Hello and welcome to episode 59 of The Panallic Podcast, a weekly show where we discuss pens, paper and the analog tools that you love so dearly. My name is Mike Hurley and I am joined by a man who is milled from a solid block of aluminum or aluminium, as I would say, and turned into a multifunction human. That's just a bright daddy. I love it. I'm disappointed. You've clearly been in the US too long. You went straight to aluminum instead of aluminium. Yeah. How was your week in San Francisco? It was really good. I'm now sick, as you would imagine, from such a trip, but it was an absolutely great time. Very busy, a lot of fun, lots of time spent with good friends. It's very sad that you couldn't make it. I know, I know. Maybe next year, maybe next year, because everything lined up for me to go except work got in the way. So maybe next year. So I'm looking forward to that opportunity, but I'm glad you had a good time. Thank you. Yeah. So there was a lot of good news while you were in San Francisco last week. The one that you and I are probably the most excited about and all of our listeners and readers are most excited about. And the one that's the most obvious thing that we're going to talk about ever is the new Fields Note, Field Notes Colors Edition, the Night Sky Edition. I'm just going to cut to the chase. I don't have it yet. It's my mind's ship like last Wednesday or something the day after they were announced. And I still haven't gotten them yet, but just looking at the pictures and looking at what everyone else has been saying and reading all the specs on it, I'm going to go with, I'm blown away. This is probably going to be the best edition in recent memory, in my opinion. Do you know what that noise was? Did you get yours already? I got mine. Ah, you dog. I saw some of the UK subscribers, color subscribers had already started getting theirs. I didn't know you'd got yours. Yep, they came today. All right. So you give us the full breakdown here since you've got them in hand and I do not. So it's three books, as you would assume. And each, I'm getting up the other two. So, because I have one here. So each book has on the back a printed constellation or like a couple of constellations. So they're not all the same. So you've got each has its own one. And what I love most about these is the stars themselves that are in the constellation. So you've got like a, so completely plain black on the front with the gray field notes, right? On the back, you've got lots of like just gray in the same paint that's on the front. You've just got that, you know, lots of little stars and the names printed of the constellations. You have the lines drawing up between the stars, but the stars that are in the constellations are holographic stamps. That's so cool. So as you move them, they shimmer with color and it's incredible. And even the staple is painted black. That's what tripped me out when I saw them when they first released. I said, I've never been so excited about a glossy black staple in my life. And the paper is, I don't know what it's called. Let me see if it says it. It's in the specs. It's Finch opaque text paper. No, but it's the way the grid is printed. Oh, red is red isle. Is that how you pronounce? Radical graph grid. So it's like crosshairs. And apparently that's good for stargazers. I think, I think these may be the best they've ever made. Wow. I don't have mine yet, but I mean, I'm pretty excited about this. I mean, this is this is serious business right here. I'm going to make a bold prediction right now. It's that little gone. This version is going to sell out before the America is beautiful, is sold out. Yeah, I think so. But even they said like it was two days for the black, their last black ones to sell out. And then they print a lot more now. Yeah, they're up to four. America is as beautiful as 45,000. And this was 45,000. And for the first time since I've been following field notes, this is the first time a previous edition hasn't sold out before the next edition came that I can remember. There's probably been a case, but they printed so many of them now. I've never seen a previous edition not sell out before the next one was released. And I think this one's going to sell out before the last edition. This is really, really a cool edition. That's a lot of people are going to chomp, chomp to get. So it's using a, I'm trying to find the paper here. It's 50 pound tea. I can't remember what that meant now. So it's not as thick as the America, the beautiful paper, but it's thicker than the standard paper. So I did a test with my Twisbee stub nib. And it's just very, very slight bleed through very slight. So much so that it wouldn't be an issue. But I was very surprised to see that sort of near beneath distribution performed so well on this paper. So again, I think that they paid attention to it and I know at the world of play desks, she got hers like on Monday. So she put her review up and I agree with her that I think that the guys at field notes, guys and gals over at field notes, listened to all the great feedback that they've gotten. Yep. She made it, she made a pretty clear point about the paperweight and she's actually friends with Brian who's involved with field notes. I think everyone was the best part of the Americas. I didn't fawn over the America is beautiful edition like everyone else did last time. But I did fawn over the paper that paper choices that they were making now. And I still owe my paper list that I said I was going to make and share out with everybody for the field notes. But I think they are listening. I think they've improved the paper quality and then we'll see what we'll really see is if that translates into the stock editions later on. I don't know, they don't really have a reason to change the stock edition paper and they probably won't because there's probably some added cost to that. And the stock editions are totally fine. The paper that they've always used has been fine. It's just for us that are real particular and use some wider fountain pinning, some fountain pinnings with wider nibs and things like that. There is some bleed through. It's not the best fountain pin paper, but there has been some improvements like in these last two editions. So it's pretty exciting. So I think you're going to love them. I think so too. I've never used this type of graph before. I'm wondering how large it is when I really get to using it. Like is it going to be in the way? You know, is it as opposed to like a dot? You know, a dot's pretty unobtrusive. Is this graph going to be a little bit in the way? Probably not. I don't think you'll have a problem with it because you're a man who likes graph paper. Right. It would really surprise me because I like it. I think it looks really stylish. Yeah. No, I think it looks great. And once in use, I wonder how it's going to go. So I have some more field notes stuff, but we have two sponsors today. And I would like to do. I would like to the first one now if that's the key of you. Yeah, that's great. So I'd love to thank our longtime sponsor that is squarespace.com