Help with Molding & Shaping

[Dragonfly]

Hello,

I am a new member here but have read and researched this forum for a while. My fiance Ms. Dragonfly joined also not long ago...great forum.

Anyways...I am trying to learn how to mold my leather to form fit shapes for different style of holsters ranging from cell phone and knife cases to fishing rod tubes and revolvers. My question is this:

"How do I mold my cased leather to form around the bottom edge of a round shape like a snuff can?" The snuff can shape is 1" thick by 4" in diameter. Imagine sliding a snuff can of this size down inside a holster. I want the bottom of the holster to be formed/molded neatly to the round snuff can. Do I make sense? The holster would consist of the "molded front" sewn to the "flat back". Any help on this is much appreciated. I need to learn as I have a project where I am gonna have to make several of these for clients in this manner. I have researched the web for many, many hours for tutorials demonstrating this molding stuuf and have come up empty.

Thank you in advance for any help and I look forward to becoming an active part of this forum. Have a great day.----Jason

[8thsinner]

Bear in mind I am hardly an expert on molding, But have played a little with it for sheaths and stuff.

The easiest surest way is to make a wooden version of what you want covered, soak the leather in luke warm water till nice and pliable then tack the edges down over the item of course making sure your leaving enough to get trimmed once it's stitched.

You may need to use several soakings and moldings for this but it's the method I have used before with more or less success, but nothing approaching perfect.

A bone folder can be used too to create the initial horizontal/vertical crease up onto the snuff can sides, do it wrong however and your left with an unremovable line along it. Of course it takes a bit of practice but not much to get usable results...

Hope that helps or gives you enough to continue your search with more ease..

[Drac]

take a piece of wood that's the same thickness as the can and cut out a piece that's the same shape and just a little larger (1/16-1/8 inch) all the way around. that makes can removal easier but will still hold it in place even without an over strap. lightly sand one of the corners. now mount that piece onto another piece of wood making sure the sanded edge is your top edge. now cut a hole in the middle of another piece of wood that's slightly larger than the diameter of the piece you cut and mounted plus the thickness of the leather. (example: if your leather is 1/8" thick and using your posted dimensions, that would be 4" can plus 1/16" extra plus 1/8" = 4 3/16" diameter hole. 4 1/4" if you use 1/8" extra instead of 1/16" extra). sand the inside smooth. now put your vegtan leather in water (some use warm water. I use straight hot water from the tap) until no more bubbles come up. lay the leather on top of the piece that's mounted and put the wood with the hole in it on top of that and puuuuuush! clamp it down, let it dry, cut, stitch or rivet and voila! take some money! dying and tooling extra.