Hello and welcome to episode 72 of the Panetic Podcast. I'm back. I have returned from my very brief departure from the show. The Panetic is a weekly show where we discuss pens, paper, and the analog tools that you love so dearly. I am the returning Mike Hurley, and I am joined by a man that if you looked at his skin under a very powerful microscope, I'm sure you would see a dot grid. It's just a Brad Dowdy. My eyes were bugging out when you started saying that. I was like, where could this possibly be going? I did say to you, it was a bit of a weird one today. Yeah, that's nice. I like it though. That was, uh, that was interesting. All right. Remind me. What's your name again? My name is Anna Reinert. Okay. Well, welcome back, Mr. Hurley. Thank you. I'm sorry everybody that not only was I not available for the show, I also posted the show late last week. Just crazy stuff happened. And, uh, unfortunately, I had to miss the Panetic, which is a real basic. I was very sad about that. I enjoy this show so much that it was very upsetting, but what I did get now, can I, can I, can I, let me talk about the show for a second, Brad. All right. The show in general. Okay. We record this thing every week and it's the show that people laugh at when I tell them that I make because they can't conceptualize what this is, what that we do. And we're doing this show with you every week. I do kind of find it a bit strange at times that we sit for an hour and we talk about this stuff. This is, you know, this is the stuff that me and you talk about and it's strange, right? Yeah. I'm with you on that. But people love this show, like love the show. And that's awesome. And that makes me so happy. Last week, I got to be a listener. And this show is awesome. Because it doesn't exist anywhere else. This is a show for people that love pens and paper. And it's made by people that love pens and paper. And I got to sit last week and I was just in absolute like rapture of the show. Like I was just so into it listening to you and Anna talk about pencils and different types of paper and cool pens that you've been trying out and listening to Anna's stories about like the paper that they're taken away from her at work and how sad that made her and I felt bad for her. It was just, I loved it. I really loved it. Just want you to know everyone that doesn't mean I'm going away. I like making the show even more than I love listening to it. But I think I can finally understand why people love this show. And that was awesome. Well, cool. That is awesome. It's, it's so much fun. I mean, we talk about it all the time is like, it's very, you know, even if, you know, kind of having a down day or whatever, you know, jumping on the microphone and talking to you with about pens and paper, it's kind of uplifting because it's so much fun. And, you know, it's, we're passionate about it. And I think it comes out. Hopefully it comes out in the, in the podcast and, you know, being able to have on, you know, guests like Anna share our passions like that. It's, it's awesome. I mean, it makes it, makes it all worthwhile. And it, it makes it easy when, you know, you were able to talk to someone like her and just, and just, and just flow was really pretty much what we do. And yeah, it's, it's good. I'm glad, I'm glad you enjoyed last week's episode. I was nervous doing it. I could tell, you know, yeah, I could tell I was nervous. You did an incredible job then. Oh, good. Thank you for stepping in. It's like short notice and doing it. I really enjoyed it, but I could tell you a little bit more nervous than usual. Yeah. Yeah. I was a little, I had to focus a little bit more, but behind the scenes stuff while I was doing it too. So, you know, my, I was a little bit more distracted than normal, but, yeah, it went pretty well. You guys just think I'm sitting there pressing buttons. It's not an easy job. It is not at all, not at all an easy job. So continuing your absolute celebrity that you have been doing recently, you were becoming the pen man sort of all over the internet. You're involved in two things. You haven't included a link to one of them and need to find it. You're on the radio. God, yeah, I was. We'll get to that in a minute, but you tell us about the wire cutter interview or article. Yeah. So God, I bet it's been, it's been close to a month since the author. There was an article on the wire cutter. If people aren't familiar with the wire cutter, their whole goal, I guess you say, for their site is to have a product category and pick the very best product in that product category. So like, if you're shopping for headphones, you know, they have hopefully taken a lot, taken a lot of the, you know, they've done a lot of the product testing and things to narrow down, you know, the product choice to make it easy for you to purchase headphones, if you will. I guess three or four weeks ago, Tim Barabow, he writes for wire cutter reached out to me about one to do. They were ready to do an article for about the best pen. So he reached out to me and unbeknownst to me, I knew he was talking to other people, but then the list of people he ended up talking to was me, Brian from Office Supply Geek, Aziza from Gourmet Pins, and Elizabeth from No Pen intended. So great cost to characters. Yeah, awesome cast of characters, the best. And I mean, we exchanged just epic link emails. I don't think we ever talked on the phone for this one, but we just exchanged so much information back and forth. And Tim was sending out quizzes and charts and we had to rate different things and was a very, very thorough interview process. And he was doing it with all of us. And he ended up putting together a pretty epic link article on the best pen, which, you know, we'll have that link in the show notes for anyone who hasn't seen a chip. And, you know, right away, the article kind of exploded. I even emailed Tim and he was like, you know, I can't believe how he said I knew it was going to be good. But he said, he said, it's just really taken off. And Brian Lamb, I guess who started Brian, I guess, Brian was an end gadget, right? Previously. Yeah. Lamb. He said that, you know, the feedback and the comments and just the traction they were getting on the article was really huge. So he appreciated myself and Brian and Aziza and Elizabeth, I'll help out with the article. And it was really fun. I've gotten ever since that article happened. I've just, you know, the amount of email I have gotten has really ramped up, you know, people looking for help in choosing pens and things like that. So just the whole conversation around pens, it really picked up the pace right when that article hit and I've had people reaching out, you know, to do different things. And it's definitely made a difference in giving some exposure to this whole little pen and paper world that we live in, which is great. You know, we want more people to become involved in things like this. So it was fun to do and Tim did a great job. And I was happy to see how it came out on the wire cutter. And yeah, if you haven't checked this out, set aside about an hour of your time to go through this whole thing because they did a very thorough job, which