Hello and welcome to episode 89 of the Panetic Podcast, your weekly show where we discuss pens, paper and the analog tools that we love so dearly. My name is Mike Early and I am joined by the Ayatollah of Eroshizuku, Mr Brad Downey. I like it, how's it going Mike? Good man, very very well, how are you? Good good, I like you, I think that's a good one there because you have serious competition with the main man Keegan from One Star Leather because I purchased a wallet from him and again I got another special introduction on my envelope and this time I am the best Disney princess. Well you see, where I agree that that's awesome, that's not stationary related. I know, I know, but the Ayatollah of Eroshizuku, I am totally down with. To save follow up, I am perfectly aware that there is not meant to be a iteration, it is merely assonance. I know that Ayatollah is not spoke of an eye. Yes, yes, it was well done and we have another intro, it's become a thing when we get further down the list here but we got a lot of follow up items so I say we get right into it today man. So a bang, that was my iPad falling from my desk to boxes below, everything is okay. Everyone is okay, everyone is well. Alright. And I missed what you said because I turned around just and then sort of crash to the ground. No, I was saying we got a lot of good stuff to talk about today so we should probably get into it because I want to hear about this Twisbee customer service that you have received since our last episode. So last week I mentioned that I had contacted Twisbee to ask them for a new cap for my ROC and it has arrived Brad. I'm stunned. It arrived like three days ago. And it's an ROC cap, they didn't send me like a blue or a red cap, it's a Twisbee 540 ROC. Yeah, it was on the band at the bottom of the cap, it's got the little special ROC designation right? And it has the sun logo on the top. Wow, where did it ship from? I'm curious, from California or from Taiwan? It came from Asia, I feel really bad because I can't remember where. No, that's fine. I was just more of a curiosity from my part. It's from wherever Twisbee are based because I don't want to say because I feel like if I say like China and I'm wrong then I feel like I'm just being generalistic or whatever. No, no, no. I didn't mean to put you on the spot but I know one of the guys, Speedy from Twisbee works out of California a lot but I think the main shop is in China or Taiwan, I don't even know exactly sure. So I was curious if it shipped from like California area or from the Asia area, but the Asia area. I'm pretty impressed they still have some of these caps. That's what I don't understand. I guess they just have replacement parts. I guess they just have replacement parts, they're there for these sort of scenarios. That's a smart thing, I guess, yeah, I mean to have that back stock for a certain amount of time until it's gone way past when they're being sold. I mean these hadn't been sold for a couple of two or three years now I'm guessing. So is it like good as new? It's good as new. That's so cool. And that was fast too, I mean like ridiculously fast. It's like three or four days, something silly like that. Good on them. So congratulations. I mean if you needed yet another reason to purchase Twisbee products, their customer service is now that reason. Yeah, well we're going to give you even more reasons right now. Yeah what you need to tell me about this because as is usual with the Twisbee Facebook page I don't really understand what's happening. I think that's a fair sentiment and I will agree with you on that on the Twisbee Facebook page, I don't know what's happening most of the time either because they post a lot of prototype stuff. They say hey we're working on this, we might do it, we might not. So I don't know how many things are real, how many things are not, how many things are going to go in production and if they do go in production it might be a year from when they post a picture on there but they've posted one of the coolest things I've seen from them in a long time and I'm a huge Twisbee fan so I think everything's pretty cool but this kind of takes the cake. It's the 580, you know the 580, diamond 580 with aluminum piston and section, colored aluminum piston and section parts and it looks amazing. It's the clear demonstrator barrel with and the aluminum is colored in blue, green, orange, purple and red and I think it looks outstanding. I mean it's like I want one of these yesterday and they may not even manufacture it right? It's really hard to tell. You don't know anymore then. I don't know anymore. I mean and they'll come out and say I don't know, I don't know what we're going to do. Yeah because actually the capture on the photo is we've been testing the aluminum piston mechanism for years. I don't even remember when we started. Now it's final done. The turning mechanism is very smooth. Most of all I'm happy with the result of the pin in original aluminum color. So what does that mean? Are you going to make it or not? I don't know. But they've shown off things like you know way back I don't even I couldn't even find the dates if I wanted to probably but the rose gold 580 that they just launched what a month or two ago. I mean that's been on their Facebook page for ages the classics been on their Facebook page for ages. So they just kind of use their Facebook page as this testing bed to get feedback on what the prototypes look like I think and of course every time they do that everyone just like rages for them because they all look so good and everyone wants them. I mean there's this there's this white delrin looking pen further down the page back from November that I've never even seen before. Never even heard before. It's got this cool filling mechanism in this cool translucency in it so I don't know what to make of it but I wanted to post it out there because it's awesome looking and you know what I feel about the the 580 in general. As a matter of fact I was using it using it last night and every time I use it I'll I'm always always very much enjoy it especially last night when I shot ink across the across the meeting table in a in a meeting I was at my at my day job or night job as you will my 580 made a