The Pen Addict 161/transcript

The Pen Addict Podcast Transcript
Episode:	161
Title:	No Micarta For You
Release Date:	June 29th, 2015
Hosts:	Brad Dowdy Myke Hurley
Guests:	Joe Crace
Additional Information
Official page:	Episode 161
Audio File:	Audio Episode 161
Podcast page:	The Pen Addict 161
Length:	6565 min <br />1.083 h <br /> minutes
Previous Transcript	Next Transcript

Relay FM

Myke Hurley: From RelayFM, this is The Pen Addict episode 161. Today's show is brought to you by Squarespace, Build It Beautiful, and Karis Customs. It's Quality Pro. My name is Myke Hurley. The Pen Addict is a weekly show where we discuss pens, paper, and the analogue tools we love so dearly. And this week, I am joined by the officer and the gentleman. It's Brad Dowdy and Joe Crace.

Joe Crace: You're terrible. Wait, which one are you?

Brad Dowdy: I mean, I assume I'm the gentleman.

Joe Crace: Okay, yeah. I assume Joe's the gentleman too, so he is the vintage gentleman on Twitter. So if you don't know, I have a special guest live in the recording studio with me, which is the playroom in my parents' house, which my kids have managed to destroy. Anyway, we have Joe Crace, aka the Gentleman Stationer. Say hey again, Joe.

Brad Dowdy: Hello, everyone.

Joe Crace: Yes, so we got an awesome show for you guys today, and I'm super excited to have Joe on. And we're going to talk about his blog and his pendome and his pen show travels, because you get around a little bit, don't you? A little bit over the years. Yeah. All right, so we have a bunch of follow-up to get to as we go. Myke, you want to get into this? I most definitely do. So what do you think about this Mental Floss article that surprised everyone, including myself, in the last week or so?

Myke Hurley: Yeah, what happened here? Like, I know that you like to leave these surprises for me, but there were no horrifying, nightmarish pictures in this one.

Joe Crace: Yeah, so... Yeah, that picture still crops up every now and then from the Boston.com thing. But the Mental Floss, I knew about it for about six months ago, at least, if not longer than that. So I was on a podcast called The Jeff Rubin, Jeff Rubin Show. That was probably a year ago. And Mental Floss works with Jeff Rubin on occasion. When they find something interesting that he's done, they want to transcribe it and put it in the physical magazine. So Jeff told me that they were doing that. And I said, yeah, absolutely. And that kind of vanished a few months past. And then finally, Mental Floss reached out to me several months ago and said, hey, we're putting this article together that Jeff Rubin and you had talked about on the podcast, this article on pens. And we want you to do a picture of your collection for that. So I went back and forth with that. And my wife is very disappointed. She wanted credit for the image in the magazine, which she didn't get. So she was disappointed in that. So a full credit to Mary Beth Dowdy for the image in Mental Floss magazine. She doesn't listen to the podcast, so she'll never hear this. The image is the best bit. Yeah, totally, totally. And then the rest of it's the transcription. And I had no clue when it was coming out. The last I heard from them was months ago when we finalized the picture. And then all of a sudden I got a tweet in the middle of last week or early last week. I guess the subscribers to Mental Floss got it in and said, hey, it's on the front cover. You know, what to say, the number one pen snob in America. That was on the cover. They were much nicer for the title of the article. It was called The Pen Whisperer. So it was fun. It was nice to see. I really didn't have to do anything except take a picture. It was just a transcription of a podcast. But they made it come out good in the magazine and actually just picked up my physical copies today here in Tennessee because they didn't have it at the lame Barnes & Noble in Macon, Georgia. Before I came out of town.

Myke Hurley: Did you get a copy for me?

Joe Crace: I will. Sure. I would like you to. I think I have two more laying around. So, yeah, I'll get you one of them.

Myke Hurley: I would like that.

Joe Crace: Yeah. I'm on it. Do you want me to autograph it for you?

Myke Hurley: Definitely.

Autographs

Joe Crace: How about Joe? Do you want Joe to autograph it for you? He is a gentleman.

Myke Hurley: I would very much love that. I'm happy to. Joe, could you just like autograph like a – well, there's like five by nine photographs of yourself and send one of those to me.

Brad Dowdy: I think I'm all out. There was a bit of a run on those last week via the website and stuff. So, you know, I should be getting a new shipment in the next couple weeks and I'll set one aside for you.

Joe Crace: Thank you very much. That's what you need on the relay site. Headshots. You know, like the – we all need – what are those pictures called? Where you get like a – I had them in the mall. Where you get all dressed up and fancy with your makeup on and your sweet America outfits.

Brad Dowdy: Those pictures that actors have taken that they autograph for restaurants and stick them up behind the cash register.

Joe Crace: Yeah. We need to get on that for the relay shop mic stat.

Myke Hurley: Okay. I can work – we can work on that. We'll get the fulfillment robots in order.

Joe Crace: All right. Cool. Yeah. Glamour shots is what I'm thinking of. Glamour shots. Yeah. Totally. You can wear like a cowboy outfit like chaps and stuff. That'd be sweet. Yeah. All right. So I got a new pen coming, Michael. Have you seen the link to this yet? Yes, I have seen this. We very much talk about. So I have a Shinobi coming from Sean Newton who is now a full-time pen maker. He is – the school year is over. He is now doing pens full-time. And I'd order this one I think back in February. So when we talked about, you know, when we did our custom pens episode, you know, why that it takes these guys and gals several months to get a pen designed and completed for you just because it's a lot of work and they're very busy getting other pens made. So I'm pretty excited about this. What do you think about how it looks?

Myke Hurley: It's stunning.

Joe Crace: Yeah. You like that look?

Myke Hurley: Yeah. The two-tone is really sweet.

TWSBI Menlo

Joe Crace: It was hard for me not to go with – you know, I like the kind of the blue and the red, like my Menlo in the demonstrator style with the transparency. But I've seen some grays that look really sweet and mixing that with a little orange. I thought that would be a pretty cool look. I think I'm going to be real happy with how it turns out. I get back home tomorrow. I anticipate that it will be in my mailbox. So you will definitely see more pictures of it this week and inked up for sure and in use. And Joe, you have a Shinobi in process, in the queue.

Brad Dowdy: In the queue. I think I got an email from Sean about two weeks ago and he told me that it would probably be end of July. Okay. When mine should be ready to come.

Joe Crace: That's not too bad. So what are you getting on it? What's your style? So mine's just an acrylic, like a smoke gray acrylic and then like an orange clear acrylic for these sections. What do you have coming?

Brad Dowdy: I went with the matte black ebonite in which I asked him to take a rod of black ebonite but not polish it. So it still maintains the matte black kind of rough finish. And I'm going to do a two-tone barrel and section with a dark, kind of dark red, even burgundy alumite material. What is that? I think it's a, it's not celluloid. It's a type of acrylic that I think there's companies here that'll make it. They can customize the color because Sean said he didn't have one in that color in stock, but he would talk to his supplier and they were actually going to make a darker red color of alamite, I believe. That's what he said. That's cool. So if you're, if you're in the market for, for a custom pen, you can really, you can really get any color you want. Yeah.

Joe Crace: Yeah. That's not the only custom you have coming. What you have something else that we've talked about on our, our custom pen show, one that I don't own, but it's definitely high on the list for me to look at in the future.

Scriptorium Pens

Brad Dowdy: Well, I also have a Balladeer from Scriptorium pens on order. And for that pen, I chose to go with the Conway Stewart Dartmoor acrylic, which is a really dark brownish, greenish black, marbled acrylic that's been discontinued. It almost actually looks like a celluloid, but it's not.

