The Pen Addict 12/transcript

The Pen Addict Podcast Transcript
Episode:	12
Title:	Houston, We Have A Fountain Pen Problem
Release Date:	May 3rd, 2012
Hosts:	Brad Dowdy Myke Hurley
Guests:	No guests this episode
Additional Information
Official page:	Episode 12
Audio File:	Audio Episode 12
Podcast page:	The Pen Addict 12
Length:	3535 min <br />0.583 h <br /> minutes
Previous Transcript	Next Transcript

Myke Hurley: Hello and welcome to The Pen Addict podcast, your weekly show where we discuss pens and paper and the analogue tools that you love so dearly. My name is Michael Hurley and I'm joined as always by my good friend and the pen addict himself, Mr. Brad Dowdy. Hello buddy, how are you?

Brad Dowdy: Good sir, how are you doing?

Myke Hurley: Very well, very well. And this episode is brought to you by Squarespace and we'll talk about Squarespace a little later on in the show.

Brad Dowdy: Yes sir.

Myke Hurley: So Brad, how's things?

Brad Dowdy: It's going very good. You should have introduced me as the non-jet-lagged member of this podcast as opposed to you, who is still batting a little bit.

Myke Hurley: I got back from the States a couple of days ago and I've not been sleeping that well. I thought I'd beaten it by staying awake, you know, like not sleeping. If I just stay awake until like 10 o'clock the day after, like yesterday, the day before yesterday, I'll be fine. Then I woke up, I had the day off work yesterday. I woke up at a nice time, you know, I had a good sleep. So I thought, right, I've beat it. And last night I didn't fall asleep until 3am. So I haven't beaten it, not yet. We'll see what happens this evening.

New Purchases

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. Yeah. Well, good luck with that. Well, I was a, I was a busy boy while you were gone. Um, you know, I've, uh, what picked up a couple of new pins. One we talked about, I think on our last episode, uh, we kind of mentioned it in passing and I've been peppered on Twitter ever since. Are you going to review it? Are you going to review it? And that's the, uh, the, the TWSBI Diamond 540 fountain pen that I ordered. Um, you familiar with this brand? Other than us just kind of mentioning it in the past?

Myke Hurley: I'd never heard of them until you mentioned them a couple of weeks ago.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. And, uh, I, I've never seen one in person, so I was pretty anxious to get it because the, the price point's pretty, um, reasonable. I think I paid $55 for mine, um, for something that's, seems to be so far in, in my, my first go around with it is seems to be very well made. It's very good looking. I'm a, I'm a big fan of the, uh, the pins you can see through that, the translucent, lucent barrel in the, in the fountain pen world. It's called a demonstrator because I guess it's the, the theory is you're demonstrating the inner workings of the pin. Um, you can see the ink, you can see the, the refill mechanism, which in this case is a plunger that's built in. Um, I, I've never had a pin like this at all. So I was kind of, uh, excited to get it. Um, I've had a few people on Twitter keep asking me, when are you going to review it? When are you going to review it? Well, I need some time with this one. Um, I've had, uh, good experiences with it so far. Um, I haven't had great experiences with it so far. Um, that that's not a knock on it. I think I just need some more time. I'm having some weird, um, you know, one of the things we might talk about later if we get to it today. If not, we'll do it another episode is how to store your fountain pens. And I came home to find this. I just had this pen laying horizontally on my desk. I came home to find it, um, with like a little pool of ink in the tip area of the cap. Like it doesn't sound good. Yeah. So the cap screws on, right. And you know, I probably hadn't used it for a day or two and I picked it up. And since it's a clear barrel, well, this, this is a red, white, and blue, uh, barrel, but it's, it's still, I can see through the red, um, cap, um, it's still translucent. I saw this kind of black looking blob there and I couldn't figure out what it was. And I finally unscrewed it and, uh, and it actually rolled around inside the cap there. I was like, that's a big old blob of ink. And it was, it was kind of, it was more large than just like a speck of ink. I, I'm going to chalk it up as a one-off experience. You know, maybe I jostled the pen wrong. You know, I certainly didn't drop it, but maybe I moved it wrong, banged it somehow on the table or whatever and caused it. Ever since I've cleaned it out, it hasn't happened again, but, um, it's something I want to keep an eye on, um, just from a storage perspective. And like I said, maybe we'll talk about later, but this is a, I'm so overall, I'm very happy with the purchase. It's a super quality built pin for the price for, like I said, I think I paid 55 for it.

