The Pen Addict 51/transcript

The Pen Addict Podcast Transcript
Episode:	51
Title:	The Things That People Love The Most Are Wrong
Release Date:	April 23rd, 2013
Hosts:	Brad Dowdy Myke Hurley
Guests:	No guests this episode
Additional Information
Official page:	Episode 51
Audio File:	Audio Episode 51
Podcast page:	The Pen Addict 51
Length:	4242 min <br />0.7 h <br /> minutes
Previous Transcript	Next Transcript

Myke Hurley: Hello and welcome to The Pen Addict podcast, a weekly show where we discuss pens, paper, and the analogue tools that you love so dearly. My name is Myke Hurley and I am joined, as always, by my friend and co-host, the master of all of the inky seven C's, Captain Blue Ink Stained Beard himself, Mr. Brad Dowdy.

Brad Dowdy: That's pretty good. I was good with the captain of the inky seven C's, because I'm a huge Blue Ink fan, and you capped it off with the Bluebeard reference, so I'm good with that. That's great. And you know what happened after last week, right, after the big His Bradness Lord of Penmanshire intro? I think I'm still hearing about that. You know, I've been called Lord Brad, His Bradness, The Brad, any other type of name you've heard all week long on Twitter and email and everything, so it's been pretty funny.

Myke Hurley: As funny as that was, and as great as it was, I now, well, a couple of minutes ago, was wishing I'd never done it, because now I feel the bar has been set far too high. Yep. And considering I don't put any thought into this until, like, usually before we record, I'll say to Brad, just give me a minute, and he thinks I'm sorting something, but I'm trying to think of something.

Myke Hurley: So yeah, that tends to be how my brain works at the moment, and I'm paying my own price, I guess.

Check Cashed

Brad Dowdy: That's right. You have written a check, sir, as they say.

Myke Hurley: Yep, that I cannot cash.

Brad Dowdy: Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. But no, that was great, and hey, we'll let you off the hook, because that was an elite intro, and it'll honestly be hard to ever beat, but I mean, really, you can't do better than what you did today. I thought it was fantastic.

Myke Hurley: Oh.

Brad Dowdy: Especially since you just come up with it off the top of your head. I would be sitting here for like an hour trying to come up with something and go, oh, that's terrible. Oh, no. But no.

Myke Hurley: I would love to tell you where my inspiration comes from, but quite frankly, I don't know.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. It's that innate skill that you have, which is why you do your job so well.

Myke Hurley: So what have we got today?

Brad Dowdy: I'm not done sucking up yet.

Myke Hurley: No?

Email Follow Up

Brad Dowdy: No, I'm just kidding. Okay. We got some follow-up topics. I got a lot of good email this week, so I wanted to go a few things. One of the topics that, you know, after the pen show recap episode last week and my blog posts on the pens I picked up, I got a lot of good emails. And one of them stood out, and I thought it was an awesome email, and it was a really very, very helpful email, which is one of the things I enjoy about doing this podcast and writing the blog is I get to learn so much about things that, you know, I'm not completely experienced with, like fountain pens, especially on the vintage side. So, excuse me, the Parker Vacumatic that I bought at the pen show and how I was raving about how, you know, you could see the amber coloration through the stripes in the barrel and how I just thought that was the coolest thing ever. And it looked beautiful. I mean, it really made the pen for me. And I got an email from a guy named Daniel who is very experienced, you know, purchasing vacuumatics. And he said that's actually not a feature that a hardcore vacuumatic collector looks for. That's actually an unwanted result of, you know, ink staying in the barrel too long and discoloring the inside of the barrel.

