Hello and welcome to episode 79 of the Panatic 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 joined by a man who is surely now got gold tip nib it's mr. I'm good I'm good I was saying I was trying to back out yeah I know I'm I'll be right back I need to go like wash my hands and brush my teeth real quick yeah I was I was filled dirty I was well committed so I'm going to the dentist this week so maybe I can come back with a little something extra gold some girl you can get like a girl yeah exactly how are you sir. Oh I'm good are you good I'm golden I'm golden I'm trying to get over this cold you can probably tell I sound a little bit different so if I blow out blow out your headset on the this episode I will try to catch myself but yeah thankfully the fireworks have stopped here. Oh yeah it's a guy forks night that's right it's 5th November so I recorded with Patrick I recorded the last episode in the enough podcast today I'm so sad yeah and there were fireworks. Throughout the entire episode popping in the background yeah it's usually something out Patrick's window or something that's making the noise but this time it was you yep it was well I was it was every I have my windows closed and everything but so loud you know yeah you can't really escape fireworks well that was a deserving sendoff then of the enough exactly in a way it was kind of nice but yeah this hasn't been the only fireworks that has been this week I mean surely there was some. In Georgia yeah yeah the knock kickstarter project funded success it was successfully funded Mike I don't know if you know that what I don't think you guys are going to make it it was going down to the final minute. It was tight there at the end so I remember on the show that that you said that you hoped you'd break 2,000 75 so 2,000 backers 75,000 dollars where you got yeah 2,000 backers. And 78,000 dollars 662 so congratulations thanks I appreciate that I'm just I'm shaking my head you know you can't see that but I'm just like what an incredible amount of money yeah isn't that amazing. It really is it really is and we're excited we're we're excited that the backers are so excited about this project I mean we get so many I mean people don't even have these things in their hands yet and they just keep sending us messages about how excited they are. You know how happy they are for us and I don't know it's a good feeling it's it's a good feeling I'm not going to lie of course Jeff has been updating the Instagram yeah. He loads of pictures hard at hard at work yeah he's pretty much doing cases full time starting yesterday then I'm going to be up there this weekend helping helping out with that and hopefully bringing back the first batch to start getting organized we don't have our. We're waiting we got to wait till the kickstarter funds come in to get some of our shipping stuff set up yeah but I'm going to start organizing that because I'm going to be handling a lot of the shipping. So you're basically going to start getting some of the packages ready I guess yeah yeah I got to figure out the get some organizational things going basically so we can I can fulfill in a efficient manner I'm not overly concerned about it but it's just something that's not set up until I can't really set it up ahead of time kind of thing. Yeah you can do it but it's about how you do it really right right I imagine lots of huge buckets yeah yeah definitely that's exactly right so which will be good I mean it's it's good times it's good to it's good to get this thing going and I'm glad we're able to start manufacturing really because I think we would be behind if we weren't but I think even you know Jeff's just starting starting this week he's already feeling pretty good about the process so far so I mean I think I think we're going to be in a good good shape. So we did send out the survey this week for any listeners who what the carrier now I'm just going to say any listeners who who are backers who haven't seen a survey you need to check your junk mail folders or something like that your spam folders I know some got delivered there because they got I guess they come from a different different address than them than our backer updates come from Kickstarter I think most people were getting those but the surveys get handled a little bit differently but I never thought I would see so many tweets or messages about how hard it is to choose the colors on the survey people are excited about picking the colors and they're having a hard time so I went pretty heavy in the orange yeah it looks pretty sweet I'll admit that I got like the is it the high tower that was in the peacock right I got that one because you know but most of mine were orange I did choose like what I think I got one maybe one blue and one steel okay but nice I didn't realize until I got the survey how many pen cases I now will be on it didn't dawn on me until I was checking them all and then one thing I had a concern I have a concern I want to share with you just customs charges yeah I we've had a couple messages about that because it's potentially going to be quite a hefty pack not met how big do you think it will be we were doing some measurements the other day but I didn't do any weights yet it's not going to be supremely heavy and it's going to be about what was the dimensions 8x12 so we'll see I mean yeah hopefully there's not going to be a real hit there and I don't know if there's a way to put in the description that's more feasible I don't know I might have to look into that I would suggest that like for example I see the t-shirt last week just a t-shirt it cost me $20 in customs fees so I'm just concerned that I will be I'll be going back to vanishing point days not that I will mine for your goods but you know it's not just me well sure yeah and I don't want to get you know rigged over the coals by a bunch of um by a bunch of backers saying oh I didn't know there was going to be these additional fees and you know