The Grey NATO – 351 – Tactile Turn x TGN, Watch Writing, 3D Printing, Pen Collecting & More With Ed Jelley
Published on Thu, 30 Oct 2025 06:00:00 -0400
Synopsis
In this episode of The Grey NATO podcast, hosts Jason Heaton and James Stacey announce their collaboration with Tactile Turn on a special pen called the Graynado SideClick Pen (CPN1). They discuss the features of this titanium pen which includes orange accents, a special engraving, and their signature orange dazzle camo pattern on the clip. They then interview Ed Jelly, who works with Tactile Turn but is also a watch writer, electronics manufacturing professional, and entrepreneur who recently started a 3D printing business making Apple Watch Ultra cases. The conversation explores Ed's journey from pen enthusiast to watch enthusiast, his role at Tactile Turn, the manufacturing process behind their products, and his personal watch collection. The hosts also discuss their recent travels, with James sharing details about his trip to London for a watch event and a TGN meetup.
Links
Transcript
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| Jason Heaton | Hello and welcome to another episode of The Grey NATO, a loose discussion of travel, adventure, diving, driving, gear, and most certainly watches. This is episode 351 and it's proudly brought to you by the always growing TGN supporter crew. We thank you all so much for your continued support. And if you'd like to support the show, please visit thegreynato.com for more details. My name is Jason Heaton, and I'm joined as ever by my friend and co-host, James Stacey. James, welcome back to this side of the pond. It sounded like it was a good trip. |
| James Stacey | Great trip, and back to an exciting episode. After weeks, maybe even more, of me teasing stuff, getting the dates wrong, not aligning correctly with the production schedule of a very cool product, we can finally take the wraps off. our collaboration with Tactile Turn, the Graynado SideClick Pen, aka the CPN1, is now live. Jason, you want to walk people through it, or maybe the design of it, and then we can get to the specs? I don't know. I'm excited about this, and you've had a chance to actually kind of have it in hand. |
| Jason Heaton | Yeah, me too. And I think, you know, we've kind of gone back and forth and I think, you know, Tactile Turn has been such a great partner in terms of kind of shepherding us through the design and production process and kind of the packaging and getting this thing off the ground. And we couldn't be more thrilled. I got a prototype a few weeks ago and I've been playing with it. It's just, it's pretty spectacular. So this is, you know, we've talked about Tactile Turn in the past. They're based out of Dallas, Texas. They do all of the production of everything except the springs. You'll hear in a minute here from Ed Jelly, our guest today, who works with Tactile Turn. Yeah, so this is, it's a stonewashed titanium barrel pen with the side click action that Tactile Turn's known for. And we've incorporated a few TGN specific kind of hints or cues on it, including some orange accents and a kind of a bit of an engraving that says CPN1 on the barrel. And then the orange dazzled camo pattern that we used on the, the, the crew watch number one pen packaging that was designed by Evan at Stay Calm Industries that were, it's kind of become a bit of a trademark for us. And we talk about it a bit with Ed, but it's, it's become kind of a fun little kind of visual cue for us. And it takes a pilot G2 0.7 millimeter ink refill. So this is a very standard commonly found uh ink refill that according to um ed in a bit you'll hear is uh one of the most common uh ink refills in the world so you shouldn't have any problem refilling this in the future and it's a product that you know you could use for for years to come and we've got our pre-order is open now we opened it up to our slack crew last week and it's open through november 30th and and according to tactile turn they're starting to kind of they're going to start to fulfill orders uh in the very near future so you don't have to wait too long to get these um Price is $139 and it's ordered directly through the Tactile Turn website. |
| James Stacey | Yeah, we'll put the link right in the show notes. I actually have to jump on ordering some special things we're going to throw in the boxes that I'm pretty excited about. Speaking of the camo pattern. But yeah, I'm super excited about this. I'm a big user of their pens. We get into this with Ed in a few minutes when he's on the show, but we've known Ed for a long time. And then with Tactile Turn, I've had a couple years to experience their pens. We've definitely talked about it on the show before. And if I'm going to use a pen, this is the option I go with. And they kind of floated the idea back and forth. Hey, do you guys want to do a collab? And I kind of felt like, you know, is the crew, the audience really going to love this idea? So we kind of... teased it or floated a concept out to the Slack and people were all about it. So we went down this road. And then even then, I kind of had an idea of how popular it might be or where I kind of set a line where I would be comfortable with it feeling like a success. And we've hit a multiple of that. So I'm pretty thrilled. I think it's pretty cool. It's definitely a premium product. That's what you're... you're buying and paying for. And don't worry if you don't love a Pilot G2. I can also include in the show notes the reference list of all the other cartridges that work, like all the other inserts that will work with this size of tactile turn pen. You can use a wide range of fairly popular pen inserts if you have a favorite, seeing as we went with sort of their standard size. You know, I love a side click pen. I love the idea of it being in titanium. I think the matte body, the TGN CPN1 printing, and then just to see this camo used again, it just makes me smile. It makes me so happy. I think it's such a cool design and really kind of a fun thing. And to see it on the clip of the pen is just enough of a nod. that would be hard to miss. You know, if it's tucked into a shirt or a pant pocket, you still see the clip, which I think is kind of fun. And then with the orange cap, uh, for the, the button, uh, to kind of extend the pen. Uh, I think it's, I think it's rad. Uh, I'm, I'm pretty happy with it. I think it looks cool. I think it matches the, the watch that we did with CWC quite nicely. And, uh, and I'm, I'm happy with how, how the pre-orders are going so far. So, Check the show notes for that. If you have any questions, by all means, let us know. Either thegraynado at gmail.com or you're more than welcome to hit us up on the Slack as well. But that'll run for just a hair. It'll run for exactly a month from when this episode drops. So we'll be sure to talk about it on future episodes. I got my order in and I'll get it, I believe, over American Thanksgiving. I have a few of them showing up. And I can't tell you how excited I am. This is one that I think is pretty cool because I know it's a really nice thing, but it's also like a forever thing. So if you're in the in the world of maybe using something more than a Bic or, you know, something that comes in a four pack from Staples, nothing against those. They work very well. But if you are in that world of using something more and you're looking for sort of a forever option and like the TGN color spectrum, I think you'd be happy with this one. |
| Jason Heaton | Yeah, I agree. And as someone who likes kind of a watch that can do different things or has a bit of a fidget spinner, like a bezel or a chronograph that you can click buttons, I think this pen is right up my alley. And I think, you know, it's also, yeah, you said it's a premium product and it is for $139 for a pen, but... it's also more accessible than say, um, the crew watch number one, that was, you know, over a thousand dollars. And I think, you know, for people that maybe, um, vacillated a little bit about spending something on something like that, I think this is, uh, hopefully a little bit of an easier decision. Um, if, if you're into pens and if you're kind of on the fence, it's, uh, it's not too much of an outlay. And I think it's a, it's a product that you'll still have for many, many years and should serve you really well. And it's, uh, it's pretty cool. We're really excited. |
| James Stacey | So hit the show notes for that if you're interested and you have about a month for the pre-order. So we went with a nice long window in the event that anybody wants to kind of hem and haw over the decision. And all right, with that sort of exciting announcement finally off the plate for me, your guy who gets some of these dates and things wrong. I'm back from a trip from London. I'm a little bit jet lagged, but doing okay. Went to bed very early last night. How have you been? |
| Jason Heaton | Yeah, I've been pretty good, you know, just kind of keeping on here. My next big trip is in a couple of weeks out to the Channel Islands, and we can talk more about that as the dates approach and then afterwards, of course. But, yeah, kind of the big thing in my life is I've been kind of working down on a deadline for entry into kind of a cool competition that Land Rover, the company, is – putting on, and it's called the Defender Trophy. And if that sort of rings a bell or kind of hearkens to something else, you're probably thinking of the Camel Trophy, which was an event that was run through the 1980s and 90s, largely with Land Rover vehicles. The first year was actually a Jeep, like a CJ5, I think it was. Then they moved to Land Rover after that, Defenders and Discoveries and Range Rovers. And Land Rover kind of saw the wisdom in reviving this type of competition where there's some off-road driving and driving challenges mixed with some more physical and navigational and kind of logistical challenges of working with the team. And they're calling it the Defender Trophy. I guess, you know, cigarette advertising is no longer a thing. So they jettisoned the camel connection. And they're doing this next year somewhere in the world. I believe it's going to be somewhere in Africa because they keep hinting at some crossover with the organization called Tusk that works with kind of elephant conservation groups. To kind of winnow down the entry list, they're doing a first round of kind of qualification in, I believe, the Canadian Rockies in April of 2026. And they're bringing up 190 Americans and 44 Canadians as kind of the North American round. And I've thrown my hat in the ring. I'm going to apply to kind of take part in this thing. So the requirements are I fill out an application form and submit a one minute video kind of explaining why I think I'd be a good competitor or participant. Like applying to road rules. Yeah, right. Exactly. Yeah, right. There's so much of our audience won't know. Yeah, right. Yeah, exactly. We'll see. There's a good deal of luck involved with this, but one of our good buddies, someone we just mentioned on the last show and we've had on as a guest, Brock Stevens, has also thrown his hat in the ring. Brock and I were just chatting on the phone a few days ago. He said it'd be really fun to do this together as a team and be competing together. I think that would be thrilling. I think it'd be just such a blast. Brock's a big Land Rover guy, as am I. I'm kind of working on buttoning up my application requirements and get that stuff submitted by the deadline, which is in November. And yeah, I mean, fingers crossed, I'll be up there in Canada in April to compete with other North Americans to make it into the final round. |
| James Stacey | And then maybe a dumb question. Is this with your Land Rover or they have a fleet that you're operating with? How does that work? Or you don't know? |
| Jason Heaton | So, yeah, they're going to be using the new Defender. And they've made a special Defender Trophy version that uses the same Sand Glow paint scheme that was used for the Camel Trophy trucks back in the 80s. That gorgeous sort of warm mustard yellow color that they called Sand Glow. And it's kind of some special cues and kind of a special logo that they're using for the Defender Trophy. yeah i would imagine that all competitors will be driving those around and i think that's pretty cool you know i've i've i've kind of thrown some friendly barbs at the the new defender um kind of as a snobby owner of the old style ones but uh they do look pretty cool and it'd be really fun to compete in one of those |