Myke Hurley: I've got it on the list.

Brad Dowdy: Oh yeah. They're great looking. Um, one of the things I, I was kind of quick draw the, the purchase cause I knew I wanted one and I saw this one and I just went for it. Um, the barrel, I think it's called a faceted barrel. It's like at the diamond kind of, you know, it's not a smooth round barrel, right? It's kind of got a diamond, I won't say carving, but it's just, you know, the, the shape of the barrel, um, is not smooth. Um, I think just from an aesthetic standpoint, I would prefer a smooth barrel, but it's by no means any kind of deal breaker or anything like that. Um, like I said, I'm generally very happy with this, with this pin. And we'll have to see where it slots into the rotation. That's kind of the biggest thing, right? I mean, how much I'm happy I bought it. How much am I going to use it kind of thing? So that's, that's what I'm still trying to figure out.

Myke Hurley: But how are you getting on with the vanishing point?

Brad Dowdy: Oh, I love it. I use it a lot. Yeah. Yeah. Pretty much so. Um, that's the pin I reach for now. Um, you know, it, I'm getting ready to hopefully start a new job here in the next week or two, and I'm going to do my best for that to be my main pin. So that's going to be the real test for it. Um, I haven't reviewed it yet on the pin addict because I felt like my, um, my reviews are pretty consistent style on the pin addict. And I almost feel like that's doing a disservice to this pin. So I think I'm going to kind of take it in stages. I've recorded a video for it. Um, I've done the standard review that I always do on the pin addict for it. I haven't posted any of this yet. So look for those in the, in the coming weeks. But I think after that, I think it's going to be kind of, I'm so happy with that pin. I think it's going to be kind of a recurring theme on the blog as far as, you know, how, how I use it on a, on a daily basis, you know, after, you know, three months of, of heavy use, how's it holding up? You know, am I getting tired of filling it from a bottle? Have I, you know, switched over to cartridge and using a syringe to fill the cartridge, that kind of thing. So that, that pin deserves a little more than a whole series. Yeah, I think so. Number one, uh, it's, I paid a lot for that pin. So it, it deserves more than just the standard, uh, you know, one-off written, um, written review, which I'm going to do that, but I think that's more of a, uh, you know, phase one type of review of that pin. I think, I think it's got a lot to offer and, and I want to put it through the ringer more than I do some of my other pins just because if you're spending that kind of money on a, on a pin, you want it to be well worth it not to, not to sit and collect dust.

Myke Hurley: Makes perfect sense. I've got one sitting in a JetPens basket at the moment and I'm probably going to pull the trigger end of this week, start them next week. Nice. I, I've got no complaints so far with that pin.

Brad Dowdy: I really love it. Actually, I wrote today's show notes out with it. Um, and it's, you know, even if I let it sit for a day or two, it just writes right away. It's smooth. It's really, it's a really smooth nib actually. Um, I don't know. It's, it's, it's for me, it's a really good pen, uh, for what I look for in a pin and how I want to use a pin.