shit shipping is to pay awful yes it's just awful there's no two ways about it people you know want to know well can you reduce your shipping fee I'm like well I'm already losing money in my shipping fee you know in this in this um in this project I mean there's certain fixed costs that just are you know and it's like you know shipping fees you know people usually don't have a way to get around them but we try to be pretty reasonable and I I'm fairly certain we're going to lose lose money just in shipping but we wanted to get these products out and get them in a lot of people's hands and you know that's what this Kickstarter was about was getting the getting the word out and getting the product out and we're certainly not going to lose money overall but I know just on the shipping part of it we will but that's totally fine and we accepted that in the beginning just because we wanted to get these just all over the world and it turns out it worked worked out that way pretty well so we'll see what happens I mean I don't I think customs is a bit of a dark art I've had things come through absolutely fine I've had things locked away in cabinets and right in post offices in places we'll see what happens yep we'll see what happens so yeah no that's a that's a concern I just don't know the best way to handle that and that's something I'll be looking into you should maybe contact some of your friends that's true that's true I just wrote myself a note here so I know Dan's had to deal with it so I will I will enlist and I like hands and people like that you know yeah and actually I'll probably hear from Dan before I text and it seems like he listens pretty quick to the podcast and starts saying hey I can help you with that he's great he's great he's great so in a pretty shocking release this week we have a new field note that was completely out of the left field I thought yeah how awesome is that so it's Field Notes Pitch Black great name what a great idea yeah they killed they they pretty much killed it on this one and out if you saw on the day they announced it they turned the whole site black did you go see that I did see that it's back to normal now but I thought it was a pretty cool Halloween yeah so what they did was in a nutshell is they have a pitch black edition think of the cover is sort of like the night sky when you say it's kind of the same gray gray ink dark black cover yeah stealth stealth gray text ink and then the dark red on the inside so and the black and the black staples I mean it takes all of your boxes doesn't it yeah totally I'm like I so don't need these yet because I'm still working on the drink local additions you know filling them up but as soon as the winter edition comes out I'll be adding these to the order because I've always said I use the just as when I'm not using a regular addition I mean a limited edition I'm using the red blooded so this will replace the red blooded for me and unfortunately they're shutting down the red blooded edition yeah this this will replace the red blooded yeah it's a I don't know if they're yeah they're calling it a retirement but it could make a comeback they did three full print runs of those I don't know what the quantities are I don't think it's gonna be some super collectible thing I'm a little bit sad that the letter press covers are my favorite field notes additions so I'm sad in that aspect of that red one's not gonna be available but I think this is a more than fair trade off for me this is a sweet book you ordered some right I have two packs and I haven't got them yet I don't know why I ordered two packs like I thought that they was gonna run out I was actually talking to Jim Kudal about it and I was like I've ordered two and he was like thank you I don't even know why I did it and he was like yeah a lot of people are doing it yeah so they'll yeah they should be around for a while it's like I'm so used to to when I make these orders like I tend to order in pairs and so just I guess it was just have it I was like well I better get two packs in case they sell out even if they sell out that's refreshing I do it for shipping purposes I mean I've never ordered just the one three pack it's just not good shipping you know management shipping awesome management so yeah I always order at least two three packs whenever I order so I'll I'll make just to get these they'll be a good I've got so many of the most recent additions so that's why I just haven't jumped into these didn't you subscribe though I did okay then I order extras I mean you know I mean they're actually scared cuz I wonder what you meant but no I don't know what it depends I mean you sure don't need to order extras if they don't like cuz the drink local because it was six so you didn't get two packs or three do you buy more than just two packs or three that you get with the colors don't yeah you wouldn't think that I would have to buy more but I kind of do interesting I bought four more three packs of the drink local four more yes so then I gave I gave up I gave two of them to Jeff though so I gave him a loggers and an ale so I only have two extra so I got two with the color subscription then I got two extra so then I gave two so you have twelve no I have four three packs four three packs which is just two loggers two ails okay that makes sense yes I understand yeah yeah I'm on I got two and two as well yeah I'm on my second of the drink local nice good that's not quite quick do you follow Johnny Gamber from a pencil revolution I'm not sure I don't think so well you you follow field you follow field nuts he's the one he posted like yesterday he just finished filling all six books of the drink local edition oh no I don't know did he post it in the group yeah yeah he said all right I'm done I just laughed what is he putting in them he put down in there what he does we'll have to find the post we'll try to put that one in there my drink locals are empty full he said burp or something crazy