Hello and welcome to episode 56 of the panetic podcast on five by five this is a weekly show where we discuss pen paper and the analog tools that we love so dearly my name is Mike Hurley and I am joined today by the man with refillable insides and an eraser for a brain that is mr. Brad daddy that is awesome thanks I didn't see good how are you yeah I'm good man I'm really good good you sound you sound good you sound refreshed rearing rearing to go yeah yeah super excited for my holiday in a couple of weeks yeah yeah and meet me not so much I had a long party weekend here at the house I haven't been doing any pen or paper action I've been pretty quiet on the on the internet I was kind of not fully off the grid but since probably since Friday till right about now I have not really been online very much not I haven't picked up a pen until right now for this episode for days so you remember how to write yeah no it's it's hard sometimes you know and you start you know when I don't pick up a a pen for a day or two I start to miss them I have to go look at them all and decide what I'm going to use do you do you feel like you have to apologize I do I do I feel guilty I was like oh I'm sorry I left you guys inked up all this whole weekend and didn't use you are you dirty now do you need a do you need a bath I have I don't I don't even know where to go with that so I figure we should probably just move into the first topic yeah that's true we probably should so so the last week you were talking about different kind of refills for what one particular were you looking for so I was looking for I mean I we were talking about my new collection of render Ks from the vendors something that would fit a render K yeah yeah so I was asking for some suggestions for things that would fit that so we worked out that they were Parker that they were Parker refills so I was looking for something along those lines yeah did you get some good you get some good answers because I didn't really come up with anything great I mean you know I use the aside from the high-tech see that I use in the render K I use the what's it called Fisher Space Pen is the part style you know with the cap we talked about that last week that's something I use I didn't know if you got any good feedback on from the crowd on that so I actually got a handful of responses really sort of ranging and what they were kind of telling me was you know I should go for XYZ I got a bunch of people suggesting Schmitt refills because people know that I love the retro line and that they're the guys that make the retro inks aren't they that they rebrand I believe they're Schmitt aren't they they're Schmitt inks yep so Schmitt's going lots of other brands to their excellent quality cartridges so I got those I got suggested there's quite a lot you've put one in the show notes the Schmitt P8126 capitalist rollable pen refill yeah and that that was actually for the the retro 51 I don't know if it fits the render K yeah so that that one does look like it wouldn't in all honesty that looks like it wouldn't fit yes I got that in for the wrong part then yes I was gonna talk about that in the retro retro 51 part I moved the notes around incorrectly yeah do you move the notes so what I am trying to do at the moment is to check my previous order an order that I just placed through colt pens but I cannot find the like the previous order thing but I can tell you what I got and then I can just all right so I bought a few different ink refills from them I bought the Schmitt 900 M easy flow refill okay I bought the Schmitt P900 B ballpoint pen refill the Schmitt P900 M ballpoint pen refill Mike Judak suggested the P900 so I bought I'll try bold and medium Mike did I could actually sent me the the the pens in question from last week then I tried a couple of extras I've tried one extra actually was the Schneider express 735 Broad they were what I went for gotcha so just I'm waiting for them to come in they should probably arrive tomorrow so those are all rollable styles except for one ballpoint yeah they're all rollable except the one ballpoint well two ballpoints actually the Schmitt P900 of a ballpoint so I'm gonna see how they come out but the dude as I'm gonna call him instead of doodack now he'll be the dude forever more okay I sold he suggested he said that I would like them so I will take his word on it um and I'll see what comes out cool but I made another purchase oh whilst on the cold pen site I was like I cannot just go to a pen website a fantastic site like cold pens and just walk away with four refills with the total cost of like six pounds that's not that's not how he works here is it who am I I'm a pan addict for freak sake I have to do I can't I can't just buy some refills and leave it at that can I bridge you know these things absolutely not so I bought something I've been hankering for for a while so Twisbee diamond mini oh cool I forget about that that's a fantastic pen so I figure I love my Twisbee it's the pen that I use all day every day now um so why not try them anyway because I I've been looking at the um the what's the new one the 580 yeah the 580 but I want to get one of those in a color yes and all that seems to really be widely available or just available in any way at the moment is the clear one yes yeah no that's all that's all it's available right now so I figure I will wait for that um but what I'm what I've I did actually go for the clear with the mini though because I've I think it looked the nicest which is kind of weird I'm doing it right that way but yeah I had a hard time choosing myself I mean I went with the fully clear one I didn't like the it was either all black or all clear I didn't like the one that was kind of mixed up um but yeah what what nim did you get oh yeah this is the I can't I can't believe I didn't even think