Myke Hurley: Oh.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, so it's not – but unfortunately, I guess for vacuumatic collectors, that's the norm, right, because it's an, you know, 80-, 90-year-old pen or 70-year-old pen. And you almost aren't going to find one that's clear, and those are the ones that bring in lots of money. Like if it was just a regular stripe one and had kind of a clear, more see-through barrel, the less ambering they are, the more collectible it is. So let me – I'll read you his email real quick just so it kind of makes sense to everyone. It says, you may already know this from your research, so forgive me if I'm telling something you already learned. The amber color you see between the stripes is not something original to the pen but something that comes from age and is very, very common with vacuumatics. Originally, when the pen was new, the area between the stripes would have been clear, allowing for you to see the ink sloshing around inside and letting you know how much ink you have left. But depending on how badly ambered the barrel is, you may still be able to see ink inside when you hold the pen up to the light. And the more heavy the ambering, the stronger a light you'll need to see the ink. The ambering you're seeing is not actually desirable to hardcore vacuumatic collectors. Instead, they're looking for vacs that have remained clear all these years, which is pretty rare. So he says, that said, I agree with you that the amber is pretty cool looking. And as someone who is using the pen rather than putting it in a display case, you didn't worry about it at all. It has no impact on the pen's use. And that's it. So I mean I thought that was a pretty – I was really excited to get that email. It's like, oh, man, that's great information to have, right? I mean it doesn't change what I think about the pen because, to be perfectly honest, I wouldn't have bought it if it didn't have that because it probably wouldn't have looked as cool. And it probably would have been three times as expensive or something like that, right?

Email Feedback

Myke Hurley: I love – I mean looking at this email and reading it through with you, I love how educated our listeners are in these things as well as like you are, for example. And how they have – I mean it just shows like the differing like sort of levels of knowledge that people have about certain types of pen and things like that. But you know lots and lots and lots about pens. There is a reason you are the pen addict. And nobody challenges you on that, right? But Daniel, he knows about this – I mean it's just this very minute detail about one pen from one manufacturer made between certain time periods. That's exactly right. I just think it's awesome.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, it's totally awesome. Like he sent me this email and it's like you'd think that I was disappointed because I was all excited about a pen that's actually – maybe it's considered flawed. I mean not really in the grand scheme of things. And I was actually thrilled to get this email because it was so educational. I actually exchanged several emails with Daniel going, okay, that's fascinating. Tell me more about this and why is this happening and tell me more about this pen. And yeah, he just went on and on. He actually sent me a picture of one that he has that's pretty clear and it looks very different from the pen that I have, which is – it's really cool. And the funniest part is I think I got this email probably about two hours after we posted last week's episode.

Myke Hurley: Amazing.

Brad Dowdy: So he listed – I mean before I had even re-listened or even probably even downloaded last week's episode, I got an email, hey, I just listened to your podcast and let me tell you about this vacuumatic and what you're seeing. I was like, man, this is awesome. So yeah, this is all the time with readers and listeners. I mean I'm constantly learning as we all should be and this is digging into fountain pens and we're going to talk about that more today. This is a whole new venture for me and even though I've been kind of buying them on and off for the past year or so, it's still – I'm a very, very novice fountain pen buyer and collector. So it's great to have someone like Daniel send an email. It's great to make friends with someone like Thomas who has sent me dozens of pens to test out to see what I like and things like that. So it's pretty cool.

Myke Hurley: So I didn't win the vacuumatic that I bid for last week. It went to $107 before shipping and I wasn't willing to go any higher than that really. That was kind of my max. But in a way, I mean I'm kind of pleased now that I didn't win it because it probably wouldn't have looked like yours because I thought that I was – I mean I don't know how this one would look. But I thought that I was going to get a vacuumatic that looked just like yours. I mean and there's a strong chance looking at the – I remember we were saying looking at the images, I couldn't see any ambering. And you were saying you were having trouble like getting a photo of it and stuff. Maybe this is why. But I mean I couldn't see it. Maybe this one had a different color ink in it. I don't know. Many reasons that it could be different. But I would have received it and been let down I think because it wasn't – I mean the whole thing itself is nice. Like I like the little silver like stripes, like flakes I guess in the body. But it was the fact that it had that beautiful amber color that – I mean that me and you love even though, you know, it's maybe wrong. But I guess, Brad, the things that people love the most tend to be the things that are wrong. Right. That is a life lesson that we can take away from the day.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah.

