and I'll agree with that because of the price point, which we'll get to in a second. I don't want to get there yet. Um, the, the, the main question I think from this pen is, can you accidentally bump and twist this mechanism? That's going to be the real, like, Hey, let's, uh, think about what we're doing here because
'''Myke Hurley:''' What would be the benefit of that?


'''Speaker 01:''' somebody pick up your pen and be like, what is this? Right.
'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yes. Okay. So that it's there, right? So that you don't have to take the... You don't have to disassemble the pen. You don't have to take the pen apart or unscrew the barrel. Oh, I guess you could fill it, right? You could just fill it without unscrewing it. Okay. Yeah, you just take a little piece off the back and twist the knob. That's what you normally see. And this is just kind of building it in to where you don't have to take it apart. You don't have to remove a cap. You're just twisting it. You're almost like kind of like flicking it with your thumb to like move the converter mechanism.


'''Speaker 00:''' Yeah. Yeah. So this doesn't have this safety or protection of like a captured converter where, okay, you can access the converter from the back, but it's got a cap over it. Right. Like my Kaweco sport piston has a blind cap to get to the piston knob, right? Because you don't want me accidentally twisting that and, and, and ejecting ink through the nib area. So we'll have to see, um, you know, like if you're putting this in a pocket or a bag or is, is it going to move around? Is it going to be able to be manipulated at all? Or does it kind of have more of a stiffer kind of locked in type of feel? So we'll have to see. So we'll see. We'll see. You know, is it like a push down and turn type of situation? Right. Is there some kind of, uh, it just says to engage the filling system, simply rotate the revolver, which that's a whole nother thing. So that's what they're calling the twist mechanism, which I just read that. Hey, look, it revolves. All right.
'''Myke Hurley:''' I would say, well, I mean, obviously we're going to talk about this a bit more, but like while I don't think I want this idea of like not have like being able to fill up a pen so fast, right? Which I guess is what's going on here. Unless you're going to tell me otherwise. This makes more sense to me than just having access to a standard converter, which is built into a pen. Like at least you're doing something with it from a design perspective. Yeah.


'''Speaker 01:''' You know, it does. It revolves. It revolves.
'''Brad Dowdy:''' Think of it. It's essentially kind of like a piston filler, right? Yeah. So, but it just has a different type of build. It almost has like a sleeve on the interior, like a converter is generally how these work. I don't, I can't tell if this one has it like that or not. Um, the questions I have about this, like it seems completely fine. Like I would actually like to test this out. Um, I think the marketing of using the word torque filler is something I want to see for myself because torque mean to me, and I have not looked up the dictionary definition of torque, but it means to me there's like some type of type of resistance and like there's like a, a tightening and a releasing of a resistance. And to me, this just seems like a passive, like you would twist a converter anyway. Like I watched the little video on it and there's no, it's no, like you're, you're winding it up and then, and then sucking in the ink kind of thing. Right? Like that's what I think of like what torque would enable, but I don't know that this does. I could be wrong on this. And I watched the video. It didn't look like it because it looks like they were just passively, um, just kind of twisting as they go. Right? Like you, you know, those windup cars that you pull back and they, they like ramp up all the way and then like shoot off in there. I like, that's what I think of if I was looking at a torque filler, like there's some type of resistance that's going to like shoot the ink in here. Once I like twist it in enough, right? Like, like twist, twist, twist, twist, fill kind of thing. So it just doesn't, it seems like a, I don't know. It seems misleading, at least a perception rise, maybe not in technical terms, but in the perception wise.


'''Speaker 00:''' Um, okay. It's about 50 bucks, which looks good for 50. I think it's good. Yeah. Like, isn't that right? Like it's around 50 bucks and I'm kind of interested in that. Oh, take that back. I think it might be 60. I'm not, I apologize. I'm not looking in it, but what's interesting is that I have it for 52. Okay. 52. They're offering needlepoint and architect nibs for a very small premium to that 62 price. I don't know if that, if you still have that up, I haven't pulled it up. Um, but it was a pretty low, it wasn't like a $25 upgrade to get a needlepoint or an architect. It was something lower, like almost like in the five or $10 range. So we'll see, that's going to be something they have available. So that price point, I find interesting because I think that's pretty accessible, right? For, uh, just, uh, something above your basic pen, say pilot metropolitan, uh, TWSB eco thing where they're trying to do something a little different. And I immediately think of the Tuzu, the Sailor Tuzu, which we talked about a month or so ago in that both of those pens are in that $50 price point. They're both trying to do something interesting with what they're offering. They're both Tuzu more is trying to get like a beginner is a very beginner focused fountain pen. I believe, um, where this is maybe, I don't know. They're trying to make it easier for you to fill your fountain pen maybe. So it could be a little bit that aspect, but I thought that was both of those being around that $50 to $60 price point and seeing companies try things. Like, I think it's cool. Like I don't have a Tuzu yet. I'll, I'll eventually get one and I'll get this pen too, because I think it's, it's going to be at least interesting to test to see if there's some value in it. Um, but yeah, like I think, uh, I think it's interesting, you know, the more that I look at it, the more I'm thinking about the TWSB go, that's almost more of a torque, torque type of filler filling system. We always talk, you always bring up the TWSB go when I talk about the beginner pens. Like, that's an interesting one. Like it's in that category, I think for, for the, the Captiva. So, um, it will be fun to try this one out and see what it's about because like people want to know about the Tuzu and people want to know about this pen. And I like seeing these innovations, even if someone like super experiences, maybe not going to get like the purest benefit from this. But I think, you know, there's always people looking for, um, new and different things and that are new to fountain pens. And I think, um, I think it could be good. So I look forward to trying it.
'''Myke Hurley:''' I don't think anybody wants that mechanism that you described though. I'm not saying that you're saying that either.


'''Speaker 01:''' Someone had just got, it's like, uh, I'm amazed at how many ways pens continue to change. Yeah.
'''Brad Dowdy:''' That's like a vacuum filler, a vacuum filler kind of does that.


'''Speaker 00:''' Yeah. So you think they're pretty static, right? Like where this is stationery, this is analog. Like I just did my review of the, uh, Jetstream light touch, right? Which we've talked about. So I didn't want to put, I did my review is up on the blog and there was nothing new. So I didn't put it in to add to the show notes today. Cause I didn't feel like I had anything new to say, but it's Uniball is someone who like plays around with ink technology a lot, right? They're always doing something to tweak these things and big picture. Like, is it that big a deal? No, but for someone who's love stationery, seeing even just companies try like minor things and playing around with ink formulas, for example, I think it's, I think it's really neat to see. Um, it obviously gives me something to talk about, but it gives me something to test out and see is like, Hey, are they, do we actually, can we actually see change in the stationery industry? Like the, you know, I hold up the, the Uniball Kuretoga as like the champion in, in this is like, no one thought they needed something like that. No one probably thought that would technically work to have a lead rotation mechanism in a mechanical pencil. And I'll be danged if it's not one of the best inventions in stationery in the last couple of decades.
'''Myke Hurley:''' But the speed part, like that just seems like you're asking for trouble, right? Like I don't, you know, do we, do we really need like, like speed? I could imagine like taking what you were saying about those kind of windup cars, maybe something along the lines of as you fill it up, the tension increases. So you know that it's full, like that, that would make sense to me if that's what it did. But I would say all of, all of that's marketing. It doesn't matter. Like, yeah. You know what I mean? Like whatever, even as a, as a function perspective, even if it did what you said, nobody needs that. It's just marketing, right? Like, you know, you, you, you will like wind the pen and then it will do something quick. Like, you know, it's just like, you maybe think that that sounds cool. And that's like the, you're kind of designing the product around the idea that you've had this mechanism. My money would be, this is just, they've decided to name their system. Yeah. And they're calling it.


'''Speaker 01:''' There is, there is such an easy, um, world to imagine where the Kuretoga comes out and we look at it on the show and we're like, that seems like a gimmick. Like, right. Yeah. When we've just first seen it, like who are people asking for this, but right. Yeah. It's fantastic. And like, this is why, like, I remember I was talking about the Tuzu and I was, I'm very much on the fence of like, I would, I would want to see how that feels to use. Cause I could see something here, but I also understand and completely, uh, uh, see how this could just purely be like a gimmick. Like it's right. You know, it's just like a thing that they have made because it's a thing to make as opposed to actually solving a problem. Exactly. Exactly. All right. We spoke about this new pen. D is that the brand name?
'''Brad Dowdy:''' I agree because, and I'll agree with that because of the price point, which we'll get to in a second. I don't want to get there yet. Um, the, the, the main question I think from this pen is, can you accidentally bump and twist this mechanism? That's going to be the real, like, Hey, let's, uh, think about what we're doing here because


'''Speaker 00:''' Endless? Endless. Endless. Yes. It's the maker. Okay. So they, they started making notebooks, right? So I've used some of their paper. Oh, that's where I know them from. That's the notebook. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So they, for years they've done notebooks and then they got into notebook systems, right? Like the, you know, putting together like your little notebook kit and now they've kind of branched out. So they did the, uh,
'''Myke Hurley:''' somebody pick up your pen and be like, what is this? Right.


'''Speaker 01:''' I have even more respect for it now that they're trying something.
'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. Yeah. So this doesn't have this safety or protection of like a captured converter where, okay, you can access the converter from the back, but it's got a cap over it. Right. Like my Kaweco sport piston has a blind cap to get to the piston knob, right? Because you don't want me accidentally twisting that and, and, and ejecting ink through the nib area. So we'll have to see, um, you know, like if you're putting this in a pocket or a bag or is, is it going to move around? Is it going to be able to be manipulated at all? Or does it kind of have more of a stiffer kind of locked in type of feel? So we'll have to see. So we'll see. We'll see. You know, is it like a push down and turn type of situation? Right. Is there some kind of, uh, it just says to engage the filling system, simply rotate the revolver, which that's a whole nother thing. So that's what they're calling the twist mechanism, which I just read that. Hey, look, it revolves. All right.


'''Speaker 00:''' So they're the one who did a retractable pen, uh, uh, earlier this year. Right. Um, that, that did not do well. Right. So they've gotten some feedback on there. I never even tried it because the initial reviews were so bad I passed, but they have actually acknowledged and are, are taking changes and, uh, are going to work on it. So I appreciate that. Yeah. Also around 50 to $60. Right. Um, but you know what? They're like, Hey, yeah, maybe like we're going to try, we're going to try something different here. So we'll see if we can improve it. And I appreciate companies that take that kind of feedback and, you know, try to make their products better. So yeah, that's why I'm interested in, in trying out the Captiva. So it should be cool.
'''Myke Hurley:''' You know, it does. It revolves. It revolves.


'''Speaker 01:''' But if you want to try out the Captiva, you know, I mentioned that price earlier at $52. Well, what if you could also get some money off over our friends at Penn Chalet? Penn Chalet have the products that you're looking for from the brands that you love, whether you want a new fountain pen, a new ballpoint, mechanical pencil, maybe you're looking for some ink or fountain pen accessories, maybe you're looking for some pen carrying cases. Doesn't matter what you're looking for. Penn Chalet have got it. They're adding new styles of pens and products to the site every single month. And every two weeks, you're going to find new special discounts. Penn Chalet do free shipping on orders of over $75 in the US. They sell internationally with great shipping rates. They believe in fast and reliable customer service with low prices and high quality products, which they offer a 100% satisfaction guarantee for. So head over to PennChalet.com slash PennAddict. You will get the 10% you will be able to from there get a code you need to save 10% on anything at Penn Chalet. So you can go pick up that endless pen if you want to, but also to see a selection of exclusive offers for listeners of this show.
'''Brad Dowdy:''' Um, okay. It's about 50 bucks, which looks good for 50. I think it's good. Yeah. Like, isn't that right? Like it's around 50 bucks and I'm kind of interested in that. Oh, take that back. I think it might be 60. I'm not, I apologize. I'm not looking in it, but what's interesting is that I have it for 52. Okay. 52. They're offering needlepoint and architect nibs for a very small premium to that 62 price. I don't know if that, if you still have that up, I haven't pulled it up. Um, but it was a pretty low, it wasn't like a $25 upgrade to get a needlepoint or an architect. It was something lower, like almost like in the five or $10 range. So we'll see, that's going to be something they have available. So that price point, I find interesting because I think that's pretty accessible, right? For, uh, just, uh, something above your basic pen, say pilot metropolitan, uh, TWSB eco thing where they're trying to do something a little different. And I immediately think of the Tuzu, the Sailor Tuzu, which we talked about a month or so ago in that both of those pens are in that $50 price point. They're both trying to do something interesting with what they're offering. They're both Tuzu more is trying to get like a beginner is a very beginner focused fountain pen. I believe, um, where this is maybe, I don't know. They're trying to make it easier for you to fill your fountain pen maybe. So it could be a little bit that aspect, but I thought that was both of those being around that $50 to $60 price point and seeing companies try things. Like, I think it's cool. Like I don't have a Tuzu yet. I'll, I'll eventually get one and I'll get this pen too, because I think it's, it's going to be at least interesting to test to see if there's some value in it. Um, but yeah, like I think, uh, I think it's interesting, you know, the more that I look at it, the more I'm thinking about the TWSB go, that's almost more of a torque, torque type of filler filling system. We always talk, you always bring up the TWSB go when I talk about the beginner pens. Like, that's an interesting one. Like it's in that category, I think for, for the, the Captiva. So, um, it will be fun to try this one out and see what it's about because like people want to know about the Tuzu and people want to know about this pen. And I like seeing these innovations, even if someone like super experiences, maybe not going to get like the purest benefit from this. But I think, you know, there's always people looking for, um, new and different things and that are new to fountain pens. And I think, um, I think it could be good. So I look forward to trying it.


'''Speaker 00:''' Yeah, so before we even get to that, they also carry the new, they're going to be selling the new Lamy Safaris, the Pina Colada and Cherry Blossom, like an unintended ad read there for that one. So yeah, they have all the stuff you need. And on our PennAddict page, they have some really cool Magna Carta Denema fountain pens. So these are kind of micarta-ish materials, right? So where there's some fibrous materials in the barrel materials that the pens are crafted from. And they're making some really cool colors in this. And the price is really, really like to a point where I should try one of these out because I've never reviewed a Magna Carta pen. I've always liked them. A lot of them can come with number eight nibs. I don't know what the nib sizes are available in these, but they have some acrylic ones in here too. And the price points are spectacular on these. And it's definitely worth checking out. Also, they have some pens from our good friends over at Heinz that are a really, really good price and including some really neat materials for them. And I'm just, wow, I'm just getting down here. So an Aurora 88, which is rarely seen on here on the sale page. So yeah, boy, I'm still scrolling, still scrolling. Lots of leather accessories, case accessories. Wow, great stuff over at Penn Chalet. So go check them out.
'''Myke Hurley:''' Someone had just got, it's like, uh, I'm amazed at how many ways pens continue to change. Yeah.


'''Speaker 01:''' Go to PennChalet.com, P-E-N-C-H-A-L-E-T.com slash PennAddict. You'll get the code you need to save 10% and to see these special offers. Our thanks to Penn Chalet for their support of this show and RelayFM.
'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. So you think they're pretty static, right? Like where this is stationary, this is analog. Like I just did my review of the, uh, Jetstream light touch, right? Which we've talked about. So I didn't want to put, I did my review is up on the blog and there was nothing new. So I didn't put it in to add to the show notes today. Cause I didn't feel like I had anything new to say, but it's Uniball is someone who like plays around with ink technology a lot, right? They're always doing something to tweak these things and big picture. Like, is it that big a deal? No, but for someone who's love stationary, seeing even just companies try like minor things and playing around with ink formulas, for example, I think it's, I think it's really neat to see. Um, it obviously gives me something to talk about, but it gives me something to test out and see is like, Hey, are they, do we actually, can we actually see change in the stationary industry? Like the, you know, I hold up the, the Uniball Kuretoga as like the champion in, in this is like, no one thought they needed something like that. No one probably thought that would technically work to have a lead rotation mechanism in a mechanical pencil. And I'll be danged if it's not one of the best inventions in stationary in the last couple of decades.


'''Speaker 00:''' All right. We got a shout out of the week, Myke. Shout out of the week. Man, I thought you were going to miss there for a second. Never. Split second. Never. Split second. I want to give a shout out to my friend, Nomadic. I can't remember if I've shouted out Luca or not previously. If not, it's been at least last year. But they deserve more than one shout out anyway. So a fellow Twitch streamer is how we met.
'''Myke Hurley:''' There is, there is such an easy, um, world to imagine where the Kuretoga comes out and we look at it on the show and we're like, that seems like a gimmick. Like, right. Yeah. When we've just first seen it, like who are people asking for this, but right. Yeah. It's fantastic. And like, this is why, like, I remember I was talking about the Tuzu and I was, I'm very much on the fence of like, I would, I would want to see how that feels to use. Cause I could see something here, but I also understand and completely, uh, uh, see how this could just purely be like a gimmick. Like it's right. You know, it's just like a thing that they have made because it's a thing to make as opposed to actually solving a problem. Exactly. Exactly. All right. We spoke about this new pen. D is that the brand name?


'''Speaker 00:''' Luca does amazing journaling streams almost every morning during the weekday. Like 6 a.m., 7 a.m., you know, get your morning started off right Eastern time in the U.S. Just chill journaling streams every day. And they're so chill. And you can just go. One of the good things that Twitch does is you have the replays of the stream. So you don't have to be up at 7 a.m. to catch this stream. You can go watch the replay and sit there with Nomadic. Journal. Listen to some chill music. Check out some stationery. They're also very active on Mastodon. I have the link to Nomadic's Mastodon in there. So we chat on there. So definitely give Nomadic a follow if you're on Twitch and Mastodon. Super awesome person. And love their stream. Love their journaling stream. So chill. So awesome. So really cool stuff.
'''Brad Dowdy:''' Endless? Endless. Endless. Yes. It's the maker. Okay. So they, they started making notebooks, right? So I've used some of their paper. Oh, that's where I know them from. That's the notebook. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So they, for years they've done notebooks and then they got into notebook systems, right? Like the, you know, putting together like your little notebook kit and now they've kind of branched out. So they did the, uh,


'''Speaker 01:''' Very nice.
'''Myke Hurley:''' I have even more respect for it now that they're trying something.