mess on the on the table I don't know how I've still yet to figure that one out but that was fun and I don't I don't think anyone anyone caught me last night but I think I accidentally flipped the pin somehow and I shot ink about two feet across the table and I had to I had to mop it up when I was done I digress but I will I want this aluminum piston to his be yeah I want I want them bad like I saw them and I was like oh yeah yes make it happen to his be make it happen so that's a that's a temptation right there so I would be curious to see because that will probably a little bit more than I'm guessing probably be a little bit more than the standard 580 but I bet it's still probably like I don't know they have the they do a good job of keeping it all in the reasonable price range it seems like maybe like a seventy seventy five dollar pin something like that maybe who knows I'm just pure speculation on my part but probably a little more than the regular 580 just for the parts and I added cost to the parts but man beautiful yeah so what else you got where also we in the document was oh gummy notebooks I know a little bit about this but you've been kind of driving this one here yes so we had to the up to what do you know about these things it's stone paper right that's all I remember yes so we had a listener contact us Alexander puts got in contact to say that he'd found these really interesting notebooks and that he wanted to send them to us so basically what what we've got is it so I have them here Brad and I'm I'm putting yours in the post because he sent that I told him to send them both to me and then I would send yours on to you right that's what he told me he was gonna do because he's in he's in Europe somewhere right yeah because I said you know let's let's save you some money rather than you use boots is right so I'll read from the back agami uses repap I don't really know what that means in all the product lines oh here we go repap is made up of 80% calcium carbonate and a small percentage 20% from non-toxin resins the calcium carbonate present in repap comes from the limestone recovered from caves and used in the cur and used in the creating repap a resistant and durable as well as waterproof paper a paper that is also soft smooth and bright white one of the strangest notebook products I've ever received so we have I have a couple of different sizes and I've got the smaller size the pocket size like this is like a field notes size one okay so they don't feel like stone but I would hope not but they feel like stone so it feels like paper but you know how like that feeling you get when you rub stones together mm-hmm and oh actually no hmm you've been to the beach right have you ever been to a pebble beach no so we get these a lot in the UK and there's a really interesting thing when stones get wet they they give off this like strange feeling like a like there's a film covering stone mm-hmm and this obviously is the breakdown of sand and stuff right it kind of feels like that a little bit like the paper is kind of it's smooth but there's a definite texture that you can't put your finger on it's like a rough texture and when you sort of using the pages they rub together in a strange way like there's an awful lot of resistance between the pages okay oh and what you're left with is a paper that feels like it's glossy but isn't shiny okay which is really strange so it has the feeling of like magazine paper mm-hmm but it doesn't shine okay interesting yeah because the thing that threw me off the most about it was not the stone in the makeup of the paper but that it's waterproof on top of that yeah I haven't tested the waterproofness of it that just that seems like I don't have interesting there's a lot lot going on there because I have had a I guess review of stone paper on the pan addict before and I've never actually tried it myself but you know stone papers been around for a few years now is when I started seeing it and there's some interesting the guy that did the review on my blog for the Oxford stone paper notebook I don't know if it talks about yeah it talks about it being strong durable and water resistant so that's interesting and he also lit it on fire it's kind of fireproof why don't you try that real quick nope no okay this reminds me of the expedition edition yeah and it's tear proof as well so that's interesting so how does it handle yes feel when you write on it so it doesn't tear like I'm trying to tear it right now and so well it does if you get it right you know sure it's that it doesn't rip like you have to like really sort of go for it to tear it right it's really interesting like interesting to the point where I'm like hmm okay so basically I wrote down my notes whilst writing on the paper itself so I will write I will read to you what I was writing down slow drying time not incredibly slow but slow as you'd expect it leaves an interesting line on the page and what I meant by that is like the way that pens feel on this paper is interesting and the way that the ink dries is unlike other pens so when I was writing with fountain pens I was writing with a pelican my pelican the way it dries it doesn't look like the way it dries in other paper it's like it's kind of like drawn on it and it just stays there it doesn't get absorbed yeah I can see that I guess happening because that's how the expedition paper was right yeah it's super no no I don't mean it's not drying when it dries it's like it's like it doesn't look like any ink has been absorbed it looks like it's just dried in place gotcha but it's dry oh yeah that's weird you know obviously it's not you know it's absorbed by the paper in as such that you know there's not ink always all over the place but when it dries there's no feathering nothing you just write on it and it dries hmm so it's like kind of writing with a permanent marker on plastic I got you doesn't get absorbed just stay there the ink drying is good all things considered like for time to be honest it doesn't dry instantly but it dries pretty quickly but the way it looks is incredible fountain pens it feels like you're writing on glass it's it's amazing so smooth and I've never had the retro 51 perform so well really it's like a different