Scribe

Yeah.

Sure.

So pretty.

Hey, Tim. Doing good, Cody.

Yeah, I feel bad for anyone that kind of follows me on Instagram thinking I'm just gonna post like leather stuff and things I make and it's 85% train pictures.

Yeah. Creepy Uncle Cody and trains or something like that.

Sure. So I guess. I guess it became more like, apparent that a lot of other people were kind of into it on Facebook and stuff once, like, the Field Nuts group started and things like that. But I've been in the pens and stuff like that for years and kind of was a very irregular member at Fountain Pen Network and stuff like that. I've always used pencils, but I think it's since, like, fieldnet started, I've really gotten into it because it seems like it was a. I don't know if it's a hard road to go down, but, like, even remember early on talking to Andy and Johnny both about pencils and kind of, I remember Andy saying, like, you should buy these, you know, because I was doing a co op thing through the Field Nuts group. And so that's kind of how I really got into pencils. And now I have grosses of them. I posted in the group. I have literally have a small cooler full of pencils at this point. It's nothing on Johnny, but I've always been interested in pens and paper and stuff like that. So this is kind of just an extension of that. And thankfully it's a cheap extension of that compared to the world of fountain pens.

That's all that stuff.

And that's really the thing Is that there was a time. Yeah, yeah.

It's different than. I mean, you're looking at a decent pen's probably going to be around $100. Yeah, the sky's the limit. Yeah. There's people out there that are buying the kaya's left and right. And those are. You're looking at a thousand bucks. Sometimes for those you can buy like

Yeah, exactly. And with pencils, too. I mean, I bought plenty of pencils I don't like and just give them to someone because there's not necessarily that financial hit like when I bought the high Unis and HB are really, really hard to me. And so I just gave them away and I was out 15 bucks or whatever. It's different. Like if you buy a pen, it's like, oh, cool, this is $300, and I don't like how it writes. What do I do now?

Yeah, I've got a whole lot of railroad pencils now. Very direct, you know, which is actually pretty cool because I've been able to find some. So, long story short, my physical connection to railroads is from my great grandfather, and it was a pretty small road called the Nashville Chattanooga in St. Louis. It's actually pretty hard to find stuff on ebay from them because it was small and it was, like, absorbed in 1950. But I've been able to get some really cool pencils that they, I guess, gave out to clerks and things like that. And, you know, it's kind of neat because I've been able to collect a bunch of just random roads and things like that and actually sent some to Johnny because I ended up buying several lots on ebay and end up with, you know, 50 or 100 pencils.

Yeah, but that isn't it. I'm usually like a part of the weird train phenomenon is also like noting stuff and things like that. So usually I'm actually writing down the stuff that goes by and everything, keeping track of movements and generally being way too nerdy on that stuff. So trains are also a very physical part or pencils also a very physical part of that.

No.

Okay.

Wabash, yeah.

It's kind of funny because a lot of them are actually really good pencils too.

Because you're expected to use them. They weren't necessarily just tchotchkes. They were what you actually wrote stuff down on. Freight bills and things like that. So there's actually a wide variety, too. I've gotten all different kinds of grades and stuff like that. Even from the same roads, where I guess. I mean, just like us, there's people that wanted a hard H or a soft B, and so they had them made. I mean, at that point in time, I'm sure it was also a lot easier to have custom pencils made versus now, where it's, you know, you have to go and, like, beg them at Musgrave to get something made.

Keep in mind, it guess it depends what time you're talking about. But before computers, everything would have been manually done, you know, so it would be a lot of paper and a lot of paperwork of actual paper and things like that. It wasn't until the 60s before I even saw rudimentary stuff. So there definitely was a history of people physically using pencils there, which is pretty neat. It's another physical connection you can have with it. If you get out here to conventions and get on ebay, you can find a lot of the paper ephemera from railroads, all the actual freight bills and letters and stuff back and forth from shippers. And your corn will be this Much? A ton. And all that kind of stuff.

Yeah.

