Hello and welcome to episode 76 of the panetic podcast a weekly show where we discuss pens paper and the analog tools that we love so dearly my name is mike early and i'm joined by a man who doesn't worry about he wears a belly band mr. Red daddy and hopefully you feel that fans are listening to to understand what that uh what that reference is to and you're not going to what's my talking about i don't think anybody ever knows really what i'm talking about that's true that's true i'll give you that so how are you sir i'm very well me how are you. Good good hang in there fresh off a little extended long weekend vacations have been added out of the pin loop for a few days it's always a challenging coming back and you know writing a blog post and getting back. Answer emails following up on tweets and putting together a podcast episode it's challenging sometimes but i'm refreshed and ready to go excellent. Good oh sorry i just hit the mic so excited to punch the microphone yes goodness gracious. So yeah i'm back better than ever and you know watch the the the not co pin case kickstarter project continue to slowly ramp up which is going great it's almost 60,000 i was hoping to be at 60,000 by the time we record the podcast today but maybe by the time. People are listening to the podcast will we will have ticked over to 60k from 59 672 incredible it is incredible and it's it's really exciting and just like you know pretty much like i talked about last week you know jeffrey and i went through like. Panic mode like the first few days when i was just going gangbusters going on my goodness but. We know once you get past that initial that initial little shock and i'm kind of step back realize that hey you actually plan for this in the beginning it's not it's not unexpected and you can handle this it it's all good so it's been all good from there so. And we talked a little bit a lot about about it last week and i alluded to the fact that we're going to start dumb. You know pre ordering some machinery pre ordering some fabric and everything to start manufacturing early and i said i would give an update on that once the once everything started coming in and it has started coming in so we got one of our main pieces equipment is this bar tech sewing machine. I'll put a link to the picture of it in the show notes that just came in today i think either yesterday or today it's a really big gold singer singer machine it's it's kind of huge i didn't know what to expect and what it does it's going to allow to for us to really tighten up the seams in the pockets in the in the pen slot so it's it's really really nice i'm. Bro basically it's going to finish the case is really nice we that was something we had to have for this project and something we were we were counting on so. We have already got that in and we hope to have fabric and all the other pieces that fabric binding padding zippers all that stuff should be trickling in through the rest of the week so i'm going to do a project update. Today or tomorrow on the kickstarter project for those people who don't happen to listen to the podcast with these updates show i've got a picture of the machine and things like that so we're ramping up getting ready to roll. That is amazing yeah it's exciting times exciting time so 14 more days it seems it seems like it's been going on for like six months at this point and it's only been two weeks so two more weeks to go and we're hopefully we should be manufacturing. Before the project actually closes so that'll be good that's probably needed. Yeah i think so so but yeah it's going great had some continued continued good feedback and now everything's looking good so i am happy happy about that so that's great. One other follow up topic i had was about this fountain pen that we talked about on a previous episode of the podcast and i can't come up with the previous episode number for the life of me it was just a it was just kind of a side mention where you and i was i mentioned it to you saying hey check out this this cool looking fountain pen that just came out of this company called franklin Kristoff. And they made i was familiar with the brand i've seen with the Atlanta pin show but they didn't have this particular model it's called the model 40 pocket. And they've had that style for a while but they came out with a new model new acrylic model that's called smoke and ice. And it's it's a pocketable fountain pen so it's kind of short think of it like a colico class sick or cavico classic or a la sport i do well done. And so it's you know it's that smaller pen but it's got this i don't even know how to explain the looks of it it's just a really cool looking acrylic pen. And i said a few months ago when we talked about that i was absolutely ordering this pen well when i got the opportunity and the money and i did. Have both so i went and ordered it yesterday and it actually just got the shipping notification a little bit before the podcast so i hope that there are only one state away from me in north carolina so hopefully i should have it by the end of the week and maybe i can talk about a little bit next week but i'm. It just really the design really caught my eye boy boy boy it's nothing like i'd seen before. Are you looking at it now yeah so it's the one called smoke and ice there's there's probably eight different colors you can get it in. There's a fire nice and those are the those it's it's hard to explain it's kind of got a clear acrylic with like a ice interior i don't know it's going to be pretty cool looking. First class yeah like frosted glass that's a good way to put it. I am one of the cool features that franklin christoff as a company provides is is my buddy mike masuyama who i always praise every chance i get they actually have stock nibs that he has already done for them so he does their needle