| James Stacey | Yeah, I got to say, I was in the English countryside this weekend for a little break after a trip to London. And while, yeah, the new Defender is quite a departure from the original, it seems to have taken hold in its natural habitat because they were all over the roads and parking lots of the Cotswolds. I saw them all over, including a not small contingent of, you know, what we would call the last generation Defender and plenty of series trucks as well. Oh, that's great. |
| Jason Heaton | I mean, that's one thing I love about going to the UK is I just fill up my phone with photos of old Land Rovers around. Yeah, so... Yeah, it looks like it was a bit of a whirlwind trip. You were only there for four or five days, but you really packed a lot in. Tell a little bit more about that. |
| James Stacey | Yeah, I'll try not to be too long-winded about it, he said, before becoming deeply long-winded. Yeah, so we went in on a Wednesday night, landed Thursday morning. Myself, Sarah, and our son, our four-month-old son, traveled in. I was going in for largely a business reason, which was Watch of Switzerland, which owns Hodinkee. It asked if we wanted to help host sort of a fun collector watch enthusiast dinner at their Knightsbridge store, which is where they manage a lot of Either independent brands or brands with more of a specific type of following. That could be a Blancpain, a Breguet, Jacob & Co. It's a pretty widespread. And so they brought in a handful of really incredible collectors and some really nice people to kind of get a chance to sit down with brand representatives. Almost think of it like a mini, a very, very mini Watches & Wonders. where you could walk around and talk to a rep and see one of their latest watches, maybe stuff that wasn't available elsewhere and that sort of thing. And then, you know, had some dinner and got to kind of just hang out and kind of chat watches with these guys. It was a pretty fun evening. And then... Got up on Friday and wanted to see a couple of the other Watch of Switzerland properties. The main one of my interest was the Old Bond Street Rolex store, which is, you know, this huge Rolex boutique on Old Bond Street, which is one of the many shopping streets in London. And that's also a Watch of Switzerland that runs that property. So we got to go in there and hang out for a while. I'm trying to think of all the cool stuff that I saw but really the coolest weirdest thing was a clock not even a watch the story is up on Hodinkee now so you can check it out I'll include it but we get into the store and it's Tantan and myself and Sarah and my son and we get into the store and on their like long front foyer cabinet you know counter where people might come up and say oh I'm here to pick up my watch or I'd like to talk to somebody about whatever In a case at the end, they had like a big Rolex Submariner with no lugs, like a desk clock on a little metal stand. And I just kind of kept looking at it. I was supposed to be paying attention to the person, you know, to the conversation I was having, but I couldn't stop looking at it. And then I look over and I realized Tantan is also looking at it and not paying any attention. And then finally, when there was a moment, I said, what is that? And Tantan goes, yeah, what's that? What is it though? Because it was like $9,000 or 9,000 pounds. Oh, my gosh. |
| Jason Heaton | Wow. |
| James Stacey | And that might have been unfair. It was a little over 8,000 pounds. And it's this big Submariner. And we said, what is that? And it had a price tag, so we figured it was something you could buy or conceivably that they would sell. And they said, oh, yeah, it's this clock that they released, but they haven't really talked a ton about it. And I said, oh, OK, well, when we get a chance, we'd like to see that, you know, no rush or whatever. But that's the thing right now. And so we ended up sitting down, you know, in in the in another layer of this many layered, beautiful store. And they brought one out to show us. And it weighs a lot. It's like solid steel. Nothing like a trinket desk clock or like a desk clock as a promotional item or something that would be next to someone's like Rolex ashtray, an umbrella, nothing like that. Much more like the people who make a Submariner decided to make a clock. |
| Jason Heaton | Huh. |
| James Stacey | and it just gets nuttier the more i talk so we pick it up or tantan picks it up and then we go you know can we open it because it's this smooth back there's no controls for the clock there's no crown anywhere and it's sweeping the second hand is sweeping and there's a date on it and it's you know it's very much like an 80 millimeter submariner no lugs just the bezel and then it looks like the bezel is cerachrom and all that kind of stuff And so they go, yeah, you can open it up. So, you know, without instructions or anything, he just starts turning it. And like the back bowl of the back of this rounded dish kind of comes off. And man, the back of this clock is finished like a Rolex movement. Oh my gosh. Wow. And as we're looking at it, we realize there's a screen on it. So it has a secular perpetual calendar anti-digi movement. Wow. And then it's secured. The back is secured by like channeled ball bearings. And then as it turns out, the bezel is Cerachrom. It is fully luminous like a Submariner. And it has a big crown on the back when you open it. And I really suggest you, while I'm speaking, if you can, hit the story on Hodinkee for sort of reference. But once you've had the back kind of cover dish off this heavy piece of steel... the crown is there and if you pull it out this little screen on the back turns on and has the date wow and you know it's this it's the other elements based on the date on the front and then and then the month and the year on the back and it's accurate to 2400 and And all this. And so we just had like a million questions. Obviously, like, who makes this? How is it made? What is it? So we got as much information as we could after this experience and put it together. But I think it's the only Annie Digi Rolex I've ever come across. Certainly one that's available in the current... catalog i believe they said it's it's not like you can just walk in and buy one although i don't know who's walking and buying ten eleven thousand dollar clocks on a whim yeah i think you kind of have to register your interest and and get one you look at it and go like wow that's a big price tag for a rolex clock like for a rolex it's not a watch right yeah and then you pick it up and you start playing with you go like i guess it's at least they went all rolex on on the idea of a submariner clock and then we couldn't stop thinking about like oh what would uh What would a Milgauss one be like with a green crystal? Or what would an Explorer one be like? Or how cool would an Explorer 2 one where you could do two time zones? Or imagine a Sky Dweller desk clock. How cool would that be? Maybe there was a function where you could rotate the bezel, you'd still have the annual calendar, all that kind of stuff. It was really cool, man. So that was an absolute highlight of my Friday. We also got to go and check out the Regent Street Store, which is like the largest multi-brand watch retail location in Europe. And they just had a huge Patek display, some Pateks you'll never see anywhere that I haven't seen anywhere else. MB&F, you know, they've got Tudor, they've got Breitling, they've got like the Hamiltons and the Rados. A real good spread as far as like... the sort of trajectory of watches and what they can cost. And then by the time we finished that, it was, you know, like 4 or 5 p.m. And I had to meet a couple of guys for dinner. We were able to connect with both Ken Lamb and Henry Catchpole. for dinner, not too far from an event we flew through just after. So we had a nice dinner, the five of us. My son slept on the bench next to Sarah while we ate. But that was lovely. And then, you know, the other kind of really big highlight of the trip was we had planned on the TGN Slack a sort of London hangout at a pub sort of in the Chelsea area called the Builder's Arms. And so... I'd have to go back and double check. I want to say like about 35 people said they would be there and then a few people were dropping out and then a few people brought people. Yeah. And then we just absolutely rammed in like sardines into the back of the pub by the fire. |
| Jason Heaton | Yeah. Yeah. |
| James Stacey | And so just a really, really like one of the better watch hangouts I've ever been to in my life. We just had a blast. Everybody was in the best mood and was having a really good time. I want to have a big shout out to James Vincent, who helped us put all of it together. and secure the spot with uh with the builder's arms and on top of that a huge shout out to the builder's arms not easy to have that many people and that much noise just show up on a Friday evening to your pub especially like an it was like a residential pub it wasn't like on a high street yeah and they kept up with the beer orders and the food was really good and the service was excellent and everybody was awesome A huge shout out to Chris F. Chris, if you're listening, can't thank you enough. Chris F. and his wife came from Germany, but they also brought along these 3D printed glow in the dark TGN Arkan tags. Oh, wow. Like these plastic tags that you could have fixed to, I don't know, whatever you want. Yeah. But he took it upon himself to print all those. And then he flew Ryan Air. So those tags took up the majority of what he was allowed to bring with him. to england and uh and so it was a super uh super nice treat to meet chris and uh and his wife kate and uh and yeah and then uh a shout out to ken uh lamb from arkin for kind of co-throwing the event and and helping with uh with some of the logistics and we had a bunch of the watch there's the most arkins i've ever seen in one place i think ken would have to adjust as i'm sure maybe he's had more than that in one but we had a a good stack of them and then two of them were being worn by some good buddies that uh that came out and that's you know uh henry catchpole as i mentioned and then thomas holland happened to be in london at the same time and he showed up just after he landed so i think he landed got to his hotel jumped right on some sort of uh mode of transportation and then hung out for a while and And then lastly, a shout out to Damien, who helped us find a small crew of us after it all ended, went for a kebab before we kind of, you know, set in for the evening. And so we had just an amazing time. It was it was one of those things. There's just I've thought about it every couple of hours since I got back. And I've just been smiling and thinking of looking over some of the photos and that sort of thing was great. So a huge thank you to everybody who came. I can't I literally can't thank you enough. I had a blast. |
| Jason Heaton | Yeah, the photos that I saw on Slack looked pretty amazing, especially that there was like this group shot of like just this pile of Arkan watches, which was really impressive to see. And, you know, I mean, Ken Lamb's everywhere. I mean, how many places in the world have we bumped into him? I mean, I've seen him in Wales and Scotland and, you know, you've seen him in Vancouver and we've been in Toronto with him. I mean, it's just, yeah, it's amazing. |
| Ed Jelly | Yeah. |
| Jason Heaton | And I've never been let down by a trip to the UK. It's just the people are so friendly. The watch culture is great and everybody just looks for an excuse to just hang out and get together and have a pint and shoot the breeze. So that's, that sounds really amazing. |