of this guess guess what I guess mm-hmm this is the big part of it I can't believe I forgot to mention this this is the whole point I wanted to bring it up today I'm so pleased you reminded me guess what nibs I got one point five stub one point one stub oh good cool because I think you're gonna like it that's what you have right one point one I have one of each actually I have the one point five in the mini and the one point one in the 580 and honestly there's not a lot of difference between those two every time I every time I use the 580 with the one point one and I have it inked up it I look I always have to check the nib I'm like are you sure this in one point five because it's not super fine so it's barely smaller than the one point five I can imagine both I can imagine once you get to that sort of range doesn't the difference is so minimal once you're that sort of thickness but yeah I thought why not give it a go I mean after last week and you were like you're really surprised by saying yeah I'm writing it I was like really I was like okay I'll give it a go so I'm giving it a go I'm interested I'm interested to see what you think especially from a left-handed perspective it's a little bit different feel a little bit different style especially cursive which you write in right I mean like I'm a print style writer you write more in script cursive right well I flip-flop but yeah I do write in cursive but I go between cursive and script okay so yeah I'm interested to see get some feedback from you just to to broaden my knowledge on how how you know someone would feel with that type of nib in your type of handwriting so yeah that'll be awesome so we awesome we shall see so what are you gonna ink it with well I mean you should know these things before you even order yeah I mean well I'm I've still only got the one what I consider really good bottle you know which is the pilot or she's so good so I figure I should probably get some more ink but I've not I've not jumped into that that yet I'm probably just gonna gonna put the irish azuku in it and see where we go from there yeah that'll be that'll look awesome in that stub nib that compaki is gonna be awesome you'll probably never want to take that out that's that's a really a perfect choice but I should see but what but what I need to do I need to send you an ink samples because I've developed a quite the ink problem well I still have I still have these ink samples here where are they so yes I still have these inks samples from Joe that he sent us so I'm probably going to try these out first because I've got some of the noodlers banana key so he said burning key yeah banana idea Bernanke I still have those and I saw you did a review is it Bernanke black blue I did the blue and how quickly the dry time was yep so I might when that comes in actually give it give the blue or the black well blue and black ago cuz I've only got a little bit of aging and maybe that will help inform me to buy a and you're in to okay cool did you do just a straight review of those yeah there is Bernanke blue right that'll be in the show that's the blue I've been in the black yet but I have I plan on it because I was pretty impressed with the blue I'm gonna put it in show so when I mention again to people because I've had a couple of queries about the show notes so you can find show notes now cuz obviously they have moved and not 70 decibels anymore because we've had some people that used to go there and have been going there so one listener whose name has escaped me now so I'm sorry I've forgotten your name but thank you and I've done what you suggested which is to put a link on the 70 decibels page for anybody that was going there to find the show notes they are now at five by five dot TV and this episode is slash panetic slash 56 so it's really easy to get them now because before I couldn't you couldn't just type it in but now they'll always be at pan addict slash the number of the episode so it's really simple and all of the shows are five by five dot TV forward slash pan addict that's much easier than it was before yes so you can let people can find they can find them all there so that's great fantastic what should we talk about next well since you brought it up I did a couple I did a couple things to as far as shopping goes online and I forgot about it till you mentioned it but I placed my first cult pins order excellent and it was around what made me think of it is talking about inks I ordered some inks that I can't get from US vendors so that was one of the reasons why I went to cult pins for them and one of them is when I wanted to try it's the it's the standard the pelican blue black you know you I can get every color of pelican in the US except for the blue black and I apologize I didn't do my full research because it's just popped into my head as we were talking but there's a specific reason why the blue black is not available in the US it uses some one of the ingredients is like on the band list for sale in the US so I was actually so I just ordered it up from the UK and got it shipped over here but I don't even know what the ingredient is someone who listens to the episode they can send me a link or I can find it pretty quickly afterwards what it is but it's just for whatever reason it's just like on the band list and I don't know why but I'm willing to take that chance because I have a blue black ink problem as I noted on today's review on the blog but I'm excited to get that actually try to have a sample of that no friend Thomas sent me I really enjoyed it so I wanted to order a couple bottles from them and they carried it and then the other ink I ordered from them is a really cool one I'm when I'm excited to get and when you can only get from cult pins because they had a diamond make them a special ink just that's the cult pins ink it's