So initially what happened, I was in grad school and I'm actually. I'm kind of fuzzy on the exact timeline, but it would have been like late 2004, early 2005, hand sewed a hat because my oldest brother, who's also very crafty and who actually makes guitars from scratch now, he had made a hat. And so I decided to make a cycling hat to ride around in. And it's all hand stitched and took forever, but it actually turned out well, surprisingly. And so I actually bought, I'll say the name, it's Manhattan Cordage, the name of the messenger bag. But I got one on clearance and I wanted it to be like an actual messenger bag to ride on the bike, which is have a specific bag like the chromes and things like that are. They ride really high on your shoulder. They don't move around when you're out of the saddle and actually pumping your legs and stuff. But the one I got wasn't anything like that at all. It just really was really disappointing, even though it was like fairly cheap. So I decided to pull it apart without actually owning a sewing machine. So I pulled it apart to see how it was made and then I bought a sewing machine. Then I went down to the fabric store and at that point cobbled together the necessary equipment to make stuff which like now I use a. It's a water waterproof vinyl coated polyester liner and the thousand denier corduro. It's kind of like the industry standard for a messenger bag. But at this point I was just using like duck canvas and you know that really awful plastic stuff your grandma puts over her couch? That was my waterproof liner in there. But that's how I got started, you know, just doing it in the middle of nowhere in Tennessee. And then a couple years later I really started making messenger bags. And then I've kind of gone in and out of it. Like when I lived In Pittsburgh in 2006 and seven, I made a bunch for the messengers around there. And then when I moved to D.C. in 07, I did a little bit and then kind of gave it up because school was taking too much time. And then kind of went back and forth. And then the last big round is that I Bought a backpack and didn't like it. So I was like, all right, I'll just get a sewing machine. And I promptly destroyed that sewing machine. Like I had the 2000 before it or so. So eventually I end up the only thing that works as far as light duty sewing machines are like really old singers. Like the kind of stuff that were like, you know, treadle machines converted to electric and stuff like that.

But I was using one of those for quite a while. And then the true story is I did really good on ebay and had some money in my bank account. I was like, oh, I'm trying to find a sewing machine. And it turned out there's actually a place in Baltimore that sells used machines. Because the problem with getting like a big industrial machine is the first freight. It's going to cost you a ton to freight it from anywhere. And so I went over there and found one and it was just night and day versus what I could do. And then after that, I had a little bit of leather I've been playing with and actually started getting some horween stuff and started really getting to the actual notebook covers and stuff like that. I still do a little bit of bag work, but mostly for friends and family and stuff like that. It's just much more labor consuming than doing the notebook covers. But that's where I'm at now. And doing mostly leather notebook covers for my two main sizes are like the field notes three and a half by five and a half size. And then also like the full size Midori size. They're eight and a quarter by four and a quarter, which is a size that drives me crazy because I want to like it, but I can't because it's too narrow and weird. But that's been most of what I've been doing lately. Just because. Couple of things. But I. Yeah. And I've got. Johnny has some of my Cordura stuff, which is kind of where kind of what I came from, doing the bags and everything. And I'm hoping to get back to doing some more of that fairly soon. But I've been wanting to do that fairly soon for a year and a half at this point. So.

Cordura, it's the same thing. It's on like a. Like if you've seen a chrome bag or anything like that, it's a really durable outside fabric.

Yeah. All the Noko stuff is also corduroy. Like that nylon I think they use. Yeah, it's a coated nylon. It's actually made by dupont Cordura as a trade name. There's other generic versions of it.

Yeah, it's, it's a nylon fabric that actually has plasticized coating in the back of it. Yeah, it's really durable and I think it works really well. And the kind of difference between it and leather is that a leather is much, much thicker, you know.

So it's kind of. And when I age differently, a corduroy is going to get dirty and. Yeah, the coating will wear out over time. Over a 10 year period or so.

The leather kind of stays as is, kind of gets scratched up and looks cooler.

Yeah, it's a really cool fabric. It's just the goofy thing with, with it is that it can be not fiddly, but it takes a little more time I think to actually sew it, but kind of between the two. So sewing doesn't take very long. Leather covers. All the other stuff does.