'''Speaker 00:''' All right, Myke. I think I've been kind of nice for most of the, you know, Lamy talk, the Endless Pen talk. But like, I skipped talking about the EDCist pen when it first came out. But I keep getting emails on it. And I think it's finally time because the campaign is over. It ended back in March. But I definitely got some commentary on this. I know some people in the space reviewed it. Do you want to go first? I mean, what's the point?


'''Speaker 01:''' You know, like, look. I'm going to describe this for the listeners out there. All right? Yeah. This is a little 3D printed square where on one of the corners of the square, there is a rollerball tip.


'''Speaker 00:''' We'll get to that. Yes. A rollerball ballpoint tip. There's a pen tip. Rollerball, gel, ballpoint, whatever. Yeah.
== Retractable Pens ==


'''Speaker 01:''' Pen tip. It's super tiny. I would say probably. Well, actually, it's a little bit big, a little bit smaller than a bottle cap. I would say kind of like stamp sized. Yeah.


'''Speaker 00:''' Stamp size.
'''Brad Dowdy:''' So they're the one who did a retractable pen, uh, uh, earlier this year. Right. Um, that, that did not do well. Right. So they've gotten some feedback on there. I never even tried it because the initial reviews were so bad I passed, but they have actually acknowledged and are, are taking changes and, uh, are going to work on it. So I appreciate that. Yeah. Also around 50 to $60. Right. Um, but you know what? They're like, Hey, yeah, maybe like we're going to try, we're going to try something different here. So we'll see if we can improve it. And I appreciate companies that take that kind of feedback and, you know, try to make their products better. So yeah, that's why I'm interested in, in trying out the Captiva. So it should be cool.


'''Speaker 01:''' It's 3D printed and it comes with a little kind of case protector holder thing, which is designed to affix to a watch strap. They show Apple watches a lot in this, but.
'''Myke Hurley:''' But if you want to try out the Captiva, you know, I mentioned that price earlier at $52. Well, what if you could also get some money off over our friends at Penn Chalet? Penn Chalet have the products that you're looking for from the brands that you love, whether you want a new fountain pen, a new ballpoint, mechanical pencil, maybe you're looking for some ink or fountain pen accessories, maybe you're looking for some pen carrying cases. Doesn't matter what you're looking for. Penn Chalet have got it. They're adding new styles of pens and products to the site every single month. And every two weeks, you're going to find new special discounts. Penn Chalet do free shipping on orders of over $75 in the US. They sell internationally with great shipping rates. They believe in fast and reliable customer service with low prices and high quality products, which they offer a 100% satisfaction guarantee for. So head over to PennChalet.com slash PennAddict. You will get the 10% you will be able to from there get a code you need to save 10% on anything at Penn Chalet. So you can go pick up that endless pen if you want to, but also to see a selection of exclusive offers for listeners of this show.


'''Speaker 00:''' Yeah. It could be like a backpack strap. It's like that. It's like that like one inch width or a little less sub one inch width.
'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, so before we even get to that, they also carry the new, they're going to be selling the new Lamy Safaris, the Pina Colada and Cherry Blossom, like an unintended ad read there for that one. So yeah, they have all the stuff you need. And on our PennAddict page, they have some really cool Magna Carta Denema fountain pens. So these are kind of micarta-ish materials, right? So where there's some fibrous materials in the barrel materials that the pens are crafted from. And they're making some really cool colors in this. And the price is really, really like to a point where I should try one of these out because I've never reviewed a Magna Carta pen. I've always liked them. A lot of them can come with number eight nibs. I don't know what the nib sizes are available in these, but they have some acrylic ones in here too. And the price points are spectacular on these. And it's definitely worth checking out. Also, they have some pens from our good friends over at Heinz that are a really, really good price and including some really neat materials for them. And I'm just, wow, I'm just getting down here. So an Aurora 88, which is rarely seen on here on the sale page. So yeah, boy, I'm still scrolling, still scrolling. Lots of leather accessories, case accessories. Wow, great stuff over at Penn Chalet. So go check them out.


'''Speaker 01:''' You're basically threading something through the little holder and then you can attach a pen to it. But this is just one of these things where it's like cute idea. I guess like fine. Sure. Fine. Why is this a Kickstarter campaign? Yeah. This is a piece of 3D printed plastic. This should just be on thing of us. There's nothing here. This is nothing.
'''Myke Hurley:''' Go to PennChalet.com, P-E-N-C-H-A-L-E-T.com slash PennAddict. You'll get the code you need to save 10% and to see these special offers. Our thanks to Penn Chalet for their support of this show and RelayFM.


'''Speaker 00:''' There's nothing here. It's air. So the biggest flaw in this design isn't the size. It's how you get the refill in. So this is a D1 refill, right? So if you're listening to this, you're probably familiar with a D1 refill. But you, being the now owner of the EDCS pen, literally has to cut the refill to size. Usually in the middle of where the ink is exposed in the refill, you have to cut this.
'''Brad Dowdy:''' All right. We got a shout out of the week, Myke. Shout out of the week. Man, I thought you were going to miss there for a second. Never. Split second. Never. Split second. I want to give a shout out to my friend, Nomadic. I can't remember if I've shouted out Luca or not previously. If not, it's been at least last year. But they deserve more than one shout out anyway. So a fellow Twitch streamer is how we met.


'''Speaker 01:''' You're wasting a refill, right?
'''Brad Dowdy:''' Luca does amazing journaling streams almost every morning during the weekday. Like 6 a.m., 7 a.m., you know, get your morning started off right Eastern time in the U.S. Just chill journaling streams every day. And they're so chill. And you can just go. One of the good things that Twitch does is you have the replays of the stream. So you don't have to be up at 7 a.m. to catch this stream. You can go watch the replay and sit there with Nomadic. Journal. Listen to some chill music. Check out some stationery. They're also very active on Mastodon. I have the link to Nomadic's Mastodon in there. So we chat on there. So definitely give Nomadic a follow if you're on Twitch and Mastodon. Super awesome person. And love their stream. Love their journaling stream. So chill. So awesome. So really cool stuff.


'''Speaker 00:''' You're wasting more than half of the refill.
'''Myke Hurley:''' Very nice.


'''Speaker 01:''' Like four fifths of a refill maybe? Or like three quarters of a refill?
'''Brad Dowdy:''' All right, Myke. I think I've been kind of nice for most of the, you know, Lamy talk, the Endless Pen talk. But like, I skipped talking about the EDCist pen when it first came out. But I keep getting emails on it. And I think it's finally time because the campaign is over. It ended back in March. But I definitely got some commentary on this. I know some people in the space reviewed it. Do you want to go first? I mean, what's the point?


'''Speaker 00:''' You're making an absolute mess and you're now exposing the ink to the elements from the end of the pen. Attaching that to anything, you're just asking for so much trouble. I can't even imagine the amount of ink getting everywhere.
'''Myke Hurley:''' You know, like, look. I'm going to describe this for the listeners out there. All right? Yeah. This is a little 3D printed square where on one of the corners of the square, there is a rollerball tip.


'''Speaker 01:''' If you are two millimeters off, right? Which means that the refill is not protected by the back of the thing. That is just spilling. It's just spilling out.
'''Brad Dowdy:''' We'll get to that. Yes. A rollerball ballpoint tip. There's a pen tip. Rollerball, gel, ballpoint, whatever. Yeah.


'''Speaker 00:''' Yeah. Right. So a lot of these inks are made with like little stoppers in the inside of the back of their refill, right? To not allow the ink to come out. And you're just cutting it. Like I'm watching the videos of them cutting the refill right in the middle of the ink. And I'm just losing my mind. I was like, there's no way this is like good. Like if you're going to do this, I don't even know how much this was. It couldn't have been that expensive. But like just buy a Fisher Space Pen, throw it in your pocket, throw it in your bag. You're going to be so much happier with this.
'''Myke Hurley:''' Pen tip. It's super tiny. I would say probably. Well, actually, it's a little bit big, a little bit smaller than a bottle cap. I would say kind of like stamp sized. Yeah.


'''Speaker 00:''' Then just, you know, okay. It's $15. $15 was the early bird. So $17. So just buy a Fisher Space Pen. I mean, buy. I mean, I would rather just use a full size pen. Buy the G2 Mini if you need a smaller pen. For like $3.
'''Brad Dowdy:''' Stamp size.


'''Speaker 01:''' Genuinely, Brian, cannot imagine the scenario where this is the solution. Yeah. I just cannot fathom what that is.
'''Myke Hurley:''' It's 3D printed and it comes with a little kind of case protector holder thing, which is designed to affix to a watch strap. They show Apple watches a lot in this, but.


'''Speaker 00:''' Yeah. There's some smaller products. I think a Pico Pen is one of them that are keychain pens. Those at least have like proper termination to the refill as to where you're not going to have a leak situation. Right. This just seems like you're setting yourself up for a bad time. Yeah. With this product. And I am. And I don't even. I don't know where you would enjoy using this. Where this is going to be functional and not just having like a space pen in your pocket. Or like literally. I would take a bank ballpoint pen over this. Like honestly, just throw it in a bag and just be done with it. Like this is not solving any problems that I can think of and actually causing more problems than it solves. So there. I got it out of me.
'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. It could be like a backpack strap. It's like that. It's like that like one inch width or a little less sub one inch width.


'''Speaker 01:''' Yeah. This is nothing. It's nothing. Like this isn't a product.
'''Myke Hurley:''' You're basically threading something through the little holder and then you can attach a pen to it. But this is just one of these things where it's like cute idea. I guess like fine. Sure. Fine. Why is this a Kickstarter campaign? Yeah. This is a piece of 3D printed plastic. This should just be on thing of us. There's nothing here. This is nothing.


'''Speaker 00:''' Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So there we go. EDC is pen. I at least appreciate the name. They're at least trying to be like funny about it. And I was like, okay. Yeah. The name is actually good.


'''Speaker 01:''' It's the 3D printing of it that frustrates me. Yeah. That you would. Why does it need to be a Kickstarter campaign?


'''Speaker 00:''' Yeah. I mean, they only raised $9,000. So this wasn't like one of those campaigns that went ballistic. Yeah.
== Pen Refills ==


'''Speaker 01:''' But you know, they wanted it to. Right.


'''Speaker 00:''' Oh, of course.
'''Brad Dowdy:''' There's nothing here. It's air. So the biggest flaw in this design isn't the size. It's how you get the refill in. So this is a D1 refill, right? So if you're listening to this, you're probably familiar with a D1 refill. But you, being the now owner of the EDCS pen, literally has to cut the refill to size. Usually in the middle of where the ink is exposed in the refill, you have to cut this.


'''Speaker 01:''' I mean. Yeah. Yeah. I just, I don't understand this one. I really don't. Let's do some ice TPA.
'''Myke Hurley:''' You're wasting a refill, right?


'''Speaker 00:''' Let's do it. We got a bunch.
'''Brad Dowdy:''' You're wasting more than half of the refill.


'''Speaker 01:''' Ross writes in and says, I've had two or three experiences recently where I forget the filling mechanism for a pen. And wind up spilling ink kind of all over the place because I do it wrong. I pull something out and ink squirts out is the most common mistake. This sounds ridiculous.
'''Myke Hurley:''' Like four fifths of a refill maybe? Or like three quarters of a refill?


'''Speaker 00:''' I got a product for you, Russ.
'''Brad Dowdy:''' You're making an absolute mess and you're now exposing the ink to the elements from the end of the pen. Attaching that to anything, you're just asking for so much trouble. I can't even imagine the amount of ink getting everywhere.


'''Speaker 01:''' This sounds ridiculous. But I actually like to buy pens with different filling mechanisms. It's one of the things that I enjoy. But when I'm using them and they run dry, I am always in the middle of something. And I just want to get ink back into them. I have a homo sapien, a pelican 800, a lami 2000, a mold block 149. And I keep forgetting which one has the filling mechanism. How do you keep track and not mess up with far more pens than I have? Can I just take a stab at this first? I have two suggestions. The first one, I'm only slightly joking, which is just slow down, Russ. I'm sure it's not that urgent. Let's just take a second. If this keeps happening to you, let's just take a second. My next solution is you probably keep your ink in the same place. I feel like that is a typical enough thing. You have a drawer you keep it in or a box you keep it in. I feel like that's relatively normal. I think most listeners would understand that. You have the place to keep your ink. Make yourself a nice little index card that goes with the ink. It's very visible, very clear to you. If you're using this pen, it's this. You know? Let's do that. Right.
'''Myke Hurley:''' If you are two millimeters off, right? Which means that the refill is not protected by the back of the thing. That is just spilling. It's just spilling out.


'''Speaker 00:''' Once you fill it up, write it down. I'll keep the little card in the area. You know, and I don't know Russ's full situation. I mean, if you have 20 pens filled up at one time, that could be more of a problem. But, you know, if you have a handful, you're like, I think you can track it pretty well. Like, literally writing it down. So, I don't track anything, pretty much. As far as, like, that goes, like, what's filled. Like, I will just kind of do some ink samples. Like, okay, what do I have currently ink? So, I know what's what. I'm literally doing the write it down thing. That's how I keep track of it. As far as, like, making the mistakes of the filling systems. I mean, it looks like Russ has mostly pistons. So, you just have to, like Myke says, you just have to be a little bit careful and thoughtful with the Lamy 2000 or the Mont Blanc or the Pelican, right? Those are all piston fills. So, if you twist the knob, like, you're only twisting the knob to either fill it or to clean it, right? So, just don't twist the knob. The only situation I've ever run across where I've had, like, the mistake, and even Alan mentioned this in the Discord, is that I have opened up a barrel of an eyedropper pen thinking it was a converter pen. And luckily, I was in a protected area. I think I was actually, like, on my desk on top of a notebook, right? So, it hit the notebook, like, before I could close it, before I could tip it back in the right place. Like, that's a mistake that I've made by going too fast. I don't think there's any, like, true solution. It's like, hey, do this so you're not, you know, like, ejecting your ink from your piston fills. Like, I just think you just have to, you know, keep a note of what you have filled. Be thoughtful about the processes that you're using. Don't do anything silly. Or thoughtless, like I did with an eyedropper. And a lot of us have done that, made that eyedropper mistake. Because an eyedropper is not a majority filling system, right? Like, if I have 10 pens inked up, you might have one eyedropper. You know, I'm not going to have 8 out of the 10 are going to be eyedroppers. So, I could accidentally grab that eyedropper or open it up for some unknown reason. Especially if it's not transparent. Like, I have some eyedroppers that you can't see the inside of. So, yeah, thinking about that and being careful how you open them. You know, otherwise, just if you're not sure, if you're not sure, do it in a safe space. Like, over a sink or over a notebook you don't care about. So, you're not making messes. But literally, it boils down to just, like, writing down what you have going. And being patient with your filling and cleaning and manipulations of your pens.
'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. Right. So a lot of these inks are made with like little stoppers in the inside of the back of their refill, right? To not allow the ink to come out. And you're just cutting it. Like I'm watching the videos of them cutting the refill right in the middle of the ink. And I'm just losing my mind. I was like, there's no way this is like good. Like if you're going to do this, I don't even know how much this was. It couldn't have been that expensive. But like just buy a Fisher Space Pen, throw it in your pocket, throw it in your bag. You're going to be so much happier with this.


'''Speaker 01:''' Rebecca asks, I'm relatively new to fountain pens. I'm in the course of exploring them. And I've ended up with an extra Kaweco Sport nib and an extra Schmidt nib. Could you recommend what I could buy, like, pen-wise without a nib so that I can use these extra nibs?
'''Brad Dowdy:''' Then just, you know, okay. It's $15. $15 was the early bird. So $17. So just buy a Fisher Space Pen. I mean, buy. I mean, I would rather just use a full size pen. Buy the G2 Mini if you need a smaller pen. For like $3.


'''Speaker 00:''' This is such a good question that I don't think we've ever been asked. And unfortunately for Rebecca, there's not an easy answer, right? Like, extra nibs, buying a pen without a nib or almost something without a nib is pretty tough unless you're going. And it's going to cost you more than. The reason why you have extra nibs is it's going to cost you more to buy a barrel for one of those nibs than to just buy a new pen with a nib. To be completely frank. Like, I could tell you, like, I have pen barrels made by custom pen makers that fit random nibs. But that pen, I paid a lot of money for, right? Because I'm getting a one-off barrel with a neat material and someone hand-making this barrel to fit, you know, the threading of whatever, you know, section I have to fit in there. Or whatever extra nib I have to fit in there. So that's going to be, you're talking like, you know, a three-figure proposition, like over $100 to get, like, just some random barrel to fit a Kaweco Sport nib. You're just better off buying another Kaweco Sport if you want to use the nib. And that's how you end up with extra nibs. And I wish I had a better answer for you. So what I would say, Rebecca, is going forward is I would, as you get more experienced with these fountain pens, I would get one of your Kaweco Sport nibs or one of your Schmidt nibs ground into something else. And now you have one pen with two different nibs, but the nibs write differently. So that's the way I would look at this, right? So that's one thing that I do with the Kaweco specifically. I have several Kaweco nibs, one that's a needlepoint, one that's a cursive italic. And I'll use the Kaweco pen barrel I want and swap the nib into it. So think about this in reverse. And, you know, maybe that's not something you've explored yet because you're new to this. But over time, if you continue liking fountain pens and you maybe want a stub nib, you know, well, you have a nib here. You could get the nib ground and then now you have, you know, maybe a medium nib for your Kaweco Sport and you have a stub nib for your Kaweco Sport. And that's kind of the way I would look at it. Then finding, trying to find a barrel that's going to be probably like a fruitless endeavor to do any kind of reasonable thing with that.
'''Myke Hurley:''' Genuinely, Brian, cannot imagine the scenario where this is the solution. Yeah. I just cannot fathom what that is.


