Category Archives: Pens

Fast Faster, No Really, Faster

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It’s become clear that I need a business model that involves more than refreshing a website.

Thanks to a regular customer, I discovered that tonight there’d be more Jellyfish inks available from the store where I buy and resell ink. The trouble, is, I couldn’t be there at the time the sales launched.

By the time I managed to get the computer and refresh the page, sales were going so fast for some of the flavors that the three bottles I put in my shopping cart somehow went before I could pay for them. I tried buying a few complete sets but when I went to check out I realized I only had four flavors.

As a result, I ended up buying none, especially as I was doing most of this on spec with no actual buyers lined up. I’m hoping I can pick some up from the actual store, but given that all that happened in only 15 minutes, I don’t have much hope there will be anything available in the store.

That said, any chance to sneak down to the store and look around is time well spent, even if they don’t have any ink. Lately, even their unloved inks (i.e. the flavors they always seem to have in stock) have been selling out.

Stationery of The Year: ISOT 27

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The only thing that interested me was the stapler. The rest made me think I should be a member of the committee.

Every year at the International Stationery & Office Products Fair Tokyo (note: link now getting ready for next year) a select group of five people choose new products for the “Grand Prix” or top products of the year. The two main categories are “Functionality” and “Design”. Last year’s winners included Suito Cleaning Paper and an expensive tape measure.

This year’s nominees, and winners, were, for the most part, unimpressive.

The Lihit Lab standing pen case had potential but suffered from being silicon, which made it slippery. It also requires two hands to use. To open you had to unzip it, then you pushed it on the desk and a center tube  pushed the pens and pencils up.  When you went to close the case, you had to pull the tube down. I told them it would be really cool if I could squeeze it to open it and then squeeze back after standing it up.

The paper products weren’t that interesting. The “Design” Grand Prix winner featured Japanese manuscript paper printed with color unique enough that people apparently use it for wrapping paper. It’s not that useful, though, unless you write manuscripts in Japanese or wrap presents.

The Knoxbrain LUFT is a more traditional sized Traveler’s notebook (no surprise as Knoxbrain is owned by DESIGNPHIL which owns Traveler’s) It uses ring clips which makes it a thin Filofax. It was nice looking but was nothing special.

I liked the white board brush, but it’s more of a specialty item than something useful to the general public.

The lighted hanko/chop is interesting, and I like that all you have to do is touch the bottom section with your finger to turn on the light,but it’s more for people worried about getting things perfect than for the general public.

The ruler pen thing was well made, and reasonably priced, but not something I’d ever need.

I liked the bookends. The colors were great and they had a brushed texture that was cool. I’ll look for them in the future.

My favorite thing was the stapler. It’s made by Max, who also make an impressive small stapler capable of binding 40 pages with no problems. Th award nominee is the size of a thick USB thumb drive and designed to be carried loose in a pencil case. It handles 10-15 pages with only two fingers. I liked it enough I ordered one after I got home.

My only complaint about the small stapler was the name. Never call your product “gimmick” (says the man who calls his blog Mere Blather).

 

Pens Among the Office Supplies

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I was mostly looking for notebooks, and scaring the hell out of the people who make them, but ran into a guy who likes fountain pens and that slowed me down.

Today I was lucky to have the time to head down to Tokyo Big Sight to attend the International Stationery & Office Products Fair Tokyo. I’ll write more posts on this in the future, but today’s story was typical of why I like the pen and stationery community.

First, I made it my mission to track down non-Japanese pens and stationery. I found a number of pen manufacturers from Korea, Taiwan, China and Turkey who all offered interesting pens (one of my favorites featured Japanese ink and Swiss pen tips in Chinese bodies).

However, this year there seemed to be more notebook manufacturers than last year.

It therefore became my job to scare the notebook manufacturers by using my two wettest fountain pens to test the fountain pen friendly nature of their paper. A typical conversation went:

Me: Are these fountain pen friendly?
Victim: Yes, they are.
Me (taking out my Nock Co Sinclair full of pens): Oh, really?
Victim (as I write on the paper): Gasp.

Several of the manufacturers expressed relief when their paper held up–more on that in a future post–and all admitted they were nervous when I started testing. None of them failed horrible, all though some did have minor bleedthrough. Granted, some of them seemed to think I was more professional than I am but no one was upset by the testing.

Note: I realize that, perhaps scaring the hell out of people is not the best way to win friends and influence people, but it did kind of make me a friend. One notebook maker, though, said he was a fan of fountain pens and, sure enough, his notebooks held up well. This, however, led to a long “I’ll show you mine if you show me yours” meeting where we played with each other’s goods, so to speak.