is what they do at the wire cutter. You know, they want to make the decision for you. And they put in the time and effort and trying to find all the details and getting all the details right. So, and I think they did a really good job. It's just a shame you got the pen wrong. No, it's just a shame that you chose the wrong pen really. All right. So let's give, um, since, uh, Mr Mike Hurley did not get to participate in this article, Mike Hurley, what is the best pen that just anyone can go into a store and buy and use? Cause that was the kind of, that was the impetus behind the article. It wasn't, you know, it wasn't, we weren't including fountain pens and all the odd Japanese pens and things that are like, we wanted it to make it your wire cutters. You know, they wanted to make it an accessible product. So what's an accessible pin that you would have chosen for, um, the winner pilot G2. G2. Okay. I would have gone G2, but you know, I don't like the jet stream. I just something, there's something about it that I don't like. I don't find it a very smooth writing experience. And the G2 is, is just excellent. Mm hmm. Well, you clearly don't know anything. So, oh, is that how it is? You know, I had a couple of people contact me from the show and be like, Oh my God, the jet stream has like, yep, they picked the pen. I didn't get that at all. I was like, Oh my, well, yeah, cause those people won't contact you. I mean, they only contact me because they know you're insane. But people that contacted me was, Oh my God, the jet stream, that's the one I use. Great choice. So, you know, that was the good choice. So, but, um, what's weird is, you know, I didn't know anything or I didn't know who he, who else Tim was talking to or anything he was asking anyone. It was just me and Tim talking. And apparently between the four of us that he interviewed, it wasn't even close. I mean, we all gave the same answer. Um, in the end, so we're right and you're wrong. Okay. That's the end of the week show. Yeah. And the end of the show together. Yeah. No, but I mean, the, the G2, there's actually a big section about the G2 because of how popular it is. Um, so, and I'm, I don't hate the G2 as much as everyone else does. I actually like the G2 fine. It just wouldn't be my choice. Um, a couple of people interesting that that's not in there. I mean, I know it's maybe not like office supplies store accessible. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's a little bit available, but I guess that was, that was probably more of the key. It's a little bit more niche than some of these other pins that were, that we were talking about. Um, so it didn't, I mean, that would, that obviously ranks pretty high for me, but I don't think that's, I've always said all along about the high tech. See, that's not a, that's a pin I'm very careful to recommend to other people. Yeah. Again, you know that I'm not massive on that pin anyway. Oh, right. Yeah. Yeah. You don't really like, you don't care for that one much at all. Especially barrel. Yeah. And plus it doesn't come in anything greater than a point five millimeter tip size, which you know, most people, you know, prefer for a gel ink pen, prefer the point seven like me. Yep. Yes, sir. So congratulations. And then you were on the radio. You were on 89.3 K P C C. What makes one pen superior to another? And I've got that in the show notes too. So people can go and listen to you on the radio. I haven't got ran to this into it yet, but I've saved it to listen to later. And you can find links to this show, all the things that we discuss over at five by five dot TV slash pan addict slash 72 going here. What was that like? That was pretty cool. So, you know, the, the water cutter gave, like I said, it gave us a lot of exposure. And I think that afternoon that the article came out, just a guy from the radio, that radio station reached out. I think his thing was Justin at the time, I guess one of the producers or something reached out and said, Hey, we'd like to talk to you about, you know, do just do a little segment about this article. We saw the article. I'm a big pin fan. I love the article and just wanted to talk to you real quick. And he kind of did like a pre interview with me, went over some topics and things like that. And then he said, Yeah, this is good. And he said, I'm gonna get one of our, I'm gonna get our host to call you back. And we'll kind of go over, you know, somewhat similar questions, just in general. And it went super well, but real smooth. You know, thank goodness I've been doing this podcast or else I would have probably been like panicked, like talking to a guy on the radio. Yeah, your radio trained. Yeah. Yeah. So, um, they posted it on, they have a blog on the website. So they posted just an dedicated article to pens and kind of did a summary of the interview. And they have an audio link on that page. It's like a four minute interview. And, um, you know, we just covered like the really, really basic stuff, like, you know, what is a gel? What are the kind, what are the kinds of inks in a pen? You know, ballpoint gel and, you know, liquid ink. It was really at that super, super beginner level. But you know, that's what, um, that's what they were looking for. And, um, I thought it went really well. I was, um, kind of surprised. So, um, I was pretty happy with that. And, you know, I've got a couple of other things, you know, people have reached out to one to do other articles. There's a magazine article that someone wants to do and things like that. And, um, it's, it's been kind of fun. So it's, uh, it's hectic getting all these things done because my schedule is so weird. Um, this radio stations in California and they weren't recorded like 7 30 in the morning their time, which is 10 30 my time, which is usually about two hours after I go to bed. So I'm, I was like hanging on by a thread waiting for them to call and get this all done. Um, one morning. So, um, it was kind of tough for me, but I thought it was a good opportunity. So it was worth, you know, I didn't want to blow it off and, um, and, and miss it. So, uh, so I, I got a little more caffeine in me and stayed up for a little while that morning. So, uh, it was fun. It was good stuff. Are you going to start like bumping up your appearance rate for this show? No, that is such a celebrity. No, I would never do that. I would never do that at all. Good. Nope. Nope. I know, uh, Mike is the hand that, that feeds me. Hey, I owe this all to you. You're the one that, that drug me kicking and screaming, you know, behind the microphone. So I'll see how that worked out. Mm hmm. Now look at us. I know. Crazy. But now, um, yeah, it's, it's been fun. It's getting, uh, you know, wire cutters, a huge site. So we've gotten lots of traffic. I've got lots of traffic on the panatic. I'm sure everyone else that was involved got lots of traffic too. And, uh, like I said, the number of just general emails, questions, tweets, all that stuff is really ramped up in the past week since this article posted. And, um, it's been fun. It's been fun answering all these emails. And, you know, if I, if I haven't got an answer to you yet and you sent me an