Due to lack of entries and an unclear description of what was required to enter the contest, I’m extending the contest for another 3 days. Please re-read:
The Dragonthorn Leatherworks PCS is custom leather holder handcrafted by Dave Hauser for your EDC’s (Everyday Carry items). You can read my review of the custom PCS that Dave created for me (pictured to the left): https://the-gadgeteer.com/2012/10/18/dragonthorn-leatherworks-pocket-carry-system-pcs-review/.
Dave understands first hand that these are rather expensive and has an idea to bring the cost of his PCS creations down in price a bit … “kits!”. What we would like to do is to offer The-Gadgeteer.com readers the opportunity to help Dave determine just what these “kits” will be and have a chance to win one! Contest details after the jump.
The Challenge
The concept is to design 2-3 standard Dragonleather PCS products that can be cut, stitched and shipped at an affordable price. Once the customer receives his/her kit they would follow the instructions to mold the PCS to their items and would then burnish the edges themselves with the supplied “Dragonthorn slickum” (or dragon spit as Dave likes to say) and burnishing stick. We need you, the readers, to suggest 2-3 PCS kit styles. In order to be more usable by the masses they would contain a standard set of pockets in whatever configuration you come up with. Do they hold items like those contained in my PCS pictured above with an Altoids tin, lip balm and fingernail clippers?
Or something like Dave’s PCS which contains his pearl handled knife, a pen and a guitar pick? Your call. The key is to design, or come up with, a standard design or 3, that Dave can offer on his web site for purchase.
Prizes
1st Prize – A full custom PCS with lining
2nd Prize – A PCS kit with lining
3rd Prize – A PCS kit w/o lining
Judges
To determine 10 finalists:
Julie Strietelmeier, The-Gadgeteer
Dave Hauser, Dragonthorn Leatherworks
Final Vote:
The-Gadgeteer readers
Myself and Dave will narrow the finalists down to the top 10 and you, our readers, will select the top 3 entries. Sketches are the preferred method of entry but we will accept good descriptive text as well. Your drawing skills are not part of the selection process, only the design concept itself.
This offer is open to all Gadgeteer readers. International shipping will be covered up to $20.00 and shipped via the US Postal “Priority Mail” service (as info, most countries in the world can be shipped to via this method for $20.00 and arrives within 6-10 days).
How to enter (please read carefully – any missed steps and your entry will be disqualified):
1. Between now and 11/10/2012 11:59PM EST leave a comment detailing your idea for a PCS and email me ( ju***@th***********.com ) any sketches you would like to include.
2. At some point on 11/11/2012, I’ll announce the 10 finalists and open up the voting to you. Voting will be open till 11/13/12 11:59PM EST. The winners will be announced on 11/14/12.
Rules:
1. Leave a comment detailing your idea for a PCS. Optional – Email me ( ju***@th***********.com ) your sketches (.jpg format) and descriptions.
2. Gadgeteer writers, family members and close friends may not enter this contest.
3. the-gadgeteer.com is not responsible for any lost packages or incorrect shipping addresses.
4. Failure to follow instructions will result in the entry being disqualified.
Gadgeteer Comment Policy - Please read before commenting
My favorite gadget is my Sony Reader Wi-Fi. I know it doesn’t have color but I don’t care because it’s really light and I can download books directly from the library without connecting to the computer.
Definitely the iMac G3. I still remember the translucent casing from when I was in college. Ah, those were the days…
My favorite “gadget” has been the Tom Bihn Empire Builder Bag. I use it everyday, the quality is phenomenal, and it holds everything I throw at it.
The concept I chose is a small travel shoe kit. My concept pic needs a lot of work and very rough. I wanted it to be much sleeker and compact like pic two in this post.
I need a PCS to carry a usb drive and a couple SDHC cards or similar for cameras. And a spot for an ID card or two that is handy for getting in through security controlled doors. Actually if the slot that held the card was big enough for 3 – security card, credit card, driver’s license that would be nice as I tend to not travel with much other than those.