who give you everything you need to make an amazing website. Squarespace is a fully hosted, completely managed environment that allows you to create and maintain a beautiful website, blog, portfolio, online store or site for your business. It doesn't matter how experienced while when it comes to building websites, because of squarespace, you can put something online that looks incredible and functions amazingly in just minutes. You don't have to worry about any of the nasty stuff like hosting, scaling, or integrating with social services like Twitter and Facebook. They're beautiful themes, great templates. They have great page creation tools. I have updated my field notes page on my blog at mikeherley.net. And it took me five minutes today to just drag and drop in the new images that I wanted into the image blocks and resize them. And then I was able to change the focal point on them to make sure they were right in the middle of the page and add the captions in. And it took me just a few minutes to do something that if I was trying to code that, I don't think I ever could have got it done. So that's why I love squarespace. They have great statistics. The real-time analytics that built right in so you can see is coming to your site. They have apps for Android and iOS that you can view these statistics and post your blog on the go. If you want to sell stuff online, you have squarespace commerce, which actually add a fully integrated door into your website. You can sell physical or digital goods and integrate with Stripe to start accepting payments immediately. And they have so much more. I'd love for you to go and try them out because I think that if you have a website that you want to create, if you have an idea or if you have an existing site, why don't you just go and try out squarespace? And if you haven't, if you've tried them and it wasn't for you for some insane reason or whatever, why don't you go and take a look at it again? And even if squarespace isn't where you want to put your next project, I can assure you that it's going to be somewhere that you will be able to put someone in your life. So maybe be a friend or a family member who needs a website, squarespace can give them the tools that they need. And then it makes it really easy for you to support them because it's such a simple platform. Go to squarespace.com, start your free trial, squarespace plan, start at $10 a month for a standard plan, and use the code 70 decibels six at checkout. You'll get 10% off your first order. So go check out squarespace. Everything that you need to make an amazing website. Yeah, that reminds me I need to go update my field notes page. I still, I just need to take pictures. I'm slow on taking pictures. I need to take pictures of America, the beautiful. So maybe when this one, this one gets in, I will add that. Add those updates as well. And like you said, it's super easy. It'll take me longer to take the pictures and edit the pictures and upload them, then it will add them to the page. That's for sure. Yep. So whilst in San Francisco, I was able to get my hands on some, some field notes books that I've been waiting to get for a long time. One is the XOXO set. Nice. The purple set. Yep. And the other is one of the, there was a Kickstarter for a company called Studio Neat, and they did an app called Simple Bracket. And with that, they were given away a field notes book with a basketball stand on the back. And I was going to back them, but they couldn't ship them to the UK, but I was able to get one of those too. So I've added those to my page. That's fantastic. I'm really happy to have the XOXO ones. Yeah, you've wanted those. Ever since we started seeing pictures of them last year, you've been anxious to get those. I was able to trade for a set of them, but I only had one set. So I know I was never able to send you any, but it's pretty cool. I really like the Simple Bracket one. I actually, when Studio Neat launched the Kickstarter, I think they were going to do it in green. And that's the one I really wanted. And they, I think there was a, ended up being like a paper problem, and they end up doing the orange, which is totally fine. It came out well. They did a good job with that for a, I know a bunch of us did the, did the Simple Bracket back for a March Madness for the basketball tournament. I didn't know I led some, some panetic groups and things like that. So they know I'm a, I'm a fan of Studio Neat and I'm definitely a fan of anyone that gives away field notes on their projects. I'm good with that. Indeed, especially custom ones. Yeah. So are you, are you going to use the XOXO? Are you just going to, you're just going to hang tight? Um, I have opened them. Yeah. Because that's what I do. Absolutely. But I'm probably going to use one of the dark sky ones next, which kind of brings me into my next kind of thing that I want to talk about field notes related today. Okay. My voice is terrible, isn't it right now? Yeah. Yeah. I can tell you, you've had a roughly, I, I, you know, I envy you being out in San Francisco. I don't envy how you are feeling right now because I know that's, that's a, for even just a week, you would think at some point you would catch up and circle back around to, to normalcy. But I imagine you're, you're hurting pretty good. Um, getting back to your regular schedule. Yeah. It doesn't, it doesn't help that like I woke up of a sore throat this morning and, and this is my fourth podcast today. Oh my goodness. So you're right at the end. So my voice is, is strained. So I apologize, listen, as if I'm quiet or hard to listen to today. I do apologize. But after, um, I've got a couple of things and then, and Brad's got got something that he wants to talk about. So you can listen to his lovely, uh, southern voice, rather than this horrible raspy British voice. So whilst in San Francisco, um, I was seeing a lot of my nerd friends carrying field notes, notebooks around with them. I am a collector of field notes, but I am not a user of field notes. Um, I always have them in my bag. Um, and, you know, I grabbed them and write little notes in them, but I don't use them to, to the extent that my friends do, like you do, or Steven does, or people like that, they always have them in their back pocket with them and they pull them out and they take notes in them. And I want to try and start doing more of that. You know, I've got all these notebooks building up and they are great books. And, and, you know, there's a reason that I love them. It's the quality as well as the fun and the variety of collecting them. Especially now I've got the subscription because I have more than I need. You know, from a savings, just, just, just to save on, I can just save on to a pack of free of each, you know, because I get two packs of three. They're just going to keep on coming. Exactly. Just one thing I meant to mention about it, I was so impressed by how quickly that they arrived. I've never seen them come so fast, except for my, except for mine. I usually have them. I don't subscribe, which I think I said before, but um, yeah, from, but I got