email, um, it's still in my inbox and I will get to it eventually, but my inbox has been packed for days. So I'm getting to them slowly, but surely. So thank you everyone for, uh, sending those emails and I'm more than happy to answer questions. Good man. Mm hmm. Good, good stuff. So there's some more, um, field notes insanity. Yeah. Speaking of good stuff, we had that, um, I posted about that butcher blue three pack. Yeah. Um, it ended up going for $410, which is just ridiculous, I think. Um, yeah, it was $90 off, wasn't I? Yeah. I was, I was like $30 short. I was like 380 something. So, um, yeah, it's, it's pretty insane. And I, I've got a comment about this, but I want to, I want to talk about this, um, the spreadsheet that someone on the field notes group on Facebook call, uh, created look at this. I hadn't seen this. So yeah, I haven't seen that yet. No, I wanted to be able to post, be able to share this with anyone who's interested in field notes because this is a really good resource. The guy that was doing it, what this is, is there's a guy, um, and boy, I forgot to say I'm Jeffrey Hega on the field notes Facebook group. And what he did was, I think it's from, I want to say it's from like January 2013 up until. Yeah, it looks like all of the year. Beginning of September, what he did was create a Google doc, Google spreadsheet that tracked the sale of every field notes, field notes auction on eBay. And not just that, it doesn't say like, you know, butcher blue, you know, $410. It's got like the very specific like items, like the American tradesman, when it shipped, it shipped out with a, um, carpenter pencil and it shipped out with like a card that told you how to sharpen a carpenter pencil. Um, and it came in a little zip block bag. So he's got, you know, if the auction was just the notebook, it says just the notebook of it says American tradesmen with the pencil and instructions went for this much. The American tradesmen without the pencils this much, the American tradesmen with pencils, instructions, but no bag went for this much. It's insane. The amount of work this guy put in, it's crazy. This is crazy looking through some of this. And you see how, so like he's got, for example, there were three butcher blues sold this year. The most recent had 35 bids and it sold for $410. It was one in the end of August that had one bid for three, three, nine, but there was one in March that led one bid for $35. Right. It's amazing. This is, this is really cool stuff. Yeah. Bravo. Bravo, Jeffrey. Yes. And the reason why he was posting it on this is he can't keep up anymore. He needs, he wanted someone to take over the spreadsheet. And it's, it's pretty, it's pretty intense. He's done a extraordinarily thorough job. So I don't know if anyone's taken up the mantle yet to keep this going. I certainly can't do it. But he was doing, like he, yeah, he did it for the whole year. Well, it's got 500. What is it? 538 entries so far. And I included another link in there, Mike, like the last link where one of the different guy in the field notes group, Cody Williams, he took that spreadsheet data and like made charts and graphs and all this stuff off of it. It's hilarious. You just got to, you just got to look at it and see what he did. And although for some reason, the image isn't coming up for me right now. Oh, no. Maybe I want to if he took down his, his sources photos aren't, don't seem to be working. Is that the same for you? Yeah, it might be a Facebook thing. Hopefully, maybe it's a Facebook thing. But anyway, you go back and what this guy Cody did was he made, if you actually, if you scroll down, you can see some of them where he's got like auction price, you know, graphs and through the whole thing. And he just made all these charts off of this spreadsheet that Jeffrey did. So it's, it's pretty crazy. You guys think that we're crazy on this podcast? We don't even sniff. Some, some people are doing out there, not even close. And this makes me feel pretty good about myself. Hey, but I, but I see something like this and I just nerd out on it. I was like, Oh, this is beautiful. I can't believe someone did this. And it's, uh, it's pretty amazing. Hey, Brad. Yes. Did you get the email? What email from field notes? Oh, I did. I did. Came today. Came today. Um, I don't know. Well, this one, I think next week, that next week, check your inbox. I'm very excited. Oh, so speaking of which, um, back to the field notes, I don't have this in the page and I can find the link later, but, um, on the field notes, Facebook page, there was a link. There was a, someone posted a thread. Okay. So what's your guess for what this, um, next edition is going to be, you know, because people now like to speculate, um, what are the things are going to be? And it's, it became, I don't know, it's probably a hundred posts deep, um, thread on there. Um, do you want to hear my guess? Do you want to take a shot? Do you want to, you want to throw something out there? I mean, it's really just, it's really just throwing darts and just totally, total random wacky guesses that people had, but I liked, I liked my guess actually. And I might steal this idea from me. I have quite literally no idea at all. All right. So I guessed a, how do I explain it? It's a, that the next edition will be a plastic, a translucent plastic cover. So like a clear translucent plastic with like a orange field note stamp on it. You know, the field notes and for future of the, you know, the logo you're looking for, um, out on the front. Why, why, why do you think that? I don't know. You just got to get something random. I mean, people are guessing like, you know, uh, three pack colored of fall colors and everyone's like, well, they've kind of done that for fall already. I feel like it's going to be something great. I, I, I've really don't have any sort of, I don't, I don't have an inkling and I also can't like think of something. Yeah. Um, so I was just trying to think of something out there that they haven't done and find that post. Where was that? At least a week ago and the posts on there are just like epic link back and probably find it quicker because I've, since I've replied to it, I can find the, like find it in my notifications. Yeah, find it while I'm, uh, probably easier than, um, because there's so much in this page. It's, I love being part of this group. It's like the other thing that I care about on Facebook. Yep. Oh, like I said, that's the only reason I, I, um, recreated my Facebook account. Yep. It's worth it. I mean, just so I could be part of this group. Okay. I found it. Cool. So should we take a quick break? Should we thank our first sponsor for the episode and then then we've got, we've got the two reviews that we promised for like two months, we're actually going to do it today. We'll do it. We'll do it. So yeah, sounds good. Okay. So take a very quick break before we come back and talk about those magical reviews that you've waited so patiently for the listeners. So our first sponsor today is Shutterstock.com. This is where you're going to find over 20 million stock photos, vectors, illustrations, and video clips. You can start searching at Shutterstock.com