yes that was crazy so yeah this should be around for this this is obviously gonna do extremely well and I look forward to getting them and and using them because I think it's a I don't know that I change a thing unless they want to do a lot of press cover but this is fine just like this because I love that gray that gray text on there it looks sweet dot grid dot grid awesome all about it yep what else to me Chewie what else have we got we've got loads of perfection a bunch more stuff should I try to take a quick break now yeah why don't you do that real quick and then we'll go from there it's probably sounds like a good idea so let's take a quick moment to thank our friends are over at square space dot com square space there who give you absolutely everything that you need to create an exceptional website we love square space if you are looking to build a site maybe you want to build a online portfolio or a site for your business maybe you want to sell things online like Brad will be doing he's going to be doing that on on square space they've got everything that you need to do all of that stuff for a free trial and 10% of your first purchase go to square space dot com and use the offer code tally ho eleven I have been I put a post on my site today on white curly dot net because our our friend Mr. Matthew Alexander he launched his new company today and I wanted to post about it because I didn't go live today yeah it did go live today so I need a new lifestyle dot com I had an image that I wanted to post because I took a photo of Matt about in December of last year when he came to visit me and he told me about his idea that he had and he spent the rest we spent the rest of the day talking about it and I convinced him to buy and pad and pay pen and paper so he could write the ideas down so he wouldn't forget them and I took a picture of him because I felt it was like a moment to like to sort of chronicle and I wanted to post that and just write a little thing about it so I just typed some stuff up into my square space blog and I was able to drag and drop the image from my desktop into the window and then I was able to use the sort of the selectors to shrink it down to the right size easily put a caption in and then I was able to just drag and drop it to where I wanted it and have the text wrap around it was so easy like that's the stuff that I love and then I was able to save it as a draft waiting for him to announce it and then when he announced that I was able to publish very simple it's what I love about Squarespace I love the fact that there are always adding new features I love that they're always making them more easy to use I love that they're always adding new designs and their designs they're just fantastic they've won numerous awards for their beautiful designs they all feature mobile experiences they're all responsive from a web design perspective which look fantastic they have 24/7 customer support and their plans believe it or not just started just $8 a month and they include a free domain name if you sign up for a year I just think they're fantastic as I mentioned before they're commerce platforms so if you want to set up a shop to sell things you can do it in just a few minutes as well and that's something that I think we'll be talking a lot more about as Brad switches all that stuff live over at Knockco so I mean you can see right what I've mentioned there just through talking is Brad has his sights there I have my sights there I mean you can't get more of an endorsement than that we trust Squarespace with our website so you should too I want you to go and sign up for a free trial no credit card needed and when you decide to sign up for Squarespace make sure that you use the offer code "TallyHoe11" that's T-A-L-L-Y-H-O-1-1 that's going to get you 10% off your first purchase and it will also help show your support for the pen addict and all of 5x5 thanks so much to Squarespace they give you everything that you need to create an exceptional website one quick comment on Squarespace they update their blog pretty frequently on whatever changes they're making and you know some of its back end stuff like they had an analytics change here recently that they did a big update on but I just happened to stumble on it yesterday they did a post a couple days ago they have a new commerce template called supply looks nice right yeah I sent that to Jeff and he about fell out that's going to be perfect for us I think we're going to switch our commerce template which we haven't put live anyway it's still behind the scenes it's because it's going to be a few months before that's totally live but you know they're always doing updates and things like this adding new templates and it's really neat and clean and it's I think that's going to be our commerce template and I know I know this this has been kind of rather now but the great thing about the way they do that stuff is you can just change it yeah and that's it like it doesn't break anything you just change it yeah like we have all this stuff built out I'll just go pick new template and then you know I might I'll just check and make sure everything landed in the right spot yeah see you choose the new template and it loads and shows you what your site's going to look like you can go around everything but until you click save it doesn't change it's just awesome right so hey a quick pro tip for you on reading your Matt Alexander post on need and first of all congratulations Matt I'm pretty excited for this it's going to be awesome did he launch it on his birthday on purpose I don't know if it was I think it was just a happy accident but one that he was very pleased about like he was saying to me earlier that all of the birthday wishes and the world wishes for this it felt like his heart was going to explode so yeah quick pro tip for you next time you give him a pen take off the little UPC label that was to show you how like he literally ran around the department