Editing The Pen Addict 470/transcript (section)

== Drill Log Product ==


'''Myke:''' Yep. Yep. So we put in all that work knowing that the next time we do it, we can do it a lot faster. We went through a lot to get these done. To get these 20 pins done, it took us four months, five months. Yeah. It took a while. So well worth the wait.

'''Brad:''' Talking about waiting. Don't be a drill log boy. So I saw this on Instagram. Big drill log boy. You have five drill log pens?

'''Myke:''' Yeah. So we, this cracks me up. So we talked about drill log obviously a lot because I am obsessed with this product, right? We've, I've been very clear as to why. Like this is a Brad product. This is maybe not a product for everybody. And, you know, to kind of rewind quickly for people who may just be listening for the first time, drill log got in touch. The pins were available only in Japan. So I never went through the routine to, to get one. And I just bided my time and drill log said, Hey, we're going to do a Kickstarter for, you know, other markets so we can sell these outside of Japan. I'm like, okay, great. I can't wait. This is awesome. I love it. And then they were like, well, can we send you, you know, one of our products or our products to check out? And I'm like, yeah, absolutely. You know, they said they want to give me an early look before the Kickstarter. And I said, yeah, please do. Here's my address. They sent me literally one of everything. Like, so I was not expecting this. So not only do I have the upcoming Kickstarter pin, which is just for a singular model, I have the pins that launched with Drillog. You know, there is a, you know, there's the basic classic, which is just kind of a straight, smooth barrel, classic barrel. There's the Mirage barrel, which if we'll put the link into Drillog on the site, this is kind of like the circular cutout barrel. There is a classic spiral barrel, which as you can imagine, is kind of like an exterior spiral twist going on. These are all machined pins, either out of aluminum or stainless steel. And then there's a twin spiral, which has, is a double-ended drill log with a little spiral section in the middle. and then the Kickstarter one is going to be the classic barrel, and then they have like the rainbow of colors, right? Anodization, blue, green, blue, green, yellow. So this is going to be

'''Brad:''' like the cylinder one that's at the bottom of your image, basically. Yes,

'''Myke:''' the cylinder one, and I got the orange one. So this is the amber-orange from the Kickstarter.

'''Brad:''' It's a bit goldy in the image that you posted on Instagram.

'''Myke:''' Yeah, so we'll talk about this until the cows come home, and we've talked about this with spoke and everything. Orange is one of the single hardest anodizations to get color accurate. Okay. This one's pretty good. This is, in my hands, it's more orange, and it always shows up in the pictures more gold than it does. It's hard, not only is it hard to make, it is hard to photograph. So I feel like they executed on the orange, as well as you could for an anodization as someone who has gone through this process before. Okay. So with those pen barrels, you need a pen nib. So that's what Drillog is really all about. It's these metal-engineered dip nibs for fountain pen ink, necessarily. Not necessarily just that, but, you know, any dip type of ink you could use, you know, any type of artist ink, anything you want to have a dip nib for to put the nib in an ink bottle or an ink pot and write on paper. But the difference with these is they are very fine-tipped. So it's a metal tip, and the two tip sizes they make right now are 0.8 millimeter and 0.5 millimeter, and they sent me both of those too. So I have just about every combination of Drillog you could have, and I love them. Okay. For what they are. So I don't know how much I can explain even just on the podcast, but I'll try to do my best. So let's just take out the barrels for right now and just focus on the nibs. So you have a 0.8 and a 0.5. Obviously, the 0.8 is wider. It gives a wider line than the 0.5, and I tested the 0.8 first. It went really well. It's good. It's like a 0.7 to a 1.0 millimeter gel ink line, you know, like that type of width with that line. And the ink, the way the nibs are designed, right, since they're metal, they had to figure out a way for this ink to stay on the nib to give you a good enough writing experience to not have to be constantly dipping back and forth, right? You want to dip the pen and then you want to write a decent amount and then re-dip. Like, that's what it's for. It's not going to, you can't write forever with any dip nib, and they were, but they're designed to hold ink.

'''Myke:''' So what I would do as I was figuring this out, and I did this all on stream, just trying to figure it out with the viewers as we went, that different inks matter, like the type of ink chemistry matters. Oh, yeah. Right? So there's inks that roll off the metal and there's inks that stick to the metal. And we'll put, we need to put a link into Jacob, a food day fan's blog post about this. Okay. And he lists like viscosity and surface tension measurements. I didn't get that detailed because my brain can't comprehend those things.

'''Brad:''' Yeah, I found it. But he discusses

'''Myke:''' how these types of ink properties, how they work on this metal dip nib as opposed to like a glass dip nib. And there's different types of inks that work better. Okay? So that's part of the process.

'''Brad:''' Right.

'''Myke:''' So that was, that's cool. I think that's cool, right? It's, it's, I think with a glass dip nib, it's more, at least from what I've experienced, it's more universal. Like any, I haven't noticed an ink being that much different in the glass dip nib. With the metal nib of the drill log, I do notice a little bit difference. Like, oh, I wrote less lines with this type of ink than I wrote with this different type of ink. Right.