and you will find the perfect image for your website and publication or any other creative project. Shutterstock gives you a global image collection to help you find images from across the world to suit your project. You can choose from buying images one at a time, as you like, like Alocart, or you can choose image packs or monthly subscription packages. They have whatever fits your needs, you never have to compromise. And you're always going to find new images when you go to Shutterstock. Do you know why Brad? It's because they add 10,000 new images every single day. That's incredible. Whoa. It's an incredible number to think 10,000 every day. It's 70,000 a week. And it's more affordable than you think. There's no charge for large files. There's no extra charges. You just pay once and you will get any image or a vector or anything. You'll get all the high resolution for it. So you don't have to worry about, "Oh, I got the 2500 by X size because I bought I needed it for the little size." You pay for it once. You've got all of those options available to you. If you need them, just take them. As you're searching around through the many, many, many, many, many, many, millions of images over at Shutterstock, you can create light boxes. So you can add your favorite pictures or images or media to them. As you're searching around, you can review them later. So you're like, "I like that one. I like that one. I like that one. You add them to your light box." And then when you finish doing your search, you can just go and review and pick from your favorite images that you could also have an iPad app where they can do that too. They have 24-hour support during the week. They can get you an account rep dedicated to you. They also have enhanced license access. If you need that, they have a huge library of not just of images, but also vectors that I mentioned, icons, infographic templates, and video clips too. So go sign up for a free browser account at Shutterstock.com. There's no credit card needed to do this. And when you find the images you like and decide to purchase, use the offer code PENZ9 and you'll get 25% of any package. Thanks so much to Shutterstock for their support of 5x5 and the pan addict. All right, someone's Shutterstock.com. And I am looking at 102 results of wire cutters. I love these little searches that you do. Just to show you how many images of wire cutters do you need? Well, you've got the choice between 100 and how many? 102. But in 102 you have, so that's more wire cutters than anybody could need. There's some very choice images on here too. There's a couple I'm liking. I'm liking very much. So you'll have to go to Shutterstock to check them out, check out the bar cutter images. So on the 19th of August, you finally published your Allow Me 2000 review. Can you believe it? After all this time. How long ago did you get this pen? I think almost exactly a year. Well, it was something like that. And we've talked about it a bunch on the podcast. You'd think I would review it by now as much as I've talked about it. But I never felt totally comfortable reviewing it right after I got it. And if you follow the blog or the podcast for a long period of time, you'll know that I felt I was having issues with the pen. And we actually talked about it last week a little bit with Anna too. I didn't know what to do at the time because I think that was probably besides the pilot vanishing point that was far and away. The Allow Me 2000 was probably the most expensive fountain pen I had. And at that time, I didn't have that many fountain pens either. You know, my whole collection wasn't that large as far as fountain pens goes, at least compared to it to now. And my experience with the pens wasn't that great. You know, just fountain pens in general. My whole experience was I didn't have a lot to go off of. So I kind of just kept putting it off because it was an amazing, it's an amazing pen. And I didn't think mine was performing right. Like, I was seeing some weirdness in the nib when I was writing. It wasn't performing as I expected it to. And this is the Allow Me 2000, the macrolon version, which we'll talk about as opposed to the stainless steel version and an EF nib. So I was getting, it was almost like the nib was sticking to the paper a little bit in strokes the certain direction. So I'd clean it out and, you know, I'd have one ink in it and I'd clean it out and clean it thoroughly and try a different ink and see, I wanted to use this pen so desperately bad that I was trying everything I knew to get it going. And I was getting the same results every time. It was, it just was not writing that well for me. So, you know, I did some poking around online and found that actually for the price you're paying for the Allow Me 2000, which is around 150 bucks, 140 bucks, it actually doesn't have great quality control on their nibs. It's kind of a known thing, which I didn't know at the time. If I'd have known that earlier, I probably would have sent it off to get it repaired earlier or send it back or something. I probably would have handled it differently. But I, being a little more naive about it and wanting to try to resolve it myself, I didn't, for some reason, I didn't just like go to the internet and say, you know, hey, I'm having a problem here. What's the deal and everyone goes, oh, well, it's a known issue with Allow Me 2000s. They just, some of them have funky nibs. So, what it ended up doing was I just held out to get it looked at at Atlanta Pen Show back in April. That way I knew I could send it off to someone to get it fixed and probably had it back sooner. But I knew I was going to the Pen Show. So, I figured I'd just wait and get someone to look at it in person because that would be a new experience for me too. So, that's why the review took so long. One, it took me, you know, a month or two to figure out what was going on with it. And then, you know, a few months to figure out what I was going to do with it. And by that time, I didn't want to wait to send it off and be gone for a month or two. And, you know, just not have it and not know exactly what was going on with it and not be able to talk to someone about it and what's going on with it. So, I just held it until April and took it to the Atlanta Pen Show to have a nibmeister look at it and my, my siyama from Mike at work. He was going to be there and he came highly recommended. And so, I took my Lamy 2000 to him and I'll never forget this is one of the highlights in podcast history on our show. When I told you I did that and gave the pen to Mike, my siyama, and he looked at it and he got his loop out and he looked at it and he goes, oh, yeah, one nibs longer than the other one. And I, when I told you that on the, the podcast, you like freaked out on the Atlanta Pen Show recap and just like, I can't believe that, that he knew that like immediately and he could see that and apparently to him, you know, what I can't see with, you know, just my regular eye looking at it, you know, you can't see something like that. But his experience and with, with pens of all types and his decades and decades of experience doing that, he saw the problem immediately. He