Myke Hurley: It fits me very well. See, I'm going to, um, I'm probably as well, I'm definitely going to get the expensive shipping on it as well from JetPens. Yeah. Just to be able to track it. I mean, and even then, even with like the $40 shipping, it's still cheaper for me to buy it from JetPens than from a UK supplier.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. That's crazy. Yep. Crazy, crazy, crazy. I'm looking forward to it. Yeah. So another pin that I picked up that I haven't really talked about, um, that I'm actually very happy with is called the Sailor Hiace Neo. Um, that's a big, it's, they classify it as a beginner's fountain pen. Um, Sailor makes all kinds of levels of fountain pen and it's a company that's been around for a hundred years and, you know, they're really well known for their nibs. And, um, our friend, Sean Blanc, uh, tweeted me one day, said, Hey, you know, I like the platinum preppy that you guys, that you've, you know, talked about and reviewed, you know, but I want something, you know, maybe a step up from that, but still a real entry level fountain pen. So I said, and he said, you know, should I look at the Sailor or the Lamy? And I actually told him, I said, you should look at the Lamy just because it's a little more flexible as far as your options go. You know, there's more barrel styles. Um, you know, it takes a converter. You can swap out the nibs if you want. It's, it's a more, you have more options with that pen and more flexibility. He replied right back to me. He's like, I don't want any flexibility. I don't care about that. I just want to know which pen writes with the finest line out of, you know, that's still, you know, a reasonably low priced pen. And I said, well, then it's a no brainer. You want the Sailor high ice Neo. This, this pen writes like the pilot Pereira. Um, it's not, the Pereira is really smooth. Um, the Sailor is smooth, but not as smooth as the Pereira, but the Sailor high ice Neo is also about $16. I think while the Pereira runs you upwards of 50. Um, and, and this is a true entry level fountain pen. I mean, it looks like, you know, a student's pen to be honest with you. Um, it's just a standard plastic barrel, um, in one of, I think five or so just, you know, main colors. I got the orange one. Um, I guess I have a thing for orange. I seem to, between my retro 51 and a few other pens, I like orange pens. I guess I like the contrast with the black. Um, and then, uh, an aluminum cap. Um, it, it takes cartridges, but it does also take a converter. I just stuck with the cartridges. I think for this type of pen, I'm not going to get too crazy with it and worry about doing a converter and things like that. Plus I had a, I don't know, six or so extra Sailor cartridges laying around this pen. I love the nib on this pen. It's very firm in a very fine line. Um, I bought the, uh, F nib. Um, and it's actually finer than my vanishing point by just a tick. Um, it writes a thinner line and you, you know, that's what I like. So this pen probably wouldn't be for you, Myke, just because, um, it's, it's super fine. So for all those people, I get a lot of questions. Um, and I've talked about this before. I want to try a fountain pen, but I want it to write as fine as my gel ink pen. Well, the Sailor High Ace Neo. Um, if you want to step up from the Pereira, which, you know, the, the Pereira can, you know, you may not want to take that one out in public. It's not as good looking. It's kind of a, you know, uh, with the translucent barrel and the, the bright colors, it kind of stands out a little bit. This pen just looks, uh, it's a little bit more sleek and classy in its design. And, you know, people wouldn't know you're carrying a fountain pen until you, until you broke it out and started writing with it. But, uh, I am very, very happy with this pen. I surprisingly so because I tried the Sailor Clear Candy. I reviewed it on the blog maybe a month ago. Yeah. And I just thought it was average. Um, the nib was really rough. I thought I needed to break it in some, um, it never got much better. Uh, so I was actually hesitant to, to try the High Ace. Um, it's much, much better in my opinion. So cool. Those are, those are my new acquisitions. And it's funny, I've got this fountain pen bug apparently. And, uh, yeah, some of the readers have been, have been commenting on that. And, you know, some of the, uh, guys on, there's a forum called, uh, uh, fountain pen geeks. They have a forum over there. They were actually saying they're turning into a fountain pen podcast. And, you know, I've got the bug. What can I say? I've got the bug. So, you know, that won't be the only thing we talk about, but, um, it's kind of, kind of what's happening now in my, in my pen arsenal, um, looking at all the different options for fountain pens. And actually I don't see an end to it anytime soon, but, uh, I'm really happy that this has happened

Fountain Pens

Myke Hurley: because, you know, fountain pens are my favorite. Like, even though the retro is my favorite pen, um, as I continue to say every show, uh, fountain pens are my favorite style.

Brad Dowdy: Yep. And you, you, and you've used one for quite a while before we even started this show.

Myke Hurley: Yeah. I've, I've always been a fan of fountain pens. So I've been using it for years.

Brad Dowdy: Yep. And I've had plenty of them prior to starting our podcast, but I wouldn't say that any of them have ever made it into my daily rotation of pens. But now, um, it's probably taken over the, uh, the vast, uh, percentage of my writing time with fountain pens. Never, never would have thought that was coming with me.

