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Old 13-10-2014, 04:00 PM
jayeson (Jayeson)
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jayeson is offline
 
Join Date: Aug 2014
Location: Perth, Australia
Posts: 22
Craftright vs Pelican Case Comparisons

I recently purchased both an inexpensive large Craftright Safecase and a not so inexpensive Pelican 1550 case. I got the for different uses after reading these threads on cases for mounts and eyepieces. It wasn't until the Pelican arrived that I discovered they were the same size. I thought I would share my thoughts on how they compare.
  • The cost of my yellow Pelican shipped from Amazon was about 3x the Craftright. A silver one was about $5 more and black another $20.
  • The shell of the Craftright is thicker and tougher looking than I was expecting. The Pelican however looks like it could go through anything. All parts look to be thicker and of better plastic, and some parts such as the carry handle are in another league.
  • The ribs on the back of the Craftright are not level and the case does not sit upright well, especially with the weight of a mount in it. I am careful to set it down against a wall. The Pelican is rock solid.
  • My Craftright example is actually airtight. It has a manual pressure release which was tightened at the factory, resulting in the case being distorted by the time I got hold of it. I shall just assume the Pelican seals, and it has a fancy watertight, auto, pressure release valve. It is worth noting that the Pelican only has two clasps to mess with. The Craftright has 4 and does not seal unless all are latched.
  • The foam in the Craftright smells terrible and has an oily residue. I would never let optics in direct contact with it and wasn't too keen on even getting it on the mount either. The pictures on the net of folks with expensive camera lenses in there - yikes. Just setting up the foam to take these pics had my hands covered in it. The arrangement is no good either - 3 equal thickness pieces, only one of which is pick and pluck. This particular detail bothers me a lot . I ended up not using the included foam and instead adapted the closed cell packing foam my mount came in. The Pelican foam has the layers you want. It has a mild new car smell. Actually, it reminded me of renting cars in the US. The pick and pluck is slow to work with and it is challenging to avoid loosening pieces you didn't want to. I don't see what the alternative would be though for someone without special cutting tools. Against the yellow case, it is clear that quite a bit of foam dust is present. I spent some 2 hours on each of these cases fitting what I have in there.

My first thought in unboxing the Craftright was that it was a lot of case for $69. Now, err, I suppose it is OK for the relatively inexpensive mount that is in it. Well, at least for local storage and car trips. I think it is perhaps better suited to equipment that will get dirty/greasy anyway. If Pelican foam were purchased for it, then the cost would end up much closer to that of the Pelican 1550. As someone else has said, if I were to do it again, I would go straight for the Pelican.

The Pelican is excellent. At the typical Australian retail price, very hard to swallow, but shipped from Amazon, not too bad. For folks in the US where shipping is free/near free, I can't imagine wasting time even considering the cheap stuff.

I have attached some pics of the two. The Pelican picture is poor - in person it looks far more impressive than the Craftright. My early eyepiece purchases look silly in this big case. John Bambury's eyepiece collection from the thread linked above made his 1600 case look small, so I ordered the smaller 1550. And it seemed like we had a lot of boxes of stuff on the shelf. Even with my more spread out spacing, my eyepiece purchase plans are going to fill only half the case.
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Last edited by jayeson; 13-10-2014 at 05:23 PM.
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