Myke Hurley: Because that's the nice part about it. And I guess in a way you can maybe come away from experience feeling like maybe you have something that is – your pen is unique. There may be many that are like it but yours has a specific level of coloring to it that will change over time as you use it and that's kind of cool. I like that.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. And it changes my opinion zero about the pen. Right. I mean just because, you know, it may not be the desired effect. Like I said, I don't think I would have bought it in any other way. I would – I picked up this pen and it grabbed me and that's what made me fall in love with it. And then, you know, and I'm still just as happy with it the day as I am today as the day I bought it. So it's great. I love the pen. But back to your eBay purchasing, you know, I'm no vintage fountain pen expert. But if you're – I'd say if you're not at a very high knowledge level, it would be hard for me to buy vintage fountain pens on eBay. You know, that's really something you've got to see in person and make sure all the parts are in working order. And, I mean, we're talking that, you know, pens are decades and decades and decades old. So you never know what you're getting unless you can lay your hands on it, you know, on the front end. So that's a hard thing to do. So last week we also talked about – we've talked about a couple weeks in a row now the new – I keep wanting to call it American Tradesman, but it's America the Beautiful field note set. And we discovered last week that the paper density in the new model, in the new version, is greater at 70 pounds than most – I didn't check them all, but most every previous version of the field addicts memo books have been a 50-pound weight paper.

Myke Hurley: You know, you just called them field addicts.

Brad Dowdy: I didn't catch that. I make lots of slip-ups on that. That's a pretty good one. I did the – we had the Pilot 51 for one episode where I was stuck on saying Pilot 51 instead of Parker 51.

Myke Hurley: Oh, that's the worst.

Field Notes Notebooks

Brad Dowdy: So, yeah. The field addict notebooks. Maybe that's a new brand I need to come out with, right?

Myke Hurley: Yeah, I would definitely be up for that.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, I'd probably get sued.

Brad Dowdy: But the field notes notebooks. So I wanted to do some testing on the paper because I told you I wasn't even going to – I wasn't, you know, totally enthralled with this release. And, you know, I've said I wasn't going to open one until I had finished up the current one that I was using. Then I would test it out. But I just got to thinking and I had some time one night this weekend. So I broke one out and tested it with a bunch of fountain pen inks because, you know, most gel and ballpoint and – I don't know. Some of the rollerballs are hit and miss. Most gel and ballpoint inks work fine in field notes. I don't even bother testing them. They're real good on the standard weight paper and things like that. But I wanted to test out this new paper with fountain pens because fountain pens are real hit and miss on the lighter density, thinner 50-pound paper. But they actually work pretty good, especially the finer tips that I like to use. I'm hesitant to use super wide and broad tips, but most people say they still work pretty good too. So I took out my red-blooded memo book that I had been using that I've been carrying around waiting to fill up. And then I took out one of the new America's Beautiful editions and used the same set of pens and same colors, same writing samples, same everything just to kind of get a feel for what the differences were in the page. And I'm going to do a blog post on this. I don't have it done yet, but I wanted to talk about this – go ahead and talk about this since we mentioned it last week.

Brad Dowdy: In the standard paper, you know, most fountain pens you can see through on the back of the page. They don't bleed a lot. Some of the wider nibs do. Like I have a Falcon, a Pilot Falcon, which is a flex – a slightly flex nib, which we'll talk about in future episodes. Because, you know, that one ink bled a little bit because it's putting a little bit more ink on the page. But it didn't really bleed through to the next page. But almost every ink you could see through on the back of the page, right? So like if I was writing with a fountain pen on one page and I was a person who wrote on the back side of the same page I just wrote on the front side of, that wouldn't work good with a fountain pen ink in the standard field notes books. Does that make sense? Like you can see the ink through. It didn't bleed over to the next page. Like there's no color on the following page, right? That page is still intact and I could write on it like normal. But I couldn't write on the back side of the page that I just wrote on. It would look really bad. Every single ink I tried, which, you know, that's kind of to be expected. I mean that's not a bad thing. That's pretty much the expectation with that level of paper. So I took the same pens, ran the same kind of ink tests on the new page. And they don't show through the back hardly at all. I mean they do some. It's more of a shadow instead of a real see-through color. They definitely don't bleed through the page. But I did find that the paper was rather absorbent, if that makes sense. So like if I use the same, my Pilot Custom Heritage, my PO nib, which is the finest fountain pen that I use, which is actually the fountain pen I use regularly in my field notes notebook, the line on the standard version, the 50-pound paper, is finer than I got on the 70-pound density paper because the 70-pound, this particular paper they're using, seemed to absorb the ink more. Does that make sense?