| James Stacey | Yeah, it was an amazing event. And if you're listening and you wish you had been able to come along and that sort of thing, these are the sorts of things we do on the Slack. So yeah, man, it was just such a nice night. It would have been killer to have had you there. And I can't wait to do another one, ideally in a spot like that, if not the same spot sometime soon. The next chance I get to be in England. Sarah and I just love it, and I can go into the rest of our trip now, but I wanted to make sure to really put a strong thank you out to the folks that came out to the London event. And to those of you who had planned to come and couldn't for one reason or another, you were missed, and don't worry, I will endeavor. I will do my best not to come to England or really anywhere else where I can and skip that this trip allowed it, which is really a treat, but it also underlined the importance of making it a priority. What else did you get up to? Then you had a weekend. Yeah, so Saturday morning we rented a car in London and drove all the way out to the Cotswolds. It was a couple of hours. We were staying in an area called North Leech, which is beyond Oxford and looked like a reasonable spot to put us en route to a couple of other places we wanted to get to. We only had about 48 hours total, actually a little less than that, getting there kind of Saturday midday and then leaving Monday, very early Monday morning to get back to the airport. So on Saturday, we got there, kind of got settled in, then drove around and saw a little bit of the surrounding area, went through a walk. through this lovely town of North Leach. And then we were staying at a spot called the Wheat Chief Inn, which was kind of a combination of a pub and a really beautiful old hotel with a few rooms. Can't recommend it enough. The experience was lovely. And then down the street from there was a spot called the Sherbourne Arms. which is just one of the better restaurants I've been to in a while that combined this sort of like low ceiling, super old Englishy architecture, a big fire and great food and fantastic beer. They had a Daya IPA on tap. Daya will become a bit of a theme from the two days that I had in the Cotswolds. And that was kind of our first day. We had done a lot of moving around London for those first days. the Thursday and Friday and then getting up and getting out of the city, driving out, you know, driving on the other side of the road, you know, in the opposite seat in a stick and a little tiny car with the, you know, a Vauxhall Corsa is a bit like wearing a hoodie and trying to, trying to see behind you. Uh, there's not a lot of, uh, of visibility. So, you know, did my best. Uh, it's, it's the most I've ever driven, certainly by a long measure. the UK and certainly the most seat time in a vehicle like that so you know did my best with that made it out to made it out to North Leech and really had a nice kind of slower Saturday and then the weather was still looking strong for Sunday so we ventured out we went to this sort of rustic but very fancy sort of farmers market slash spa slash restaurant slash like British countryside version of Chelsea market and which I believe was called Dalesford. And it was fine. It was very, very busy by the time we got there. And then from there, we went to a really picturesque sort of town, almost picture something like, if you're not from the area, like the town, the little town from Hot Fuzz. And and so this is a spot called Stowe on the Wald, S-T-O-W. And, you know, just that literal picturesque, fully stone town. And we had a great time there, walked around for a little while where the weather was good, stopped in the afternoon, figured we would, you know, sit down and have a beer, ended up at a spot called Off the Square. um which was sort of like a tap room run by this guy sebastian he goes by sea bass and they also had day uh a variety so we were able to have like one of those little flights and just delicious fantastic beer huge fan from there we needed a proper you know sunday roast so we went to the porch house which is believed or at least is purported to be Um, the oldest in, in the Cotswolds and, and a very, very old, um, a very, very old pub as well. Uh, parts of the building are said to date back to 947 AD. Uh, and you know, it's, it's in the Guinness book of record as English, England's oldest in, uh, this is a very cool spot. Absolutely beautiful. Uh, the food was amazing. You know, I've had a proper roast, you know, Yorkshire pudding, all the good stuff. And then we went back to North Leech, kind of hung around and watched the F1, you know, to kind of round us out to the evening. And then we were up very early and on a plane out of Heathrow by like 11 in the morning on Monday. So I've been home for almost exactly 24 hours as we're recording this. And yeah, feeling largely okay. I went to bed expressly early yesterday evening. But yeah, everything's been good. I enjoyed, you know, a flight with a four-month-old couldn't have been easier. He slept the entire way there. And then coming home, he just kind of hung out and smiled and giggled and had a good old time. And when he was asleep, I was... working my way through the end of the fifth and the start of the sixth book in the Terminal List series. So I'm about a third of the way into the sixth book and really enjoying it. So yeah, that's as whirlwind a weekend as I think one could manage with a four-month-old in tow. But yeah, we had a great time. |
| Jason Heaton | It's amazing how much you can pack into just a few days. I mean, I experienced that earlier this year with that short trip to Brooklyn and then the few days in... on the Isle of Skye, et cetera. And it's just, it's so, it's so great that if you just kind of don't try to do too much, but you sort of limit yourself to the surrounding area, how much you can kind of explore and just sort of soak up your immediate surroundings. That's a, it sounds like a great time. |
| James Stacey | Absolutely, yeah. So that's my trip report. I will edit it to be as concise as possible because we have a busy episode. We have a great guest on in Ed Jelly, watch writer, 3D printing, business extraordinaire, supporter of Fantastic Pens, including our own. He's a true multi-hyphenate in the 2025 sense and a guy that we've really become... uh, quite close to and, and have appreciated his work both from afar and at a personal level. So that'd be a good time. But, uh, do you want to jump into a quick, uh, I think it'll actually be a very quick one, but a quick, uh, risk check. |
| Jason Heaton | Yeah. And actually, um, since we're recording this after we had our chat with Ed, uh, it turns out he was wearing the exact same watch as both of us. Um, so it's, it is a very easy risk check. It's, uh, the one I've got on and you have on and Ed had on is the, our CWC crew watch number one. So this was the kind of the very limited edition TGN watch that we did in collaboration with CWC back in the early part of the year and seemed like a fitting choice for today's episode. |
| James Stacey | Yeah, I agree. And I wore the Nomos because I really wanted to test out the time change going to London. It was awesome. And then we had the event Friday night, which was like a collab event with Arkin. So I had my Arkin on. I wanted to make sure people had a chance to see the Vancouver West Coast speakeasy. And then for the rest of the weekend, I wore my CWC CWN1 on a gray NATO. And it's just I love the accuracy. You know, when we woke up and realized the time had changed, it's a quick change. And then the ease of just being able to click the bezel, you know, one more hour over to account for the time changes is lovely. So, yeah, I'm such a fan of the watch and really enjoy, especially just scenarios where like you don't really want to be bothered by a watch. It's just it's so subtle and easy to wear. |
| Jason Heaton | All right, well, let's jump into our main topic, which happens to be a chat with Tactile Turn's Ed Jelly. And I think it actually does him a disservice to just say Tactile Turn's Ed Jelly because Ed is, as you mentioned, a multi-hyphenate. He runs his family's electronic manufacturing firm in Long Island. And then he also does a lot of consumer marketing and product design for Tactile Turn, which we'll talk about more with him. And then he's... The way we got to know him was as a watch writer in which he was writing reviews for Worn and Wound and still does on occasion. So Ed is truly a Renaissance man, as we like to have a few of those types on TGN as guests. And it's our pleasure to introduce and welcome Ed Jelly to TGN. |
| James Stacey | Ed, welcome to the show. What a treat to have you. |
| Ed Jelly | Thanks for having me. It's been a long-time listener, first-time guest, so I'm excited to be here. |
| James Stacey | Yeah, it's a treat, man. We were just kicking it before we pressed record, trying to remember, just to pinpoint kind of the first time that we crossed paths. Why don't you bring, because you were kind enough to have a much stronger memory than myself. You know, I'm pretty fuzzy on early 2020. Why don't you bring people up to speed first time that we got to hang out? |
| Ed Jelly | Yeah, well, we'll set the scene here. It was the Oris Vale, Colorado press trip. And it was like the last thing I think I did before the world shut down for COVID. So I believe we shared a breakfast table. There was a book recommendation. I believe it was about some sort of fighter jet squadron and a nice brisk back to the hotel walk led by Jason over there. |
| Jason Heaton | Yeah, that seems like a whole different world back then. I mean, pre-COVID, we were all the age of innocence, I guess. |
| James Stacey | Just a few very long years ago. And I guess in that span of time, you've had quite not like a career change, but like a shift into like a broader scope of enthusiasm. |
| Ed Jelly | Yeah, I mean, I've been anytime anybody asks me like, oh, what do you do? And I'm like, all right, how do I how do I phrase this? So I don't seem like I'm a lying or be just doing like 10 things really poorly. So that's usually like the lead in where I'm like, all right, how do I do this? But like, I've always kind of just. gravitated towards things that I'm interested in and that has gotten me into quite the work situation. |
| Jason Heaton | Yeah, you're a bit of a Renaissance man. I mean, we're here kind of, the timing is such that we're having you on the show the week that we're announcing our new collaboration with Tactile Turn and the pen that we announced at the beginning of the show. And we'll get into kind of more of the details about it with you in a bit. But back then when we met in early 2020, you were writing for, I believe it was Worn and Wound, right? Yeah. |
| Ed Jelly | Yeah. Yeah. So I'm still I'm still like in the background there. I've been with I had to write like a timeline here. So I'm using my little cheater note. I started with in the watch world with Worn and Wound in 2018. So I started doing like your your standard press release, you know, I don't want to call regurgitation, but, you know, that is what it is. You take a press release and you turn it into the voice of the audience. of the publication and give you a little two cents on it and off you go and um while that's necessary work in the world of any sort of enthusiastic journalism it's not the most exciting so uh really what i wanted to do was was review watches i mean i started with my own blog about pens and i've always been like kind of a pen nerd going back even a childhood and uh i was doing that in 2012 and then i kind of picked up a camera through that and i'm like you know if i can write like a halfway decent article and back it up with some pretty good pictures i think this is something that uh At least I could pitch like a full package to everybody. And honestly, I think after harassing Zach Weiss at Wind Up, I think two years running, he's like, you know what? Actually, we are looking for somebody. And then I kind of fell in there with the watch world. |
| Jason Heaton | And were you did you have a day job at the time when you were kind of doing the pen stuff on the side? |