'''Brad:''' So it seems like with some inks, the pen, like the grooves or whatever, kind of hold onto the ink more. It's not, it's not pushing it all through. Is that right? Yes.

'''Myke:''' Yes. So to continue that holding onto the ink point, you can get to a point where there's still ink held on the nib, but it's, let's just, for lack of a better term, it's not flowing. Yeah. From the nib points. So you're writing, you're writing, you're writing, and then all of a sudden it's dry, but you look at the nib and you say, hey, I still see blue all in here. But if you twist the nib, like in a clockwise fashion, it starts to, like gravity starts to pull the ink down into the slots and you just kind of, you can get more lines out of that. Like I, you, I had to figure all this out as I was going. It's not like a glass in the dip nib where it's like you dip it, you write, you're done, you dip it again. This one actually is, it, I mean, it's generally similar, right? The idea is similar, but I could actually get more writing, you know, with just a little turn in my hand as I go because of the way these spirals are cut in here. They're holding the ink, but sometimes they need a little help to get down to the point of the nib. I vastly preferred the 0.5 nib size over the 0.8.

'''Myke:''' That's a me thing, right? That's me wanting to write with a Pilot Hitec C 0.4 millimeter dip nib is what that gets me, which to me, that's like the sexiest thing anyone could ever say to me, right? Like that is what I want when I'm writing. Like I want that. And now I have this metal nib that I can get any ink color in any ink bottle and dip it and write right away with it.

'''Brad:''' What do you think? Did you try the 0.8?

'''Myke:''' Oh yeah, yeah. I tried it a bunch first and it's just, I think that will be the most popular because it puts the most ink on the page.

'''Brad:''' Right.

'''Myke:''' Right. A lot of times dip nibs.

'''Brad:''' You think I could get along with that?

'''Myke:''' Oh yeah. Okay. Easily. You would absolutely get along. You would not, I would not recommend the 0.5 to you.

'''Brad:''' No, no, that wasn't going to happen. I knew that. I knew that going. It's interesting, like this is going to be one of those things where you have to experiment with. But honestly, I feel like the majority of people that would buy this pen, unless it explodes, which it actually has the opportunity to, I think. I think if you're, if you're a pen person, it will be fun to experiment and see what works, you know, like ink wise, like which of the inks that you have are going to work because this is the thing, like we can look at what Jacob is saying and you can see like, you know, the viscosity, who knows the viscosity levels of all the inks that they own? Jacob does. Well, yep.

'''Brad:''' That's why we're going to link that article. Surely this is one of those, this is something that Jacob looked up, right? Like he did, he did. He references that. He was trying it out and was noticing, oh, some inks work better than others. Let me see if I can try and work this out. But you know what I mean? Like, because the ink that you have in the bottles didn't print that information on the bottle. Right. So it's just one of those things where I think it will be a fun thing to play around with and see which inks work, which don't, which provide the right experience. But for me, this, like what I see this pen for, for myself personally, is like, this is the ink testing pen. Yes. Because I, as I said before, I am not a fan of swatching.

'''Myke:''' This was literally coming out of my mouth. You said it correctly. This is an ink testing pen, not an ink swatching pen. They are two different things. Right. So a lot of times, you know, your ink swatches are for bigger, broader applications of ink on a paper. Your ink testing is, well, let me see what this color looks like and a style reminiscent to how I actually write on the page. And that's where these 0.8 and 0.5 tip sizes, you know, I write like the 0.5 tip size. So I'm going to dip this nib into the ink with the 0.5 size and then I see how I write. And I was, I was really, really pleased with the 0.5.

'''Brad:''' How do you clean it in between? You run it under water or something? Is there a quick way to clean it?

'''Myke:''' Just water. So when I was testing them, I just had two bowls of water next to me or you could have like two little containers and I'd basically have a dirty water and a clean water, right? So I'd, you know, I'd go, the first dip would be into the dirty water like that had ink in it before and rinse it in there and that gets, you know, probably 90% of it off and then I'd dip it in the clean water and then I'd wipe it with a paper towel and I specifically wiped it with a shop towel so I wouldn't get fibers on the nib. I would consider using like a microfiber cloth or a fiberless like paper towel. You know, I wouldn't use like a traditional paper towel to that. I don't, I wouldn't want fibers in these grooves at all and it's sharp enough, it's not sharp enough to cut you but I think it's sharp enough to grab some fibers and kind of have some residue there so I thought about that the first time I did it I did it with the paper towel I was like, oh, this probably isn't the best idea let me go grab a different towel to use. so. They don't, I don't know that they have any recommendations but that would be my recommendation and you know, they may add it. Let me get to two downsides, Myke. Okay. The first one is very simple and very obvious. This is expensive, right? This is expensive for a niche product so on the Kickstarter It's going to be between what, like $220 and $280 I think depending on because you have to

'''Brad:''' I was more than I was expecting you to say.

'''Myke:''' Hashtag a Johto, baby. Okay.