store he bought their to the moleskin the land I think they're cool yeah yeah pack of those and then I think that's a G2 and he just sat down and just started writing that's awesome I'm so happy I took that photo yeah that's really good and it it's not just the photo I mean it captures somebody captures a moment you know exactly what was going on there and then something great came out of it so that's very cool very cool well done yes sir so I got another well done product here that kind of I tried to not buy just because I don't know I spent a lot of money on pins as it is but on kickstarter I've been eyeballing this this project called the Apollo technical pin and drafting scale have you seen this one yeah somebody sent it into us I can't remember who was talking my head yeah and I was just like it looks interesting but it's not for me and I did not expect you to buy it but you have bought it I didn't either I thought this looks really good it looks really well done it's not for me that was what how I saw it sure I can and I can understand that because you're not a super high tech see fan even though it takes other refills it's just it's not a beer alley but I literally looked at this I think I went to this project page every day for three days and read the whole thing and going you know the first time I looked at it I was like man this looks really good I'm just you know I'm not gonna back another pin and then I looked at it the next day I was like oh check out that black one I didn't see that black on the first time and I was like that's pretty neat and then the third day I found the black one's nice yeah it's like a road train yeah I came in and said forget it I'm backing it I keep going I keep pulling up the web page I'm gonna back it so I'm gonna I want this black one because I traded my rotarying 600 roller ball that looks a lot like this so this will be kind of a replacement for that and I don't know it just it looks extremely well made and the price is good for a titanium pin for I think mine was 50 yeah fifty nine dollars and you can choose your color of the the silver of the black and I thought for fifty nine dollars it was like totally fair and it does have a stylus on the back end which I don't really use on my pen that I wish people would just stop doing it like that was you know what I watched the video and that was one of the things that made me close to tap cuz I'm like kids they're not good those those styluses those little ball styluses they're not that good like especially not in a in a size like this right so I was kind of just like you've annoyed me and that kind of seems a bit crazy but I was like you just annoyed me now because you're trying to cram more functionality in it and you're actually probably creating a lesser product because of it I think it's I think it's a addition though right yeah yeah so it's got like I don't know if it's a screw or if it's a separate piece but it does come without it just frustrates me yeah so and actually yeah but yeah I which I mean cuz I'm good man I don't have to do this I'm totally going off on one now if you're creating a drafting pen a technical pen which is all about precision then you shouldn't be making a stylus for the iPad where there is no point precision right and it's like you know the studio need guys they knew what they were doing they created something that felt and acted like a board marker like a dry erase marker right because that's what it feels like to use because you have very little control over it It's just something that frustrates me to see people because you clearly aren't doing it to be precise. It's being done as a value add. I don't know why I've taken such a fence to this. Maybe I should be quiet and let you say, "Oh, great. The product is again. I apologize." No, no, no, no. I'm with you on that. I will not use the stylist piece for this. When this started becoming a thing a few years ago, I was like, "Okay. Let me try a few of these. I could see how this would be useful. I carry my iPhone. I carry a pen and I carry paper." But I never use a stylist on my iPhone when I'm out and about or when I'd be carrying that pen with the stylist piece on it. But if I'm at a home and have my iPad out, I'm always using the cosmonaut. I would never reach for the pen with the stylist on it because I'm not going to be riding at that time. I've just found it to be, even though I was behind a few of these, and I've just found through use that I never use the stylist piece of it. Excuse me. It just seems extraneous. Unfortunately, with this one, you don't have to use it and it comes right off and you'll never see it again and Mike can sleep well at night. I think it looks really good and I think the price is right, so hopefully it's done. Super good looking. I'm sure people that buy it are going to love it. I just looked at it and was like, "That's more than I need." I probably wouldn't use it that much personally, but it takes a ridiculous amount of great refills. Yup. Yup. All the high-tech season, 50, 60, 70 refills, a bunch of good stuff. It's real good. I've done a good job putting the page together and they're doing well, 62,000 over against 30,000. Oh, yeah. And one other thing, it does come with a pencil modification. I'm not going to be ordering that, but I thought that was interesting because this does look like the roaching 600 line and I think that was a famous pencil before. Maybe they made the pens at the same time, but the pencils really took over the world. What's so special about the ruler thing? I don't know. I'm not an engineer. Okay. I guess it's just a balance and it's maybe it's got some measurement stuff that's handy or something. I couldn't really speak to that. I don't think mine does mine come with a ruler. I don't think it does. Yeah. Mine doesn't come. It's called a tri scale. That's actually a pretty expensive thing, but a lot of people are raving about that. I have no interest in that. I just want the