| Ed Jelly | Yeah. So that's kind of a funny story. Like I'm still at my day job. So my family runs a small electronics manufacturing company. And while it's not the most exciting thing in the world, it's afforded me the luxury of being able to pursue like side quests. And some of those side quests have really turned into. Kind of 50-50 quest. So my like day-to-day, I'm running a small electronics manufacturing company on Long Island. And then I kind of just squeeze my other stuff in. Like it started like, oh, like, well, you know, my boss right now is my mom and she's not going to write me up if I'm squeezing an article in between production scheduling. Yeah. It kind of started like, let me fill my hours of the day with with what I can. And that's like, you know, that's an extreme luxury to be able to do that and have the freedom. And that's kind of grown into like what's really like an equal part of my career, especially with tactile turn. |
| James Stacey | So kind of your fascination with something in the category maybe started with pens. What was the what was the kind of spark for watches? |
| Ed Jelly | So for watches, it was just being in college and getting the lecture. This was in largely a time where nobody was always on their phone. It was starting to really kind of be the problem it is now where if you look around you, there's probably most people are looking down at their phones. In school for me or in college for me, it was always like no devices, handwritten notes. If you're going to take notes, you better not be on a laptop. And I don't even care if you're checking the time. I don't want to see your devices out. So I'm like, well, I need to know what time it is because I got to get the heck out of here. So I think I started off with just like I had a couple of weird like I had a Timex camper, the really tiny resin one. And that didn't really sit with me. |
| James Stacey | And then I think in the same era I would have been wearing I had a white dial Expedition. |
| Ed Jelly | Yeah. Yeah. No, this was like this was just when those expeditions popped off and had that really cool silver one. I remember I ended up that was a little bit later. But I think the first thing I got was after just doing some research because I was already like nerding out on pens because I'm taking handwritten notes. So I'm like, I need like eight fountain pens. I got to look like the weirdo with eight fountain pens in college. |
| James Stacey | What sort of year are we looking for for people who are remembering what watch Internet was like at the time? |
| Ed Jelly | 2011. And I actually can go back. I bought my first mechanical watch was a Seiko SKX173 from Amazon, still in my Amazon account history for $171. And I still have the watch. And that was the one that I just wore all the time for like several years until I was like, I don't know. I think I need more watches. And actually a coworker here at the, at the electronics company was like a deep watch you seek guy. And like, that was my first intro to micro brands. So like my next two watches after the Seiko were like some deep cut micro brand watches, which was, uh, just a few months ago. |
| James Stacey | I want to say like before the summer in the summer, you wrote a great story for one and one about that one, seven, three, right? |
| Ed Jelly | Yeah, we did. I think it was like I don't remember. I'll be honest. We were just saying before this has been a whirlwind. I that could have been four years ago. But yeah, I did. I did do a piece on the 173 and I did a little like a Seiko then versus Seiko now and kind of like a comparison and like a look at where the brand is gone. But like the Seiko holds a special heart, a special place in my heart. I just love the brand. And, you know, I think I can blame you guys. I have the SPB one was a 143 143. Yep. I have one of those. Always love Seiko. And it kind of just took off from there. And then once you fall into like the micro brand watch forum stuff, it gets like real nitty gritty. And like I ended up wearing, I don't know if you guys remember this small brand that were based out of Hawaii called Bali High. Oh, yeah. Yeah. They made, uh, I had a watch from them. It was the Bali high Q diver courts movement with a carbon fiber, uh, dial. And it weighed like four pounds and it had like this PVD case and PVD bracelet. And it came in like a, it came in a dive box. And that was like, that was in 20, uh, 2012. I bought that. And, uh, then I ended up getting a Helson skin diver that the crystal popped off of, which was fantastic. I had that fixed. And then it kind of just like, I found worn and wound in that like 2012, 13, 14 world. When like watch blog started coming on the radar, it was like, Oh, this is a problem. So I kind of just progressed from there into a madness, but I've cooled off a bit. I kind of like gotten comfortable in my collection and, uh, |
| Jason Heaton | Well, we can talk about your collection in a bit if you want, but I'm curious, you came to pens and then came to watches. We're almost out of this functional necessity. You know, you needed something to write with. You needed something to tell the time with. And did you have kind of a personal bent towards mechanical stuff or craftsmanship or, you know, like your arrival to pens and watches? You make it sound a little bit more, I don't want to say pedestrian, that sounds pejorative, but it sounds a little more practical than the romantic way that some people come to these things. |
| Ed Jelly | I can paint a picture for you. I was a seven-year-old kid with a subscription to Popular Mechanics, and I read the absolute heck out of it every month. I live for Popular Science. Yeah, I was a Popular Mechanics and a Popular Science guy from age seven. My grandfather was an engineer. He's an electrical engineer, so there was always a lot of like, all right. Uh, it's Christmas. Here's your circuit board building kit. Um, just kind of general tinkering. Like I always used to take my toys apart and put them back together. I broke my Sega Dreamcast. That was in a thousand pieces cause it broke and I wanted to see if I could fix it. Big no, always wanted to tinker, always love gear, always love gadgets. But I think like that, like going, into watches and pens and kind of EDC gear was like my version of finding the best tool for the job. And that like always kind of was like, what's the best thing for what I needed to do? And like, you know, I'm, I'm, I'm sure we all are notoriously hard to buy gifts for. I think it's just like a watch and gear guy thing where it's like, I don't even know where to start with you. Cause you're a crazy person. And, uh, you're going to research this for three weeks before you, you bother buying something. So we're going to go with gift card. Uh, that's kind of the, the M.O. |
| James Stacey | Yeah. Yeah. Sometimes a gift card is lazy. Other times it's just really kind. |
| Ed Jelly | Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. |
| James Stacey | You know, I'm curious beyond that, like with your sort of start into watches being Seiko, I would love to know kind of you get into watches kind of right at the birth of some of the major, like if it was around 2010, 2011, like around the birth of some of the major watch publications. I'm curious how you kind of took that and then found yourself in a position to be on a press trip for oris because there's there aren't a lot of us out there that started kind of as nerds and not like wealthy collectors that became people in the writing side of it and and i you know i'm wondering maybe if your if your path or experience kind of mirrored some of my own so i mean i think it was really just like starting my own pen blog like i it wasn't even it had nothing to do with pens it was like i just owned at jelly.com and like |
| Ed Jelly | all right i already own this this website like let me just make a blog and like it's still there i haven't posted on it a very long time but like there's hundreds of written reviews all with pictures and like you can see the quality just like slowly getting better and then like i wanted to write for somebody else and um Through the pen blog, I actually started taking photos for Tactile Turn a couple years after starting that. And then in 2016, I was approached by Bernard Capulong of EverydayCarry.com to write for them. And I remember getting an email from Bernard. And it was like, hey, man, we want you to write for us. I'm like, oh, cool. What, are you going to give me some free stuff and I'll write some articles for you? And he's like, no, no, no. We're going to pay you. to write for the site like where we want you to do that. I'm like, oh, me, like pen blog guy, because it's funny, the start of Everyday Carry, the quick tangent, they started on a men's fashion forum called Super Future. There was a thread, a single thread in the other like category buried deep in this men's fashion forums as big in a raw denim. and uh there's this really active thread about like gear and like pocket knives and like edc before it was like before it had a name he and we knew each other from this forum and then he just hit me up a couple years later like oh this website's like popping off right now like we need writers like can you come do this and like uh shout out to bernard like he was a heck of an editor and like he really whipped me into shape so like i went from enthusiast with my own site which was like nobody's editing that i just had published and like you know spelling errors and and mistakes all over the place and then uh kind of getting my first like approach from that to to write professionally um you know and then it kind of snowballed from there that kind of gave me the confidence to hit up the warning round guys because i'm on long island they're in brooklyn and it was kind of you know i'd pop in a wind up before you know it was crazy like it is today and uh just want to be a part of it. I always wanted to be able to write and photograph and kind of tell my story and experience this new gear selfishly. Like that's the best way to do it is if somebody is going to send you something to check out, like save me a couple of bucks. |
| Jason Heaton | I'm someone who appreciates well-made stuff, but, and I'm, I'm blaming this on my being left-handed and that is my. I don't want to say aversion. It's not an aversion. It's more of an indifference towards pens, although the CPN one is a lovely object and I'm all behind it. But writing across a page as we lefties do, fountain pens are just not an option for me because you end up just smearing the ink by dragging your hand across everything you write. So talk to me about... |
| Ed Jelly | pens and pen enthusiasm and where you see overlap with watch enthusiasm and kind of the appeal of of pens among enthusiasts one part of it is like yes this is like finding uh an experience like a tactile experience touching pen to paper and getting the experience that you want so like if you've never written with a fountain pen you can just pick up like a lami safari for like 30 35 i don't know what it is you say 40 bucks get it with like a medium nib throw some ink in there, and you're going to be like, whoa, this is different from anything I've ever written with if you've never written with one before. Or if that's like a pain in the neck or if you're a lefty and you end up with a handful of ink because you've got to drag it over in a page full of smeared words, that's not going to help anybody. There are thousands of different types of refills that will provide all sorts of different writing experiences, different line widths, different colors, different dry times, different levels of permanence. Just go on JetPens is a website that sells Japanese stationery. Oh, JetPens. Yeah, JetPens rocks. And just browse through there, and they got stuff that you don't even know exists. This is really crazy stuff. Get a sampler pack. And if you've even been curious or you hate the free pens at work or you're just tired of borrowing something from a doctor's office, for me, there's nothing worse than the doctor's office pen. It's like, what am I going to get from this? Hopefully not COVID or the flu. But, like, just having your own stuff and having it be cool. And I think on that end, like, the tactile experience of actually writing. But on the other end is, like, the materials and craftsmanship involved in, like, a good pen. I ended up selling it because I wasn't using it frequently enough. But, like, Nakaya is a brand of fountain pens out of Japan. And they hand make their pens out of ebonite. And then they have skilled artisans. uh apply a yurushi lacquer to the pen so they're they're wildly expensive and then before you order the pen you fill out like a survey on your writing style and like what angle you hold the pen at and how hard you press and how much ink you like to come out and they tune that nib based on your input so like it's for you like which is which is kind of wild but it's like that's like the writing experience and the craftsmanship you have them both in one kind of thing um this is a |