pen that's crazy the autographic liner really doesn't work yeah I can see that to the point where I wrote in this yesterday still still smudges oh my goodness but the fountain pens don't you have to really go at a certain amount of time you have to really go at it so I can go to my ink yesterday and really rub it and it will smudge fountain pen ink but the autographic liner if I just touch it the ink comes off that's interesting that's you know that's not ideal but just don't write on the autographic liner like if I really like sort of rub on this the ink will smudge but it kind of would do that paper as well like for fountain pen ink if you really you know it's going to do with something weird anyway basically I recommend this I think this is a really cool different and interesting product and the paper is good it's good quality they're nicely made notebooks they've got a nice little character to them and there's a bunch of different sizes I'm definitely going to use it more mm-hmm I think it would be a really interesting sort of just ink testing notebook because it will produce such peculiar results yeah I like that there's a pocket size one too so that's pretty neat so I look forward to to testing it out I'm gonna get them in the post you today so yeah no hurry no thank you yeah thanks Alexander so that's sitting in my in my groove from Mr. do that awesome so how is your penmanship in there because we got to we got a we got a nice got a nice email from a from a listener talking about uh penmanship so how's your penmanship working these days same same yeah no right same same as it always was yeah like it changes a lot so huh got it we got an email from Josh and the subject is Mike's left-handed problem so this is a really interesting email they caught me off guard I didn't know what to think about this I don't I'm gonna I get that you know you say read it first yeah I don't I'm not gonna read the whole thing but I'm gonna read the the nuts and bolts here and I'm especially gonna read the beginning it says to the man who takes his power from the mighty mythology of the heavens brad or the pin god how did I do very good actually since I've been listening to your podcast with great enthusiasm during the past few months I can't believe how ignorant I was to the wide world of writing utensils outside of the big ball points which I use so thoughtlessly which I used to so thoughtlessly buy and lose and bulk I was particularly interested in your evolution into fountain pens like Mike I'm a lefty I struggled to write with my now beloved pallet prayer in my divergent left-handed oddness but I've recently overcome this problem I write with my right hand so let's stop right there what what were your thoughts when you read that when I got there I was like I can't wait to read the rest of this email cuz this is insane I have a fundamental problem with it like I just just unnatural well you know like a nature like a nature fundamental problem with it was very 1840s going against the laws of nature kind of thing it just feels like a right yeah it's just like kids being forced to write with their right hand you know it's it's just it feels very sure sure I don't like it so let me let me read this next little bit and then we'll talk about it some more says this yeah says the solution of mine is not for the faint of heart but nor is it as difficult as you may assume writing with my right hand is merely taken consistent and dedicated practice I write just one page each day in the beginning I was not able to complete the full page in my allotted practice time but I've been able to increase my writing speed significantly in the past four months I'm down to about 20 minutes per page now in my handwriting while still somewhat slow is much better than I can scroll with my left hand so it's interesting on a lot of accounts right so your issue and I'm totally with you on that as a yeah because I you know it used to be a kind of a stigma right to to write with your left hand so people would force people to change but I mean he's obviously doing this on his own and it seems to be working for him so I don't know is this something you'd even consider or it's just not there's no reason to ever even go there I'm proud of being left handed yeah like yeah I don't want to change it I don't feel like I need to be fixed and I don't feel like maybe that this you know this is what is being that Josh is saying this of me or of himself even no no but I don't feel like the way to fix my penmanship is to force myself to be right handed so I think the most important thing he said here honestly and when I get questions about penmanship this is what I say regardless of what hand you are it takes consistent and dedicated practice to change your penmanship so it's very possible he could have done this with his left hand I don't know if he tried maybe he did but and I wrote some notes actually last night just to kind of thinking about a new blog post just about penmanship because people ask me how I get my penmanship and it's it's strictly a practice thing and an evolution of a lot of repetitive action I mean there's no simple way to make it better and my handwriting and I've said this several times my handwriting right now is infinitely worse than it was 10 or 15 years ago because I don't practice anymore it's all about speed now and that leads to a little bit of you know poor handwriting so I'm gonna I'm working on some notes to write up a post just about handwriting in general and how to learn to write better not that I have all the answers but just kind of how I evolved into the handwriting that I have now when it was good why I think it's bad now and how you can change things but it's it's legitimately it just comes down to Josh at it best consistent and dedicated practice I mean 20 minutes 20 minutes a page you know if you can spend that every day for the past like he said the past four months he's been doing that I promise you no matter what hand you use your handwriting it's gonna be better it's just the way it goes right yeah but you know what I'm not interested in changing my penmanship I like the way I write and trust me it is not bad we just like to I was just like they give you a hard time it just kind of