Myke Hurley: That makes sense to me that that would happen just because of obviously my background now, well, not background, but my current work is in printing paper goods. It's one of the things that I do is I create paper mailings for my company. So I've learned that thicker papers, heavier set papers do have a higher absorption for ink. The stronger the paper's stuck, the more ink it will drink.

Brad Dowdy: Yes, exactly. But since it does counteract it a little bit by, say, it did drink more, making my lines wider, there was less show-through on the back because of that thickness, right?

Myke Hurley: Yeah, which makes, you know, because it's being absorbed in the… Right.

Brad Dowdy: So my lines were slightly thicker and the colors were slightly darker, right, because there was more ink. It's a little more saturated. The other interesting thing to note, which I didn't realize before I opened this book, the America is Beautiful edition, that the paper is more of an ivory color. It's an off-white color instead of a regular white notebook. When you put them up to next to each other, it's a stark difference. But I thought it handled fountain pens really well. I think it handled them maybe a little bit better than the standard edition, but it's not some huge difference where it's going to make a big difference where I'm going to say, oh, I really want all my field notes books with this paper. It wasn't a game-changer type of paper, if you will. It is very good. It works well with fountain pens. You actually might be able to use the back side of the page somewhat, depending on the nib and the ink you use, which is obviously another consideration. But I'll write all this up. I haven't had the chance to take photos yet. I just wrote this up this weekend.

Brad Dowdy: But I'll take pictures, and there will be a full blog post on it. I hate talking about things where I can't point to people and show them the results of it, but I thought since we had just spoken about it, I thought I would give you the test results and just kind of some feedback on that because it did pretty well. Well, it's not going to change anything, if you will, put it that way.

Myke Hurley: I find your conclusion interesting because I have a different conclusion in that I hope that every book made from today has paper of this weight because I am a much, much bigger fan of it. I think that it is an excellent paper stock they're using now. And I have found that even with – so basically I was able to use my Twisby with the really heavy ink distribution. It bled through to the other side but not onto the next page, which really surprised me because it was going like clearly through. With previous field notes. So for me, this kind of makes – this makes field notes notebooks for me usable in any circumstance, which I didn't find before because I just felt with fountain pens there could be a bit hit and miss. But I really hope that they continue to use this weight of paper because I'm very, very, very pleased of it.

Book Thickness

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, the only other difference is that it made for a thicker book, right? I mean it's a third to 50% thicker than a standard book that we're used to.

Myke Hurley: I like that though. I think that this is – I think that they feel really nice. That isn't an issue for me.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. I mean it feels very, very high quality.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, I'm indifferent. I'm good either way, really. If they use the thicker paper, I'm fine with that too as long as they go back to graph or dots.

Myke Hurley: I mean I have no problem with – I don't have a problem if they do go back because I've always been happy, but I'm extra happy. But I've got lots of these.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, yeah. So I would like to see this paper maybe used in a future run and see it in a pure white graph or dot format to see. Just because – I mean I don't have to make these caveats every time, but it's all personal preference, right? It's well known that I'm not a lines – I'm not a fan of lines, but line paper. But this one is actually pretty good. I like how it looks, but it's not my favorite Field Notes version at all. A lot of people that are using this are saying this is the best version ever, so that's great. I mean that's – I tell people this all the time. That's why there's more than one manufacturer. That's why there's more than one pen manufacturer. Just because I like a pen doesn't mean you should like a pen or will like a pen. That's why there's lots for us to choose from, and it makes for good discussion.

Myke Hurley: I hope that they use this paper with a dot. That's what I really hope. I like the dot.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, that'd be good. I'm still surprised that they've only done the one dot version and not even – I've talked about it before. They should make a dot stock basic version. We'll see. I'm sure they know better than us what's on their pipeline. So they've probably got a pretty good plan.