Joe Crace: Nice. Nice. Now on these, on these two new pens, my Shinobi is clipless. How do you, what's your preferred method of clip, no clip? What's your, what's your design preferences on your custom pens?

Brad Dowdy: Well, because I use my pens for work a lot and I typically have to wear shirts with a pocket in the front or at least a dress shirt with a tie. I tend to go with a clip pen and with a clip because I carry it around. It's just more convenient for me to clip to my shirt. Yeah. But the Shinobi, of course, is going to be clipless. And I do have clipless pens. I just tend to carry, they have to be pens that I can carry in my pocket.

Joe Crace: That's good. We all, we all have reasons we carry the things that we do. Right, Myke? Yeah.

Myke Hurley: Most definitely. Dali, are you going to be eyedropper-ing this Shinobi?

Joe Crace: Yeah, without a doubt.

Myke Hurley: Yeah. I mean, you got to, right?

Joe Crace: Yeah. This is a no doubt one. Like I have a, I have the two Franklin Kristoff Model 20s, the long skinny one, the slip cap ones, and I have a solid black one, which is not see-through, not transparent at all. And then I have the orange one. So the black one, I just throw a converter in there just because I can. And it, honestly, it's easier. But the orange one, it looks ridiculous with the converter in it, to be quite honest. And the Shinobi picks that Sean took with the converter in it actually don't do it justice at all. Right? You take that converter out, it's a way better looking pen. So you see the ink sloshing around in there without a doubt.

Myke Hurley: I'm just looking through Sean's Instagram feed and this is painful. There is some incredible stuff in here.

Joe Crace: Yeah, things you shouldn't do with your wallet in reach, right?

Myke Hurley: Oh, yeah. I mean, this, wow, he makes some incredible pens.

Joe Crace: Now, did you have your wallet in reach when we had liftoff last week? You know, I haven't bought one of these yet. What?

Myke Hurley: I know. It's kind of crazy, right? What's wrong with you? I don't know.

Retro 51 Liftoff

Joe Crace: Okay, you got to explain why because there's not many retrofitters. Retro 51 no-brainers that I've thought about for you. And the Retro 51 liftoff that was just announced, and for those who hadn't seen it, it's a space shuttle. It's a retro space shuttle pen that they launched in a limited edition last week. Limited edition of 500. I thought you'd be first in line. What's up?

Myke Hurley: It's a really good looking one, but I'm not a space guy, really.

Joe Crace: But you're a Retro 51 guy, limited edition guy. I mean, I'm pretty sure they're gone already. I mean, there's only 500 available.

Myke Hurley: They are from Goldspot.

Joe Crace: Yeah. Yeah, so I got the, I mean, I got the, I think I got the shipping notification for mine. I definitely ordered this one. I think this one's stellar looking. Oh, it looks amazing.

Myke Hurley: It really, really does look amazing. I just haven't.

Joe Crace: But you're, well, you're also British. Do y'all even have a space program?

Myke Hurley: Yep.

Joe Crace: Oh, really?

Myke Hurley: Do you not remember the European launch recently? No, no. No, you wouldn't. Not big coverage over here. You Americans.

Joe Crace: You know what? Y'all have those bounce houses that get sucked up by the wind shears, right? And then lift off into space, right?

Myke Hurley: Just because it's getting close to Independence Day, you think that this is okay. Let me tell you something. This is unacceptable. Joe, I'm sorry you have to hear this. He's showing off. Yeah.

Joe Crace: This, this pin is totally acceptable though. I'm a, I'm a big fan of this. And our cohort, Mr. Stephen, Mr. Stephen Hackett was all over this. He, he, when the, when the first sighting of this pin came up, he was, you know, texting me immediately. Where can I get this pin? Because right now he was at the SpaceX launch. He's a big space nerd. He was at the SpaceX, I should say, failed launch yesterday. Or was that this morning? I guess it was yesterday. Um, so yeah, he was, he was all over this pin and I know a lot of people are, and, uh, it, it looks really good. I'm anxious to get this one.

Brad Dowdy: I can see this one selling out in a day.

Joe Crace: Yeah. I don't, people have been asking me where to get them now and I don't know. So if anyone has any, uh, secret stash out there, um, gold spots out of stock.

Myke Hurley: Farney's is out of stock and I've just bought one from penboutique.com, which I've never heard of before.

Joe Crace: Yeah. They're good. They're legit.

Brad Dowdy: They're, they're, they also have very good deals on, um, limited edition inks. They're, they're my, they're my go-to source for limited edition Montblanc inks and stuff like that. All the secrets. The Andersons might get a few of those retro 51s and they typically order a couple, at least a couple of limited editions.

Joe Crace: Cool.

Myke Hurley: Yeah. I just went by Google. I mean, these guys don't have great shipping prices, but hey, ho, it's on the way now.

Joe Crace: That's been tough. I know that came up a lot in the Slack channel this week that, um, the shipping to the UK was, uh, nearly the cost of the pen. Cause these are not expensive pen, which was, what's makes them, uh, you know, very sought after and then, and they sell out real quick.

Myke Hurley: Well, I hope you're happy now. I bought one.

Joe Crace: I think that's a good purchase. I, this just looks like you. I just thought this would be you regardless. Um, of, you know, whether you're, you know, I, I don't know. I just thought, man, Michael, Michael liked this one. And I was, I was very wrong. I'm rarely wrong about your tastes. And, uh, I missed the boat on that one. I will admit. You weren't wrong. Okay.

Myke Hurley: Like I, I like it. I do really like it. I think it's great looking, but I did. I just didn't buy it immediately. And then I was kind of just fine with letting it go.

Joe Crace: Yeah. No, I hear you. I hear you. I still, out of the limited ones that I have, I still use the vintage surf more than any. That's been my favorite retro 51 release.

Myke Hurley: No, I love the, the, uh, the swish basketball.

TWSBI Eco

Joe Crace: Uh, yeah, that's pretty cool. I didn't get that one. I didn't get that one. So what about this new Twisby release? The eco or echo, I guess we're calling, I guess we'll go with eco eco friendly. Um, oh, the Andersons do have it actually.

Myke Hurley: Oh, good. I wish I would have a boy from there. I'll put that in the show notes too.

Joe Crace: All right. Good. So they'll probably have this Twisby eco that's coming out in mid July. What do you think about this, uh, addition to the Twisby line at like a $28 price point? What do you think, Joe?

Brad Dowdy: Well, I think eco stands for economical. I believe as it was originally explained, uh, this, this pen has been in the works for a really long time. Yeah. Like two years, probably at least a year. I'm probably going to pass on it. Yeah. I'm a, I like Twisby and I have a, I have the, one of the orange aluminum five eighties, but I'm, I'm happy with that. And if I buy anything else from Twisby, it will probably be a secondhand micarta or just

Joe Crace: some other nibs for my five 80, which I'll get customized. Did you see, and I just saw this before the show notes came out, they found an extra box of the version two micarta in their warehouse and are offering them through sale, uh, just until they run out of them. I did not. Yeah.

Brad Dowdy: And I will probably buy one tonight and break my, break, break my very publicly self and public self-imposed hiatus.

Joe Crace: Yeah. I won't link that publicly. So, uh, anyone listening now can go check that, uh, check that post. Yeah. A hundred bucks. And they're only through twisby.com and they're only until they have them. They were literally cleaning the warehouse, found a box of them and you know, they had already listed them out of stock. So now they're going to resell these, this last batch with clip or without clip with clip with clip. So these are what the gold clip, gold nib.