became a thing and and I'm never gonna let it go well good good for you Mike own it baby thanks Papa I'm not gonna go I'm not gonna go tie your left hand behind your back and make you walk around town all day just using your right hand very Shakespearean all right I got an email another email just about a new product that Pentel is coming out with several years ago and I used to get emails on this from time to time they had a mechanical pencil that was 0.2 millimeters and that's that's like ridiculous for a life pencil led humans yeah yeah so I mean I've used point as much as I like fine tip pens and I've used 0.3 millimeter mechanical pencil leads 0.3 millimeter is too fine I translated the page it's great isn't it I was actually gonna read this to you I was actually gonna put something in the show notes about the translation but yeah I'm glad you're enjoying it but we have this link to the show notes and I just wanted to mention this it's called the Pentel Orens I believe is how you pronounce it O.R.E.N.Z. Pentel is the only one that I knew of that used to have a 0.2 millimeter led mechanical pencil and I never got one jet pen stop carrying them you could never find I could never find one I just wanted one to to see what it's like 0.3 is too fine for me I'm obviously 0.2 would be as well but just to have something that fine would be fun to play around with and they stopped making them several years ago despite the fact that they still manufacture 0.2 millimeter led the pencils aren't easy to get with to find and now they're coming out with a new 0.2 millimeter pencil so for anyone who's interested in that and I know a few people are based on some of the emails I've gotten in the past I don't know when or where you'll be able to get these but it's it looks like they're going to make it a more it's not completely a it's not a totally drafting engineering style pencil it looks like more of a mainstream design so I'm guessing we might see these at places like jet pins and other retailers and things like that in the coming in the coming months or years depending on how long it takes people to get on board but it's a new product for 2014 and I thought I was a cool link and you can get lost in some of these some of these Japanese pen pages huh 2014 mechanical pencil that is not broken core marvelously even ultra fine 0.2 Lorenzo will be released from the sun that was the part that I saw it is the extra lead sharp microfiber that can be used so Renzu it just doesn't it just doesn't you cannot do direct translation of languages that use a different syntax it's just not yeah but that release from the Sun part was killing me last night when I saw this it would have come from why did very quick I want to give one last piece of follow-up yeah I'm gonna let you take this one so this is from Caris customs that they did a survey of the backers of the ink project as to whether they were gonna do medium or fine nib that originally offered a medium nib and lots of people wanted them to do a fine nib now they were only gonna make one nib size for the ink that they you know they wanted to not have to complicate things any further so basically they put out this survey and they put out an update which I'll put in the show notes shown at sort of five by five dot TV slash pan addict slash eighty nine and basically from the survey they had people answering fine nib outnumbered those answering medium nib as the need they wanted four to one so they're going now with a fine nib for the for the ink they've changed the original specifications of the pen it's gonna be a fine nib now now as they've mentioned some people don't you know what now no longer want to have the pen so you know they can I guess cancel but I try to throw my hat into the ring on this where it's a bit strange obviously to change something halfway through the campaign 68 hours to go by the way nearly at ninety thousand dollars I guess anybody that's listening to the show and is a bit unsure of this over the weekend I was playing around with my retro 51 tornado fountain pen which has the same nib and I've mentioned that I'd used a nib before that's the pen that has it it's a Schmidt medium nib for me now that nib is not usable it's too wet it gives far too much ink on the medium for me so I personally am happy with the fine I'm going to assume that the fine nib will be closer to a more standard German medium than this Brad do you have an ink I do I do medium nib and what do you think do you think that I mean I'm putting you on the spot but do you think that they've maybe made the right decision going with a fine nib I do and I mean but you know it's it's personal preference but for me obviously I would prefer the fine nib over the medium nib yeah the medium nib was pretty wet and pretty wide lines I'd be anxious to see what the fine does I didn't realize it when I answered the survey and maybe that's my ignorance and my just rushing through it real quick I didn't realize that they were going to change what it shipped with based on the results and only and only go with the one nib you know I thought there might be let's see how many people want fine and how many want medium and we'll do both I didn't know one was going to be cut off you know kind of based on the results of the survey so it was an interesting decision yep there you know the justification is that you know if we ordered all these nib sizes and let everyone pick it would delay our shipping and manufacturing time because we'd have to treat every order as a custom order instead of making you know one set of pen using the same nib for every pen that we make we'd have to spend extra time sorting out okay does Mike want this does Brad want this does Bob want this does Jane want this and that takes extra time and that's what we're going through with with knock and but we I mean it's a different completely different set of set of parameters on there and where that's just exactly how we needed to set ours up but on Dan and Karis Customs case I can see why they would want to do it that way and they're going to offer the other nibs available for sale after kickstarter so that's good if people want to swap it out and you know these days I could understand why some people would