called a diamond cult pins deep dark blue dark blue and like I said I'm a fan of blues and especially dark blues and blue blacks and this looks like an awesome awesome color and it's a special formulation only only through cult pins so I was I was really excited to get that in and try it out so we'll see but hasn't come in I expect to get that order this week I think I ordered at the beginning of last week and I think it should probably come any day now I was actually thought it might be here today but it's not so any who that was my my first cult pins order and it was really because I wanted these inks and I can't get them anywhere else you know I mean you can find the blue black from from different other European vendors but not the diamond deep dark blue special special special formulation for cult pins so that is awesome I look forward to this and yeah I think I'm gonna make me a note here I'm gonna put together a sample pack for you of some other inks I know you're not a big ink swapper like I am you know switching things out constantly but I'll shoot you over a few things here eventually some of the some of my favorites not just any random stuff some I think you might have a chance I have a chance at liking see things more of your money that would be different I mean I would like to have more but it's just buying them you know I think it's in a hand pretty quick honestly yeah just because of the space that bottles of ink take up as well I mean I know that there are loads of programs you can be on where you can get testers but at the moment I'm not at that stage like all the maintenance and the cleaning and that sort of stuff to try them all out I mean it's simple enough and we've had a bunch of friends help us you know in some tips for cleaning them out, but I don't feel like I'm at that point right now. Right, right? Right, so um, the other thing that happened, you know in the past week or so, was um, everyone started getting their retro 51 vintage surf pens. Got them in. Yes, they did. And uh, except for you, right? Except for me. Yeah, so uh, you chastised me, um, before we started recording there, there was a little squeaking sound going on in my house and uh, you know, it sounded kind of something something like this. Yeah, so I thought I'd do that again for you. Oh, please love that. Hopefully no one had it turned up too loud. But I was checking out, I was looking at the refill in my retro 51 vintage surf, which is in my hands. Just for the record mic, it's number 67, so you will not be getting number 367 and numbered, um, huh. Ooh, then numbered. Yeah, out of 500. So up on up, just below the uh, the knurling on the twist mechanism, um, is 367, um, and there was a funny story that happened with this. I'd say after last week's show, we talked about this pen, how it was available for order. I'd say within an hour of us of this show going live on five by five of it, being able to be downloaded and listened to was I got a tweet from our, our friend, John Martin. And he said, Hey, look at this. And sent me a link and was an Amazon link. And it went to a page that was selling the retro 51 vintage surf for 20 dollars. I like that you think that's funny because I, I don't think that's funny at all. I think it's hilarious. I'm sure that you do think that. Yes, because like, because what happened is during last week's episode, you ordered it while we were on the show. I did, didn't I? Yeah, you went and ordered it while we were sitting here talking, you went and it's like, all right, my order's in. I forget it. Did you get it from Art Brown, or I forget who you are. I've run it from Art Brown. Yep. Yep. So, because we, you didn't want to wait until the, until it came to your UK vendor, just because it's limited to 500 pieces. Well, my UK event is probably not getting them. Right. That's right. Because the quantities may not be high enough. Everyone might not get them. So after the show, I got this link. I was like, ah, there's no way this is going to go through. You know, it was 20 dollars. I think this suggested retail, I think is 55. Most vendors were selling them for like 45 to 49. So that seemed to be the going price. And this price on Amazon was 20 dollars. So John placed his order and I wasn't even going to bother. I was like, there's no way this is going to work. And I said, what the heck the worst thing is going to do is just going to cancel. So I went and placed the order, ordered, get the email, order accepted. All right. No big deal. Next day, your order has shipped. I was like, hmm. Okay. That's cool. But there's no way that this is going to be the right pen. You know, I was, I was fully expecting like you're, uh, you're balsam for field notes, you know, too good to be true. It's not going to be the right pen. There's no way. But still, even if it was just a, some other retro 51 tornado, 20 dollars is a good price for any retro 51. Um, but then it showed up at the house and sure enough, here it is, vintage surf for 20 bucks. That link is no longer active needless to say on Amazon. I'm not how sure how many people took advantage of that. But I know at least John and myself did and um, I think we're very happy with, with the results. And uh, it's, it's, uh, it lives up to the hype. It's as, it's as good as to be expected. So I'm real happy with it. Well, I will have more to say when mine arrives, which will hopefully be by next episode. But do you know how much it cost me including shipping? Oh, I'm scared, but 84 dollars. So I am very happy for you and John, very happy indeed that you were able to get them for 20 dollars. You sound so sincere. Oh, I'm very sincere. I did get, I mean, I got another pen because I couldn't justify matching shipping price to the pen. So I bought the ace as well, which was 20 bucks. I can't believe if I would have just waited a little