point nibs which are like extra fine. And then he does their curse of curse of italic and stub nibs for their pen so that's that's actually a purchasing option. When you go to buy one of these pens you can buy like the stock steel you know extra fine fine medium broad etc etc or you can buy the steel needle point or any of the stubs that mike masuyama has ground himself and so i got the. Masuyama medium curse of italic and steel oh yeah. So that was. Yeah what was that mike oh yeah we still recording this podcast i just had a moment. Brad i think i might want this free worldwide shipping. Yeah yeah totally i actually didn't notice that when i ordered it and i went through the paper screen in the shipping didn't come on so i was like oh maybe this has free shipping even better so yeah it was you know the total the total price of the combination that i got was one thirty four fifty. That's the base price is like is one nineteen fifty so for another fifteen dollars i got this i got the masuyama nib which is probably thirty or forty dollars if you're just sending your. Nib off to him to get worked on at least so that's a pretty good value i like the fire and ice yeah that it was a it was a choice between those two okay well depending on what you think. Might be an expensive week for me next week yeah. Yes i'm actually anxious to to get it and i put a we'll have this in the show notes on one of the one of our listeners i think it's peters and Peter yeah Peter. I want to try to attempt to pronounce his his instagram name i can't i can't go there but um Peter has this exact he actually has the exact he put up a post on instagram yesterday and i started talking to him about it i was like i've been meaning to order this pen i think tonight might be the night and it turns out he's got the exact same one that i ordered when you put the ink in it so yeah let me tell you about this so the way this pen is designed. You can have there's two ways to put into it one it takes to short international cartridges excuse me. I take short yeah that would be that would be pretty cool it takes short and international cartridges as to nibs yeah that's two nibs. Hey there's a pin coming like that i'll have to shouldn't send you that link anyway you've got me sidetracked now it takes short international international in cartridges so it's a cartridge filler doesn't there's no converter that fits it or what Peter did is it is converted into an eyedropper fill. Which if you look at this picture that's what Peter showing off here so even from the manufacturer on the manufacturer page they say this is a an approved way to carry this pen. So what you do is you just put like silicone grease on the threads and you just dump ink into the barrel basically it's just like a wide open full vessel of ink. So that's pretty crazy looking i don't i told Peter i said i don't know if i have the stones to pull that off right when i get the pen. Yeah i don't like the idea of that that's upset me now because i thought that that was how you feel that because i was thinking how awesome it would be to get the fire nice and put the orange roshizuku in there. But there's no reason not to do it i mean it's a completely approved method of filling yeah but when you say something like get some silicone grease i'm like i'd say yeah that's a normal thing though i know but that fine for eyedropper eyedropper conversions. Sure sure but at that point i'm a bit hesitant you say to do something like that. Yeah i'm with you that's what i actually what i said i said i don't know if i could pull that off and carry it around in my pocket. So i'd be i'd be pretty nervous i imagine i'm gonna start with the. Um in cartridges first and then i may switch over to this once i've once i've had it a little while this would be actually my first eyedropper fill pen. Um yeah so i got to i am sure i will try this out and will will report on that but i don't think it's going to be like the day i get it or anything i think i'm going straight to the. To the ink cartridges at first so that's that's the plan but i thought you i thought you would like that picture that that peter had with the with the ink floating around and now. I don't know it looks great it looks really really good so it is a real beauty yeah it is. It came out stunning so i'm. This is one of those pens it is good as it looks in pictures it may even look better in person so i'm i'm anxious to get it because i haven't actually physically held one but anyway. It's a should be here this week and hopefully i can talk about it next week a little bit more it's going to be good. And i think that is all the follow up i got i did notice i did notice some last week after i posted and or after we talked on the podcast about your trip to the London pin show. I saw at least two other people post that they had gone to the London pin show as well so you missed that you you're in and out so fast you missed that meet up opportunity i know a couple of people contacted me i felt really bad it's my day kind of got away with me i didn't have as much time as i. Thought i was going to have yeah i was actually surprised when you the first time you texted me i was i looked at my watch i was like it's kind of late for you to be heading that way. Yeah that's cool i'm still glad you got to go so some other people were there and they had they had nothing but good things to say and i saw some good images of the show and that. Yeah what you are describing looks exactly like you know something exactly like how like the Atlanta pin show would look or some of the other shows here in the u.s would look. You see i also hadn't considered to check to see if all of the tubes are running sometimes it works on the weekend it took me twice as long to get there and i expected one route was shut down or something yeah it was ninety