I'm a soulless heathen who kept his most used sockets loose in a tool box. I admit it, feel free to hate me as much as you want. Yes, every time I needed a socket I needed to dig, but I could easily grab the one box and have 90% of what I needed to work on the car with me, and believe it or not it's pretty amazing how many sockets, unis, extensions, wrenches and pliers you can carry in a single box when you just throw them in all loose. I once was a complete man, with a well organized chest. All of my sockets were on rails, everything easily locatable, and life was good. Then .... others in the house started using my tools and .... well.... apparently my tool chest has some advanced biometric technology built into it that will allow anyone to *remove* a tool, but only I can put one back in : ( I decided my life needed a change. I had been looking at rails and thinking about rails for a while, but ... I don't know. I have metal rails; they're solid, they'll last forever, the spring clips are dirt cheap, you can build the rail out however you want. They're extremely space efficient, cost efficient, but there's just something about rails that always bugged me... kind of fighting to get the socket off, fighting to get it back on. It's really no surprise sockets ended up just being loose in the drawer so often. The more I thought about it, the more I realized that I really liked the tray that my 3/8 deep Craftsmen came in (pictured). No fighting to get sockets in or out, and also easier to keep in order because the tray was fit for each socket diameter. This tray was really just sturdy enough to transport and sell the sockets but I kept mine in there for about a decade, maybe 15 years or so, and really enjoyed it. When I saw this Lisle case I figured this was the one for me, and I put my sockets in it tonight. I'm giving it four stars for now and will change over time as I see how it holds up long term. I've read that the magnets aren't strong enough for some folks. Perhaps they've changed the design, or maybe there are QC issues with their magnet supplier, or maybe different sockets just have different metallurgy. Mine or a combination of Craftsmen and I believe some Huskey, as well as a couple just cheap crap ones. I'm still looking for the rest of my 3/8's (I know...) so the tray isn't completely full, but as you can see it has two magnet rails on each side, as well as one long strip magnet on the back. It holds to my chest perfectly - securely, but breaks free easily enough when you go to take it off. It holds the sockets in strong enough for me, even upside down. It does take a lot of space, but I can still put it in my shallow tray on top of other crap and close the tray. All in all I think it's pretty damn good. Big, for sure. I won't be able to fit all my sockets back in my portable box with these, so I've decided that my torx and extractors will stay on rails. This has definitely really helped organize my sockets though and I'm looking forward to my next job with it.