my shipping notification immediately. So I actually thought they would be here by today, but they, but they aren't. But from the, they got out the subscribers ones super, super fast, like the subscribers ones were showing up almost the day or the day after they announced it and then even across, uh, across to England. I mean, they're showing up already, even before, you know, I've gotten mine. That's, that's very impressive. The field notes account actually tweeted to me and to us today, actually, because of a conversation we were having and they say that generally the subscriptions start shipping before the edition, the edition is launched and I received my shipping notification, like, well, by notification that they would be shipping about a week before they're announced. Okay. So my thinking would be that they maybe start sending to international a little bit sooner. So we don't have to wait so long. Maybe you know what? Yeah, that, I mean, that just, that just shows how much field notes cares about their brand and their product that they want to make sure they're, they're doing those little things like making every, everyone kind of gets them at the same time. So if that means, okay, we got to ship to people in Europe, you know, three or four days of head ahead of, you know, the people in, in the US, we're going to do that. So everyone's kind of getting them at the same time. And it's those little things that make a difference in a company like this, I think. So I just got, I just pulled out the, um, the actual, the package and it was a mail in June 7th. Wow. So they made it out. They made them out on the Friday and then they announced someone like the Wednesday or the first day and then it means I get them on time. Now that's excellent customer service. Yeah, and that takes them, that takes some stones on their part too, right? Because they don't, they don't want someone to get these before they've even announced them either, you know? Yeah. I mean, they are in the mail and can show up any day, you know, but they, I guess they've got it down to knowing how many days it's going to take and managing that with their announcement and stuff. So, um, I mean, because they, they, I've, in all my years of following field notes, there's certain, there's never been a leak of what their, uh, what the next version is. Indeed. Um, so, yes, so back to your topic. What I, what I want is I want to be able to keep field notes in my pocket, right? In a back pocket and I want a small pen to carry around with them. So it's like attached to the book. Now a pen that I've got is the field notes space pen. And that kind of does that job, I think. But what I'm wondering, and I'll post this to you and to, to any other listeners, is there a better pen than the field notes, like a space pen, a small space pen for doing this job? So, I mean, space pens, fine, but it's not really the type of pen that I go for. Right. Right. So it's a rollable, right? No, a ballpoint. It's a ballpoint. Yeah. Um, I like the space pen. It's not, it's not anywhere near, like, one of my favorite pens. I like it for its utility and its looks. Um, it's not a great, it's not a great writer. Um, it's a decent writer. I use it, uh, the really fills in like my county comm embassy pen, but that's a large pen and you want like a smaller, something that you could basically, like you want something that you can clip to the field notes that's small enough to pretty much stay internal to the notebook, right? You don't want a pen bigger than the notebook size, right? Is that kind of what I'm gathering? Yeah, something small and good. Are you gonna have an issue with the, uh, with the tip size? Like, you know, like, so a lot of these small pens that I like, you know, have like a very small, like a gel pen that's 0.3 millimeters. I mean, it's a small, it's a perfect pen for that, but I don't, would that drive you crazy? I don't know. I don't think so. Well, let me tell you my favorite right now for, I do, I do two, I write with two pens, well, two types of pens in my field notes. I either write with a fountain pen, if like I'm at work or something, right? At work, I'm using a fountain pen most of the time. And if I already have my fountain pen out, I'll just take my field notes out and write in it with the fountain pen that I'm using. Now, if I'm not at work and don't necessarily have a fountain pen with me, like if I'm just going out, you know, going to the store or just going out anywhere, I still carry my field notes in my pocket, but then I use a smaller pen and the one I'm using constantly and is still, I think, my favorite. It's called the Monteverde Pokito. It's a, it's a mini ballpoint, 0.7 millimeter ballpoint. You're not going to get the, the benefits of the pressurized refill, like the Fisher space pen. That's, we didn't mention that before, but I think it's, it's common knowledge when we say Fisher space pen. It's, it's a pressurized ink refill. That's, that's the selling point of it, not necessarily the, the small size or, or, you know, how it writes, but the fact that it's a, it's considered a right anywhere pen. It can handle all kinds of different conditions and things like that. The Monteverde Pokito is not like that. It's more of a standard ballpoint, but I've never, this ballpoint ink roof fill is really close to a gelling, I'm, excuse me, like a roller ball type refill, or maybe even gel, it's pitch, pitch black. It's super smooth. The barrel of the pen is metal. Um, I don't know if it's aluminum or not, but it's a metal barrel. So it's durable. Um, it even has a stylus on the end, because, I mean, I'm always going to have my phone with me, usually when, when I'm carrying around this notebook too. Um, it, and I've actually, you know, I'm on my second one because I washed my first one because I left it in my pants pocket and it kind of exploded. Um, but the clip is super durable. I mean, the clip is tight. Um, it's a twist, it's a twist release. Um, to get, to get the tip out of the pen, to get it writing, it's not a, a not pen or a retractable pen, or, and it doesn't have a cap, so you're not going to lose anything. Um, it's my favorite mini pen to carry with my field notes notebook. Put it that way. Okay. Um, I don't know for you, if you want something, I don't know, I'm having a hard time recommending something for you to be quite honest. Um, just because I'm wondering if you would want like a wider, like a gel pen, like a .7 gel, would that work better for you? Probably. Because you can get like the G2, the pilot G2 mini. Yeah, I have one of those somewhere, I think. Yeah. I mean, it's, it's probably two or three times the width of something like the piquito, but it's probably the same length, if that makes sense. Um, there's, um, gosh, I'm trying to think of anything that would write wider. It seems like everything that I like that's small also writes really small. Maybe we float Frodo's one over to listeners then. Yeah. So let's hear some, some mini pen recommendations. Um, probably larger than, you probably want something like a .7 millimeter gel, right? Yeah, that