This transcript was generated from an audio file by AI, and may contain inaccuracies.
Transcript
You said that the core was better than a Blackwing.
False, Johnny, you're right.
From Erasable Media, this is the Erasable
Podcast with Brad, John, and Tim. So, hey, hey. Back on the side of the Atlantic Ocean, it's the new Erasable Podcast. I'm Johnny Gambro on hosting duty, and I'm joined by none other than Tim Wasem. So we were gonna do a little bit of a reboot of the show when we had 101 episodes, but we sort of got a dossier about Andy that was a little alarming. It turns out he only uses fountain pens and he uses the blood of innocent gnomes and fairies. So we kicked Andy off the podcast. So we had to find somebody who we know loves pencils and hates pens. So introducing our new co host, Brad Dowdy.
I am so glad to be part of this show.
Hey, Brad.
Hey, guys. I'm glad y' all got rid of the riff raff.
Yeah. So it turns out after this, Brad also has an announcement on his podcast. Mike has an announcement on his podcast.
Wait.
Tune in next Wednesday.
Did we make a trade? I must add a note.
So this is episode 91, and in 90 episodes, Andy's never missed a show.
That's crazy.
That's crazy.
The week. Yeah, he was busy this week, so we're gonna see what it's like without Andy, which is hopefully not gonna be a cluster cuss, but, you know, we have. We have a pro on here, so I think we'll be good.
But we miss you, Andy, so love you, buddy.
And Andy will be producing this, so.
Yeah, he's still gonna do all the work, so he's gonna still hear.
He's gonna make him sound, like, really awesome, and we're all not gonna know
it till we hear it.
Yeah, he'll do a little voiceover, like, thanks, guys. Thanks, guys.
Yeah. Well, Brad, thanks for joining us. Yeah, it's really exciting. It's been too long. We haven't done this in a while. I don't remember what episode that was last time you were on. It was a long time ago, though.
Yeah. I didn't go back and look at it, actually.
That was a really long time ago.
Yeah.
So Mr. Doughty has been coming over to the dark gray side a little bit, so we thought we'd pick his brain as his pencil. Experience is growing tonight. But first, we'll start as we always do, with Tools of the Trade. Do you want to go first? Our new co host, Brad.
Sure, sure.
So I'm glad you put this in The. In the document. Because no matter if I listen to the show every week, I forget exactly how it starts off. So consuming along with the beer I have right here. I'm drinking a Peroni tonight. Just the. That's kind of the nice.
That's the.
That's the house beer at Pentict Estates. And I just. I keep that in the fridge for, you know, whenever the.
The.
The time strikes. I'm not drink. Drinking something super fancy like the. The Natty Bow from. From Baltimore.
Dude, Natty Bo is nasty. But the. There's a new one coming out. It's going to be nasty. Natty Bo.
Gross.
But I. I actually.
What's. What's your. What's your. Johnny, what's your house beer? Now, I want to know, because that's, like, an interesting thing.
What changes right now? It's Sam Adams cold snap.
Yeah.
Oh, okay. Yeah.
Which is really good.
Yeah.
My wife and I don't always agree on beer.
Gotcha. Yeah.
What's yours, Tim?
Modelo is good.
We always have Modelo on.
Yeah, perfect.
Yeah, that's perfect. Baseball.
Beer, too.
Yeah.
So I actually did consume some media prior to this episode, which is actually. Usually this would probably be a blank for me. It'd just be, you know, podcast or music or some other things that I'm listening to or into. But I watched Icarus on the flight home from the Baltimore pen show this past weekend. If you hadn't heard of that movie. I hadn't heard of this movie before this weekend when the Oscars happened. And it won an Oscar. And it's about this guy who started to make a movie about doping, and he's a big cycler. He was a big Lance Armstrong fan, and he was watching, you know, all these guys win all these races and test clean at the end of the race. And, you know, we all know that House of Cards eventually came completely crashing down, so he wanted to kind of recreate the doping system that these guys used. And he was a. Like a very advanced amateur racer. He does this huge amateur race over in France and go through the same thing, see if he can improve his times and improve his speeds and then test clean for this race. So that sounds all well and good, and that's only, like, the first 30 minutes of the movie, because what happens is he gets looped in with the head of the Russian doping program, and they become, like, best friends and. And this. And this guy ends up being the guy who takes down the entire Russian organization. All their athletes, all their Olympic athletes. Why they weren't in these most recent Olympics. So it's this crazy, crazy story of how this movie turned into one thing. It turned it into just completely different things. So it's kind of wild. Highly recommended. It's not something that I heard of before I even heard of it this weekend and I've been just fascinated with it ever since.
Awesome.
Sounds awesome.
Yeah. So writing with in honor of the podcast, I'm of course going with a pencil, but I grabbed one of my in the Pines notebooks from Write Notepads, which is my favorite edition they've released so far. I'm about through this notebook even though I don't use it quite frequently as some of my other ones. But I use it regularly because it's so nice. And to match it up, I'm using the Caran d' ache Swisswood Pinot symbros, which is what the pine version of the Swisswood. So I didn't know this was a thing until I saw this weird little two pack of the regular stinkwood Swisswood.
The soy wood?
Yeah, soy wood. Choco wood. So it had one of those, it had one of these pine ones. So it's a. It's almost like an ivory coating. You know, it's a very yellow pine pencil. Not like a yellow traditional pencil, but like a ivory looking pencil. One of the traditional Swiss woods and a sharpener and they were like stupid expensive. I think it was like 26 bucks or 24 bucks for the two pencils and a sharpener. So I finally found it for like 50 off one day. I was like, okay, I want to try this weird white looking pencil. So that's the only place I, I've seen this and I've kind of even. I've used it so more much I've kind of worn out the, the black writing on there. It's not as. It's probably like the same core as the regular Swisswood, but it feels a little bit different. Like it feels a little bit waxier. Even though that the regular Swisswood feels kind of waxy and I enjoy it. This one's a little bit different, but it's probably the same exact core. But it's a pine pencil instead of. What is the other one? Beach Swiss beech wood, Something like that.
What is that? It's some kind of weird cooked wood. They cook it.
Oh yeah.
Why? It stinks.
Gourmet wood.
Gourmet wood. So yeah, so. So that's what I'm. What I'm writing with.
Nice.
How about you, Tim?
I. As far as consuming, I Always try to go for something I'm watching, reading and listening to. It's probably unnecessary and probably takes away too much time, but I can't help myself but watching. The only thing I can say is baseball. I'm. I guess they could go for listening, too, because I'm listening to a lot of radio broadcasts and watching as much spring training baseball as possible because we are only three weeks away.
Yeah.
From opening day, which is the best news ever because I am so ready for baseball season this year. Reading I just started a new book a couple days ago. I had. I've never read any David McCullough books, and I finally decided to try them out, mostly based on the California Typewriter documentary, which he was interviewed in. I was, like, really intrigued and loved hearing him talk in that documentary and was like, you know what? I've been meaning to. And actually, like, on a personal note, like, my grandfather who passed away a few years ago was just kind of obsessed with him, was really like a huge fan. And I remember him recommending the books, and I just never got around to it. So I was like, you know what? I'm going to do it now. I'm going to pick one out. And the one that I picked out is a book called the Greater Journey, which I had actually never heard of. I mean, he's mostly known for. He has the John Adams book that he wrote and then the Theodore Roosevelt book, Mornings on Horseback. And he's. So he's got some of his, like, bigger because they were turned into shows or whatever that people know about. But this one, the Greater Journey, is about Americans going to Paris and specifically Americans going to Paris before 1900. Because we always think, when we think of Americans going to Paris, you think of Hemingway and, oh, yeah, Ezra Pound and Fitzgerald and all these. But. But there was from like 1830 to 1900, there was this. There are these groups of young Americans from all different interests or all different professions. There were writers, painters, scientists, physicians who went to Paris to go and study their craft. And then so the premise of the book is that it's like a biography of all these people, this core group, people who went and went to Paris, learned all these amazing things, and then changed America based on what they took away from Paris. And it's super interesting. I'm really enjoying that book a lot. So I would, I would recommend it. I'm. It's. It's a. It's a longish book. It's not one of his longest books, actually. That was kind of one of the reasons why I picked it, but it's. It's still a decent length, but I'm about 80 pages in or something like that, and I've really been enjoying that quite a bit. As far as music, there's a jazz guitar player named Pat Martino who I was. Became a big fan of in high school. He has a really interesting story where he, he. He was around in the 60s and 70s and 80s, like he'd been around for a long time recording. And he was kind of a young prodigy sort of. But at some point, I think it was in the late 80s or early 90s, he actually had a aneurysm. I think it was in the 80s he had a brain aneurysm and had to teach himself guitar all over again. So he was this virtuosic guitar player and then at some point had to start from scratch and teach himself again, which, from what I understand it like, came back quicker than it was learned the first time. But it still was like he just had to start over. And he came out with a new album last year that's called Formidable, which is the first album he's done in a little while. And it's a really fantastic album if you're a fan of jazz. He covers one of my favorite songs, which is called In a Sentimental Mood by Duke Ellington. So I. Any jazz fans out there? Pat Martino. Formidable is a really, really great album. And it's. It's actually an album that's not available on streaming services that I know of, but it's. It's worth your money to buy at least a digital copy and pick it up because it is, it is very, very good. And I am writing with. I have the pencil of choice, which is. My common pencil of choice these days is the Mitsubishi 9852. Ew. The recycled 9852. I'm in love with this pencil. So it's what they. If you know the 9852, this is the one where they take the leftover cuts of the slats and make. They call them a recycled pencil. But it's basically just using the leftover bits for making the other ones to make these in there. It's like. It's an awesome pencil, an affordable HB pencil. And it has of course, my. My favorite label on a pencil, which is on the reverse side of the Mitsubishi 9852. Ew. It says Master writing.