And kind of on Cordura, sewing is what takes all the time because there's no finishing work after that. A leather cover, as soon as it's, you know, I cut the pieces, I glue it together, I trim it, I sew it, I then trim it again. Then I put like a. It's kind of this. It's called gum. I can never pronounce it right. Tragacanth. I don't know, it's like a whitening agent. And then I run a Dremel over it and then once that's done, I actually put beeswax combo I have on that and run it over. So it can be time consuming outside of the sewing stuff. So maybe it's a wash in time. As far as construction. It's actually one of the things I want to figure out because what Johnny has is actually, you know, it has a field note in the back and then has a second pocket front that has four card slots. So it's really, it's a little bit tricky making it because you have to get all the dimensions perfectly right for everything to fold up correctly. And so. But I probably would do some simpler covers that are just kind of like a Velcro wallet that has a field note on each side. That's my plan right now. At least that's cool.

I try to make stuff that's simple and is actually of quality and is not precious. I think that's a good way to say it. I really. I mean, this is kind of. Me and Johnny and actually Chris from Write Notes Pads were talking about a little bit of this set on Saturday. Everything. I just. I just want it to be stuff that's very functional and stuff that doesn't really have a whole lot of frills to it. It all uses good product, good at inputs, all. All really well. Tan horween leather out of Chicago and, you know, mil spec nylon thread. I try to get the edges nice and clean, but there's not a bunch of ornamentation to it. You know, it's not. I'm not like embossing, you know, an eagle flying over a canyon on the front.

And there's a lot of cool stuff. If you ever look in, like, into like heavy duty leather, working at what people are doing as far as, like holsters and weird stuff like that. But there's an insane amount of craftsmanship that you can put into it. But then I don't know if it takes away from the utility or not. We've got a thing that someone's put, you know, 40 hours into or whatever.

It's all possible.

I think the problem is I've actually had a lot of people ask for some really cool stuff. I just don't have the time to do it right now. Yeah, that's kind of the frustrating thing is that I'm kind of time constrained and I've been busier this year. Than last. And so kind of my time for doing a lot of really cool custom stuff has been eaten up. Actually the one thing that someone actually asked for last week that I want to do is do some leather, like tote bags and things like that. But the problem with that is that, you know, it takes up like almost an entire side to do one. So I have to have a lot of materials on hand and stuff. But I'm probably actually going to do one pretty soon just to do it I have before. But it'd be neat to get more into that stuff. I've had people ask for, I guess about every size of notebook it possible at this point. Yeah, I've had people that had really weird, like narrow stuff like similar to what the word notebook, that little journal they had.

Yeah, something similar in that size like up to. I've made stuff for people that have, you know, 8 by 10 notebooks and things like that.

Yeah, go ahead.

Oh yeah. I'm going to get into a little bit of tirade here probably. You know, I'm from Tennessee originally and so I actually have, you know, geographical ties to good old Shelbyville, Tennessee, the Musgrave Company and actually my, you know, my sister in law is from Shelbyville. I've actually flown into that airport multiple times, which is something not many people can say. There's an airport. There is an airport. I mean, like, you know, it's like a. Basically an outhouse and you know, a

Like the Northern Exposure. But it was actually exactly 50 miles from the airport I used to fly out of. So it actually was really good for doing solo trips and stuff like that as a student. So that's why I was in there a bunch. But I really like the unigraph and the test score 100 a lot. But it was such a. I mean, I talked about this a little bit in the group. It was such a pain to order them and actually end up having someone else order them for me. It kind of threw me off them. And then when I got my test scorings, both of them have actually changed a little bit from the ones I had before. I had bought both these pencils from someone that was doing some bulk breaking on Amazon. Like they sold them in 36 packs, but the text on both of them had changed. And I've had a lot more problems with my test scoring 1/ hundreds that I got from the gross that I got this time than ever before, which kind of sucks because I now have a pencil and just gets completely chewed up in the kum tube step sharpener, which isn't a problem with any other pencils. It's just have so much lead breakage and stuff on them from I guess it being uneven. Then the finish of them itself is actually. The black paint on them is rubbing off exceptionally quickly. Yeah.

Yeah.