would be good, I think. Yeah. So that's, that's the challenge here is finding something like a .7 millimeter gel, or a wider tip at ballpoint, like the, um, the space pen you use is a 1.0 millimeter, um, ballpoint pen. So something in those ranges, because everything I use has a smaller tip, um, finer line, something like that. Um, have you ever considered anything like the, uh, like the portable fountain pen, like the Kawiko Lilliput? Uh, yeah, I don't think I want a fountain pen for this. Yeah, I'm with you. Plus it, it has a top in your, yeah, a lot of it will lose it and things like that. Um, but this reminds me, I need to do a, um, I need to do a, uh, another top five list of mini pens. I've never done that before. So this, this reminded me that I, I need to put together something like this, because I actually get, I get this question a lot, and, uh, Monteverde Piquito is my go-to mini pen for, you know, leaving the house, you know, with a field notes notebook and my phone. Um, it's, it's far and away the best. The other one I use sometimes is the, um, the Pentel Slichee, uh, Tekko, which they made a .3 millimeter gel, um, Pentel Slichee in those, the pen barrel is smaller than this Monteverde Piquito. It's, it's narrower. It's perfect for something like that, but I think the .3 millimeter gel, I don't think that's something that you would like. Probably not. Yeah. I'll put a link into the, the notes and you can see, um, you can see what it, what it looks like. I've reviewed both of those pens. I'm very, very high on both of them. And, um, but yeah, I'm, I'm having trouble finding, besides the G2 is kind of the big mini gel ink pen, but it's the exact, I think it's the exact same barrel dimension as their standard G2. It's, but they just cut it in half pretty much. So no, I deal really. Yeah, it's not ideal. It's, it's a little bit too wide. Um, we'll have to see if there's, see if there's some other route we can take. So we'll throw that out to the listeners and, uh, I'll, I'll tweet it out later too. And we'll, we'll follow up on that and see if we can come up with anything good and we'll, we will report back on that. How's that sound? We will report back. [inaudible] Exactly. So why didn't you tell people about, um, I wonder, I've read this review. So let's see. You think tell me, tell us about your next thing. Yeah. Because I want to have this conversation with you too. All right. So, um, we've talked about it many, many times and it's, it's a very popular item. And I've been waiting and waiting and waiting for the right version to come in of the pilot metropolitan fountain pen. So this is a, this is a very important pen, if you will, for a lot of reasons. Um, people are loving this pen one because it looks awesome. It feels great in the hand. It's got a killer nib. And for all of that, you're only having to spend about $15, give or take, depending on where you buy it from. And so everyone has been challenging me and not in a malicious way, but they were just like, you got to check it out. You got to check it out because, I know, like Anna mentioned, you know, I know Brad likes the Lamy Safari for his recommend, what pen do I recommend for beginning fountain pen users? And I've always recommended the Lamy Safari and everyone's like, you got to try the metropolitan. You got to try it. You got to try it. Um, and that's going to be the pen that you're now going to recommend for, um, beginning fountain pen users. And so I, that the hesitation I had before was that when I was, I was ordering mine that they did, I didn't, I was holding off for the particular color. We had this conversation back with Anna that, you know, I think you bought the gold one and she bought the gold one maybe and I was holding out for the black plane one, right? Yeah. Is that the one you have? And you're like a gold, but I want to get it anyway. I think you'd like it better if you didn't have the gold, right? I think so. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So anyway, long story short, I finally got my palette, palette metropolitan in and I reviewed it up on the blog and I'm sure pretty much if you listen to this podcast, you probably read the review, but if not, it'll be in the show notes and I, I really, really, really like this pen. It's a fantastic pen. This nib is, might be the best nib I've used on a sub, I don't know, $100 pen, probably, we'll just say steel nib. I mean, as far as a steel nib goes, this nib for in a $15 pen will rank with any steel nib pen on the market. Bar none. I don't know that I've used one this smooth, honestly. One of the readers pointed out that I used probably one of the wettest, most lubricated inks when I did the review in Aurora Black. Yeah. That's just a real, real high flow, very lubricated ink, which helps. I mean, it's a super, super smooth ink, but I wanted to try something different than the stock metropolitan ink. So as much as I love the feel and the look and the nib of the pen, I had a really, I had a big problem with the pen that I didn't, I haven't really heard anyone mention before and that there is a large step down in the section of the pen, right where the pen caps down into the grip area. There's a metal edge step down, like where the cap would snap. Yep. And I noticed it immediately. As soon as I started writing with the pen, the way I grip the pen, that metal edge dug into my fingers and it was not comfortable to write with. I mean, the pen felt great on the paper, but I felt that I could not write for an extended period of time with this pen. It just did not feel comfortable with me. And then I got to looking and and no one else really mentioned that, but after I mentioned in the review, a bunch of other people said that, yeah, they noticed that and that's one of the reasons why they're not a fan of the pen. So it's by no means a deal breaker and, but it puts it on par with the Lamy Safari and, you know, each of these pens has grip flaws, if you will, the Lamy Safari, you're tied into a molded grip. And if you don't write with a standard grip, it's not going to be comfortable, comfortable for you to write with. The Metropolitan, on the other hand, has kind of a different issue to where you might have the edge of the pen digging into your fingers while you're right. So, I mean, there's there's give and take with both. But what I really wanted to talk about is I a lot of the feedback I got was very strong and not in a bad way. I love all the the disagreements. We can have lots of good conversations. Our friend Phillip Kallenberg, who's he's talked with both of us and I've talked about him on the podcast before. And Phillip and I enjoy a lot of the same pens. We exchange pen lists all the time. And, you know, we've been kind of on the same journey where we were liking the fine gel pens and we've kind of morphed into these fine nib fountain pens and different things like that. And he sent me, not only did he leave a big comment on the on the Metropolitan Post, he sent me a huge email. That was a little even a little bit more stern than the comment he left on the blog. And he was