bit longer because where I couldn't, I couldn't buy it, um, to ship here, but I could have had it shipped to anyone. I could have had it shipped to like Stephen or, or Matt and picked it up forever. Well, yeah, or I could have just bought you two of them. Yeah, or yeah, shipped it, shipped to one of the guys at WWDC and just brought it with them. Yeah, exactly. But as I am a semi collector of these pens, I couldn't let it go. So, yeah, that's all right. Don't, yeah, don't don't sweat it. And don't worry. I paid, uh, God, I probably paid 20, $25 and shipping for four bottles of ink for cult pens. So, you know, that was probably as much as the, as the ink. So that's just, that's what it takes though to get the, get the hard to get items. So you got it. You'll be happy with it regardless of the price and so will I. Yeah. Oh, I'm going to quick note on that quick note on that. What'd you say? Let's step $20 shipping to get those inks to you. I think that's, I mean, if you look at the amount, it costs me to just get two pens. So anyway, right, right. Well, I was going to say on back on the Retro 51 thing, I'm going to get, um, I love the refill that's in it. Um, it's really one of the best roller ball ink refills ever. I would just prefer something finer. And, um, a few of our friends on Twitter, we're talking about it. And this is what you mentioned earlier. The Schmidt P8126 is the same refill, the stock refill for the Retro 51, but in a fine tip, it comes in a medium is the standard that it comes with. And, um, um, Brad, uh, I think it's Brad Thornebo on Twitter sent that and, um, Mary Collis, um, Brad Thorne, borrow, sorry, send us that. And Mary Collis chimed in saying, Hey, that's the one I used to. It's fantastic. And, uh, did you, uh, did you have you happened to click on, uh, Mary Collis's Twitter feed recently? I have. Yeah. Mary. What do you think about that? It's awesome, isn't it? She's wearing her 70s. It is so cool. Yeah. I mean, I'm still waiting for mine. Yeah. I caught that just out of the side. You haven't gotten it yet? No. Well, it was a shipping overseas, aren't they? It should arrive in the next day or two. Yeah. Yeah. But that was cool. I actually caught that out in my corner of the eye, even in the, even in the small photo, I could see what she was wearing. I was like, Oh, that's so cool. So that is very cool. I was excited to see that. Excited to see that. Mine should arrive maybe tomorrow because I received my, uh, Steven Hackett, five tall pixel shirt today. And they are, they are finished today with, you know, uh, departed. So. Yeah. Yep. Shall I, uh, take a quick break? I think this is going to be another just mainly follow up show again today. Yeah. I think so. We got lots to talk about. So yeah, I know, no problem at all. Let's do this. So let's take a quick break and we will talk about our five friends over at squarespace.com. Squarespace. They give you absolutely everything you need to make an amazing website. Squarespace is a fully hosted, completely managed environment for creating and maintaining a beautiful website blog or portfolio with squarespace. You get everything that you need that it takes to put a fantastic site on the web. It doesn't matter how it's experienced, right? Does it matter if you have any experience or all the experience in the world when it comes to building websites? Because no matter what your skill level, you can put something online in just minutes. You'd have to worry about any of the nasty stuff like hosting, scaling, integrating with maybe Twitter feed, Facebook feed, Instagram. You'd have to worry about finding a designer or anything like that because squarespace do it all for you. They have beautiful themes. They have a drag and drop a page building system. They have all of their themes and their pages. They all restructure to look fantastic on mobile devices by using responsive web design. They have built-in statistics. They have built-in customer support 24/7 award-winning customer support. They have live online workshops as well. If you want to have any help with setting up your site, they've got that in the bag. They have a system called Squarespace Commerce where you can add a fully integrated store to your website for e-commerce, which is incredible. If you sign up for one of their annual plans, you'll get a free custom domain name as well, which can be integrated painlessly into your site. Or if you have one else from an existing provider, you know, if you've maybe signed up for a domain with somebody else, you can easily link that in just a few clicks. I want you to go and find out more, support the show and try it out for yourself. Go to squarespace.com/70desibels at 7-0-D-E-C-I-B-E-L-S. Squarespace plans start at $10 a month for their standard plan and $20 a month for their unlimited plan. If you sign up for a year, you'll automatically get 20% off that price, sign up for two, you'll get 25% off, and use the code 70desibels5 at checkout and you'll get 10% off on top of any other discount from your first order. So go check out Squarespace, everything you need to make an amazing website. All right. Thank you, Squarespace. Indeed. So what have we got next on the list? Yeah, I finally got around, I don't even know what episode we talked about this in, but we've mentioned it several times about doing some fountain pen ink testing and field notes, notebooks. And I've also done it in don't paper books. And I finally posted that on the blog last Friday, just kind of a, you know, kind of a quick and dirty sample of what some of the fountain pen inks that I had loaded up. And the question came about is because the Field Notes America, the beautiful edition, came with the 70 pound density paper. And we were commenting on how much thicker it is and is it nicer for fountain pens and things like that. The short version