'''Speaker 01:''' All right. This episode is brought to you in part by our friends over at ExpressVPN. Going online without ExpressVPN is a bit like driving without car insurance. You might be a great driver, but you never know what's going to happen. So why not have that protection from things that you would otherwise not be surprised by? Like, for example, if you connect to unencrypted networks in cafes, hotels or airports, your data isn't secure. Somebody on that network could gain access to your personal data and they could sell that data to others. Nobody wants to think their data is being sold to other people. That is why ExpressVPN can help you protect your data by creating a secure encrypted tunnel between your device and the Internet. ExpressVPN is really secure. It's super secure. It's basically an impossible task to get past ExpressVPN's encryption. It's easy to use. You just fire up the app, click one button to get protected, and you are protected. It works on all devices from phones to laptops to tablets and more, so you can stay secure on the go. It's easy to see why it's rated number one by top tech reviewers like CNET and The Verge. I very frequently, I always use ExpressVPN when I'm using hotels. Like, sometimes you go on to, like, a hotel Wi-Fi. You know, maybe you're trying to, like, airplay something or whatever, and you can see all of the devices on the network. And it's like, oh, that's a lot of devices on this network. I think I would prefer it if my data was completely secure, and that's why I trust ExpressVPN. So secure your online activity today by visiting expressvpn.com slash penaddict. That is expressvpn.com slash penaddict. And you can get an extra three months for free at expressvpn.com slash penaddict. Our thanks to ExpressVPN for the support of this show and RelayFM.
'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. There's some smaller products. I think a Pico Pen is one of them that are keychain pens. Those at least have like proper termination to the refill as to where you're not going to have a leak situation. Right. This just seems like you're setting yourself up for a bad time. Yeah. With this product. And I am. And I don't even. I don't know where you would enjoy using this. Where this is going to be functional and not just having like a space pen in your pocket. Or like literally. I would take a bank ballpoint pen over this. Like honestly, just throw it in a bag and just be done with it. Like this is not solving any problems that I can think of and actually causing more problems than it solves. So there. I got it out of me.


'''Speaker 00:''' I used them last night, Myke. I was at Starbucks. You pop on ExpressVPN. Very good. Because I didn't have, like, good, like, cell service where I was at. My son had a tennis match. It was too far away for me to, like, drop him off and drive home. So I went and found Starbucks, popped in, popped on the ExpressVPN, sat and chilled for a bit, and easy peasy.
'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah. This is nothing. It's nothing. Like this isn't a product.


'''Speaker 01:''' Moises writes in and says, I now realize I urgently need an answer and detailed response to Myke's beloved shacket. What brand is it? What makes it so great? I ask because I recently fell for a denim work shirt from Filson that has an interior left breast pocket big enough for my EDC, and it's changed my view of shackets. As a stationery nerd, in the surface of the sun, summer climate of Texas, I had never considered an overshirt with shacket features as an alternative to carrying a small bag. So a shacket is a combination between a shirt and a jacket. It's basically like an overshirt. I'm just going to say, Moises, I do not acquire shackets for features. They are for fashion. I'll just say that to start with.
'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So there we go. EDC is pen. I at least appreciate the name. They're at least trying to be like funny about it. And I was like, okay. Yeah. The name is actually good.


'''Speaker 00:''' I'm a feature guy, Moises. Okay.
'''Myke Hurley:''' It's the 3D printing of it that frustrates me. Yeah. That you would. Why does it need to be a Kickstarter campaign?


'''Speaker 01:''' I have two shackets that I like, and then two overshirts, like overcoat, like, you know, like work shirts that I like. The work shirts are both Paul Smith work shirts. I'll see if I can try and find a link for them. But they are old. I've had them for years and years. The one that I was talking about recently, which I was wearing at Apple Park Battersea, well, Apple Battersea is from a company called Wax, which is a London-based company who I've been getting really into recently. I love their style of clothing. It's suitably flamboyant for me. Like, I like to stand out when I buy things that I really want to wear, that I really like. And I think they do a really good job of that. But they also have more regular pieces that are made of fun colors, like the orange one that I have. And then I also have a Paul Smith one, which Adina bought me, which is a very similar style, but in more muted tones, like blues and brown. So they're the things that I like.
'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. I mean, they only raised $9,000. So this wasn't like one of those campaigns that went ballistic. Yeah.


'''Speaker 00:''' Yeah, so I'm like Moises, I don't have the opportunity to go full shacket all the time, given the temperature here, right? Because they're long sleeve and they go over what you're already wearing. Like you could just wear a t-shirt, but still, like you're adding on heat layers. So a lot of the popular shackets are even like flannel or fleece lined. So they're like double walled. But I do have more of a work shirt style that I wear as a shacket. It's like the duck canvas. Like if you felt it, it's like, oh yeah, this is pretty uncomfortable. Like you wouldn't want to wear this as just like a shirt, but it's like an over shirt. And, you know, they always have like pockets or pin loops and they're useful for carrying stuff around. And like, yeah, I'm a big fan. But me only like for a couple of months of the year, just because of the heat around here. So, you know, I would implore Moises in Texas to, you know, maybe check out some anoraks or maybe even some popovers, which you can get short sleeve. We'll have to figure out some recommended companies on our new fashion blog podcast.
'''Myke Hurley:''' But you know, they wanted it to. Right.


'''Speaker 01:''' The, what would it be? The shacket addict?
'''Brad Dowdy:''' Oh, of course.


'''Speaker 00:''' Mm-hmm. Shacket addict.
'''Myke Hurley:''' I mean. Yeah. Yeah. I just, I don't understand this one. I really don't. Let's do some ice TPA.


'''Speaker 01:''' Nick writes in and says, I often journal over breakfast. So there is always a chance that a crumb or another piece of debris on my paper could be picked up by my fountain pen nib. This is something that I worry about that then dipping my nib into my ink bottle could leave the debris behind where it could later get into another pen and cause it to clog. So I avoid piston and vac fillers and I only use cartridge pens refilled with a syringe. Am I being excessively cautious here or is this a valid concern about cleanliness and cross contamination that you have considered?
'''Brad Dowdy:''' Let's do it. We got a bunch.


'''Speaker 00:''' We just have a level of S-tier questions for Ask TBA that I can't even handle today. Yeah. Between the nib question and this question that Nick asked because I am very much with Nick on this. I can hear you like giggling over there. But like this is a real thing, Myke.
'''Myke Hurley:''' Ross writes in and says, I've had two or three experiences recently where I forget the filling mechanism for a pen. And wind up spilling ink kind of all over the place because I do it wrong. I pull something out and ink squirts out is the most common mistake. This sounds ridiculous.


'''Speaker 01:''' I don't doubt it. But what is funny to me is I love the, and I don't mean this in a bad way. I mean this in a, you know, we're all in this together way. The general neuroses. Yeah. Right? That like a lot of our questions have had today. And also just the entire episode, just me and you. You know?
'''Brad Dowdy:''' I got a product for you, Russ.


'''Speaker 00:''' This is literally what we do. These are the type of things I think about. So Nick, let me, I'm just going to have a conversation with Nick here real quick.
'''Myke Hurley:''' This sounds ridiculous. But I actually like to buy pens with different filling mechanisms. It's one of the things that I enjoy. But when I'm using them and they run dry, I am always in the middle of something. And I just want to get ink back into them. I have a homo sapien, a pelican 800, a lami 2000, a mold block 149. And I keep forgetting which one has the filling mechanism. How do you keep track and not mess up with far more pens than I have? Can I just take a stab at this first? I have two suggestions. The first one, I'm only slightly joking, which is just slow down, Russ. I'm sure it's not that urgent. Let's just take a second. If this keeps happening to you, let's just take a second. My next solution is you probably keep your ink in the same place. I feel like that is a typical enough thing. You have a drawer you keep it in or a box you keep it in. I feel like that's relatively normal. I think most listeners would understand that. You have the place to keep your ink. Make yourself a nice little index card that goes with the ink. It's very visible, very clear to you. If you're using this pen, it's this. You know? Let's do that. Right.


'''Speaker 01:''' This is talk directly to Nick.
'''Brad Dowdy:''' Once you fill it up, write it down. I'll keep the little card in the area. You know, and I don't know Russ's full situation. I mean, if you have 20 pens filled up at one time, that could be more of a problem. But, you know, if you have a handful, you're like, I think you can track it pretty well. Like, literally writing it down. So, I don't track anything, pretty much. As far as, like, that goes, like, what's filled. Like, I will just kind of do some ink samples. Like, okay, what do I have currently ink? So, I know what's what. I'm literally doing the write it down thing. That's how I keep track of it. As far as, like, making the mistakes of the filling systems. I mean, it looks like Russ has mostly pistons. So, you just have to, like Myke says, you just have to be a little bit careful and thoughtful with the Lamy 2000 or the Mont Blanc or the Pelican, right? Those are all piston fills. So, if you twist the knob, like, you're only twisting the knob to either fill it or to clean it, right? So, just don't twist the knob. The only situation I've ever run across where I've had, like, the mistake, and even Alan mentioned this in the Discord, is that I have opened up a barrel of an eyedropper pen thinking it was a converter pen. And luckily, I was in a protected area. I think I was actually, like, on my desk on top of a notebook, right? So, it hit the notebook, like, before I could close it, before I could tip it back in the right place. Like, that's a mistake that I've made by going too fast. I don't think there's any, like, true solution. It's like, hey, do this so you're not, you know, like, ejecting your ink from your piston fills. Like, I just think you just have to, you know, keep a note of what you have filled. Be thoughtful about the processes that you're using. Don't do anything silly. Or thoughtless, like I did with an eyedropper. And a lot of us have done that, made that eyedropper mistake. Because an eyedropper is not a majority filling system, right? Like, if I have 10 pens inked up, you might have one eyedropper. You know, I'm not going to have 8 out of the 10 are going to be eyedroppers. So, I could accidentally grab that eyedropper or open it up for some unknown reason. Especially if it's not transparent. Like, I have some eyedroppers that you can't see the inside of. So, yeah, thinking about that and being careful how you open them. You know, otherwise, just if you're not sure, if you're not sure, do it in a safe space. Like, over a sink or over a notebook you don't care about. So, you're not making messes. But literally, it boils down to just, like, writing down what you have going. And being patient with your filling and cleaning and manipulations of your pens.


'''Speaker 00:''' Yeah. Um, I hate anything on my notebook, even the tiniest bit of dust, debris. I can see this stuff. Right? I don't have great eyesight, but I can pick out the randomest little dot on a page that doesn't belong there. And it will bug me and I have to make sure to get it off. The nib debris that you kind of should be worried about is more paper fibers than actual like real life, like food, dust, those types of particles. Because those are going to eject pretty quick. You're going to see that and you're going to be able to wipe that off with like a paper towel, rinse it under the sink, whatever. Like that. I don't really think that's going to be your big problem. Getting into your filling system. They're going to be particles are going to be too big to actually be drawn up into anything. I believe. Um, if you, if you even have like a modicum of fountain pen maintenance, right? Like if you even like, it sounds like if you're worried about this, that you actually care about cleaning your pens. So I don't think that type of thing is going to be an issue. You do, however, have to, um, think about paper fibers. And I would recommend you getting a loop. If you don't already have this, you know, it's a little magnifying glass, little one lens magnifying glass and looking at your nibs from time to time and seeing if you have fibers stuck in the tines. Now those aren't going to damage your ink or in there, but they could be like a clogging situation. They make the nibs not right as well. I think that's more of a concern than getting any type of like food debris or even like dust or particles in there. Because those pieces are going to generally be so big, they're going to be noticeable and you're going to be able to remove them. That's not going to be something, um, like that's going to be small and you would miss it. Um, miss cleaning it out before putting it in an ink bottle.
'''Myke Hurley:''' Rebecca asks, I'm relatively new to fountain pens. I'm in the course of exploring them. And I've ended up with an extra Kaweco Sport nib and an extra Schmidt nib. Could you recommend what I could buy, like, pen-wise without a nib so that I can use these extra nibs?


'''Speaker 01:''' Would you worry about contamination of the ink?
'''Brad Dowdy:''' This is such a good question that I don't think we've ever been asked. And unfortunately for Rebecca, there's not an easy answer, right? Like, extra nibs, buying a pen without a nib or almost something without a nib is pretty tough unless you're going. And it's going to cost you more than. The reason why you have extra nibs is it's going to cost you more to buy a barrel for one of those nibs than to just buy a new pen with a nib. To be completely frank. Like, I could tell you, like, I have pen barrels made by custom pen makers that fit random nibs. But that pen, I paid a lot of money for, right? Because I'm getting a one-off barrel with a neat material and someone hand-making this barrel to fit, you know, the threading of whatever, you know, section I have to fit in there. Or whatever extra nib I have to fit in there. So that's going to be, you're talking like, you know, a three-figure proposition, like over $100 to get, like, just some random barrel to fit a Kaweco Sport nib. You're just better off buying another Kaweco Sport if you want to use the nib. And that's how you end up with extra nibs. And I wish I had a better answer for you. So what I would say, Rebecca, is going forward is I would, as you get more experienced with these fountain pens, I would get one of your Kaweco Sport nibs or one of your Schmidt nibs ground into something else. And now you have one pen with two different nibs, but the nibs write differently. So that's the way I would look at this, right? So that's one thing that I do with the Kaweco specifically. I have several Kaweco nibs, one that's a needlepoint, one that's a cursive italic. And I'll use the Kaweco pen barrel I want and swap the nib into it. So think about this in reverse. And, you know, maybe that's not something you've explored yet because you're new to this. But over time, if you continue liking fountain pens and you maybe want a stub nib, you know, well, you have a nib here. You could get the nib ground and then now you have, you know, maybe a medium nib for your Kaweco Sport and you have a stub nib for your Kaweco Sport. And that's kind of the way I would look at it. Then finding, trying to find a barrel that's going to be probably like a fruitless endeavor to do any kind of reasonable thing with that.


'''Speaker 00:''' No. Uh, in this case, no, because I don't, I genuinely don't think you're going to get that far. Right. Right. Like if you happen, if you happen to run your ink through something wet, let's something viscous, like I don't like he's, he's mentioning breakfast. So I'm only thinking breakfast. If there was a drop of honey. Yeah. There's like jam or honey. You're going to know before you do anything else that you need to rinse that off. Right. I'm saying what my point is, you're not going to have the opportunity to contaminate because you're going to catch it beforehand. So I think you're actually being a, Nick is actually being excessively cautious in this because I don't think you're going to get that far.
'''Myke Hurley:''' All right. This episode is brought to you in part by our friends over at ExpressVPN. Going online without ExpressVPN is a bit like driving without car insurance. You might be a great driver, but you never know what's going to happen. So why not have that protection from things that you would otherwise not be surprised by? Like, for example, if you connect to unencrypted networks in cafes, hotels or airports, your data isn't secure. Somebody on that network could gain access to your personal data and they could sell that data to others. Nobody wants to think their data is being sold to other people. That is why ExpressVPN can help you protect your data by creating a secure encrypted tunnel between your device and the Internet. ExpressVPN is really secure. It's super secure. It's basically an impossible task to get past ExpressVPN's encryption. It's easy to use. You just fire up the app, click one button to get protected, and you are protected. It works on all devices from phones to laptops to tablets and more, so you can stay secure on the go. It's easy to see why it's rated number one by top tech reviewers like CNET and The Verge. I very frequently, I always use ExpressVPN when I'm using hotels. Like, sometimes you go on to, like, a hotel Wi-Fi. You know, maybe you're trying to, like, airplay something or whatever, and you can see all of the devices on the network. And it's like, oh, that's a lot of devices on this network. I think I would prefer it if my data was completely secure, and that's why I trust ExpressVPN. So secure your online activity today by visiting expressvpn.com slash penaddict. That is expressvpn.com slash penaddict. And you can get an extra three months for free at expressvpn.com slash penaddict. Our thanks to ExpressVPN for the support of this show and RelayFM.


'''Speaker 01:''' Yeah.
'''Brad Dowdy:''' I used them last night, Myke. I was at Starbucks. You pop on ExpressVPN. Very good. Because I didn't have, like, good, like, cell service where I was at. My son had a tennis match. It was too far away for me to, like, drop him off and drive home. So I went and found Starbucks, popped in, popped on the ExpressVPN, sat and chilled for a bit, and easy peasy.