Myke Hurley: Well, I'm putting it in the show notes, Joe. So you need to rush as soon as the show's done.

Joe Crace: It gives everyone, uh, it gives everyone a few hours. You know, if you're, if you're listening live now or, or recording live, uh, as you much,

Myke Hurley: um, why Joe, why are you interested in, in the micarta? Just of interest.

Brad Dowdy: Just a unique material. It's a look, it's a look that it's really hard. That's really hard to find on a pen anywhere. I think the only other company that's done a micarta pen is sailor. Sailor had a limited edition micarta pen and it cost a fortune.

Joe Crace: It's a super, it was a king of pens. I think micarta, which is their super high end, probably over a thousand dollars.

Myke Hurley: Cause I don't like the way this pen looks.

Joe Crace: Sure. That I agree with you.

Myke Hurley: It looks like it was put in a box and forgotten about.

Joe Crace: Sure. I, you know, until I used one myself, I didn't realize that how much I liked it. And that was a, I completely agree with you, Myke. And especially since the version ones came with the clip, I went with the clipless one, which is generally, that's why I was asking Joe earlier, you know, does he get clips a lot? Because I usually don't get clips if I have a choice of just a personal preference thing. So when the version two micarta came out and I had been loaned a version one one with the clip, the version two came out with the clip. Not only had I had a chance to use one and found that I like it. Oh, all of a sudden there's one without a clip. Yeah, I'll buy this and like it. Although like a lot of people with micarta, the micarta, TWSBI micarta, it had some feet issues. So I have like permanent stains on my micarta, but I still love the pen because it fits and feels so great.

Brad Dowdy: And I don't know whether the gold clip on the micarta might keep me from springing for this as opposed to just holding out for a clipless one on eBay.

Joe Crace: Yeah. Yeah. It's a bright clip, if you will. It really stands out. It stands out. All right. So this eco, which you're right, economical. The retail price is going to be $28.99. What do you think about this pen, Myke?

Myke Hurley: I'm wondering, so is it eco? Like, do we know the eco is in economical or is it like an eco-friendly pen?

Joe Crace: So that's what Joe was just saying. Yeah, I know. Economical.

Myke Hurley: Do you think, do you know it's that, Joe, or do you think that's what it is?

Brad Dowdy: I remember hearing that somewhere. Just because it's cheaper. It was going to be the economy model for Twizky. Gotcha.

Joe Crace: Yeah. That makes total sense. This is going up against Lamy Safari, right? Right in that price range. This will be in the conversation with the Pilot Metropolitan. I think it looks good. I will absolutely buy one. I mean, it's a piston filler for less than 30 bucks. That's pretty good. You can see they went the economic route on the nib units and feeds. They're not the screw-in units like you get with the 580s and that entire lineup. It looks like a friction fit nib and feed, which is actually kind of cool as being someone who prefers to have like two or three extra nibs for no good reason whatsoever. It looks like they'll be easily swappable and you can probably do some different things with this pen, you know, as you go. So it'll be interesting to see. I think it'll do really well. And I think it looks pretty good. I'd probably go with like a white one.

Myke Hurley: I'm full out down on Twizby again, though. Again? Yeah. Why?

Joe Crace: What are you?

Twizby Mini

Myke Hurley: Another mini broke.

Joe Crace: The same one that was replaced already the first time.

Myke Hurley: Yeah. So I think we're on to our third between the two of us now because I gave her mine and that broke. So we've gone through three of them and she's not like careless. It's just something happens. Like one of the pieces snaps, like either the piston inside breaks or the piece that I don't understand why this keeps breaking. I've had this break on two now. The grip just detaches from the body.

Joe Crace: Hmm. Yeah. Like it does like a full, almost like a clean break. I've seen pictures of that.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. I've had a grip break on a Twizby mini and that's the only Twizby that I've had problems with. Yes. The mini.

Joe Crace: I've had problems with the Micarta.

Myke Hurley: I only had problems on the 540 ROC, but that's because there was a problem in that line of 540s that they fixed. Right. But it was just the cap snapped. Yep. There was like a hairline fracture in the cap, which ended up giving way, but they fixed that for me. But I've had two minis now die to the grip breaking off and I'm not, I'm not keen on, on them at the moment. Yeah.

Joe Crace: So I will never, how should I say this? I, people who really dislike Twizbys because of the quality control issues, it's a totally legit argument. I, I, I'm a huge Twizby fan as you know, but I'm not going to pretend that there's not gobs and gobs of issues with, with the pen. So yeah, there's definitely issues there.

Myke Hurley: I love their products. I do not love their quality.

Joe Crace: Yep. So, um, word in the chat room is that the Micarta, the found, lost and found Micarta box is already sold out. So no Micarta for you.

Joe Crace: Man. Yeah. That was quick. Well, it was probably already sold out before we linked to it, but I, they didn't say how many were in the box that they found. I didn't know, at least not that I saw.

Brad Dowdy: Well, that'll be another thing on my list for the DC show this year.

Joe Crace: Yeah. Yeah. And we're going to talk about that DC pen show. You coming, Myke?

Myke Hurley: This is just sold out. Cause I was on this page a moment ago and now it says the variant is sold out. Please select another. That wasn't there. So somebody bought the last one in our chat room.

Joe Crace: They're going to hold it hostage for Joe. You're going to get an email or a Slack chat here later. Hey, you know that Micarta you were talking about? All right. We got a bunch more to get to and we haven't even scratched the surface with the gentleman stationer. So let's talk about one of our really, really good friends, Michael.

Myke Hurley: That's such a great idea. This week's episode is brought to you by our friends over at Squarespace. You can start building your website today at squarespace.com and use the offer code Inc at checkout. It's going to get you 10% off. Squarespace. Build it beautiful. When it comes to finding a place for yourself on the internet, there is nowhere better than Squarespace. And that comes with both mine and Brad's guarantee to it. We love it. We both use Squarespace for our own projects and we couldn't be happier. I've used Squarespace on various projects in the past. Right now I have MikeHurley.net at Squarespace. Relay's blog and Relay store is at Squarespace as well. And then of course Brad has PenAddict and KnockCo over at Squarespace. And that is because they can give you a site that looks professionally designed and you don't need to worry about any coding or anything like that. No matter what your skill level is, that doesn't matter. Maybe you just don't want to be bothered to do these things. Like you've been doing this stuff forever or maybe you do some of these kinds of things in your day job and you just don't want to have to worry about it. You want a website that's going to look fantastic. It's going to have great, easy to use tools and is always going to stay up. It's going to have state-of-the-art technology and always be secure and stable. This is the stuff that Squarespace can give you. And they are trusted by millions of people around the world and have some of the most respected brands using their platform. All of their templates, all of the beautiful designs that you can have over at Squarespace feature responsive design. This means that basically your site is going to look good on all devices. It's going to look great on mobile phones. It's going to look great on tablets, desktops. It doesn't matter how people are looking at your website. They're going to get a fantastic design throughout. They have 24-7 support with live chat and email. So if you do get stuck with anything or you need any tips or you need any guidance, they have teams located in New York, Dublin and Portland who are there to help you anytime, day or night. I mentioned that both me and Brad both use Squarespace's commerce platform. So we use it at Relay and Notco use it as well. This is basically gives the ability for anybody to add a store to their site. It has inventory information. You can set up shipping information too. It really, really is awesome. And you can basically set everything up and you can sell physical goods and digital goods. They have the cover page where you can build great looking single page websites and just so much more. If you sign up for a year at Squarespace, you'll also get yourself a free domain name and their plans start at just $8 a month. You can start a free trial today by going over to squarespace.com. And when you decide to sign up, make sure that you use the offer code INK to get 10% off your first purchase and also show your support for the Pen Addict podcast. We thank you so much to Squarespace for their help out today and always for supporting us at Relay FM. Squarespace, build it beautiful.