| Jason Heaton | A bit of watch pen overlap is, you know, the English brothers from Bremont are now sort of overseeing or have taken on the stewardship of Yardo Lead, this old British brand. I don't know if you're familiar with Yardo Lead. Yep, yep, yep, yep. And, you know, it feels right up their alley. You know, these guys are all about kind of heritage and good stories. And there was a story about a guy who was carrying one in his breast pocket during... one of the world wars and it happened to save his life because the bullet bounced off of the pen that was in his breast pocket and didn't go through his heart. And so the pen had this big dent in it and they'd still got the actual pen in their museum. And they, they like to tell those stories. It's very, very Bremont of the pen world. Um, do you have any experience with yard of lead or what? Any thoughts on that? |
| Ed Jelly | don't have any experience with them i know the brand um i don't think i've gone out of my way to get one again that's like a it's an old brand that's been around for a long time i think that's also what's cool too is like people can latch onto the history of the brand i mean even pilot has been around for an incredibly long time making all sorts of pens uh you know not just the g2 that's in every pen cup in the world but their fountain pens are incredible um It just it's there's a lot of history. There's a lot of the same things. And like if you go to a pen show, which, yes, is a thing. And there are quite a few people that attend them. They're they're wild. You will see like the watch version of the pen guy. They're all over the place. It's just kind of like and often there's there a mix of two. You see a lot of cool watches at pen shows. |
| James Stacey | While we're deep into pens, why don't you give us the rundown on how you got connected with Tactile Turn and kind of what makes that company special? Because it was you that kind of introduced me to... I'd heard of the brand, of course. I'd seen them come up on pen discussions. There was a time when I was a Kickstarter supporter of Cara Customs, if you remember them, which is, I think, a similar concept in some ways. Yeah. And and then when you started to give me details on like how the company is managed, how they work, the scope of the it's just a fascinating thing that immediately I felt very connected to from from like this is how if I had a pen company, I think this is how I would hope it was. It was operating. How did you get connected? |
| Ed Jelly | Yeah. So it was again, it was an email through my pen blog. I got an email from someone named Will Hodges. I think it was at like one o'clock in the morning. Hey, I've got a Kickstarter pen coming out and like I really like your pictures. Can I send you a pen to check out? And like that was it. And then that was one of the first pens before Tactile Turn was called Tactile Turn. It was E-I-M-I-M and I do not remember. what that stands for um but the pens were the x y and z they were these machined aluminum pens with a base and uh will was making them on a single hand lathe in the corner of his buddy's shop i had a lot of free time i did not have two kids i did not have two dogs i did not have a wife or a house or um you know several jobs so it was just me in an apartment and like we would just bs back and forth about oh wouldn't it be cool if this happened it you know, oh, well, your pictures are better than mine. Like, why don't you take pictures for this next Kickstarter? And it's like, you wouldn't happen to be any, you know, happen to know Photoshop, would you? Like, I need all these banners made. And then we just like go back and forth and like chip away at the visual aspects of his early Kickstarters. And then like... You know, his brand started growing. Those Kickstarters really popped off in the early days with the with the bolt actions and he had an older click pen. And the company just scaled up exponentially from there. And I've kind of always been in the periphery. But, you know, one day it was, hey, you know, I really need someone to manage my social media. Do you want to do that? So I was doing that, still doing that. We started doing that, then more pictures. And one of the nice things about Will and the rest of Tactile is if you come to them with an idea, all right, let's do it. Let's try it and see what happens. And I pitched the seasonal stuff, which is a special edition pen where it kind of bummed me. Like in the world of EDC gear and drop culture, it happens in watches too, where it's like there's 150 of them. They go on sale, they get botted, and then they're gone. And the idea was to have a product that was special that would live a little bit longer on the site. So I've kind of been... designing and project managing and photographing and promoting just everything anything that could have to do with the seasonals i've been doing for a couple years now and um just kind of i kind of just kind of weasel my way into places if i like what we're doing and if there's a good relationship like let's let's do it so it really started from something as simple as a hey what do you think of this email to uh can you take a couple pictures to um you know pretty doing a lot of work over there these days so |
| James Stacey | And then if you were to give people kind of the elevator pitch on what makes Tactile Turn special, where they're based, how big the company is, what makes them better or different than some of the others in the space, what would you like to explain? |
| Ed Jelly | So sell me this pen, basically. Yeah, I've done that quite a bit now. And I think what makes Tactile Turn such a great company is, number one, I really do like working there. I like what we can do there. I like working with them there. It's fantastic. But I think ultimately they make a great product. And it's, yes, $99 is our starting point, is expensive for a pen. But like... you're not you're getting a lot for that and i know that might sound crazy to some yes a 99 pen is crazy but like a mont blanc can be 800 this is like a solid piece of machined titanium or other materials that uh really will last you a lifetime you could buy one and done and you'd be fine but most people add to their collections because they end up resonating with them so much so Tactile is based out of Dallas, Texas. We do everything under our roof and that's designed, machined and assembled. We make everything except for the springs. We got an excellent spring guy down the block and we don't want to upset that relationship, but we mill the clips. We make all the screws custom. Every part of the pen is made under our roof, which means we can kind of do whatever we want. And that's been incredible to see, you know, going from one model to now a whole fully fledged lineup of pens. And we've got, uh somewhere around 40 people in the shop right now um and then we also have tactile knife company under that roof as well so again same same made in america made in dallas all under our roof um pivots handles blades blade grinding um honestly everything every single part of the knife is is under our roof just like it is with the pens so and everything's back to the lifetime warranty so if you're not happy with it we'll we'll fix it which is great to be able to say all those things, not just like, Hey, or order it on Amazon and then kick rocks. It's a, you know, something that we back and we stand behind. |
| Jason Heaton | Can you talk a little bit about the CPN one project that we were collaborating with tactile turn on, um, kind of the, I guess the nitty gritty details about the pen. I mean, we talked about a little bit at the top of the show. Um, and of course now it's for, it's in pre-order or for sale at this point, but, um, what makes this one unique and kind of what was any, any little hurdles in getting this one off the ground? |
| Ed Jelly | I don't think hurdles. I think it was it was honestly the process was smooth. Like you guys are great to work with. We had Evan help out in there, too. And stay calm, stay calm industries. Right. And that's him. When you have a solid base to work with, like we base this on our standard side click, which is one of our it's our most popular length. It's our second most popular mechanism. Yeah, we got one. We got one right there. And this is based on an older Japanese Mitsubishi boxy pen where the refill releases when you hit a button on the side, except ours is made entirely out of metal, in this case titanium. So we wanted to kind of take something that felt very TGN. So we have orange accents. And I think one of my favorite things about the CWC watch is like you really got to look close to know that that is a TGN collaboration. So I know we might have missed wrist check, but I am wearing my CWN1 today. That makes us three for three. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, boy. But you got to look really small at the bottom. And the tiniest little letter says TGN. So we wanted to do something subtle that still makes it like a recognizable tactile turn pen, but add some TGN touches. So we have the laser engraving on the body next to the release button, which kind of gives it like a little bit of a military stock number kind of look. And we went with orange accents on the clip side release button and top button. And the... What is that, the Razzle Dazzle camo? Is that what it is? Is it the official name? |
| James Stacey | I don't think it has an official name. It was the sort of R-spin with Evan from Stacom Industries. It was R-spin on Razzle Dazzle. We like camo, but can sometimes find it to be quite intense, and there's something kind of... I mean, levity is the wrong word for camo used for a battleship, but... if you'll allow it, it almost has a certain comedy to it. And it's been adjusted with this sort of creamsicle colorway of our core orange and like a tan orange tone as well. So we should come up with a proper name for it. And Evan, if you have, and I miss it, apologies. But, you know, it's this weird sort of thing that we use for the box of the CWN1. And I love, I really like it. And now it's slowly making its way into a few other things. |
| Ed Jelly | And we did that on the clip. So that's a laser engraved thing. So we hit the whole clip with an orange paint, and then it goes into the laser department, and they actually remove the Cerakote with a high-powered laser to get those nice crisp lines. So it's kind of got like a geometric pattern on the clip, and it's very subtle. I mean, it's a good mid-tone orange. It's not too loud, but if somebody takes it off your desk at work, you can hunt them down. |
| Jason Heaton | Yeah, good point. |
| Ed Jelly | Unless they cover themselves in razzle-dazzle camouflage, which might honestly make them stick out even more. It depends on the color of the horizon. Yeah, very much so. But no, this kind of just made sense. I mean, I've been bothering you guys from the marketing arm of Tactile Turn for a while now, getting you guys out some seasonal pens, some stuff to check out. And, you know, I think we're off to a great start with these pre-orders. And clearly it resonates with the people. And, you know, shout out to the Slack group. Those guys show up. |
