I’ve reviewed Diamondback tool bags before. For the last year, I wore the Denali bags and liked them a lot. The major complaint that Diamondback gets is the lack of room in the fastener pouches. Enter, the GRRande bags. These bags are designed to hold more and larger fasteners, as well as for concrete formers, cleats, and ties. I’ve been wearing this rig for the last few months.
Diamondback is starting a new series with a design it is calling “cottonmouth,” meaning the pouches stay open for easier access. As a framer, I try not to carry a ton of fasteners, but I like having open bags to carry strips of nails, larger structural screws, framing clips, spreader cleats and snap ties, and so on.
Layout. On the dominant-hand side, you have two main pockets, and a pocket up high at the belt. Around the rim of the main bag are seven tool slots for things like chisels and markers, and on the outside back is a loop to hold a nail puller or flat bar. Pencils go in the front and there is a “SCUBA webbing hanger for impacts, drills, or nail guns” to hang off.
The non-dominant side is basically the same design but has a layout-square divider, and pocket up high for a tape measure up to a 35-foot FatMax. Rear tool loop. Both bags also have the rear hammer loop if you prefer to keep your hammer there.
There’s enough vertical storage for utility knife, chisel, pencil, and more.
Fabric loops are good for hooking an impact driver.
These bags come standard with a hammer sleeve—a feature I absolutely love—and a 6-inch belt.
Over the years, I have become a minimalist about what I carry. As you can see from the pictures, I like to have a variety of marking tools. For fasteners, we put nails, strips, structural screws, and the like in buckets and keep them close at hand to avoid carrying too much weight in our bags.
The left side bag has an all-too-rare element in tool-pouch design: a slot for a layout square.
The tape-measure pouch holds a 35-footer nicely. Good for what I do: framing. There’s also a sleeve for a nail puller.
What I love about these bags is that there is a lot of room for things like spreader cleats, ply clips, hurricane clips, and more. Diamondbacks are expensive, at $450, but built to last and wear over a long time. I bet you could get 10 years out of these bags. This is a lot of money to spend, but Diamondback offers a 30 day unconditional money back guarantee, stating, “If you are not completely satisfied with your purchase, just ship it back within the return window and we will gladly provide a full refund of your purchase price.”