have a problem with it there's there's no doubt but these days what now that I feel like I've gotten a pretty good grasp on fountain pens I'm not so worried about nibs as much because I know I can switch them and I know I can do things that you know maybe not everyone who's buying their first fountain fountain pen understands that they can do but you know people's the argument would be well I shouldn't have to do anything and I can see that argument too so anyway so there you go I try to throw my hand to the rings people know that I'm a medium aficionado and the medium that Schmidt that I have is closer to a bold really in some of the stuff that I've used so I think people if you back the project and you're unsure I would say go for it still and I'm sure that you know it'll be simple enough to get a replacement nib for a reasonable cost but I think people will be happy with it yeah and these nibs aren't going to cost very much the replacement nibs I'm guessing no so you can you can find them you know righty hoe then shall we take a quick break and I have rearranged the order of the next batch of topics because I have something that I want to talk about which might take a little bit of time and just in case it's too long and that's good these other topics can be held till next week if we run out of time or such so yeah totally fine because I really want to get the ball rolling on this thing today okay it's part of my new year's resolution I like it so this episode is brought to you of course by the fine folks over at Squarespace they are the all-in-one platform that makes it fast and easy to create your own website for a free trial and 10% off go to squarespace.com and use the code the offer code tally 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Squarespace truly cares about design and it really shows throughout their whole site which are always updating with fun at new branding that is one numerous design awards as well as just their templates and everything else that they do winning awards because they are amazing they have two brand new iOS apps for Squarespace customers Squarespace blog which lets you easily draft post schedule and review posts to manage and monitor your comments to your blog and also Squarespace blog is fully integrated with layer tension allowing you to easily format text markdown and tap and drag images within your post and they also have Squarespace metrics which allows you to monitor website analytics like KPIs and page views unique visitors and it gives you projections and charts for your websites these are all at your fingertips these are just some of the amazing features that Squarespace have to offer I've been using them for a long time as Brad I haven't got enough good things to say about Squarespace big fan they've been around for 10 years now these guys really know what they're doing I want you to go and try them out for yourself because I know that you'll be hooked when you do go over to squarespace.com sign up for a free trial there's no credit card required to do this and if you decide to purchase it plan start at just $8 a month and include a free domain name if you sign up for a year and make sure that you get 10% off and support the show by using the offer code tallyho1 that's T-A-L-L-Y-H-O-1 thank you so much to Squarespace for supporting 5x5 and the pan addict. Two quick things on that please one they introduced layout engine two what about two weeks ago now actually something like that I think it rolled out slowly but it kind of so maybe not everyone has yeah last load they definitely now everybody has it now as of last week okay so I've had it for a couple weeks and it's really nice they've done a good job I was a little bit confused at first on how to use it because it was funny they rolled it out like I got mine before they even launched the blog post on their site yes yeah I did have it until the blog post went live yes I had like a week before that so I was a little bit confused I couldn't figure out exactly how to do stuff in the end I think it works better for me than how it was set up before you can manipulate things a little bit better so that's worked out well and secondly the iOS app man it totally works the previous app in Squarespace knew this and they would have no problem admitting that it was it was literally garbage it was unusable it just flat out did not work this new app I'm actually able to edit markdown links which I wasn't before and save them on the fly on my phone like if someone says hey I've got a typo or hey my links well one I had to add some bad formatting some self-inflicted bad formatting and some links like a week ago and I was able to fix them on my phone in about a minute and before on the app I would never have been able to get that working without a huge amount of frustration and I was actually nervous going in I was like all right I'm gonna test this thing out and see if it works and it was kind of like an aha moment it just worked and it was awesome so hello you to those iOS apps actually being able to work now yeah when they when they upgraded to to their version 6 the apps had some problems yeah but they instead of that they push them updates out which fixed a bunch of stuff but they decided they needed to go back to basics of it again which they've done yep and it just it works now and it's super you it's actually a useful tool instead of instead of an exercise and frustration also it's it's also more than that it's like a useful tool as opposed to just and the only option you have on on you know up with on the go so instead of the iPhone app being just like this is all I can do it's now like actually this is just good just generally good to use yeah no I could actually write a full blog post in there if I was comfortable doing so without hesitation where before it there was you had no shot of accomplishing something like that and now it's really great so my one of my resolutions my main pen resolution of the year is to help someone in my life find the perfect pen for them and I have somebody in mind that I'm trying to get this through with so over the weekend I took a selection of pens a selection of fountain pens for this person to try out and I took notes now what I'm going to do