Joe Crace: All right. So JetPens did a really cool article last week. It's a blue-black fountain pen ink comparison. And it's not just like this little comparison. It's like a full-blown chart of swabs of all the blue-black inks they stock. A classification of, you know, is it a neutral blue-black? You know, like a fair mixture of blues and blacks. Does it lean towards a darker black? Does it lean towards a lighter blue? Does it lean towards teal? Does it have various water resistance properties? It's a super, super thorough. And I bring this up, you know, a lot of companies do this and have these great charts, but I'm just, I'm a blue-black ink aficionado. I mean, that's my, that's my wheelhouse. You know, the six pens I'm carrying right now are seven pens. You know, probably five of them have blue-black inks of some variety in here. And this is a really good chart that I hope they do more of. Like they list an ink color. They list what color group it belongs to. I tend to like, looking at the color swabs, I tend to lean towards the neutral color group, which is, you know, your very traditional blue-black inks. Lamy blue-black, Pelican Edelstein Tanzanite, Palich, Erosu Juku Shinkai, Sailor Gentle blue-black. Those are probably four of my favorite blue-blacks right there. So that's definitely my wheelhouse as far as shade goes. And then you can go down to the bottom of the chart and you can check the water resistance. You can check, you know, the tone. You can check, they even have like the price chart in there, you know, based on, you know, how much the ink costs. And I just thought it was a really good, they did a really good job on this one. I haven't seen them dupe very much. And I'm going to put a call out to Elaine at JetPens. And I would like to know why they do not have a public RSS feed for their blog, because I would have seen this sooner if I could get an RSS feed for this. So I guess I'll just have to roll my own. There's plenty of sites that you can roll your own. But I would like an RSS feed of the JetPens blog. So make that happen, Elaine, please.

Joe Crace: So which blue-black are you going to go buy now after reading this, Myke? Or do you need, you need an orange chart. Is that what you need?

Myke Hurley: Yeah, I need different, yeah, that's what I need. Come on, Elaine, an orange chart for me. I'm not a blue-black guy.

Ink Colors

Joe Crace: I think that would be pretty high on the list of charts to make, to be quite honest. Blue-blacks, oranges, and probably reds.

Brad Dowdy: Reds, I would second.

Joe Crace: Yeah, yeah, I think reds would probably be the next up. And then after that, orange would be a pretty short chart. Reds and greens are probably up there pretty highly.

Brad Dowdy: But this is a great comparison with all the different tests and swabs and writing samples that she goes through. And then she goes into an incredible amount of detail on the properties of the various inks.

Joe Crace: Yeah, it's a really, really good chart. So I can't imagine how long this would put together. It would take me forever. So I'm glad that they take the time and effort. And, you know, a lot of the pin companies, pin vendors, you know, put this effort in, you know, for their customers. So when they get all these questions, they can just point them to these pages, right? I mean, it's definitely self-serving. It's, you know, in their best interest as a business to do this. But it shows that they are actually thinking about the community, too, the way they present this information. You know, they're not, like, shouting at you. They're, like, giving you information you can make decisions off of, which I like. All right. We have a pin blog of the week, Myke. And then we're going to get into the Gentleman Stationer goodness. So our pin blog of the week is one that was brand new to me. I stumbled on it in the Field Nuts group on Facebook. It's called FieldNotesColors.com. And what Andy is doing, Andy is going to review every single colors edition, starting with the most recent and working his most recent workshop companion. And then working his way all the way back to the Butcher Orange. He's got one of each. He's going to start. This is a brand new blog. So we'll give him a little push here. And he's going to start doing a review of every single edition. He thinks he'll do about one per month on there to get through the edition and really get into it. But he's already got, like, a ranking up of his favorite Field Notes. And I'm definitely a fan of Andy because his number one is Drink Local, which I'm a massive fan of. And his second favorite is Grass-Stain Green, which is my personal number one. Joe, were you ever a Field Notes guy at all? I don't know that we've even talked about that.

Brad Dowdy: I am a Field Notes guy. I'm not a subscriber, but I use Field Notes all the time. Really just pocket notebooks in general. I started with Night Sky.

Joe Crace: Okay. Cool. Cool. So, yeah. Check this out. Field Notes Colors. Pen Blog of the Week. And good job, Andy. This seems like a weird URL to have, though. I feel like... As it's too close to what the company is? Is that what you're saying?

Myke Hurley: Well, I mean, they have something. They're cool colors. I'm surprised Andy was able to get this URL, is my one thing. But, um...

Joe Crace: I'm not going to lie to you. When I read it, I went, huh.

Myke Hurley: I thought that you'd put a Field Notes URL in there by accident. Sure. I would... Far be it from me to tell people what to do. But if I was Andy, I would just send an email to Field Notes. Just send their way and just make sure they're okay with this.

Joe Crace: Especially now we've spoken about it. Way to go, Myke. Now you've got Andy puckering a little bit.

Myke Hurley: I'm just saying, you know, I want Andy to be... They're very good about this stuff.

Joe Crace: It was available. It was available. It's not Andy's problem. You're a lawyer. Fair use. Fair use, Michael.

Myke Hurley: Okay. Just trying to look out for everyone here. Yep. Did you see that everybody was very happy at Field Notes with your long pairings list that you did last week?

Joe Crace: I did see that. That was pretty funny. And I wonder if Brian is... I think Brian's behind the Field Notes Twitter account. He was dogging me a little bit about my handwriting. You know, he was saying it was nice, but it's like, oh, I would assume he would have something like that. You know? And yeah, I thought that was funny, but they did like it. And Jim tweeted about it as well. So I was very appreciative of that. That was cool.

Brad Dowdy: Well, and I'll just go ahead and insert a little disclaimer there. I'm not an IP lawyer, so I have absolutely no idea whether that constitutes fair use or not. But I'll just throw that out there.

Joe Crace: That was the most lawyerly thing you could have possibly done on this podcast is to disclaim your advice as a lawyer. That's like all lawyers should have that tattoo, right?

Brad Dowdy: This does not constitute legal advice.

Gentleman Stationer

Joe Crace: This does not constitute legal advice. Awesome. I love it. All right. So we're ready to talk about some Gentleman Stationer stuff. You ready for this? All right. Yeah. So Joe Crace, what do you like to be known for?

Joe Crace: That's a loaded question. That was. I had to do that. I had to put you on the spot right out the gate. So as the Gentleman Stationer online, what is the – why did you create this blog?

Brad Dowdy: Honestly, I created it probably just to give myself an excuse to buy more stuff, to buy more pens and paper, and hopefully, if I'm completely honest, to get a little free sample or something thrown my way every once in a while in exchange for doing some reviews. But it's kind of turned into a good experience in the sense that I've met so many great people doing it. I mean the people who write in, the people who tweet at me, the people who I've met through Slack at shows. It's just been a lot of fun. And I think it has ultimately kind of given some structure to what I've done in getting into this hobby, what I've done to my wallet in getting into this hobby, what I've done to my house with all the bins and boxes. And we can talk about that a little bit later. We're definitely talking about that. I'm trying to tone it down a little and maybe streamline things a little bit more. But it's been a pleasant surprise over the past year. It's been quite a journey, quite a ride, but it's been a lot of fun.

