What type of Tool Case do you use??

[David Love]

Mine is the 216-101 which has two pallets on one side and a built in tool
holder on the other.  The bag is designed to stand upright and has a large
compartment in the middle which I use for the Verituner, miscellaneous
felt, a small box of punchings, an Acrilikey kit, some sheets of sandpaper
in a small slip pouch, a variety of liquids on small applicator bottles,
and a spare few parts that I seems to need from time to time.  Everything
is held in these plastic boxes that disposable wipes come in (very handy
boxes left over from when my kids were younger).  The outer pallets hold a
variety of tools.  I, too, keep editing down the kit as it tends to get
heavy.  I do carry a set of fold up wheels in the car for times when I
can't park right in front of the customer's house.  I keep a separate
stringing kit in the car with a whole range of wire and various stringing
tools.   One other thing I keep in the kit is a few sample hammers glued
onto shanks for slipping quickly into the piano to demonstrate to customers
how awful their worn out hammers sound.  Live demonstrations can be quite
effective.  

David Love
davidlovepianos@earthlink.net


> [Original Message]
> From: Bill Ballard <yardbird@vermontel.net>
> To: Pianotech <pianotech@ptg.org>
> Date: 9/7/2003 6:41:08 AM
> Subject: Re: What type of Tool Case do you use??
>
> 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
> +++++++++++++++++++++
> _______________________________________________
> pianotech list info: https://www.moypiano.com/resources/#archives