Myke Hurley: No, it's, it's quite a change. Especially like from when we started to now, but I'm very pleased.

Brad Dowdy: I knew once, once, once I started, it was, uh, I was in for it bad. So that's just kind of my personality. The scary part is I'm only scratching the surface. So who knows what's to come?

Field Notes Notebooks

Myke Hurley: So what else did you, so, Oh, I'll tell you something that I have got. Um, I said, I've recently come back from a, from a trip to Memphis. I went to spend some time with Stephen Hackett and his family and, um, he got me a gift. He got me the, uh, field notes, national crop edition.

Brad Dowdy: Nice.

Myke Hurley: They, they are very attractive books.

Brad Dowdy: Oh, they're awesome. I have not gotten that set, but I'm tempted and I'm tempted. They, they look, I I'm a huge field notes fan. So yeah. Yeah. Have you, have you broken one in yet?

Myke Hurley: No, I've got a stack that I don't want to start using those until I've, I've got rid of some of

Brad Dowdy: that stack. You should put, it comes with a patch, right? You should put that on your suit jacket at work.

Brad Dowdy: Sure. That will go down very well. Just so that bad boy right on.

Myke Hurley: It does come with a patch. It comes with a map, which shows you like where the different crops have been grown and stuff. It's a, it's a nice set. I like it.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. People have been raving about it. So yeah, that's good. It's a very, very good looking set. They do a great job. No doubt about it.

Myke Hurley: They really do.

Brad Dowdy: Well, that was very thoughtful of Mr. Hackett.

Myke Hurley: Yeah. He, he knows me too well.

Listener Emails

Myke Hurley: So what else have we got today? We've got some email, I think.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. I want to go over, um, we got a, got a slew. I, at last episode I asked for question, you know, send me your questions, send me, you know, any problems you're having, send me any of that. So I have a, I mean, we're only going to get to a fraction of it today just because we don't have all the time in the world. Um, so we got a few topics we want to cover, but I think, uh, first we might want to hit up our, uh, our sponsor Squarespace.

Myke Hurley: Look how good you are reminding me. I know. I've forgotten. I don't know how I could forget such an amazing company like Squarespace.

Brad Dowdy: Yes. I got skills that way.

Squarespace Sponsorship

Myke Hurley: You have, you have. That's why I hire you. That's why I pay you the money. So Squarespace is sponsoring the 70 decibels network for the whole month of May. Um, and on each of the different shows, we're trying to do some different stuff. Um, so some shows we're talking about some of the fantastic features that Squarespace offers like, um, WYSIWYG editing tools and the fantastic iOS app that they use. Um, but they're going to do something a little bit different on this show because I have strong arms, Mr. Brad Dowdy, um, into switching over to Squarespace and you're going to be moving the pen addict blog over.

Brad Dowdy: I am. I am. And we're going to try to accomplish this during the month of May during, um, during, um, the whole month. Squarespace season. Square, yeah, we'll call it Squarespace season. And it wasn't a strong arm at all because I've been very disappointed, um, with my current host and my current blog design and my current setup for probably going on close to two years now.

Myke Hurley: What's the problem you've had with your hosts?

Brad Dowdy: It, I'm with TypePad right now. I'll sit, there's no hiding that. And the, and that's the issue. The, the rate of change and the quality of the offering has been static for probably about three years now. I've been on there for five. And at first, um, you know, I, what I'm looking in, I'm a busy guy. I got lots going on. So what I'm looking for in a host is not a self hosted platform like WordPress. I've done that before. You know, I've had blogs since, you know, the early two thousands where I'm setting up movable type or, you know, doing, you know, setting my, you know, buying my own space, you know, managing, managing all the backend updates of the code and, and all of that stuff. And I don't have time for that anymore, you know, with kids and work and everything else going on. I, I needed a self hosting, um, site.