Joe Crace: So it really just has been just over a year. You're in a blog. Blogversary. That's a terrible word. I should be sued for that. Don't ever say that word again. How about vidcast?

Myke Hurley: What are you doing, Tony?

Joe Crace: So Joe's anniversary for writing The Gentleman Station was just on June the 2nd. And when I read that, when I was doing research for this podcast, I was like, that can't be right. He's been doing this for like years. I mean, that's how when I read your blog and your voice, and this is before even meeting you at the Atlanta Pen Show in April, I was like, I love how you present things, how you word things, all of your reviews, all of your topics that you talk about, like you've been doing this forever. Honestly, it's just like, you know, just you rolled up, you know, planted the flag, and you were just going to town. It seems to come easy to you. Do you find, I mean, obviously you enjoy doing it, but do you feel like it kind of comes easy to you? Because that's what I see when I read your stuff.

Brad Dowdy: Well, I guess it comes easy in the sense that I've been doing this for a long time, and in the sense that I've always been preaching at people trying to get them to use different pens, as I'm sure we all have. But I had a lot of false starts along the way. I had written some reviews, put some up on FPN, Fountain Pen Network, FP Geeks. There's some of those early reviews floating around out there, which I enjoyed. But, you know, I think I was really looking for a way to get to more people, to see if I could put some stuff out there that more people would want to read. So I decided to go with my own blog. It's a Squarespace blog, which I've been incredibly happy with. It's incredibly easy, and, you know, I couldn't have asked for a better experience. I had a false start with WordPress, but Squarespace has been great.

Myke Hurley: Checks in the post.

Myke Hurley: I also just, whilst I've jumped in now, I'm just going to jump in again, via the ever-amazing Doug Beal in the chat room, who has bugged JetPens, and they have confirmed that they do actually have an RSS feed for their blog at jetpens.com slash blog slash feed.

Joe Crace: I tried to play around and tried to search for it, and I tried to find the right phraseology, and I tried to find the link for it, and I kept failing.

Myke Hurley: I tried slash RSS with a couple of different things, but it's actually slash feed. Nice. Okay. Thank you, JetPens. And they're going to look into an orange ink comparison.

Joe Crace: Live chat room, baby. That's the way to go. So, excuse me. When I met you in Atlanta, it was the first time we'd met, and I think we probably chatted online a few times before that, and said we wanted to make sure to get together in Atlanta. I came to find out that you were kind of an experienced pen show traveler, visitor. You definitely get around more than I do as far as to other regional pen shows, things like that. So tell me about why you're making these journeys, probably even before you started this blog.

Brad Dowdy: Well, I had been to one or two before I'd started the blog. I'd been to D.C. once, and then I had been to the Columbus, Ohio show. The D.C. show I had gone to because it coincided with a work trip. I was in D.C. for work. I saw that the D.C. show was going on that weekend, so I just arranged to stay for an extra day and go and see it. And that show is such an incredible experience that when you go once, your reaction is, how could I not be going to this thing every year? I mean, it's amazing. It's huge. Anything you could possibly want to see is there. And that's really the only one, with the exception of Atlanta, that's really the only one that I've been attending with any regularity for about the past three years. I just arrange a work trip. I have an office up in D.C., so the company that I work for does. And so it's easy to arrange a time to go there, which can coincide with doing some work up in Washington, spend the weekend, visit friends.

Joe Crace: So you're going this year, right?

Brad Dowdy: I will be.

Joe Crace: So I'm going this year, and a bunch of people are going this year that were in Atlanta at the Atlanta Pen Show. Some other people are making the trip to D.C. that we didn't get a chance to meet in Atlanta. So we definitely want to do some kind of meetup, and we'll work on this as it gets closer, try to define something.

Myke Hurley: Stop trying to make me jealous over there.

Joe Crace: Oh, we will. I mean, there's no doubt. I fully expect this to be a pretty good Penn Addict meetup and Pen Show something. London to D.C. should be an easy flight, Myke.

Myke Hurley: I'm just looking at when it is.

Joe Crace: 16th of August, I think. 13th to 16th. Yeah, something that sounds rightish, yeah.

Brad Dowdy: It runs Thursday to Sunday. It's a full four days.

Joe Crace: Yes. So Jeff and I are arriving Thursday and leaving Monday morning. When are you getting there? Probably Friday morning and coming back Sunday night. Okay. So, yeah, we'll do something. We'll definitely have some meetups, have some stuff scheduled. And something you put in the show notes that you wanted to talk about because it came up in the Penn Addict Slack room is that it's gotten around now that Bung Box is going to be there. And just to clarify a little bit, the lady whose name escapes me that owns Bung Box, she will be attending the show. Bung Box will not have a table at the show. So, I know this because we're working, Jeff and I are working for Van Ness Pens on Saturday and Sunday who sells all the Bung Box inks. And now that it's kind of out there, you know, that's pretty much what's happening. But she's going to be there attending the show. So, that should be super cool.

Joe Crace: When you go to a show like DC, besides the Twizby Micarta, do you have like an idea of what you are looking for? Because from the Atlanta Penn show until now, you know, I've really kind of fit in like all the purchases I've wanted to make recently. And if I started to make a list for DC, it would be blank essentially. I don't have any like, I need to hunt this down. I'll just kind of let it come to me if I see something great. What do you do heading into like this show? Because it's a big show.

Brad Dowdy: It's a big show and it is really easy to get carried away and bankrupt yourself over the course of four days. But, you know, I try to set a budget up front. Normally, I have one or two things on my list that I absolutely want to go see. Not necessarily that I want to buy because as always happens, a lot of times I'll go and I'll see something there and realize that it's not at all what I expected it to be. Sure. And I end up not buying it. So, I normally go there with, you know, a budget. One or two things that I'm really interested in. And then just kind of let it happen.

Joe Crace: Yeah. I think if I'm going to list out anything, it would be a general term. I'm going to look for some pilot vintage stuff because you're just not going to find. This is one show where people actually travel from around the world to get to as opposed to Atlanta, which is more contained as far as who's going to show up.

Brad Dowdy: And this is a good show for modern pens too as opposed to vintage. A lot of the pen shows around the country other than DC and LA. And, you know, there was a fair amount of modern stuff in Atlanta too this year, but DC really is, I don't know, I would say 60-40. Vintage versus modern. That's good.

Joe Crace: I would say that's a good mix and abnormally high than, you know, more so than, you know, what you would experience in Atlanta. But I think, let's talk about the vintage thing for a second because a lot of people always ask about vintage pens or vintage pens versus modern. And I've always said in the past that, you know, I'm a fan of vintage pens, but that's not something I'm going to buy online. That's something I want to touch, hold, talk to the person who restored it. And at a pen show, that's kind of the key thing, you know, if you're looking for anything vintage. Like, you're a fan and looking on your blog, you're a fan of a lot of Parker stuff. Like, your Vacumatics, I've just seen pictures of, they look beautiful. They look like really nice specimens of the Vacumatic, if you will, and the Parker 51s as well. They're really nice. So what's your take, like, when you're shopping for vintage and how you're going about purchasing these things and adding them to your collection?

Brad Dowdy: When I'm looking at vintage stuff, I mean, I typically look at vintage stuff from the perspective of a user. If I'm going to buy a pen and spend $150, $200 on a pen, I want to be able to use it. I'm past the point where I'm going to buy something simply for the sake of collecting and letting it sit in the box and not use it at all. But Brad and I are looking at the chat room. I do not have a fishing vest. I do not wear one of those pen show fishing vests. Myke, do you have a pen show fishing vest?