basically calling me out on it saying that, you know, there's no way that the Safari is a better beginner fountain pen than the pilot metropolitan. And I look at it strictly from the perspective of if you're a beginner and want to try a beginner fountain pen, you know, what would I recommend? And I stuck with the Lami Safari in the end over the pilot metropolitan because I felt it gave you more options right off the shelf. There's more variety in nibs. There's more variety in barrel colors and design. You know, I just felt that it was it was going to stay as my most recommended pen fountain pen for beginners. And a lot of like Philip's Philip's comments were, you know, I prefer it was a lot of back and forth. And his point was, well, you can take the Metropolitan and yes, it only has a medium nib available, but you can buy a pilot plummics and you can swap out the nib, you know, for that and, you know, make it a give it a finer nib and do things like that. And I said that I agree with you completely, but I'm never going to recommend a beginner to buy two fountain pens just so you can switch the nib around, you know, out for a beginner, I want them to be able to buy a pen, pop an ink cartridge in and start writing. So that's that's one of the hang ups. And I don't want it to sound like I hate the Metropolitan. I think it's an awesome pen. I mean, for the price, I mean, yeah, I mean, I will agree, I will never disagree with anyone that says that a $15 pen that writes this well is not the best beginner fountain pen. It's awesome. I'm still going to recommend the Lami Safari for my beginner fountain pen. You know, I don't know what else to say about that. It's a good I've had a lot of good conversation. I implore everyone to read the comment section on the blog. The comments are quite disparate on both sides of it, which means it's that always makes for a good topic and a good subject of conversation when, you know, people are that adamant on both sides of the topic. So it's, it's by no means a bad pen. And I actually, I think it's a fantastic pen. And actually, the thing I'm most impressed with is pilot for bringing this pen to market, because that's a killer price for a killer product. It's just not for me. And it's not what I'm going to recommend to beginners. But it is going to be an option. I mean, I think that's, you know, two good options, the Safari and the Metropolitan, and they both have things you need to consider when you buy them. And like I told Phillip in our email exchange, which is in the comments section, and my comment to him was, that's why I always tell Mike on the podcast, that's why they make more than one pen. So we'll leave it at that. We all have our, we all have our own tastes. And I stand where I stand. And everyone else stands where they stand. And it's a battle royale for the $15 fountain pen. Phillip was funny, though, at the end of our conversation, our email conversation after a, after a, I don't know, a handful of emails gone back and forth. He finally, his last email wrapped it up. He's like, I can't believe I'm getting so mad about a pen I only use for ink testing. Wow. So that was, that was the wrap of that, that conversation. We just, we had a good laugh about it. But he was very adamant that I was wrong. And you know, I wasn't as adamant that I was right. But I mean, like I told him, that's why they make more than one own pen. And we'll always all have the pen that works best for us. And that's why this is such a, such a fun hobby to be involved in and a fun blog and a fun podcast, because we can all find different things we love or hate about pens and have a good discussion around them. And, you know, we're all trying to find the things that make our, that make our pens and paper work better for us. And that's, that's why it's so much fun. So we have a new sponsor this week. Yes, I'm excited. Very, I'm thrilled actually that we're sponsored this week in part by Colt Pens. Now we've spoken about Colt Pens a bunch of times before on the show. And we're both me and Brad are really, really happy to decided to sponsor us this week. At cultpens.com, you will find one of the largest range of pens, pencils and refills on the planet. They have an unrivaled collection of over 11,000 products. And they specialize in classic, hard to find in niche pens, pencils and refills on the world's biggest manufacturers, which I think is music to mine and Brad's ears, right? For sure. Colt Pens, they pride themselves on customer service and they process orders promptly. They also offer comprehensive presales and after sales service and are very happy to answer any and all question you have, no matter how odd, broad or specific, because they have the knowledge and the know-how to get it answered for you. They're recommended by the customer service departments of Pilot Pentel Uniball, Zebra and many more under the recommended UK retailer for brands such as Faber-Castell, Schneider and Koiko. So that's a lineage. There are some companies that we love and one of the things that I really like about cultpens is that you're able to buy items like refills individually. So you remember a couple of weeks ago I was testing out some refill options for the render key and I bought a bunch of different refills. You remember I was going through them all? I bought all of those from cultpens and rather than needing to buy a whole pack of like four of each, I was able to buy each one individually. And then when I decided which ones I want to stick with, I can go back to them and buy packs as well. Cultpens are based in the UK but they ship worldwide with very affordable rates and competitively priced products as well as exclusives as well. I want to highlight just before we wrap up a couple of products that cultpens have got at the moment which seem very exciting to me. So they stock Twisbee notebooks and pens and they even have some pens, Twisbee pens that you can only get from them in the UK. You can't get it from anywhere else. They have inks like the cultpens deep dark blue which Brad just recently reviewed and that was what you mentioned a couple of weeks ago that you bought. So that that ink which Brad loves a lot actually and I'll put his link into the show notes. That is a cultpens exclusive they had that made for them and they are currently offering a two-for-one deal on the Pentel sign pen and I'll make sure it's links in the show notes to all of those. So please go and check out cultpens and consider making your next purchase from them. Not only do they offer a great around service but it will help support the show. Just go to cultpens.com and let them know that we sent you. A great place to do this so if you want to buy from them you love what they got you want to help support the show. Tell them on Twitter and they are @cultpens on Twitter. That's a real great way to tell them that you heard about them on our show and then that will encourage them I'm sure to sponsor with us again because we love to have we love to have sponsors on the show that are really good for this show and I think that cultpens are a perfect example