Myke Hurley: One of the great thing in regards to hosting and Squarespace is you don't even need to think about it. The hosting just happens. It's like totally in the background. I don't even consider anything about hosting. I never worry that I've not got enough bandwidth or anything like that. Um, I never worry that like if, you know, I mean, if you're going to get linked on daring fireball, right, you're going to be okay because Squarespace stays up. I've never had Squarespace go down no matter how much traffic we've got. And we've had some pretty big traffic days, um, over the, you know, you can imagine, you know, we, especially if like, say for example, we have like a big landmark episode, you know, like when we had like 10 people on for the hundredth episode of enough, all of those 10 people, you know, a lot of big bloggers linked to the site didn't, didn't even blink. Um, and that's the fantastic thing about Squarespace, the hosting, it just happens. And if you buy their unlimited plan, which starts at $16 a month, then you have unlimited bandwidth, unlimited storage, but even on the regular plan for $8 a month, it's, it's, you've got such great, um, options there anyway that I don't, I still don't think for most people it'd even be a slight problem.

Brad Dowdy: Right. Right. And you know, I've, I've, uh, started the process. There's nothing, uh, public I can, I can share yet, but I've, I've, you know, opened my account with Squarespace. I've, I've paid in advance, uh, using our, using our wonderful 70 decibels code. What's that code again, Myke?

Myke Hurley: It's a, you can go to squarespace.com forward slash 70 decibels to start your two week free trial. And when you come to purchase your site, you can get 10% off your first order with the coupon code 70 decibels five. And obviously that will be in the show notes. So yeah, you've, you've purchased the annual unlimited.

Brad Dowdy: Yep. I just, you know, I like to go ahead and, you know, so I don't have to think about it for month to month. I just went ahead and purchased the annual unlimited. I've started trying to, the themes are awesome. They're, um, uh, they're really look up to date and current, um, which is something the pin addict in its current state is not. So I'm going

Myke Hurley: to, I mean, that was, I mean, we had this conversation a little while ago, didn't we? Even before we had Squarespace come on as a sponsor for sure. Um, I was trying to be very nice to you, but say to you at the same time that your site looks very old and it

Brad Dowdy: does. There's no doubt. There's no doubt, you know, so it, it needs some work.

Myke Hurley: Exactly. And the thing about Squarespace is even though there's templates, they're not templates like type pad templates. You have complete control over them. You can move the widths. You can change the sizes, all of the fonts. They use Google fonts, the Google font library. That's all built straight into the site. So you can pick from hundreds of pretty good looking web fonts, you know, for free, um, which is fantastic. And you can make your site look exactly the way that you want it. So yes, go to 70 decibels. Sorry, if you go to squarespace.com forward slash 70 decibels, use the coupon code 70 decibels five for 10% off. And we're going to be talking about Squarespace throughout the whole month

Brad Dowdy: of May. Yep. Yep. So, uh, if you guys see any downtime this weekend, I might have a chunk of time to, uh, to work on this. So, uh, yeah, I'll follow me on Twitter at dowdyism, D O W D Y I S M. If you're wondering why the site's down, you might want to check Twitter first. That means I might, uh, I might, uh, I might have my, uh, my hands full, but, uh, deep in there somewhere. Yeah. So, uh, if you see anything funky going on this weekend, it might just be that, uh, that's, uh, convert to Squarespace day. So I'm looking forward to that. Awesome. Cannot wait to see it. Yep. So email. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We've got a very interesting one here. Okay. And it was so interesting. I actually put a post up on the blog today, which I'm normally a Monday, Wednesday, Friday review blog. And, uh, you know, I'll pop in some, uh, some interesting tidbits on Tuesdays or Thursdays. And this was so interesting that, cause I have no clue, but I thought the question was interesting enough. Um, it's from pen addict reader. I'm going to butcher his name. I'm going to go with Kaveh K A V E H. He emailed me. He's, he travels to Marriott and you know, we all talk about hotel pins. A lot of them are the famous big ballpoint hotel pins and Marriott, you know, has the courtyard and you have the labeling and all the, all the colors of their pins are the same except for the red one. All the barrel designs I should say are the same except for the red one. The red one has a set of, of dashed lines on the back of the barrel. So he sent me an email. I was wondering if you know what the meaning is of the red bars on the back of the red Marriott stick pins. All the other colors just have courtyard.com on back. At first I thought it was a Fibonacci sequence, but the measurements don't exactly add up. I know Marriott's a Mormon company, so maybe it symbolizes something in Mormonism. Either way, it's on all the red pins I've seen and nobody has a good explanation. Well, I certainly don't have a good explanation. I'm going to guess Myke, you probably don't know either.

