Editing The Pen Addict 142/transcript (section)

== Fountain Pen Inks ==


'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. So he did this really cool infographic laying out different fountain pen inks. And we'll have that in the show notes. But it basically categorized types of inks from waterproof, water-resistant, which there's obviously a difference, pigmented, permanent, lubrication.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' There's even freeze-resistant, fluorescent, fast-drying ink. So if you have some ink questions and you're kind of new to fountain pens and you're trying to determine, okay, I'm going to buy my first bottle of ink. What are the things that are important to me? It's like when I review inks, like Myke was talking about how my Fuyugaki ink review was really short. It's because I don't focus on a lot of the real deep-down characteristics of an ink. Does it look good and does it perform good? That's what I care about. But if you care about waterproofness, go look at this infographic. If you care about a pigmented ink, if you're an artist, something that's not going to wash away when you're using other materials over this ink, go look at this infographic. If you want a permanent ink or if you need an ink that's fast-drying, if you're left-handed, go look at this infographic. It's super helpful.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' And it gives you a good kind of guideline to buy those inks that are going to best suit your needs. So thanks to Ron for creating that. And, well, we should have shared that sooner. All right. A few more links, Myke. And one of them is on keeping a laboratory notebook. Now that sounds like super generic and uninteresting. But it's really one of the most interesting things that pen addicts can kind of get involved with because official laboratory notebooks are very – what's the word? They have to be – follow a lot of guidelines, if you will. They have to be permanent. They have to be archival. A lot of people's lab notes from like official like scientific labs have to go on the record, right? They're official. They're considered official documentation. So if you're working in the lab and you spill something on your notebook, is the ink going to stay true in the notebook? Are you going to still be able to read the information? This is a very, very important thing for those who work in a laboratory. And we've done some stuff on this before in blog posts on the pen addict. I've actually had someone who worked in a lab go through a bunch of lab tests and ink tests and paper tests to try to figure out what inks work best with different solvents that you'd find in a lab that might spill on your paper or spill on your notebook so you can continue to read your notes. And this is a really, really deep dive into that. And honestly, it's almost too much to talk about in this episode, but it's extremely long and extremely detailed. And they come down to a lot of conclusions about the types of pens that handle the different type of solvents in the lab. And it was an interesting conclusion to which pens perform the best. The Secura Pigma Micron, which is an archival ink, did really, really well. So did the Pentel Hybrid Gel. So did the Uniball Gel RT, which is like the 207. And the RT, which uses Uniball Super Ink technology, making it archival. So you can kind of see the theme here. These companies that tout their inks and their brands as an archival ink, those are the inks that are really lasting through these different solvency tests. So this is a long, long, long, long, long post, which is awesome. So I thought I would throw that in the show notes for everyone to check out. And what's the last thing you've spilled on your notebook that erased your inks?

'''Myke Hurley:''' I don't know if I have.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Coffee spills, coffee spills, whiskey spills, girly drink spills, nothing.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Nothing I can think of recently. I mean, you do know me. I am partial to a girly drink, of course. Yeah, good.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Hey, I'm good with that. We're going to have some in Atlanta for sure. But yeah, I'm not a big spiller of liquids on the notebook. But I am also not in a laboratory setting all day long. So if you're into this type of thing, how many words do you think this post is, Myke? A couple thousand? It's ginormous.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah, it's huge.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Maybe a thousand, maybe a little more. But it's got a really, really huge ink testing sheet on there. So check out if you're really concerned about the permanency of your inks, check out this post. It's really, really cool.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' All right. Guess what we're going to talk about next?

'''Myke Hurley:''' What do we got?