Ive had to ship a few contrabassoons for trials, or for repair; and making a sturdy shipping box is essential. If you do a good job making a shipping box, it will last for the entire time you have the instrument, and you will not be at the mercy of the postal service’s packing job. This is for a Wolf Kronwalt contrabassoon which is compact compared to other contra cases, so you might buy a little more material than what I used here.

I used 7 pieces of 1” thick 2’x2′ foam board, this is used for wall insulation.

2 heavy duty large double corregated cardboard boxes. The cardboard dimensions don’t matter as long as you have enough to cover the instrument sides, but it must be double corregated “heavy duty”

And Gorilla tape. Like most duct tape, it does a better job of sticking to itself than to anything else, so wrap around a complete loop aroound the box and onto itself. The end result of this is going to be a “tape monster” so I used 2 rolls.

I taped 2 panels along their edges to cover the large sides

I snapped 1 panel in half to cover the top and bottom.

Snapped 2 panels in half, taped their short edges together to cover the slender sides. Then i trimmed down the height.

This roughly fit around the outside of the case. Next I more closely fit padding inside of this shell.

The shell of padding has some gaps as this is not an entirely square case, so I added an extra internal layer of foam fitted to the shape of the case. Around the handles especially need a extra layer, to push the outside layer flush over the handle will make the padding take a rounded shape.

Hard to see when it’s all together, but each side has contact with multiple small pads attached inside of the larger pad. This will help if the package is ever dropped onto an edge or corner, the weight will distribute to multiple sides.

Taped up the seams, taping in loops and attaching the tape to itself.

Detached the box at its glued seam, and bent it around the outside of the foam. Pulled it tight and taped it.

After this I added 1 panel from the second box to cover the top and bottom. (forgot to take a photo)

Tape monster. I think that the tape really makes the cardboard firmer and hold up better, especially to water and deformation from having other things stacked on top of it.