smoothed out the nib. He actually ground it down a little bit finer than the Lamy EF, which is a little bit wide, but not overly wide for me. But I did want a little bit finer. He grounded down, smoothed it out. And now it's probably the, if not my single favorite fountain pen, definitely probably in the top three. It was a long process getting to this point for me. And I get asked about this pen so much that I finally needed to get the review up. And it just, it took forever. But it was worth it, I think, in the end, because it, it became a story, you know, instead of just a straight pen review, it was more of a story on how I learned to, to figure out more what was wrong with my pens and how to fix it and not be afraid of getting someone to look at it and work on it. And now it's, it's one of my favorite pens I own. So it was pretty cool. It was a, it was a fun process. And we'll have the link to the review in the show notes. So y'all can check it out if you haven't seen my Lamy 2000 review. But um, the one question that I always get asked and the reason why people were wanting me to put this review up so much is the Lamy 2000 is almost the exact same price point as the pilot vanishing point. So it's one or the other? It's one or the other. People don't want to buy both because it's right around 140, 150 US dollars. And so people aren't going to buy both. They say, tell me which one. They're both supposedly great, which one do I buy? I'm recommending the Lamy 2000. But that's, but I have a problem with this that you had to get your work done. I know. To make it work. So how can you, how can, and the reason you love it potentially is because you had it worked on. So how can you recommend it? Because there's caveats to everything, right? I can't recommend the vanishing point blindly because the clip is right where people grip it. Right. Right. I mean, there's, there's give and take with every pen and you have to know these things going into it. And hopefully my experience with this has, you know, can help, you know, other people out if they're having issues with their pen. You know, I, as much as I'd love to say, just buy the vanishing point to everybody, which I'm actually, I actually have my vanishing point inked up right now and not my Lamy 2000. If that tells you anything, how much I like that pen. You know, I can't blindly recommend that pen either because you're, I don't know how everyone grips their pen. And if they buy that pen and that clips in the way, well, they're going to hate it. You know, I mean, that's, that's why, you know, we have the show and, and I'll write this blog and everyone else that has all these great blogs is to help, you know, spread this information around to where you can hopefully find out what's going to be fit to you. But I'm, you know, if you put the gun to my head and ask me which, which pen should I buy? The vanishing point or the 2000, I'm going to say the 2000, I think it'll work. I think more people would get more enjoyment out of that. Even, you know, taking a chance that, you know, you might have, you know, a little bit of nib funkiness with it. But like, for example, like Goulay pens, I know that they know that the 2000s, you know, can sometimes be a little funky with the nibs. So they check them all before they ship them out. So, you know, if you work with vendors and retailers like that, that are aware of the product, then, you know, you're, you have a better chance of getting a good one right off the gate. And you know, and I think it's a small percentage, obviously, but it does happen. It happened to me. And now it's fixed. But yeah, I mean, I can't, you know, it's hard to recommend pens blindly, right? There's there's there's gotchas for all of them, right? It's 150 pounds on cold pens. Now, I want to talk about the barrel real quick. Check out when when you go look at my review, go read everyone else's review on this pen because there's some exceptional reviews. And I linked them in my post that really go in depth about the design and the history. This pen's been around since the 60s in almost essentially the same design, if not identically the same design. That's how iconic this pen is. And if you've never used one, this macaron barrel, it's kind of like a fiberglass, if you will, it's it gets kind of warm to the touch. It's just really neat feeling. It's hard to explain without without someone having one and held one on their hand, but it's it's lightweight, but not too light. And it's just got this really unique feeling. It's perfectly balanced, obviously. The design is spectacular. And you know, it's got the hooded nib and, you know, the steel the steel section. And it's just straight up beautiful pen. So I mean, it's it's hard to choose between the vanishing point in the Lamy 2000 because they're so different than everything else in the price range there. They are non traditional traditional fountain pens, if you will. They've been around for decades each. They don't look like anything else on the market. And no one else has come up with a design that matches either one of those things. So that's why they're so sought after, I guess, if you will. You know, people really like the design. It's unique. And nothing else comes even remotely close to the to the vanishing point or 2000. And they just have a lot of cache that way. I might come across one very soon. Oh, yeah. Sunday to 6th of October. The London pension. Oh, that's right. I am planning on going. I don't know. I don't know if I'm going to have already a budget because I'm we're coming back from a break that I'm about to go on. But yeah, I'm hoping that I can have a little bit of money to put to buying some myself something there. Yeah. Well, if nothing else, you'll get to see some things that maybe you've only read about and you'll get to, you know, get them in your hand and see what they feel like and, you know, understand why some people like one pan or some people don't like one pan or understand what you might like better than better than you thought or something you might something you thought of you would have liked. And you dislike it just by holding and feeling interested in, you know, what I found going to these fountain pin shows is the the dealers there are so helpful answering questions. They want you to try everything out. And so I think you'll leave it. You'll have a good time regardless of even if you come home with anything, we'll see. So yeah, you should want to go and, and, you know, figure out what pins you want to look at and just kind of just kind of take it all in. I think it'll be exciting. Shall we do our second sponsor and then the next sort of review? We should. I think we have an even bigger review coming up next. Yep. So finally going to get to the CoaCo. Well, say CoaCo. CoaCo slash colt pens, smaller colt pens mini fountain pen brought. So we're going to be talking about that. We spoke about a few weeks ago, but finally Brad has got here. So we're going to talk to you about our thoughts, collective thoughts. This episode is also brought to you by the fine folks over at Squarespace, the only one platform that makes it fast and easy to create your own professional website