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I dislike using other people’s
tools when I travel. And I dislike it when all my tools fall tips-first
into the concrete. Oh, and I also dislike all of the tool rolls I’ve
encountered.
I’ve bought flimsy, poorly designed, ill-stitched
tool rolls all my life. None really worked and so I have just taken to
wrapping up each tool in a socks and traveling with a suitcase of
tool-filled socks. The TSA does not like me.
Yesterday I received the medium-sized tool roll I ordered from Blue Spruce Toolworks,
and I am now ready for my brutal travel schedule in 2011. This fine
piece of canvas work is everything you need to store all your
sharp-edged friends.
• It has 24 pockets, which is enough to
store all the edge tools I need to travel with – a set of bevel-edge
chisels, a set of mortising chisels, plus specialty chisels for paring
and dovetailing.
• The tool roll has two protective flaps that
fold over your sharp edges. Without flaps like these, tool rolls are
just suicide machines for your chisels. The slightest nudge will send
several of the tools to the floor.
• The pockets are snug. I put a
variety of standard chisels in mine without any problems. The medium
tool roll won’t fit the largest English mortising chisels, but few rolls
will.
• The canvas material is sturdy but rolls easily. I’ve had
tool rolls that were so beefy that you could hardly roll them.
Likewise, I have some lightweight rolls that frayed after a couple
years.
And if all that’s not enough to convince you, here’s the
other cool part about these. They are being made by Dave Jeske’s
daughter Hannah to help pay for her class trip to Washington, D.C. Dave
reports that Hannah is off school now and hard at work on these chisel
rolls in a sewing machine in his basement.
And one last thing:
This is a limited production run (Hannah does need to finish school), so
get your order in now. The rolls are reasonable, $30 to $35 depending
on the size: small, medium or large. For details, visit this page on the
Blue Spruce Toolworks site.
— Christopher Schwarz
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