pen. So. Does yours come with one? No. No, doesn't. Okay. Plus the black one would look silly in that thing. They have a black tri scale. Do they? Okay. Oh, that's right. Because they have a brass pen to that. Like the black tri scale looks like something you find the desk style looks awesome. Yeah. It does look pretty. They're all great looking. And I think the engineering and drafting and architectural community seem to be very positive on the tri scale piece, but I just don't understand it. So I didn't get one. I don't have any need for that. Don't have any need. But yeah, we'll see how this goes. They've met their goal. They've doubled their goal so far. They had the 30,000 goal, they're up to 62 and they got 37 days to go. I guess this was a 60 day project. So they're well on their way. So I'm anxious to get it. Cool. So a couple of weeks ago, we spoke about the field notes every day carry. And I had Keegan from one star level goods get in contact with me. I'll put a link to one star level goods in the show notes, which you'll find at 5x5.tv/penadex/79. I was actually introduced to Keegan by our mutual friend, the dude, Mike Dudek. And basically, at one star level, they make really beautiful products out of lever. And some of the stuff that Keegan makes are like a note, like everyday carry, notebook holder type dealio. So I was very lucky that Keegan sent me one of his. He asked me what I like to look of. And I went for the park sloper senior, not just because it was the most expensive item, but because it was made to fit field notes, size, notebooks. So what I've got here is a really nicely put together, like it smells good. Lever piece, I've got like a green and brown, like the main image on the page that you'll see, which is in the show notes, is what I went for. It's really, really well put together. The field notes fits in like a glove. You have to be really careful when you slide in the back cover into the inside of the right hand side of the piece. So it's just slides in there, trying to think of like a passport holder. So you have to be careful as you're putting it in, right, because it's obviously tight for a reason, but that means you could end up accidentally folding your field notes book in half. And that's on one side. And then on the other side, you've got some like a credit card holders, and you've got like a pocket that you could put other things into. So in the description, you can put like bills and stuff, which is you can put like another notebook in there. Unfortunately, it doesn't fit another field notes notebook in the other side, which was a bit of a shame for me, because I like to be able to carry like two field notes notebooks around me, because I'm crazy like that. The average human only needs one, and then you can put other stuff like money and things in there. And I've been using it sort of just as a nice piece to carry the field notes notebook in. Like, if I was the type of person that was able to wear jeans in their daily work life, then I would be carrying this around me as my sort of wallet slash notebook holder every day, but it's just slightly too big to fit in the back pocket of my work trousers. And it would, it's kind of also then too wide to go in like a front pocket, you know, in a back pocket in the in the jeans is perfect. And then I've got my wallet on my field notes book. Now one of the things that I was excited about was the fact that you could put a pen in the side. It's got like a part you can slide the pen into a problem for me is most of my favorite pens don't fit. It's like a tooth in it's like standard ballpoint width. Yeah. So it fits like he says, fits many pens from Barker, Barker, Parker, Bic, Cross Fisher, et cetera. So that's perfectly standard. I mean, you know, really you should be catering for regular people because if you catered for me, the most of the regular people's pens wouldn't fit in it. That's cool. Yeah. And it's probably not going to fit in your pocket anyway with a larger pen. So one pen that does fit though is Maya Joto, do you remember Maya Joto? Yeah. That fits in there. So I'm pretty happy about that because the retro doesn't fit in it. And the main problem that I had was these a lot of pens that have a clip on them. I was struggling to fit in there, but also looking at some of the pens, like the render key doesn't fit. That's too wide. The retro 51 doesn't fit. That's too wide. And the same with the Edison Collier because they're quite thick pens. Sure. You know, you could get something like, like I say, like the Joto will fit in there. I was able to put a auto graphic liner was able to fit. So that's in there as well. I mean, you do have to have the clip on the outside for that one, but that's not difficult because it's not like a really sort of rigid clip. Sure. But the only thing is because it's leather, it kind of needs to be broken in a little bit. So it takes a bit of a pull to get the pens back out. But I figured that if you used the same panel at a time, you would end up molding the lever of a time, which is kind of also one of the good things about it. Yeah. So looking at it before hearing your comments about it, it looks extremely well made. Oh, it looks thick. The stitching looks amazing. Stitching is incredible. Like it's actually one of it's the stitching is one of the highlights, which is probably not something you would always say. No. I mean, hey, having to look at stitches for our cases, which are not on a, which are completely different than this, I can appreciate stitching and I think that's important. And yeah, and it's just, it's really well made and in all honesty, for $125, I mean, I think it's worth it. If you're somebody that wants to be able to put all of this stuff in one place and you maybe want a little bit more, I've just got these, the options that you have, I've got a lot more flair than the field notes one. Yeah. I think that's a pretty good buy. Yeah. I think if I was a wallet person and