'''Speaker 00:''' Now, if you, if you happen to get that far, you probably have other problems than whether you're, your, your nibs are probably in worse shape than whether you accidentally got something stuck in there. Does that make sense? Yeah. Right. Right. Like I feel like you're going to catch any issue beforehand. It's good that you're cautious because I'm obsessive about the tines of my nibs being clean. I keep a loop at my desk and a brass shim to clean them. Right. If I get paper fibers stuck in there, I will sit here and inspect it. Like you can tell, especially as someone who likes fine lines like myself, sometimes the fine line gets wider and you don't know why. And then all of a sudden you see some paper fiber stuck in there. Right. So they're absorbing more ink, making the line width wider and something has changed. Your expectation has changed about the line on the page. So I get out the loop, look at them. I was like, oh yeah, there's some stuff stuck in it. Grit the brass shim, you know, clean it out and go back to writing. Right. Like if I had something else, something bigger than that, I'm like, I'm going to notice immediately and never going to, I'm never going to get that in an ink bottle. And you're certainly not going to draw it up into a piston or back filler. I'm 99.9% certain of that.
'''Myke Hurley:''' Moises writes in and says, I now realize I urgently need an answer and detailed response to Myke's beloved shacket. What brand is it? What makes it so great? I ask because I recently fell for a denim work shirt from Filson that has an interior left breast pocket big enough for my EDC, and it's changed my view of shackets. As a stationary nerd, in the surface of the sun, summer climate of Texas, I had never considered an overshirt with shacket features as an alternative to carrying a small bag. So a shacket is a combination between a shirt and a jacket. It's basically like an overshirt. I'm just going to say, Moises, I do not acquire shackets for features. They are for fashion. I'll just say that to start with.


'''Speaker 01:''' Also, my kind of feeling on this is you would just be able to clean it. And like the worst, you know, like this imagine worst case scenario. If you have somehow missed the cream cheese that you've accidentally got into your ink, you would lose a bottle of ink. And the rest you can just clean, you know.
'''Brad Dowdy:''' I'm a feature guy, Moises. Okay.


'''Speaker 00:''' So here's one concept along those lines that I used to worry about that I no longer worry about. Okay. Is if I had to clean out an ink converter, right? Let's say I'm at a pen show and I don't have my cleaning supplies, but I'm really liking this new ink that I got, but I don't have an empty pen. I don't want to buy a pen or new converter or anything like that. So you can go to your hotel room and I've done this and you clean out a converter, right? And there's still water in it, right? Like you're not going to be able to air dry that unless you spend, you know, 30, you know, time with your hair dryer jamming in there. The percentage of water left behind in the converter is so minuscule compared to the ratio of ink you're putting in. It's not going to affect how that ink looks or performs. So I've gotten over like, hey, if I have a couple of drops of water in my converter, it's not going to change hardly anything because the ratio is so tiny. Now you obviously don't.
'''Myke Hurley:''' I have two shackets that I like, and then two overshirts, like overcoat, like, you know, like work shirts that I like. The work shirts are both Paul Smith work shirts. I'll see if I can try and find a link for them. But they are old. I've had them for years and years. The one that I was talking about recently, which I was wearing at Apple Park Battersea, well, Apple Battersea is from a company called Wax, which is a London-based company who I've been getting really into recently. I love their style of clothing. It's suitably flamboyant for me. Like, I like to stand out when I buy things that I really want to wear, that I really like. And I think they do a really good job of that. But they also have more regular pieces that are made of fun colors, like the orange one that I have. And then I also have a Paul Smith one, which Adina bought me, which is a very similar style, but in more muted tones, like blues and brown. So they're the things that I like.


'''Speaker 01:''' If it could, right? Yeah. Then that ink's maybe not very good.
'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, so I'm like Moises, I don't have the opportunity to go full shacket all the time, given the temperature here, right? Because they're long sleeve and they go over what you're already wearing. Like you could just wear a t-shirt, but still, like you're adding on heat layers. So a lot of the popular shackets are even like flannel or fleece lined. So they're like double walled. But I do have more of a work shirt style that I wear as a shacket. It's like the duck canvas. Like if you felt it, it's like, oh yeah, this is pretty uncomfortable. Like you wouldn't want to wear this as just like a shirt, but it's like an over shirt. And, you know, they always have like pockets or pin loops and they're useful for carrying stuff around. And like, yeah, I'm a big fan. But me only like for a couple of months of the year, just because of the heat around here. So, you know, I would implore Moises in Texas to, you know, maybe check out some anoraks or maybe even some popovers, which you can get short sleeve. We'll have to figure out some recommended companies on our new fashion blog podcast.


'''Speaker 00:''' But you also, I mean, you also don't want to have perishable goods in your ink bottles because that's not going to go well, right? So like, I think you'll avoid that ahead of time. I don't think you're going to find yourself in that situation.
'''Myke Hurley:''' The, what would it be? The shacket addict?


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


'''Myke Hurley:''' Nick writes in and says, I often journal over breakfast. So there is always a chance that a crumb or another piece of debris on my paper could be picked up by my fountain pen nib. This is something that I worry about that then dipping my nib into my ink bottle could leave the debris behind where it could later get into another pen and cause it to clog. So I avoid piston and vac fillers and I only use cartridge pens refilled with a syringe. Am I being excessively cautious here or is this a valid concern about cleanliness and cross contamination that you have considered?


== Challenges of finding uses for fountain pens in daily life ==




'''Speaker 01:''' Josh asks, I love collecting and using fountain pens, but I don't have much to write on a daily or weekly basis that aren't conducive to the work that I'm doing. I've tried free journaling as a way to use my pens, but I can't get into a good journaling habit. Do you have any advice on how I can use my fountain pens more?
== Notebook Debris ==


'''Speaker 00:''' Yeah. So this is a constant battle for me, Josh, that I think about. Like I do some journaling and I do planning and I do my five-year journal, which is limited, right? So anytime someone asks about this type of thing, I always recommend starting small, right? You want to do the smallest task with your pen. And if that's writing down a short task list for the day, you know, like the three things you need to do today, write that down. And then all of a sudden, well, you tried to do the one thing and something changed or the schedule changed and now you're writing more. And these little things tend to build into bigger things into using your fountain pens. So I have my five-year journal. There's been a couple of times where that's a limited space, limited thing. So, you know, I have like five or six lines in a small area and I've wanted to write more. So I'll get out a different notebook and continue just kind of writing down my thoughts from there. So these small things kind of like lead you into larger things. So if you use them for the little stuff, you're eventually going to pick up the bigger stuff. And then some of the things I do, which you'll have to figure out what works for you. Some of the side tasks that I do when sometimes I just want to write and put words on a page. But I'm not very thoughtful or creative like from a journaling or like a letter writing perspective, right? So I write down a lot of album lyrics. I copy poems. I copy book passages. I copy quotes. And I'll just write them down on a notebook. Like I'm not like particular about these things. But sometimes I just want to use my pens and I'll just start writing these things down. And then it just kind of builds on itself. Like I don't necessarily have any like habits built from that other than like I'm willing to write things down more. Right. Wherever that may be, you know, whichever notebook I have using. I have never been someone who's been able to say, OK, today, June 5th journal entry go. Right. Like that doesn't work that way.


'''Speaker 01:''' What did work for me was Myke's theme system. I would think of his free journaling, right? So yeah. Josh. That doesn't work for me. Yeah.
'''Brad Dowdy:''' We just have a level of S-tier questions for Ask TBA that I can't even handle today. Yeah. Between the nib question and this question that Nick asked because I am very much with Nick on this. I can hear you like giggling over there. But like this is a real thing, Myke.


'''Speaker 00:''' But something like Myke's theme system has worked for me in the past because it says, OK, June 5th go. But what about this? What about this? What about this? And I can answer those questions and put down my thoughts and track what I was thinking about those things. So any kind of prompts help. Staring at a blank page is is not something that works for me. A lot of people are very able to do that and just start writing. I can't do that. I need prompts. So, you know, that's another thing, you know, can find find a good prompt for you, even if it's just like gratitude. Right. You're just using your stuff. Don't be particular about the pen. Don't be particular about the paper. And don't be particular about the place. Right. Where you're sitting or where you're standing or if you're on the road. You just have to kind of do the little small stuff with a pen and a piece of paper. And then that just kind of leads into wanting to do more. At least that's what I've found as someone who does not have like a traditional journaling habit.
'''Myke Hurley:''' I don't doubt it. But what is funny to me is I love the, and I don't mean this in a bad way. I mean this in a, you know, we're all in this together way. The general neuroses. Yeah. Right? That like a lot of our questions have had today. And also just the entire episode, just me and you. You know?


'''Speaker 01:''' So obviously I have opinions on this one because this is somewhat similar to the situation I've been in and that I was in that led me to create the theme system journal, which was the idea of sitting down and just writing in a journal. I actually think is like a pro level journal. Oh. Right.
'''Brad Dowdy:''' This is literally what we do. These are the type of things I think about. So Nick, let me, I'm just going to have a conversation with Nick here real quick.


'''Speaker 00:''' Yeah. Oh, it's aspirational.
'''Myke Hurley:''' This is talk directly to Nick.


'''Speaker 01:''' Yeah. Because I have actually, this is, I have a second journal because I'm working on something and there is an element of like free journaling in it. And now I can do it. I can sit down in front of a blank page and just start writing and just see where it takes me, which is a really great thing to do. But I think it takes a daily practice before then to get to the point where you feel like you could reflect in that way. Right. And so when I created my own system in a, I think it was, yeah, it was a Hobonichi Tech Show. That was kind of like what I built the system in and then we made the journal out of it. And what I like about the theme system journal is that it's not telling you what to do, but it's giving you four boxes that you can repeat every day. Right. And so if you go to the website, if you go to themesystem.com, you'll get some ideas. Like we have like a large selection of like prompt ideas that you could put in the boxes. And I recommend that you take a look at those and see if there's anything that jumps out to you as maybe to do something yourself. But my recommendation, my strong recommendation for you is to gratitude journal, which is what Brad mentioned. And because gratitude journaling is very easy, right? In a sense of it is a thing that you can replicate and that you just have to work to think of what are three things today that even made you feel good or you're thankful for. And if you say you have three things and you say to yourself, I will use three pens. Great. Right. You've hit all the birds of all the stones at that point. So that would be my recommendation to you is to start with very basic gratitude journaling because I also just think that that style, like gratitude journaling, I think is just good for people's mental health. Like I do it now. My big box in the middle of my theme system journal is gratitude journaling. That's what I do there.
'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. Um, I hate anything on my notebook, even the tiniest bit of dust, debris. I can see this stuff. Right? I don't have great eyesight, but I can pick out the randomest little dot on a page that doesn't belong there. And it will bug me and I have to make sure to get it off. The nib debris that you kind of should be worried about is more paper fibers than actual like real life, like food, dust, those types of particles. Because those are going to eject pretty quick. You're going to see that and you're going to be able to wipe that off with like a paper towel, rinse it under the sink, whatever. Like that. I don't really think that's going to be your big problem. Getting into your filling system. They're going to be particles are going to be too big to actually be drawn up into anything. I believe. Um, if you, if you even have like a modicum of fountain pen maintenance, right? Like if you even like, it sounds like if you're worried about this, that you actually care about cleaning your pens. So I don't think that type of thing is going to be an issue. You do, however, have to, um, think about paper fibers. And I would recommend you getting a loop. If you don't already have this, you know, it's a little magnifying glass, little one lens magnifying glass and looking at your nibs from time to time and seeing if you have fibers stuck in the tines. Now those aren't going to damage your ink or in there, but they could be like a clogging situation. They make the nibs not right as well. I think that's more of a concern than getting any type of like food debris or even like dust or particles in there. Because those pieces are going to generally be so big, they're going to be noticeable and you're going to be able to remove them. That's not going to be something, um, like that's going to be small and you would miss it. Um, miss cleaning it out before putting it in an ink bottle.


'''Speaker 01:''' So I have every day, I force myself, right? Like because that's the practice. You must write three things that you are grateful for, that you are thankful for. And yeah, with my journaling, I use two pens every day, right? I use one to do all the headings and then one to write the whatever it is that I'm writing. So that is a big recommendation or to do some kind of like habit tracking or something like that. Yep. Colton writes in and says, I've been spoiled by the Platinum 3776 nib. It takes zero pressure to write consistently and will write on just about any kind of paper. Then I pick up some kind of ball pen and I have to push down hard to get it to write. I've tried the 0.5 millimeter auto gel refill, the Schmidt P8126N27 and the space pen refill from my Mark I. But they all need some amount of pressure. Is there a refill that doesn't need pressure and can write at a low angle?
'''Myke Hurley:''' Would you worry about contamination of the ink?


'''Speaker 00:''' So you have discovered the mechanical engineering design of a ball in a tip of a pen. You have to move the ball to get the ink to flow around the ball to the page. So it's really, really challenging to find something that's a ball type pen to do this, right? Like, you know, drawing pens and marker type pens, right? Those would work. Pencils would work.
'''Brad Dowdy:''' No. Uh, in this case, no, because I don't, I genuinely don't think you're going to get that far. Right. Right. Like if you happen, if you happen to run your ink through something wet, let's something viscous, like I don't like he's, he's mentioning breakfast. So I'm only thinking breakfast. If there was a drop of honey. Yeah. There's like jam or honey. You're going to know before you do anything else that you need to rinse that off. Right. I'm saying what my point is, you're not going to have the opportunity to contaminate because you're going to catch it beforehand. So I think you're actually being a, Nick is actually being excessively cautious in this because I don't think you're going to get that far.


'''Speaker 01:''' Yeah, I would have said like a Sharpie pen, right? Yeah, fountain pens. That would do it. I mean, if there's something where you don't want a fountain pen, a Sharpie or a felt tip pen, like a Copic or something like that, that's going to do it for you. Yeah.
'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah.


'''Speaker 00:''' So you've run into like a technical limitation, right? Because if you do find something that requires less pressure, do you know how much ink is going to be on the page to like exist and to actually make a line with a ball mechanism in a pen? It's going to be like a flood. Now, if you want that, that's cool. Like you could get like the Uniball Vision or the eye is what it's called in some parts of the world. I don't know where Colton lives. Because, you know, you get like a 1.0 millimeter gel ink pen. Yeah. Like you're going to have an easier time pushing that pen across the page, right? Because it has, you know, more ink passing around the ball and it's going to require less friction on the page to move. But are you going to like the output? Yeah. Right. Like, so there's this balance. Like you, you've, you've, you're wanting to invent magic and like I'm all for it. But like I, it's, you're going to limit yourself so much in the output that I don't think you're going to be happy. So I think you should continue being spoiled by the Platinum 3770 Nix, 7786 nib because it's maybe the greatest fountain pit nib there is.
'''Brad Dowdy:''' Now, if you, if you happen to get that far, you probably have other problems than whether you're, your, your nibs are probably in worse shape than whether you accidentally got something stuck in there. Does that make sense? Yeah. Right. Right. Like I feel like you're going to catch any issue beforehand. It's good that you're cautious because I'm obsessive about the tines of my nibs being clean. I keep a loop at my desk and a brass shim to clean them. Right. If I get paper fibers stuck in there, I will sit here and inspect it. Like you can tell, especially as someone who likes fine lines like myself, sometimes the fine line gets wider and you don't know why. And then all of a sudden you see some paper fiber stuck in there. Right. So they're absorbing more ink, making the line width wider and something has changed. Your expectation has changed about the line on the page. So I get out the loop, look at them. I was like, oh yeah, there's some stuff stuck in it. Grit the brass shim, you know, clean it out and go back to writing. Right. Like if I had something else, something bigger than that, I'm like, I'm going to notice immediately and never going to, I'm never going to get that in an ink bottle. And you're certainly not going to draw it up into a piston or back filler. I'm 99.9% certain of that.


'''Speaker 01:''' Yep. I would agree with that too. All right. If you have a question that you would like us to answer on the show or you have some feedback or some follow up about this episode, you can always go to penaddictfeedback.com and you can leave us your thoughts and questions there. If you want to find Brad online, if you want to go read Brad's review of the new Jetstream Light Touch, right, is the name? Light Touch, yeah. I don't know why I struggle with that name. I always want to put one in there for some reason.
'''Myke Hurley:''' Also, my kind of feeling on this is you would just be able to clean it. And like the worst, you know, like this imagine worst case scenario. If you have somehow missed the cream cheese that you've accidentally got into your ink, you would lose a bottle of ink. And the rest you can just clean, you know.


'''Speaker 00:''' I wish they would have done something more specific. It's a very generic name, so it's hard to remember.
'''Brad Dowdy:''' So here's one concept along those lines that I used to worry about that I no longer worry about. Okay. Is if I had to clean out an ink converter, right? Let's say I'm at a pen show and I don't have my cleaning supplies, but I'm really liking this new ink that I got, but I don't have an empty pen. I don't want to buy a pen or new converter or anything like that. So you can go to your hotel room and I've done this and you clean out a converter, right? And there's still water in it, right? Like you're not going to be able to air dry that unless you spend, you know, 30, you know, time with your hair dryer jamming in there. The percentage of water left behind in the converter is so minuscule compared to the ratio of ink you're putting in. It's not going to affect how that ink looks or performs. So I've gotten over like, hey, if I have a couple of drops of water in my converter, it's not going to change hardly anything because the ratio is so tiny. Now you obviously don't.


'''Speaker 01:''' Well, I mean, isn't this one for Colton if it's a light touch, you know? I guess what Colton's looking for, right? Closing the name, Brad.
'''Myke Hurley:''' If it could, right? Yeah. Then that ink's maybe not very good.


'''Speaker 00:''' Yeah. Maybe try the Jetstream Light Touch. You're still going to have to push and pull the pen though.
'''Brad Dowdy:''' But you also, I mean, you also don't want to have perishable goods in your ink bottles because that's not going to go well, right? So like, I think you'll avoid that ahead of time. I don't think you're going to find yourself in that situation.


'''Speaker 01:''' It says Light Touch. I don't know what to say. I don't know. You can go to penaddict.com. Brad is at penaddict online and he's over at twitch.tv slash penaddict. You can check out Brad's products over at spokedesign.com. You can find me here on RelayFM and I am at iMike, I-M-Y-K-E, and you can find my products over at cortexbrand.com. Thank you to our sponsors this week, ExpressVPN, the St. Louis Pen Show and Pen Chalet. We'll be back next time. Until then, say goodbye, Brad. Goodbye, Brad.
 