is, it definitely is, which we would have expected, that was kind of the expected result. But I really wanted to, to put some inks and some pens to the test just to see really how it did perform. It did great on all my extra fine fine nibs and lots of different inks at it. And we'll, we'll have obviously have the link of the show notes where you can go look at the pictures. I tried to expand them a little bit so you could see them. On the Americas, the beautiful edition, it handled the inks wonderfully. I thought it was, it absorbed a little more ink than the standard, the like, the dome paper notebook did, the utility journal. And it maybe even, except for one pen, maybe even bled, it bled a little bit. I'm sorry. Yeah, it, it feathered a little bit on the page, meaning the ink kind of spread, but it really wasn't bad. And especially due to the thickness of the paper, it didn't hardly come through the back of the page at all. That was the most impressive part. You know, I thought my wider nibs and some of those inks didn't work as well. They, they spread and bled too much on the page. Like I wouldn't feel comfortable with writing with them in there, but all of the fine nibs that I like, I thought they handled it wonderfully and especially the bleed through on the back of the page, even with the wider nibs and heavier inks that you could, you could probably use the back of the page to write with on the America's beautiful edition with fountain pens, depending on which ink and nib combination you use. I thought it, it did exceptionally well. And you know, field notes might ought to consider using that paper going forward as a stock edition, but I think there's, there's lots of ramifications in, in doing that. I compared it to the field notes red blooded edition, which is one of the base edition memo books with just the standard 50 pound paper, the Finch paper, 50 pound bright white. And this is what you'll find in just, you know, the standard craft paper memo books, and then lots of the other more basic straightforward memo books. There was a few differences in the some of the color subscriptions editions, but this was, this would be your standard field notes paper. I use this the most with, you know, my extra fine nibs again, and it did bleed through a lot on the back of the page. One particular pen that stood out on the field notes red blooded edition was my palette, palette falcon, which is a soft extra fine nib. It's got some flex in the nibs. So when I'm writing the nib flex is in there for more ink gets on the page. Well, that just bled profusely on this paper. You can see it's, it's obviously legible, but it looks kind of ridiculous on the paper. And of course, they bled through to the back a lot. They didn't really transfer to the next page. Some people worry about that. I do that the ink actually transfers from one page to the writing side of the next page. You could never use the back side of standard field notes with most of these fountain pens, although I've talked to other people that use, you know, wide broad nib fountain pens and inks on their standard field notes journals without any issue. Do you, do you use many fountain pens in your field notes or do you have something specific you write in your field notes with, Mike? I don't really have anything specific. But you don't really use fountain pens though, do you? I tend not to use fountain pens on them historically because the paper is thinner, has been thinner. And I knew what would happen, you know, right, right. Especially as I have many broad fountain pens, I knew that it just was a non-starter. So, you know, I typically will grab something like a retro or, you know, something like that. I bought a Sharpie pen the other day, you know, I don't know why I was in the there's a new supply store and I went near the office. They don't really have a lot of great stuff, but they had why I want to get one free. So I was like, okay, I'll do that. Did you ever use one of those before? Yeah. Yeah, a long time ago. I love those pen. Those are fantastic. This is one of the aluminium ones that you'll hear. Yeah, cool. I like that pen. It's refillable too. So I have a question about, well, I have one question and before though, I want to call foul actually on this review. I think that you cheated for the don't paper test because, you know, you love don't paper so much and you only tested four pens and inks. That's what I'm going to say. Apparently, you washed out the other pens. I'm not sure if I agree with that. I think that you may have cheated. I know it wasn't. It wasn't a fair test, was it? No. Yeah, and I called myself out on that because I was like, I did the first two at the same time one night and then somehow I think that's about the time where I was talking about reducing the number of fountain pens I had inked and I inked them and I was like, I mean, I cleaned them and after that, I realized that I hadn't done the dome ink testing yet. So yes, it is not a match for the inks. I think you did what people wanted out of this style, what people would want, which is just to compare Field Notes to Field Notes. I think that's the most valuable test out of it. Anyway, to my eyes, I mean, again, the actual, the real paper themselves might be different, but from the images, it looks like for bleed, the Field Notes did better than the dome just from the ones you tested. The Americas, the Americas is beautiful. Yeah, not the standard. No, not the standard, not even close. Yeah, but it did look like that that did better than the dome. But one of the things, the thing that I wanted to ask you to question is your Pelican M405, it's an EF nib, but it looks like the thicker than your stub nib and I don't understand why. So from looking at the images, it's extremely thick and I don't understand. You don't know how good of a