of that. Yeah that's fantastic and definitely let them know on Twitter. Whoever manages their Twitter account it's probably a couple of people. They do a fantastic job. I've had some lengthy conversations on Twitter talking about refills or talking about certain pens. They are very knowledgeable, very smart, very witty, good conversation to have. So definitely tell them that you heard about cultpens from the pen addict and just to give my own little aside on cultpens shipping from the UK to the US I ordered this was like you said weeks ago where I just I'm into I'm needy been to fountain pen inks right now and trying to find you know all these different shades of blue that I like and which ones are my favorites and I found out it might even been from cultpens I don't know where I found out that they had their own special ink made by Diamine a cultpens deep dark blue and well I was like well you know if it was red or green or something like that I probably wouldn't have ordered it but you know deep dark blue you know it's just like let me hand you my credit card and so I ordered a couple bottles of that in order a couple bottles of a pelican blue black from them so I ordered four bottles of ink from the UK and I think they shipped it was less than it was probably like maybe seven business days seven or eight business days that I got it and it was it was totally reasonable package great had no problems with shipping don't have to deal with customs like Mike does the other way and you know I got it and I love this ink this ink's awesome actually I posted the review yesterday on it um it's hard to photograph fountain pen inks accurately so I had some had some funky coloration in that but it's a it's a really rich deep dark blue just like it says I mean this is a it's a very descriptive name it is is deep dark and it is blue it's not it doesn't dry black like some dark blues do um it doesn't have a lot of shading but it's a it's a beautiful color this is an everyday used type of ink um I'm a big big fan of I was I was a fan of the diamond inks anyway they behave very well they're easy to clean out of pens um they work well on all kinds of papers and um their colors are really really good so I was happy to see that they partnered up to make an ink so cool and um I'm very happy with it and now we'll definitely be uh reviewing the uh the pot of blue black that I got from them as well because that's another ink that you can't get in the US so uh yeah I'm stoked that they're a sponsor and um this is uh this is good stuff Mike definitely says colt pens dot com c-u-l-t-p-e-n-s dot com and they are @colt pens on twitter thank you very much to colt pens for sponsoring yes thank you colt pens so I've got a pretty lengthy topic here Mike we might need to chop it up yeah we might just chop it up let me see what I can do here we're um because we're at 40 minutes I know and that's normally that's about an average length but I don't want to just stop right now and and leave people hanging I think this is a conversation I think this is a conversation I can get started and then we can wrap up on a future episode I don't know if it'll be next week or or later down the line but this is a topic that I've had so many people email on and I've never I keep getting asked to do um a show on fountain pen inks um as I've been doing more ink reviews people have a lot of questions and they keep asking me is there a podcast episode you can point to where you just where you go over fountain pen inks and tell me you know what I need to know about fountain pen ink so I've been trying to put this together and I think that I mean that's it's probably a pretty long conversation but it ties in with the with the ink review I did for um for the blog you know yesterday with the uh the coat pens deep dark blue let's just start talking about fountain pen inks and we'll we'll get to a a good stopping point and we might have to pick some up later but I basically want to talk about just kind of like a fountain pen inks 101 um you know what are some of the basics why you know people use certain types of inks um what what are some of the terminology around fountain pen inks and this is all something that you know I'm looking for feedback on to you know I'm liable to I'm not as well versed in fountain pen inks as a lot of people are so I'd love to hear some feedback and what what else what other topics you would like me to hear or any corrections you have um to make on anything I'm saying that's incorrect so basically um we'll just get started with you know why people use the different types of fountain pen inks that they use and it's you know just like anything else with pens it's all a matter of personal preference you have to determine what your use is going to be you know are you using it at work um are you using it for um artistic type of work are you using it on cheap copy paper are you using it in a fine nib or using it in a super broad type of nib or you using it on high end paper like clarifontane there's so many variables that that go into a fountain pen ink and how it's going to perform for you and your individual situation so let's just go through a few of these terms and we'll just kind of try to try to tie it up into a cohesive package and I don't know how how well I do I'll do because I'm still learning about this myself but some of the terms that you'll hear when I'm reviewing fountain pen inks um on the blog or that we talk about on on the show you're gonna hear terms like um saturation your that is really I I kind of say saturation is like the depth of the ink color on the page you know how solid or strong or deep the ink lays down on the page um you can have for an example you can have like a black ink that is almost as pitch black is like a sharpie marker on the page you don't see any color variation the color is consistent throughout the line or you can have you know a black ink from a different vendor that might have a lot more gray in it or might look more watery or like a watercolor that would be a more low saturation point for the ink um so saturation is really that ink depth um how dark that line is how strong that line is how consistent a color that line is in relation to the saturation there's a term called shading shading is a term I use a lot because that's you take that line of ink that you're putting down on the page and the shading is the range of the individual color you'll see in the line of the ink you know if you take like the black ink I use in the previous example that's as dark as a sharpie there's no color variation if that shade is it's it's it's a solid line it's a consistent in color you're gonna say that that ink has little or no shading if you then take a another ink and you lay down a line of ink and you kind of see the ink moving around and like the ink where you started the line is a very light shade and the ink where you finish the line is very dark shade and you can see like for an example like in a green ink you might see some yellow or some brown or some of these different colors um in that line of ink that's going to be a