So nice.
Can't. Can't turn that down. And in honor of our guest, I had to pick a pen so in the pen that I picked was the. It's a bit crystal. Because it was. Well, frankly, because it was nearby. But when I saw it, I was like, oh, my gosh, this is like, I forgot about this. It was in a box of things I hadn't looked at in a while. But it's a. It's not the usual bit crystal, but it's a bit crystal ultra fine, like a European edition in red ink. And I. As soon as I picked it up, I was like, hey, maybe that's a good one I can use tonight. And I picked it up, started writing with it, and I was like, this is. This is such a killer pen. It actually writes better than the others. And I feel like I. With the bit crystals, I tend to either use the ultra fine because I have a few others that are in black and blue. I tend to either use the ultra fine or I use the. The. What is it, 1.6? Is that what it is?
Oh, there's big fatties.
I love the big fat ones. I love those too. So I like the. The big fat one in blue. But, yeah, so I got that. In the notebook of choice is a Walmart purchase Cubs spiral notebook manufactured by markings by C.R. gibson. So it says on the back. Love it, love it, love it. Been using it at school, so that's. That was my. My choice.
Is it not gonna work again for like another hundred years?
Yeah. That was so funny. Johnny, I'm so entertained by you.
And, yeah, your buddy Michael Hagen's already given me crap on Twitter, so I'm coming after you.
Michael giving you crap for what?
The Braves sucking and the Cubs being good.
I'm like, listen, Braves are going to be insane soon, so he'll eat his words. But we've still got our window right now. That's right. How about you, Johnny?
So I just read the book called Cod. I forgot what the subtitle is by Mark Kurlansky, the guy who wrote the book we talked about called Paper and Salt.
Doesn't he have one called Salt?
Yeah, so the salt one was like four or five hundred pages about salt and one of the most entertaining books I ever read. It was so good. Okay, the cod book was good and it made me want fish. And I haven't had fish in like, I don't know, 14 years or something. They probably had cod the last time I ate fish. So there you go. So. And I've been. I'm trying to get into the new Hemingway biography, which has a picture of him pointing a Tommy gun at the camera. But every time I touch it, like, literally every time I touch it, Rose like, poops or screams or, like, walks in the room crushing goldfish going, la, la, la.
That's the. I think I've tweeted on several occasions that if you ever want to not get writing done, just get your kids down for a nap and then sit down to write, and they will wake up as soon as. As soon as you sit down. It's amazing. It's amazing how that timing works out.
Today. I'm like, I have a half an hour. Rose is like, no, you don't.
Nope.
That put the kibosh. But I'm looking forward to cracking into that. And we watched Rotten on Netflix. That food biography, it sucks, really. Like, after Dirty Money. Dirty Money was really well done. And, you know, there was a central theme to each one, but also a bigger picture. Rotten just is just a rambling piece of crap with this terrible hipster narrator that I have passed out on everyone. Even the cod episode.
So there's a cod episode. Usually we.
Yeah, but it wasn't really about cod. It was about fish. We're like, hey, did you know the fish are leaving? I'm like, oh, really? I never heard that before. There was one about garlic that I fell asleep watching several times.
That's a bummer. I'm glad. I'm glad you said that, though, because I was. I've got that in my. To watch in my queue, and I'm not going to.
We're usually a lot more positive, like, hey, watch this. It's fun. And we're like, don't watch this. It's terrible. But on the positive side, did you guys. The Frankenstein Chronicles was added to Netflix recently.
No.
With Sean Bean. It's sort of a cop show set in the 1820s in London that involves elements of the story of Frankenstein.
Well, that sounds cool. I remember hearing about this. Yeah.
Yeah. It was so good that I watched, like, four in a row to finish it up last week. And I never do that. I usually fall asleep. It was super enjoyable and also super gory. And if you like Sean Bean and you want to see Sean Bean make it through an entire season of Something.
I was gonna ask if he died.
No, he's back for season two. And, yeah, I won't give any spoilers, but it was very good.
Really enjoyable.
And if we're talking about music, I've been re listening to Eat Me, Drake Me by Marilyn Manson because it's really delicious and Henry likes it. Move on from letting my kid listening To Marilyn Manson. So I am riding with a big, fat triangular Statler. Norris. Norris. Ergosoft.
Those are nice.
I like those.
You sent me one of those a while back. Stashed it away for him. Did you say finger?
Yeah, it feels like a finger, all right. It being triangular makes it feel soft and also bony.
Well, I think they should add that to their sales pitch. You know, like their. Their marketing materials.
It makes up for it not being cedar.
It feels like a finger sort of bony.
And I'm taking show notes in a field notes Alphabet soup edition, which I'm finding. I don't like this paper. It's too, too thin and smooth. Like all the good things about paper. Not this one, but the blue lines are nice. And I did buy two packs of the damn thing, so I have to use them. So.
Yeah.
So why don't we jump onto fresh points and we can let Brad go first again. He could talk about how much he likes that wopex. So
the wopex is sitting here with me. It's about half the size of where it started when you handed it to me. And that's not because I've been using it. That's because we all took it out at the pen show. I was next to the pay it forward table at the pen show. And for those of y' all who aren't into pins, there's a great group of people headed by Oscar Rodriguez that set up tables at pen shows and donate things to kind of like the tag along pen friend or the newbie pen friend. So, like, if you're there at a pen show with someone who's like, really into the pen show and you don't know what's going on, but you were nice enough to come. They give you like, a pen starter kit. And, you know, they had pencils out, they had black wings out, they had a paper out, all kinds of things. So anyway, we started getting out sharpeners to try and sharpen the wopex. And I don't know exactly what sharpeners we tried, but none of them worked. It just made it worse and worse. So now I have. I came home with like, half a wo pecs.
Well, they're heavy, so it saved on your travel weight.
Yeah, exactly. So I will say the core is not bad. It's like we all used it and go, oh, it's darker than I thought it would be. That's pretty much what everyone said when they used it. Because we were passing this around, you know, of course, giggling as. As we did. But yeah, this is this is a no go, Johnny. I'm sorry. I. I'm sorry to disappoint you, but I. I'm glad I. Because now I know what a terrible pencil is like, and, you know, I can, you know, rank all the other terrible pencils up against it, but I am. Yeah, I don't get it. I don't get it.
I mean, I'm happy to send you a box to replace that one. I'm good. Not even kidding.
You know, I do have two kids. I'm sure they would get a lot of use out of them.
I have some neon ones.
Oh, okay. I still deal. Yeah. Still say no. I'm like,
did you, Johnny, did you take the to be?
No, I grabbed one of the, like, the regular green ones. I was like, you know what? I'm going to ask Brad to hold this. I'm going to get behind him and photobomb it. Ask Joe Lebo to take the picture. But I was like, I'll never work that out. Plus, Brad's a good sport and like, hey, can I take your picture with this?
And I'm super excited to have it. Right? It's, you know, I don't have a Wolfex. I hear you talk about it all the time. And now I should have brought him box of them.
You'd feel.
You'd have felt guilty. And you said you liked them.
Oh, totally not. I mean, I love you for lots of things.
That's not possible.
It's become a joke. I forgot if I even like it anymore.
I was. I was just about to ask. When's the last time you actually used one?
So moving on.
Yeah.
So, you know, my, my. My other fresh point was the actual Baltimore pen show itself. I don't know if I spelled it right in the show. Doc. Johnny B A W L M E R. Is that correct, Ballmer?
See, my mother would say that's correct.
Okay.
I would say people don't really see Balmer. They say Baltimore.
Yeah, I never once heard. I never want once heard this. This rendition. But I will say it is one of the best pen shows I have ever been to. You know, I've probably been to a good dozen or more at this point, and we just had a blast. It was a great show put on by a great guy, good venue, good location, good people. I really couldn't have asked more from the show, so it was fantastic. So thank you, Baltimore, for being awesome. And we're going to talk about one of my other favorite Baltimoreans. Is that what you are? Are you a Baltimorean?
