What type of Tool Case do you use??

[Bill Ballard]

At 1:42 PM -0700 9/6/03, David Love wrote:
>Jensen offers a variety of nice cases depending on your needs.  I use the
>one below, a triple sided cordura case.

I've use Jensen cordura bags for nearly twenty years, and my last one 
was the double-sided (216-301). (Triple-sided, David? Does yours hold 
four pallets or six?) At least with Jensen, you can buy the bag and 
the pallets separately, when one or the other craps out. The zippers 
on the bags would fails at odd intervals (anywhere from 15 months to 
4 years). and the pallets pouch would tear because I would insist on 
cramming as many tools in a single pouch as I could. (Two or three 
pliers nesting into each other in one large plier pouch. In a pouch 
normally made for a single screwdriver handle, I stuff 6-8 small 
tools: an LO wrench, a 15/64" open-end wrench, brass punch for string 
seating, rachet offset screwdriver, double-ended spinet capstan 
wrench, 5/16 box/open-end wrench.....you get the puncture).

I actually had a brand new Genck case for two weeks ago year ago (go 
look it up in the archives: Fri, 4 Oct 2002--RE: Genck Tool Case). A 
beautiful case but its pallets were too limiting. Bruce Genck put 
alot of thought into his pallet design, but my transfer from four 
pallets to two wasn't going to work with his design. So I returned it 
to Schaff (as I warned them I might).

There was also John Ross's LowePro Nova 5, but my problem was not 
carrying more tools but less. After 30 years of tuning, it's not my 
ears which complain after a long hard day, but my hands and wrists. 
After setting the tool bag in front of piano #1, the morning after a 
long hard day, the hand which carried in the bag had a low burning 
feeling. Part of that was the one arm/hand swing I'd used to get the 
bag on the passenger seat of my car to follow me out the driver side 
door. But the majority of that was the weight  of my accumulating 
collection of tools.

I continued on with my aging Jensen double-side bag, until mid-June 
this summer when I happened by a yard sale, with two laptop bags. 
One, a Targas, I bought for $1, and gave to my son (a long-overdue 
gift allowing him to his laptop move out of a cloth bag.) The second 
one had a Mac PB2300c. I talked the price down from $25 to $15 
because of a missing power converter. The light bulb went on when I 
discovered that the Jensen pallets would drop right into my laptop 
bag. The real delight was the shoulder strap which placed the weight 
of the bag in the small of my back. I'm still in the "tool histogram" 
survey to settle  for once and for all, what gets to live on those 
two pallets (laying one on top of the other, no structural 
separators). But with four "full-bag" dimension pockets in the top 
half of the bag, I've got room to spare. So much so that the total 
weight may creep right back up  into the "danger zone".

So that's my story and I'm sticking to it. (Better ramble than rant, right?)

Bill Ballard RPT
NH Chapter, P.T.G.

"So, I hear you like baked goods"
     ...........A new customer, very happy to see me
+++++++++++++++++++++