or online portfolio for a free trial and a special 20% off. If you sign up during September, go to squarespace.com and use the offer code tally09. I love Squarespace because of the work that they continue to do to make their platform even more awesome every day with new features, new designs and even greater support. They give you the perfect platform to create your own space online to create your next web project. They have over 20 highly customizable templates that you can choose from. And they've won numerous design awards for these from institutions like the webbies and Forbes. I created some new pages on a Squarespace site recently and it's so easy. You just select the pages that you want, the type of page that you're after, you know, you can select an individual page like a collection. So if you want to group a few pages together, maybe you want to set up a gallery, you can choose other sort of pages. And then you can drag and drop types of content into the page and drag and drop them around. It's so simple, so awesome. It just makes creating pages so fun and just easy, painless. I don't have to code anything or worry about designing anything because they do it all for me. They have over 70 dedicated employees based in New York City who make up the Squarespace support team. They work 24 hours a day seven days a week. You don't get that anywhere else. And that's something that I love about Squarespace. And Brad has said before, you know, he's contacted them in the middle of the night and they've got back to him. So we can attest with personal attribution for that working. Squarespace plans that are just $8 a month and they include a free domain name if you sign up for a year. And every design automatically includes a unique mobile experience by featuring responsive web design. It's going to look fantastic on any device that people come into your site from. I want you to go and try this out. Just go and sign up for the free trial. Go to squarespace.com, sign up for a free trial and play around a bit. I know you're going to be blown away. So sign up. When you sign up, use the code tally-ho-9-t-a-double-l-y-h-o and the number nine. If you do that in September, you're going to get 20% off. And you'll also be helping support this show. If you love the pan addict and you like listening to it every week, go sign up for Squarespace because that helps us to stay around. Thanks to you for doing that. Anybody that has always keep sending us in your examples of the sites you've created in Squarespace. You can send us via Twitter that we always like to see those. And I want to thank Squarespace for their continued support of this show and all of 5x5. Squarespace gives you everything that you need to create an exceptional website. So I updated my Squarespace. One of my Squarespace pages recently, my Field Notes page that I keep for my Field Notes collection that we've talked about before. And I had to add in the new pictures. I didn't have America's beautiful edition taken on there and the night sky edition I didn't have on there. And then I acquired some other upgrades to my collection. You'll just have to go in and find it for yourself. So I don't want to give it away. Look at some of this here. Huh, sneaky. And also changed the layout, which took about two seconds. That was my whole point with the Squarespace thing. I did the large images. I think I thought were too large. So I resized them and it took about, I mean, for me to do the whole page and resize everything took about two minutes. You just drag and drop it and everything sizes in and it looks good. It looks a lot better, I think. Yeah, they were good. That was a good idea by us to do that. It was. It was super helpful. It's something that I always wanted to do and didn't know the best way to do it. And turns out this was not just the best, but the easiest. And was that when we both created the pages independently? Yeah, we had done it over a weekend and I was like, well, I'm just going to get out here and make this page. And you independently for me said, I'm just going to get out here and make this page. And we got on the podcast and Tuesday and realized we had done the same thing. Like the tools that we are. We are crazy guys. Awesome. All right, so we got a big interview about big interview here. Goodness gracious. We got a big review here. Our friends at Colt Pen sent us each the Colt Pen's mini fountain pen that they worked with Coleco on to design a fountain pen just for them at Colt Pen's. And our good friends sent us a pen, each of us a pen, and they sent me the full nib set. Did you get all the nibs for that? I only asked if you remember, I asked like three, I got like a medium of bold and fine. And I if you remember, because I've already given my initial impressions of the pen. And I am using the fine nib and I really love the fine nib, which is rare for me. Yep. So I was a few weeks behind in getting mine and I got all the nibs. I got extra fine, fine, medium, broad and double broad. And we'll talk about the nibs in a minute. But do you want to give your impressions again about the pen? And we haven't talked about this from a review perspective, like a one-on-one thing you and I on what our complete review of the pen is. So do you want to go first? Do you want me to go? Yeah, I'll sort of recap my feelings. I'm really, really happy with the way that the pen looks overall. I think that they chose some really nice materials. It's like aluminium and like chrome, I guess. I don't really, it's probably, I could find it by looking at the page. I'm sure it will say what it's made of. I'm looking now, Brad. Yeah, I'm looking now. It just says metal, but it's metal. It feels really nice. It's anodized aluminum. Anodized aluminum. Matt brush finish. Excellent stuff. And the trim is nickel chromium plated brass. Hey, so I did say aluminium and chrome. So you know, I've got it going on. It's weighted really, really well. It's surprisingly small. It is so small that I do have to cap the nib to use it. But in doing so, it actually adds the weight required to balance the pen, which for me, I find that's quite a rare thing for me. We're adding the cap actually balances the pen, but it does in this instance. So it's not really an issue for me. It's got a good clip, nice strong clip. And I really like the experience. I mean, obviously they've got real quality nibs and they went with a great partner in Kawiko because, you know, if they would have just put any standard nib in here, it maybe wouldn't be as good as a pen, but they chose a real great partner because Kawiko nibs are very, very high quality, they're good stuff. I only have one small niggle with the pen really, that the area where you screw the cap on is just quite sharp around where the cap and the pen meet. But it's not so much that it's a problem for me in all honesty, but it was just something that I noticed. And that's maybe an extremely nitpicky. I have been using this pen at home an awful lot. It kind of fits in with my with using field notes for me quite nicely. I don't carry it around on a daily basis and you can tell me if I'm being silly here. I am a bit nervous about carrying a fountain pen