I was impressed that he was interested enough in fountain pens to interrupt his work to try out the ones I was carrying. He also gave me a couple notebooks, including one with a cover and two refills and promised more samples if I was able to show up on Friday.

Still don’t know if I will, but it does have me wondering who else I can get samples from since it’s the last day…

A Brief History of Bad Ideas

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The original bad ideas didn’t have a pen. The second one did but it was more skeptical than bad. Somehow whisky was always involved.

Because most bad ideas start with alcohol and the phrase “Hey, guys, watch this”, and because the whisky was free, I took pictures of a couple bottles of booze at my in-laws’ house and declared that they would cause bad ideas.

Today's bad ideas brought to by Hibiki and Booker's.

A photo posted by DL (@d.e.lively) on

Later, when I was enjoying a sip of whisky at home, I noticed that the nib on my pen was pretty dirty. that prompted a post celebrating dirty pens and whisky in a dirty glass. Bad ideas were implied, but they weren’t called bad ideas.

Eventually I settled on the idea of a glass of whisky and a pen causing the bad ideas.

That lasted for a few posts until I decided to add a notebook.

Since then the posts have been fountain pens, notebooks and whisky. They’ve also been my most popular posts. (My most recent post has 56 likes in only one night.)

Granted, I have mass-produced a lot of them by taking a bunch at one time–which is cheating I suppose and not as much fun as actually drinking that much booze–but I still like a sip of whisky on Friday nights.  (After posing the glass with several pens and notebooks, of course.)

Once I had someone question whether the things in the pictures were the bad ideas. I assured the person they weren’t. Once vodka made a guest appearance.

I’ll keep making the bad ideas. I’ll also keep taking pictures of booze, pens and notebooks.

 

 

The Mystery of the Sharpie Pens

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I bought some pens a while ago and I don’t remember why I wanted them. I can’t even say “It seemed  to be a good idea at the time” because I don’t remember what the idea was.

The pens are Sharpie pens of different shapes and colors. There are the retractable ones and the three pack of many, well three, colors.

These pens are terrific, but why I own them is a mystery.

These pens are terrific, but why I own them is a mystery.

I like the pens. They are fat for cheap pens and the fine tip seems to be sturdy enough that I suspect I won’t mash them into broad tips before the I use up the ink. I like the way they write and they’ve already proven to be useful at the school where I work, but I still don’t understand what I was thinking when I ordered them.

I especially like the nock mechanism on the retractable pens.

I remember having a good reason for ordering them when I ordered them, but that’s all I remember. I do remember, though, getting the notice that they were on the way and then not being able to remember what my grand plan was supposed to be.

I also remember being sober when I ordered them.

I’ve tried searching pen blogs that I frequent for reviews that might trigger memories of what the purchasing trigger was. Unfortunately that hasn’t worked. I’ve even searched the notebooks I was carrying at the time to see if I’d made any notes about them. That hasn’t helped either.

Mind you, this isn’t just changing my mind about them. I’ve ordered products, especially via Kickstarter, that took so long to receive that I wasn’t interested in them anymore when I finally got them. This is different. I don’t remember why I was interested in them.

Maybe it will come back to me some day. And then I’ll order some more and probably forget why.

 

 

The Ten, er Seven, er More, I Would Keep

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For a while I’ve had an idea for a website called, in some form or another, “The Ten I Would Keep”.

The idea is to get people who tend to collect more things than they should to list the 10 items they would keep if they were forced to get rid of most of their collection. They would list the items and write a short blurb explaining why each was staying. (They’d also post pictures because free media.)

By doing so, my feeble theory goes, they would figure out the things they really liked and/or cared about and shed the rest.

The next goal would be to rank the ten they would keep in order to adopt a “one in one out” policy for the 10 that are left.

In my case, at least with pens, I’ve tried to reduce it to seven I would keep with three on the bubble. Then there’s, well, more on that later.

I started with a pen case that, if I arrange my pens correctly, can hold seven pens. The case is the Sinclair from the Atlanta-based Nock Co.

The “Sinclair Seven” are the pens I plan to carry around and use regularly. They are different kinds of pens with different colored inks and represent the seven pens I would keep if I had to get rid of all but seven.

Granted, to normal people, seven pens is a lot to carry. However, in a Japanese context, it’s not that many. (More on that in another post.)

