Recently the past few years have seen a literal explosion in new case makers.  I suppose that I have been partially responsible for that as I am always encouraging people to go out and make their own and trying to educate the public about what a good case is.

This post is a continuation of my last one where I talked about how some case makers are putting out cases that I wouldn’t let out of the shop for a variety of reasons including how they are built and somewhat less, how they look.

Lately there is a situation with a new case maker who put the cart before the horse in a way by really marketing his cases before he had made more than a few.  He spent a lot of time on the main billiards forum showing off each thing he learned to do – each post made to solicit more orders.  And his opening prices were cheap so the effect was that he did in fact get orders.  Enough orders that he is now backed up and the very same forum where he got all the business from is now impatient to receive their cases and venting that frustration on the open message board.

After 18 years as a case maker I still don’t have a proper handle on how long it takes to make a case from concept to finished product.  Oh I have the general idea but if you said how many minutes or hours does it take to do this or that step I wouldn’t really know other than a general decent guess based on my feeling.  I do know that we cannot make a case in less than two days and most cases take us five days.  Some cases take much longer, the recent case called the Palace Garden took about four weeks of construction time and about four weeks of intense design time before construction began and around 30 emails back and forth with the customer prior to that.  But normally once we get rolling after a case is designed we can usually have it done in a week.

And when I say we can have it done then I mean done to my standards which are full of many details that are important to the fit and finish of the case and which take a lot more time.

So I often wonder if the new case makers get into the business without a really good sense of how much time they will need to spend on each case to make a decent one?

There are so many steps to making a good cue case and each one takes minutes to hours to accomplish.  Starting with the leather one must inspect the hide very carefully before cutting it to insure that the parts are blemish free and to cut it most efficiently so as to reduce waste and cost.

From there the parts are grooved, sanded, tooled, dyed, sewn, riveted, etc….  The interior is made, one Organic Rebound interior takes two people 4 hours from start to finish to complete.

In short a lot of effort goes into making a good cue case.  It isn’t rocket science for sure.  But it is hand crafted meticulous work where the detail makes all the difference.

I think a lot of new case makers these days are finding out just what it takes in time and effort to make a passable product. I hope that you as consumers also take a little bit of time to think about what goes into making a cue case and learn to appreciate the details that a shop like ours puts into our work.

Do you know what a well built cue case looks like? I study cases of all kinds with a special emphasis on cue cases. I look at all the details that indicate good solid construction, meticulous work, and attention to the smallest details. Things like the stitching being straight and tight, the pockets being properly aligned, what should be centered is centered, the comfort of the handles and straps, the ease of use. I pay very close attention to the small details on the cases we build and I often will remake an entire case if something is "not right". This often causes us to have delays in delivery and it's – probably – things that the customer would not think were a problem anyway. I say this – with flame retardent suit on – because I see cases being done by my colleagues and competitors which exhibit issues that I wouldn't let out of the shop – and still they get high praise. Which leads me to believe that either the consumers don't know what "good" is – or my standards are too high – or the consumers know and don't care. Which is it? I am not going to go into detail here about what these things are that bug me so much because that would require a lot of show and tell and would piss everyone off from my colleagues to the people who own those brands. I believe that my colleagues all are building the best product they can and doing everything they feel is needed to be done to make a good case. My rant here is more directed to the consumer who gushes about a product without any experience with similar products which might actually be better. I guess it's unreasonable to expect people to temper their enthusiasm with some background on their experience so we can judge their opinion accordingly. For example if one of my customers who has owned and used every case made says that xxx-brand is the best then that carries more weight than Joe LeaguePlayer who has owned a few instroke knockoffs saying that xxx-brand is the best. I just get a little pissy when I know how anal I am about it and how much pressure I put myself and my team under and then I see cases which are not done right (in my opinion, based on my experience). I probably won't change on this point but it still irks me to see someone write that xxx-brand of case is the "best for the money" when I can clearly see many things on it that I wouldn't allow out of my shop. It makes me wonder about what people consider to be "good" and have value and where that opinion comes from. It also makes me wonder why I try so hard. Anyway, that's all I wanted to say about this. I am not going to change and we will continue to put out cases where I feel that the fit and finish is what it should be or as close as we are able to get. I hope that you as a consumer will look a little closer at the product you are considering and judge it based on the smallest details as well as the overall look. My goal here is that you never buy a case from us where you suddenly look at it one day and say, "that doesn't look right".