question that is, and let me explain to you why. It's an awesome question, and you're not the only one that has mentioned that. I've had someone else on Twitter mention that. R can and P on Twitter, who I talked to a bunch, he's in Atlanta, so we chat a bunch about pins and inks and he made the very specific comment that you did. Why? He said, "Is your Pelican seriously an extra fine nib?" And it looks like that. And I said, "Yes, it is." And that's why it is at Mike Masayama's house right now. That was my answer to him. He's broken. It is not broken, but I did not elaborate on why it's the way it is. And there's a very specific reason. It wasn't broken. This was a pin I bought at the Atlanta Pin Show. Okay, I bought it from Richard Binder. And he does, when you purchase a pin from him, I guess it's benderizing, although it's just like his last name is spelled B-I and D-E-R. I very nearly just spit cherry coke all over my laptop when you said benderized it. It just sounds funny to me. So there's this term in the fountain pen world that people know that it's a binderized nib, or benderized whatever. So what that means is he adjusts every new pin that you buy from him, goes to him for smoothing and he adjusts the ink flow into whatever. It's almost like a proprietary. This is the way I believe pin should write. So I just did it at the show, not knowing. So I bought the pin, then you wait another 30 minutes and he adjusts smooth. I remember you mentioning this now. I remember you saying about that. So he does this. Yeah, it's like a default thing with him. So I got home that night. I mean, I tested it out and I was like, okay, this is fine. Boy, this is flowing a lot. There's a ton of ink. I couldn't figure out. I assumed it was from that. And I had always planned on sending it to Masuyama anyway to get it like Thomas, as I had his adjusted to like the super fine, the point two millimeter. Like if you look at the Lami 2000 up top on those reviews, I had all my plan was always to get that done, but I was going to hold off for a while. And but I couldn't just because it was just so wet and flowing so crazily. And actually that night, I talked to Thomas when I got back, I said, I bought this from Richard Binder and he did, you know, his nib adjustment, he was like, Oh, he's like, you're not going to like that. Knowing that I write a lot like him with these super, super fine lines. And he said, yeah, you should ask me or whatever. I was like, it didn't matter because it was, it was part of the service that came with it. And I knew I was going to get it ground down further anyway. So I have sent that nib off now to Mike Masuyama to get like the point two millimeter Japanese extra fine nib that I wanted on this pit, which was the reason I purchased the pin anyway. So I just wasn't planning on sending it off that soon. But I couldn't use it. It was so the ink flow was so great. But that was, that was a great observation by you. Um, you're probably too nice to No, I'm not very nice. Um, kind of seems like you buy a pen from this guy and he kind of ruins them. Like, you shouldn't have to. Well, there's a couple of things like, if I went to a pen show, right? And I met Mr. Bender's bender. I know that he knows more than me, right? Right. And if he has one of these grind grinding machines, whatever you call them, I'm going to assume that he is of a, you know, he read the guy really knows what he's doing. And you seem to believe this too. So if you do, then you know, I'm going to. And if he says, Oh, let me just, you know, sort it out for you. I'm going to assume that he's going to make it as it should be. Right. Right. You've just dropped all this money and he is forcing it into his way. Like, that looks maybe even thicker than I would want to use. And that's saying something. Right. Right. And that's just kind of a shame. It's one of those things I wanted to experience anyway. It's it. I mean, in this case, like, okay, I would never do it again. If I bought another pen show, I just say, no, give me the pen. But I wanted to do it because I knew every a lot of other people have had it done. And it's kind of a thing in the fountain pen community that you've had your nib adjusted by him. So I wanted to see what it was all about. And it turns out I don't like it. So I would never do it again. So it's like one of those. I didn't have a problem doing it the first time. It's like an initiation ceremony. Like everybody has it done and everyone gets it changed back. Nobody would tell them. It just seems very strange. Like, why would you not even ask someone how they would like it to be ground to? Like, it's like, Oh, I'll just do it. And to their, they don't actually do much grinding. It's more of just a general smoothing and flow adjustment. It's not a lot of differentiation and not a lot of nib alteration as far as size goes, but you can adjust the ink flow is more what they did and then make sure the nib was smooth. So it's more of a flow ink flow issue than a grinding the nib issue. If that makes sense, there's ways to adjust the ink flow by moving the feed and things like that. So I'm assuming that's more that's more along what it is because I watch him do it. There was no grinding of the, just use a lot of, you know, like the sandpaper and stuff to smooth it out. So I'm glad I did it. So now I know to never do it again. And I would never buy a pin that was because I knew I'd have to have, I'd have to get it worked on again because it would, it doesn't fit me. But you know, it fits a lot of people. I have a very particular writing style. I have very particular likes in the way I like my pins to write. And you know, Richard Bender is super well respected in the community. So I'm glad I got it done. But I would never do it again. It's not for me. And now I've learned that. I can't imagine getting