The Pen Addict Podcast: Episode 644 - Savage Pencil Reviews

*Paper Mate Sharpwriter, the Bic Cristal of the mechanical pencil world.*

Myke is back, and brought with him a huge life announcement! We also recap last week’s gift guide, land on opposite sides of what Inkvent inks should represent, and dig into Adam Savage’s latest pencil video.

Show Notes & Download Links

This episode of The Pen Addict is sponsored by:

Squarespace: Save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain using code PENADDICT.

Factor: Healthy, fully-prepared food delivered to your door.

Enigma Stationery: Shop online with code PENADDICT24 for a free gift and discounted shipping on orders of $50 or more.

Posted on December 13, 2024 by Brad Dowdy and filed under Podcast.

Lessons Learned from Valentina

(Kimberly (she/her) took the express train down the fountain pen/stationery rabbit hole and doesn't want to be rescued. She can be found on Instagram @allthehobbies because there really are many, many hobbies!.)

As you may recall, I have been working on my Italian by copying/transcribing books. I started copying a pocket Italian Grammar book, which sounds exactly as fun as you think. Fortunately, I found the Italian children’s books that I bought years ago and decided I would read/copy one of them. After all, I was also copying The Little Prince (“TLP”, which is also a children’s book,) so why not an Italian one?

The book I picked is called “Un amico Internet per Valentina” (or “an Internet friend for Valentina) by Angelo Petrosino. Valentina is a 10 year old Italian girl who goes to elementary school, where she ends up getting a penpal from England and also an Internet penpal (yes, her father is nervous about this but it’s a nice kids book, not my usual murder mystery, lol).

*This is the second book in the series (I’m waiting for the first book to arrive.)*

With illustrations, large fonts, and even large chapter titles, the book was under 200 pages. So I picked an A5 Nebula Casual Note spiral notebook with 120 pages of their 90 gsm white paper. I was going to take a gamble and hope that would fit, but no big deal if it didn’t. (Spoiler: it fits, phew!)

*This is the Nebula Casual Note. I like the minimalist starry decoration in the upper right corner.*

I hadn’t used the Nebula paper in a few years so it was a nice change of pace from the usual Rhodia, Leuchtturm or Tomoe River. It has a bit of texture, almost like Midori Cotton. I used saturated inks, shimmer inks, and shading inks and had no problems with feathering or bleedthrough. Overall, I enjoyed using this paper, but I quickly discovered that I did not like side-bound spiral notebooks. As a right hander, I had no problems when writing on the right side of the page, but flip to the other side and omg, my hand would dig into the coils as soon as I got to the right half of the page.

*Written with Rohrer & Klingner Solferino, which has a slight golden sheen which you can see here.*

*I wonder if it would be better or worse if it was a spiral (single) versus the double coil.*

Unlike TLP, this is a physical book, which required me to use a book stand because (1) I don’t have room on my desk to lay out a book AND write in my notebook, and (2) so it’s easier to read when it’s propped up. Thankfully, I had bought a bookstand for this project - you can find it at The Gentleman Stationer. I love that it is foldable and has a low profile so it can sit flat on my desk without taking up a lot of room. You can also adjust it to a couple different angles, and use it with books/notepads/etc of varying thicknesses.

*This metal book stand lays pretty flat when collapsed.*

*You can see the 3 notches on the bottom of the stand which holds your book at different angles.*

While I still prefer transcribing an eBook versus a paper book because I can change the font size and I don’t have to worry about schlepping a book around, I enjoyed the tactile sensation of flipping a paper book and eyeballing how much of the book or chapter is left (without relying on my Kindle app’s stats). It’s just a nice change of pace for me, since I do all my reading on the Kindle app.

With TLP, I (1) wrote almost all of it in cursive, (2) used a different pen/ink combination per page, and (3) only wrote on one side of the page because I was using a 52 gsm Tomoe River notebook. With Valentina, I changed it all up!

For starters, I wanted to do something a little different than the cursive writing I used in TLP, but I couldn’t decide on cursive versus print. And we know that the answer is always “both” whenever there’s a choice to be made! So I chose a style that is a slightly different style of my usual cursive as well as simple print, which I don’t usually use.

*I asked IG folks which one they preferred and most of them said cursive.*

Since I wasn’t planning on making IG posts for every page like I did with TLP, I decided to use that style for a whole chapter, regardless of how many pages it took. It was nice to get a few pages of practice, which really helped with improving my consistency, especially for print, which I don’t do nearly as much as cursive.

*I wrote ~2-3 pages per chapter before switching styles.*

This last one, it’s a doozy, at least for me. Ready for this? I wrote with one pen in this notebook until the pen was empty. I didn’t use the pen for any other purpose. Not only that, I decided to pick higher capacity pens too! No Kaweco mini-converters here! For someone who routinely has 48 inked pens in order to switch it up multiple times a day, doing this was pretty extreme! I know a lot of folks regularly write with one pen until it’s empty but not me! I left these pens at home so they wouldn’t accidentally get used while at pen meetups or in my regular day-to-day writing. I was also kind of curious how many pages it would take to empty out a pen, so it was a fun experiment!