minutes instead of forty five. Oh gosh so that's terrible through another spanner in the works is it yep yep all right so we have a pretty good topic today that i've been meaning to get to for a while so do you want to take care of our sponsor friends first and then we'll get into the topic of the day i think it sounds excellent so this episode is of course what you buy the phone folks over at square space to give you only one platform that makes it fast and easy to create your own professional website online portfolio. For free trial and 10% off go to squarespace.com and use the offer code tally how 10. Now Brad any listener to show is going to have heard all the amazing stuff that i said you know the beautiful template designs squarespace have the 24 7 customer support. Basically everything you need to create your website but i want to talk about commerce today. All right so this is squarespace is commerce platform which is what allows you to sell physical and digital goods right from within any squarespace site. 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All right to speak in a square space they allow me to make these extra pages on my blog with ease and that was kind of the impetus behind creating a permanent home for my top 5 pens list. And that list was updated today or actually last night during the middle of the night but I digress. I've done a fall update I guess my last update was in July and that was just some minor changes I didn't really re-rank or add I think I added a couple things to the list but there were a couple things I wanted to do this time around and one of them what most of it revolved around how to. Rank my favorite fountain pens and that's proven to be more of a challenge than I thought it would be because I can have like a list of what my favorite fountain pens are. But it's not as useful to the readers as say what a list of my favorite gel pens are or ballpoint pens are and that's because there's so many variables that can happen or are available for fountain pens from. You know from things as simple as nib sizes to things as crazy as like you know ordering directly from Japan and having these really you know just crazy things going on that you know not necessarily everyone is familiar with so as I've gotten deeper into fountain pens I've kind of gone from okay I've enjoyed these basic things so now let me step it up a notch and try out some more exotic things if you will. So how do I if I had just one single top 5 fountain pen list I think people kind of look at that list kind of cross side saying I don't even know what these pens are I don't think it would be that useful I guess to readers of the pen addict if I just had a straight what are Brad's top 5 pen fountain pens so I tried to. Separate them into the end I really I had trouble coming up with a name for this and you know I'd love to hear some feedback on this but I have I've broken into two lists of top 5 fountain pens in the easy to buy division in the top 5 fountain pens in the hard to buy division. And those aren't really accurate names I didn't want to say you know beginner or ex beginner and expert because I didn't think that was fair I didn't think that was accurate I don't want to say common and uncommon because that's not really accurate either. So I was having a hard time coming up with those actual list names. So I went with this and I explained the easy to buy list is what people readers of the pen addict are going to recognize as the more common or ready readily available fountain pens like if you look at most online vendors or most stores or most any other shops these are the types of pens that they're going to have easily available for you to test out try out and purchase. And then the second list the harder to buy vision division is it's not that the pens are hard to come by or even hard to use it's just I wrote that you have to take there's some extra things you need to take into account when looking at these pens this is actually the list of pens that I use more. Then most so this these pens include like you know the the the pilot Falcon which has a flex nib it's a very specialized flex nib on it and that's not something I just want people to go out and buy without doing research so I wanted to try to clarify that and separate those two lists for those types of reasons. You know I use I talk about I've talked for months about my pilot custom heritage 912 with the peo nib that's one of the most that pens pretty much always inked up and in use by me. But I wouldn't want someone else to go out and buy that peo nib without doing tons of research and even you know trying one so I had a bit of a challenge trying to segregate that I didn't want to list with just these exotic things that I use I wanted more of like a regular person's list that you know. When people come to me for recommendations you know I can talk about here's a good list of fountain pens for you to look at these are you know great quality well designed well built perfect functioning fountain pens that you know anyone can use and then you know once you get a little bit experience and you decide that you'd like these things but maybe you're looking for something a little different then you look at this other list and say okay let's talk about you know what are the differences between. You know the toys be 580 that you recommend now and you know the pilot falcon you know why would I consider those type of pen so that's the kind of conversation I want to have I didn't want to just you know have all these exotic pens out there and people would just be looking at it a little bit oddly so am I making sense in what I'm trying to accomplish there do you think I accomplished that task yeah I get it it's difficult to distinguish like I was trying to think could you call it beginner well no it's. Not beginner