 
== Journaling Use ==
 
 
'''Myke Hurley:''' Josh asks, I love collecting and using fountain pens, but I don't have much to write on a daily or weekly basis that aren't conducive to the work that I'm doing. I've tried free journaling as a way to use my pens, but I can't get into a good journaling habit. Do you have any advice on how I can use my fountain pens more?
 
'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. So this is a constant battle for me, Josh, that I think about. Like I do some journaling and I do planning and I do my five-year journal, which is limited, right? So anytime someone asks about this type of thing, I always recommend starting small, right? You want to do the smallest task with your pen. And if that's writing down a short task list for the day, you know, like the three things you need to do today, write that down. And then all of a sudden, well, you tried to do the one thing and something changed or the schedule changed and now you're writing more. And these little things tend to build into bigger things into using your fountain pens. So I have my five-year journal. There's been a couple of times where that's a limited space, limited thing. So, you know, I have like five or six lines in a small area and I've wanted to write more. So I'll get out a different notebook and continue just kind of writing down my thoughts from there. So these small things kind of like lead you into larger things. So if you use them for the little stuff, you're eventually going to pick up the bigger stuff. And then some of the things I do, which you'll have to figure out what works for you. Some of the side tasks that I do when sometimes I just want to write and put words on a page. But I'm not very thoughtful or creative like from a journaling or like a letter writing perspective, right? So I write down a lot of album lyrics. I copy poems. I copy book passages. I copy quotes. And I'll just write them down on a notebook. Like I'm not like particular about these things. But sometimes I just want to use my pens and I'll just start writing these things down. And then it just kind of builds on itself. Like I don't necessarily have any like habits built from that other than like I'm willing to write things down more. Right. Wherever that may be, you know, whichever notebook I have using. I have never been someone who's been able to say, OK, today, June 5th journal entry go. Right. Like that doesn't work that way.
 
'''Myke Hurley:''' What did work for me was Myke's theme system. I would think of his free journaling, right? So yeah. Josh. That doesn't work for me. Yeah.
 
'''Brad Dowdy:''' But something like Myke's theme system has worked for me in the past because it says, OK, June 5th go. But what about this? What about this? What about this? And I can answer those questions and put down my thoughts and track what I was thinking about those things. So any kind of prompts help. Staring at a blank page is is not something that works for me. A lot of people are very able to do that and just start writing. I can't do that. I need prompts. So, you know, that's another thing, you know, can find find a good prompt for you, even if it's just like gratitude. Right. You're just using your stuff. Don't be particular about the pen. Don't be particular about the paper. And don't be particular about the place. Right. Where you're sitting or where you're standing or if you're on the road. You just have to kind of do the little small stuff with a pen and a piece of paper. And then that just kind of leads into wanting to do more. At least that's what I've found as someone who does not have like a traditional journaling habit.
 
'''Myke Hurley:''' So obviously I have opinions on this one because this is somewhat similar to the situation I've been in and that I was in that led me to create the theme system journal, which was the idea of sitting down and just writing in a journal. I actually think is like a pro level journal. Oh. Right.
 
'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. Oh, it's aspirational.
 
'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah. Because I have actually, this is, I have a second journal because I'm working on something and there is an element of like free journaling in it. And now I can do it. I can sit down in front of a blank page and just start writing and just see where it takes me, which is a really great thing to do. But I think it takes a daily practice before then to get to the point where you feel like you could reflect in that way. Right. And so when I created my own system in a, I think it was, yeah, it was a Hobonichi Tech Show. That was kind of like what I built the system in and then we made the journal out of it. And what I like about the theme system journal is that it's not telling you what to do, but it's giving you four boxes that you can repeat every day. Right. And so if you go to the website, if you go to themesystem.com, you'll get some ideas. Like we have like a large selection of like prompt ideas that you could put in the boxes. And I recommend that you take a look at those and see if there's anything that jumps out to you as maybe to do something yourself. But my recommendation, my strong recommendation for you is to gratitude journal, which is what Brad mentioned. And because gratitude journaling is very easy, right? In a sense of it is a thing that you can replicate and that you just have to work to think of what are three things today that even made you feel good or you're thankful for. And if you say you have three things and you say to yourself, I will use three pens. Great. Right. You've hit all the birds of all the stones at that point. So that would be my recommendation to you is to start with very basic gratitude journaling because I also just think that that style, like gratitude journaling, I think is just good for people's mental health. Like I do it now. My big box in the middle of my theme system journal is gratitude journaling. That's what I do there.
 
'''Myke Hurley:''' So I have every day, I force myself, right? Like because that's the practice. You must write three things that you are grateful for, that you are thankful for. And yeah, with my journaling, I use two pens every day, right? I use one to do all the headings and then one to write the whatever it is that I'm writing. So that is a big recommendation or to do some kind of like habit tracking or something like that. Yep. Colton writes in and says, I've been spoiled by the Platinum 3776 nib. It takes zero pressure to write consistently and will write on just about any kind of paper. Then I pick up some kind of ball pen and I have to push down hard to get it to write. I've tried the 0.5 millimeter auto gel refill, the Schmidt P8126N27 and the space pen refill from my Mark I. But they all need some amount of pressure. Is there a refill that doesn't need pressure and can write at a low angle?
 
'''Brad Dowdy:''' So you have discovered the mechanical engineering design of a ball in a tip of a pen. You have to move the ball to get the ink to flow around the ball to the page. So it's really, really challenging to find something that's a ball type pen to do this, right? Like, you know, drawing pens and marker type pens, right? Those would work. Pencils would work.
 
'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah, I would have said like a Sharpie pen, right? Yeah, fountain pens. That would do it. I mean, if there's something where you don't want a fountain pen, a Sharpie or a felt tip pen, like a Copic or something like that, that's going to do it for you. Yeah.
 
'''Brad Dowdy:''' So you've run into like a technical limitation, right? Because if you do find something that requires less pressure, do you know how much ink is going to be on the page to like exist and to actually make a line with a ball mechanism in a pen? It's going to be like a flood. Now, if you want that, that's cool. Like you could get like the Uniball Vision or the eye is what it's called in some parts of the world. I don't know where Colton lives. Because, you know, you get like a 1.0 millimeter gel ink pen. Yeah. Like you're going to have an easier time pushing that pen across the page, right? Because it has, you know, more ink passing around the ball and it's going to require less friction on the page to move. But are you going to like the output? Yeah. Right. Like, so there's this balance. Like you, you've, you've, you're wanting to invent magic and like I'm all for it. But like I, it's, you're going to limit yourself so much in the output that I don't think you're going to be happy. So I think you should continue being spoiled by the Platinum 3770 Nix, 7786 nib because it's maybe the greatest fountain pit nib there is.
 
'''Myke Hurley:''' Yep. I would agree with that too. All right. If you have a question that you would like us to answer on the show or you have some feedback or some follow up about this episode, you can always go to penaddictfeedback.com and you can leave us your thoughts and questions there. If you want to find Brad online, if you want to go read Brad's review of the new Jetstream Light Touch, right, is the name? Light Touch, yeah. I don't know why I struggle with that name. I always want to put one in there for some reason.
 
'''Brad Dowdy:''' I wish they would have done something more specific. It's a very generic name, so it's hard to remember.
 
'''Myke Hurley:''' Well, I mean, isn't this one for Colton if it's a light touch, you know? I guess what Colton's looking for, right? Closing the name, Brad.
 
'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. Maybe try the Jetstream Light Touch. You're still going to have to push and pull the pen though.
 
'''Myke Hurley:''' It says Light Touch. I don't know what to say. I don't know. You can go to penaddict.com. Brad is at penaddict online and he's over at twitch.tv slash penaddict. You can check out Brad's products over at spokedesign.com. You can find me here on RelayFM and I am at iMike, I-M-Y-K-E, and you can find my products over at cortexbrand.com. Thank you to our sponsors this week, ExpressVPN, the St. Louis Pen Show and Pen Chalet. We'll be back next time. Until then, say goodbye, Brad. Goodbye, Brad.


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

Revision as of 21:05, 21 June 2026

The Pen Addict Podcast Transcript
Episode: 618
Title: Monitoring the Safari Situation
Release Date: June 5th, 2024
Hosts: Brad Dowdy

Myke Hurley

Guests: No guests this episode
Additional Information
Official page: Episode 618
Audio File: Audio Episode 618
Podcast page: The Pen Addict 618
Length: 7676 min <br />1.267 h <br /> minutes
Previous Transcript Next Transcript


Myke Hurley: From RelayFM, this is The Pen Addict, episode 618. Today's show is brought to you by the St. Louis Pen Show, Pen Chalet, and ExpressVPN. My name is Myke Hurley, I'm joined by Brad Dowdy. Hi Brad.

Brad Dowdy: What's up Myke Hurley, how are you today? I'm good man, how are you? I'm good, I'm good. I'm ready to talk about pens. Shocker.

Myke Hurley: I mean, look, here's the thing, I'm feeling a little sleepy today, but I can feel like this first topic is going to wake me right up.


Lego Build

Brad Dowdy: Are you still tired from our Lego build?

Myke Hurley: Yeah. Oh, great, yes. Nice, nice, nice. All right, so we have done the Lego build for the year. This is a thing that we do every year for RelayFM members. Boy, have we. If you are a RelayFM member, it's in the crossover feed. Go to relay.fm slash membership to learn more and become a member and support this show. Or if you support any show, you get access to this. So, you know, it's just like a thank you to all of our members. So we built a Lego Spider-Man set. This is the longest build that we've ever done. We built continuously for nearly five hours. And also, different this time to last time, we made a video version, which is in the show notes of the audio. So you can listen, but you can also watch along, as Brad definitely told me to do some things that he refuses that he told me to do.

Brad Dowdy: I fully admitted. I admitted. Some of us are able to admit when we make mistakes. Some of us aren't. We'll let you decide, Chad. We'll let you decide.

Myke Hurley: I said that to my wife, that you told me this, and she laughed, and I said, I actually think that this is maybe a good reflection moment for me. But, you know, we'll see about that. So, yeah, that's available for RelayFM members. If you decide to support this show or any show, you will get access to that, and we will appreciate your support for another year. Thank you so much.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, it was fun. It was exhausting.

Myke Hurley: But let me tell you, Brad, it took three days to get the video version to work.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, so this was an on-a-wim thing that Myke took on for all of us. So thank you, Myke, for doing that.

Myke Hurley: Basically, what happened was I realized halfway through that our audio levels were not balanced properly in the streaming system. Because I used my streaming app that I used to stream, because it was just easy to build it. It was OBS. And you have to fiddle with the audio sometimes, depending on what the source is. And I realized you were a bit too quiet. And I was like, well, this isn't a problem, because we're recording our own audio. I'll just swap it over. And I found, like, I used Final Cut because it was a big thing. And also I found Final Cut has, like, an automatic audio sync feature. So if it's, like, takes the old audio and here's the new audio. The problem was Final Cut was effectively refusing to finish the export. And, like, multiple times export in this video, which took, on average, about six hours per export, it would get to, like, 90% and the app would crash. This happened, I think I maybe tried to do this export, like, four or five times over the space of three days. Until I eventually got it to work by exporting it and basically, like, just pure, like, non-compressed. And then I was able to use a tool called Handbrake to get it into a 1080 file to upload. But, like, it was, so it got to the point where it was, like, I had to publish it on Monday. And it was, like, oh, I had left it overnight to do this thing. I even had, like, the non-good audio version, like, uploaded to YouTube. And it was just a case of, like, well, if this doesn't work, I'm just going to have to press, like, publish on this one. But I came into the studio and found that it had happened. Because first I tried to do it on my MacBook Air, and that was not happening. And then I tried to do it. And then I tried a couple more times on my MacBook Pro. But I finally got it there in the end.

Brad Dowdy: Final Cut finally found that 1x3 block. Yep. Finally found it.

Myke Hurley: Flat 1x3 with a washing machine.

Brad Dowdy: Mm-hmm.

Brad Dowdy: All right. Are we ready to get into some Lego-looking fountain pens? Yeah, baby, let's go. Because I am. Let's go. I was so confused when I saw a blue and yellow Lamy Safari hit my Instagram feed about a week ago, sometime late last week. It was just this kind of bright blue with a yellow clip from a non-retail account. And I thought, okay, cool. Like, there's Lamy hacks are pretty popular, right? Where people will disassemble Lamy Safaris, especially with the Safari. They can be disassembled. People can swap the clips and the finial caps and the grip sections and just make their own colors. And it was just a single blue Lamy clip, a yellow clip, and, like, a bright blue barrel. I was like, that's a really cool-looking swap. Like, I like this one. And then probably – and I really didn't think twice because this is a pretty common thing in my Instagram feed, as you can imagine. Like, I see just weird stuff like this. And then probably, like, the next day, I started scrolling, and there were more images of this blue and yellow Lamy Safari. And they were coming from, like, real retailers that I follow. And then all of a sudden, there was a pink and red one that I was like, all of these are together. And this is Lamy Safari 2024 Special Edition? Question mark? Because we already had a special edition set.

Myke Hurley: Who says there can only be one special edition?

Brad Dowdy: And I'm – yeah, I'm, like, wondering, like, what is happening with Lamy? And how much do I like this? And, you know, do I like these pens? And I'm still, to this day, like, five days later, probably after I saw this, can't totally wrap my head around what we're seeing here. Because it seems like such an outlier to me that they would have a second big release, let's see, four months after the previous big release. Although, I guess these don't have ink related to them. Like, the first big relief with Violet Blackberry and Pink Cliff, like, back in February, March timeframe, those were right on schedule with every other Lamy Safari annual worldwide release limited edition. And both of those colorways came with their own ink. And, like, that was the big release. And Lamy will do things throughout the rest of the year, right? They'll introduce new Safari colors. They'll maybe do some, you know, mix and match thing. And it'll usually just be, like, a singular fountain pen, right? Like, one fountain pen with a neat color. Or they'll do a region-based one. They'll might mix in some all-star colors. You know, they're not – this isn't their one and only release during the year. But I usually don't see – at least it's been a long time since, and maybe never – that they've done a full fountain pen ballpoint rollerball. And, interestingly enough, both of these, both the Pina Colada, which are the names – we'll get to these in a second – and Cherry Blossom both have pencils, which we'll talk about that in a minute. It just kind of blows my mind. And I'm kind of looking at it sideways a little bit. And on one hand, you know I love this, right? Like, this is the style of Safari I want to see more of, right? The color barrels with the bright clips. Like, they've done a good build, right? Like, mixing and matching the parts to make these builds of these pens to where the barrel's one color, is the primary color, and then the additional parts, the clip, the finial, and the grip section, are the alternate color. And both of these kind of fall in the same design. Like, the Cherry Blossom is a pink barrel with red accessories or hardware. And the Pina Colada is a blue barrel. I don't know why it's blue, but – well, that's maybe a different drink. And then yellow hardware. So, I mean, they're gorgeous. I love them. And now Brad flips the worry switch. It's like, Brad, you got exactly what you wanted. Like, 100% exactly what you want.

Myke Hurley: I just found lots of images of blue Pina Coladas. Really? Yeah. I don't think I've ever had a blue Pina Colada. I mean, to be fair, I did have to say Pina Colada blue. And there's a tropical version which is made with blue Carousel.

Brad Dowdy: Yes. That's my expectation. Like, this is a blue Carousel drink for sure.

Myke Hurley: I think maybe they just didn't want to do a yellow cream pen. Yeah.


Lamy Pens

Brad Dowdy: Like, it would be like a cream or a light tan. And it's like, yes, okay, maybe that's not really. I mean, they could have just gone. I might have even accepted almost brown, like, just from like a coconut shell perspective.

Myke Hurley: This is more fun though, Brad.

Brad Dowdy: This is a killer. Like, this is like, if I'm in the design lab, and I talk about this all the time, if I'm in Lamy's lab, this is something I'm putting together, right? And now, I have quickly gone from, do this Lamy, do this Lamy, do this Lamy. It's like, whoa, whoa, whoa, Lamy. Too much. What are we doing here? Are you going to make me, like, put a moratorium on you, like, sailor, where you're introducing, like, literally all the safaris? Now, we have a quarterly Lamy Safari limited edition, like, I'm not saying they're doing this. What is this for the monkeys, Paul? Like, Lamy, I want you to do more of your designs. Yeah, no, not like that. Every story weeks, there's a new one. Yeah, this is literally a no, not like that. Like, you got what you asked for. No, not like that. Yeah.

Myke Hurley: Well, Brad, this is, look, praise be to Mitsubishi Pencil, you know? Like, that's what's going on here. It's obviously the only way to assume what is happening. You know, praise be to Mitsubishi, we now have some interesting Lamy Safaris.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, so here's the thing. When the Pink Cliff and Violet Blackberry came out, I bought one of each, right? Like, that's kind of what I do. Like, one of each, like, fountain pen, rollerball, ballpoint, whatever they offered. And, you know, go through them, kind of review them, and then literally give all of it away, and I'll keep, like, one safari, whichever safari I like the most, I'll just keep. So I kept the Pink Cliff one because I like the matte barrel color. These are glossy. Both of these are glossy, by the way. It's hard to tell in some of the pictures, but there's some close-up pictures. These are definitely both glossy barrels and glossy grips, if people were wondering. I have ordered zero of these so far because, like, now I'm just like, well, yeah, what's the rush, right? They have clearly shown that in the span of four months, they're willing to just, like, overload the shelves with these colors. And I think both of these colors, I like these better than the Pink Safari and Violet Blackberry. Pink Cliff and Violet Blackberry. There's too many names here.

Brad Dowdy: But, like, I'm, you know, I'll probably pick up, like, one or two of these. You know, maybe the Pina Colada Ballpoint. You know I love a good ballpoint. Right.