Some people say Baltimore on Baltimore.
We won't say, well, you're a Baltimore in. This other guy's a Baltimore on. So we'll talk about him in a little bit.
I'm going to go ahead and say that if Baltimore has a pen show next year, that Henry and I will be there.
Nice.
Excellent.
Nice.
Get ready, Johnny and Henry. We will be there.
It was at the harbor, which is McHenry with a party. We'll have a pen. We party.
It'll be great. Yeah, let's do it. It'll be fun.
And my last fresh point. I just stumbled on this today as I was doing a little bit of shopping on Jetpens. And I don't know how I missed this when it first came out. And this might actually help with the who opex. Have y' all seen the Sonic toga return pencil sharpener?
I want one.
I am looking at them, right?
So the idea and why it's recalled. Return pencil sharpener. Not only do they look cool, they're kind of.
Does it add to your pencil instead of taking away?
It's a reverse pencil sharpener. So you put the little stubs in and you end up with an entire pencil by the.
It creates. That's how Wolpex has happened. Yeah, that's how Wolpexes are made, Tim. So basically it's like the easy Bake oven of wopexes.
So it sharpens the pencil and then once it hits a certain point, it pops it out. So you can no longer continue sharpening it. Sharpening it down. So I'd be interested to see if that really works how it's advertised. And it has. It's a. It's a short point kind of sharpener. So, yeah, you. You lock in. Lock in the pencil, sharpen away, and then it kind of ejects it once it's to the proper, proper sharpness level. So no more over sharpening for you. But I mean, the pink and purple and light blue one's pretty rad and I'll probably end up with one someday.
Yeah, I like that. I like that blue and light blue one. That's cool. I like that. I really like the Sonic. They're the ones who make the ratchet sharp.
Yeah.
Ah, the rachetta. I love that sharpener. I have that at school. I use that all the time.
It's excellent.
Nice.
So, yeah, that is. Those are my fresh points. The only missing fresh point was the natty bow from Baltimore, which we did talk about earlier. So. But I'm apparently I'm good for having missed that. Missed out on that.
Yeah, you did. You. You might have missed out on the Blackwing beer, though. Did you have any of that?
Johnny did not hook me up, and there was a liquor store right across the street, but I avoided that one.
So Johnny gave. Johnny gave me some Black Wing beer. No, that was Lebo. Yeah, that's right. Lebo gave me.
I should take credit, but no.
Yeah, you're right.
Steelers thunder.
No, you're right.
I'll steal his thunder. He didn't bring me any either, so screw you, Joe Lebo.
But next year, the Black Wing beer he brought me exploded on me. So just gonna. It was super fluky, but, like, I took it back to the hotel room and, like, opened it up and I hadn't been shaking it. It just been sitting on the table and it just like. Like in my bag. Like, one of them popped open. So it was super good, though. Like, the three of them were fine, but yeah, I missed. That was the only pen show I've ever been to. Is that D.C. show that we. That's where I met Johnny, or I saw Johnny for the first time and then saw you, Brad, for the first time. And that was such an amazing time.
Three years. Three years ago.
Yeah, three years ago. I was. It was. Oh, man, it was so much fun. And seeing Joe Lebo and Cody Williams was there, plus other people. I mean, that was fun.
That was awesome.
Good times. Good times.
Excellent. You want to go next, Tim?
Sure, yeah. The first thing I want to bring up is that Baron Fig has announced. Has a big announcement about the Confidant, that now the Confidant is going to be released in not just two colors, not just two shades of gray, but five different colors. So they've expanded the standard covers for the confidant from. They've got light gray, the charcoal, which is the darker gray, and the three new colors, which I guess are all. They sort of fit in with the scheme of some of their other products. They don't actually match up with them as well as one would like them to, but. But they've got blue slate, fig wine and yellow gold that you can get. But the. One of the only. I guess one of the downsides for me, because Dot grid is dumb.
That podcast is horrible.
That was. Yeah, that was hyperbole on purpose. Dot grid is. Most people like dot grid. For me, I don't like dot grid, but all three of these are, at this point, for now, are all available only in. In dot grid. So. But the colors. So we actually so Baron Fig was generous enough to hook us up with. With some samples of these, and we all got to choose what we got. And in a very cute way, all Johnny, Andy, and I all picked different colors. That was super cute. It fits our personality. Johnny picked the yellow gold shocker, Andy picked the blue slate, and I picked the fig wine because, you know, I guess wine, but no, I'm just a dark. Like, even with fountain pen inks, like, when I. When I allow myself to delve into that, the dark reds are always my place. So. But we got those, and yeah, they look great. I have the fig wine one right in front of me, and it is. I mean, I. I am totally biased, but I. From seeing pictures of the other two. Fig wine, I think is my favorite. I think it looks. I don't know, man.
This yellow is like a dandelion in the sun under your nose.
The yellow looks awesome. I'm not gonna lie. I would have picked yellow. Yellow, too. It looks fantastic. I'm actually surprised it took them this long to break out of the gray. The gray mold on these because, I mean, I think it's easily their best product and their most popular notebook. It's certainly got to be. And.
Yeah.
Yeah. But these colors are, like, a perfect match to, like, every other everything else that they do.
So it's a. Yeah, nicely.
And it's good that they didn't do, like, you know, like, Leuchtturm and Rodeo, where they just take, you know, kind of like the. The bright main colors, like orange and green and purple. You know, they did their own thing, and it looks really good.
Yeah, it fits their. Their. Their brand. They. They use those colors a lot. So.
Yep.
Yeah, I'm happy they did dot grid. I love their dot grid.
Yeah, my. My problem with dot grid, and I was texting Johnny and Andy about. I have something, like, over time, I've just gotten worse at ignoring dot grid, because I remember talking about it early on, and I would say, like, yeah, sure, dot grid, whatever. Sometimes it's fine because I could just ignore the dots and just write, but my handwriting is just big enough. I like to write in a bigger size, like a font size or whatever you call it. And I write in cursive that I always. It's like every time I'll finish a line, I'll go to the next line to keep writing, and I'll land on a different part of the page, you know, so it's like I'm writing, I'm starting at the top of one of the lines. Of dots and the next time I'm halfway like the dot is in the middle which I used to be able to ignore that but now I just can't. I just can't. And I think I've 100% which I. People wouldn't be surprised by this who've listened to us for a while but blank paper is 100% my favorite now. So can't get that with this yet. But when. No I know lined paper is fine but it's like even like when I was in I was always like a college ruled like all through college and high school. Like I love the little because I was right but once I switched to cursive when I stopped writing in print and switched to cursive, I like to just have this big looping handwriting. So but once. Once the other. Once the blank and the line come out and some of these new colors. The confidant's already my. My standard hardback notebook in this size. I think from now on my notebook of choice is either going to be that charcoal in blank or the fig wine in blank or. And I'll. And I'll try some of these others down the road but I think they look really nice. So. So yeah. So I think they. I think they did a good job and I think it's kind of overdue for them to come out with some of these other colors. So I think people are these limited have been whetting people's appetites for having some standards that aren't just gray or grayer, you know and. And then with the. The lock that came out recently, like that one just blew everybody's mind and I just. I mean I know that that one's not grid. Right. Am I remembering right? Yep. So that one is just so beautiful. Yeah the lock even despite its downfall of being dot grid I will use the crap out of that one. So that'll be. I'm using the. What's the workplay edition? Is my school notebook like my work notebook where I'm doing lesson planning and stuff and the lock is. Is next in line for that and
I will tell that sell out yet?
I don't know.
The pen sold out a while ago I think.
I don't know about the notebook sold out.
That pen is fantastic.
And it's fantastic. I got to check one out in la. It is really cool. Like the. I was reading the description of it because I have the aluminum, you know the standard Squire and like it has a good weight. It's not too heavy, not too light and they Say the brass was three times heavier. And I was like, okay, that seems like super reasonable. I don't think it's gonna be too heavy. It was actually heavier than I thought, but still felt really, really nice.
Oh, it is really cool. I've got that one in my, my notco pen case that I, that I love, love, love, love. So, yeah, it says the, the notebook is still available. It says brass pen sold out in parentheses forever.
Rub it in.