I also carry a Nock Co. Lookout which holds the three pens that are on the bubble. If a new one comes in, one of those pens will go out. I don’t get rid of the one that goes out right away, though, as I may not like the new pen.

Where I cheat, though, as if what I just wrote isn’t a cheat, is that I’m running a low volume low margin ink resale business on the side. As such I feel compelled to test the inks so that I can offer swatches and writing samples for potential customers. Because of this, I have four pens that count as one pen because they are used as testing pens. This “one pen”, like the pen I use for marking exams, exists outside the “Ten I Would Keep”.

At least for now.

 

 

Tactile Turn Gist Fountain Pen–Initial Impressions

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The Tactile Turn Gist is an odd pen. Part of it looks new. Part of it looks used. Some it is rough and I had to put grease on the grinding.

I won, for various complicated reasons, a Tactile Turn Shaker after donating money to a veterans’ charity. I liked the pen so much that I bought the larger “Mover” version. Both pens quickly entered my daily use rotation both at work and at home.

Tactile Turn’s signature technique is to grind a spiral texture where the fingers grip the pen. It looks cool and provides a good grip.

When the Kickstarter for Tactile Turn’s first fountain pen launched, I couldn’t resist and ordered one. I chose the version with a polycarbonate body and zirconium grip section and finial because I thought it balanced looks and price.

The Gist on a Rhodia notepad.

The Gist on a Rhodia notepad. Note how the body is shinier than the cap. 

Because the Kickstarter was popular, there were some delays, especially when equipment started breaking and suppliers stopped supplying promptly.

When i finally received the pen my reaction was a mix of “that’s cool” and “hmm, that’s peculiar”. The machined polycarbonate cap and body have different looks. The body looks polished and shiny whilst the cap looks flat, as if it hadn’t been polished before being assembled and shipped out.

 

The two looks of the two parts of the pen.

The two looks of the two parts of the pen.

This is a small thing, and it definitely means I won’t be afraid to use it, but I usually prefer to rough up my own pens rather than having them pre-roughed.

The gold bock nib is pretty good, but I had to straighten the tines slightly.

I thought it might be a bit small, but it’s a comfortable size. Unposted it’s 4.64 inches (117.8 mm). With the cap posted it’s 6.1 inches (155 mm). The cap posts solidly and the pen is light enough it comfortable to use.

The zirconium looks great but makes me wish the pen had a black steel nib rather than a gold nib. The zirconium section is grippy and easy to use.

The Bock nib and the zirconium section and finial.

The Bock nib and the zirconium section and finial.

My only complaints, thus far, are that the threads for the cap are rough. I had to slather some silicon grease on them to smooth them out and eliminate most of the grinding sound.

For a first attempt at a fountain pen, it’s a valiant effort, but I’ll need to use it some more before I can give it a proper review.

2015 LE Edison Mina Extended–First Impressions

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In Nathaniel Hawthorne’s story “The Birth-Mark“, the protagonist, Aylmer, marries the beautiful Georgiana. She is perfect in every way except for a hand shaped birthmark on her face. (Body 10/personality 10/face 9.9). Aylmer obsesses over this one flaw and that ruins his perception of the rest of Georgiana.

That’s kind of how I feel about the Edison Mina Extended. It’s beautiful and elegant. It just has a scrawny neck and that ruins my perception of it.

The pen is the 2015 Limited Edition version of the Mina and is made from a gorgeous Denim Ebonite that won’t be available again for one year. Ebonite (hard rubber) is one of my favorite pen materials as it has a warmth to it that other pen materials don’t.

The pen is about 5.8 inches long when capped and 5.03 inches long when uncapped. This makes it slightly shorter than the regular Mina as, in order to add the production number to the finial, Edison Pens had to flatten the Mina’s normal rounded ends.

The Edison Mina Extended. You can see the production number and slightly flared end on the cap.

The Edison Mina Extended. You can see the production number and slightly flared end on the cap.

The pen is slightly flared at the ends which reminds me of the special pens expert Pen Spinners use (often in my class; long story). Edison also included a new style of nib, which, unfortunately, may be the cause of the fatal flaw. (Note: I’m terrible at pen spinning and have therefore never attempted to spin this pen, although the temptation is there…)

My biggest complaint, and it’s very close to being a deal breaker, is that to get the flare and the new nib style the pen is left with a surprisingly small section down near the nib. If I’m measuring it correctly it is only 8.4 millimeters, which is only 1 millimeter thicker than a woodcase pencil. As a result, I find myself holding it up by the threads.