Myke Hurley: No, but I feel like I need one.

Joe Crace: Yeah. You know, totally in Atlanta next year, we're going to get everyone pen show fishing vests and just walk around.

Myke Hurley: Is this something that I've missed? I don't understand.

Joe Crace: Yeah. When you see a lot of the old guys that do, most of the, a lot of the repair guys, like you see those fly fishing vests that have like eight pockets on the front, right? And they're just loaded to bear with, you know, all their fountain pen goodness. And it's just like, you know, 30 pounds worth of gear strapped to the front of their chest.

Brad Dowdy: If you go on any of the forums, like a lot of times, a fountain pen network or FP geeks will have show write-ups by people who take pictures and have gone to a show and write summaries. And without exception, there's always some comment from some very confused person who just can't get over what's with the fishing vests.

Joe Crace: It's pretty amazing. Yeah. So we'll have to find you some fishing vest, fishing vest pictures. But yeah, we got sidetracked there, but that was, that was too good, too good to pass up. But out of your, your personal collection, do you, do you think you skew towards modern? Do you skew towards vintage or do you just skew towards what you like?

Brad Dowdy: Probably more towards just what I like, which as of recently has been more modern. The vintage stuff, you know, the Vacumatic is a great pen. The Parker 51 is a great pen. And they're great pens from the perspective of bearing the test of time well. They carry the years well. You know, they're, they're simple pens. They don't have a whole lot of moving parts. So there's not that much to break. And at least with the Vacumatic and the, and the 51, now there are some manufacturers out there who are actually manufacturing replacement parts for these pens so that you can fix them.

Joe Crace: I believe that Andersen's bought one of the Vacumatic companies a year or two ago that made us some small part or something like that.

Brad Dowdy: I think that was Snorkel for the Snorkel, the Snorkel Solutions. And the Snorkel's another great vintage pen. Yeah, that's what I want. That's a lot, that's actually a lot of fun to work on by yourself. It's not an incredibly complicated repair. But, you know, some, some pens, older Schafers, some pens made out of older celluloids can be very brittle. And you can't use them in the same way that you can use a modern pen or some of the sturdier vintage stuff. You can't carry it with you. You can't put it in your pocket without running the risk of it getting scratched up or broken. And that's something I just kind of want to avoid. I've had some of those pens. And at the end of the day, it's not worth the headache of worrying about it. I don't, I don't want to worry that I'm going to break it by taking it with me to work and dropping it on the, on the carpet. Right. Right. Which is something you do really have to be legitimately concerned about.

Joe Crace: Oh, totally. I've shot ink across the table. Um, as I reminded myself in the mental floss article, I did that with a Parker Vack and Rohr and Klingner alt gold groon across a table in a conference room. Uh, one day during a meeting, it was pretty cool. I don't think anyone saw me, but, uh, my hands were green. I didn't. I think I just kind of rolled the notebook over it and just kind of swiped it with my hand and, and got it off the table. And, you know, people were paying attention to, uh, to what they should have been paying attention to. How did it not look like a big smear or something? You know, it's those, I don't know, polyurethane plastic conference tables. You know, they don't, they don't really hold ink very well. They're, they're made to clean everybody's germs off, you know, when you're done. So yeah, they reject ink. All right. I want to, I want to talk more about ink. I have a very important ink question to ask Joe, and then we're going to get into, uh, a more serious topic and one I really want to, uh, to discuss. So, uh, why don't you talk about a seriously awesome pen company that is our second sponsor for today.

Myke Hurley: This week's episode of the pen addicts is brought to you by our friends over at Karis Customs. They are an awesome pen maker based in Mesa, Arizona. All of their stuff is made in their shop and they are proud to be based in the U.S. of A, which is super important for something I'm going to tell you about in a moment. Karis Customs make fantastic products. They make the render K, they make the ink, they make the bolt and the retract, which you can now get in gorgeous two-tone colors as well, which look fantastic. You will have seen these pens all over the internet because they look incredible. They make them out of great materials, aluminium, brass or copper. You can choose the materials that you like the look of the most. The ones that, you know, that you feel have the right balance and weight and texture for you. They have three great choices that you can make. They do some awesome colors as well that you can choose from as well. And, you know, with some of their pens, with the ink, for example, you can also choose what you want the grip section to be made out of. And you can end up with some really cool combinations as well, which we've spoken about a bunch on this show. So, like, Brad has what's known as the Iron Man, which is the, oh, you can hear him pinging it in there, which is the red with the brass. Is it brass, right? Yeah.

Joe Crace: Brass grip? Yeah, brass section. And, yeah, I actually, it was part of my blog post today on what I've been carrying the most recently. I love this pen. And just the weight, feel, build, the way it writes. And it looks cool on top of that. So, yeah, I love this pen. Huge fan of the ink.

Karas Customs

Myke Hurley: And one of the reasons they are so great and one of the reasons that we love them so much is that Karas Customs stuff is made with quality in mind. They take great care with their materials. They take great care in production. They want to make sure that they can give you the best pen they could possibly do. I'm a huge fan. They make amazing stuff. And I buy everything that they make because I know that it's going to be made by pen addicts like us for pen addicts like us. They have a real connection with their customers over at Karas as well. Dan from Karas Customs is always in our chat room as well when we record. And they're great parts of the Slack community that we have. And just in general, just great parts of the pen addict community. You can get yourself a great 15% off just for listeners of the pen addict if you use the code pen addict at checkout. This is their Independence Day sale, which ends on July 6th. So support a homegrown American business and buy something cool from Karas Customs. Thank you so much to Karas Customs for their support again of this show.

Joe Crace: We love you guys. So I was already a huge fan of Joe and the Gentleman Stationer before this podcast. He's a great guy. We hit it off immediately. But what I didn't know and what makes me love him even further, he's a big fan of the Sailor Gentle Apricot ink, right? I didn't know this. Best orange ink ever. Yeah. What do you think about that, Myke?

Myke Hurley: I don't know that ink very well. I've heard people talk about it, but I don't know if I've ever seen it. I definitely haven't used it.

Joe Crace: Okay. I need to send you a sample because I just got a bottle in from a wonderful reader who was not using it and sent it to me because I had drained my last bottle. It's one of the only ink bottles I've drained completely probably in the past year or two. And I will send you a sample of that because I would be interested to see because I don't think it compares to Fugugaki at all. They're so, so different. Fugugaki is much darker and deeper and Apricot is lighter and is much more shading. Have you hoarded this ink or have you found a suitable replacement?

Brad Dowdy: I only have two bottles of it and I switch inks a lot. It's one thing I'm trying to get better about, just kind of consolidating my ink collection. But I think the other orange ink that I like, which is sort of comparable, it's not quite as vibrant as Yuyake by Hiroshizuku.

Joe Crace: Yeah, I just bought one of those mini bottles of it just so I can try it, but I haven't inked anything up with it. I thought that was actually closer than the Fugugaki, which is super orange, which is a great looking ink. It's just too orange for me.

Brad Dowdy: Apricot has almost a nice golden yellow hue to it. And a couple of the ones that I'd like to try, but I think ultimately might be too expensive for a good general replacement are some of the bung box orange inks.