Myke Hurley: I had no idea about this until I saw you tweet about it earlier today. And I was hoping, started reading and I was hoping for an answer, but even you didn't have one.

Brad Dowdy: No, it's, uh, you know, it might be nothing. My, my initial guess is it's nothing, but there's, um, the, I, I put the penatic readers, uh, to, to the test. I've already got one guy. He submitted the question to Marriott.com. It's been tweeted to the Marriott Twitter handle.

Myke Hurley: I don't think it's nothing. Yeah. It seems like it sticks out too much. Like, you know,

Brad Dowdy: why would you even do it? Yeah, exactly. Because it's different than the rest of them. I mean, you would, you would think for, you know, that would be a cost savings to make everything the same for a company that size. So to take one pin and do something different with it, it was the least worth the question. I thought it was an interesting question. Is it Morse code? No. Um, someone's, someone said, since there's more than two sizes, we can rule out Morse code. So there's more than two sizes of dashes. Um, someone said, maybe it has something to do with colorblind, being able to distinguish the red from a different color. Um, you know, the, someone's already chimed in on the Mormonism aspect and said, there's nothing, no symbolism there that's a relevant. So we'll see if, uh, we'll, we'll link to that in the, in the show notes. If anyone has any ideas about that, I thought it was an interesting question to pose.

Moleskine Inc

Brad Dowdy: Cool. So secondly, this is one I really wanted to, to talk about today because I, I want your input on this. It's about Moleskine Inc and show through on the back of the page and you're an avid Moleskine user. And you've talked about it on, on, on the show before. And what, what prompted this question was when we were doing our digital analog, um, episode, we talked about, um, Stephen Hackett and his field notes, how we use his field notes, fill up a notebook, and then he'd scan them into Evernote to preserve that data, to capture that data forever. Well, Antonio from Spain wrote in saying, I love to use notebooks and pens and pencils for my work and leisure. The notebooks I use are from Moleskine. When I listen to your podcast about analog and digital, I have a question for you. I use both pen and both pencil and pen in my notebook. And when I finish it, I scan it into my computer, which sounds familiar. The problem is that when I use the pen, you can see the ink through the other side of the page. And he attached some pictures for Myke and I to look at, um, after I load my complete notebooks to my iPad, you know, so I have access to all my notes and specifically the work ones he's using. The pen he uses is Uniball i-micro in black and blue and the Pilot V-Ball 05 in blue and red. Um, he says he has not found a notebook paper with a paper that resolves this problem. So talk about what you see in your Moleskine. Um, like I bought one recently. I haven't started using it, um, to do some testing on, I haven't opened it up yet, but you use it all the time. So what, what do you see? Do you see the same type of thing?

Myke Hurley: Um, it kind of depends what I'm using. Um, if I'm using one, like if I'm using the Lamy, I might see a little, but to be honest, it's never been so much of a bleed through for me that it's enough to make me switch. Like I've never had seen it as a massive problem. Um, I have to be using something quite thick with a very dark ink for it to bleed through. But, but even then, to be honest,