Although the steel M nib is well tuned and writes well, the pen quickly worked its way into my “back up” pen case and out of the regular rotation.

In “The Birth-Mark” Aylmer’s obsession with Georgiana’s small flaw leads to tragedy. In this case it might lead to an early pen sale.

A close up of the Denim Ebonite.

A close up of the Denim Ebonite.

Remembrance of Ideas Past

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Some of them are crappy ideas, but some of them are worth salvaging. That said, if they were such good ideas, why didn’t I remember them?

Since early May 2014 (in fact, I started May 2, 2014) at the recommendation of a podcaster I listen to regularly, I’ve been making daily lists of ideas. The ideas vary from blog post ideas, to article ideas, to business ideas, to ideas for other people. (Some of which I have passed on to those people.) This lets me test pens and ink (I always record both) and use up my stacks and stacks of inspiration.

The basic rules are that I have to produce at least 10 ideas a day and no single idea can be more than a couple lines in the notebook I’m using. I have to fill the page, which means I often end up with 12 or more ideas. I also have a rule that I have to catch up any days I miss before I can move on with the current day’s ideas. The record is 40 ideas after a record setting four days off.

I  haven’t counted, but I should be somewhere around 7,300 ideas.

I have taken breaks, especially during National Novel Writing Month and exam time at the school where I work. I have, unfortunately, made this a daily habit and not the morning habit I’d originally intended.

Also, there is some repetition of ideas as a good idea manages to resurrect itself a couple of times. (I pay attention to those.) And sometimes an idea gets repeated but transformed each time like the secret message in the Pass the Message game.

I alternate between lists of random ideas and lists focused on one topic (for example, improving smart phones, fountain pens, 10 ways to improve Japanese pen shows, and dealing with clutter).

Where I’ve failed is on mixing and matching the ideas to create new ideas. For example, combine gourmet pizza delivery with gourmet ink to get a service that delivers gourmet inks. You request the blend, we deliver. I wrote that down as idea number 6 on August 22, 2014. (Now, of course, someone else is doing something similar.) For all I know, we both stole it from someone else.

Note: I don’t get annoyed when things like that happen. It tells me I’ve got some good ideas. I either need to act on them or just start posting them for others to use. 

The next phase is to implement more of the blending and mixing. I’ve decided to dedicate Sundays to doing nothing but pulling random ideas out of the old notebooks and playing with them to see what I can make from them. That’s how I discovered the one that came true and that I’d passed the two year anniversary.

There’s still the problem of storage of all the old notebooks. I’ll have to come up with some ideas for dealing with those.

 

TWSBI ECO Clear–Initial Impressions

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I thought the TWSBI ECO looked clunky until I couldn’t see it clearly. That’s when I ordered it. After using it for only a few days, I’m ready to declare it the best “next step” fountain pen available. (More on that later.)

The initial TWSBI ECO’s had white or black caps that, because of the hexagonal design of the cap, seemed heavy. Although they were released at the end of last year I put off buying one hoping for better colors.

Then, recently, TWSBI released the ECO Clear. It has a clear cap and piston nob and if it weren’t for the piston parts, the feed and the translucent inner cap, it would be nearly invisible. Well, at least until ink was added.

The TWSBI ECO clear.

The TWSBI ECO clear. I’m not a big fan of the plastic disk finial as it crosses the line between being and looking cheap.

I bought a version with a fine nib and I’ve rarely been this impressed with a nib on the first use, especially a steel one. It isn’t scratchy at all and thus far has worked well on copy paper, Tomoe River paper, Rhodia paper and an onion skin notebook.

Unposted the pen is 5.2 inches (13.1 cm) long and weighs 3 ounces. Even posted (which makes it 6.3 inches  /16.1 cm long) it’s still comfortable to use. The end has a rubber O-ring that helps the cap snap into place and holds it steady.

Even beyond my initial testing, I already find myself looking for excuses to work it into my daily rotation. The section is a bit small towards the tip of the pen, but it’s well tapered and comfortable to use.

It might be a bit big for people with small hands but I think people ready to take the next step from cheaper fountain pens to slightly more upscale fountain pens will like this. At this point, I think it would also make an excellent first fountain pen.

A closer up look at the section and cheap plastic finial.

A closer up look at the section and cheap plastic finial.

The only problems I’m having are that I’m 50/50 with TWSBI fountain pens. I have one that’s worked perfectly out of the box, and a second that’s had three parts break and have to be replaced. This one is supposed to be designed to prevent some of the cracking problems but we’ll see how it holds up over the next six months or so of regular use.