On a case-by-case basis
Dec. 26th, 2002 12:56 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tugrikWhen you see the monoceri crating up their gear and snuffling the wind, you know something serious is up. Well, not really -- it just feels like the start to some kind of serious adventure, and I like that. :)
Part of my oft-expounded-about love of infrastructure includes having proper storage for things. While a lesser drive, there's still a satisfaction to having safe and rugged casing for items or systems of value. I may procrastinate in taking care of my stuff, but I do eventually get around to finding ways to preserve the bits of tech and tools I find important. Every once in a while that procrastination gets to me and I spend a little too much of my resources 'catching up' on this particular desire, seeking out all manners of racks, casings and mounts.
One thing that often stops me from 'getting around to it' is a preference I have that borders on a mild OCD. I dearly love custom-made casings that fit parts or systems exactly. Having cases that don't hold all the items within a system or have too much space left over just bothers me a little. Having non-custom cases that aren't easy to modify, causing for pieces to fit haphazardly or with too much slop space, just feels terribly inelegant.
Luckily, the folks at Pelican seem to cater to this market-subsegment I find myself in, and make many types of cases that strike a good compromise. I'm sure you've seen these cases around; they're somewhat ubiquitous. Waterproof, dustproof, crushproof and airtight, they're designed to help anything from computer equipment to optics survive being thrown around cargo planes and safari jeeps. Most of them have what they call a "pick and pluck foam" lining: the inner foam supports are all pre-perforated into little rectangular blocks which you can tear out to form holes for the individual items you want packed. They also do pre-cut foam bricks for tons of products, working with the manufacturers to make OEM case sets. These are popular for video cameras, telescopes, and electrical test equipment.
Over the years I've started buying these things. It started with getting a smaller case for the collection of telescope eyepieces my old Celestron had. Next came one for the binoculars that I was always afriad of damaging while hauling to Burning Man and back. At work I've acquried dozens of them (at Engineering's request, not mine) for our GPS trackers, antenna testing meters and the like. Over the holiday break I picked up one of the 1600 series cases to finally pack up the Digital-SLR gear, lenses, flashes and other such accessories. I'm on the hunt for one of the longer 1750 cases for the lightstands and backdrop supports. With luck I'll have them all together by CF, so I can tote the photo gear there in 'em. There's a handful of other things around the house I'd like to get cases for, but I've not really prioritized yet.
The goal with the photo equpment is make it airline-ship-ready... so I can do photowork for other conventions. Anthrocon invited me to come shoot there last summer, but I had to turn them down because at the time I had no way to ship the camera equipment safely. Everything was in softcases, but they were too bulky to bring as carry-ons in an aricraft and utterly unsuitable for FedEx'ing. The pick-and-pluck foam setups aren't the best looking, but they do function well and should keep things safe when the 'tossers' throw them around the aircraft holds. My only real worry is that Pelican cases pretty much scream "Hey, expensive stuff in here! Please, steal me!"
Two major problems arise from casing up the photo gear. For one -- all pelican cases look alike. Same shapes, corners, latches... and for the most part, all of them are the same carbon-impact-resin black. Even though they come in different sizes, they still look alike. More than once I've grabbed the wrong case while running out the door, and found myself holding a bag of telescope eyepieces instead of the binocs I wanted. The other problem, as stated above, is that new and unscuffed Pelican cases scream "steal me!"
The way to help both of these situations is to go nuts on the cases with paint, color, sticker and stencil. The messier and more roughed-up they look, the less appetizing they are. Color-codes or other identifying marks will help in grabbing the right cases in hurried situations... though of course one should avoid literal labels of what's inside. I can't decide how best to do this, though -- and more mechanically, which type of paints and clearcoats will work the best and last the longest, considering the cases will indeed take a good knocking about over their lifespan.
A good example of this are my DeWalt toolcases. My sister put big red-paint handprints on it, and I had others fingerpaint random things on their surface. Mixed with the playa dust (they're 3-year B'man survivors) the cases look weathered, skanky enough they're not "ooh, shiny new tools to steal", corporate-logo-less, and downright tribal in a way. I'm hoping to get the same effect. Atop whatever basic scribblings get put on them, I plan to plaster 'em with stickers from sites I've taken the equipment to, in that old-style-luggage kind of way. Cases with Character, if you will.
So my question is twofold:
Once they're dolled up a bit, I'll stencil on name-and-address (and engrave same on the tag-position) and then clearcoat them to see if it helps the paints last. I actually hope they scuff and scrape off with use, but not so much as to completely undo the markings. Anything will be better than flat, new-like black though.
And now on to trying to convince my boss to give me tomorrow off, so I can spend a little more holiday being On Holiday... it's not like they don't owe me 2 weeks of comp time and 3 weeks of vacation...