I like that. So that's gone. But yeah, that's my first fresh point. Just if you haven't seen the new colors of the confidant, you should go check those out. Fig wine, blue slate and yellow gold are available now in dot grid, which is, which is exciting. The next thing is actually teaching related. So I teach freshman high school English and I picked up a new assignment which is inspired by ESPN magazine, which sports magazines, as far as they go, it's a pretty terrible magazine. But there's a teacher I really respect in California. His name's Kelly Gallagher and he writes a lot of books. And he's just this amazing, inspiring teacher, high school English teacher. And if you've ever read ESPN magazine, there's a page in there, usually it's called six things. It's like six things you should know about Fill in the blank, whatever it is. So it'll be like six things you should know about being a bodyguard for an athlete or six things you should know about being a relief pitcher or something. And the idea is that they'll get somebody to come in and say, like, this is the thing I'm the expert about. And I'm going to give you six things that aren't common knowledge about it that you should know, which is really cool. And so I have my students do this where they have to pick something that they are an expert on that they feel like they know a lot about. And then I say, well, explain six things to us about this that are not what everybody would know. So if you're writing about basketball, don't say, hey, when you throw the ball in the hoop, it scores two points. And you know, most people know that for sure. So you try to pick the kind of not common knowledge thing. And so one thing I'm trying to get better at is writing with my students. So they'll, when they're working on a project, I'll work on it right alongside them and I'll have my own topic and I'll show them like, here's my progress. This is what it looks like. And so this year is the first time I've done this assignment. And so I tried to work on six things you should know about pencils, obviously. So. And I didn't get it done in time because, I mean, I was grading them and helping them get this thing finished. But for next semester, I've got it set up that I'll have this. I can show them an example of my own work. And then. And so I had to come up with six things about pencils that the average person probably wouldn't know. So I was going to share the six things I came up with.
Nice.
So the first thing I explained was I was talking about the difference between. And I'll share that once I got it all, like the final version. I'll post it up on Twitter and on the erasable website. But the first thing I had was the lead versus graphite thing. Just explaining that to people the lead and graphite are not the same thing. And then explaining the name of plumbago, just that Plumbago was one of the names that was used for it. And that lead and graphite look a lot alike, but graphite doesn't cause poison poisoning and cancer or whatever. So explained that. And then I talked about. Talked about Henry David Thoreau was for one of them, explaining because they know him. They know his name from Walden, and reading excerpts from his work and so explaining that you know him for this, but actually this was his profession. The next one was I actually explained to my students, and I did talk about this in class. I talked about all these in class. But the difference between European, Japanese, and American pencils, that there's kind of these three different centers in the world that we get talked about a lot. And I probably could have even included talking about Indian pencils, but we've never really discussed on the podcast how Indian pencils fall into that range, you know, where they. Who they line up with the most, which would be maybe a good topic for another time. The next one is talking about cedar wood and why. Why cedar wood is kind of the perfect choice and why we don't use other options that we've got available and why we don't use red cedar anymore. And then the last two one was that pencils are modern. Like talking about how pencils aren't the precursor to pens. It was like, we always think of pencils leading to pens, but actually pens have been around a lot longer, you know, a thousand years, but pencils have only been around for a few hundred, which was. Which they actually found pretty interesting. Yeah. So just that cedar or just that cedar pencils are the result of just a few hundred years of progress. And the last thing is that pencil revolution.com changed the world.
Yep.
True name truth. How did that get into my head? Johnny is king to the Google Doc. The actual sixth thing. The king is the king. The last thing I actually explained was the concept that pencils last forever. We've talked about this on the podcast before, but just. Yes, that ink fades, especially if it's exposed to sunlight, which most of the time doesn't matter, but just people think of pencils as these temporary things where it's like the equivalent of writing with chalk or something. And that's just, you know, not true that pencils last forever and that it's. You're literally grinding stone onto paper. And so it's going to last a very long time. And so they, they also wanted to argue with me on that, but that did not work because they are children and they don't know what they're talking about. So, yeah, so that was a fun assignment. So I enjoyed that. So once I get that finished and get a final version of that, I'll put it up and it's kind of a. I was thinking of it as a cool thing you could share with other people when you're trying to spread the good word about pencils. The last thing is that Plumbago 4 has been announced by Andy's zine has been announced Plumbago. For this time around, we're looking for creative nonfiction and memoir around one simple idea, how Analog has shaped your life. So it's up to you to interpret what this means. But this time around, we're looking for a really tight issue, really tight issue focused on this topic. And our friend Harry Marks from the covered podcast, the beloved Harry Marks, has come aboard to help shape the narrative. So he's going to be co editing this with Andy. We'd love to hear from anyone, but we especially like to hear from people outside of our usual bubble for stories. So, I mean, women, people of color, people who we don't often hear from. We'd like to hear from everybody, want to hear from anybody out there. So please send us your additions to this edition. It doesn't necessarily have to be an essay form either. Poetry, screenplays, comics, illustrations, stories, etc. All that's good, but based on the idea of memoir. And it can be inspired by how Analog has shaped your life, even if it is not written as pure nonfiction. The deadline to submit a finished piece for this is June 1st, and then mid July is when we're thinking that this will be distributed. So go to Plumbago XYZ for more information and to submit your pitch so you can submit your idea to us. Also, copies of issue three are still available. So if you haven't gotten a copy of issue three, which is absolutely gorgeous, Andy did an amazing job on this one. So I can't give them enough props for this. I think it's just beautiful. The fiction and poetry issue is awesome. So please, please get that if you haven't gotten it already. We'll release the PDF when they sell out or when issue four is published, whichever comes first. So the PDF will be available eventually for purchase. But please buy a copy of issue 3 if you haven't gotten it yet. I know I will be in this next issue and, and this is, this is a pretty hot hot topic right here. But my what I'm going to write about or not hot topic, but it's. This is going to be scandalous, but I'm going to write a tell all Memoir piece for Plumbago 4 about the creation of the Erasable Podcast. I've started it, so it's going to be. It's going to be pretty messy.
Is it going to have screenshots of this?
You're going to see, you're going to find. Yes, that'll be in there. And you're going to find out about the CD Underbelly of the the Erasable Podcast and all the, all the infighting that happens behind the scenes and. Yeah, but just about the experience of doing this and what it's been like. And I just felt like that would be a fun thing to share because I've never really talked about it. So that's what I'll be doing, for instance. But if you're interested, please go to Plumbago XYZ for more information and to submit your pitch.
Excellent.
There we go. Johnny, how about you?
So, speaking of podcasts, if folks are members of the Field Nuts Facebook group, then you probably know one of their moderators, Adam Webb, who also used to run a Tumblr called Field Notes in the Field, which predated Field Nuts and pretty much anything Field Notes related that wasn't Field Notes. Anyway, he's half of a new podcast called Take Note, which is about notebooks and using notebooks, which is a really good topic for a podcast that no one is touching.
So I'm definitely checking this out.
Yeah, there's a link in the show Notes. I haven't gotten a listen to all of them Yet. But this looks really awesome. Yeah.
I hadn't heard of it until I saw the show notes today and I went and downloaded I think the first five episodes. So I'm gonna start listening to those this week.
Looks cool.
Yeah. And our friends at Write Notepads and company released a new. Two new things, a new product and a new sort of line of products called the Test Kitchen, where they're going to put out interesting new things to sort of test them and see if people like them, if people want to use them, people want to buy them. And the current thing is a series of writing tablets. Did you get to check these out when you were at the pen show, Brad?
Yeah. So the Baltimore on we were talking about earlier was none other than Chris Roth from, From Right. Notepads. And I'll just say I love that guy. Like, I'm glad I finally got to meet him. We've talked online for years. He's, he's just a treasure. Like, he's just absolutely everything any human being could hope to be all in one nice, neat package. Nice neat, fluffy hair package. But yeah, he was a rad dude, but he was, he is so proud of these pads because of the, the, I guess you would call it the fineness of the letterpress stamping he could get on these pads. They were, they were awesome. What do you think about them?
I love them.
They put a magnifying glass on the table.
Yeah.
So you could check out how detailed they were.
I, I feel like I wasn't there seeing these, but like with, with Chris, I mean, as far as notebook makers go, he's a lifer, you know? Like, I feel like he is one who is, I mean his family does it. It's just like in him, like he has to do it. And so I always, anything new that comes out, I'm always super excited to see it because he is just dedicated to this and he's, he's impassioned by this. Like, you know, I mean like nothing else. So I, I'm always excited because I know that he's never gonna do things and nothing's gonna be half assed with him. Yeah, he's, he's gonna, he's gonna take things super seriously. And we know from kind of background or like behind the scenes info that there are times where he has an idea and he tries it out and he's like, this isn't good enough. I gotta try it again. I gotta do it again. I gotta do it. Gotta, gotta get it right. So I can't wait.
Yeah. There was a season that came out late because they scrapped the idea. Yeah, yeah, but. So these are. These are 30 sheets of really, really heavy paper with nothing on them but a letterpressed image at the top. So they had stuff like a ship pineapple, a blowfish. I remember the other ones I bought, the raven elephant. There wasn't. Yeah, the elephant one was really cool. I should have bought, like, a pile of these for everybody I knew, but I didn't think of it, and I was lazy. I brought a small bag.