Brad Dowdy: And so, yeah, like, it's super interesting. It's weird to me that they added the pencil into both of these as a huge part of their lineup because, again, the pencil is the least functional Safari, right? If you don't, like, pencil.

Myke Hurley: I don't like the knock that they have made for the pencil. It looks cheap. I feel like they could have done a better job there.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, because the knock on the ballpoint is killer. It should be that. It's a smash. It's a smash little accordion-looking piece. Yeah, and the pencil, the hang-up with the pencil is they insist on using the triangle molded grip section, which should not be on pencils. I fully believe that pencils should not have molded grip sections the way people rotate a pencil, right? The pencil forces you to rotate unless you're a Kura Toga because they get edgy, right? You get a flat spot. And so, having a triangle grip section on a mechanical pencil is no bueno in my opinion. So, anyway. So, like, I'm sitting here. I love everything about this. This is exactly what I want Lamy to do. And now I'm just on edge. Like, in three months from now, like, what else is going to happen? Are they going to make me eat my lunch or eat my words?

Myke Hurley: You know that? This is such a hilarious... You've begged and begged and begged for them to do exactly this. And now they've done it. You're like, I don't know, man. I don't know. This is all over.

Brad Dowdy: Well, honestly, what I've begged for is translucent vistas. That's what I've been begging for. Or not...

Myke Hurley: Not only are you going to get that, you're going to get translucent every pen now, right? Like, that's what's going to happen.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, that's okay. So, now there's going to be a lot. So, this is an interesting time to be me.

Myke Hurley: Hilarious.

Brad Dowdy: Because there is a balance in the force, right? And, like, once you feel this disturbance, it's like, oh, no. Are they becoming what I hate?

Myke Hurley: Well, there may be more evidence for this. Once again, praise be to Mitsubishi Pencil. We now have a Lamy and Ink House Hong Kong collaboration for a very special-looking Lamy as well that you put in the show notes.

Brad Dowdy: So, along the lines with what I mentioned, as I was doing my research and just kind of poking around, kind of getting the scope of what Lamy has just done with the Pina Colada and Cherry Blossom, I run across a more limited edition store edition from Ink House, which I believe, yeah, Hong Kong. So, they're in Hong Kong. And we have seen over, I would say, like, the last five years or so, we've seen Lamy Safaris and some All-Stars appear in the Asian market as either, like, they've done a regional All-Star before. They did that red one with the yellow translucent grip. That was, like, Asian market release. And then they've done some store exclusives. Like, I have a Safari that was only available in Atoya in Japan. Then they have another one. That was a gray one that I got. Then there's a green and gold one here that's been recent. And now these ones that are, and we've obviously seen the Pokemon ones, right, that were hugely popular. All these special editions. They were with Ink House as well. Yeah, with Ink House. So, this is, like, I guess we could call this a classy upscale edition. Yeah. Even though it's still a Lamy Safari, but they have done these add-ons. I want to say, like, this is killer. Yeah. Like, I am madly in love with both of these pins.

Myke Hurley: It looks like the Lamy body is textured, too, a little bit. Or maybe it's just the photography.

Brad Dowdy: It's probably, it's a matte body. Let me look at the blue one here. Like. Yeah, so it's blue. So, these are matte bodies. The blue one's matte for sure. Let me look at the white one.

Myke Hurley: Some of the shots, it looks like it has a more intense texture than usual, but maybe it's just the photography.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. No, that's the matte. That's the matte finish. The white is the same way. The white is also matte.

Brad Dowdy: So, yeah. Like, so this is. It's store exclusive, right? And, man, do I love. I like these more than the.

Myke Hurley: Me, too.

Brad Dowdy: Than the Pina Colada Cherry Blossom.

Myke Hurley: Yeah, me, too.


Ink House

Brad Dowdy: But they've also done more with these. Ink House, specifically. Ink House has made a box for these, which I don't want to oversell because, like, I'm not anti-packaging, but, like, what am I going to. This box is gorgeous. What am I going to do with it once I ink up the pen? Well, you know what I'm going to do with it, Myke? I mean, it's a. Yeah. That's a keepsake box. It's a keepsake box. I'm going to put it in the killer sleeve that it comes with. Now, that is dope. Yes. Like, these sleeves. Like, this. Y'all need to go look at both of these images in the juxtaposition of the Pina Colada Cherry Blossom set versus this Ink House set. I am just blown away with this Ink House set. But, again, we now have 10 Lamy Safari pens I've just talked about in the last five minutes, 10 minutes. Like, in the span of five days, and this is the stuff that, like, starts to put me on edge. I'm like, I get the store specials. That's, like, you almost can't control, like, the release dates on those. That's just, those things happen when they happen. But then, like, the Pina Colada is like, this would have been great for next year's special edition. The 2025 release, I would be through the roof, right? If that was this, that was 2025's release. And now I'm like, oh, no. What's going to happen in September? What's going to happen for December?

Brad Dowdy: You know, it's cool. I like it. Like, I mean, like I said, if I was in those walls, I'd be jamming these colors and send them out the door. But we are, Lamy is, it's a situation I am monitoring now. Let's put it that way. We are monitoring the Safari situation.

Myke Hurley: We come at this from such different perspectives. Like, I look at this and it's nothing, to me, it's nothing but good news. It is. More product means, like, better health for the brand.

Myke Hurley: Allegedly. I mean, you can get to a point with that, right? Of course, right? But my assumption is these people are smart enough that they are producing as many as they think they can sell. And if they don't sell, then they'll change course. You know what I mean? Like, I'm just going to take it as these are intelligent people that understand how to run a business. I'm just going to take that as a beginning point. And then just assume that this is an example of that, where even though you're now unhappy about it, this is literally the thing that you've been asking them to do. I'm not unhappy about it. You're nervous, let's say, about it. It makes me ask. Yeah.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. Now I'm asking a different question. I'm like, what are we about to witness? Yeah. Right. It's the same. Because I've seen this before.

Myke Hurley: You know what this means, right? Like, you know, you wanted them to do this. You wanted them to produce more designs, more product, more interesting stuff. They're doing that. So if we assume that they're coming at it the right way, the way that you would hope they would have in doing it, then this is golden. And I think that they're more likely to... I don't think it's a very complex thing that they're doing here. You know what I mean? Like, you're producing more and you're selling more would be the assumption. If that's not what's happening, then they need to address that. But...

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. Like, you've talked me down a little bit. You know, just trying... All right. Chill out, Brad. It's okay. Let me ask you a question. Can you name the current base stock inventory of the Lamy Safari? What colors they offer? Like, if you went into the Lamy, one of the flagship stores.

Myke Hurley: Absolutely not. No.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. Neither can I. So...

Myke Hurley: I mean, I can take some guesses. You know what I mean? They probably have a blue one and a red one. They probably have a clear one and a black one. Yeah.

Brad Dowdy: I think they probably have a white one. Maybe have a white one. But this is the same thing, like, when we talk about Sailor. It's like, what base Pro Gear is there, right? Every once, every couple of years, they'll, like, re-up. They'll, like, redo the black and gold trim one. Like, it's like, okay. Well, maybe this is just what they are now. Like, and that's cool.

Myke Hurley: Yeah. I mean, because I can see the scenario where it's like, they have those products, right? They have the, oh, here's the stuff that goes on shelves that me and you and people listening to this show are maybe not that fussed about. And then for people that enjoy the brand or, like, finer things, they create these special editions. Yeah. Which can also sell to people going to a pen website or whatever and taking a look and being like, oh, there's a blue one, like, with yellow clip on it. But also, it can fit with us. Like, I think that this, for a brand like Lamy with a product as iconic as the Safari, I would wager the most iconic modern fountain pen design. This is maybe a conversation for another time, but I'm just going to put that out there. That's something to think about, sure. Yeah. This is the thing that, as I say, I'm not sure about it, but I could also, I think I could argue it if I had to. That they are now using that iconic design to produce more product. And I just think this is exactly what I would do. It's exactly, obviously, what you would do if put in that position. But the concern is you've got to bring it home because if you don't, then that's bad. You should have stayed as you were.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. So good timing on these colors, late spring, getting into summer. Like, this is what people want to see if they're just browsing. Like, if they're going to buy their first Safari, boy, these are going to really pop off the shelves, right?

Myke Hurley: Oh, yeah, definitely. Yeah. If they even make it to the shelves.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. I know they might make it to some pen shows here coming up, you know, maybe even this month. What do you think?

Myke Hurley: Well, let me tell you about one. It's the St. Louis Pen Show. And listeners of this show, you understand and feel the love of writing with a great pen, with a fountain pen. Whether it's documenting your thoughts and ideas, maybe you're journaling or just doodling. If that's you, the 2024 St. Louis Pen Show is the place for you. It is happening from Thursday, June 20th through Sunday, June 23rd in the suburbs of St. Louis at the Sheraton Westport Lakeside Chalet on beautiful Westport Plaza. And there's plenty of free parking. And it's only 10 minutes away from which airport, Brad?

Brad Dowdy: Crevcourt.

Myke Hurley: Crevcourt Airport. That's how you say it. And there's so much to look forward to at the St. Louis Pen Show. You've got Trader Day on Thursday, which includes a party on the plaza with a live band. Friday has an event called Vintage Pen Panel and a pen tasting followed by a free dessert party. You're probably not having the pens for dessert. On Saturday, you can enjoy an evening pen show after dark in the hotel bar. And on Sunday, uninterrupted browsing time for over 85 vendors from 42 states of the U.S. and Canada with a great mix of products. There will be new modern vendors like Tachia. Is it Tachia? T-A-C-C-I-A? I say Tasha. Tasha. Tasha. Sailor. Pens Empire. You'll see artisan pens and pencils from brands like Hardy, Right Turns, and Country Made. Not to mention ink journals, paper stationery, clothing pen storage, and vintage pen dealers featuring show circuit favorites. Plus, there is a free ink testing, a silent auction, and so much more. The St. Louis Pen Show is a 501c3 organization with a mission statement to teach adults and children how to read and write in cursive. It's entirely run by volunteers. There are no paychecks taken. They just do this for the love of the game. Get all the details right now at stlpenshow.com. You can buy tickets. It's $5 for day admission, $30 for a trader pass for all show access, or $10 for a weekend pass. You can discover and sign up for classes, see a complete list of vendors, get information on Westport Plaza and things to do in St. Louis. Plus, check out the link on the website to book hotel rooms at a special rate of $141. But that is while they lost. These blocks fill out quickly. So to get yourself a fun-filled, exciting, and educational weekend, get your tickets to the 2024 St. Louis Pen Show at stlpenshow.com. Thank you so much to the exposition, the Stilo St. Louis, for their support of this show and all of RelayFM. Man, I want to go to this pen show so bad. It sounds like it's such a good time.

Brad Dowdy: I literally have the FOMO, was what I was going to say. Before you even said that, I've only been to one show this year, driven to Atlanta. I'm getting the serious FOMO for St. Louis. One of the things I did yesterday, which has given me the FOMO, is I built my ink sample. So you mentioned there's going to be an ink testing station there. So I'm going to have a row of samples there. Myke from Ink Dependence, Anna from Well Appointed Desk. We're all sending samples to the show. So you're going to be able to test out some stuff. I'm sure there's a bunch more people that I just heard Myke mention in this yesterday. So I built 10 orange ink. So I was allocated 10 inks to use and I did 10 orange ink. So there's some fun stuff, some cool stuff. So it's going to be very cool. So yeah, y'all go check out the St. Louis pen show if you're available that week. It sounds like it's going to be a blast.

Myke Hurley: You're saying you haven't been to a pen show this year. It's nearly been five years since the St. Louis pen show.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's crazy. Five years, man. That doesn't sound right when you say it that way. It's like, no. But now if I think about it at all, it's like, oh yeah, that's exactly right. So maybe we can fix that next year.

Myke Hurley: I think it's been as long now since my last pen show, since when we started the show to my first one, I think. No. Interesting. There's some weird stat in there, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. We've been doing the show for like 10 years and I haven't been to a show for five years.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, yeah. So we'll have to fix that. Maybe next year is the year we fix that. So we'll figure it out. Busy year this year. That's for sure.

Myke Hurley: Yep.


Endless Pens Captiva

Brad Dowdy: Endless Pens, Myke, has been busy making interesting and unique stationery. The latest is the Endless Pens Captiva. And this came across my desk yesterday.

Myke Hurley: I saw this on the Pen Chalet Instagram account. Yeah. And I was hoping you were going to bring it to the show. And when I opened the show notes today, it was in there because it was good because I wanted to ask you about it. I don't understand what this pen does. Okay.

Brad Dowdy: So in a nutshell, if you have a pen with a converter, right? So you take off the barrel, you have a twist in your converter. Okay? Sure. And that's how you fill the ink. So now you put the barrel on the pen and, you know, take your standard converter pen that you have. And sometimes you'll get a pen where the back end of the pen comes off and you can actually access the converter without having to disassemble the pen, right? So that's called a captured converter system where the converters on the interior are almost built into the pen barrel. And...

Myke Hurley: What would be the benefit of that?

Brad Dowdy: Yes. Okay. So that it's there, right? So that you don't have to take the... You don't have to disassemble the pen. You don't have to take the pen apart or unscrew the barrel. Oh, I guess you could fill it, right? You could just fill it without unscrewing it. Okay. Yeah, you just take a little piece off the back and twist the knob. That's what you normally see. And this is just kind of building it in to where you don't have to take it apart. You don't have to remove a cap. You're just twisting it. You're almost like kind of like flicking it with your thumb to like move the converter mechanism.

Myke Hurley: I would say, well, I mean, obviously we're going to talk about this a bit more, but like while I don't think I want this idea of like not have like being able to fill up a pen so fast, right? Which I guess is what's going on here. Unless you're going to tell me otherwise. This makes more sense to me than just having access to a standard converter, which is built into a pen. Like at least you're doing something with it from a design perspective. Yeah.

Brad Dowdy: Think of it. It's essentially kind of like a piston filler, right? Yeah. So, but it just has a different type of build. It almost has like a sleeve on the interior, like a converter is generally how these work. I don't, I can't tell if this one has it like that or not. Um, the questions I have about this, like it seems completely fine. Like I would actually like to test this out. Um, I think the marketing of using the word torque filler is something I want to see for myself because torque mean to me, and I have not looked up the dictionary definition of torque, but it means to me there's like some type of type of resistance and like there's like a, a tightening and a releasing of a resistance. And to me, this just seems like a passive, like you would twist a converter anyway. Like I watched the little video on it and there's no, it's no, like you're, you're winding it up and then, and then sucking in the ink kind of thing. Right? Like that's what I think of like what torque would enable, but I don't know that this does. I could be wrong on this. And I watched the video. It didn't look like it because it looks like they were just passively, um, just kind of twisting as they go. Right? Like you, you know, those windup cars that you pull back and they, they like ramp up all the way and then like shoot off in there. I like, that's what I think of if I was looking at a torque filler, like there's some type of resistance that's going to like shoot the ink in here. Once I like twist it in enough, right? Like, like twist, twist, twist, twist, fill kind of thing. So it just doesn't, it seems like a, I don't know. It seems misleading, at least a perception rise, maybe not in technical terms, but in the perception wise.

Myke Hurley: I don't think anybody wants that mechanism that you described though. I'm not saying that you're saying that either.

Brad Dowdy: That's like a vacuum filler, a vacuum filler kind of does that.

Myke Hurley: But the speed part, like that just seems like you're asking for trouble, right? Like I don't, you know, do we, do we really need like, like speed? I could imagine like taking what you were saying about those kind of windup cars, maybe something along the lines of as you fill it up, the tension increases. So you know that it's full, like that, that would make sense to me if that's what it did. But I would say all of, all of that's marketing. It doesn't matter. Like, yeah. You know what I mean? Like whatever, even as a, as a function perspective, even if it did what you said, nobody needs that. It's just marketing, right? Like, you know, you, you, you will like wind the pen and then it will do something quick. Like, you know, it's just like, you maybe think that that sounds cool. And that's like the, you're kind of designing the product around the idea that you've had this mechanism. My money would be, this is just, they've decided to name their system. Yeah. And they're calling it.

Brad Dowdy: I agree because, and I'll agree with that because of the price point, which we'll get to in a second. I don't want to get there yet. Um, the, the, the main question I think from this pen is, can you accidentally bump and twist this mechanism? That's going to be the real, like, Hey, let's, uh, think about what we're doing here because

Myke Hurley: somebody pick up your pen and be like, what is this? Right.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. Yeah. So this doesn't have this safety or protection of like a captured converter where, okay, you can access the converter from the back, but it's got a cap over it. Right. Like my Kaweco sport piston has a blind cap to get to the piston knob, right? Because you don't want me accidentally twisting that and, and, and ejecting ink through the nib area. So we'll have to see, um, you know, like if you're putting this in a pocket or a bag or is, is it going to move around? Is it going to be able to be manipulated at all? Or does it kind of have more of a stiffer kind of locked in type of feel? So we'll have to see. So we'll see. We'll see. You know, is it like a push down and turn type of situation? Right. Is there some kind of, uh, it just says to engage the filling system, simply rotate the revolver, which that's a whole nother thing. So that's what they're calling the twist mechanism, which I just read that. Hey, look, it revolves. All right.

Myke Hurley: You know, it does. It revolves. It revolves.