a bold nib pin and having this done. It would be like, I'd run out, run out of a ink in a day. You pick it up. Pick it up, the ink would just run right out. Yeah. Yeah. So, but that was a great question. And I've actually forgot about that until you mentioned that because I had someone else ask me that too. So he'll hear it on this podcast too. Because I didn't, I didn't told it. I didn't have that much space to elaborate. Yeah. But basically what I told him. Yeah. That's why it's at Mike's house right now. Getting, getting fixed. How I want it. Like I said, that was the plan going into it anyway. So it was worth me getting it test out to figure out what the deal was. And the deal is it's not for me. So I think we have one more pen to talk about today, which is one for me that I mentioned. If you're mentioned, sorry, if you remember last week, I spoke about the cross edge. Yeah. So listener Eddie Samuel's got in touch a couple of weeks ago, and he said to me that I should buy a cross edge pen. He believes that it beats the retro 51. So I was like, right. Then them, them's fighting words. Them's are fighting words. My response to him was all caps dude, send a link. So he sent me a link and linked in the show notes to the cross gel pen in the green that I bought it. So it's very nice pen. The body and the, but the mecca, I've never used a mechanism like this. It's incredible. So it, you will see from the image, the images in the show notes. If you want to take a look, Brad, too, you will see that on the body of the pen, there is like, uh, I mean, the pen is opened. So maybe go the image where it's closed, which is like the third image on the Amazon page. You'll see that there's like a little silver band in the middle of the pen. And there's two green sort of plastic areas when you pull. So basically you put your fingers on the the green plastic areas and you pull the pen apart. As you pull it apart, the, the nib emerges from the pen. Okay. And you push it together to make it retract. I'd never used a mechanism like this. It's very strange. Yeah. Zebra makes something not as nice looking as this, but I have used a mechanism like that in a zebra pen before, but not as, as well done as this one, it looks like. It has a great feeling when you push it together. I want to see if you can hear this. Oh, that's real solid. Yeah. So the, the mechanism I was blown away by. The problem for me, problem number one, um, lies in the holding of this pen. So you see, you see in the, the nib area, it's quite large and you've got that black line. Mm hmm. See that? So that's like an indentation. Yeah. That is uncomfortable for me to hold. And also it's almost like a double indentation where it threads for one, and then where the line is for two. It's the black line that's the problem. Yeah. In my opinion. Okay. But also the, with the size of my hand, you know, probably not the same for everybody, when the pen is then extended, you see like you've got the big silver sort of gap. The, the edge of the green part on the bottom. Um, it isn't totally smooth. It's a little bit rough. And that sits just in the little, you'd like the, what would you call that part between your finger and your thumb? Yeah. I don't know the official term. I call it like the cusp. I call it the cusp. Okay. I think, I think, uh, as a kid, I was told the rest, I think it's, yeah. Yeah. So it just, it hits against there. So it rubs against there when I write. So that's not great. But what I was being told by, by Eddie, he says, the cross gel refill is more smooth than a few fountain pens I own and definitely beats a retro 51. Eddie. Wow. Eddie. Now, Eddie. Now, I'm sure you are a listener. Eddie, because you take it down a notch, Eddie. Come on now. You, you know, to say to me, oh, you know, that if you say to me that something's better than the retro 51, then it's similar. You know, I'm going to try it. And Eddie, I don't agree. I don't agree. Now, let me tell you why. So they are very, very similar. And I would even agree that it lays down as good if at some point, not even, you know, maybe even a smoother line in the retro. I wouldn't say that's consistent, but sometimes it does. However, it has one floor that the retro 51 does not have. And I consider this to be an issue. I wouldn't call it skipping. If you were to lay a solid line and you can see some white in the line, what would you call that? Yeah, I just call it white in the line. It's not skipping, but it leaves some white, it leaves some white space in the line. That's a lot of ballpoint pins act that way, right? You find white space within the line. It's not a solid line. It's not consistent, but it doesn't. And I have never had a retro 51 do that. So Eddie, where I agree, this is a very nice pen. This is, do you know what this is? This is the pen you buy someone for Christmas. This is it. You know, we're always looking for that pen. Oh, I want to buy something for X person for Christmas. $30 on Amazon. It's got a great weight to it. A really excellent weight. It looks fantastic. You can get a few nice colors. It's got a very solid refill, an excellent refill. Not bad on the retro 51, but if the retro 51 that wasn't around, this would take that sort of mantle for me. It is that good. It just doesn't. I mean, it probably maybe matches it, but I don't consider it better, in my opinion. And it hasn't really gone. I was saying, let me make one comment that we haven't made clear so far. This is a gel angry fill. Okay. Yes. Yes, of course. Yes. This is not a roller ball angry fill. So what was that? I just want to make that clear. Would that say that it should be this good, or what? I don't really know. And no, I'm just saying to me, it's not apples and oranges anyway, but you know, once you when you get the gel angry fill, a gel ink refill should never leave whites based