Case foam for your rifle case?  Yeah, it’s dead.  After spending hundreds of dollars on countless hours cutting and rearranging case foam I finally found an answer to this problem.  Rather than set up a case for foam, I set up my Pelican case for a second soft one inside.  Sort of like Russian nesting dolls but for gun cases.  Let’s dive into how this works, and how you can make this work for you.

Case Foam is Dead – Outfitting Your Hard Case with a Soft Case

For this example, I’ll be using a Grey Pelican Storm 3200 case with a 42″ Savior Equipment Urban Warfare Double Rifle Bag and a Pelican Air 1755 Long Case with a slightly longer 55″ Savior Equipment Urban Warfare Double Rifle Bag.  Savior makes my favorite soft cases, and Pelican makes my favorite hard cases.  You can make this work with any case so long as you know the dimensions.

The key is finding a hard case that has internal dimensions that will accommodate your soft rifle case.  Okay but why would I want to do that?  A soft case is going to cost more than case foam would.

Glad you asked.  If you want to fly with a firearm you’ll need a hard case.  Even if you don’t travel, a solid hard case keeps your gun protected from the elements and gives you added security with external locking points.  Not to say you need a hard case for every gun you own, but having a few for transport is a sound investment.

As anyone with a few hard cases knows, they’re not the most fun cases to travel with.  They’re heavy, cumbersome, and take up more space.  It’s much easier to take your firearms in a soft case for a quick day trip to the range.  So what do you do when you want that added layer of protection a hard case brings, but also the versatility of a soft case?  Well, I’ll show you.

By pairing a soft case with a case with no foam you now have the best of both worlds.  In reviewing the above Pelican 1755 Air Long Case I inadvertently found myself in several dust and rain storms.  A situation where having a hard case saves you a lot of headaches later on, but It’s still a cumbersome solution.  At the conclusion of that review, and out of sheer curiosity, I pulled the foam to see if my 55″ Multicam Black Savior equipment bag would fit inside.  It did, with room to spare.  Now I had the best of both worlds.  Protection from the elements, and the ability to deploy a soft bag so I’m not lugging around a Pelican.

From there the ideas kept flowing.  The new Pelican Air series rifle cases have Molle panel inserts.  I noticed I could take the velcro ties from the case and loop them through these panels so both cases would open when I opened the lid.  You could of course add a small section of velcro to the inside of your case and do this much cheaper.

The biggest advantage of this configuration is the added space.  Before it was a struggle to arrange the foam to accommodate the large Ruger RPR Mag and a single 100-round MTM ammo box.  Now I can add up to two 100-round MTM ammo boxes and only have to worry about the weight distribution.

Like all things new and different there are pros and cons.  It’s easier to stagger a single rifle with more ammunition in boxes or magazines in this configuration, however having more than one long gun can be a bit of a challenge.  I haven’t found this to be discouraging as most cut foam cases with two long guns don’t accommodate ammo well, so there are trade-offs no matter what way you go.  At least in this configuration, you have more options for transport, and you can always stick that case foam in the closet in case you think you might need it.

More information on the Pelican 1755 Air Long Case can be found here, and information on the Pelican Storm 3200 can be found here.  In addition, more information on the Savior Urban Warfare cases can be found here.  Thanks for reading.

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