This photo gets huge if you click on it

Like their vintage and current bicycle components, Campagnolo cycling tools are unique, ingenious and highly functional. Among their most famous and sought-after product is their Campagnolo Complete Tool Case, which contains almost every tool needed to prepare a frameset to be built into a bicycle. They were remarkable and prized tool kits in their day, and even now, when so many superbikes are made of carbon, certain tools from Campy's kit are invaluable and heavily used if you have one.

Rare even when new
Since these wonderful cases are becoming a little rare, this webpage is about mine, which is shown above (click to enlarge photo a lot). So that you can see how the cutters, chasers, facers and spanners inside were used to prepare that Masi, Cinelli or Hetchins for assembly, I've put illustrations from Campagnolo's tool case instructional poster, and the tool pages from their Catalogue 17 of 1973 below (click to open complete images).

I believe my Campy tool kit is from 1969 to 1972, since it's similar to the one shown in Campagnolo's Catalogue 16, which appeared in 1969. By 1973 the kit had changed to a plastic interior instead of the full wooden interior with blocks supporting all the tools. If you can identify the exact year my kit was made and/or the catalog it appears in, please let me know.

Closed, my case is 30 1/4 inches long, 19 inches wide and a mere 2 1/2 inches thick. A continuous hinge and two latches keep it closed, there's a quality carrying handle, and the tools remain in place when the case is lifted. But it's not easy to walk with it by your side. It weighs 45.6 pounds. Note that my case's original handle has been replaced with a more modern Campagnolo one.

From the famous Bicycle Center
Pristine, essentially unused Campagnolo tool kits exist in collections (and you can still find them for sale occassionally for in the ballpark of $3,500). But they don't make my heart race the way my beaten and battered example does. That's because it came out of the famous Bicycle Center in Santa Cruz, California, where I worked for six weeks in 1980 at the end of a cross-country bicycle tour, and then from 1982 to 1989 when we moved to Santa Cruz.

Roger and Marcia Sands opened the Bicycle Center on Mission Street on the west side of Santa Cruz (in the building where Falafel of Santa Cruz restaurant is today), just in time to take full advantage of the bike boom that hit the country in the late sixties and early seventies.

Stocking the great names and hiring the best
Ahead of the trend, Roger was already importing and selling handbuilt frames by Hetchins, Harry Quinn, William Hurlow and Bob Jackson of Great Britain. And, supplying the hard-to-find components to complete the bikes from Campagnolo, Cinelli, Brooks, Mavic, Mafac and endless other great marques.

In the decades that followed a who's who of cycling supported and worked at the shop. Anybody's Bike Book author, Tom Cuthbertson, Dan Nall, who helped bring cyclocross to America, Tim Neenan of Lighthouse Cycles and Stumpjumper fame, Robert Wright who penned the first wheelbuilding book of the bike boom era, Rock Lobster framebuilder Paul Sadoff, and other bikemen with chain lube running through their veins.

My first Campy tool kit
Although I had already worked as a professional mechanic for 11 years, and in 5 different bike shops, some with a few prized individual Campy tools, it wasn't until I managed the Bicycle Center that I finally got to work with this full Campagnolo Tool Case. When the store changed hands a few years after I had left the shop and I got the chance to acquire it I almost couldn't believe it. It now holds a place of honor on my workbench and even with all the wear and tear, dings, chips and even a few cracks, still works its magic when I'm building or repairing fine bicycles.

Clever design
The detail photo below shows the way seven tools nicely nest in one spot in the case. All the tools that I lined up laying across the other tools manage to fit from smallest to largest on the wood holders just above them. Compare the photo above with this one and you can see how it looks when the tools are all in their places.

Notice too, how the straight edge (can you find it?), crankarm bolt tool, derailleur-hanger alignment tool and saddle spanner have unique holders. You'll see the special Campy brush used for cleaning the filings after chasing and facing sits loosely in the case.

The craftsmanship of the wood told holders isn't very special. Some are crooked. They crack and break relatively easily. And they're only glued on the case and can pop off. You can see some repairs to mine made over the years by some of the Bicycle Center's mechanics (not me).

Still, there's magic in this took kit and I love owning and using it.

Click on the 16 thumbnail images below to see much more detail on the tools.