you know it's difficult right yeah I don't excuse me I had a hard time coming up with the names and I didn't want to beginner and expert or were scratched off the list pretty quickly because that's not really fair it doesn't work now it doesn't work for what what this is so I was trying to I don't know I still those names might change I was I had a challenge and common and uncommon doesn't didn't really work. So I don't know what we'll see we'll see what the people say if there's maybe it maybe it makes complete sense as it is and we'll just leave it as it is but so in breaking when breaking up these lists. I kind of had I don't know you'll see I'll go through these lists real quick and we'll see like in the in the top five fountain pens which I used to just have a top five fountain pens list let me pull that up real quick Mike and so I can. I can tell you what the previous list was I'm sorry here I was not prepared for that but I said I better save this list off just in case I need to go back to it you to find a special place to store it and I know I need an archive archive. So the old list top five fountain pens was pilot vanishing point number one Lami 2000 to his B540 pilot Pereira and Kaveko al sport. Alright, so now the new list the new top five fountain pens easy to buy easy to buy division list is kind of the replacement for the old general top five fountain pens list. That's a new number one which is the Twisby 580. You've not reviewed this yet. Every time I update my top five list I realize how many things I haven't reviewed yet and it's kind of embarrassing. Have we even spoken about the 580 on the show? Yeah plenty of times. But you own one. Oh yeah I've owned one since the day it came out. Oh yeah of course. Yeah I just don't I mean for whatever reason I just forget to review things sometimes and a lot of it's because I'm using it all the time in which you would think that would remind me that I might want to review it. But I guess the more I use it the more I think I've already reviewed it or something like that or I don't know I can't explain it but every time I do these lists I always find a whole list of things that I haven't reviewed yet and it's usually like the number one or number two things recommending so I will be reviewing that soon. But you can look at the Twisby 540 review that I've done and I'll get a link or you can grab it. It's kind of similar but the thing that I found about the 580 and why I put it at number one is it comes up in every conversation about fountain pen recommendations. Whether you're a beginner or an expert whether you're looking for a low price fountain pen or one or willing to spend a decent amount of money on a fountain pen. The Twisby 580 comes up everywhere. So for example for a beginner you know if they're wanting something like a llama safari or a pilot metropolitan you know those are say fifteen to thirty dollar pens. You can get the Twisby 580 if you're looking for something you know maybe if you're very very very beginner maybe the 580 is not for you because you have to it's a piston filler so you have to have a bottle of ink if you're just wanting to take it easy and just use cartridges you know the 580 is not for you. But if you're wanting to have kind of that full fountain pen experience with fountain pen bottle ink the Twisby 580 and the price point and the quality of the pen it's completely the way to go. So it works well for beginners and then even so the beginners who haven't gone with a Twisby at first and have like a llama safari and they're wanting to you know ramp it up a little bit well they might start looking at like one of the pelican steel nib pens. Or one of the sailor steel nib pens and both of those are you know between a hundred and a hundred and thirty dollars. Well when you compare that to the Twisby 580 it's hard to justify buying those more expensive pens. Sure there's little things that set them apart but for almost half the price buying the Twisby 580 just seems like the right thing to do it's that good of a pen that it basically it can play up to the next price point level. Easily if that makes sense. I mean it feels and looks and is designed and performs like a pen that's probably twice as expensive. And it always seems like I have one inked up and handy. You know I never just let that pen sit by and collect dust. I get total enjoyment out of using it. I love the design. I love how easy it is to clean. I love the piston filling mechanism. I love the nibs on the 580. The build quality is great. I love the looks. There's really, I don't have a knock on this pen at all. It's also, you can also swap out the nibs on it which I have for my 580. I have an extra fine steel nib and then I have a 1.1mm sub nib that I just switch out whenever I feel like it. So it's almost like two different pens in one. I could just unscrew the nib unit and pop in another one that was like $25. So I basically got two completely different pens out of the same pen barrel by switching out the nibs. So when I was putting together this list, it seemed like a no-brainer. That was going to be my number one pen. It's a pen that everybody can use from very beginner fountain pens to the most expert of expert fountain pens because you can do some modifications to it like my friend Thomas. Since it does, you can swap out the nibs on it. He has pilot nibs that have been made to where he can put in a Twizzbee and things like that. So it's got all the toys and bells and whistles that expert fountain pen users or fidgeters or people like to play around can do things with the pen. But at its most basic level, any beginning fountain pen user will find it to be wonderful, I think. So you don't have a 580, right? You just have the 540? Yeah, I can't imagine that there's enough of a difference. They're very similar. There's a few minor