If you'd asked me a year ago, those would have been my top two for sure. Now I've actually. A lot of the Japanese pencils I'm using more. So the 9850 from Mitsubishi, the 9852. I got these really cool green ones. I gave Johnny one the other day. Oh, man, it's like the coolest color ever. And I actually did a quick search on. On Amazon or, excuse me, on ebay. I didn't see these offhand. I'm sure they're out there. They have. I'm assuming that the 9850 and 9852 are the same. The same. It's just a cosmetic difference because these come in like, you know, air quotes, fun colors. There's this green one, then there's an orange one. I think there's a yellow one also. But I. I kind of spot them because I like the color. And reality is I actually really like the pencil itself, which sucks because, you know, on eBay they're 15 bucks a dozen. And I probably paid. I don't think I have a price on here. I'm sure I paid less than $5 a dozen in Japan for them, which is the recurring theme with all Japanese stationery. So this. It's a. I try not to stock up too much just because I have a ton of stuff. I probably should when I'm over there. But so I would say those four or those three really are probably my top three that I use right now. I also use the. The Tombow 8900 a lot. The kind of medium green one of those. And then I guess going against the grain. I actually like the Wolfex lot lot. I use a lot for drawing. It's me and Johnny and. Versus everybody else in the world on the woke heads.

But actually, I find it. It's. It's the ideal pencil for me laying out because I do it when I do a drawings I do watercolor stuff. I do them like on little postcard sized pieces. And I found that kind of the way I draw I can actually kind of lay out very well with that and doesn't leave much of a mark. First of all, I use a unigraph or test score and it's too much of a mess to really try to erase after the fact. But riding with them, I really don't like them but. Sorry, Johnny.

Well, usually I have a little. It's not a comb, it's another brand. A little single hole that I use like when I'm out running around. But I use my two step also and it seems to do fine in there. I haven't had any problems with. With them but. So I have actually bought a KUM magnesium sharpener to really use to carry around. Now I must have got this. This came up in the group a little while ago too. Must have got one of the bunk ones. It won't sharpen anything. It just breaks everything. And someone had mentioned that the casting on some of them are off or the blades are off one.

There's nothing you can really do about it. Which I mean I didn't pay hardly anything for it. But it's just kind of frustrating. Value is actually I keep a handful of pencils at my desk at work but for the most part I use them in bullet pencils. And so I've got. When John and Jay had the Kickstarter for their bullet pencil, I bought a passel of them. I think I ended up buying five of them total.

Because there's at one point they were a little bit under their goal and he was offering extra tubes. I just went and bought some. My goal or my plan was to give them away but I haven't quite got around to that yet.

Probably. I need to get. I need to actually talk to John and see about getting. I don't have the raw aluminum or the raw brass.

Which is the one really want.

But I'm actually interested to see how the raw. Raw aluminum looks versus Johnny's prototype one. Because the finish on all these seems to be much smoother than that initial prototype which had. It seemed like a little. Not burrs in it and stuff. Little surface regularities.

Yeah.

Yeah, it's a really solid product. It's. I think of it actually different. I had a lot of vintage bullet pencils too. I think it's a different product. To me though, they're both very good, but they're. I mean John and Jay's bullet pencil is much more well made. I mean the old ones are essentially all throwaways, right? It's kind of what they're initially tended to be. But all the, all the ones that I have for the kind of vintage bullet pencils are things I have connections to. So Randy, who's in the group, both groups, the erasable group and Facebook, he's been restoring some from time to time, older ones. And he always keeps an eye out for Rock City ones, which is this tourist attraction outside of Chattanooga. If anyone has followed me on Flickr or anywhere else, I have an obsession with this remaining barns from that there's

No, there's. There's probably 80 left at this point or 900 point.