But, yeah, he. But he was so proud of those. Like, I was flipping through them and he was talking to someone else. He's like, pick up the magnifying glass. I thought he was gonna, like, punch me. I'm like, okay, I'll check it out. And so he's, like, really proud of him, and he should be. They were awesome. They, like, the detail on them was. Was amazing.
I'll throw a chorus light bottle at you.
I can't. Oh, gosh, I can't wait. When are these gonna be available?
Well, these aren't on the website yet, but I've been talking to Chris today and yesterday, so he's gonna try to get us a link that'll be, I think, just on the podcast, hopefully, so that folks can go on and order them, because they're really nice. Like, order them so that they'll be inspired to make more. Also, it would look really cool with the logo of a certain podcast at the top. So we'll see what we can do about that.
The penatic.com.
totally.
I can see us featuring Andy and Mike. So I got to meet a certain Mr. Brad Dowdy last weekend again, which was awesome. And did. Did I put the picture of the wopex on Instagram?
I don't remember.
I should.
Do I have a picture of it on Instagram? I may not either.
I. I thought.
It seems like I did. I know I took several pictures of it, but I can't remember. I think. Yep, I think you did. I don't know. I can't remember.
So I wore a fleece vest because I thought I'd fit in at the pen show, but it was not the right color. Like, three people, like, actually beat me up on my way to the bathroom. You're that pencil guy. And they got me.
Yeah.
Everybody was super nice. The hotel was nice. The bar had.
If only you can sharpen a wopex for protection, but it's just impossible.
I had a keychain sharpener that sharpens them perfectly in my pocket.
That's a myth.
But see, they were all looking for ink refills, and they didn't think, oh, I'll ask him.
That's right.
I spent, like, most of the day in the corner anyway talking to the folks from. Right. Notepads. I got them to occupy the table a few times while they went to go potty. I stole a lot of money and a lot of notebooks. You think I'm kidding?
Yeah.
So, I mean, so for folks that weren't there a few years ago, they had it at, you know, one of those crappy airport hotels. And, you know, crappy airport hotels in Baltimore are pretty crappy. So this was right next to the baseball stadium, really close to Harbor Place and the harbor Fort McHenry. Like, you know, all the stuff that makes Baltimore not the Wire. Well, a lot of the stuff that makes Baltimore not the Wire. So that was cool. If they have it there again, that would be super awesome. They had it. They had decent coffee there. That was.
They actually did. I totally agree with that.
They had Sam Adams cold snap on tap. That was also a nice surprise. Yeah, I hope they do it there again next year. I would definitely go again. So.
I feel like I'm hearing your sips in HD right now, Johnny. I just, like, I'm really enjoying that.
Yeah, you know what? It's Perrier. It's not even anything special. So we mentioned earlier that Mr. Dowdy has been. Correct me if I'm wrong, you've been on sort of a graphite kick lately.
Yeah, no doubt.
Like, I keep seeing black wings in your IG feed.
Yeah.
And that's, like, that's the least of my problems these days. So, yeah, it's become a full fledged thing. There's no doubt about it.
All right, then. We've got you on record.
Yeah. Because I have to with having you on here, Brad. I mean, I'm a pencil person. Obviously, people know me as being interested in pencils. But I would not be here if it wasn't for your podcast and listening to your podcast. Because I remember I was teaching middle school and I was grading papers. I think one of my original instincts to, like, finding nicer pens was like, I need to make grading papers more interesting. And I remember, like, looking for nice pens and then, like, ended up on your pad, your website, and then ended up with your podcast and listened to it for a year or something. And that was what eventually got me to asking Johnny and Andy if they wanted to do something like this. And because eventually, like, pencils became, like, a bigger thing for me and just like kind of blew up and I. Yeah. And it was. And I remember and I. Your. Your own progression of going from the gel pens and fine point gel pens to say and saying like, never fountain pens.
Right.
And then getting to fountain pens, then being like, pencils don't make sense and then getting the pencils, which I, I always love, like listening to the pen act. I always love that you're willing to change your mind and you're willing to try new things and be like, actually, this is awesome and I was wrong before. Or actually, like, you, if you. If you look at it this way, is actually really great. And that's a really admirable thing that I think a lot of people, or just the average person within this field, like, you find or within this field of interest, you. You find the thing you like and you stick to it. But you're. You seem to be always searching for something new and in a good way, not just because you're like trying to. Johnny, stop. Hang on. Grown ups are talking right now. Johnny. So I just wanted to say that, that like, I mean, erasable would be much different or may not even exist. I don't know. If you hadn't been doing what you're doing. So. And just the fact that you're. You're here and you're. You're always kind of like looking for something new and discovering new things. It's just like, really cool.
Yeah. And I just wanted to say that. And now I take notes about a podcast about pencils. Like, oh, I need to go check out this pencil. So thank you guys for doing what you do and opening up this who world. I probably wouldn't be this far down the rabbit hole without you guys, like, pointing me in the right direction and talking about those things. You know, I think we all can learn from, you know, someone who's gone on that little exploration, even something as silly as a pen or a pencil to figure out, hey, what are the good things out there? What works best for me, what doesn't, what might work for someone else. And I mean, that's how the pen addict started was just me trying to figure out what's best for me. And then, you know, it just kind of branched out from there. You know, I didn't think fountain pens would ever be a thing. Like, I was. There was a way higher percent chance that wooden pencils would be a win and fountain pens would never get used. But as it turns out, with the fountain pens and the pencil thing kind of relates to it you can really customize what your handwriting and your experience is like. So with fountain pens, I discovered, oh, I can write with a really fine point or a fine tip, and I can get it in a cool ink color like a turquoise blue or an orange. And then I can make my handwriting. Mine and pencils are kind of the same thing, you know, even though it's mostly gray, you know, the colors aren't that varied, but you get a style and a feel, and you can tell something's different in your hand and the output's different from one pencil to the next. And then you figure out what works for your writing style, and you kind of latch onto it, and then the next thing you know, you know, we have hundreds of episodes of podcasts about pens and pencils. It's crazy.
So that's the last time that we had had you on, we. We refused to talk about pension. So since then we've talked about pens a little bit and you've talked about pencils. So I rephrase this question. Can you talk for a minute about what drew you to pens and to start, you know, pen addict and your own explorations, like, way back when we started the blog.
Yeah, for sure. First, I want to say I did notice that you did not break out in hives at this show like you did at the DC show when you were first around all of these pens.
I did. I'm really hairy. You couldn't see it.
So it all. It all started off for me, like, when I was a kid and trying to write as tiny as I could. Like, that's all I cared about. All of my writing was small print cursive, you know, drawings. I don't know why. I have no clue why my handwriting was that way, but that's what I did and what I liked. And being an older person, I was growing up in the 80s and going to school, and I didn't have access to all the awesome stuff we have these days, so I was stuck with, like, whatever we could find at the grocery store. Luckily, my grandfather was an artist in his spare time and took his hobby pretty seriously. So he'd take me shopping to, like, art supply stores or the campus bookstore, which was like a magical wonderland for someone looking for really unique writing instruments. And I remember this to this day, you know, going to the LSU bookstore in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and shopping in, like, the engineering section because, you know, back in the day when they're teaching engineering and architecture, they have to sell all those tools in the bookstore. Right? That's the only Place you're not going into Staples, you know, if those things even existed back then, or ordering from Amazon all the things you need for your engineering class. So I got exposed to all these things when I was. When I was young, and it just stuck. I don't know how or why, but it just stuck. I. Growing up in school and in college, I was always very particular. Like, everyone who probably listens to the show can tell the stories of how they're particular about their school supplies. And that carried on into after college when my work life, you know, I would bring my own pens and paper to work and use them at my desk and then take them home at the end of the day because I didn't want anyone stealing my stuff. So we all have that kind of, like, super particular bent on, you know, our stationary love. And so it got to a point where I found, like, a specific pencil, a specific pen at a specific store.
Freudian slip.
Yeah, I. I was hoping you didn't catch that, but, like, like, that was a guarantee they were gonna catch that. So I found the uni ball signo RT in 0.38 millimeters. So, like, my. My holy grail pins at the time were like 0.5 millimeter. Anything, you know, anything fine I could get. And then I saw a 0.38. It's like, wow, this is really cool. So this is like early 2000s, mid 2000s, somewhere around there. So I bought a bunch of them, and then I started running out of them. So I started looking online, and as it turns out that you can get some really crazy stuff from Japan. And I'd already had, like, a blog and, you know, been sharing things online, writing about baseball, of all things, you know, 15 or more years ago, early 2000s. So I always like sharing and, like, communicating online and that sense of community around, like, shared interests and things like that. So I was like, oh, I'm gonna start this pin blog. And, you know, I don't. One thing you can. Couldn't find at the time. And I don't even think I'd found your blog at the time, Johnny, if not, I know I found it shortly thereafter. I started, but there weren't many reviews. Well, there weren't many pen reviews anyway, but there weren't many that, if you could find them that actually showed pictures of what the writing looked like. I said, well, I'm gonna do a blog, and I'm gonna use my handwriting, and I'm gonna write on the page and I'm gonna talk about how the pen works on the page. And that was my thing for like a while. And it just started to, you know, get an audience. In about a year or so, I started getting people like leaving comments and wanting to talk more about another pen or telling me a pen that they like that I should go find. And it just kind of grew from that sharing of information and wanting to discover more and find more and share it with other people. And then it just kind of becomes this cycle of like finding cool things, learning about them, using them, and kind of, you know, spreading that word a little bit. So it's been awesome. And you know, I'm very lucky to say that, you know, I can now do this for a living. Like, you know, 15 years ago I couldn't do this. You know, it would be doing this, you know, having a business online about the thing that you love, you know, that was like, that would get you kicked out of your house, you know, not too many years ago. So, yeah, it's been crazy. It's been a, it's been an awesome ride, that's for sure.