cosmetic and functional differences. The 540's had a cracking problem in the section, so the 580 kind of fixed that with a little chrome piece for durability and things like that. So yeah, before the 540, what did I say, it was third on my list to begin with, the 580 is basically the next model of that same pen. So it basically went from number three to number one, which isn't that big of a jump if you think about it. But it's just a different model number than the previous version. It's an all-around great pen, and I think, I don't know, I think everyone should own one. It's an awesome pen, because then after that, you start getting into the LOMI 2000. I recommend that pen, and number three, the pilot vanishing point. I recommend those pens all the time, but they're getting up into that $140, $150 level, and that's past the comfort level that a lot of people are willing to go to. So something like the TWISB 580 kind of fills that need, even though it's a steel nib pen, and the next two are gold nib pens, the 2000 and the vanishing point. The fourth one is the Kaviko AL Sport, which is, it's kind of hard to beat that pen for any pocket fountain pen. So we'll see how the Franklin Christoff model 40 compares when I get it, and then the fifth one is the LOMI AL Star, which, this is just another, it's a pen I can't get enough of, and it's just a very basic pen, and you could substitute the LOMI Safari here too. I mean, they're essentially the same design, I just like, I like the aluminum body a little bit more, it's just a little bit cooler. I like the all black one that came out this year, I like that, and I love the LOMI nibs, they're just very, very good, very good functional pens. So that's the top five fountain pens in the easy to buy division. So then I separated out another list, and these are the pens that I, I use, let's see, out of the top five easy to buy division, I have every one of those pens inked up right now, and in use. I say that because in the harder buy division, I have all these inked up too, minus one, that's actually minus two, I'll tell you about that. Minus two, but these are the ones that I tend to reach for personally first. So I have the Pilot Custom Heritage 91. It's an extremely good value pen, kind of like, it's basically the Twisby 580 of the 14-carat gold nib pens, but the kicker is, it's Japan only. So that's kind of why I put it in this division, and I hope that makes sense on why I'm separating these. You know, a lot of people aren't comfortable with either buying it directly from a vendor in Japan, or like me, I bought mine secondhand off a message board. The fountain pen network classifieds. It was practically brand new. I think I paid $90 for it, but it's only, gosh, in the low hundreds, if even that, I think you might can get it under $100 directly from Japan from some of these vendors, and the build quality and quality of the nib, it's unparalleled for the price. So that's why I wanted to put it on this list as the number one pen in this division, but the kicker is, you're going to have to hunt it down. You know, no vendors carry it, or regular, you know, vendors on our show that we talk about jet pens, cult pens, goule pens, all of that. No one carries this pen, but it's very common in Japan. It's kind of an almost like an entry-level pen in Japan, and you can find it from different vendors and things like that. It's a fantastic pen. The Pilot Falcon, which is my number two one, it's actually more available here in the U.S. like I know Goule carries it, but it's a flex nib. So I don't want people just running out and say, "Well, Brad said the Pilot Falcon's good," and they spend $200 on this pen and go, "What's this nib?" So each one of these pens has a little thing about them that you kind of got to be aware of, but I've gotten used to them, and once you kind of go down this path, you're really kind of off the deep end, and you're kind of figuring out these things that you like. The Pilot Falcon, it's an amazing nib. It's really all about the nib for that pen. It writes in a super fine line, and the flexibility of the nib, it makes the line a little bit broader, and it's beautiful, and it uses real shadedings with it. It's really cool. The third one is the Edison Beaumont. It's actually real easy to purchase. A lot of vendors carry this model. I happen to get a limited model, which is the limited stealth version. They made, I don't even remember, 100 of them or so, 140. I can't remember the number. It's a fantastic pen. Actually, the first time I tried it, I wasn't crazy about it. There was a model called the Edison Pearl. That's a little bit larger, and I thought fit my hand a little bit better, but once I got this Beaumont, I figured out that it really fit my writing style better. It was a better fit in my hand when I was actually writing. The Edison, it does a production line pen, which you can get from places like Goulay Pins or Anderson Pens, and there's maybe five colors with, I don't know, five or six different nib styles. Then directly from the Edison site, they do a signature line where you can just go through their whole collection of acrylics and barrel materials, and you can design this pen any way your heart desires pretty much directly through the Edison site and from Brian Gray. So that's a very cool pen. He still always confuses me that his name is a Brian Edison. I know. I have to think about it every time I say the same thing like the Parker 51. I really have to think about saying it because I got myself saying it. It's just one of those things that sticks in my head where I would say pilot 51. It sounds normal, even though it's like so wrong, it's embarrassing. The fourth one is the custom heritage 912, and that one is on the list because it comes with the PO nib, which is the posting nib that I've reviewed and