is I'm just going to run through Brad the the pens that I was able to get that we were able to try out together and then run through some sort of overall comments okay because I need help okay to find this pen so I need I need you I need the pan addict listeners to be as awesome as they are and help me on this treasure hunt maybe you will just be able to give me the answer we'll see so the pens that we tried out were a Kaweko sport mini sorry medium I meant to say the Quaker sport medium nib a vanishing point medium nib the park of vacuum attic in whatever size nib that is nobody knows an Edison per lat the Twisby 540 ROC which is a fine nib the 540 Twisby 540 in a medium nib the Twisby mini stub nib the platinum because I just figured why not the pilot metropolitan I'm going to put links to all these insurance by the way case anybody's new to these pilot metropolitan only comes in a medium nib the tornado fountain pen which is why I was using it a pilot prayer medium nib an AG spalding pen in medium nib the limey ale sport in medium nib they would that's the list of pens okay so basically the favorites out of this were for a nib the Twisby mini because of the stuff which okay yeah that had the stuff now because it's interesting as well I was told but the overall favorite pen to which I have now given this person they didn't they now have this pen because I don't use it was the pilot metropolitan now when I go through my summary of what they're looking for it will maybe try it or maybe help explain that a bit a sleek simple design not clear plastic can be plastic but not clear plastic doesn't want to it doesn't it's not intended to look like plastic medium nib stub preferred from all the nib sizes that we've got got to try out it was clearly going to be either a medium or the stub because it was interesting must be light smooth to right she's very perceptive of how a line is drawn any of my pens that I consider to be slightly rough considering you know my stringent you know the way that we are as panetics she picked that up 100% she's like don't like it so like for example the prayer rush couldn't stand it which could not stand it hated it also didn't like the design of the prayer but love the cap thing actually because it's so amazing must have good ink flow and must be full size it's not many otherwise to be many would have been what she would have wanted but because even though it's clear plastic she loves the design of it but doesn't like that's mini it's a mini pen so that's it I mean overall she actually doesn't the obvious one would have been a Twizzbee right but she doesn't five eighty yeah but she doesn't like the overall style of the Twizzbee so that's that would have been an easy one right so I could have got a stub nib no problem job done right the overall design of the larger Twizzbees she doesn't like which is interesting but there are some differences between the minis and the full size and the way that they look I mean it's an option but it's kind of it doesn't fit the I don't think that Twizzbees are really sleek or simple they're quite big and bulky right they are actually I've had I've had someone email me in the past couple weeks you know they they definitely they kind of went through a list like this you know I need this I need this and one of the high you know they're one concern about price and then to you know they said they have bigger hands so they needed a larger pin so I pointed out the 580 and they're like oh my gosh that's exactly what I need just because it's a little bit larger pin compared to it's when you put that side by side to the prayer and you realize how small the prayer actually is so you know it's clear to me that the type of thing that she's looking for I mean I feel like I can see that you know mm-hmm and she's she's in love with the Metropolitan which is funny to me because it proves what we were talking about it many many moons ago about the fact that it was such a fantastic pen but I just didn't really I just wasn't blown away by it but I guess for somebody who's not as fanatical and obsessed as we are they just didn't have all the other things that I like was interesting enough to me that sort of stuff I had it in gold which I wasn't happy with but it was you know as I said it I wasn't surprised by it performed perfectly well I remember saying that at the time um so this is where we are I mean the kind of the metropolitan would be will be fine and we'll do the job but I really want to find something different for her what did she think about the perlet because that's got the most different well besides the vanishing point that's got one of the most unique barrel yeah so feels I guess then most of the everything else on this list oh do you know what she picked up which is amazing I thought because it's something that I noticed but never really paid attention to the Edison perlet sounds interesting when you write and I it's true I never but and I could hear it but I never really noticed it that yeah I know exactly what you're talking about has a really amazing sound she thought it was weighted really well liked it a lot and liked the barrel construction but did not like the pattern sure that's all because it's I mean it's a smaller pin I mean it's the it's not necessarily a mini pin but it's it's definitely not a whatever I would consider a full-size pin but that barrel style and material I think is really nice and there's bigger options like in those Edison's they're not exactly cheap obviously but something like a Edison Beaumont might be something to consider because it comes in the solid materials it's full-sized it's lightweight you can get a stub nib that's one of the the first things it depending on her feeling of the like the acrylic barrel of the the perlet you know the Beaumont's come in similarly nice materials and for a full-size pin it's awfully light but it's extremely comfortable to write with and you have that nib variety now so here's the other caviar probably the most expensive yeah so my my caviar is I don't want to do expensive because I'm going to buy this pen and if she doesn't like it I'm kind of screwed because then I and you know I haven't got a price limit I guess but under a hundred dollars okay I