Joe Crace: I know, I've looked at pictures of those and I'm going to look at that at DC. That's going to be high on my list. And I don't know if the Kobe inks will be there or not. They apparently have a couple of colors that are at least one color that's ballpark in the same realm. I know that would be something to look for. I think it may actually be called Apricot. Okay. You know what? I think you're right. I think you're right, actually. So, yeah, that's one to check out. But people have been on the hunt for this Apricot replacement, and it's so far been a fruitless endeavor. See what I did there?

Myke Hurley: I have nothing to say to you.

Joe Crace: That's professional podcasting. Don't you know that? I really don't think it is.

Joe Crace: That was terrible. And we're all about terrible here. So, yeah, we could almost do a whole podcast on Sailor Apricot, but that would be awfully boring. But one of these days, someone's going to find and come up with a really good replacement. That ink just does things on the paper that no other orange inks do. And it's hard to match, which is sad that they did away with it.

Noodler's Apache Sunset

Brad Dowdy: Well, one other thing to throw out there. Depending on the bottle you get, Noodler's Apache Sunset can look like Apricot.

Joe Crace: Yeah, I love Apache Sunset. That's a really, really great ink. It's a little, if you just picture the terms, it's definitely more fallish flavor. It's got that hint of brown more than the Apricot does. But it shades similarly to the Apricot, and you get those yellows and golds in there, too. It's just a slight, slightly more on the darker side, but it's really, really good. I prefer that over, like, Fuyugaki, too. So I'll have to try the Yuyaki when I get home. It's sitting on my desk, so I want to try that.

Myke Hurley: I don't like the name Apache Sunset because it makes me think of Napalm.

Joe Crace: Hmm. Well, you can get Noodler's Napalm, too. I mean, Dragon's Napalm. Dragon's Napalm. That's, like, intense orange. It's reddish orange, I think. So, yeah, I'm with you. I'm with you on that. I mean, if nothing else, Nathan Tardif can come up with interesting names for his inks. Yeah, like Hall of Darkness, for example. Yeah, he doesn't hesitate to be controversial or throw shade at anyone. When he's coming up with an ink name, which I, you know, I guess I got to give it to him. He seems like an interesting dude. All right. So this is a big topic, and we'll wrap up the show on this. But it's kind of got a lot I want to cover here and a lot to ask both Joe and Myke on. So Joe recently did a post on the Gentleman Stationers about two weeks ago, I guess. It's called Searching and Fearless Inventory. And this is something you see talked about in the pen community a lot to where a lot of us, I say we, the collective we, not just we sitting here. We, as fountain pen users, stationary users, get into this habit, and I thought you put it well, is, you know, we're buying stuff just because we can buy it. And we're not necessarily buying it because we have a specific use case for it. You know, we're buying because we should buy it, right? We feel we're in this community. Someone's released something new, a new ink, a new pencil, a new notebook. We should buy it, or we feel like we should buy it, but should we really? I mean, that's kind of the dilemma a lot of us have a lot of the times.

Brad Dowdy: Well, I think there's a FOMO aspect of it, too, just a fear of missing out on the next big thing. Sure. The next big thing that everybody's crazy about, that everyone's talking about, and that you're not going to get in on it. Yeah, you don't want to miss out. If you don't buy it now, it's going to sell out, or they're going to quit making it. By the time you ever get around to it, you're never going to see it again.

Joe Crace: Raising my hand, guilty as charged here. You guys did it to me, like, 35 minutes ago.

Joe Crace: Now that's just passing the blame, Michael.

Myke Hurley: No, because I didn't, like, it was in the idea, like, I've been trying to calm down some of my purchases recently. So I'm able to let things go a little bit easier when I see them go by, and then you guys just won't stop talking about the Retro 51s, and then I have to go and buy it.

Joe Crace: You know, we have a podcast about pins, right? Say what now? So, Joe, what brought this about, and how are you making changes in what your habits are?

Brad Dowdy: Well, I think what brought it about was that I was sitting at my desk working from home one Friday trying to get something done, and I just found myself getting completely distracted by these piles of pens and paper and bottles of ink and all this other stuff sitting on my desk. I mean, I think I might have had, like, nine or ten inked fountain pens sitting on a tray in front of me, and, you know, I'm trying to write something and put a brief together or a paper together that I had to get out that afternoon, and I, you know, maybe I shouldn't be using this pen. I haven't used this one in about a week. Oh, look at all, what am I going to do about all these pencils I have in this cup? I mean, I bought these three months ago, and I haven't even gone through two of them. It just got very distracting, and, you know, on top of that, you had the stuff that I had purchased but have never gotten around to using that I might have reviewed but ultimately decided it wasn't for me. And as you accumulate more and more of this stuff, it has a weight to it that you're carting it around. You've got to move it out of the way, but there's also a psychological aspect to it where, you know, you've got all this unused stuff sitting around, almost like a full email inbox or a backlog of unread books. At some point, you've almost just kind of got to declare bankruptcy and move forward.

Joe Crace: I thought it was interesting in your post how you kind of, as you were inventorying everything, you were, like, going around the house, and you were, like, taking pictures, and there's, like, you know, you have, like, your desk stuff and stuff here. Then there's stuff on shelves, and then you're, like, finding cabinets where there's, like, ink jammed in the back corner. It gets out of hand really easily if you're not careful or have some kind of, you know, stricter focus on what you're going to actually use as opposed to what you are going to buy. And I, it's hard. I mean, which sounds silly. It's like, just don't buy it, Brad. You know, just stop buying that stuff. And, you know, you do get wrapped up in that missing out thing. And I have tried, I thought it was, it's kind of been telling to me in my personal carrying stuff, stuff that I use the most, how I've, like, actually stripped out a bunch of stuff out of my backpack that I haven't been using. Like, I would max out my backpack because I could, right? And that doesn't mean I should be carrying all that stuff. I'm sure as hell not going to use all that stuff. So I've got it really narrowed down, and I thought my post today was kind of, like, a culmination of that. But if it's short-lived, it kind of defeats the whole purpose. So, like, how are you going to manage this, you know, going forward? Are you doing something, like, specifically to say, okay, my next purchase has to meet X criteria?

Brad Dowdy: I think for now what I'm doing, for a while I've been doing the one-in-one-out on pen purchases. But if I'm going to add a new pen to my collection, I'm going to get rid of something that I haven't been using. And I've been pretty good about that over the past six months to a year. In terms of ink, that's where I'm really going crazy because I like to, you know, I like to change my ink colors. I guess I'm probably more of an ink collector as opposed to a pen collector at this point. And I don't have a crazy amount of ink, you know, crazy being a relative standard in our group of people. I don't have hundreds of bottles like some people out there. Thomas Hall. But I think I'm just going to be more intentional about what I buy, that I have to really, really like it. It has to be something that truly is a limited edition and it has to speak to me. Right. I'm not buying it simply because it's a limited edition that's going to be scarce and I'm going to want to be able to say that I have a bottle of it.

Limited Editions

Joe Crace: Right. I think we're on the same page. Like, I'm a huge fan of limited editions, but I purchase them to use them. I don't purchase them to sit on a shelf and say, hey, I have this limited edition. Because I'm never going to sell it. I say that and that's a little extreme, but I don't go into it looking to sell anything that I buy, especially limited edition. I look to use literally everything I buy. And I think I've been pretty good about that. Except now the stack of stuff I need to use has gotten really, really large. And I'm actually, that's money that I've spent that's just sitting there that I haven't used. And it could be sitting there for six months until I get to it kind of thing.