Brad Dowdy: Um, okay. It's about 50 bucks, which looks good for 50. I think it's good. Yeah. Like, isn't that right? Like it's around 50 bucks and I'm kind of interested in that. Oh, take that back. I think it might be 60. I'm not, I apologize. I'm not looking in it, but what's interesting is that I have it for 52. Okay. 52. They're offering needlepoint and architect nibs for a very small premium to that 62 price. I don't know if that, if you still have that up, I haven't pulled it up. Um, but it was a pretty low, it wasn't like a $25 upgrade to get a needlepoint or an architect. It was something lower, like almost like in the five or $10 range. So we'll see, that's going to be something they have available. So that price point, I find interesting because I think that's pretty accessible, right? For, uh, just, uh, something above your basic pen, say pilot metropolitan, uh, TWSB eco thing where they're trying to do something a little different. And I immediately think of the Tuzu, the Sailor Tuzu, which we talked about a month or so ago in that both of those pens are in that $50 price point. They're both trying to do something interesting with what they're offering. They're both Tuzu more is trying to get like a beginner is a very beginner focused fountain pen. I believe, um, where this is maybe, I don't know. They're trying to make it easier for you to fill your fountain pen maybe. So it could be a little bit that aspect, but I thought that was both of those being around that $50 to $60 price point and seeing companies try things. Like, I think it's cool. Like I don't have a Tuzu yet. I'll, I'll eventually get one and I'll get this pen too, because I think it's, it's going to be at least interesting to test to see if there's some value in it. Um, but yeah, like I think, uh, I think it's interesting, you know, the more that I look at it, the more I'm thinking about the TWSB go, that's almost more of a torque, torque type of filler filling system. We always talk, you always bring up the TWSB go when I talk about the beginner pens. Like, that's an interesting one. Like it's in that category, I think for, for the, the Captiva. So, um, it will be fun to try this one out and see what it's about because like people want to know about the Tuzu and people want to know about this pen. And I like seeing these innovations, even if someone like super experiences, maybe not going to get like the purest benefit from this. But I think, you know, there's always people looking for, um, new and different things and that are new to fountain pens. And I think, um, I think it could be good. So I look forward to trying it.

Myke Hurley: Someone had just got, it's like, uh, I'm amazed at how many ways pens continue to change. Yeah.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. So you think they're pretty static, right? Like where this is stationary, this is analog. Like I just did my review of the, uh, Jetstream light touch, right? Which we've talked about. So I didn't want to put, I did my review is up on the blog and there was nothing new. So I didn't put it in to add to the show notes today. Cause I didn't feel like I had anything new to say, but it's Uniball is someone who like plays around with ink technology a lot, right? They're always doing something to tweak these things and big picture. Like, is it that big a deal? No, but for someone who's love stationary, seeing even just companies try like minor things and playing around with ink formulas, for example, I think it's, I think it's really neat to see. Um, it obviously gives me something to talk about, but it gives me something to test out and see is like, Hey, are they, do we actually, can we actually see change in the stationary industry? Like the, you know, I hold up the, the Uniball Kuretoga as like the champion in, in this is like, no one thought they needed something like that. No one probably thought that would technically work to have a lead rotation mechanism in a mechanical pencil. And I'll be danged if it's not one of the best inventions in stationary in the last couple of decades.

Myke Hurley: There is, there is such an easy, um, world to imagine where the Kuretoga comes out and we look at it on the show and we're like, that seems like a gimmick. Like, right. Yeah. When we've just first seen it, like who are people asking for this, but right. Yeah. It's fantastic. And like, this is why, like, I remember I was talking about the Tuzu and I was, I'm very much on the fence of like, I would, I would want to see how that feels to use. Cause I could see something here, but I also understand and completely, uh, uh, see how this could just purely be like a gimmick. Like it's right. You know, it's just like a thing that they have made because it's a thing to make as opposed to actually solving a problem. Exactly. Exactly. All right. We spoke about this new pen. D is that the brand name?

Brad Dowdy: Endless? Endless. Endless. Yes. It's the maker. Okay. So they, they started making notebooks, right? So I've used some of their paper. Oh, that's where I know them from. That's the notebook. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So they, for years they've done notebooks and then they got into notebook systems, right? Like the, you know, putting together like your little notebook kit and now they've kind of branched out. So they did the, uh,

Myke Hurley: I have even more respect for it now that they're trying something.


Retractable Pens

Brad Dowdy: So they're the one who did a retractable pen, uh, uh, earlier this year. Right. Um, that, that did not do well. Right. So they've gotten some feedback on there. I never even tried it because the initial reviews were so bad I passed, but they have actually acknowledged and are, are taking changes and, uh, are going to work on it. So I appreciate that. Yeah. Also around 50 to $60. Right. Um, but you know what? They're like, Hey, yeah, maybe like we're going to try, we're going to try something different here. So we'll see if we can improve it. And I appreciate companies that take that kind of feedback and, you know, try to make their products better. So yeah, that's why I'm interested in, in trying out the Captiva. So it should be cool.

Myke Hurley: But if you want to try out the Captiva, you know, I mentioned that price earlier at $52. Well, what if you could also get some money off over our friends at Penn Chalet? Penn Chalet have the products that you're looking for from the brands that you love, whether you want a new fountain pen, a new ballpoint, mechanical pencil, maybe you're looking for some ink or fountain pen accessories, maybe you're looking for some pen carrying cases. Doesn't matter what you're looking for. Penn Chalet have got it. They're adding new styles of pens and products to the site every single month. And every two weeks, you're going to find new special discounts. Penn Chalet do free shipping on orders of over $75 in the US. They sell internationally with great shipping rates. They believe in fast and reliable customer service with low prices and high quality products, which they offer a 100% satisfaction guarantee for. So head over to PennChalet.com slash PennAddict. You will get the 10% you will be able to from there get a code you need to save 10% on anything at Penn Chalet. So you can go pick up that endless pen if you want to, but also to see a selection of exclusive offers for listeners of this show.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, so before we even get to that, they also carry the new, they're going to be selling the new Lamy Safaris, the Pina Colada and Cherry Blossom, like an unintended ad read there for that one. So yeah, they have all the stuff you need. And on our PennAddict page, they have some really cool Magna Carta Denema fountain pens. So these are kind of micarta-ish materials, right? So where there's some fibrous materials in the barrel materials that the pens are crafted from. And they're making some really cool colors in this. And the price is really, really like to a point where I should try one of these out because I've never reviewed a Magna Carta pen. I've always liked them. A lot of them can come with number eight nibs. I don't know what the nib sizes are available in these, but they have some acrylic ones in here too. And the price points are spectacular on these. And it's definitely worth checking out. Also, they have some pens from our good friends over at Heinz that are a really, really good price and including some really neat materials for them. And I'm just, wow, I'm just getting down here. So an Aurora 88, which is rarely seen on here on the sale page. So yeah, boy, I'm still scrolling, still scrolling. Lots of leather accessories, case accessories. Wow, great stuff over at Penn Chalet. So go check them out.

Myke Hurley: Go to PennChalet.com, P-E-N-C-H-A-L-E-T.com slash PennAddict. You'll get the code you need to save 10% and to see these special offers. Our thanks to Penn Chalet for their support of this show and RelayFM.

Brad Dowdy: All right. We got a shout out of the week, Myke. Shout out of the week. Man, I thought you were going to miss there for a second. Never. Split second. Never. Split second. I want to give a shout out to my friend, Nomadic. I can't remember if I've shouted out Luca or not previously. If not, it's been at least last year. But they deserve more than one shout out anyway. So a fellow Twitch streamer is how we met.

Brad Dowdy: Luca does amazing journaling streams almost every morning during the weekday. Like 6 a.m., 7 a.m., you know, get your morning started off right Eastern time in the U.S. Just chill journaling streams every day. And they're so chill. And you can just go. One of the good things that Twitch does is you have the replays of the stream. So you don't have to be up at 7 a.m. to catch this stream. You can go watch the replay and sit there with Nomadic. Journal. Listen to some chill music. Check out some stationery. They're also very active on Mastodon. I have the link to Nomadic's Mastodon in there. So we chat on there. So definitely give Nomadic a follow if you're on Twitch and Mastodon. Super awesome person. And love their stream. Love their journaling stream. So chill. So awesome. So really cool stuff.

Myke Hurley: Very nice.

Brad Dowdy: All right, Myke. I think I've been kind of nice for most of the, you know, Lamy talk, the Endless Pen talk. But like, I skipped talking about the EDCist pen when it first came out. But I keep getting emails on it. And I think it's finally time because the campaign is over. It ended back in March. But I definitely got some commentary on this. I know some people in the space reviewed it. Do you want to go first? I mean, what's the point?

Myke Hurley: You know, like, look. I'm going to describe this for the listeners out there. All right? Yeah. This is a little 3D printed square where on one of the corners of the square, there is a rollerball tip.

Brad Dowdy: We'll get to that. Yes. A rollerball ballpoint tip. There's a pen tip. Rollerball, gel, ballpoint, whatever. Yeah.

Myke Hurley: Pen tip. It's super tiny. I would say probably. Well, actually, it's a little bit big, a little bit smaller than a bottle cap. I would say kind of like stamp sized. Yeah.

Brad Dowdy: Stamp size.

Myke Hurley: It's 3D printed and it comes with a little kind of case protector holder thing, which is designed to affix to a watch strap. They show Apple watches a lot in this, but.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. It could be like a backpack strap. It's like that. It's like that like one inch width or a little less sub one inch width.

Myke Hurley: You're basically threading something through the little holder and then you can attach a pen to it. But this is just one of these things where it's like cute idea. I guess like fine. Sure. Fine. Why is this a Kickstarter campaign? Yeah. This is a piece of 3D printed plastic. This should just be on thing of us. There's nothing here. This is nothing.


Pen Refills

Brad Dowdy: There's nothing here. It's air. So the biggest flaw in this design isn't the size. It's how you get the refill in. So this is a D1 refill, right? So if you're listening to this, you're probably familiar with a D1 refill. But you, being the now owner of the EDCS pen, literally has to cut the refill to size. Usually in the middle of where the ink is exposed in the refill, you have to cut this.

Myke Hurley: You're wasting a refill, right?

Brad Dowdy: You're wasting more than half of the refill.

Myke Hurley: Like four fifths of a refill maybe? Or like three quarters of a refill?

Brad Dowdy: You're making an absolute mess and you're now exposing the ink to the elements from the end of the pen. Attaching that to anything, you're just asking for so much trouble. I can't even imagine the amount of ink getting everywhere.

Myke Hurley: If you are two millimeters off, right? Which means that the refill is not protected by the back of the thing. That is just spilling. It's just spilling out.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. Right. So a lot of these inks are made with like little stoppers in the inside of the back of their refill, right? To not allow the ink to come out. And you're just cutting it. Like I'm watching the videos of them cutting the refill right in the middle of the ink. And I'm just losing my mind. I was like, there's no way this is like good. Like if you're going to do this, I don't even know how much this was. It couldn't have been that expensive. But like just buy a Fisher Space Pen, throw it in your pocket, throw it in your bag. You're going to be so much happier with this.

Brad Dowdy: Then just, you know, okay. It's $15. $15 was the early bird. So $17. So just buy a Fisher Space Pen. I mean, buy. I mean, I would rather just use a full size pen. Buy the G2 Mini if you need a smaller pen. For like $3.

Myke Hurley: Genuinely, Brian, cannot imagine the scenario where this is the solution. Yeah. I just cannot fathom what that is.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. There's some smaller products. I think a Pico Pen is one of them that are keychain pens. Those at least have like proper termination to the refill as to where you're not going to have a leak situation. Right. This just seems like you're setting yourself up for a bad time. Yeah. With this product. And I am. And I don't even. I don't know where you would enjoy using this. Where this is going to be functional and not just having like a space pen in your pocket. Or like literally. I would take a bank ballpoint pen over this. Like honestly, just throw it in a bag and just be done with it. Like this is not solving any problems that I can think of and actually causing more problems than it solves. So there. I got it out of me.

Myke Hurley: Yeah. This is nothing. It's nothing. Like this isn't a product.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So there we go. EDC is pen. I at least appreciate the name. They're at least trying to be like funny about it. And I was like, okay. Yeah. The name is actually good.

Myke Hurley: It's the 3D printing of it that frustrates me. Yeah. That you would. Why does it need to be a Kickstarter campaign?

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. I mean, they only raised $9,000. So this wasn't like one of those campaigns that went ballistic. Yeah.

Myke Hurley: But you know, they wanted it to. Right.

Brad Dowdy: Oh, of course.

Myke Hurley: I mean. Yeah. Yeah. I just, I don't understand this one. I really don't. Let's do some ice TPA.

Brad Dowdy: Let's do it. We got a bunch.

Myke Hurley: Ross writes in and says, I've had two or three experiences recently where I forget the filling mechanism for a pen. And wind up spilling ink kind of all over the place because I do it wrong. I pull something out and ink squirts out is the most common mistake. This sounds ridiculous.

Brad Dowdy: I got a product for you, Russ.

Myke Hurley: This sounds ridiculous. But I actually like to buy pens with different filling mechanisms. It's one of the things that I enjoy. But when I'm using them and they run dry, I am always in the middle of something. And I just want to get ink back into them. I have a homo sapien, a pelican 800, a lami 2000, a mold block 149. And I keep forgetting which one has the filling mechanism. How do you keep track and not mess up with far more pens than I have? Can I just take a stab at this first? I have two suggestions. The first one, I'm only slightly joking, which is just slow down, Russ. I'm sure it's not that urgent. Let's just take a second. If this keeps happening to you, let's just take a second. My next solution is you probably keep your ink in the same place. I feel like that is a typical enough thing. You have a drawer you keep it in or a box you keep it in. I feel like that's relatively normal. I think most listeners would understand that. You have the place to keep your ink. Make yourself a nice little index card that goes with the ink. It's very visible, very clear to you. If you're using this pen, it's this. You know? Let's do that. Right.

Brad Dowdy: Once you fill it up, write it down. I'll keep the little card in the area. You know, and I don't know Russ's full situation. I mean, if you have 20 pens filled up at one time, that could be more of a problem. But, you know, if you have a handful, you're like, I think you can track it pretty well. Like, literally writing it down. So, I don't track anything, pretty much. As far as, like, that goes, like, what's filled. Like, I will just kind of do some ink samples. Like, okay, what do I have currently ink? So, I know what's what. I'm literally doing the write it down thing. That's how I keep track of it. As far as, like, making the mistakes of the filling systems. I mean, it looks like Russ has mostly pistons. So, you just have to, like Myke says, you just have to be a little bit careful and thoughtful with the Lamy 2000 or the Mont Blanc or the Pelican, right? Those are all piston fills. So, if you twist the knob, like, you're only twisting the knob to either fill it or to clean it, right? So, just don't twist the knob. The only situation I've ever run across where I've had, like, the mistake, and even Alan mentioned this in the Discord, is that I have opened up a barrel of an eyedropper pen thinking it was a converter pen. And luckily, I was in a protected area. I think I was actually, like, on my desk on top of a notebook, right? So, it hit the notebook, like, before I could close it, before I could tip it back in the right place. Like, that's a mistake that I've made by going too fast. I don't think there's any, like, true solution. It's like, hey, do this so you're not, you know, like, ejecting your ink from your piston fills. Like, I just think you just have to, you know, keep a note of what you have filled. Be thoughtful about the processes that you're using. Don't do anything silly. Or thoughtless, like I did with an eyedropper. And a lot of us have done that, made that eyedropper mistake. Because an eyedropper is not a majority filling system, right? Like, if I have 10 pens inked up, you might have one eyedropper. You know, I'm not going to have 8 out of the 10 are going to be eyedroppers. So, I could accidentally grab that eyedropper or open it up for some unknown reason. Especially if it's not transparent. Like, I have some eyedroppers that you can't see the inside of. So, yeah, thinking about that and being careful how you open them. You know, otherwise, just if you're not sure, if you're not sure, do it in a safe space. Like, over a sink or over a notebook you don't care about. So, you're not making messes. But literally, it boils down to just, like, writing down what you have going. And being patient with your filling and cleaning and manipulations of your pens.

Myke Hurley: Rebecca asks, I'm relatively new to fountain pens. I'm in the course of exploring them. And I've ended up with an extra Kaweco Sport nib and an extra Schmidt nib. Could you recommend what I could buy, like, pen-wise without a nib so that I can use these extra nibs?

Brad Dowdy: This is such a good question that I don't think we've ever been asked. And unfortunately for Rebecca, there's not an easy answer, right? Like, extra nibs, buying a pen without a nib or almost something without a nib is pretty tough unless you're going. And it's going to cost you more than. The reason why you have extra nibs is it's going to cost you more to buy a barrel for one of those nibs than to just buy a new pen with a nib. To be completely frank. Like, I could tell you, like, I have pen barrels made by custom pen makers that fit random nibs. But that pen, I paid a lot of money for, right? Because I'm getting a one-off barrel with a neat material and someone hand-making this barrel to fit, you know, the threading of whatever, you know, section I have to fit in there. Or whatever extra nib I have to fit in there. So that's going to be, you're talking like, you know, a three-figure proposition, like over $100 to get, like, just some random barrel to fit a Kaweco Sport nib. You're just better off buying another Kaweco Sport if you want to use the nib. And that's how you end up with extra nibs. And I wish I had a better answer for you. So what I would say, Rebecca, is going forward is I would, as you get more experienced with these fountain pens, I would get one of your Kaweco Sport nibs or one of your Schmidt nibs ground into something else. And now you have one pen with two different nibs, but the nibs write differently. So that's the way I would look at this, right? So that's one thing that I do with the Kaweco specifically. I have several Kaweco nibs, one that's a needlepoint, one that's a cursive italic. And I'll use the Kaweco pen barrel I want and swap the nib into it. So think about this in reverse. And, you know, maybe that's not something you've explored yet because you're new to this. But over time, if you continue liking fountain pens and you maybe want a stub nib, you know, well, you have a nib here. You could get the nib ground and then now you have, you know, maybe a medium nib for your Kaweco Sport and you have a stub nib for your Kaweco Sport. And that's kind of the way I would look at it. Then finding, trying to find a barrel that's going to be probably like a fruitless endeavor to do any kind of reasonable thing with that.