Part of my oft-expounded-about love of infrastructure includes having proper storage for things. While a lesser drive, there's still a satisfaction to having safe and rugged casing for items or systems of value. I may procrastinate in taking care of my stuff, but I do eventually get around to finding ways to preserve the bits of tech and tools I find important. Every once in a while that procrastination gets to me and I spend a little too much of my resources 'catching up' on this particular desire, seeking out all manners of racks, casings and mounts.
One thing that often stops me from 'getting around to it' is a preference I have that borders on a mild OCD. I dearly love custom-made casings that fit parts or systems exactly. Having cases that don't hold all the items within a system or have too much space left over just bothers me a little. Having non-custom cases that aren't easy to modify, causing for pieces to fit haphazardly or with too much slop space, just feels terribly inelegant.
Luckily, the folks at Pelican seem to cater to this market-subsegment I find myself in, and make many types of cases that strike a good compromise. I'm sure you've seen these cases around; they're somewhat ubiquitous. Waterproof, dustproof, crushproof and airtight, they're designed to help anything from computer equipment to optics survive being thrown around cargo planes and safari jeeps. Most of them have what they call a "pick and pluck foam" lining: the inner foam supports are all pre-perforated into little rectangular blocks which you can tear out to form holes for the individual items you want packed. They also do pre-cut foam bricks for tons of products, working with the manufacturers to make OEM case sets. These are popular for video cameras, telescopes, and electrical test equipment.
Over the years I've started buying these things. It started with getting a smaller case for the collection of telescope eyepieces my old Celestron had. Next came one for the binoculars that I was always afriad of damaging while hauling to Burning Man and back. At work I've acquried dozens of them (at Engineering's request, not mine) for our GPS trackers, antenna testing meters and the like. Over the holiday break I picked up one of the 1600 series cases to finally pack up the Digital-SLR gear, lenses, flashes and other such accessories. I'm on the hunt for one of the longer 1750 cases for the lightstands and backdrop supports. With luck I'll have them all together by CF, so I can tote the photo gear there in 'em. There's a handful of other things around the house I'd like to get cases for, but I've not really prioritized yet.
The goal with the photo equpment is make it airline-ship-ready... so I can do photowork for other conventions. Anthrocon invited me to come shoot there last summer, but I had to turn them down because at the time I had no way to ship the camera equipment safely. Everything was in softcases, but they were too bulky to bring as carry-ons in an aricraft and utterly unsuitable for FedEx'ing. The pick-and-pluck foam setups aren't the best looking, but they do function well and should keep things safe when the 'tossers' throw them around the aircraft holds. My only real worry is that Pelican cases pretty much scream "Hey, expensive stuff in here! Please, steal me!"
Two major problems arise from casing up the photo gear. For one -- all pelican cases look alike. Same shapes, corners, latches... and for the most part, all of them are the same carbon-impact-resin black. Even though they come in different sizes, they still look alike. More than once I've grabbed the wrong case while running out the door, and found myself holding a bag of telescope eyepieces instead of the binocs I wanted. The other problem, as stated above, is that new and unscuffed Pelican cases scream "steal me!"
The way to help both of these situations is to go nuts on the cases with paint, color, sticker and stencil. The messier and more roughed-up they look, the less appetizing they are. Color-codes or other identifying marks will help in grabbing the right cases in hurried situations... though of course one should avoid literal labels of what's inside. I can't decide how best to do this, though -- and more mechanically, which type of paints and clearcoats will work the best and last the longest, considering the cases will indeed take a good knocking about over their lifespan.
A good example of this are my DeWalt toolcases. My sister put big red-paint handprints on it, and I had others fingerpaint random things on their surface. Mixed with the playa dust (they're 3-year B'man survivors) the cases look weathered, skanky enough they're not "ooh, shiny new tools to steal", corporate-logo-less, and downright tribal in a way. I'm hoping to get the same effect. Atop whatever basic scribblings get put on them, I plan to plaster 'em with stickers from sites I've taken the equipment to, in that old-style-luggage kind of way. Cases with Character, if you will.
So my question is twofold:
- What physical media is best for black carbon-polymer-resin? As in, what type of spraypaints, clearcoats, and brush/fingerpaints should I go buy? I don't know paint.
- Anybody local, artistic or not, want to help me scribble on these things? :)
Once they're dolled up a bit, I'll stencil on name-and-address (and engrave same on the tag-position) and then clearcoat them to see if it helps the paints last. I actually hope they scuff and scrape off with use, but not so much as to completely undo the markings. Anything will be better than flat, new-like black though.
And now on to trying to convince my boss to give me tomorrow off, so I can spend a little more holiday being On Holiday... it's not like they don't owe me 2 weeks of comp time and 3 weeks of vacation...