Yeah, Ruby Falls kind of next door to them.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah. They have like a bunch of road signs and stuff now. But the barns are all. The last ones were actually painted well so they will go and repaint some of them, but for the most part a lot of them were last repainted in like the 60s. It's a lot of. I mean probably not worth getting into all the reasons on the podcast and stuff, but a lot of them have actually stood the test of time because I used really horrible paint on them that I managed to stay around when any kind of realistic non deadly paint would have washed away. But you know, it's like every. It was a tourist trap right from that point in time and so they had tons of tchotchkes. But the bullet pencils are actually fairly hard to come by. I've got four different versions that I've managed to pick up a couple and Randy has found a couple for me. But all the rest of the bullet pencils I have have like some sort of physical connection. I have a bunch from like this around Tennessee. Jay, before he did Kickstarter Bullet pencil was selling some original ones. He actually found one from the Hermitage for me, which is Andrew Jackson's home.

Outside of Nashville. I've done a bunch like that. Some from the Smokies and have some greyhound ones. And I have a greyhound. I used to have two greyhounds. So there's a track. So I've got a couple different variations of those and stuff. It's also kind of cool to be able to carry a small piece of history with you that's functional.

And I think speak for yourself.

use right now I've actually. I don't think I've completed an entire field notes this year. Don't know if I should say that out loud or not. I'll probably get thrown at me. But I've been using. Chris from Wright Pads has this little. What I'm not sure the exact size of it. Do you know, Johnny, this is like six by three.

Little ledger. Yeah. When he. He actually gave me one of the prototypes when he first started making them. And I've been using one of those pretty much ever since. So that's my main thing, my main catch all for. For work and all that. Other than that, I like the hobonichi a lot. It's got the. A variation of the Tomoe river paper. It's not quite exactly the same, but it's pretty. Pretty close. I find. That's pretty good. It's different. Both of these are very different textures. Right. So Chris's paper is fairly toothy. So doctor Pencils work well on it. The Tomoe river is pretty. It's pretty smooth. So I find, you know, I use one thing and I use the unigraph more and the Hobonichi and the test 100 more in Christmas paper. Yeah, I think those are my two favorites. And you know, there's a lot of stuff out there that's pretty decent. I've always liked the 70 pound paper and the field notes specifically. I think my favorite one's actually America is Beautiful. That had that really nice pale blue line.

Yeah, exactly. Like when the Shelter woods came out, I was really excited and just induced. I didn't like them nearly as much, but that's how it goes. Everything has to be different. I understand that.

Yeah, carry evolves a little bit. But it's like kind of my point beforehand is that I think me and Tim are kind of the same thing with you buying the gross of Palomino HBS that kind of searching for solutions instead of the journey. That kind of actually didn't come clear to me until it's actually something that they said on the pentatic podcast and I can't the exact context of it, but it's basically like, oh, if you don't like it, it's part of the journey and that's cool. And my first thought was no, that's not cool. This isn't like I'm not kind of not going through the wilderness, right. I'm trying to find very distinct solutions for problems. They're very minor problems, right. Like how to best keep a journal, how to best keep track of stuff. But you know, I've changed it up a little bit. I've always for the past couple years tried to have a planner and at first that was a field notes that had the pages divided in two and then I bought a hobonichi last year actually I was in Japan in December and I got directly off the plane and went to a loft and bought one before I went to the hotel. That's how excited about it I was. So I used one of those the past two years and it actually has been the perfect solution for me as far as keeping stuff organized. And so that's what I carry all the time. I do usually have a pocket notebook so I've got two rivers in the back of mine, but I haven't even written in it. It's just kind of there idly. And then I have a little leather notebook flip cover I have for my rhino pads ledger that I keep with me and that kind of dissolves the scrap and catch all stuff. But really once I kind of landed on the unigraph and test scoring I had enough to last me for a while. And then when I got these grows I definitely do. I mean it is frustrating that there seems to be a little lower quality on those we usually have on a day to day basis. I carry a little Franklin Christoph 40 fountain pen. I usually have a tactile turn. It's the. I can't if it's the move or the Shaker. Someone takes the G2 refills.

And then I have a couple bullet pencils. Usually I have, depending on what I'm doing, usually one with the Wopex and one with softer pencil. I actually have like a small art kit that I carry that has a little, you know, the credit card tens, the little flip top ones, little aluminum ones. Oh yeah, really easy. So there's a lady in Seattle that makes or sources. They're essentially makeup tins that fit in those. And so you can have a little bit of watercolors with you. And so I carry one of Those that has 14 colors in it and a little spray bottle. And I actually, I think I posted this in erasable group too. I converted three of my bullet pencils to paint brushes.

