Inspired by how others used Pelican cases to store their watches, Quasimodo had arranged a MO and managed to secure a few pieces for us.
I was excited when I first collected the case, I had no idea how big or small the case is, I just jump onto the MO as I don’t have a good case for transporting my watches if I’m going to a gathering.
We ordered the Pelican 1470 case, http://www.pelican.com/cases_detail.php?Case=1470
Upon receiving it, I’m so anxious to start messing around with the Pick N Pluckâ„¢ foam but I’m also holding back on the size and layout of the slots to be cut out.
There’s so many different layout and sizes that you can think of, took’s Quasimodo idea of putting it on the PC to make sense of the layout, I decided on Excel which in it’s simplest form, just rows and columns to help me in deciding the layout and the size of each block.
I toyed the idea of different sizes, 4×6, 4×7 and so on, I took  Ivan’s advise on 4×7 and viola, the first block is out.
The whole idea is not to get to the exact size but  smaller so the sponge can grip on the object tightly, rather than having a loose fit with the object wiggling around.
You could probably be wondering what’s 4×7, cm ? inches ? It’s actually the number of blocks in the Pick and Pluck Foam.
As you can see, the foam is already pre-cut, leaving small mini joints holding them together, so you can customise the size and shape of the slots. Slots for watches is easy, just a rectangle.
I didn’t really use the knife for every cut, just get in to cut the first few joints, get the 4×7 shape out and use my fingers to slowly tear the remaining joints apart.
The Seiko 6309 just fit in nicely.
The bigger Halios Puck will have the crown protruding out but it’s ok, there’s allowance in between the slots.
Now, I settled with the 4×7 sizing, I continued my “designing” on Excel to find the most optimised layout and fully utilising the real estate, so I came out with a combination of 4×7 and 4×6 slots with a max capacity of 20 watches !!
When I was slotting my watches in, I realised the cut-out blocks  is too “fat” for the slot especially it’s compressed with the watch strap, so I decided to remove 1×7 and 1×6 from the blocks, so it fits into the slots with the right tightness.
So viola.
The 4×6 slots can hold either small watches or watches with thinner straps.
Now to fill it with watches.
I tried to group them in a certain manner, modern divers at the left, Seiko vintage in the middle and other vintage divers on the right.
I still have 2 spare pieces hanging around, oh well, there’s never enough watches.
Now, that’s the end of my little DIY project, I will probably add another layer on top of the watches to protect the acrylic crystals and bezels as the sponge might scratch them up.