My idea is a PCS that would hold: 1. a notepad, 2. a pen and 3. pieces of paper (receipts, shopping lists, to-do lists).
(Just emailed you this with a sketch)
Thanks for clarifying the entry rules! My design is for carrying:
– a 3.5-4 inch pocket pen. E.g., a Fisher Bullet pen, which is 3.75″ closed, or the 4″ pen in my photo which is from a recent Kickstarter.
– a tube of lip balm
– one or two credit/ID cards and/or some folded cash.
There would be a main compartment sleeve sized to fit the cards, with a rounded bottom to avoid pointy corners sticking into you when carried in a front pocket. The front-facing side (i.e., the side on which the other items will also sit) has a thumb cutout for ease of sliding out the cards.
On top of the main sleeve would be sewn pockets for the other two items: a Fisher Bullet or other pen of up to 4″ length (the long side of an ID card is 3 and 5/8″, a bullet pen is 3.75″, the pen in my photo is 4″ – I don’t think you would want the card sleeve to be taller than 3.5″, else even with the thumb cutout it would be difficult to extract the card) and a tube of lip balm.
How about something that holds the EDC essentials? Sleeve for a torch(streamlight pro-tac2), knife(sog flash), pen(fisher space), lip balm(burts bees of course). Slim enough for back pocket, but include a slot or clip on the reverse so it could be belt carried.
Sketch to follow.
Hmm. I think:
Lip Balm/Chapstick/Lipstick
Small pen (Bullet pen, or something similar)
Small knife/tool. (Gerber Dime, Leatherman Style series, Swiss Army Classic, that size.)
If the overall size fits, as an optional ‘back pocket’: Credit card/ID/cash.
I think that would work for a lot of uses.
Oh: @Linda: Check out Levenger’s Wallet Writer’s. That’s basically what they are.
Where Julie’s lip balm and altoids tin are, you could have slots for a fisher space pen and a Swiss Army knife, and where her nail clippers are, there could be a slot for a house key and/or a car key.
What I would love to see would be something about 11 CM wide and 6 cm tall, with 3 seperate pouches on the front each about 3.5 cm wide, with a longer pocket on the back to accomodate credit or business cards. This would accomodate a small pen, light (maratec AAA) and small knife like a spyderco Dragonfly. Since these are things you would carry around on a day to day basis, it would be nice to have them bundled together and not getting scratched loose in your pocket. I believe this could be done with 3 pieces of leather, the middle one of which would be a bit stiffer than the other 2. If it is offered as a kit, prepunched holes and instructions on burnishing would be great. A layer of felt-like material pre-glued to the internal parts would be fantastic.
A second idea would be an iphone sized pouch, with 5 small pockets on the back side of the pouch. 4 could be the same 3.5-4.5 width, and one could be much narrower for a fisher spacepen or a longer pen pouch across the bottom edge, under the other pockets for a pen/stylus.
Julie – Since I sent you my sketches on time and listed my favorite gadget, do I need to follow the new rules and give details on my PCS ideas? I think I sent you about 8 or 9 and they include most of the PCS ideas that were submitted today.
The favorite gadget thing was a screw up on my part. I had used an old contest post as a template and some how managed to overlook that I still had that in there… You’re entered and don’t need to do anything else.
Emailed my idea in. Thanks for the contests and a fun site. Been checking in daily for years’n’years, always finding great stuff.
I would like some thing hold my:
CKRT M-16 knife
Streamlight PT-2AA
Zebra F-301
Moleskin
This would be cool!
The idea behind this, if I understand it correctly, is for him to be able to more or less mass produce a leather holder for 3 things that most Gadgeteer readers (and I assume the rest of the world) seem to carry loose in their pockets currently.
In reading people’s comments, there seems to be some fairly commonly repeated items: pens, smallish multi-tools/knives, lip balm and flashlights of one design or another.
Lip balms are all more or less the same size in the US, so that seems simple enough to standardize.