on the lines in the line. Anyway, that almost that rarely happens on a gel ink pen. It should not be acting like that. You know, your mileage may vary. Eddy's refill might be better than mine. Who knows? You know, mine could be slightly different. But and it's got a really cool mechanism that would impress people. You know, if I basically if I took one of these and a retro 51 and put on both on the desk in my office, the executives would love the cross. Yeah, I think so. It's a cool looking pen. I'm with you on that. I've never seen it before. You linked it. I think it's really good looking. What's interesting also is on the Amazon page, you link to, you know, on Amazon has, you know, people can upload their own product images, the customer images. If you look at the first customer image, the first thing that caught my eye is that's not a cross refill. It looks like a pilot G2 refill. So I opened up the link and he has a highlight on it. It's a pen, pen tell, inner gel LR7 refill. So it looks like this is a compatible with a lot of standard gel ink refills. I'm not familiar with cross refills. But there's someone, one of the reviewers of this product has put in a pen tell, inner gel refill, which that's a pretty, that's a pretty sweet option. If it's compatible with a lot of popular gel ink refills, it looks like a, looks like a basic G2 refill to me. So anything that's compatible with the G2, which is a lot like the inner gel, that's a huge list. Yeah. That's a, that's a, that's a, that's on the plus side for this pen. Yeah, sure. Because any of the refills, because the stock refill that comes with it is apparently not, not so hot. Well, I mean, it's, it's good. It's, it's very good. But I have, it's just not retro 51 good. No, I have a, I consider the retro 51 to be the finest pen of this non fountain pen I have ever used, like hands down, in my opinion, there is no greater pen. That is non fountain pen than the retro 51. Every single model I have used with the rollable with the rollable refill has been flawless. And, and, you know, however long we've had these, like a year, I've had them a year, some models, they still write as great. And I've never had problems with them. But yeah, I would say, Brad, that this would go on that list of, made the list that we've had real trouble with is like, what do you buy somebody as a gift? This is a perfect gift because Cross has a good name as well. That's right. I mean, the, that, that price range, like $25 to $40 is a tough price range. In, in pens, that's why that's one of the reasons why we like the retro so much, because that, that fits a need right there a lot. So. But yeah, so, um, $30 on Amazon, I would say it's a great, a, a great, um, deal for Amazon, uh, for this pen, $30. Great. Cool. Yeah. If you're interested, by all means, check it out. It's a nice piece. Um, by the way, you know that the, the, sorry, I must mention, the refill that they're showing on the page is not the refill that this has got. Okay. Um, it's a metal one, and it's a cross one. Yeah. So. I'm just saying it looks like the standard cross gel refill must be compatible with a lot of standard basic gel refills, like G2 and inter gel. Yeah. I, I assume that they would work, but that's not the one that I've got in this pen. Gotcha. It's the cross gel rolling ball refill. Um, I don't, you know, I don't know why, why they would show that, but whatever, but, and if you look down the page, like on the Amazon page, you will see them. They have them there. Like the, the refills that people also bought. That's the refill. Cool. Awesome. Um, anything else today? I think we got it, man. I think, uh, I think we're covered. Cool. Brilliant. Yes, sir. As always. So always, one, one of these days, we're going to make it to our topic. Yeah. I have a feeling next week we'll have time. Maybe. Who knows? Maybe. Well, I don't want to write that check. I can't cash. Well, next week, we've got a record two episodes because I'm off the way before. So I'm sure we'll get to it then. That's true. Yeah. We'll, we'll double it up. So we'll get to some topic, some topics and some questions and stuff. So yeah. Oh, you have got one last thing in here. I do, I do, I figured it was a good part of the, the kind of wrap up when we're talking about how to get in touch with us. And I did create on, if you're an app.net user, um, which I'm pretty active on and it's got, we've got a good, uh, burgeoning pin community on there. I created, uh, on app.net uses a chat room system called Patter. Is that the best way to, to define that mic? Yeah, it would be like a chat room type system. Yeah. Yeah. So if you have an app.net account, you can, um, open up, uh, Patter and I created a room called, uh, pin addict and we'll have the link in the, in the, um, show notes so you can go. And it's basically just, you know, like a, it's basically like an IRC channel, if you're familiar with IRC is just a, um, wide open chat room 24/7. Uh, people get in there, ask questions, talk about different things. And, uh, I created this, uh, pin addict room that I'm trying to be active in just for as another way to people to reach out and, um, and talk about pins and, and, and, you know, meet some of the, uh, the other, uh, friendly faces and, and screen names in the pin community. So, uh, it's been fun. I opened it up last week and, uh, it's gotten some good response so far. It's been pretty active. So I'm very happy with it. Excellent stuff. So yeah, that'll be in the show notes too, of course. So people can find that. Um, I am on Twitter and app.net time. I Mike, I M Y K E, uh, Brad is at dowdy D O W D Y and app.net and dowdy ism D O W D Y I S M on Twitter. We will be back next week for episode 57 of the pin addict podcast. Um, until then, thank you very much for listening. Say goodbye, Brad. Goodbye, Brad. [BLANK_AUDIO]