Brad Dowdy: it's not something I've had a massive problem with. Yeah. And in the limited Moleskine use, I haven't noticed the, his pictures, it was, it was clear. I mean, it was, it was obvious that there's an, I won't say issue, but I have not experienced the amount of bleed through that he has. Um, or the, I, it's more of a show through. It's more like you can see the shadowing of the ink, not that it's bleeding through the page. Right. So, and, and he even says he uses the pilot V ball O5. That's a really good Moleskine pen. Um, and I, it usually stays on the surface for me. Like I can't, you know, I, I did a few testing that had a, a Kaya, a blank page that I ran some tests on and I really couldn't see through much at all. So I, unfortunately I, I, I'm not too much help on that. The one thing is both those pins, uh, Antonio that you're using are liquid ink pens. If you switch to a gel, you're not going to see that as much or, or hardly at all. It doesn't have that. It's not going to seep into the page as much. You might have a little bit of a dry time issue. Um, it shouldn't be too bad. Um, if you use something like the Uniball Sino 207, if you want to try a different, keep the same pens, but try a different paper, I'd look at the Rodia web notebook. Um, you're not going to see anything to the level of what your, what your picture showed. So I, you know, you, you do have to be wary of some liquid ink pens, but I've used the pilot V ball and Moleskine for a long time and I haven't seen the, the type of bleed through that, uh, Antonio has. So check out a gel ink pen or maybe trust a Rodia or Claire Fontaine. Um, so that, that's something to look at there. Oh, someone's going to do this probably some pens for you. I have, I have no vanishing points coming. Um, I have no, what did I order the last time? I can't remember. It was the jet. It was the jet. It was the jet streams for my wife. What's, what's funny is, you know what this is, is my, is also for my wife for mother's day,

Mother's Day Gifts

Myke Hurley: but it's no pens this time. So good. So yeah, remember mother's day. Don't worry if in the UK, it's already passed. We had it ages ago. If you're in the U S mother's day, was it the eight 13th or

Brad Dowdy: something? Yeah. Next, not this weekend, but next weekend. So yeah. Hey, pens make a good, uh,

Myke Hurley: mother's day gift, but I, I didn't go with pens. So you suggest the, uh, the, the Rodia. Cause it's called the web notebook. That's the one that's kind of like the moleskin, right?

Brad Dowdy: It's got that band and stuff. Yeah. Same general, same general design. Um, it's, uh, it's for the same large moleskin size. I think the web notebooks may be a fraction larger, like maybe a quarter inch or half inch in width as I found out when I was trying to fit one in my rickshaw bag that didn't fit. Cause it's a little bit wider. Okay. But the, the paper quality is excellent. Um, if you, you know, Rodeo, if you should, you should be able to find Rodeo, you know, I won't say it may not be the easiest thing to find locally, but you should be able to find a good distributor in Spain. Um, and, and I think, cause I think they're made in France actually. And same thing with the Clairefontaine, they have a, um, they have good paper. And if you can find a Clairefontaine or Quo Vadis notebook, it's going to be the similar type of paper quality to the Rodeo. Excellent. Um, a couple other things we can, we can knock out real quick. Um, cause one is an email, another email that I don't really have an answer to, but I want to ask the audience to, to help me out with this. It's fountain pen storage. Um, I've been asked this several times. Um, I've never really thought about it too much. So I did a little bit of digging. You know, I have several pens on my desk that are inked up. Um, obviously a fountain pen that's not inked up. That's easy. Store it however you want it. Um, but the inked up pens, I've been storing them horizontally. Um, I started to wonder if that was an issue with my Twisby that I mentioned before. I had that little pool of ink in the cab. Um, so I did a bit of reading. And of course the first thing I said, I read says, yes, absolutely. Store them horizontally. I'm like, well, okay. And then I got to read more in the consensus seem to be for fountain pen storage is to store them nib up, you know, like in a cup or, or, or something like that. If you, if you have them in store them nib up, which makes logical sense. I mean, it's not, it's, um, you know, it's a more fluid inking system than, you know, your pressurized refills or cartridge. I mean, or your gel ink refills or ballpark ink refills, you know, they're not going to be, they're not as finicky as a fountain pen. So

Myke Hurley: I'd love to hear some. I'm storing nib up, right? Does it not,

Brad Dowdy: does it not dry out the nib? The theory is that if you store it, no, pretty much no one would, would store it nib down, I would hope. But if you're storing it horizontally, you end up soaking the feed. That's, you know, that's where the ink's, um, coming from, for the nib and it might end up clogging your pen more and being more of an inconsistent, um, writing pen, it might glob it up a little bit more by storing it vertically, nib up.