Myke Hurley: Anything else?

Website Update

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, one quick thing. Excuse me. Goodness. If people have been to the site since Sunday, the penaddict.com website, they'll notice I made a change to the template and the design of the blog. And I still have some tweaks to make. There's some things I'm not happy with, how they turned out. But I made the changes with one particular reason, for one particular reason, and that is I wanted to make it easier for readers to leave comments on the blog. In the previous template, I didn't have any – I enjoyed the template. I liked the nice, clean look of it. But to leave a comment, you really had to hover over this little – it's really, really tiny, almost like a dot. It's like a comic book text bubble. And people couldn't figure out how to leave comments. I'd get more emails on how do I leave a comment than I would get comments. And so now that I'm starting to do more giveaways and things like that, I wanted to make it easier for people. So I went to a template design that uses just the traditional comment structure that everyone's used to on a blog. They click the word that says comment, and they're able to leave a comment. So I did the redesign quickly, and there's a few things I'm going to change about it. But I do like how it turned out. I am going to make a few tweaks, especially with the image on the header. I'm not thrilled with that. But I wanted to make it easier for people to leave comments on the blog. And I think even before I did the giveaway post, I was already seeing more comments on Monday than I normally did. People just couldn't figure out on that old version how to do it, and there was no way to change out of it. So I made the change really for ease of use for all the readers. And I think it's pretty clear that that worked and it was needed. So that was the change that was in place. So if anyone sees anything weird, definitely let me know. So send me an email or leave a comment, and I'll take a look at it. But there will be a couple minor changes probably over the next week, and then we'll go from there. I'm happy with it overall.

Myke Hurley: Cool. Cool. I like it a lot.

Brad Dowdy: Thank you. I've actually gotten a lot of good feedback on it. I'm personally mixed. I kind of like the old one better, but I think this is better in the long run. And I generally like it. I think I just need to tweak a couple things to be real happy. And you know I'm a fidgeter anyway, so I'll keep messing with it. And the thing about it with Squarespace, I know that's probably coming up here soon, right? That is coming up next. Our ad spot. It took me maybe 30 minutes to make all those changes. It was just ridiculous. That's why I wasn't hesitant to do it because I knew I could do it pretty quickly. And it was really like a 30-minute deal.

Brad Dowdy: So, yeah, there you go. There's my ad for Squarespace.

Myke Hurley: I guess I should do the full ad now, right? Yeah, go for it. Excellent. So let's take a moment to thank our friends over at squarespace.com, who give you absolutely everything you need to make an amazing website. So Brad just mentioned it there. He was able to make some changes to his site very quickly. And we'll talk about that in a little bit more in a second, I think. So with Squarespace, you have absolutely everything that you need to build a website online. That's from templates, so design tools, to page layout tools. You have fantastic hosting. You have excellent support. They have 24-hour, seven-day-a-week customer support who respond in moments to you. They're very, very efficient, and they help with any queries, problems, or issues that you may have. They have great iOS and Android apps that feature their real-time statistics. You can also post to your site on the go if you want to as well. They have Squarespace Commerce, which is the new store system. So you can instantly integrate and accept payments. You can instantly integrate a store into your site, instantly accept payments. And you can sell physical or digital goods. You've got tools like inventory management, order processing. You can host digital files and have them sent electronically via email links and stuff to your customers if you would like. But the themes, which is what Brad was talking about today, they're excellent choices. They're really, really beautiful. And if you like the way that Brad's site looks at the moment, he wouldn't have had to have done much tweaking to it at all to get it to look that great. He chooses the image that he wants, chooses some of the colors he wants for his fonts, and he can make font changes and choices there as well. And you can see these at squarespace.com forward slash templates if you want to take a look. And they have some live demos as well, so you can see what the sites look like with those templates.