think it's probably where where I want to go with this I don't I don't want to go much higher than that or really any higher than that if it's more than 50 it makes it you know right okay so no that's a good that's a good dumb it's a good thing to know I mean it's the right pen I mean the other thing is if I don't have one of them then and it's a nice pen hey I've got another pen for my collection right right but I would prefer to for it not to to cost too much more yeah now that's fair um another one I'm thinking of is and I don't have one of these and I keep going back and forth on whether I like it or not I have a hard time getting past the gold the gold nib just because I prefer the silver or rhodium plated nibs is the Twisbee micarta that's a pin that's always fascinated me it's a different material I don't know if that would be her style but it's under a hundred bucks it's full sized and very lightweight because of the materials it's made with and it comes in a range of nib sizes I think it's like 80 or 90 bucks yeah she's gonna like that it's kind of like snake skinny looking yeah actually the listeners can totally correct me on this and I don't want to give out misinformation but I think micarta is like some type of cotton filament type of pin the way it's made or wrapped I could be wrong and I'm not looking at it I wasn't prepared to do the research on that but it's so that makes it a lot more lightweight pin mic then you know like a solid plastic pen but it's totally full size I mean it's full barrel width full length everything and it's it's cool looking I've held one and the only I would buy one if I didn't if it didn't have the gold nib so maybe that's something I got to look at found a replacement for but that's always been kind of in the back of my mind is a pin that I would like and would want to try um what else what else yeah this is good this is a good exercise actually because I get this is this is what my email inbox is like yeah so it's good no it's fun it's fun to try to to try to you know people give you a list of you know this is this is exactly what I'm looking for when people are looking for recommendations you know she's obviously she's very precise in what she wants and that's good like I wrote down I was writing all this down as you're saying you know we want a pin that's sleek and simple non-demonstrator with a medium or greater or a stub nib it's lightweight it's smooth with a good flow it's full sized and it's under a hundred dollars and I guess the real the the real benefit that she's had the other people don't get is somebody to sit down with her with a whole selection of different types of pen and be like right try this now try this now and then I can make sense in our speak of the things that she's right that she she's going through when she's trying them out you know and I can ask good questions that will give me those answers like how do you feel of the weight of this pen you know because then they can tell me a little bit about the types of materials that she wants to use I mean she's she seems I said she's very happy with the with with the metropolitan so which which led me down the pilot route but I kind of now want want to find her a stub nib yeah I mean you can get it's not hard I mean really excuse me it's hard to find but you can get palette the prayer comes with the calligraphy nib that you can get I think all those are clear barreled the ones that come with the no but you can buy a nib and swap it out into it you know if she likes the the prayer barrel yeah she doesn't like it yeah too small she just doesn't like the way it looks which I was surprised about it yeah so we'll put some more thinking into this and we'll we'll get some feedback from the listeners too and I'll put some more some more thought into it I'm thinking Twizby McCarter right now but you know being put on the spot I might be thinking of not being a but I might be overlooking something that's right in front of my face but I'm trying to think the the 50 say like 60 to a hundred dollar range and pens has always been a challenging range I've felt there's very few things that just nail it that are worth it in that price range it's like you can get a better value in the 50 to 60 dollar range or below and then you got to go to like 125 to 150 to kind of see a real difference there I've always felt that that range in the middle is a little bit more challenging sure for me one thing that I am willing to do like for example you mentioned like the prayer has a calligraphy nib if we can find a pen body that matches and a nib that I need to get from another pen I'm willing to Frankenstein this thing sure you know and and get get together the right thing yeah so I think I've got enough to to work off of so I'll see if I can come up with something else so I think I think we can figure this out this is this is what makes it fun yes this means like a treasure hunt I feel like I and I feel like I've personally gone as far as I can go like and I've been looking around and I'm kind of struggling now to come up with much more than what I have because I seem to keep finding my like leading myself down paths which have no clear end like you know I like right okay she likes this let me look at this then I'm like great but this is the perfect pen right cannot get a stub nib for it this company also doesn't make stub nibs as much as I can find so then you know you end up running round and round and round again the metropolitan I mean it surprised me that people seem to love that thing so much oh man it's it's it's unstoppable it really is everyone loves that pen and I can see why I mean for the price it's amazing but there's just a part of me that's like I would be disappointed in myself if the best that I could could source would be the pilot metropolitan as great a pen as it is just because the thing is made of plastic and it's like just it's just a standard run of the meal fountain pen mm-hmm yeah well just remember as the great Steven Patrick Morrissey said these things take time so we're gonna have to you know maybe the metropolitan is the thing for now yeah it is yeah then eventually yeah then eventually there's gonna be something that clicks they're gonna say I need this or