Fabric Tool Keg

Fabric's latest range of bottles does away with the need for a cage, and its Tool Keg works the same way, attaching securely to a couple of frame-mounted nylon studs for a convenient and waterproof way to carry your spares.

Carrying your tools and spare tube in a water bottle is an old roadies' trick, which Fabric has updated with this offering. The bottle comes complete with enough nylon mounting studs to fit two bikes. Fitting is easy: remove your bottle cage, screw in the studs and slot on the Keg. If the fit isn't snug you can tighten the studs in a little. The job took five minutes tops.

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The keg slots down onto the studs and clicks into place. Once there, it stayed there, despite me taking the bike over some rough bridleways and railway paths. While the lid doesn't have a seal, everything inside stayed completely dry, which is far from the case with some fabric saddlebags.

The thinking behind Fabric's cageless tool keg and bidons is that a bike without a bottle cage looks better than a bike with one, and it weighs less too. Of course, it will only look better if you replace the bottle cage with something better looking. The Keg itself, to my eyes, is not a thing of beauty. A second drawback is that it takes up the space you might usually fill with a bottle of water; on my winter bike, that meant nowhere to put a bottle as it only has one set of cage studs. If you're considering the Tool Keg, though, you're presumably okay with that.

Inside the screw-top pot Fabric have provided a neoprene bag. This prevents your tools rattling around and shows the company has given some real thought to this product. I was testing Fabric's own Sixteen multitool so I put that in, along with an inner tube (cx size), two tyre levers and my spare chain link. That was it pretty much full, which was a bit of a surprise as the Keg looks quite large; the problem is that, being a rigid container, it won't stretch to accommodate irregular shapes like a fabric saddle bag will.

> How to carry stuff on your bike

If you like the cageless system but don't like the look of the Keg, you could perhaps just drop your tools into one of Fabric's own water bottles and use it the same way. That would be bigger, a little cheaper, and they come in a range of colours and not just black and white.

Verdict

Secure, waterproof and light, but it doesn't hold much gear