Editing The Pen Addict 107/transcript (section)

== Retro 51 ==


'''Brad Dowdy:''' So like the Pilot Precise, Pilot V-Ball. Actually, your Retro 51 is a liquid ink pen, but it's so superior that it doesn't have these bleeding qualities, which is why we like it so much.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Right.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So something like that, it's a really good writer. So, yeah, I don't know. Maybe you don't have... Liquid ink pens, I think, are probably the least used out of all of these pens. Sure. I think most people these days are using gel or ballpoints or hybrid ballpoints, which we'll talk about later too. Liquid ink pens you rarely see these days, except for people who are in love with the Uniball Vision. Actually, in the UK, I think it's called the Uniball Eye. Have you seen that pen? E-Y-E? E-Y-E?

'''Myke Hurley:''' I think so.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. I think that's what it's called in the UK. It's like if you go to Cult Pens, I think they sell the Uniball Eye, which is similar to Vision. I don't know why they just don't call it the same thing.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Oh, yeah, I know this pen really well. It's extremely popular.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. It's a classic office supply cabinet pen.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah. Yeah.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, I noticed. And another, the Uniball also makes another one. Uniball, God, there's a boxy, one called boxy, and there's one other one called, oh, I'm blanking. It's a classic black barrel with like a little, like these little fins at the top. I can't think of the name. I'll think of it later. All those Uniball rollerball type pens are very popular in offices. At least they were for a long time. So, yeah, the Uniball Vision, Uniball Eye. Actually, the Uniball Vision is one of my least favorite pens, least favorite popular pens that people like, and I really, really dislike that pen just because it writes way too wet, bleeds on everything, and it's just not a really fine line or a really sharp line, which I like, which is why I like most of my pens in this third category, which is gel ink pens. So, their ink is a pigment gel water suspension. You know, you can look it up on Wikipedia or somewhere and just kind of see the components of what a gel ink pen is, but it's a little bit different ink composition in the refill, and what that gives, it gives a really, really bright, bold, vibrant color. It gives a longer dry time, unfortunately, gel ink pens. Since due to the composition of the ink, the ink sits up a little bit on the page for a second longer than like a liquid ink or a ballpoint necessarily, so they can't have a longer dry time. Also, because of that ink composition, people will blow through gel ink refills much faster than they will rollerball and ballpoint ink. So, a general assumption to have is if you need something that's going to last a long time to write with, like if you need to write pages and pages and pages, you're going to run through a gel ink pen faster than you're going to run through some of these other types of pens. So, these are all considerations you have to make. You know, maybe that the writing quality of a gel ink pen outweighs the fact that you're going to have to refill it sooner or use another pen sooner. So, you know, these are all things to take into consideration. But it also has very little bleed and almost no feathering with gel ink pens, which is why I like them. And they tend to, the gel ink pens, what I look for in a good quality pen for me personally, is when I write the line, that the line has sharp edges. Like, I don't like wobbly lines. That's hard to define. I don't know. It's one of those things, I know it when I see it or feel it. The sharpness of the line is the best, I think, in gel ink pens and drawing pens, which we're going to talk about in a second. That makes my handwriting look the best. As opposed to a liquid ink pen, you know, my handwriting looks good. But since that ink tends to spread a little bit, it doesn't make the lines, like the edge of the lettering, as sharp and as clean. Gel ink pens also give you just these huge rainbows of colors. I guess that's with the pigment differentiations these companies can make. I mean, you know, you look at someone like Uniball or Pilot, they have product lines that have 30 different gel ink colors. So that's one reason why they're so popular, is people like to use, you know, other colors besides blue and black. Most of your gel ink pens, they run in a range from 0.5 to 0.7 millimeters. You'll usually find those equally just off the store shelf. And obviously, you know, online you can find them much finer, you know, all the way down to 0.25 millimeter tip sizes than something like the Pilot Hi-Tech C or the Pentel Sleechy, something like that. So gel inks are my personal favorite.