MrRedhawk

Very nice, quite a project, but well done!

Alrighty, First off I have not burnished the edges, i have been looking for a good home recipe for burnishing media since I don't have a Tandy's nearby nor much cash on hand, if anyone knows of a readily accesible media that will darken and purdy up those edges let me know! Here are the pics (I apologize for the quality of my camera phone, the wife had the nice digital for uploading some pics from our zoo trip last weekend). I practiced spacing and layout on a junk piece of latigo and was fairly happy with the results. Then I moved onto using a darker piece of heavier leather shown in the layout but was not happy with the final result because it tends to bunch up when worn on the belt. For the next try I decided to make a two piece construction that would allow the belt to go all the way through the middle of two pieces of leather. This made it to where the cartridge holder simply contoured to my hip/belt instead of a tendency to curl outward, much needed improvement over the first. The holster in the pics is a purchased bianchi that only supports belts @ 1.75" or less, so the next project is DEFINITELY a belt to help with lugging around all that iron in the field when I'm ranching and hunting. The belt is the first belt I ever made with the leaves of local trees carved in (plz be kind heh). Things I learned: 1. Wetting the loop strips and pre-stretching added less than 10% in length but shrank the width of the strip about 15%... this makes your loops in the main leather too big... which allows for play... which causes loose cartridges... which means a redo and i really was not happy with the final tension on the cartridges... I made sure to put it together when flat not curved as many have suggested... any ideas here are welcome 2. Cutting strips for the loops a little larger than the holes is a good thing 3. Glue on the backside loops 4. My hand stitching still needs work 5. Place rivets close to initial and last loops Thinking about adding some more decorative stuff around the sides of the two piece... Comments welcome!

Greetings everyone, Ive been doing amateur leatherworking for a few years and just recently felt like truly adopting it as one of my hobbies. I am definitely a firearms enthusiast so my project this weekend is going to be two slip on cartridge keepers for a .44 that can be worn on a 1.75" belt. I'll post pictures on progress, but I'm still missing a few tools so the way i go about things may have to be a little different (cutting slots, burnishing, stitching). Also I would like to mention that I am quite proficient with web design and media manipulation. If anyone needs help with computer/picture/video, i would love to see more "how to" type material on the site that includes some of everyone's projects. Anyhow, just a hello and I hope to end up being a contributor to the forums/site into the future.