I have owned alot of production and a few custom cases over the years and untill just two weeks ago never really thought in general how a case should be designed. Tube or cloth or foam interior. And should they be air tight or able to breath. Well i found out the hard way. A friend was over looking at a cue i had forsale and of course i brought out my little collection of cues. Well it was a very humid day and we were in basement hitting some balls with all my cues and one of my shafts must have sucked up alot of the moisture in the air and a week later i tried to assemble cue and it would not thread on pin. After looking cue over not seeing anything wrong i tightened it up on pin and the shaft split from swelling. So now im thinking why? Well i must have put shaft away having sucked up moisture and not being able to dry out cause the case i put it back into was airtight. So now it is at the cuemakers getting a new shaft. My original thought about a case was the tighter the air seal the better until this happened. Now having just gotten two new cases from Rusty Melton i realized how important it is to have your case protect your cues from moisture if caught in rain and being knocked about but also to have cues being able to breath where ever you store them so the wood doesnt absorb the moisture and cant dry out. Rusty besides building a very beautiful case they are very functional as well as any case on the planet.