Well, we're definitely glad you're the person who's landed in this position because you're so like, like saying you're so open minded, you're so interested in like the most genuine, genuine way possible. So. Thank you. Eventually get to, I mean, fountain pens. And we, we joke about fountain pens on here a lot, but you get into fountain pens specifically and so it's like, is that being your kind of apex or that being your, your main thing that you're, you're into? What, what do you look for in a pen, generally speaking? And, and maybe if you could sort of tune your response to say like, this is what I look for generally, regardless of what price point you're looking for.
Yes.
What are you, what are you looking for?
So I'll tell, I'll start this off by saying what I don't look for and what kept me away from fountain pens forever, which might change people's minds, is two things about fountain pens kept me away. One, they write like a marker, and two, they're messy. So those two things are like all you need to know to never buy a fountain pen in your life. If you don't want to write a big huge line and you don't want to make a mess all over your hands and your shirt and your desk and those things. Once I realized those things were not true, or at least like very uncommon, then I opened up into this whole world. So what I look for in a fountain pen and it Kind of grow goes across gel pens and pencils too, is like a fine, firm, hard tip of the pen. So the nib on the fountain pen, I like it to be firm and I like it to be fine. I like it to be very comfortable in the hand. You got to have a good balance. You don't run into that too much with pencils, but you can get like some barrel diameter differences. And fountain pens, it's really, really varied. So that is a difficulty coming in blind to it. And then like from, from the price point question, that's one of those things that I've always. Gosh, I don't even know how to say it. Like, I'm not concerned with it, but I don't want to get down the rabbit hole of like spending too much money. Money does not. The more money you spend does not equal a better writing experience. Right. There's definitely diminishing returns, especially in fountain pens. It's a much more expensive hobby to get into. And pencils, but you can get like an exquisite writing fountain pen for between 15 and $30. And that's all you'd never need to spend in your life, you know, except for the ink you would have to keep feeding into it. So. Yeah, you know, I have hit, I've, I've noticed in myself in the past year, I've hit a little bit of a price wall just for my personal, you know, buying of, of pins. So that's something I'm kind of exploring on our podcast here. Probably, you know, starting at the end of last year, going into, you know, probably go through this year, I'll probably be selling a lot more pins than I buy this year. Just trying to refine what I use. You know, pencils, you can kind of, you know, number one, they're cheaper. Number two, when you use them, they're gone. Well, a fountain pen's always around. You can always ink it up with something else. So do I need the actual quantities I have? So to talk about the price is always something that's very interesting to me because I'm a huge proponent of the lower end of the price scale on fountain pens. Even though I use like some high end goods. Right. I just, I feel that's like the most important thing for like me to use, for the audience to realize that you don't have to spend like a crazy amount of money to get a good writing experience with a fountain pen.
Gotcha. I mean, I think about that with the, I mean I'm, I'm probably of anybody in the group or Like Johnny and Andy and I. I'm the most fountain pen friendly, I think, because that's where. Kind of where I started. But. But just I think about that with the TWSBI Eco, I'm like, I don't. And for me, as a super practical fountain pen user, where I'm like, I'm not gonna go for, like, art pieces. I'm not gonna like, I'm. And I've got like, a really strict cutoff for how much I'm gonna spend on this kind of stuff that even just between the TWSBI eco and the TWSBI580. Yep. Or I'm like, I don't understand why anybody would buy the 580.
Right.
With the. With the Eco. That's one of those pens that when I write with, I'm just like, this is amazing. It's such a good pen.
Yeah, yeah. It's one of my personal favorites. It's currently inked right now with, like, you know, all manner of fountain pens. I keep that one inked all the time, which is so nice to write with. But what I was going to say is we found like, a change in the community going out to these pin shows and things like that, that we're not in an age of collectors anymore. We're in an age of users like you and I and Johnny and Andy. We buy the stuff to use it, not to have museum pieces of, you know, every Parker from 1949, you know, with this type of thing, you know, whatever. Like, a lot of the older guard and the pen community have been a little bit slow to embrace the fact that someone wants to purchase a pin from them, put ink in it and write with it. Like, you wouldn't think that would be a thing, but it's absolutely a thing. So we definitely come at it from the aspect of, like, we're gonna use these things and what's the best way to go about it?
Yeah, same thing with pencils on our end.
I mean.
Yeah. I mean, just for sure, it's, you know, wanting to be using these things and. And that it's not all about collecting the. The rarest black wings. But, like, there's. There's a huge variety of things that are available these days that have a. Or that are just of amazing quality that you can get. And the same thing with fountain pens. So. Yeah.
Yeah. So, you know, we hinted earlier that you seem to be making some sort of turn toward reason and common sense and getting pencils. So, you know, you have a couple pens. What was it that made you want to pick up some pencils and start, you know, I don't know why. I don't want to overuse the word serious, but getting serious about pencils.
Yes.
I don't want it to be too blasphemous, but I was always a mechanical pencil fan, and I know that's not really, you know, that's kind of verboten on this show.
Yeah. Sorry, Andy, thank you for listening to a raceful podcast.
So. But what happens is, with mechanical pencils, I could always write fine like I wanted to. And then you just think about, well, there's this wooden pencil over there that's going to be a big, huge line, and it's going to be messy. Does that sound familiar? So I had this transition of, you know, I only want to use this very, very fine micro stuff. And, well, a pencil is not going to solve that problem for me. You know, it's just not going to fit with my handwriting at all. And then I realized, oh, you mean there's sharpeners that can do a better job than the crap I've been using and there's lead that. There's a thing called point retention, or whatever phrase you want to use, where the, you know, graphite core will actually hold its point for longer than, like, the two seconds to snap off the tip when you first, you know, touch the paper. It's like, I didn't realize there were all these things. And so you start experimenting. You start listening to you guys and reading your blogs and following you and go. You pick up on words that kind of register with you. Like, point retention was one that registered with me. I was like, that's a thing. They're not just all smashy graphite pencils that's just gonna make a mess. And it's like, no, you can get something where you can write page after page after page and not sharpen your pencil. I'm like, oh, now I'm interested. Now we're talking. Like, I always knew about lead grades, but, like, I didn't even know. I didn't know what those meant. You know, I didn't know, you know, about the hardness and softness and the scale and. And you know, how that related. So it ended up being. I don't even remember what, like, the kind of. The first pencils I ordered online were. I'd have to think about that some more. But it was definitely something I picked up from Jetpens, some of the, you know, Unis or Mitsubishi's. It might have even been the Tombow Mono one Hundreds, because I couldn't stop looking at those. I think that was a pencil that I bought really, really early. One, because they're beautiful, and two, because the reviews were really, really good. And I think that's kind of the first pencil that I sharpened. And go, oh, I get it now. This is different. This is not the pencil I grew up with. This is not the pencil I found in the desk drawer. This is not a wopex. Like, this is a different animal. And in the end, what drew me to the gel ink pens and the fountain pens and now the pencils is it made my handwriting look good. Like, when you. When you find certain pencils, I have a very particular handwriting style that's all caps and blocky. So, like, I write really well with, like, a secure pigma micron. It's a very fine edge. There's no, like, wiggle in the edge of the line. It's a sharp line. And you can get a really amazing line with some pencils. And that's what hooked me. I was like, oh, okay, look at my handwriting. What's even better than what I'm using now? So that's kind of the path I went down.
There's the theory of the. With pencils. I mean, that's what we learn on. So that our. We've talked about this before, but just that our handwriting is at its best with pencils because that's what we start with as a kid. So when you're learning to write properly and you're learning handwriting and stuff, that you're starting with pencils. And so when you come back to it, that. And this is definitely how it is for me, that I have much more control and things look better when I'm using a pencil because maybe like semi subconsciously, that's just what my brain is used to. Kind of like a muscle memory thing.