| James Stacey | I'm not surprised. I don't, it's hard to say that I get surprised more. I am impressed, uh, by the turnout. You know, the cool thing is, is we kind of kicked the idea around both on the show and then a little bit on the Slack thing. Like, Hey, if you guys, this is something you guys might like, let us know. And people were like, yeah, yeah, we would like that. And, uh, and so we, you know, went down the road of, of getting it done. And it was really quite a simple process, you know, uh, a fun, uh, Slack thread, most of the time, me being the holdup in terms of, timing and all that kind of stuff but I love the chance to work with people who who get to kind of think of the creative ways of making something like this feel different than all the other things that you've made and because you have a scope on these other special seasonal pieces and and some of the limited editions and that sort of thing it's nice to know that we were making something and then to have it come out and i thought like ah you know i had a number in my head and if we if we hit that number i would feel like it we'd we'd kind of successfully you know done something worth tactile turns time and ed's time yes sir far surpassed far surpassed i think |
| Ed Jelly | Yeah, and Evan's time and all that. |
| James Stacey | And the number definitely was a lot smaller than the one we're at now. So I'm thrilled. I placed an order for several, and I can't wait to get them. There'll be something. I've got a few people in mind for gifts and that sort of thing. Yeah, I'm super happy with it. I know Jason has a sample local, so he's had a chance to actually see it in person. Jason, would this be something that you would keep tucked into the rover somewhere for making service notes or that sort of thing? |
| Jason Heaton | Yeah, it's great. I mean, it definitely feels utilitarian, but then upon like close examination, it just like the milling on the titanium is just something to behold and then the engraving. And then I don't know that the orange dazzle camo on the clip is it's endlessly sort of fascinating to me that that can be done in a durable way. That's not just going to like scrape off with a fingernail. Um, and it's just different from, from any other kind of pen that I've used. And And it is, you know, I mentioned earlier that being a lefty, I've had issues with pens. This one, I don't have that issue. It just, it feels like the kind of thing that, yeah, I just can't kind of keep clipped on a notebook and tuck away somewhere, but it's, it's great. And I, as a bit of crossover, just this morning, I needed some replacement, a replacement fork for my Hassler Instruments bolt action strap change tool. So I stopped off to see Tom Boucher and think tom is sort of a kindred spirit with tactile turn you know he's making these this kind of small run interesting products uh in his own little uh workshop but uh there's something about that side click bolt action sort of spring-loaded stuff that that just has this there's a kind of a whimsy to it and a fun aspect of it to it |
| Ed Jelly | I think that that's also like part of why the pens resonate so well is like most of them are fun. I mean, the bolt action, you could sit there and you could annoy everybody in your meeting with the whole time. The click, 100% and even more so like our newer model, the switch. I don't know if either of you guys have gotten one of those yet, but those like... Those you can't stop playing with. Like usually, you know, it's half fidget tool and it's a functional fidget tool, not like one of those little, you know, Instagram drop ones that may or may not have any function outside of being expensive and annoying. At least you could write something with this annoying thing. |
| James Stacey | I have, I've had to, uh, I've had to stop myself from sitting here while chatting with Jason and just playing. |
| Ed Jelly | Just clicking the whole time. Yeah. Just very easily ruin a podcast with that. It's like spinning a bezel or working a chronograph or something, you know? Yeah. Yeah. I think that, that crossover is really, it's the tactile feel of something that like just feels good to use. And I think that's like with watches and gear and, and pens included, like, you know, me personally, I just want to use the thing that feels best. |
| James Stacey | Yeah, I'm super impressed by the product and have been for a handful of the pens that I've had a chance to check out. And I'm really thrilled to be able to have something that's going to be, you know, in this colorway with the camo, all that kind of stuff. |
| Ed Jelly | Yeah, it's your thing. Nothing cooler than having, you know, your own podcast pen on your desk. It's a good feeling. |
| James Stacey | It's a little nerdy, but it's super fun. |
| Ed Jelly | No, yeah, that's why we're here. |
| James Stacey | My favorite type of fun for sure. But yeah, as far as the sounds that occasionally make it into the background of the show will be the opening of a knife as I do that or close the knife, the click of the pen, and then occasionally Jason's, the beep of his Timex Iron Man striking the hour, which people like to call it the time signature because if it's on his wrist, you can just barely catch it. And I have... I've made weird edits to make sure that it stays in the show in the past. I try and edit out the knife and pen clicking, but, you know, you can't remove it all. |
| Ed Jelly | Well, maybe the next podcast collab is for the podcaster himself or herself, and it's got to be a silent click. Maybe we need to, you know, the podcast pen for podcasters. There's probably a huge market for that, right? Massive. I mean, everybody's got a podcast. |
| James Stacey | But, yeah. No, this has been super fun to be able to go down that project with you. And I hope people who are, you know, kind of keen or interested or already deep into the pen thing, give it a look. We'll have it, of course, in the show notes as we talked about earlier. But I do now want to circle back now that we've been through the pen, we've gotten to the CPN1. You know, we spoke about the watches that got you into watches. We spoke about sort of uh orris press trips and and your continued love of seiko and that sort of thing but and you'd said early on in the in our chat today that that you had kind of found a a place of balance or equilibrium with your watch collection what kind of got you there what are the watches that you like wearing most days that sort of thing what's the what's the up to the minute taste |
| Ed Jelly | So I'm definitely more of a user than a collector. I think there's always that big, oh, well, what's a collector and that whole big definition thing. And to me, really, it's like if I have stuff that I'm not using, it bugs me that it's sitting in a drawer somewhere and I'm not using it. So if it's not getting time on my wrist or if it's a fishing rod that's not getting touched or something that's just generally just sitting there, I'd much rather have something that I can use and enjoy. And my collection was pretty much the same for a while. And then I ended up moving a couple pieces within the last year or so just because they were just sitting there. So for the longest time, it was... My Speedmaster, which I bought when my first son was born, which I absolutely love, and I will never get rid of that. And I had a Zinn 856, which I have moved on from because it was cool, but I wasn't wearing it. I had a Black Bay 36 Blue Smile Dial, which is an excellent watch, but I wasn't wearing it, and I sold it, and I bought a bicycle. So... Again, turn it into something I'm actually going to use. Now I have two bicycles and one sits there. So it's really just shifting over into a different problem. |
| James Stacey | Sure. Been there. |
| Ed Jelly | I have my Grand Seiko SBGN003, the GMT Explorer 2 lookalike. But I absolutely love that watch. Wear it all the time. And then I did make a mistake. I bought the Gray Beast, the Grand Seiko SBGV245 when my second son was born. Wore it in the hospital. Going to love this thing and wear it forever. Don't wear it ever at all, maybe like once in the last three years. And I've got this weird guilt hanging over me like it was there when he was born. You got to keep it. I really don't have to keep it. I think I should probably just sell it and be done. But that's been kind of a weird back and forth. And my most recent acquisition, there's an SPB 143 in there somewhere, which is he's on the warning list. Uh, he's, he's danger warning list. And then I have the, uh, the CWC that you guys did. And that kind of ruined watches for me. I'm a big fan of high accuracy courts. I have two of the high accuracy courts, Grand Seiko's with the nine F movements. Killer, right? They're so good. And like people, Oh, it's courts. It's like, look up Grand Seiko courts. Like if they're growing courts, crystals and regulating them to their, to the movement and they're accurate plus or minus 10 seconds per year. Like, |
| Jason Heaton | you know the popular popular science kid in me is like this is like they grew crystals like i always wanted to do the grow your own crystal kit as a kid and like seiko's doing that and then put it in watches i still get excited um i think jason's actually seen yeah yeah they've got these crystals yeah it was behind some mysterious uh glass and in some big room some kind of a big centrifuge or some sort of yeah colony of high pressure environment not sure how they did it but yeah yeah pretty wild |
| Ed Jelly | And I think that's wild, though, to have something so accurate and so reliable. But really, I kind of bounce back between the CWC because I think it's a good really go anywhere, do anything watch. I know astronauts went to space and landed in the water with their Speedmasters, but I don't want to have to pay for another service. I already got burned by the, you know. 800 omega chronograph service tax once i don't want to do it for for my own uh you know out of my own silliness uh we'll say so yeah i kind of just settled into speedmaster uh cwc and then usually the grand seiko uh sbgn and then i have a couple of weird flankers that i'll throw on that are not really worth selling but |
| James Stacey | With that in mind, you've got a great trio there. You've got a few kind of maybe sentimental or otherwise that sit on the periphery. I think a lot of us can kind of align with that thinking. Do you think of it in terms of like there's a grail, a goal, one that's always been on the radar as something that, you know, if the timing and the money was right, you would make it happen? |
| Ed Jelly | You know, like, I wanted a Submariner for the longest time, and then, like, I was, like, kind of chasing around the idea of getting, like, the modern reference no-date sub, and then, like, I went into a couple ADs, and I'm like, I don't think I want this watch anymore. It's $10,000. That's a lot of money. Like, I got a, you know, I have several college funds I should be funding before looking at big, dumb watches. But I think, like... I don't know the grill watch to me like I have this stuff that I love and like you know if the if the watch I paid just over a grand for is getting way more risk time than like you know the equivalent $6,000 worth of watches that just kind of see the inside of the watch box then like. don't know there's no problem with that you know and i like having you know those those couple seikos in the collection that you can move you know there's a turtle in there once upon a time you sell that for a couple hundred bucks you buy the other cool little seiko and then you swap that around and you know that's fun until it's not and then you get busy with other stuff and then it's like well i just have these three that i gravitate to so there's no real like major grail i thought i wanted you know i thought i was going to do something big and dumb um You know, I'm 37. I got like three years until the 40th birthday. So maybe I'll figure out something for that. And then, you know, not wear it like the other one and then feel guilted at 45 to whether or not to sell it. And the cycle, the cycle continues. |
| Jason Heaton | It's a nice place to be. I mean, it's a great place to kind of arrive at that that kind of level of understanding kind of of yourself and your own habits and interests. Yeah. I think we're all sort of getting to that point. There's a certain point in your watch collecting career that we all kind of get to that point. And then, you know, we might backslide a little bit here and there, but it sounds like you've reached a good point of equilibrium. |