I'm not a wallet person, I'm a front pocket, money clip, carry person, if I was a wallet person, I would be all over this. Yeah. But I do think, you know, for me, it would be, for what I need for like a field notes cover, that's why I just have, I love my, my don't cover because it's just for like a single notebook. There's no extra pockets or anything like that. And it's, you know, it keeps the thinner profile. But man, if I was a wallet person, because I only carry like two credit cards or not one credit card and like an insurance card in my driver's license, that's all I carry. And then some cash, this is like perfect. I don't know, it might make me consider carrying a wallet, but I'm not a big back pocket carry guy. So he makes a bunch of other stuff yet, she does make field notes covers as well. Oh, just a single solitary type cover, but has a pocket on the side. So you can look at those. Okay. Yeah. Great. This stuff looks really good. One star leather goods. I've seen lots of pictures of these. I think probably from Dudek and everyone I see always looks like really well made. That's, that's the thing that stood out for me is like, you can tell in the pictures. And hopefully it, hopefully it wears well and things like that. And I'm sure it will, it looks, it looks extremely durable. Yeah. And one of those items where I know that the more that you use it, the better is going to look. Yeah. That's exactly right. But the colors, all the colors that you use is for the levels are really nice. Yeah. I would, I would check it out. And if you're interested, then I would say give it a go. It was very, very, I mean, I know that he was hooking me up, but he was very responsive every amount of stuff. So I'm sure he'd be happy to answer any questions that you may or may not have about his beautiful products. Fantastic. Fantastic. Do you see, do you see that tweet that came out today from a doxy? I did. Yes. I don't know. The first thing I did, all right, we'll, we'll tell you what it is in just a second. But the first thing I did was, I guess you sent me that tweet. You forwarded it to me. I did. Yeah. So you did see it, of course. The first thing I did is I went to the field notes, the field notes page to see if they saw it yet. And I didn't see it posted over there. But what doxy has done, doxy's coming out with a new product. And they started, I don't know, they started yesterday, I guess yesterday, Monday, started kind of leaking tidbits on their Twitter feed about what this new product is. And today they leaked this sweet field notes. How would you explain this? What do they call it? The tweet says, happiness comes in textured French, 100 pound cream cord tone. A new kind of doxy is almost here. So it kind of looks like a canvas. So you're like a really thick canvas. So it's got like that, like look of texture about it. Yeah. Okay. Okay. That's a good description, description canvas. Always like feels. It feels interesting, I wouldn't know what you're talking about. What are you, what are you saying? I don't know. It feels pretty good. It feels interesting. It does does it. It's funny. You should say that. It's funny. Oh, sorry. I hit my, I don't know what happened now. I think I've got the microphone or something on what apparently they're coming free with the new doxy scanner, this one is what doxy. Yes, there's a new doxy scanner coming out this week and I think you'll hear more about it, more about it this week, but this field notes, they tweeted it out and this is one of the coolest field notes books I've seen. I really like that they did something different with the cover and you know, they got their logo on the belly band and stuff like that. So I thought they did a, I thought they did a good job with this, but yeah, there will be more coming soon about, about this little gym, but I was surprised it wasn't on the field nets page because actually one of the, one of the field notes, field nuts, people actually responded to doxy's post, where can I get this? Yeah, because the field notes, Twitter account retweeted it. Oh, did they? Yeah. So maybe it's on there. I just, you know what? I hate Facebook. No, no, no field notes. The field notes, Twitter account. And retweeted it. I know what I'm, what I'm about to say is I hate Facebook because like if I go to the field nuts page, I always feel like it changes like the order of stuff. It does. Like I never know what's the newest thing. So I'm like, well, I don't want to post something if someone's already posted, but I'm just so bad at Facebook, I can't tell whether it's been posted or not. So you would think it would be over there, something somewhere about it, but, um, because I'm sure they're going to be raving about it, but it looks like, um, from, from doxy's response, it's going to be part of the new product that they're launching. And it's going to come with this product. So stay tuned. All right, so we got, um, we got one more topic. I want to, I want to knock out real quick because it actually won't take very long. Mike said, okay. Yeah, ma. So I've been getting a lot of questions on this is part of, you know, the panatic blog growing and this podcast growing and people getting into new pens and people discovering things that they like. And, um, I've been getting a lot of, um, new people starting to use fountain pens. So along with that comes the laundry list of questions that you and I have had as we've gone through this experience in the past, right? We've had the same, very same questions, um, going through our fountain pen discovery period and this is actually an old question from Bobby Mendoza. One time when we were asking questions, we've, I've probably sat on this for like six months, but I've just had an increase like in Twitter and an email of just some of these basic fountain pen questions. So I wanted to go through a few things real quick. It's kind of a fountain pen 101 and on that topic, uh, Brian Goulais at the Inc Nouveau blog, which