Brad Dowdy: Everything I read says that as soon as, if you use a cartridge or, uh, you know, a converter, as soon as the ink touches the feed, it's going to go. It doesn't matter that it's been not necessarily touching this whole time. Um, like I said, I, I'm not an expert in that by any means. So I'd like to get some feedback, email, um, anything you guys can do to tell me how you store your fountain pens. Um, it's something to think about since I have, I have so many now and I try not to keep too many of them inked. I, I'm pretty good about cleaning. If I'm not going to use something for a while, I'll clean it out and store it away. But now that I've got more of them, I probably have, I'm probably looking at six of them on my desk right here. Um, and I want to make sure I'm storing them the best way possible. So I'd love to get some feedback on that. Sounds good. But you carry, you carry your safari in your shirt pocket and while it may not be, you know, a day or two days that you don't use it every

Myke Hurley: time you break it out, it writes, right? I've always sold my pens nib up. Yeah. I'm about, I've just taken the Kaweco out. I've not used it for a week and a half. Let's see. Yep. Right. It's perfect. Yeah.

Brad Dowdy: So I think, I think nib ups the way the going to be the way to go, but I would love to hear

Myke Hurley: some more feedback. I'd kind of not really noticed that I did that. It's just kind of all of my pens are sort of like, uh, they cap up, you know? Yeah. Right. Or like, so, you know, like for example, on like a, a rocker, you see the top of the pen, you know, they just face that way of finish. It's just the way that I like store my pen. It's quite scary now looking at my pen cup and seeing them all like that. And I didn't know I did it until just then. And that's pretty much how I

Fountain Pen Storage

Brad Dowdy: do too. But I had been leaving my fountain pens, like just laying on my desk, like in a row, just horizontally. Cause I was like, well, what's the best way to do this? So we'll see. We'll see if we get a consensus on the feedback. Yeah. Yeah. Uh, another real, we'll do one more real quick. Another thing we could use some feedback on is our favorite retro 51 tornado. And everyone's been loving that pen. And I have had a couple of questions since it's a 0.7 millimeter roller. Is there another good refill for that? Um, that you could get, you know, a similar performing refill with a 0.5 millimeter tip. I looked for like an hour this morning. I couldn't come up with anything good. Um, there has to be, it's a, um, it's a, it's a, it's a Schmidt refill. I don't know the model number off the top of my head, but I could only find that Schmidt in 0.7 millimeter.

Myke Hurley: There has to be something. What people are asking is, do they have, is there something thinner?

Brad Dowdy: Yes. Is there something thinner that, you know, since, you know, retro 51 just sells the 0.7 refill and that's the most common, uh, refill for this type of pen. You don't, it's harder to find something thinner, um, like a 0.5 millimeter tip rollerball reef that fits this. There has to be one out there because a lot of the, a lot of the refill brands make similar designs, right? You could have, um, you know, like a, a Parker refill will might fit in a different retro 51 pin, things like that. So there has to be something out there that's similar to the Schmidt refill that would fit in the barrel of the retro 51. I don't have a lot of refills laying around where I can test things out and see what works and what doesn't. And, and the time I searched this morning, I couldn't find, there was no clarity came from that search. So it looked like some things that might be close, but there's nothing I could say. This absolutely works and this is what you need to get. So plus I'd be hesitant to swap it out because it writes so good. I'd want another Schmidt refill. It's a really good refill. Yeah. So anyway, since I've asked for a lot of reader help today, I guess I wish to tell them how to get in touch, huh? Exactly. And they can do that.

Myke Hurley: They can send us emails by a couple of different ways. You can email Brad directly at the pen addict at gmail.com. Um, you can get in contact with us by going to 70 decibels forward slash 70 decibels.com forward slash contact. You can select the pen addict from the drop down list and that will go to myself. Um, and I will include Brad where necessary. Um, you can get us both on Twitter. Brad is at dowdyism, which is D O W Y I S M. And I am at I Myke, which is I M Y K E. Sound good. Sounds good, sir. Excellent. And we want to, again, just thank Squarespace for sponsoring this episode of the pen addict podcast. Um, they're going to be back with us again next week. We've got another fine sponsor as well joining them, um, next week. So thank you very much, Brad.

Brad Dowdy: Thank you, Myke. You have a good evening. You too, sir. All right. I'll talk to you later. See you later.