raved about. It's just a really firm, fine nib. You're not going to really find anything like that. It's a really unique nib, and there's probably other pens that come with a similar type nib. The 912 is the easiest one that I could find and the one that I tested out and the one that I love. And then the Pelican M405, it's an amazing pen. It's just very expensive in relation to say like the pilot custom heritage is very expensive compared to the 912 is much more expensive than the 91. And there's still, you could buy both of those cheaper than you could buy the Pelican M405, but there's just something about a Pelican. And I suggest anyone that's looking at them and bulking on the price. One of these days, you'll just have to try one. And Mike was a good idea. You didn't pick any of them up at the London Pen Show, probably, because that was my opinion of them. Looking at the price and looking at the style, I was turned off isn't the right word, but they weren't really on my shopping list until I tried one. My friend Thomas, my enabler. You guys all call me the enabler. Thomas is my enabler. He sent me a handful of Pelicans, and I fell in love once I started using them. It's hard to explain. I wish I could explain it in words, but I can't. So, yeah, good job by you not picking one up, because then you'd really be broke. Yeah, I'm staying. I'm staring clear of that for the time being, I think. So those are the two new top five fountain pen lists. You good with that? Any questions on those lists or anything? No, no questions. Okay, good. A third new list I added was one I should have done the very first time I ever did a top five list, because then I just kept forgetting to do it ever since, and it's been the most requested list, and that's the top five fountain pen inks. And I'm sure you'll have some comments on this, too. I'd love to hear your favorites. I think I know them pretty much, but let me go through my top five fountain pen inks real quick. And this list could be ten easily. I'll probably rotate through ten inks pretty frequently, as much as I do these top five. But the ones I use the most, the pirate pilot, Eroshizuku Shinkai. It's a blue-black Eroshizuku ink. It's easily my favorite. It's number one. There's a couple of number ones through all these lists that really stand out far and above the second item on their list. And the Shinkai is for me. I love that ink. The second one is the Roaring Klingner Scabiosa. I hope I'm saying that right, because it's such an awful name. But I've been using it for months. I just reviewed it a couple weeks ago, and it's a fantastic ink. I always have a pen inked up with that ink. The third one is the Basic Lommie Blue-Black. The color of this blue-black ink is what I think of personally when you talk about blue-black inks. It's got every shade just right as far as it's not too blue. It's not too black. It doesn't have any green in it. It doesn't have any of these odd colors showing up. It's blue-black and it's purest form, I think, for me personally. The fourth is one of your favorites, is the Pilot Eroshizuku Kanpeki. It's a stunning-looking ink on the page. It's bright. It's got shading. It's got depth. It's a very impressive ink. It's another one I keep inked up all the time. I just don't use it as much as most of my blue-black inks. Just because it's a little bit brighter and nothing wrong with that is I tend to write in blue-black or more subdued inks. The fifth one is the Noodler's Apache Sunset. I always keep this inked up in one pen, usually in my Falcon, because it's got a ton of great shading. I've done a review on this. You can see all these different, this wide range of colors from yellow to brown in this orange. It's a really fantastic ink. I always find a way to use it and have fun with it and write with it because it's just that great. Like I said, this list is likely to change, have more change than any other list. I use a lot of different inks. I could list out five more real quick. That could easily slide into these, maybe the number four and five spots on here. The top three are pretty solid. I use so many inks and enjoy using different inks. There's plenty that I've left off of here that could certainly rank. It might need a top five part two. That would be a top ten, Mike. I feel like you need to try for you, Gaki? Yes, that's on the radar. I'm going to put that on my wish list, let me write that down right now. The fact that two Iroshizuku inks are in your top five, I think that this orange is stunning. Yes, I'm going to get that. That might be the next ink I buy period. I think that's going to break into that top five, Brad, if I'm being totally honest with you. Yes, I bet you're right. I just bought Iroshizuku. It's a Fuyu Sayou gun, I believe. I'm not looking at it, so I hope I got that right. It's the gray ink. Oh, it's so good. It's really good. Oh, wow. Look at that color. It's very, very nice. I'll do a review on that one. The next ink I buy will be the Fuyu Gaki. Fuyu lei pens is really good if you're in the U.S. for these. The writingdesk.co.uk is really good if you're in the U.K. A lot of these companies offer up samples too, so be sure to check some of those out. If you're unsure and you can spend two dollars to test out an ink that you may or may not like and then go buy a bottle from there. So that's kind of what I've done. I know I got the Fuyu Sayou gun. The gray one from Ed Gelly sent me a sample a while back. Having that sample is what solidified me buying a bottle of it for sure. It's a problem with all of the Erosi Zuku inks because they do not photograph very well. No, it's really hard to get that on there, isn't it? Yeah. I have a hard time relaying proper ink colors all the time. So it's interesting. Hey, I got to... It just hit me and I'm going to put this in the show notes for you to