Yeah, exactly. And it also helps now that, like, I'm into this, I can keep a sharpener handy. Where before that that might have been a struggle. Right. If I'm out and about or, you know, away from home or, you know, at my work desk and don't have a good sharpener, that was kind of always a hindrance, right. The. The portability of the pencil.
So as you look for kind of like your ideal in fountain pens, which I. Is probably a pretty specific thing, and then you're ideal in pencils. Is there any sort of similarity or difference between those two? Like, are there some common factors that you're looking for with a fountain pen or a pencil?
It's definitely that fine, firm feel. And I'm not always. That's not the most common, like, fountain pen setup. Like, what I like in a fountain pen is a little. It's not extreme, but it's like definitely, you know, down the line a little bit. It's not in the middle ground. It's definitely more of an edge. Use what I like in a fountain pen, and it's a little bit that way in pencils. Although not as much. Like, I'm not way into the H side of the ledger because they do get too light. You know, I do like darkness. If you can find, like the. I'm sure, like every pencil lover would say close to the same thing. If you can find the perfect match of darkness, firmness, and smoothness, well, that's all I'll ever need in a pencil. But, you know, that point retention is really important to me. The darkness, not so much. And in the beginning, I thought smoothness was super important, but that's actually something that doesn't register with me very much. Now if I can hold a good point for, you know, a couple of pages of writing, like, I don't care if it's. If it's smooth and clay feeling or rough and gritty feeling, like, I don't care, you know, as long as my letter shapes remain pretty much the same and I don't have to sharpen too frequently, I'm a happy camper.
Awesome. Have you tried the Faber Castell Castell 9000 line in something like a B2B?
I don't think I have. I'm hesitating because I think I might have one, but I don't think it's not one. I've used to like, kind of really get the feel for it.
Yeah, the Germans do a good job of keeping a pencil sharp, but not having it be scratchy and smeary and then, you know, sometimes a little dark, like Japanese pencils.
I'm writing this down now.
You know, there are certain notebooks that are better for, you know, fountain pens or gel pens or fiber point pens. So when you're using pencils, what's your favorite paper or papers?
Gosh, probably. I mean, the right notepads is the first thing I'll grab. And I like their little ledger books even more so than the pocket notebooks because those are actually more of a strictly pencil paper. The pocket notebooks. I can use any range of my pens, including fountain pens, in with that paper. The ledger notebooks don't have a great fountain pen friendly paper, which makes them damn good for pencils any paper that I know is going to be quick drying with fountain pens is going to be really good. For pencils like Rhodia I don't use I barely use Leuchtturm. I do use some of the Japanese papers like Apica for pencil but I use the NOC notebooks a lot which is a very good paper similar to similar to write and for those who may not know who's that I have
to heard of that.
I I live in our so I own a company called Knock we make pen cases of paper goods.
Yes pitch it.
I I live off of our A5 spiral bound because I'm at a desk a lot and I want a top bound book. So I'm sitting here at this desk at recording this podcast. I have the right notepads in the pine left side of the COVID tucked under my laptop. Right. So you know it's I like a top bound book and the not goods are really kind of a middle middle ground paper that's kind of good for everything. The funny thing Andy asked me back in the beginning of the year he was getting a Tomoe river notebook, one of the Hobonichi's for a planner and he wanted to use pencils in it. And that's generally like a terrible paper for pencils. It's very thin it it like for fountain pens it doesn't dry anytime at all. So I he's like what's a good pencil for those So I grabbed like a whole box full of pencils and I found one that was kind of amazing is the the uni mark sheet HB I was like holy cow. This is like really. This is weird that it's so that it stands out so much on a paper. I would never really think about using pencil on that much. So I don't know. That was a nice random thing. So write notepads is my favorite for pencil that's my go to the NOC A5 pad. I use a bunch I actually don't use pencil much in my field notes I tend to for my field notes I tend to use gel ink and ballpoint and drawing pens. For some reason I rarely use pencils. I don't know why but I guess most of most of them are really good for pencils. But yeah I'll. I'll stick with the right notepads as as the best for pencil.
Awesome.
And it's kind of not even close to be honest but I haven't used as many as many different papers as y' all as y' all have as to test them out for pencils. I certainly enjoy them.
Well, when does the panic reach for a pencil? Like, when. What are the times where you're just like. Like a pencil is the perfect choice for right now. Are there times where ink just won't cut it? Or where, like, you, whatever the scenario is at hand, where you just say pencil is right for this moment. Can you describe those moments?
Yeah, I love sketching with a pencil. So for noc, when we're doing like product design, I'll just sit down with a pad. Here's another paper that's pretty good with pencils is the Studio Neat Pano book. I tend to use that a lot for sketching. And it's a. It can be like a top bound desk pad too. That's why I like it. Yeah, I like sketching because I'm not a very neat sketcher. I'm not, you know, confined to like a single line making a mark. You know, I'm a pencils always moving sketcher. So, you know, if I have a vertical line on the left, you know, it might have like four or five strokes and then, you know, bring it down to the bottom four or five. And that doesn't work as well with a pen, especially a fountain pen. It works well with, like art markers, you know, like the secure Pigma micron. But the pencil is better for that. And I can use a single writing instrument to denote color by how hard I'm pressing. So, you know, if I'm drawing in a zipper, well, I can press down harder and have a nice dark line where the zipper goes. And if I'm drawing an internal pocket, you know, I can dash it and faintly, like, color it in, you know, so it's just barely a light gray on the page. And I'm not having to grab a different pen each time I want to do that. And I almost never do that digitally. I don't. I guess I don't. I don't use digital for very many things if I don't have to, but I know, like using the Apple pencil and different sketch apps and things like that to add line width and variance and color. I just need a pencil and a notepad. And all my best sketches are done in pencil.
I know this is probably a hard question. And then you also have the pencil pack that said CW pencils. But what would you say are your favorite three or five pencils? And why.
So I'm gonna go off the board here because of that pencil pack. I think that's probably to this Day. Those are my favorite pencils. You know, Blackwing 602, Mitsubishi 9850, you know, Cron dash, Swisswood Camel mark sheet. And I'm missing one tombow mono 100. I think I got all six without looking.
Those are.
I mean, those are pretty much my favorite pencils. So what I did, since you asked this question is I went through all my pencils and I picked five more that weren't on the list that I actually really enjoy. You ready for this?
I'm actually excellent. Yeah.
So the first one I picked was actually. Apparently I have a thing for Caran d'. Ache. I. I must. I like the finer pencils. I guess there's something about the feel of a Caran d' Ache pencil that I get. I like the density of their pencils. Like, I don't like a super air lightweight pencil. I don't like pencils with erasers on them that much. But I'm okay with, you know, a non eraser pencil as long as it's got some weight to it. So the CW pencil, black wood. I don't even know the official name of it. The all black CW pencil Enterprise Black on black with the silver dipped end of the pencil. That is awesome. That's one of my favorites. The funny thing is, the next pencil I picked up that I use a lot of, I thought it was a Faber Castell. This is how into pencils I am. I was like. So I got the Caran d' Ash and I've got this Faber Castell. It's going to go good on the list. Weight. That's a Caran d' Ache also. And it's the graph wood, the silver one in hb.
Oh, those are nice.
Yeah, it's. It's got that wider diameter, beautiful dark line. It's darker than the CW pencils. Crown Dash collaboration. That one's really cool. And then good friend of the Erasables, Les sent me a huge pack of pencils that I'm still going through. Like, I have. I've used like three or four of them regularly, so I got to keep going through the rest of them. But the one that stuck, she sent me a Dixon Ticonderoga. I think it's called the stripe. It's like an orange and orange and yellow stripe or orange and light orange stripe. She said. I went back and read her note. She said, this one's made in China and it's better than the Mexican made Ticonderoga. So I thoroughly enjoy this pencil, mostly for looks, but it's got a really great line, too. It's. It's really, really nice. And I haven't tried to hunt those down. Off to see if I can get some more of those because I. Oh, Target.
Target has them.
Okay. Stripey ones.
Yeah.
Okay, cool. Yeah, I'll have to check that out. One of my weird pencils that I use actually kind of regularly is the Mitsubishi 9003H. So I can go up to about. I go up to about a 4H pretty regularly. 2 and 3. 2 and 3. I enjoy. 4 is a little much. The. The Stadler what? The Mars Lumograph 4H. That one's really good. But I do like a two good 2H and a 3H. I use them quite frequently. And like Tim was saying, I don't
know if I've ever used one. So this is that stiff? Yeah.
Yeah. So that's my aesthetic. I wouldn't want to write with it all day, but, like, if I'm taking notes, I will do it. And like, Tim was talking about the Mitsubishi earlier, the stamping on the back. This one, and I think y' all have mentioned this before, this one is made by elaborate process, so it doesn't get much better than that.
There's nothing better than an elaborate process.
And the last one on. On the. On this updated list of pencils I'm using frequently. It's not the Wopex, Johnny.
Damn it.