Pens can be all different sizes, but since the Fisher Space Pen seems to be very common (Most small pens seem to be designed to accept their refills at least) then any pen that is near that size should fit into a pen slot.
Smallish multi-tools/knives and flashlights however, are all over the map in sizes and widths. So, perhaps creating one of the kits designed for use with multi-tool/knives and a different one to be compatible with flashlights.
The necessity of choosing a size for multitools/knives and for flashlights will require some market research or survey on which of these are most common, or most requested.
Obviously, at the end of the day, Dave will know best what he gets the most requests for, and what is going to be feasible for him to produce at the price point he is trying to reach.
It’s certainly a neat idea to open it up to the community for input before embarking on a product line. I’m impressed with the ingenuity of the idea.
It’s also always interesting to see what people feel is necessary for them in their EDC items. But, since the goal here is to find something of a “standard” that can be produced in multiples at a lower cost, taking the most common items that come in more or less standard sizes is going to be the way to go in my opinion.
Anyone else who has specific needs or combos knows who to go to for some really impressive custom work!
I would love to have something that would carry my small box cutter knife, a fisher space pen and a flash drive. These are always in my pocket being an IT person.
Also maybe a tag on the side that could have an S-Biner attached to hold a small flashlight
My normal carry is a few cards, USB drive, Lip Balm, and a Challenge Coin. Also looking at my keys I would think a small slot for a car key for a clip style pocket knife.
My PCS would be a utilitarian type PCS. On the front I would have a slot for a pen knife (a Classic SD model) and a mini ink pen (I have a n older Retro 51 Tornado w/stylus I still use daily) on the back side I would have a slot for two or 3 pieces of ID and a spring clip to act as a belt clip, a inside the pocket clip or a money clip. the over all the width could be slightly smaller then the credit cart and length would be slightly larger. I am emailing a drawing of my design to you so it can be posted if anyone is interested.
Larry g
A nice leather sleeve for a metal candy tin by itself, like a Jones Soda candy tin or an Eclipse mints tin, would be great. These tins are big enough to hold a bunch of things like lip balm or AA batteries or a mini multitool, but the leather would certainly class up the presentation. A bit of leather could even go inside the tin to cut down on rattle. The tin provides a rigid structure and a lid on the end that snaps closed with authority. The ends are recessed slightly and would easily take a glued-on scrap of leather as well.
There are a few things that would work well in combination with an Eclipse mints tin, since they are about as wide as the tin is deep: a Leatherman Style CS or Micra, a Victorinox Classic, a Pocketweez, or a mini Sharpie.
In the same vein, an Eclipse mint container and a Zebralight AA headlamp/flashlight lie together nicely, as do the tin and a USB stick.
Personally, I would like a PCS that holds a tin with a Style CS in a side pocket. The tin would contain a tweezer, a few needles, bandaids and a blister pad or two, Burt’s Bees, and a flattened roll of cloth adhesive tape. Thus, a nail care/splinter/micro first aid kit for use in the shop or climbing gym, in a more professional appearing package that will be gentler on the other things in my pocket.
I just now stumbled onto your website and saw this post on the PCS. Cool website by the way. I’ve been looking for something like this for ages. I think a generic three pouch system like the one shown at the top would be great, only my preference would be for a belt loop.
Most EDC and prepper types usually carry the following, a pocket knife, keychain, and flashlight. It grows from there, and the size differences for individual preferences are huge. I think another PCS idea would be one that would fit a small pocket knife, a small flashlight, a third generic pouch for a pen, clippers, whatever. and a clip of some type to hang keys. Oh… and optional belt loop.
You don’t want to go hog wild with it. There are other systems but they get far too large to be practical. Take a look at the skinth, I was going to get one but I’d rather get leather and it just seems too large for me. http://skinthsolutions.com/
Anyway… that’s my two cents. Once again, great site and I also like Dragonthorn’s work.
The contest has been closed for entries. The 10 finalists will be posted at some point today, then voting will be opened.