in my pocket all day every day. I don't know if maybe I'm being over cautious, Brad. Yeah, I mean, a little bit. If you think about it, this is what Kawiko does, right? I mean, they obviously make a wide range of fountain pens from, you know, the smaller size of the scale to, you know, traditional size pens. But I think what they're known for is kind of the smaller footprint pens, whether it's the Kawiko Lilliput, which is the smallest. This Kawiko coat pens, which is probably the next smallest. And then the Kawiko Sport, which is probably the main mini, it's basically a pocket fountain pen. So, I mean, this is what they do, you know, and I trust them to make a pen that's not going to, you know, come unscrewed, you know, and get ink all over my pocket or something like that if I'm carrying around in my pants pocket. I've carried the Lilliput in my pocket, my pants pocket, I've carried the AL sport in my pants pocket and I've never had an issue. They're totally sturdy, totally stable. And what the coat pens one did that's different than both of those two is it added a clip. So, that's even better in my book for a mini fountain pen to have a clip that's sturdy like this, you can clip it to your shirt, clip it to your field notes notebook, clip it to your pants pocket, something like that. So, yeah, I don't, I wouldn't worry about it if I was you, you know, I trust the brand implicitly, you know, and they do a great job. And until, until something happens otherwise, yeah, I carry them around in my pants pocket all the time. What about taking on an airplane? I wouldn't do that. I take it just checking. Yeah, I'm super nervous about that. I don't know why, you know, I probably could, but I mean, what you do with this is you just take it, you know, pop out the cartridge, carry the pen and then arrive at your destination, pop in a cartridge, and then when you leave, take out the cartridge, throw it away and put it into, you know, a new one when you get back home. Yeah, I could do that. Yeah. I just wouldn't use it on the plane with the cartridge in engaged. And one of the things that I love about this pen with the fine nib that I'm using is there's no bleed for infield notes. And that's awesome. Because it means I can use it in my favorite notebooks, which I can't really do with fountain pens. Yeah, not all of them are really good for writing on, you know, thinner paper and things like that. And, you know, that's one of the things I want to talk about is the nibs. But I guess let me give my feedback on the pen if you, is that okay? Although the last thing I was just going to say is I just think this is excellent value for money. It's 30 pounds. And if you, if I compare that to a, let's say a kawakos sport. Yeah, so that's it's like 1799 for a plastic kawakos sport. So you're getting something that's much great to put together, I think, then that sort of pen. I really prefer the way that this feels and the health benefit is and stuff. Like if you compare it to a lily put, which is maybe more similar, they're like 42 pounds. So it's much cheaper. And I think I think that they've done a great job. But yeah. Yeah, I think they've done a spectacular job with the pen. I really love it. I use it all the time. I carry it with me. Actually, I carry it clipped to an exterior pocket of my backpack. So that's practically a pocket carry. It's exposed, you know, but the clip is so well done. I love the look of the pen, the brushed metal. It gives just a little bit of texture to where it's, it's not super smooth and slick. It's got a, it's got a good feel to it. I do have the same issue that you have with the grip area. But that's, I mean, that's just part and parcel with a mini fountain pen. There's only only so much space they have to make the design decisions they need to make for the pen to actually be functional, as well as look good and feel good, too. Right. So there, but it does the, like the, the back end of your grip does get on that little sharp edge and that can be annoying to some people. With the extra fine nib, I found like, I gripped below it to use like below that sharper edge there. And then with like the, the broader, the double broadness, I actually grip above it a little bit because you have that much more freedom with it with that wider nib. And that's actually kind of comfortable. So it is something to be aware of. And the, the section itself is a little bit slick, but for, for a smaller pen, it, it doesn't have like a, like I would like it if it was brushed, the section itself was the same brush metal because, you know, it almost grips better there than on the chrome part of it. But it's not that much of a hindrance at all. But outside of that, the, the cap posts wonderfully, it's like got, um, it's almost like a friction fit on the cap. It's like there's a rubber ring or a plastic ring inside the, uh, inside the cap that fits on the back of the barrel. And you just kind of, you push it on and it's, it stays firmly in place, which I like sometimes, you know, the mini fountain pens, when you write with them the cap, you almost have to write with the cap posted, like you were saying, right? And that cap gets right in the cusp of your hand. And on a lot of pens, it'll move around when you're writing, this is, is dead solid firm. So that's a, that's a key for a pen this size. You have to have that or it's going to be wiggling around in your hand and you're not going to like that at all. This one's, it's really, really solid. And that's what I love the most about this pen is the construction of it is, it's really, really well done. Um, I'll have to take some pictures of it compared to the Lilliput and the AL sport or the sport. It falls right in the middle size, size wise, the Lilliput smaller, um, smaller in length. And I think just a tiny bit smaller in diameter. And then the AL sport is more of a normal width, but still a shorter, shorter style, shorter style pen. Um, I mentioned before the clip is key for mini pen. I don't know many that have pulled off a clip this well in this size of a pen. It's, um, that's probably my favorite thing about it, really. And then the nibs, these are the same, um, Kawiko nibs that are found in all the other, you know, Lilliput, AL sport, all that, that whole line of pens, this is the same nib. And these are some of my favorite nibs on the planet. They are always smooth, they're always sharp, they're always clean. And I have discovered something with this set of nibs that even shocks myself. Um, being the extra fine, um, guy that I am, like in the fine point nibs and, you know, right and small, I'm using the double broad nib mic. And I don't want to take it out. I love this, like the super wide nib. It's amazing. I'd never even come across double broad before. I think I need to get a double broad nib. But yeah, I mean, I'm sure I'd like it, but I find it insane that you're using double broad and I'm using fine. What is this pen done to us? It's made us both question what we love about fountain pens. It's crazy. Yeah, I think the thing about Kawiko's nibs is, as opposed to like Pelican, they're, the Kawiko nibs tend to run much finer lines, I think just in general, as like if you