see. And you may have seen it over the weekend. I got to send you this link. I'm putting it in the show notes now. So you can check it out, but we were just talking about Erosu inks and Twisbees. And I remember this, someone tweeted, someone sent me this on Instagram a few days ago. We had a quote in, was episode 44 of the Panatic podcast titled "The Pintervention." We had a quote that says, "I just discussed, I just discussed Erosi Zuku filled Twisbees." And we got a big kick out of that because it was like we were speaking a different language there. And we did this little drawing for us, little text for us with that quote on it. I thought that was cool as L-T-B-R on Instagram. I think the same on Twitter too, maybe. People tend to be. Yeah, I really liked that. I enjoyed that a lot. That was fun to have something like that. Yeah. I started cracking up when I saw that. Cause I'd forgotten that we'd said that. I don't even remember what it was in reference to. I don't know. I think it was when you were, it was, it was called "Pintervention." So you must have been going off the deep end about something. Yeah. Maybe it's just in my life. This is all I talk about. Maybe something like that. Yeah. I think that's what it was when you were, I think it was, you were like referring to talking about this type of thing. Like in a public thing or like at the office or something like that. And no one would understand what you're talking about kind of thing. I think it was in relation to that. So a couple more quick updates. Some lists that I changed, changed around. No real new things. But I did update the top five pens, the overall list. I got the 580, Twizby 580 at number one. And the secure pick of a micron at number two. The uniball Sino DX.38 at number three. Our favorite OTO graphic liner at number four. The uniball jet stream at number five. Did you notice anything that fell off that list, Mike? Putting you on the spot. It's a pilot high tech C. Oh yeah. Yeah. I just haven't been using it as much. And that's what this list is trying to accomplish. Right. And anyone who's new to this list needs to read the lead in. It's basically this list, these top fives are what I'm using the most frequently and enjoying the most. So that's why it's always changing. It's not a shopping list. It's what I'm using the most. And I'm reaching for the most and is giving me good experiences. And it's always changing. That's why I try to update it as frequently as I can. It looks like it's going to be about once a quarter or so updating it. But, you know, I just haven't been using the high tech C. So it kind of fell off the list. All these other pens I've been using. I've been reaching for ahead of it. And I put it down at number two on the micro gel ink pens. It's like 6.38. I've just been using it more. It's more consistent. It's got great colors. They're really vibrant, really bright. I love the pen. So let's see. What else to update? I think that's about it. Oh, I also did. Someone had asked me, I think on the Field Nuts Facebook group, did not have a list of my favorite Field Nuts editions. I'm putting a top five list on the top five page on my Field Nuts page on the blog. I put down, there's been 20 Field Nuts limited editions so far. I ranked them from one to 20 in my favorites. Because I think someone was asking me where the drink local edition would rank. And I ranked it pretty highly. I have it at eighth overall. Ahead of some of the older classics. Plus a couple of more current favorites like American tradesmen and national crop edition. So that list is there for people that were asking. We talked about it on one episode. I had just written it down in Field Nuts and taken a picture posted on Instagram and you and I talked about it. But this is a permanent, I wanted to give that list a permanent home because I was having to research back to find it again. So this way I can just always kind of keep it up to date if there's any changes on there. Do you need to update your images? I know I'm missing the Ales and Loggers and I'm missing the Fuchsia XO-XOs that you sent me. I update it's mine. Oh did you? Yeah it's updated. It was difficult to photo the drink local. It's probably the worst picture I've taken. Yeah you can tell if some of my newer pictures are not as good. I tried to squeeze it all in and it's all kind of off balance. Yeah. It looks terrible. I need to do that too. I'm wondering how I'm going to do that but it'll be fine because I want to get the coasters in there too because those are so cool. My image is terrible. You can even see I take it basically because I have a clear desk. So I've always put, I have this really large envelope which is just lying around and I just lay them on the envelope as a white envelope and take a photo. But when you enlarge the drink local and you can see the edges of the envelope, it's a terrible picture. I kind of rushed it but I haven't done it just this. I know. So I need to do that too. So those are the two that I need to add. As I was updating this I was like oh I'm not even the most up to date with the latest editions and the XOXO. So yes sir I will work on that sir. Thank you. Thanks. Before we finish I have a couple of quick updates. I didn't give, I should have done them in the follow-up section. No problem. What you got? So I just went to say how much I've been absolutely loving my purchases. Oh yeah. Actually that was on my radar to ask you and I totally forgot as well. So recap with what you have and how you've been using them. So if anything happened I snapped the clip on my Fisher space pen. Okay. Yep. I just kind of snapped that in half. So I haven't been using that. Like it's forced me not to use it which is interesting. I've got a new clip on the way. But I've been using both the Edison pearl app that I got last week and you go tune