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' But I tend to, I don't know, I switch it around a lot. You know, I like the Rollerball and the Retro 51. You know, one of the gel ink pens that I've been liking a lot recently is the Pilot Juice 0.38 millimeter blue, because that can get it in blue-black ink. So, you know, that's another cool thing about the gel, like I was talking about, the different colors. So, you know, that's something I like. Like, I'd say gel ink pens are probably the most popular these days. I certainly don't have any hard, fast information on that. That's just kind of anecdotal, just by how much people are asking me about particular pens and things like that, where the popularity lies. And it seems to be, I think, gel ink is kind of the most popular ink these days around the world. Now, drawing pens is a completely different animal. They're not necessarily for writing, but I do. I use them for writing because of what I was mentioning before, the sharp lines. This is a very clean, even line you get out of a drawing pen. And what I mean by drawing pen is like a plastic tip or a felt tip pen, like a Secura Pigma Micron or a Sharpie pen or something. You know, you see sometimes these aren't even on the regular pen section. They're like in the art engineering section of, you know, your office supply store. But most of them are liquid ink. And most of them offer some type of archival quality in the ink because they know people are going to be using these for art or some type of project that needs to last a long time. So the ink is going to be, you know, long-lasting. It's not going to fade. You know, and not all the drawing pens offer that. But a lot of them, that's a feature that they offer. The downfall with the drawing pens is they're very fragile. These plastic tips are pliable. If you have a heavy hand, you're going to destroy them at a fast rate. Where, you know, unlike gel ink pens and roller balls and ballpoints, all those have some type of metal tip. Most drawing pens, it's a plastic tip. So you can definitely do some damage. So that makes them expensive, I think, compared to other pens. You know, like on a one-to-one basis, you know, pen-to-pen basis, they're approximately the same price, except you're probably going to throw away the drawing pen quicker than you are in any of your other pens just because the tip will break down faster, maybe even before you drain it of ink. I've certainly had that happen before because I use a lot of them. But it really gives you a control with the pen that you don't have in some of these other pens. That's why I always carry something like the Secura Pigma Micron or that Kuretaki Zig that I've been carrying recently. I just like how the lines look. And a lot of the brands come in many different colors. So, you know, that's something... If you're not doing a lot of writing, but you're doing some very specific writing where it needs to be neat and concise, I consider a drawing pen, depending on what your paper is going to be. That's probably one of the most particular type pens out of this group that we've talked about so far. You just have to have... You have to hit the right variables to be able to be happy with a drawing type pen with a plastic tip.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' The newest type of pen, which I think has come along in probably the past 10, 15 years, is what's called a hybrid ballpoint. And I think it's a completely separate ink category from a traditional ballpoint because the ink performs and behaves completely differently than a standard ballpoint that I don't think they're even in the same category. They're called ballpoints. This is something like a Uniball Jetstream or a Pilot Acroball or a Zebra Sorare. They look like ballpoints. They act like ballpoints. The ink is better, in my opinion, for writing than ballpoints. It's a darker ink. It's a richer ink. They don't smear or smudge like a traditional ballpoint. They're much cleaner, much less messy. But you're not going to get the range of color that you would get with a traditional ballpoint. It's pretty much shading-wise, it's one color. So artists are not going to use something like a Jetstream. They just can't get the work that they need out of that pen to get the coloration that they like. So this is one of the best writing pens. Like students that want a pen to write an essay for an exam that's comfortable, that's smooth, that has a good output, that's not going to make a mess, and the refill is going to last a long time, I recommend hybrid ballpoints all the time, the Jetstream and the Acroball. And they're cost-effective too. They're not overly expensive. They're more expensive than basic ballpoints.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' But, you know, in the big picture, this is like one of the best student pens that I recommend all the time. I get emails a lot from students that write a lot, and we usually end up going, based on their needs and what they're telling me, something like a Uniball Jetstream.