compared a Kawiko EF to a Pelican EF, the Pelican EF is so much wider, or maybe it's just that it's a more wetter flow. You know, it's putting a lot more ink on the page. So that makes the line wider. Um, Kawiko's are more, I guess maybe on the drier side, which I don't want to say that. That's not like an extreme. They're very wet and good flow and everything, but thing doesn't spread or run or anything like that. So I'm able to use a double broad nib like this. And it looks to me, it's like when I write with it, it's like writing with a Sharpie pen or, you know, another marker pen, like an, like an O5 secure a pigment micron. And I've always liked that look, but I've never found a fountain pen nib that could pull it off without just completely bleeding through the page or feathering. And I guess the, the Kawiko nibs, they regulate the ink properly to where it's ultra smooth and the ink flow is not exorbitant. So it's easy to write with. And, you know, with my writing style, the small block print, you know, with a wide nib, which is why I've never used them, you know, my letters will run together if the ink bleeds. Well, these Kawiko nibs don't do that. And that's all in all kinds of different papers. Like you're saying, you know, you can even use it in your field notes. And I'm, I'm pretty much fascinated with this double broad nib. And then I'm going to keep using it that way because I like it. I'm using a mini fountain pen with a double broad nib, which seems like kind of defeats the purpose. But it's fun. I'm having a heck of a good time with this pen. I love it. I think in summary, what, what the caught pens guys have done is they've taken excellent nib manufacturing and they've paired it with a fantastic design for a pen overall. And they've, they've got something which is great value. And if you're considering it, I would say drop the money and go for it. Because I think you'll be very happy. Yeah, they did it. Like I said, it fits in Kawiko's lineup in a good spot. It's bigger than the Lolo put, which I love that pen, but it can be a little small at some times. And it's a little bit more compact than the sports and AL sports. And it's a little bit lighter. And the biggest thing, one of the coolest designs in all of Pendum are the clips that Kawiko sells separately from their sports and AL sports. Like I like nothing better than seeing those pens with that add-on clip. I think it's beautiful, but it moves around. They come off. So they come off. And it was to want you to have a clip. It drives, it drives me insane. I can't clip it to my pocket because I tried to and the nib slides up and off the pen. It looks beautiful. It's not functional. This is an integrated clip and it's super functional, super tight. And for a mini pen, you're going to lose it more readily than, you know, a larger sized fountain pen. You need this sturdy clip to keep the pen in place wherever you're holding it. And they nailed this one. So they did a really good job. So good job by Kawiko and Colt Penns working together. I hope it's the start. I'm real happy with it. I hope it's the start of a long and fruitful relationship between the two. I hope so too. And that as an added bonus and that when you order this pen, it comes with a Colt Penns deep dark blue ink cartridge, the Diamine ink that I have ordered from them previously. They've made it in the short international cartridges and that's what they ship with this pen. So you're getting the full Colt Penns experience when you order this pen and I love that ink color. It's actually loaded up in my pelican right now. Awesome stuff. Now we've run really long again today. Before we wrap up, have you got any a quick update on knock? Yes, I do. I do. Thank you for asking that actually. The final production samples have been made. They are on their way to me to take the photography. Once we get that, we'll get everything uploaded to the Kickstarter page and fingers crossed maybe next week. You know, I can't give a date yet because we've had issues getting everything approved on the back end, not from any problems, but just from time delays. You know, when you have to link all these back end bank accounts and all this stuff between Kickstarter and Amazon, it just takes forever and they lost my paperwork and we've spent like, I've spent like an extra week in delays of just getting like approvals to be allowed to set up this project. So now that we've got all that behind us, it's all on Jeff and I now to finish the samples, finish the photography, finish writing the Kickstarter page and then we'll submit to Kickstarter for approval. Once we get approval, we're good to go and we're really close. I mean, it's not going to be this week. I know that and it next week's going to be close, but there's a chance. There's a chance next week. That's all I can say. I mean, one of the hosts of one of the conference organizers of XOXO is Andy Bio who helped create and build Kickstarter. So, you know, if you need me to like get him to kick things along for you, then just let me know and I'll put him in a headlock. Okay. Well, when I submit for approval, if I have a problem, yeah, I'll be calling you. So when are you going out to XOXO? Tomorrow. Tomorrow. All right. The conference is thank you. The conference is over the weekend, but I'm heading out to Paul and tomorrow. That's going to be fun. I wish I was there. That would sounds like an awesome event. So maybe if that's going to be a recurring thing for you, maybe I can make it out there one year. I expect to probably be there again, considering everyone that I know that went is going again, like where possible. Let's hope that there's some special field notes again. Awesome. Yeah. You never know. Never know what's going to happen. Awesome. Right. Well, I think we're done for this next episode. Thanks for having me back, Brad. Hey, absolutely. Thanks for joining me for this episode, Mike. And hey, let's be fair. Let's be fair. This was it was as much my delay as it was Mike's delay last week. It's not like we put, like I said, on when I recorded with Anna, we had we had conflicting conflicts. Yep. So just never good. So you can catch up with us online. Brad obviously writes the beautiful panatic blog along with your contributor. Who's name? Lisa Needham. Lisa, yes. Yes. She's got to post up right now. I know. I'm a secure pygma calligraphy pin. That's really cool looking. It's one of her favorite pins. And she wanted to make sure she could write about that. And I said, absolutely freaking lutely. Yeah, another great, another great review. And I love that. It's a calligraphy pin because I know that that's something that Lisa's involved in. She's interested in that. So yep, it's really cool. And you can catch up with Brad on social networks. If you want to get him on Twitter, he is dowdyism, d-o-w-d-y-i-s-m. And he's just dowdy on app.net and I am I Mike. I am Y-k-e. So we'll be back again next week. We're going to be at a slightly different time. I think we're going to have the episode on Thursday of next week because I need to recover from jet lag. So thanks so much for listening. And until next time, say goodbye, Brad. Goodbye Brad [BLANK_AUDIO]