into last week's episode and the show notes in last week's episode have all the links to this stuff. That's what episode number was that? 75. But I'll put a link to that in this week's episode which is /panetics 5x5.tv/panetics/76 is where you'll find all of the links. So I've been using the pearl app mainly with the Fuyugaki ink in it and I've been so happy. So so happy. I'm about to explain what just happened. So the only thing is the inside of the acrylic has quite a pungent odor. Yes. Which sometimes I notice when I just take the lid off and I really noticed it then when I breathed in. As we say in the IT industry, it's a feature. It's very interesting and I don't know why it's such a strong smell that remains. Wow. Yeah. It's the materials and I don't know if Brian's ever talked about it before. But it's all the pens. All the acrylic pens are like that and I'm sure I'll ask Thomas if he can explain. He usually listens pretty quickly and he'll give us a quick explanation of why it's so. But I think it just has to do with the materials that are used. It's acrylic. Yeah, it's an acrylic material. So it's across all the acrylic pens and not just Edison pens. Any acrylic pens have the same type of scent. It transports me back to working in wood shop. What did we call it? It wasn't design technology. I think it's called product technology, something like that. And I made an acrylic key ring and so just cutting the acrylic was that smell. Yep. I've been using that. That's been my pen. It's just been the pen that I've been using nonstop for the last week. However, because I'm using it with orange ink. There are some times and I need more official ink and I've been breaking out the vacuum attic for that. And I cannot believe how old this pen is. Because of how well it works. Right. It's easily one of the best performing fan and pens that I've ever owned. Like just how smooth it is and everything just, you know, it feels like it shouldn't work as well as it does. Yeah. But it really does and I've been thoroughly impressed. Well, that means you must have made a good purchase. The person you bought it from did a good job restoring it. Seems like it. Yeah, that's good. It's worth buying it from someone who's like you discussed. People have to go back and listen to last week's episode if they haven't. But you discussed how there was varying quality levels of pens especially in the vintage category. You can find some that look really bad and rough and gunked up. Or you can find some that people have restored to excellent working condition. Which sounds like what you got. So that's great. So yeah, that was my follow-up on those purchases. I'm also using, I don't know if I was last week, I'm using an ale field notes at the moment. Okay. I'm using the amber ale. Nice. I like it. What are you, I was gonna say, how are you liking it? Yeah, very much. I got used to that cover a lot quicker than I thought I was going to. Okay. Just a different feel of it. You know, as I said, I thought it was strange. And the half of ice and half grid. Half of ice. Half of ice. And yeah, I mean, it's nice. It's a grid. I mean, I don't really notice the color too much in all honesty. 'Cause I kind of ignore the grid. Yeah. True. And the, the perlet with the Hiroshi Sukoo Inc is doing okay in it, you know. Yeah. Just a little bleed through. So that's, I'm really pleased with that. Yeah. You should be. That's excellent. 'Cause that's a medium nib, right? Medium nib, yeah. Yeah. That's great. There's not a lot of, not a lot of bleed. So it means that obviously the ink flow is pretty good. So I'm very, very happy with that actually. I was expecting it to be a disaster. Yeah. Well, great. 'Cause most other fountain pens that I've used over a fine have been a disaster in the field notes. Yes. It's really tough. But they're built for both, both the fountain pen and the field note. Right. People ask me for that recommendation all the time. I was like, look, you just need to take what you own and go test it out because it's very particular. So I have one last quick thing and I want you to have a think about this. And we'll maybe think of something in the next couple of weeks. I have a few one-off edition field notes that are spare. So my friends at Studio Neat who did the Simple Bracket, they give me a stack of the custom field notes that they have made. The basketball printing on the back. Yeah. I have a stack of them. Oh. And I'm willing to give a few away to some listeners, but we need to think of how we could do that. Man, that's a great idea. Okay. Yeah. I'll work on that. Boy, if that's not a tease, I don't know what it is. Yeah. Because don't ask me for one now. Yeah. They're listeners. You need to wait and find out how we're going to. I don't know what we would do. Yeah. We'll figure something. Because I've got, they gave me like a handful. I only need a couple of them. I maybe have like five or six to give away. Okay. Great. Yeah. We'll put something together here in the coming weeks. I'll work on that. Cool. All right. Well, good. I think we have wrapped up this edition of the world's greatest podcast. Oh, look at you. Oh, yeah. Bring it. The world's only pen podcast. Yeah. Well, I take offense every time I listen to the prompt. Oh, everybody else does, don't worry. Yeah. Yeah. So I just want to drop that in. I say world's greatest, so it's not the best. And in my mind, that distinguishes him. Yeah. Keep telling yourself that. All right. We'll have a good one, sir. You too. Funnance always. If you want to catch up with Brad and find out all these massive lists, go to the panatic.com. Yeah. And he is at Dowdism, D-O-W-D-Y-I-S-M on Twitter, at Dowdionapp.net. And I'm Mike. I-M-Y-K-E. Until next time. Thanks a lot for listening. Oh, show notes, 5x5.tv/panatic/76. Say goodbye, Brad. Good bye, Brad. [ Silence ]