you know I'm looking for something a little bit different or you know there's there's always that gateway drug yeah and you know there's no you don't have to rush it you know you know how long it took me to get into fountain pens and you know some of the things that I found in the beginning that I thought we're like the ultimate pen ever and you know don't use anymore you know things like that so you know it's uh it doesn't have to be force force fed so if the the metropolitan's the one there's no really argument with that and you know what what you can do is you can buy a pilot plumex it's PLU MIX we put a link in the show notes it's less than ten dollars it's got the quiligraphy nib and you can put that right on the metropolitan huh boom well look at you mm-hmm that could be it yep well well well um before we wrap this topic up so I've forgotten about this so prior to me going through this I was sent by this person a list of designs that she thought was interesting it's quite funny the stuff that she's picking out so uh simple sophisticated pens um and what she sent me was the coaker right so that's style she doesn't like the cap but she likes the whole thing that is simple right matte plastic she likes them all then shiny plastic hence the metropolitan right um she then sent me some other pen I've never seen in my life so I will forget about that it's labeled pocket fountain pen she was on Pinterest basically gotcha then she said something funky she likes funky um and and so she sent me a link to the pelican twist you familiar with this now this is very strange looking pen it's one of those learn to write fountain pens that's kind of what I was thinking it was but I can't picture it yep I'll put it in the show notes but this thing is like ten dollars mm-hmm it's exactly like that one that you were showing me last week or showing us like this shows just me and you this is just our conversation what was the name of that one that we were looking at I don't even remember it was like the colorful one with a smiley face on it oh yeah the cocoono the cocoono yeah so that's that was one thing I forgot to mention likes quite funky designs as well okay gotcha just because I don't have anything like that um what else do we have here maybe something girly and charming don't she sent me what and the kaya oh gosh yeah dream on you can carry on down that little route and she said and I also like nibs like this they're beautiful to look at do you know what she sent me oh my god pellican in 1000 oh lord yeah that's a similar looking nib that's huge beautiful beautiful nib yep so easy that's good that's good that's good that's you know what yeah that's more around design clearly she's picking good stuff you know but yep that's funny so yeah I'm probably gonna get this plummox let's see if it's on colt pens because I'll just throw that in a car along with this pelican thing yep so I can you know see what she thinks of those plummox yeah the nibs really easy to change and no it's not and you can and you can get some funky metropolitan barrels now too they've come out with more than you know the gold silver and black yeah they're not with white and purple and patterns and things like that so yeah well maybe that's the ticket they're not that exciting though they just changed the whoa no no no not for me I'm just saying they just have more a wider range now than the ones that when they first came out with so it would be a parelli I can get if I grab the plummox I can remove that nib put it on the metropolitan yes cool just shame colt pens doesn't seem to carry it just a shame you should be able to find it somewhere it's I mean it's one of those pins that act for a time it was on the shelves in the US at like Target you know just like a big box retailer so it's a somewhat commonish pin but I don't know I don't know how often I don't know if they're still manufacturing as many as they used to when they came out a few years ago yeah but if not you know I can come up with one for you there any other pilot pins that carry that nip that you're aware of no no I mean just the prayer of which you're gonna have to spend too much just for the nib yeah yeah I'm not gonna spend 43 pounds on it so what pilot does there's two pins that are bought by people like me who like to change nibs around for these for use in other pins like the prayer it's the pilot penmanship because you can get the EF steel nib which doesn't come in the prayer or the cocoono and the pilot plummox which has the calligraphy nib which doesn't come in those so why didn't they just offer the nip I don't know I don't know but both of those pins are under ten dollars like I bought like three or four penmanship I think there were like 850 each at jet pins oh just so I could just for the nibs I mean I don't even use the pen I just take the nibs off and put them in my prayers or whatever else fits I'm going to assume that the pilot parallel does not have a removable nib though no that means this is 1.5 millimeter yeah but it's it's a completely it's 90 it's a pure calligraphy nib it's a very squared off rough okay edge nib it's not a stub nib that's got a little bit of that roll on the corners you really do know everything no gosh dude I'm throwing these random pilot throwaway pens at you like oh yeah well no this one has this I think I do this show with the right person good we should keep doing it oh yeah yeah I think it's got I think it's got staying power babies good legs yeah we should look into that speaking of legs I need to run let's wrap this bad boy up do you a lot that was maybe one of the worst I'm good I'm I'm the best at the worst I will tell you that right now it's an interesting way to look at mm-hmm all right well it's been a pleasure talking to you today sir thank you very much for your assistance we'll be back next week with another episode if you'd like to to find the show notes and links and contact information for me and Brad go to five by five dot TV slash pan addict slash eighty nine I am Mike I am at I'm Mike I am YKE Brad is at Diodism D O W D Y ISM and he writes at the pan addict or pan addict dot com I want them both because I made you thanks so much listening and we'll be back next week bye bye [BLANK_AUDIO]