*I used the following pens to copy the book: Nahvalur Original Plus, Pilot Custom 823, TWSBI Eco-T, Pelikan M205 and Leonardo Momento Magico (which isn’t empty yet.)*

*I didn’t think to make this log until the third pen, which is why the first two entries are also in purple.*

I had no idea how many pages it would take to write a pen dry from start to finish, but it took as few as 13 pages with the Pelikan to 34 pages with the TWSBI Eco-T. In all cases, I filled the pens to as much as they can be filled, including expelling air from the vac fillers to top them up. Thank goodness Fountain Pen Companion made it easy for me to track all of this!

Here are some stats:

199 physical pages (includes pictures, etc) -> 97 handwritten A5 pages
5 high capacity pens used (the 5th pen still has ~10 pages of ink left)
- Nahvalur Original Plus, Medium nib - 22 pages
- Pilot Custom 823, Fine Medium - 26 pages - I would have expected to get more pages due to the FM nib.
- TWSBI Eco -T, Medium - 34 pages - Wow, I am shocked I got more out of this pen than the 823!
- Pelikan M205, Medium - 13 pages - I know it’s a smaller pen than the others but I didn’t expect it to have that much less writing capacity.
- Leonardo Momento Magico, Medium nib - 11 pages so far. I’m pretty sure there’s another 10-20 pages worth of ink left.
4-5 months spent on this project, writing 4-5 times per week, 1-3 pages per session.

I’m no language expert or student of linguistics but I feel like transcribing a book in a foreign language has really improved my Italian. For starters, you can only really read and remember a few words at a time before writing them down. This makes it much easier to figure out what I was reading. Whereas, if I tried to read the book (and not copy it), I would naturally try to read it at the same pace as English and end up not understanding what I’m reading because my brain can’t process it at that faster rate. I’m also “speaking” the words in my head as I write them, which also engages a different part of the brain than just reading the words or writing them on paper.

When encountering unfamiliar words, I had heard and read that it is better to guess at the meaning than it is to bust out a dictionary to understand every single word. Every now and then, an unknown word or two would be so critical that I couldn’t figure out the gist without looking it up. Not gonna lie, Google Translate’s camera feature came in clutch a few times. But for the most part, I was able to follow along and understand the story even though I didn’t know every word. In the end, I would say I understood 75% or more of the text, which I think is pretty good, even if it is a book geared towards 5th graders!

*Screenshot of the book (left side) and Google Translate (with Google Lens) in action on the right.*

I still have another 20 or so pages left in this notebook AND the Leonardo Momento Magico is still inked up, so I’m excited to pick up another Valentina book and keep on reading, writing, and learning!

*Next up, “Gli Amici di Valentina” (Valentina’s Friends)!*

Enjoy reading The Pen Addict? Then consider becoming a member to receive additional weekly content, giveaways, and discounts in The Pen Addict shop. Plus, you support me and the site directly, for which I am very grateful.

Membership starts at just $5/month, with a discounted annual option available. To find out more about membership click here and join us!

Sakura Gelly Roll Retractable Metal Effects Gel Pen Review

(Sarah Read is an author, editor, yarn artist, and pen/paper/ink addict. You can find more about her at her website and on Twitter. And her latest book, The Atropine Tree, is now available!)

My love for Gelly Roll gel pens is well documented. One of my only downsides to these, the millennial gateway drug to Pen Addict bliss, is that they are not at all fidgety. The result being that I used to fidget with the cap-clips, bending, twisting, breaking them off. My high school pen case was full of busted-clip Gellies.

But these ones? THEY CLICK. Clicky gel pens! All the fun of the smooth Gelly Roll writing experience, plus the fun of a fidgety click mechanism.

The Sakura Metal Effects pens have the classic Gelly Roll plastic body, with the classic silver branding written on the side. It's a cloudy, see-though plastic that allows you to see the level of ink inside the pen, so you know when you're running low. The caps are rounded plastic domes in the color of the ink inside, so you can always easily tell what color you're reaching for. The clips are made of the same plastic as the cap and also have a rounded oval shape. The clips are quite shallow. They aren't separated from the cap at all, so they don't really work. Which is why I never felt too guilty about snapping them off.

The whole cap is the click mechanism, so when you press down on the cap, the spring-loaded tip deploys at the bottom end. It's a smooth click--satisfying, but not too clunky.

These pens were built for a good time, not a long time. They aren't particularly durable, the ink runs out very quickly, and while there are refills that technically fit the pen's body, they aren't the Gelly Roll refills, so why on earth would you do that.

Because it's the ink that makes these fun, when it comes down to it.

Sakura Gelly Roll Retractable Metal Effects Gel Pen Tip

Sakura Gelly Roll gel ink is known for its smooth, saturated quality. They aren't great for fine line writing. They have a standard .8mm tip, and the gel ink flows like a firehose. Which makes it perfect for showing off wild ink qualities--the other thing they're known for. This particular set is metallic, but you can also get glitter and other effects. The metallics work on black paper as well, though they're delightfully shiny on white paper. Photographing the metallic effect is tricky, so you'll have to take my word for it that the shine is pronounced and super fun. The ink is also archival quality, fade-proof, and acid-free, so these are perfect for scrapbooking or artwork.

This six-color set costs $14.50 at JetPens, and you can also get them in 3-color or 10-color sets, or as individual pens. Individual pens run at about $2.92. I would probably say that's a little on the pricey side, if I wasn't blinded by nostalgia and glitter.

As it is, I'm taking meeting notes like it's 1999.

(JetPens provided this product at no charge to The Pen Addict for review purposes.)

Membership starts at just $5/month, with a discounted annual option available. To find out more about membership click here and join us!