is his blog for Goulais pens. That's the first thing you should go to. It's called fountain pen 101. The video series, Brian makes some of the best, best videos, um, out there. He explains everything to a tee. He's very thorough. So we'll link that into the show notes. Go check out Brian's videos and he kind of covers all these topics that were, I'm just going to shoot through real quick, um, but Brian goes in depth with this stuff. And that's where I learned a lot of my everyday tips and tricks. So a couple of the questions that I've seen recently, um, one, is it normal? For ink to be deposited in the cap, or is it normal to see like on a demonstrator pen, ink in the feed section, um, and things like that. And I would say it's normal to see ink in the feed section. That's just how the ink flows through the pen, like in a demonstrator pen. It's just, that's part of the design. That's not something's not broken in an inks leaking everywhere. That's what's actually helping the ink, um, you know, be moderated through the nib, through the feed in the nib, so you actually have a decent line to write with. That's a normal thing. Is it normal for inks to be deposited in the cap? No, it's not, um, something's wrong, probably. If you're doing that, it's either the pens being banged around too much, tossed around too much, or there's not a good seal somewhere that's causing, uh, the air tightness isn't there either in the cartridge or the converter or some things just not set right. If it's happening a lot. Um, that's just something you want to, you just want to check everything out, make sure all the everything's tightened up and looking good because you shouldn't have, you shouldn't really have ink deposited in the cap. Now you'll, you'll see some a little bit from time to time and you know, you haven't really shaken it out. If it's just minor and infrequent, I wouldn't worry about much, but, um, anything larger, I would start checking it out. We talked a lot about in previous podcasts, how to store pens. You know, just Bobby asked, just storing the pen nib down cause any of this ink to be deposited in the cap. Um, I don't know that it necessarily does. I don't like storing my pens nib down just out of precaution for that. I lay them flat, just like a flat horizontal storage as much as I can or I store them nib up. Um, I think nib down, you're probably asking for trouble, although I don't know that you would be in trouble. You just never know when something just might not be right. Um, cleaning is always a big issue for people that are new to fountain pens. So my cleaning routine has gotten to be very simple and very concise and it's repeatable over and over and anyone can do it. It doesn't take, well, it doesn't, I wouldn't, I wasn't going to say it doesn't take any special tools, but I do use an aspirator, but what I do to clean a fountain pen is you unscrew the section, which is the part, you know, where the grip area is in the nib, unscrew that, pull out your cartridge or converter, run that nib section, the part that you grip under the sink, under the tap water, just kind of flush that through, you know, as much as you can till you kind of start seeing ink, um, being replaced by clear water. And if you happen to have a nasal aspirator, I've bought a couple, they work really good for pushing that water through. You don't have to have one, but once you're done kind of rinsing that, that nib section out, I wrap it in a paper towel and shake it like a mother. I mean, I just shake the heck out of it and to see, get that water to come out of it and I can see if any ink is remaining in there and if there is, I'll flush it a little bit more, wipe it down on a paper towel a little bit more, shake it out a little bit more. And after, you know, maybe two or three times of that, then it's usually pretty clear. I've gotten over the point where it has to be dead clear, perfect. I don't know if you run into that, Mike, when you clean your fountain pens, you make sure they're like, like the nib is just like crystal clear water. Or sometimes there might be a little bit of coloration from just the smallest dots of ink left in there. Yeah, I try not to get too crazy about it. Yeah, you'll drive yourself nuts trying to be perfect on that and you don't have to be because the new ink will take over and you might see it in one or two strokes right when you start, but after that, you're going to take off and you'll never notice the minute amount left in there. Now, if I have a nib that's particularly tough to clean, like my Edison boat nib for some reason, I've got other Edisons that are easy to clean, this Bobont nib, it just holds ink like crazy. That one I'll take off and put in a little cup of water and let it soak overnight. And then actually I'll see more ink come out by the morning time that I wasn't able to get out of my own. Then I'll just, I'll dry it off and it's ready to go. That's all you got to do, guys, to get your pen clean. Run the nib unit under the water, shake it out, make sure all the, as much ink is gone out of as possible, flush it, run it through there again if you have to, and dry it off. I mean, you can start, I don't even let it dry overnight or anything like that. If I'm going to re-ink it, I'll re-ink it right there. I'll either clean out the converter, clean out the cartridge. These are easy to clean out, those you just run under the faucet and the ink comes right out of those. Any cartridge or converter, most of them you can just get it right out, put some water in it, put your finger over it, shake it up, everything will come out. It's really simple. I used to overthink cleaning until our friend Sydney sent us his video and showed us how easy it was to clean pens. I used to really overthink and confirm myself with cleaning fountain pens. Now it's really one of the simplest tasks and I don't even mind doing it because I can do it so quickly now, so you just got to get in there and do it. A few other