Yeah, so I just, I cut them, you know, in half and then I used epoxy. Someone else suggested something that was much less stupid to use. I think it's like, because the problem I have now is I'm gonna have to drill these out or you know, just throw them out whenever they're done. But yeah, I think someone suggested using like a putty, like the stuff you put on the walls to hold pictures up and stuff, which actually is a much better idea.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah, so use poster tech instead. So I'll carry that stuff if I'm going to go out and draw, which a lot of times I actually will if I'm going to watch trains a lot of times and I'll go and take my scanner and then you kind of know when stuff's of kind coming. And so I kind of have a downtime, so I'll lay there and read or draw. And my hobonichi cowboy actually has a space for my little postcard size watercolor things. So that's a lot of craft to carry. But that's what I usually carry.

Thankfully it's a lot of crap to say, but it's very compact in reality, you know.

Not really.

Honestly, not really. It just seems that my frustration, I think I was talking with Johnny about this is that I actually would like to try like the unigraphs and all the grades, but it's so hard to do that because they don't really exist anymore. I actually have a 6B that my girlfriend found in her art school stuff and gave me, which is really cool. But I would actually like to try and see like to me, if the H and the unigraph is a good drawing pencil, you know, but because you can only order them gross. And they don't actually physically want to sell them to you, it seems that's not really possible. I guess it's possible, right. I have to order, you know, 10 gross of pencils and then have a bunch of. Have 144.4B unigraphs that I'll never use. But that's kind of. I try to be as practical as I can with pens and pencils just because it's. I think it's easy to get into grail status, you know, I actually don't like black wings. I'm one of the few people that doesn't like them. And so like, I don't have a. I don't really want to find like an old first gen Blackwing and only use those and stuff like that.

more of the performance hype and cost, really. And it performs well. It's just a very soft pencil. I just feel like there's. I think it has advantages over other soft pencils, but not enough to justify the cost. And kind of, you know, Charles is a very nice guy and I've liked everything I've gotten from them, but I gave away all my black wings and kind of never really felt like I needed to replace them. I mean, it's a good gateway drug. I think there was some post about that, right?

And it is. I think it serves that purpose pretty well. And so like, my nephew actually texted me a little before Christmas and was like, you know anything about black wings? And I still had some. I was like, okay, I'll send you some. And so I actually sent him, I don't know, way too many pencils and like wrote a description of everything on there. You know, a bunch of the. Bunch of the Musgraves and stuff like that, just because I'm. His mom's from there. So.

And my. His dad, my. My brother actually went to. Did his MBA at Vanderbilt and one of the people in his class was one of the. One of the Musgrave kids. Their name isn't Musgrave, but it's something else. But so there's, you know, some. Some Tenuous connection there. Plus, I mean, it's helping industry. Very, very local industry. Yeah, I mean, they're fine. It's just that not kind of want the pencil gain to be cheap. And so I kind of stay away from the black wings and from the high unis and stuff like that. I've enjoyed my. My regular unis as much as the high unis and stuff like that. Or the regular monos versus the mono one hundreds or whatever.

That's a lot of responsibility there, John.

I think we're kind of in a golden age of this stuff right now, so I think it's. Everyone should be thankful for what we've got out there. You can show people virtually what's going on. It's really cool. And the kind of reserves and all these pencils that we have the ability to get them from. Pencils.com and jetpack and all these places, and the fact that there's a knowledge base through erasable and through other groups and stuff. Be thankful for it more than anything because I can't imagine, like, trying to be into pencils when Johnny was starting his blog in 2005.

You're gonna have to get into, like, I don't know, abacuses or something soon.

someone is into them. I'm sure there has to be an astronomy.

Thanks for having me.

The best place. So all of my covers and stuff I actually have on Etsy. The easiest way to get there is williamsbag.com which is wmsbag.com and then I'm also on Instagram at Wmsburg. That bag on there, that's Basically the two best ways to reach me. Yeah, that's about it. Be prepared for all the train pictures that you follow me on Instagram though.

If I could just count the times