Myke Hurley: But you can sign up for a free trial and find out more so you can have a real play around and see if Squarespace is right for you. Go to squarespace.com forward slash 70 decibels. Squarespace plans start at $10 a month for the standard plan and $20 a month for the unlimited plan. If you sign up for a year up front, you'll get 20% off. If you sign up for two years up front, you'll get 25% off. And if you use the code 70 decibels and the number four at checkout, you'll get an additional 10% off your first order. So go check out Squarespace, everything you need to make an amazing website. So what else did you want to talk about today, Brad?

Pen Purchases

Brad Dowdy: I want to talk about something that I've been thinking about for several months now and didn't really know how to put it into words. I knew there were some changes in my pen collecting and pen buying and purchasing habits and finding different things that I like and stepping away from a few other different things that I didn't use frequently. And I knew there was kind of a change going on. And we've talked about it, how I've gotten more into fountain pens and things like that. But I never really put it into words or anything like that. Then I got an email from a guy named Phillip who I've exchanged emails with Phillip probably two years now, very frequently, probably a couple times a month at least, if not more than that. So Phillip and I have a lot of the same likes and tastes in pens. And it started, just to give you a little background, Phillip was really into, I think, the real super fine gel ink Japanese pens like the Hitec C and things like that. And then he kind of morphed into a more fountain pen type of writing implements around the same time I did. So let me read you this quick email real quick. It's pretty short, but it really captured kind of where I'm at now with my whole arsenal of pens I've got going. So Phillip says, I see that you have reached the status of collector. Back a year ago, we were just about to buy our vanishing points. You specifically stated multiple times that you didn't want to buy a bunch of fountain pens and not use them. But with the quantity you now possess, I can see that you can't possibly have all the weapons that are in your artillery inked up at once. I have found that I can barely get through a single converter's worth of ink, much less in the six pens that I have inked up at present with a stealth on the way to boot. That's the Edison Beaumont stealth that was released last week. I have found that I either need to accept the status of a collector, in which case I would likely start looking at vintage, or stop buying fountain pens, which is not likely. So I thought that really summed up a lot of things I've been thinking about recently myself.

Brad Dowdy: I'm never going to stop buying pens, right? But as I've kind of made a transition, someone even sent me an email or sent me a tweet, I think last week, where they were reading one of my posts. I forget even what pen it was, the one from several years ago saying, I'm no fan of fountain pens, things like that. I used to make statements like that all the time because I really didn't get it. I never really got fountain pens and how fun they could be, how much variation you could get, how wide of scope that the market of fountain pens covers, the things you can do with them. I mean, it's really unlimited. Until I really got in there and started playing around, I didn't realize how fun it was. And now I've obviously got the bug. And he sent me this email right after the Atlanta pen show where he saw the different types of pens I bought, which in the past, I would have never bought anything like that. So it's an interesting transition, but I'm also finding that with fountain pens, I'm having that issue where he mentioned is how do you use them all at once? Do I just, do I accept the fact that I'm now a collector of fountain pens and I don't have to use them all? You know, I can buy some vintage fountain pens and not have them inked up and have them set to the side in a pen case or a display case or anywhere, you know, just hold up in the closet. But I own them now. Or do, am I doing these pens a disservice by buying them and not putting them into use? I guess it's kind of the thing, right? So that's kind of a hard transition I'm trying to make right now is to, I almost feel I've bought so many fountain pens probably in the past just four months, maybe five months, that I'm having a hard time using them all. And I'm trying to figure out a system to where, you know, number one, stop feeling guilty if I've bought a pen and I'm not using it, right? So that's one of the feelings that I go through. And then secondly, you know, really narrowing down to like, okay, here's my core group of, you know, maybe four pens that I like to have inked up and ready to go at all times just because that's what I'm using the most. So I don't have a system down for this, but what I've found myself doing even before Philip sent this email is right now I've got 10 fountain pens inked up, which seems pretty crazy even to me because I can't possibly use that many regularly enough to, you know, not let them, you know, the nib get dried out or the ink, something go wrong with the ink or things like that. So what I've started to do is I switched out pen cases temporarily to one that I can carry eight pens in. And I've been cycling through, I had more pens inked up than the 10, I'll tell you that at first. So I cleaned the ones I knew I didn't use, cleaned them and stored them away. There was no sense in having these inked. So now I've taken this pen case where I can fit eight pens in it and I'm just taking that case with me. You know, when I go to work or at home, when I'm writing at home, I'll have that case with me and I grab the pens that I want to use and that I'm getting the most enjoyment out of. And then, you know, at the end of the week, if it's been a week since I haven't used one of those pens, that pen comes out, it gets cleaned and it gets stored until I get some bug to want to use that pen again. And I'm going through this process now. I really want to get it down to about four pens that I use regularly.