basics that a lot of people ask are all inks safe to use and all fountain pens and the answer is no. You have to at least be aware of what type of ink you're using. The pen type doesn't matter as much as what ink you're putting in any pen. There's different types of inks and I've gone over it on the blog and we'll have to check and see what podcast we've talked about, the iron gall inks, but there's certain inks you want to be careful about cleaning out much more frequently. If I'm using a normal ink, like just a basic pilot blue or pilot blue black, whatever, and if I haven't run it out in the pen, I'll try to clean it every few weeks, three, four weeks, maybe five weeks, that's about how long I'll leave a normal ink in a pen. Without just dumping it out, cleaning it, and maybe even putting the same ink back in. It just needs to be maintained that way. If you're using an iron gall ink, which is a little bit harder on the nibs and on the feeds and on the mechanics of the pen, I don't want to say corrosive, that's a little extreme, but you have to be careful about leaving it in too long because it'll dry up in your nib, it'll kind of gunk up the nib in the feed unit, so you've got to clean those about every one to two weeks at the most, just depending. There's some that are a little bit more tame, but you need to be aware of what the ink properties are before you put them in any pen, and if you have a question, let me know. I'll answer it as best as I can, and you just want to be careful. People ask about certain brands of inks, do they stain a demonstrator pen? If you're putting a certain brand of blue ink in a clear pen, is it going to stain it when you get it cleared out? That I don't have as much experience with. The knowledge I've gained over the past couple years is there's a basic tenant that my friend Thomas instilled in me that if a pen manufacturer, like a pilot, also manufacturers in ink, you generally assume that those inks are safe for their pens, or any fountain pen, really like a pilot can be used in a pelican fountain pen, but the theory being that a pen manufacturer is not going to make an ink that's going to damage one of their pens because then they're going to have to repair it, and there's additional costs in that. That's not necessarily a fact, it's just a, I think that's a good working theory though. I like that a lot, so that doesn't mean you shouldn't use things like noodlers or private reserve or any of these million other ink vendors because they make some of the best inks. Like I love all kinds of noodles inks. I tend to clean those more frequently than if I was using pilot blue black over Noodlers 54th Massachusetts, maybe that's just me being paranoid. I haven't had any problems, people report problems with certain inks, like some of the bulletproof inks or some of the more stronger formulaic inks that might not stain. I don't have a ton of experience with that, but that's a good thing to keep in mind. Just know what you're putting in the pen, understand that a pen manufacturer is probably not going to make something that's going to damage a fountain pen because that would be detrimental to their business. And then just have a decent cleaning process where you're keeping track of it every few weeks. I wouldn't leave any ink and any fountain pen for two or three months. I think that you'll probably have to do some extra cleaning steps with that. I think that's most of the questions that I've been getting, just like the super basic stuff that, it's kind of quick answers, but people never having experiences before and just getting into fountain pens, these are the kind of questions that I had in the beginning and that I asked a lot and just through trial and error and talking with people that are more experienced than myself, I've come to some of these conclusions and it's just kind of the habits that I've instilled in working with my fountain pens now. So do you have anything to add along like the very basic one-on-one stuff, Mike? I can't add anything more than what you've just put in my friend's. All right. So good. I'm always free to answer questions like this. I get them all the time and since the frequency of this topic has been increasing lately, which is wonderful to see, I'm happy to answer these types of questions all the time. And I may not have all the answers and there's guys that are out there that are way more excised and girls that are way more experienced than myself, I'll defer to them quite often. But I'm at least the starting point to help you on this journey and I'm glad to do it. So yeah, you know where to find me. Where is that? That is on Twitter. Twitter is a great way to get in touch with me if you want a quick answer. I'm on Twitter at Dowdyism, D-O-W-D-Y-I-S-M and I'm on app.net at Dowdy, D-O-W-D-Y. Either one of those avenues, you're probably going to get a quick response from me. Otherwise, you can go to panatic.com and there is a contact link there that will shoot me an email and I'm pretty good at getting back to those. Those just take me a day or two, sometimes three to get back to an email. But that's the quickest way to get in touch and I'm happy to hear any more questions you guys have about any topic, especially just getting started in fountain pens and things like that. That's a great topic. I enjoy talking about that. When you get in contact with me, I'm Mike, I-M-Y-K-E on Twitter and app.net, that's a great place. It's the best place for me, I think. And as we mentioned earlier, if you want to find links to some of the stuff we discussed today, go to 5x5.tv/panatic/79, we've collected a selection of links there for you. And I think that's about it for today's episode of the panatic podcast. Thanks so much for listening. If you enjoy the show, feel free to leave us a review in iTunes. Always nice to see and we appreciate all of those too. So, thanks to you for listening and until next week, say goodbye, Brad. Goodbye, Brad. [BLANK_AUDIO]