Brad Dowdy: And I think one thing that I'm toying with the idea of just putting everything on autopilot. There are certain things that I like to buy that I know that I will get, which, you know, the Field Notes colors. Sure. The new Palomino, I'm blanking, the Blackwing volumes, which are gorgeous. Yes. Stuff like that. I might just go ahead and subscribe, bite the bullet and subscribe. So I know that I have that stuff coming to me and I don't have to think about it, which kind of will free me up a little bit from the burden of having to make the decision. Oh, is this something that I really want to dive in right now? So, but in terms of ink, I think I'm just going to go cold turkey and use what I've got.

Joe Crace: So have you, I know you've been selling some pens. Have you been selling, do you sell off any ink or you just kind of, you're just going to start plowing through the stash and really, you know, inking up, you know, as many different things as you can as you, as kind of, as you go.

Brad Dowdy: I've sold off some ink. I have a lot of, one thing that I noticed is that I had a lot of similar colors. You know, I had, you know, four or five dusty purple inks.

Joe Crace: Sure.

Brad Dowdy: All of which looked approximately identical to one another.

Joe Crace: Yeah.

Brad Dowdy: I don't need that many bottles. I chose the two that I liked and sold the rest.

Joe Crace: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Like I'll, I'll get in a fight about, um, like the smallest, uh, change in a blue black ink. And it's like, they're so similar. Any person's not going to, not going to notice this at all. So Myke, let me ask you, do you go through bouts? I don't want to call it buyer's remorse, but just more of a, just why do I need all this stuff? Do, am I justifying this stuff? Am I using the stuff that I'm buying? You know, we, we talk about, we had a whole podcast on stuff not too long ago, and this is still that same kind of, kind of, of topic. And how do you manage it for, for yourself?

Myke Hurley: I have been like this more recently, um, after being, you know, completely, uh, independent with income. Right? Yes.

Joe Crace: Right, right, right, right.

Myke Hurley: So like, since I, uh, since I became full-time with Relay, I've bought way less pen stuff than ever before. Just because I feel like I'm just trying to be a bit more reserved. And so like, I didn't make any large purchases until the pen show. I don't have any intention of making any large purchases for a while. Um, like for example, I've, I have continued to use every single day, this Colt pens, mechanical pencil.

Joe Crace: Yeah. You keep telling me that, um, you know, when we're just chatting, you know, on Twitter or instant messaging or in Slack or something, you love that thing. That's awesome. I love hearing that.

Myke Hurley: Like I use it every single day and I love it, which is making me now want to try mechanical pencils, like in a more serious way. Yeah. Right. But like, I felt this way for like three weeks and I still haven't bought the Rotaring that I want. Sure. But I know I want, I know exactly what I want. Right. I want to get a Rotaring 600. Right. That's what I want. I've looked at them. I can see, I could have one here like within the next couple of days. Right. Uh, and it's like 23 pounds to get one from Colt pens, but I'm just not doing it yet.

Joe Crace: Right. Right. Yeah. I mean, I think buying with intentions, you know, what Joe said, and you actually kind of mentioned it there in, in passing. I think that's kind of the focus. And as much as we all like stuff, I mean, I'm guiltier than anyone because not only do I buy stuff for me, I get stuff just from vendors and, and companies and things like that, that I just have stacks of and have to go through. So I have stuff on top of stuff and, you know, it gets, it gets hard to manage sometimes. But, you know, I think, you know, as long as you're focusing on use and actually using the products that, that you're purchasing and, you know, that you're falling in love with and sharing with your friends and, you know, getting behind a hundred percent, you know, using them, you know, give them away to people. You know, that's the kind of stuff that I think is important. And, you know, you don't want anyone to ever like go crazy and, and like their credit card on fire, you know, with all these purchases and have to declare bankruptcy, stationary bankruptcy. You don't want that to happen. You know, if you have one pen, you love and one piece of paper that you love, that's all you need.

Myke Hurley: Like, I have no intention of stopping buying this stuff because it's one of the things that I love. I'm just, you know, there was a time where I was just buying, just buying stuff. Like, but now like fountain pen wise, I have a really great selection.

Myke Hurley: Like a really great selection. The only thing that I collect is retro 51s and it's not, and purposely it's not an exhaustive collection. I, I buy the designs that I like the look of and I'm happy to own as many as I decide to own, but I have no intention of buying all of them. I let many of them go.

Joe Crace: Right. And that's a reasonably priced pen. You know, you're not collecting, you know, thousand dollar pens all of a sudden and you're like, how am I going to pay for this? And, you know, your girlfriend's beating you over the head with your unused fountain pens. Exactly.

Myke Hurley: So I'm just making, you know, I'm just trying to make, like, I'm really happy with my fountain pen stuff right now. I have no intention of buying more. But, you know, the only thing that I would maybe get right now would be like a custom. But the reason I'm doing that is because it's the most expensive option available, right? Sure. Buying custom stuff. So I'm just holding off for a bit. Okay.

Joe Crace: Yeah, I'm with you. I, you know, I think we're, I think we call all kind of understand the ins and outs of it, but it's a good topic to refresh very frequently. I think because, you know, as soon as you write this post, Joe, or as soon as I make this declaration that I'm limiting to myself, all of a sudden there's something new and shiny out that's tempting you, right? And, you know, you got to see where that fits in the grand scheme of things. And, you know, I think it's something good to look at.

Brad Dowdy: Well, once you start looking for, once you stop looking at new stuff, at least for a time, you also get a greater appreciation for the stuff that you already have. And, you know, sometimes it's just fun to go shopping and you're, to, you know, metaphorically go shopping in your own ink cabinet. Yep. You can find an ink that you haven't used in a year that you forgot you had. And that's really great.

Joe Crace: And that, that's fun too. I highly recommend that, um, shopping, shopping in your own, uh, in your own cabinet there. That's a, that's a good way to put it because I, I do like to find, I believe it or not, Myke and Joe, I've been on a huge Lamy Safari kick recently. I love that freaking pen and it feels so good to use. And I get so much enjoyment out of that pen, but I bet I hadn't inked up a Safari in well over a year, if not more than that. Um, it's a good pen. So yeah, yeah. Shopping at home is a good way to give you that, uh, rush of, uh, of new item stuff. So, well, I think that's a wrap, man. Uh, Joe, you were awesome. I really appreciate you coming on the show today.

Brad Dowdy: Well, guys, thanks for having me. I've enjoyed it.

Joe Crace: Would you, would you do this again? What my next trip to, uh, Tennessee? Absolutely. Yeah. Myke, you would have him back, right? I mean, he's awesome.

Myke Hurley: With pleasure.

Joe Crace: Yeah. Yeah. He's the man. I'll get that autograph picture as soon as I get him in. All right. All right. We'll work on that. All right, Myke, take us home.

Myke Hurley: If you want to find our show notes on the internet, you can do that by heading over to relay.fm slash pen addict slash 161. If you want to find us online, I am at I Myke I M Y K E on Twitter. Brad is at Dowdyism W D O W D Y I S M. And he is over at pen addict.com. And Joe, could you just spell out your Twitter account for me?

Brad Dowdy: My Twitter account is at vintage gentlemen, V I N T A G E G N T L M N.

Myke Hurley: Yep. I was looking at it right now, but I just wanted you to do it for me because it's, that's a mouthful. But I can see you do. You got to do what you got to do. Ran out of characters. Joe's great work over at gentlemanstationer.com. Thanks again for our sponsors this week, Squarespace and Karis Customs. But most importantly, thank you for listening. We'll be back next time. Until then, say goodbye, guys.

Joe Crace: Goodbye, guys. Good morning, guys.