| Ed Jelly | I think it's also other stuff. Like I bought a, I bought a big dumb truck last year and like, that was, wow. I got the land cruiser, the new land cruiser. Uh, it's so good. Um, I do a lot of fishing on the beach. So like this spring alone, I think I was on the sand like 40 times over the course of a couple of months and then blasting on there with the kids over the summer. Um, it's been great. And I've had a pretty, pretty lazy fall run, but like, I just slept in the car last weekend out in Montauk, uh, with some, you know, there's some buddies there for a fishing tournament and, uh, just like having a truck that i can kind of do whatever with that's you know i was on a real land cruiser no it's fine i mean i have i came from a i had a polestar 2 before that at least and this one i ended up buying and this was like all right you can't buy any watches for a while you just you just bought the fun truck um i think like with the truck or you listed that you have a couple of bikes you've got a couple watches that you really like like the there is that |
| James Stacey | there's that pragmatic you know frequency that people get into where you start thinking in terms of like cost per use and if you're in your truck doing all these great things all that like as frequently as possible the cost per use is pretty good for a vehicle like that would be the same on your day-to-day bike take a take a couple more years to amortize than say a watch but uh you know no i love it uh and you know it's one of those things where you got to kind of prioritize what you like doing like you know i didn't i didn't need carbon wheels for my road bike but uh |
| Ed Jelly | They make a cool swishing sound and I feel faster. We all have our justifications. |
| James Stacey | Need is a tough thing for people on the Grenado to talk about. We're not a podcast where that lists Maslow's hierarchy of needs at the top. |
| Jason Heaton | This is fun stuff. Well, let's move on to another kind of one of your passions, if you will, or another... side hustle of yours and that is the the elro industries um it's something that james james has talked about in the past |
| James Stacey | Yeah, I am curious about this. And it was interesting because you gave us a little breadcrumb at the start when you said you were at school and you couldn't always be on your device. And now you live in a world where it feels like people are always looking at their device. And you and I have kind of shared a few little chats about this on the Slack. What was the initial seed for this? Was it the idea of spending less time on your phone? Was it more the interest in trying to implement a product, put it together, put it online? Was it all of that at the same time? |
| Ed Jelly | No, this was 100% fell backwards into it accidental. So just for those who don't know, I started a small, I'm calling it Adventures in Micromanufacturing. I designed a case that houses an Apple Watch Ultra that kind of looks like a, it looks like one of those... hiking compasses where it has the lanyard hole at the bottom and it looks like something you just like clip onto a backpack and when you need to orient yourself in the wilderness uh you know you take out your your orienteering compass and kind of find your way and um yeah so i got my son a 3d printer for his birthday and then promptly stole it uh kind of like a week later so We're just like playing around and, you know, I'm trying to get him involved in some cool, you know, engineering and tinkering and that sort of stuff. And he's a kid who's really into it. I mean, he was at BattleBots camp last summer. He was at Young Inventors camp also last summer. Just a very, you know, kid who likes that kind of stuff. So I'm like, let's get him a 3D printer for his birthday. And then, you know, watch guy, I don't really like wearing an Apple watch because then I got a double wristed and then it feels kind of like handcuffs. And then it's like, am I a dork? Uh, do I, do I care about the same? You know, my, my steps are on average the same every day. I'm sleeping the same amount every day. Do I care about those little minute changes? Anyway, I had an Apple watch ultra. It was sitting on my thing. Uh, And I decided to make a case for it so I could kind of use that almost like a beeper. Now, I'm not the first one to do that. There are a couple others out there, but nothing looked like something I would actually want to carry around in my pocket. So, all right, let's download Fusion 360 and tell them we're not doing this on a commercial scale. I don't know. Don't at me. Don't come after me, AutoCAD. And then I posted a picture on my Instagram and then that was the end of it. That, that Instagram post is sitting somewhere over 2 million views on it right now. Uh, I did not use any creative hashtags. I did not intend on starting a business, but when a post takes off like that, you start getting people messaging you like, Hey, can I buy that? I'm like, no, no, I'm not like, I'm not doing this. We're not doing this. And then, you know, like the next day happens and you get like five more comments like, yeah, I'd buy this immediately. And then like, All right, we're doing this. I guess we're doing this. So I ran off a couple prints on my kid's 3D printer, popped open a Shopify, and that's one of the things. I've been writing product copy for 15 years. I've been photographing products for 15 years. I don't have to send it out. We're just going to do this at work tomorrow. And on my lunch break, I had a Shopify with several products on it that were... I ended up running ads in the background through Meta for a week just to kind of get some of those two million views back in the system. And I started that at the end of August and now we're at the end of October and I've sold over 600. Wow. That's amazing. And we're just running prints. I got my wife making boxes at home in between, you know, kids stuff and, you know, we're picking, packing, shipping. Yeah. and photographing everything and doing this. And like you said earlier with the pens, like I had a number in my head and I told my wife, I'm like, I'm gonna sell 40 of these, I'm gonna buy my carbon wheels and then we're gonna disappear into the sunset. And before, I think I ended up getting like 40 orders in a single day. And I'm like, in the car, Best Buy, second 3D printer. So we got two printers running and a constant influx of boxes full of hardware and boxes full of boxes. |
| James Stacey | uh coming to the house so that was not intentional but um i figured why not this could be fun and it's been kind of crazy that's great man yeah you i i love the product i think it's really useful and uh and it's the right price per value and if you have |
| Ed Jelly | an apple watch ultra laying around i think you you especially i guess it's the one in two does it fit the three if it's the three they're all in the same they're all the same case so the three has a slightly bigger screen but they only took up that inner bezel uh they did not expand the outer bezel so it'll fit all the apple watch ultras and Then there's the influx of, can you make it for the Samsung Galaxy Watch Ultra? And I didn't even know that that was a product because I just haven't paid attention. And then what about the Series 10, 11, 7, 8, 9, SE, this and that? I'm like, we're just doing one. We're doing one right now. And I'll throw an AirTag case up there. |
| James Stacey | Sounds like you're busy enough with one. |
| Ed Jelly | Yeah, I'm pretty, pretty busy. And it's been like pretty wild to just like accidentally do that. Like I had no intention of starting a small brand of 3D printed stuff. And I had zero experience with 3D printing before that. It's a wild technology. I mean, I know, James, you guys picked up a printer. |
| James Stacey | Despite being so busy with all of this, you were willing to field my small litany of 3D printing queries. |
| Ed Jelly | It's so fun, though. It's fascinating. We're having a blast, man. It's fascinating. I needed ground stakes the other day because the Halloween R2-D2 blow-up thing did not come with stakes. All right, copy-paste. Let's scale them up and hit print and then, you know. 48 minutes later, you've got four ground stakes and you just hammer them in and you're done. It's just wild that you can do that now. And the different materials are just, it's just incredible. And it's like, oh, what kind of functional design can I come up with? And there's all sorts of weird little jigs and gadgets and all sorts of junk all over the house now that's like these little functional things. It's like, oh, I really could use this. And it's like, oh, all right, let's just whip one up and print it out. Yeah. Okay. |
| James Stacey | I did have my first experience of like trying to make my own thing. It didn't go. No good. So we're no, no, I need I should have I should have started with a lesson in the software, not this like foolhardy concept that I was going to be able to make essentially a scale for a pocket knife. from a reference uh but it didn't i'm still working on it yeah you'll get there you'll get there slow slow processing but i i absolutely love the ability and my daughters adore it to be like you know this is an idea that i had and you can go on i'm just still just on like the bamboo uh system which is wild there's everything in there and people just the library is just massive Yeah. So it's, it's been amazing and I can't thank you enough for being willing to like offer some advice. |
| Ed Jelly | I think that's where the fun comes in. Like if I'm not interacting with people and I think that's ultimately like kind of just like a, an all encompassing thing. Like you guys have created such a community around like all these core, uh, I don't know what's called beliefs. That's a little, that's a little. But, you know, like what do you guys call it? The superlatives, right? Like, yeah. Without making it sound like a cult or something. It's not. I don't think it is. Right. Like, you don't know if it's a cult until somebody else like you're in a cult. Right. Like, you don't. |
| James Stacey | I don't think you're allowed to ask me or Jason if it's a cult, whatever. |
| Ed Jelly | All right. Yeah. Legally, you guys can stay separate from that. But, no, jokes aside, it's an incredible community of extremely interesting people with wide-ranging interests and, like, interacting with these people and just, you know, getting to experience watches and gear. And, you know, there's a professional channel if you're having career problems. It's just crazy that, like... that's out there and all these people share this, this, um, this mutual interest that really stems from watches. And, um, even like I, we have a local TGN Long Island meet up with six guys and like we meet up every six weeks. Like it's crazy. I didn't know these people from hole in the wall. And, uh, now I got like six friends that I didn't know existed who all like watches. Like, and it's like, you know, it's great. But I think. With everything, though, it comes back to community, whether it's pens or watches. Like, if there's a reason for you to stick around, like, sure, we can all, like, buy stuff. And that's always been my biggest burn is, like, to be, quote, unquote, good at watches. Like, you need a dump truck full of money. You're sick at watches. You go buy a couple of Jorns and, you know, maybe a lot of vintage Milsubs or something. Like, yeah, you're great at watches. But, like, if you don't get into it and experience the people and kind of just that whole world – you're missing out. |
| James Stacey | Yeah, you know, I would agree. I like to think that the only part of the TGN experience that's casual is the friends you make along the way. Everything else is one rabbit hole after another. Jason and I brought up espresso machines recently. Oh yeah, no, I'm in there too. |
| Ed Jelly | That's a whole nother conversation. |