It's one of your most hated pencils. And which is why I put it on here, because I know I love it and I know Tim loves it. And it's the Palomino Blackwing 56 with a red.
Yes.
Red replacement eraser. That's the only way to travel with this pencil.
Cubs edition.
One of sort of.
Sort of Braves.
Again, sort of Braves edition.
Cubs edition.
And I actually, this is one of the pencils I mess around my knife sharpening with, so I did a bad job on it this time. But I've done some really nice knife sharpening. I'm like, wow, I'm pretty good at this. And this one just came out like a butchered. But I love that pencil. It's fantastic.
I was actually. That makes me want to ask you, as far as the Blackwing volumes editions, what's your favorite that have come?
Oh, gosh.
Is the 56 your favorite or is. No, another one?
I. I think the 211 is better, but I use the 56 more. I don't know why. Something about. So I was. When I was doing. Going through this little exercise tonight, you Know what pencil I don't use is the. The Black Wing Centennial. And that's just like a stunner of a pencil. But I don't know, you can just
send them to me.
I know, I know. I don't know if it's the natural wood that gets me, but the 211 falls in the same category when I use it. I absolutely adore it.
Yeah.
But. Yeah. So the top ones are probably 211, 24 and 56 are probably my favorites recently. Although the 16.2 was.
That's. That's right up there. The 73 has risen to the top of mind, which is for me is a shocker because I. But because the MMX core has not been something I use a lot. But lately, last, I don't know, three weeks and just. I. That texture of the 73, just. I'm smitten with that. Yeah. Just so nice.
So, yeah, it's. It's really, really cool. That's a, That's a great one too. It hadn't.
Nice. Well, so aside from the pencils we've talked about, what are your favorite pencil accessories right now? So like race erasers, sharpeners, maybe a pencil case you'd like to talk about that might be, you know, super useful that we've all seen before, you know a lot about.
So that I need to make some more of.
Yeah. So just, just take, take that any way you wish. But yeah.
So the, the two pencil accessories I use the most are the uni. What is it said the KH20 yet the desk sharpener. That's far and away, my number one most used accessory. It has a long point that's probably 95% as long as the. The classroom friendly sharpener without the tooth marks. So that's. That's my go to go to sharpener. And then the second most popular thing I use are those tin pencil caps. I don't know what they're called, but you know, the little tip protectors. Because I do like to throw my pencils in a bag or a pocket or some type of pen case that may not be made to hold like a bunch of pencils. And I want to make sure that if I'm going somewhere and that's the only pencil I'm taking, I want to make sure it's protected. I buy those. I don't know, they come in little packs of four. I'll buy like three at a time just to have them around because you end up losing them or giving them away or, you know, bending them out of Shape. So I'm a huge, huge fan of those. So I never use a standalone eraser because I just, from coming from pens, I'm just used to scratching out. Like, I don't even use the erasers on the pencils with erasers, you know, very, very sparingly. I just end up scratching out or doing something different. So I appreciate, like a really good eraser. I just never use them and I certainly, like, never pack them with me or, or travel with them. I don't know why. That's just, that's just the thing. I'm just, I just have a habit. Like I'm going fast enough to where, you know, always when I've used a pen, I just scratch it out. So, like, I don't even think to turn the pencil over, much less grab, put the pencil down and grab an eraser sitting to the side. So, yeah.
So, you know, while those three guys were beating me up on my way to the bathroom at the pen show, I got the impression that, that they don't understand pencils. So I guess our last question is, what would you say to people who are into really fancy pens or who are very particular about their pens? What would you say to them to make them want to try pencils?
Everything that you love about your pen, the way it feels, the way it writes, the color of the ink, the size and shape of it. You can find something comparable in a pencil. Pencils are not one stop shopping at the yellow number two. They are highly customizable to your preferences, to your tastes, to your likes, to your dislikes. You can avoid those things. That's what I've found when I have gone shopping for pencils and realized the differences between some of the pencils that I like and dislike and just that you can get an equally as customized writing experience with a $1 pencil as you can with any gel pen, fountain pen, marker, anything on the market. And you should absolutely spend a few bucks to try it out. That's what I always tell people about pens when they were getting the gel pens. Buy three or four of them and you will see they're different than anything you've thought or anything you've been using. And then you'll figure out which one of those four that you like and then you're set. Then you go down that path and you're good to go.
Yeah, I like how you phrase that because, I mean, as someone who's come from fountain pens to pencils eventually and then stuck with pencils, I still use fountain pens pretty often. But Usually when I go through a phase of using fountain pens a lot, I quickly get. Get frustrated by the. The. I don't know, like, the fussiness of it, which some people. I. That sounds negative, but some people like the fussiness of it. No, and that's just. And that's totally fine, but, like, I. I'll use it and I'll, like, have a pen that's misbehaving, and I'll just be like, oh, well, typewriter bell it. I'll put it aside, you know, Put it aside. I just need a pencil. And. And I'm a. I'm not a collector when it comes to pencils, but I'll. I'm attracted towards a certain type of pencil, and it's just so comforting to be able to pull up one of those. That's. That's always going to write. I mean, when you put it down on the paper, it's always going to write, and you're never going to have that issue, which is maybe not as fancy. And maybe for some people, it doesn't scratch that itch of, like, expression or whatever it is that they want. They want it to look a certain way, but it's. I interested in that because, I mean, I've had. Interested in what you say about that, because sometimes fountain pens can be so fussy and, like, so much time, and I just want to pick up a palomino HB and just go for it, just because I know that it's going to sharpen and it's going to write and it's going to be a fun experience and even, like, non fountain pens. Actually, today, oddly enough, I have a. Mike Dudek was one of my favorite people on the planet, for sure. He was so, so thoughtful that when the. The baseball edition of the Retro 51 came out, he texted me. He was like, hey, I have an extra one of these. Are you interested? Absolutely. And I bought it from. I was using it, and then I was writing today, and something seemed off, and I opened up the pen, and the Schmidt refill I had in the middle had, like, burst open inside of it. Son of a. You know, I, like, went to the teacher's lounge and was, like, rinsing it out, and I still, like, right now I have ink all over my hands. It was this, like, super annoying experience. But, like, I still love that pen. I still love that experience. But the. The thing for me, and I swear I'm not trying to corner you into saying anything right now, but, like, with pencils, is that I never have that situation. I never have that point where I'm like, well, I guess this is useful. This thing in my hand right now is useless. I'm going to set it aside. Maybe it's not as glamorous or seductive as writing with a fountain pen, but it's just, just, it's a, it's a utilitarian thing, I guess.
Yeah, yeah. I mean, I can't disagree with that at all. You know, the only, the only hang ups I ever have with pencils is portability. That's the only negative I can ever find about pencils. But there's ways around that. You just got to think about it a little bit. So, you know, it's. Pens can definitely be a hazard to your, to your hands and your, your clothes for sure. More so than pencils which will just wash out. So. But I probably went through, I don't know, probably like a two month period late last year where I didn't use fountain pens at all. Like just. I'd rather use microtope gel ink pens and pencils. But yeah, there's a, there's a pencil out there for everybody. So you just got to find it. Just like pens.
This whole, whole episode has been leading up to that sound bite you just gave us right there. So I'm glad, glad we finally got there. There's our intro. All right, so this episode is going to be about 8 seconds long, but man, it's been good talking to you.
Oh man, it's always a.
Really appreciate this. This has been, this has been fun.
Yeah.
You guys being on.
Absolutely. You guys are great. You know, love to chat anytime. So this has been a blast.
So can you tell folks where to find you on the Internet? As if they probably don't already know.
Sure.
I'm@penaddict.com I'm on Twitter at dowdyism. D O W D Y I S L and you can find all the wares I sling over at NOC Co. No C K co.
Excellent. How about you, Tim?
You can find me on Twitter imwassum and you can find me on Instagram TimothyWassum.
Sweet. So you can find me on Pencil Revolution.com and sometimes on Pensolution on Twitter. And you can find all of us at erasable us. This episode will be erasable us 91. And if you like fun and no fights on the Internet and proof that human beings can be reasonable, you can join our Facebook group@facebook.com groups erasable for we always say this literally 24.7pencil chat, which is super awesome because there are folks from all over the world. And you can check us out on Twitter and instagram@erasablepodcast. And also our regular Facebook page is facebook.com erasablepodcast where we sometimes make announcements. But if you join our Facebook group, you will know everything about the podcast and about the hosts and our drinking habits and what cars we drive and all kinds of stuff like that. You think I'm kidding? So thanks for listening. Yeah, we'll be back next week. I mean, you might see Andy. I don't know. We'll see.
The intro music for the Erasable podcast is graciously provided by this Mountain, a collaborative folk rock band from Johnson City, Tennessee. You can check out their music at www.thismountainband.com. Can taste the days of a long, hot summer.
If I could just count the times
this has happened before.