Brad Dowdy: That's going to be really hard, by the way, since I just bought four brand new pens that I'm loving and just got a fifth one this week. So it's just kind of been a process. I don't want to have all these pens inked up, but I want to have the best ones that I use most frequently inked up and then use the other ones as I see fit. You know, if I need to go try a different ink in another pen, you know, load one of those up, things like that. So it's just kind of, you know, it's an interesting transition over the past year. And I'm still learning things about what I like as far as fountain pens go. And, you know, the reason I want to get it down to something like four or less is because I still use a lot of other pens. Like I use a lot of high tech C's. I use a lot of Jetstream. So I'm not using a fountain pen all the time. So having eight or ten pens inked up seems just kind of silly to me. So I don't know what your setup's like. I don't think you keep near as many, you know, fountain pens inked up and you carry some rollerballs with you and things like that. So, I mean, do you have any thoughts on this or have you had any kind of change in how you've looked at what you carry and what you're regularly using, you know, over the past year or since we've been doing this podcast?

Myke Hurley: I think your assumptions are pretty much dead on for me. With fountain pens, I will typically have one fountain pen that is in use. So, like at the moment, it's my TWSBI ROC. And then maybe that would change. I mean, before it was the TWSBI, the regular 540. Yeah. Yeah, the 540. I was using that before. Before that was my retro Tornado fountain pen. Simply because it's just for me that I don't want to leave them with ink in for too long, really. Right. And where I do most of my pen usage, where I write the most is probably the best way to say it rather than my pen usage, is it works. And I don't like to take my favourite pens to and from work a lot. I like to keep them in one place.

Myke Hurley: And I think this is just because I just don't want them to get damaged. I don't want to have any explosions. So if I can limit that by doing that, then I do. And also, you know, you're right, Brad. I love fountain pens. Fountain pens are my primary. But for me, I feel like I only need to use one at a time. Because typically, I mean, it's changed recently. But I have very similar nib sizes that I use. I don't use lots of different inks. I only have one ink that I use, unless I'm using a cartridge pen. And I don't really see that changing too much in the near future. Because I'm really happy with this ink. Like the Konpeki Hiroshisoku. I'm very happy with it. I don't have any need to want to change that. So I don't feel like I need to have multiple fountain pens in use for different ink colours. But, you know, for me, if I don't want to use my RSC at the moment, it's because I don't want to use a fountain pen. So then I will go to something else. Which is typically a Retro Tornado.

Myke Hurley: The Rollable? Mm-hmm. Yeah. So that's kind of me. I mean, and then I, you know, I am definitely much more of the collector than the person who buys and uses. I think I'm probably even more a collector, even though my collection isn't as large, than you are. Right, right. I'm more inclined. Go ahead. Sorry, I'm more inclined to buy something, ink it, see how it performs, be impressed, but not super impressed that it takes the number one spot, and then put it in the pen cup. Mm-hmm. And then come back to it maybe one day, but, you know, and you never know.