Myke Hurley: All right. This episode is brought to you in part by our friends over at ExpressVPN. Going online without ExpressVPN is a bit like driving without car insurance. You might be a great driver, but you never know what's going to happen. So why not have that protection from things that you would otherwise not be surprised by? Like, for example, if you connect to unencrypted networks in cafes, hotels or airports, your data isn't secure. Somebody on that network could gain access to your personal data and they could sell that data to others. Nobody wants to think their data is being sold to other people. That is why ExpressVPN can help you protect your data by creating a secure encrypted tunnel between your device and the Internet. ExpressVPN is really secure. It's super secure. It's basically an impossible task to get past ExpressVPN's encryption. It's easy to use. You just fire up the app, click one button to get protected, and you are protected. It works on all devices from phones to laptops to tablets and more, so you can stay secure on the go. It's easy to see why it's rated number one by top tech reviewers like CNET and The Verge. I very frequently, I always use ExpressVPN when I'm using hotels. Like, sometimes you go on to, like, a hotel Wi-Fi. You know, maybe you're trying to, like, airplay something or whatever, and you can see all of the devices on the network. And it's like, oh, that's a lot of devices on this network. I think I would prefer it if my data was completely secure, and that's why I trust ExpressVPN. So secure your online activity today by visiting expressvpn.com slash penaddict. That is expressvpn.com slash penaddict. And you can get an extra three months for free at expressvpn.com slash penaddict. Our thanks to ExpressVPN for the support of this show and RelayFM.

Brad Dowdy: I used them last night, Myke. I was at Starbucks. You pop on ExpressVPN. Very good. Because I didn't have, like, good, like, cell service where I was at. My son had a tennis match. It was too far away for me to, like, drop him off and drive home. So I went and found Starbucks, popped in, popped on the ExpressVPN, sat and chilled for a bit, and easy peasy.

Myke Hurley: Moises writes in and says, I now realize I urgently need an answer and detailed response to Myke's beloved shacket. What brand is it? What makes it so great? I ask because I recently fell for a denim work shirt from Filson that has an interior left breast pocket big enough for my EDC, and it's changed my view of shackets. As a stationary nerd, in the surface of the sun, summer climate of Texas, I had never considered an overshirt with shacket features as an alternative to carrying a small bag. So a shacket is a combination between a shirt and a jacket. It's basically like an overshirt. I'm just going to say, Moises, I do not acquire shackets for features. They are for fashion. I'll just say that to start with.

Brad Dowdy: I'm a feature guy, Moises. Okay.

Myke Hurley: I have two shackets that I like, and then two overshirts, like overcoat, like, you know, like work shirts that I like. The work shirts are both Paul Smith work shirts. I'll see if I can try and find a link for them. But they are old. I've had them for years and years. The one that I was talking about recently, which I was wearing at Apple Park Battersea, well, Apple Battersea is from a company called Wax, which is a London-based company who I've been getting really into recently. I love their style of clothing. It's suitably flamboyant for me. Like, I like to stand out when I buy things that I really want to wear, that I really like. And I think they do a really good job of that. But they also have more regular pieces that are made of fun colors, like the orange one that I have. And then I also have a Paul Smith one, which Adina bought me, which is a very similar style, but in more muted tones, like blues and brown. So they're the things that I like.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, so I'm like Moises, I don't have the opportunity to go full shacket all the time, given the temperature here, right? Because they're long sleeve and they go over what you're already wearing. Like you could just wear a t-shirt, but still, like you're adding on heat layers. So a lot of the popular shackets are even like flannel or fleece lined. So they're like double walled. But I do have more of a work shirt style that I wear as a shacket. It's like the duck canvas. Like if you felt it, it's like, oh yeah, this is pretty uncomfortable. Like you wouldn't want to wear this as just like a shirt, but it's like an over shirt. And, you know, they always have like pockets or pin loops and they're useful for carrying stuff around. And like, yeah, I'm a big fan. But me only like for a couple of months of the year, just because of the heat around here. So, you know, I would implore Moises in Texas to, you know, maybe check out some anoraks or maybe even some popovers, which you can get short sleeve. We'll have to figure out some recommended companies on our new fashion blog podcast.

Myke Hurley: The, what would it be? The shacket addict?

Brad Dowdy: Mm-hmm. Shacket addict.

Myke Hurley: Nick writes in and says, I often journal over breakfast. So there is always a chance that a crumb or another piece of debris on my paper could be picked up by my fountain pen nib. This is something that I worry about that then dipping my nib into my ink bottle could leave the debris behind where it could later get into another pen and cause it to clog. So I avoid piston and vac fillers and I only use cartridge pens refilled with a syringe. Am I being excessively cautious here or is this a valid concern about cleanliness and cross contamination that you have considered?


Notebook Debris

Brad Dowdy: We just have a level of S-tier questions for Ask TBA that I can't even handle today. Yeah. Between the nib question and this question that Nick asked because I am very much with Nick on this. I can hear you like giggling over there. But like this is a real thing, Myke.

Myke Hurley: I don't doubt it. But what is funny to me is I love the, and I don't mean this in a bad way. I mean this in a, you know, we're all in this together way. The general neuroses. Yeah. Right? That like a lot of our questions have had today. And also just the entire episode, just me and you. You know?

Brad Dowdy: This is literally what we do. These are the type of things I think about. So Nick, let me, I'm just going to have a conversation with Nick here real quick.

Myke Hurley: This is talk directly to Nick.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. Um, I hate anything on my notebook, even the tiniest bit of dust, debris. I can see this stuff. Right? I don't have great eyesight, but I can pick out the randomest little dot on a page that doesn't belong there. And it will bug me and I have to make sure to get it off. The nib debris that you kind of should be worried about is more paper fibers than actual like real life, like food, dust, those types of particles. Because those are going to eject pretty quick. You're going to see that and you're going to be able to wipe that off with like a paper towel, rinse it under the sink, whatever. Like that. I don't really think that's going to be your big problem. Getting into your filling system. They're going to be particles are going to be too big to actually be drawn up into anything. I believe. Um, if you, if you even have like a modicum of fountain pen maintenance, right? Like if you even like, it sounds like if you're worried about this, that you actually care about cleaning your pens. So I don't think that type of thing is going to be an issue. You do, however, have to, um, think about paper fibers. And I would recommend you getting a loop. If you don't already have this, you know, it's a little magnifying glass, little one lens magnifying glass and looking at your nibs from time to time and seeing if you have fibers stuck in the tines. Now those aren't going to damage your ink or in there, but they could be like a clogging situation. They make the nibs not right as well. I think that's more of a concern than getting any type of like food debris or even like dust or particles in there. Because those pieces are going to generally be so big, they're going to be noticeable and you're going to be able to remove them. That's not going to be something, um, like that's going to be small and you would miss it. Um, miss cleaning it out before putting it in an ink bottle.

Myke Hurley: Would you worry about contamination of the ink?

Brad Dowdy: No. Uh, in this case, no, because I don't, I genuinely don't think you're going to get that far. Right. Right. Like if you happen, if you happen to run your ink through something wet, let's something viscous, like I don't like he's, he's mentioning breakfast. So I'm only thinking breakfast. If there was a drop of honey. Yeah. There's like jam or honey. You're going to know before you do anything else that you need to rinse that off. Right. I'm saying what my point is, you're not going to have the opportunity to contaminate because you're going to catch it beforehand. So I think you're actually being a, Nick is actually being excessively cautious in this because I don't think you're going to get that far.

Myke Hurley: Yeah.

Brad Dowdy: Now, if you, if you happen to get that far, you probably have other problems than whether you're, your, your nibs are probably in worse shape than whether you accidentally got something stuck in there. Does that make sense? Yeah. Right. Right. Like I feel like you're going to catch any issue beforehand. It's good that you're cautious because I'm obsessive about the tines of my nibs being clean. I keep a loop at my desk and a brass shim to clean them. Right. If I get paper fibers stuck in there, I will sit here and inspect it. Like you can tell, especially as someone who likes fine lines like myself, sometimes the fine line gets wider and you don't know why. And then all of a sudden you see some paper fiber stuck in there. Right. So they're absorbing more ink, making the line width wider and something has changed. Your expectation has changed about the line on the page. So I get out the loop, look at them. I was like, oh yeah, there's some stuff stuck in it. Grit the brass shim, you know, clean it out and go back to writing. Right. Like if I had something else, something bigger than that, I'm like, I'm going to notice immediately and never going to, I'm never going to get that in an ink bottle. And you're certainly not going to draw it up into a piston or back filler. I'm 99.9% certain of that.

Myke Hurley: Also, my kind of feeling on this is you would just be able to clean it. And like the worst, you know, like this imagine worst case scenario. If you have somehow missed the cream cheese that you've accidentally got into your ink, you would lose a bottle of ink. And the rest you can just clean, you know.

Brad Dowdy: So here's one concept along those lines that I used to worry about that I no longer worry about. Okay. Is if I had to clean out an ink converter, right? Let's say I'm at a pen show and I don't have my cleaning supplies, but I'm really liking this new ink that I got, but I don't have an empty pen. I don't want to buy a pen or new converter or anything like that. So you can go to your hotel room and I've done this and you clean out a converter, right? And there's still water in it, right? Like you're not going to be able to air dry that unless you spend, you know, 30, you know, time with your hair dryer jamming in there. The percentage of water left behind in the converter is so minuscule compared to the ratio of ink you're putting in. It's not going to affect how that ink looks or performs. So I've gotten over like, hey, if I have a couple of drops of water in my converter, it's not going to change hardly anything because the ratio is so tiny. Now you obviously don't.

Myke Hurley: If it could, right? Yeah. Then that ink's maybe not very good.

Brad Dowdy: But you also, I mean, you also don't want to have perishable goods in your ink bottles because that's not going to go well, right? So like, I think you'll avoid that ahead of time. I don't think you're going to find yourself in that situation.


Journaling Use

Myke Hurley: Josh asks, I love collecting and using fountain pens, but I don't have much to write on a daily or weekly basis that aren't conducive to the work that I'm doing. I've tried free journaling as a way to use my pens, but I can't get into a good journaling habit. Do you have any advice on how I can use my fountain pens more?

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. So this is a constant battle for me, Josh, that I think about. Like I do some journaling and I do planning and I do my five-year journal, which is limited, right? So anytime someone asks about this type of thing, I always recommend starting small, right? You want to do the smallest task with your pen. And if that's writing down a short task list for the day, you know, like the three things you need to do today, write that down. And then all of a sudden, well, you tried to do the one thing and something changed or the schedule changed and now you're writing more. And these little things tend to build into bigger things into using your fountain pens. So I have my five-year journal. There's been a couple of times where that's a limited space, limited thing. So, you know, I have like five or six lines in a small area and I've wanted to write more. So I'll get out a different notebook and continue just kind of writing down my thoughts from there. So these small things kind of like lead you into larger things. So if you use them for the little stuff, you're eventually going to pick up the bigger stuff. And then some of the things I do, which you'll have to figure out what works for you. Some of the side tasks that I do when sometimes I just want to write and put words on a page. But I'm not very thoughtful or creative like from a journaling or like a letter writing perspective, right? So I write down a lot of album lyrics. I copy poems. I copy book passages. I copy quotes. And I'll just write them down on a notebook. Like I'm not like particular about these things. But sometimes I just want to use my pens and I'll just start writing these things down. And then it just kind of builds on itself. Like I don't necessarily have any like habits built from that other than like I'm willing to write things down more. Right. Wherever that may be, you know, whichever notebook I have using. I have never been someone who's been able to say, OK, today, June 5th journal entry go. Right. Like that doesn't work that way.

Myke Hurley: What did work for me was Myke's theme system. I would think of his free journaling, right? So yeah. Josh. That doesn't work for me. Yeah.

Brad Dowdy: But something like Myke's theme system has worked for me in the past because it says, OK, June 5th go. But what about this? What about this? What about this? And I can answer those questions and put down my thoughts and track what I was thinking about those things. So any kind of prompts help. Staring at a blank page is is not something that works for me. A lot of people are very able to do that and just start writing. I can't do that. I need prompts. So, you know, that's another thing, you know, can find find a good prompt for you, even if it's just like gratitude. Right. You're just using your stuff. Don't be particular about the pen. Don't be particular about the paper. And don't be particular about the place. Right. Where you're sitting or where you're standing or if you're on the road. You just have to kind of do the little small stuff with a pen and a piece of paper. And then that just kind of leads into wanting to do more. At least that's what I've found as someone who does not have like a traditional journaling habit.

Myke Hurley: So obviously I have opinions on this one because this is somewhat similar to the situation I've been in and that I was in that led me to create the theme system journal, which was the idea of sitting down and just writing in a journal. I actually think is like a pro level journal. Oh. Right.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. Oh, it's aspirational.

Myke Hurley: Yeah. Because I have actually, this is, I have a second journal because I'm working on something and there is an element of like free journaling in it. And now I can do it. I can sit down in front of a blank page and just start writing and just see where it takes me, which is a really great thing to do. But I think it takes a daily practice before then to get to the point where you feel like you could reflect in that way. Right. And so when I created my own system in a, I think it was, yeah, it was a Hobonichi Tech Show. That was kind of like what I built the system in and then we made the journal out of it. And what I like about the theme system journal is that it's not telling you what to do, but it's giving you four boxes that you can repeat every day. Right. And so if you go to the website, if you go to themesystem.com, you'll get some ideas. Like we have like a large selection of like prompt ideas that you could put in the boxes. And I recommend that you take a look at those and see if there's anything that jumps out to you as maybe to do something yourself. But my recommendation, my strong recommendation for you is to gratitude journal, which is what Brad mentioned. And because gratitude journaling is very easy, right? In a sense of it is a thing that you can replicate and that you just have to work to think of what are three things today that even made you feel good or you're thankful for. And if you say you have three things and you say to yourself, I will use three pens. Great. Right. You've hit all the birds of all the stones at that point. So that would be my recommendation to you is to start with very basic gratitude journaling because I also just think that that style, like gratitude journaling, I think is just good for people's mental health. Like I do it now. My big box in the middle of my theme system journal is gratitude journaling. That's what I do there.

Myke Hurley: So I have every day, I force myself, right? Like because that's the practice. You must write three things that you are grateful for, that you are thankful for. And yeah, with my journaling, I use two pens every day, right? I use one to do all the headings and then one to write the whatever it is that I'm writing. So that is a big recommendation or to do some kind of like habit tracking or something like that. Yep. Colton writes in and says, I've been spoiled by the Platinum 3776 nib. It takes zero pressure to write consistently and will write on just about any kind of paper. Then I pick up some kind of ball pen and I have to push down hard to get it to write. I've tried the 0.5 millimeter auto gel refill, the Schmidt P8126N27 and the space pen refill from my Mark I. But they all need some amount of pressure. Is there a refill that doesn't need pressure and can write at a low angle?

Brad Dowdy: So you have discovered the mechanical engineering design of a ball in a tip of a pen. You have to move the ball to get the ink to flow around the ball to the page. So it's really, really challenging to find something that's a ball type pen to do this, right? Like, you know, drawing pens and marker type pens, right? Those would work. Pencils would work.

Myke Hurley: Yeah, I would have said like a Sharpie pen, right? Yeah, fountain pens. That would do it. I mean, if there's something where you don't want a fountain pen, a Sharpie or a felt tip pen, like a Copic or something like that, that's going to do it for you. Yeah.

Brad Dowdy: So you've run into like a technical limitation, right? Because if you do find something that requires less pressure, do you know how much ink is going to be on the page to like exist and to actually make a line with a ball mechanism in a pen? It's going to be like a flood. Now, if you want that, that's cool. Like you could get like the Uniball Vision or the eye is what it's called in some parts of the world. I don't know where Colton lives. Because, you know, you get like a 1.0 millimeter gel ink pen. Yeah. Like you're going to have an easier time pushing that pen across the page, right? Because it has, you know, more ink passing around the ball and it's going to require less friction on the page to move. But are you going to like the output? Yeah. Right. Like, so there's this balance. Like you, you've, you've, you're wanting to invent magic and like I'm all for it. But like I, it's, you're going to limit yourself so much in the output that I don't think you're going to be happy. So I think you should continue being spoiled by the Platinum 3770 Nix, 7786 nib because it's maybe the greatest fountain pit nib there is.

Myke Hurley: Yep. I would agree with that too. All right. If you have a question that you would like us to answer on the show or you have some feedback or some follow up about this episode, you can always go to penaddictfeedback.com and you can leave us your thoughts and questions there. If you want to find Brad online, if you want to go read Brad's review of the new Jetstream Light Touch, right, is the name? Light Touch, yeah. I don't know why I struggle with that name. I always want to put one in there for some reason.

Brad Dowdy: I wish they would have done something more specific. It's a very generic name, so it's hard to remember.

Myke Hurley: Well, I mean, isn't this one for Colton if it's a light touch, you know? I guess what Colton's looking for, right? Closing the name, Brad.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. Maybe try the Jetstream Light Touch. You're still going to have to push and pull the pen though.

Myke Hurley: It says Light Touch. I don't know what to say. I don't know. You can go to penaddict.com. Brad is at penaddict online and he's over at twitch.tv slash penaddict. You can check out Brad's products over at spokedesign.com. You can find me here on RelayFM and I am at iMike, I-M-Y-K-E, and you can find my products over at cortexbrand.com. Thank you to our sponsors this week, ExpressVPN, the St. Louis Pen Show and Pen Chalet. We'll be back next time. Until then, say goodbye, Brad. Goodbye, Brad.

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