highly shaded ink um so there's a whole range of shading inks um I put a link in the show notes a good example of it is a an ink that people love for it shading properties it's called noodlers apache sunset um it's an orange it's kind of an orangish brown ink but it's got some really bright yellow tones in it and it goes from bright yellow to almost a brown and and just a single stroke of the pen it's a very very beautiful ink and I've actually just bought a bottle of that recently um one thing I want to I'm gonna backtrack on when we do talk about the ink fountain pen inks aren't um pigment in inks primarily um it's mostly just water and dyes and other chemicals that might help um the ink flow or have um you know with saturation and there's also some antibacterial chemicals in in the inks to help you know some I've never experienced this but some people say that some of the inks mold by the chemicals and the dyes and the mixture that's in it um so there's it's mostly just water and dye and a few other chemicals that help out with the ink flow or some have some antibacterial properties um and anything I talk about we're gonna I got I have a bunch of links to put into the show notes for this for this topic um speaking of the ink flow you can have an ink and and keep in mind when I talk about something like ink flow or shading or even saturation this is all going to vary depending on the nib and the paper you use um you know especially something like the ink flow um that's going to you're gonna have to compare it like me I use these extra fine nibs I've used enough to know even on this teeny tiny extra fine nib I can tell if the ink flows is dry or wet and and what I mean by that is how much ink is getting onto the page um I can think of a couple inks that I've I've tested and not review that are extremely extremely dry uh to write with that means not a lot of ink goes onto the page um you feel a lot more feedback from the nib when you're writing with a dry with a dry ink and you can actually tell you know not all inks are formulated the same you know you can find some inks that are just super super smooth you can tell there's almost like a lubricating quality in the ink where others you can tell it's just it's just a very dry abrasive line and that's not a negative some people enjoy that it's just a consideration to have um when you're talking about the ink flow there is a range of dry to wet in the ink flow from the nib and when that when that ink hits the page one of the most important things especially for someone like Mike who's a left-hander is the dry time um that's a huge that's a huge deal right Mike it's massively important to me yeah yeah so you know all these things are going to be there's all these list of terms it's it's there the importance is going to be weighted differently for some people Mike for Mike's uh purposes you know dry time might be the number one thing he needs to consider for a fountain pen ink while myself it might be the level of shading for the ink pen I mean for the ink on the page so there's all these things to consider but there's a dry there's inks that are specially formulated to have a quick drying time there's inks that are just going to take what feels like days to dry no matter what paper you use on use them on so you know you have to do your research on the dry time and there are considerations to have around that um but there are inks that are made specifically to dry fast and you know we've talked about some and um we'll we'll talk about more in the future I'm sure um one of the two of the terms that I concern myself a lot with when I'm using fountain pen inks are feathering and bleed you'll hear me talk about that a lot um feathering is how the ink spreads on the surface of the page like on the top level of the paper that's feathering bleed is the absorption of ink through the page you can think of it like the the 3d uh the 3d feathering if you will um so feathering is like on the surface of the page and the bleed is through the depth of the thickness of the page um you know uh there's so many inks out there and they all have different properties so it's just a matter a lot of fountain pen inks and on the paper I use like rhodia you're not going to get a lot of feathering but if you use like a basic office office copy copy your paper you're going to get probably a decent amount of feathering and a lot of bleed you know it's it's really dependent on the other tools you're using along with the fountain pen ink but there's also inks that are made specifically to not feather and to not bleed so um there there's all kinds of things you can do to make um your writing experience better with fountain pen inks um waterproof ink is another consideration for a lot of people it's not something I concern myself with um I don't look for um you know any type of archival properties in in the inks that I use I don't I'm not making any kind of any journals that are permanent that you know I need to last for 20 years or 50 years or things like that um and along that along those lines um you can take a step up from waterproof and go into a bullet proof ink and that's more of an ink that it's going to be waterproof but then it's going to basically be um locked into the paper it's not going to be able to be washed out or chemically removed from the page at all it um the ink bonds with the fibers of the page and you can um you know you can as it takes to use the word archival but it's it's an ink that's going to last a long time in the paper and it's not going to be able to be modified um very easily if at all by anyone with the nefarious intentions do you do you care about waterproofness or bulletproofness in general Mike no I'm not that worried about that yet no yeah that's not a consideration um for you and that's not something I don't uh that's not a consideration for me either which is one of the reasons in my in my ink reviews I haven't been doing water tests um it's not a consideration for me it's not that I don't care about it and don't want to share that with other readers it's just not something that I'm into um and there's so many ink reviews out there and I try to link to other people that have reviewed the same inks that have done um there's some extremely extremely thorough fountain pinning tests out there on the web that you can find and they'll cover things like waterproofness and uh and and things like that in their reviews it's not something I generally get into um if I'm not super highly concerned about it myself but that may change um there's there's some that I have done some water tests on before just because they have interesting ink properties um one of the items one of the ink properties are in terms that I'm just starting to learn them learn about and I'm interested in um it's called iron gall ink and that's basically an ink term or an ink type that's been around for hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of years where it was a it was an ink made from you know highly you know acidic abrasive chemicals um you know I've got some descriptions in here that said made from