Brad Dowdy: Right. See, I've always had a theory, and it may be more of a hang-up than a theory, that I don't want to make a purchase of a pen that I'm not going to use. And I think that's changed pretty drastically recently, but I think I'm still kind of hanging on to that, you know, which is the reason why I've got 10 fountain pens inked up at the time. But I'm also, unlike you, I'm testing out different inks, different nib sizes. You know, I want to be able to discuss, you know, the differences between, you know, a 1.1-millimeter stub and a 1.5-millimeter stub and, you know, a different pen that I've got, you know, ground down to a 0.2-millimeter tip and, you know, how does that handle different inks. So I am mixing and matching, excuse me, mixing and matching things, you know, more than you just to, you know, to learn about it and to be able to discuss them and to be able to write about them, which, and believe me, that's no struggle. That's totally fun for me. You know, I enjoy doing it, which, I mean, I guess that's the key, you know. It doesn't matter what I do as long as I enjoy doing it, right? So if I'm happy with 10 pens inked up and, you know, using one a day for, you know, the next 10 days, you know, that's what I'm going to do until that system, you know, stops working for me. You know, I'm going to keep doing it. But I do want to pair. I don't like carrying around that many pens, really, kind of like you. You know, I use most of my pens at work like you do. My commute's not as difficult as yours as to where, you know, my pens might be jostled around or banged around or, you know, spend so much time in a backpack. It's a lot shorter and calmer commute. And so I don't worry about moving. I carry my pens in my backpack every day, you know, from home to work and back every day. And I've had no issues doing that. But I still want to pare it down just because I just want to have a tighter group of pens that I use on a daily basis. And then I almost need to have like a secondary group of pens that's kind of like a test group of pens. You know, like if I'm actively working on something for the blog and I need to give the other pens that I use, you know, a good workout before I review them or things like that, that's almost like a secondary thing. That almost doesn't count into like my daily use things. That's a completely, almost a completely separate deal, if that makes sense. So it's an interesting conversation. And I hate to say struggle with it because it's not a struggle. It's totally fun. But I do, I have gotten to thinking, especially over the past few weeks now that I've had, when you add, when you use fountain pens and you add four new fountain pens into that rotation, that's an enormous amount of change into a pen arsenal. Unlike, you know, people wouldn't hesitate to buy 10 Pilot High Tech Seeds in different colors, right? But just adding four fountain pens into my arsenal completely changed everything as far as how often I get to use a fountain pen. So it's, it's, it's been a fun challenge trying to figure out what my favorites are and how do I keep those favorites with me at all times and inked up and ready to go. And, and do I just clean and, and store some of the ones that I don't use as frequently? And, and you know what, that's okay too. And, you know, I'm not going to feel guilty that I've taken my vacuumatic out and cleaned it and stored it just because I didn't use it as work at work as much as I do. I still absolutely love the pen, but you know, it's just not in the heavy rotation for me, but I'm super glad to have it. So I guess that makes me a collector.

Brad Dowdy: So that's, that's it. It's something I think about a lot and, and it's always changing. I do know that.

Brad Dowdy: Sorry, because I already got a new pen that, that I mentioned slightly before that we're going to have to talk about maybe next week if I get, get some more time with it. So the, when you're, when you're done with this episode, go look up the, the pilot Falcon and, and see what you, see what you think about that. And maybe we'll talk about it next week. We'll, we'll, we'll leave it with that little tease.

Myke Hurley: Oh, blimey.

New Product

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. Oh, speaking of teases, one more thing before we go. I wasn't, I was a bad boy on Twitter and put out a tease earlier this week. I don't know. Was it this weekend? Maybe I said something I'm using two products now that total probably in price total less than $6 and I'm in love with them both.

Myke Hurley: Yeah.

Brad Dowdy: And yeah, so hopefully, hopefully I'm going to get, hopefully those will be up later this week, but I will let everyone know. I just can't mention it until they're, I can't mention them yet, but I mean, I don't want to get everyone all crazy. Ooh, ah, I mean, it's, it's obviously very, very low price pen, but it's something different. It's basically, it's something that caught me off guard that I didn't expect coming that, that has been done very well. So stay tuned for that on the blog later this week. And we'll probably talk about that. Hopefully, hopefully I'll be able to post them this week and we'll talk about them next week on the show. Cause it's, it's pretty cool.

Myke Hurley: Cool. Sounds good. So, uh, you can find Brad online. He's penaddict.com and, uh, at dowdy, D O W D Y on app.net and dowdyism on Twitter. D O W D Y I S M. I am. I Myke. I am Y K E. Uh, thank you very much for listening to this week's episode of the pen addict. Um, until next time. Bye. Bye. Bye.