| James Stacey | It's great. Don't worry, it's definitely not me wishing my current one started to act up on me and to give me an excuse after some of the recommendations I got. Some very, very cool machines. It is the treat of liking something you don't really need is meeting other people who like things they don't necessarily need. or like the best version of something or a very specific version of something that they do need, which I think, Ed, you would probably align quite nicely with, you know, the practical element tied with the fascination of a better design, a better thing, a more useful thing, or even in some cases, a thing that allows you to enjoy the day more rather than the screen more, that sort of thing. And yeah, it's always a delight to find out what the crew will decide to get into in the next thread. |
| Ed Jelly | No, it's a blast. |
| Jason Heaton | Yeah, and just to note, just as a disclaimer, we did not pay you to say any of these things recently about the value of the TGN community, but we do appreciate the comments. |
| Ed Jelly | I'm a card-carrying member. I pay my $5 a month just like everybody else. I'm not an industry plant. No, I'm a happy paying member. |
| Jason Heaton | No, we appreciate that. That's great. And it's, you know, just to kind of wrap things up a bit, you know, we're also really grateful for your help with this collaboration and kind of helping us get this off the ground and seeing the CPN1 kind of to fruition. It's been really exciting and we're excited that people have kind of latched onto it and get this thing launched and get them in people's hands. So thanks for that. |
| Ed Jelly | Yeah, no, anytime. I mean, again, that that comes back to it. Like if you're not doing cool stuff for work, work is really kind of a drag. And to be able to kind of just go after it. And, you know, this is a thing that I like. This is a thing that the people involved in it like back and just kind of. seeing what we can do and that's I think the most fun part you never know who's going to send you back an email and you know maybe it's a couple of watch podcasters who want to check out a seasonal and then you know a couple years later they got their name on the pen so it's you know that for me is the payoff it's just fun it's fun to see what we can do and it's fun to see different people's takes and Ultimately, it's most fun to see these things get out in the world. I was dropping my son off at BattleBots camp, and I did not have a pen on me. I'm like, oh, I've got to use the clipboard pen to sign him in. And the dude had a tactile turn bolt action. Wow. And it was a limited edition, too. I'm like, are you carrying the Nebula matte stonewashed bolt action? He's like, yeah, I love these things. I have about eight of them. I'm like, I work for that company. And it was just like... |
| Jason Heaton | wild it's wild and we you know went off on pens for like a good 10 minutes and it's just like just seeing that that out in the wild is like the the you know the payoff it's cool well ed jelly um such a pleasure to have you on tgn and again thanks for your work with us on the collaboration the cpn1 and uh we hope to see you again sometime soon in person now that uh yeah there isn't a global pandemic maybe it'll be a ski trip maybe it'll be something else but uh yeah pleasure to have you on |
| Ed Jelly | Thanks so much. I've been a fan for a long time and now we're full circle. So thanks for having me and, you know, keep doing what you're doing. |
| James Stacey | All right, there you have it, a chat with a true renaissance man of the 2025 era, Ed Jelly with Tactile Turn, with his family's company, with watch writing, with an early guy in the pen blogging space, and of course, Elro Industries as well, which we talked about. There's a lot to dig in there, and I highly recommend that if you're listening and you're on the Slack and you have a question, start a thread tag ed and uh he's just a delightful guy so a huge shout out to ed thanks for being on the show thanks for your help with the collab uh it was another one we love these things where it's a confluence of many factors it's always nice to be able to do a collaborative project or product with somebody but at the same time i think for reasons you all just heard ed's a natural to be on the show a lot of similar passions. And I really love the way that he thinks about stuff and the way that he kind of just tackles challenges to start by making the mini phone ultra and then as quickly as possible, spin it up into like a functioning business that has, you know, more than 10 X to his projections. I think that's a good way of sort of framing the way that Ed approaches the world. So again, a big thanks. And with that, I think we can jump right into some final notes. Yeah, sure. |
| Jason Heaton | I'll go first. This is one that actually came via our good buddy, Derek Hager, who we had on TGN a while back. And he wrote me recently and said that this was going to be a final note if we called on him for one. And he graciously allowed me to share it. I think it's got some relevance to this time of year and the region in which I live. We both live actually in the Great Lakes in the US and Canada. November 10th is the 50th anniversary of the sinking of the Edmund Fitzgerald, kind of the Titanic of the Great Lakes. It's been called the second most famous shipwreck in the world and the subject of a Gordon Lightfoot song, of course. And in tribute to that, the... Duluth News Tribune, which is the newspaper based up in Duluth, Minnesota, where the Fitzgerald kind of was last seen, if you will, as it departed on that fateful night, November 10th, 1975. And the Duluth News Tribune has put out a five-episode limited podcast called Edmund Fitzgerald, 50 Years Below. And so far as of today, which is the Tuesday before this episode goes up, They've got three that have been released, episodes one, two, and three. Each are about between 35 and 40 minutes long. And, you know, anybody that's kind of into shipwrecks and kind of Great Lakes lore and just the fascination that surrounds this famous shipwreck should give it a go. So thanks, Derek, for bringing that to my attention and allowing us to share that on TGN. I think it'd be a good one. |
| James Stacey | Yeah, the proof that we probably should ask those guys for their final notes, right? Yeah. But yeah, that's a great one. I would be thrilled to kind of dig into this. It sounds like a great bit of storytelling. And it does, I saw yours in our notes. I was like, oh, I have one for that. and mine's actually two recommendations, one feeding the other, or if you're not that interested in the longer, go with the shorter, and I think it'll lead you in. So the first one for me is a documentary which is on YouTube, and it is called One Warm Line, The Legacy of Stan Rogers. It's a documentary from 1988 that I've watched a couple times in the last little while. I've become... Maybe it's Chris Soule kind of digitally... influencing me, you know, through the ether for sort of the maritime, the music of the maritime. So Stan Rogers, very interesting guy. If you don't know who he is, he was a Canadian folk singer who was actually born in Hamilton, right where I was born. He went to, for a time at least, the same university that I went to. And then Stan died when he was only 33 in a kind of a very strange scenario with a fire that broke out on an Air Canada flight. And when they landed, almost 22 people had passed due to smoke inhalation. If you talk to people of a certain age, of a certain part of Canada, of a certain, you know, depth of Canadianism, he is kind of the goat of the, you know, the greatest of all time when it came to these things. And he was also known as being like a very decent, warm-hearted man. There's an urban myth that said, you know, when all of this chaos was breaking out on the plane. he was guiding people out of the plane with his huge booming voice. And I think when you listen to his music, it's hard not to get a little bit choked up by that idea. To give you an idea of his cultural impact in Canada, years ago, the CBC, which is our version of public radio, asked Canadians to pick an alternate national anthem. And his very well-known song, Northwest Passage, was the clear winner in the vote. It's a good one. This documentary is 45 minutes. It's directed by Alan Collins and Robert Lang via CBC TV and Kensington TV. I want to make sure to shout out all the people who made this possible. It is like an old school feeling document. It almost feels a little bit like like Alone in the Wilderness in terms of not so much its delivery, but the level of technology and the formatting of the image and that sort of thing. And it's a mix of some live performances and people who knew Stan and interviews with Stan and that sort of thing. And I just highly recommend it. It's really, really beautiful stuff. But if you're listening to this and you go, why on earth would I do that? Because honestly, if you'd kind of suggested this to me a couple years ago, I would have said, oh, yeah, that sounds fine. I don't really love like sea shanty. So it's not that's not my core necessarily. But if you go ahead and check out, I'll include two songs that you can also check out. The first is that Northwest Passage. But the second is a video for the song The Last of Barrett's Privateers or Barrett's Privateers by Stan Rogers. And it's recorded like in somebody's kitchen. And there's seven or eight guys sitting around a table, you know, maybe some Irish whiskey on the table, that sort of thing. Everyone's a little sweaty. And the other thing that I will say is, one, the song is awesome. And this is a song where if you Google it or put it into Instagram, you'll see Stephen Colbert and... jack white singing it uh like there's a certain like hold among a certain type of music nerd that this song has uh and it's it's a fantastic song it's really fun my daughters really enjoy it and the the last thing i'd say is just out of interest go in and watch this video because the of the six or seven guys sitting around the table they each exhibit a haircut that almost doesn't exist anymore You know what I mean? If you click on this link, Jason, you'll see it quite quickly. There's a bunch of hairstyles in this video that don't exist anymore. I'm not saying they're good or bad. There's no judgment call. I'm saying nobody's rocking this cut anymore. That's all. You know, and I don't know if it was a bit of an East Coast thing. Obviously, Stan grew up in Ontario, but highly identified with the East Coast where his parents were from and Nova Scotia specifically. I was listening to the opening few bits of the documentary while I kind of typed things up for this today, and I'm still affected by it. He just seemed like a lovely guy. You listen to his music. I've watched any YouTube video I can find. He had the cadence and speaking talent of a stand-up comedian. He seemed to be a genuinely funny and warm-hearted man, and he just had an incredible voice and ability to write songs. Northwest Passage is just such a classic. |
| Jason Heaton | Very cool. I mean, I, you know, I'm, I'm, uh, obviously a big Gordon Lightfoot fan, but I don't, I'm not well versed in Canadian folk singers. Um, so I will, uh, definitely check this out cause I just clicked on the link and did see the haircuts and heard a little bit of the, of the music and this is right up my alley. So this is great stuff. |
| James Stacey | Yeah, good one. So that's the suggestion. It's a one warm line, the legacy of Stan Rogers. And for Jason, the Edmund Fitzgerald podcast series from Duluth News Tribune. So definitely a maritime themed, loosely Canadian connected overall pick for you this week. But I think a lot lots to get into there. |
| Jason Heaton | All right. Well, uh, great episode, long episode. Uh, thanks for hanging in there with us. I think, uh, a little something for everybody in this one, um, watches and pens and, uh, 3d printing and 3d maritime adventures. Yeah, exactly. So as always, thanks so much for listening. If you want to subscribe to the show notes, get into the comments for each episode or consider supporting the show directly. Maybe even grab a new TGN sign NATO. Please visit the gray NATO.com music throughout a siesta by jazz are via the free music archive. |
| James Stacey | And we leave you with this quote from the Japanese swordsman, artist, and writer Miyamoto Musashi, who said, "...if you know the path broadly, you will see it in all things." |