iron salts and tannic acids from vegetable sources so what this does is this makes back in the olden days this this made the ink permanent on the on the parchment that they were using um but it's a very due to the chemicals used to make it it is very corrosive to the metal parts of the pin so these days the you know as you know we get more experience with the chemical technology and the manufacturing processes you you can buy iron gall inks that aren't nearly nearly as damaging to your pins as you know what used to be historically um but you do have to take a little extra care when you're using an iron gall ink just because a lot of people say don't use steel nibs or steel parts with iron gall ink um but you want to use you know gold nibs gold nib pens and things like that and a lot of the inks these days you can use in steel nibs you just have to be extra careful to make sure you use the pen for one don't let the ink sit you know make sure if you're going to use an iron gall ink make sure that's a pen that you're using frequently and two you want to clean it you know more frequently than you do just a regular pen um because what this ink does is you know like the the blue the blue black iron gall ink is the traditional ink um you know throughout the centuries and what happens is it goes down is like a blue ink and it says it's exposed to oxygen the ink kind of there's like a reaction reaction and the ink kind of it deepens in color um usually it's super dark blue or even black i've got a i've got a sample of one that's gone that's gone from blue to black um as as the ink reacts to the uh to the air around it so that's some some general terms um that you hear you might hear me talking about um the the list could go i could do dozens and dozens and dozens of more terms i just wanted to kind of hit the 101 points and have some conversation around these terms and find out what questions you have um around it and you know what else i can expand on and i put up we'll put a bunch of links in the um in the show notes i did a little bit of research for some of these terminology and there's some good links that i found where i got some of this information from so if you want to read more about just the general terms around the fountain pen inks you know we'll have these links in the show notes so make sure you you check that out um on a more practical nature other than just you know reeling off some definitions um some of the things i've learned using fountain pens and different inks and different nibs and different filling systems to get the best out of your pen and it's common sense but it's things that i forget from time to time is you if you're using a fountain pen ink it's not like a gel ink pen or roller ball where you can just sit and leave it capped for you know a week a month a year and you know those pens you'll pick them up in the right fine a fountain pen will not it's going to take a little bit of care and that's why fountain pens aren't necessarily for everybody um if you're using a fountain pen and with a you know a normal ink and you you run it through and you need to refill it you know it's it's okay to fill that pen with the same ink you know two or three times in a row before having to clean that pen but you do want to clean the pens regularly to ensure that the ink's going to flow properly that there's nothing anything clogged in the nib or in the feed um you know if you're using a more extreme ink like an iron gall ink you want to fill that probably every refill you want to go ahead and and clean that pen out and um things like that but you know you got to take you got to take care of your pens that you have inked up um you know this is you know it's it takes a little bit of work to use a fountain pen but i mean you know in the in the end i think it's it's worth it and it's something that i was for years and years and years and we can go back and listen to me on some of the earlier episodes of the podcast someone pointed out episode number 10 Mike when you get a chance go back and listen to episode number 10 of the podcast i listened to it it's a great great episode um but listen to some of the conversation that we have and listen to where we're at now with our pens and well let's put a link in the show notes episode 10 we get everyone to go back and listen to that because it's funny um compared then to now um but you know it it i was hesitant for years to do the work that it took um to use and maintain fountain pens but once i got into it i found that there's there's really little there's not that much more extra effort required to use a fountain pen and the options are so varied it makes it all worthwhile and getting to use all these different great fountain pen inks is part of it and um you know that's uh that's that's what makes it so fun so you know that's i wanted to go over these terms and we'll we'll continue on another day and continue the fountain pen inks one-on-one discussion because i want to talk about um you know what type of inks you should use um what type of damage you can do to a pen um by using some some different inks and and we'll go through you know a few other few other points like that um and i i think that's probably a probably a good stopping point for today and uh we can we can pick up some of this conversation we'll get some feedback to see what else people want to hear about uh inks i think they probably want to hear more about specific inks why you know a pilot of russia zuko ink is so good or why you know should you be careful with certain certain ink brands or certain strengths of ink and and things like that so um i think we'll we'll save that for another day because that could be uh you know a pretty decent link conversation how's that sound like sounds good to me man all right well let's uh i think that's a wrap and we'll uh we'll pick this up conversation up down the line awesome so we're done for today i think we're good it's been a great episode i think it has it has it has it was uh you know we uh we we cheated last week we recorded earlier so it's actually been two weeks since i've got to talk to you and i always miss when i don't get to talk to you mike oh i still haven't claimed my uh retro 51 surf from customs oh that's right so uh maybe by uh maybe by next week we can talk about that yeah maybe by next week yeah you're running out of time and money more money than to but uh you can catch up with us online uh brad writes at the pan addict dot no pan addict dot com pan addict yeah but i did i did by that domain as you lectured me for years about i know but then you wouldn't redirect it anyway it's redirected good um brad is also on at dot net and twitter he is at dowdy d o w d one at dot net and dowdy ism d o w d y ism on twitter i am i mike i m y k e thank you very much for listening to this week's episode of the pan addict podcast hopefully i will be back next week with a better voice um we will see but thank you very much for putting up with me this week brad and to listen us too and uh we'll be back next week Absolutely, see you then. See you. Bye. Bye. [BLANK_AUDIO]
