TexasJack

Clorox is mentioned in a previous post, and it will kill nearly anything, but it is a bleach and can oxidize out color as well. Lysol is mostly alcohol and will do a decent job of killing mold, but be careful to get the unscented version or the perfume they use can be pretty strong. I've used Listerine (or generic versions of it) mixed in with water when casing leather. This is a high humidity area, so it doesn't take much to bring on mold. It seems to work pretty well.

The concept with a diamond awl is to open up a narrow slot that the thread can go through, and then have the leather "set" or close back up that slot so that it holds the stitch tightly. If you make a hole with a pricking iron or drill bit or whatever, that hole will never close up as tight as the one made by an awl. If you try to make all of your holes with an awl, it's hard to keep from some of them tightening up and making it hard to sew. So, in my mind, there are two kinds of projects: those that work best with all of the holes made first (as previous posts describe) and those that can be done a few holes at a time. People that do a variety of projects may very well use both techniques. Then there are those who just don't like using an awl and are going to use one of the other methods, in which case it doesn't matter how many holes you do at a time. I hope that's not completely confusing.

Copper is one of the seven "metals of antiquity" that have been used for many, many years. (The others are gold, lead, silver, tin, iron, and mercury.) Gold is the oldest, dating back to 6,000 BC, with the rest being discovered and used between that time and 750 BC. From "History of Metals": "...Initially copper was chipped into small pieces from the main mass. The small pieces were hammered and ground in a manner similar to the techniques used for bones and stones. However, when copper was hammered it became brittle and would easily break. The solution to this problem was to anneal the copper. This discovery was probably made when pieces were dropped in camp fires and then hammered. By 5,000 BC copper sheet was being made."

Part of the article: "...Prof. Yosef Garfinkel, an archaeologist at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, found the awl in the sealed grave of an approximately 40-year-old woman that was dug inside a grain silo and covered with several large stones. Just 4 centimeters long and 1 millimeter thick at the tip, the awl was set in a wooden handle. Around the woman’s waist was a belt made of 1,668 ostrich-egg shell beads." That's some serious bead work!!

Looks nice.

Look for WinDirStat (free).

Sandy "Old Dad" Morrissey made a snake scale stamp for me a few years ago. It doesn't quite match the S&W stamp or I'd lend it to you. Sandy has an amazing amount of experience and talent, and what he did was take a long bolt from the hardware store and simply file the head of the bolt to the shape he wanted. Make sure the bolt is long enough that you don't whack your fingers as you stamp. Takes a bit of patience, but it allows you to make exactly what you need for just a few cents and some sweat.

Not. (Can't believe I'm the first one to be a smart alec!) (Sorry, but I couldn't resist.)

Nice work.

You want the leather to have the shape of the magazine, but it has to be slightly larger or you'll never get the mags in and out. You can use a magazine wrapped in saran wrap, or you can get a block of wood cut to approximately the same shape and then you don't have to worry about damaging it. A trick that was shown to me is to add a loose piece of leather with the magazine (or block) so that will give you the little extra space you need to make it fit. When I make something like this, I use very small nail (wire brads) to hold the molded piece on a block of scrap wood. There's a little spring tool that is sold in hardware stores that lets you put the nails in without a hammer. (Interpret that to also mean "without smacking your fingers") When the leather is dry enough to hold the form, pull out the object you're molding it around and it will then dry a lot quicker.

Wow, lots of pictures! You put in a lot of work on that project! I thought it looked pretty nice. Criticism? I wondered why the retention strap on the holster had the snap so low.

Nice looking rig - clean!

From the Left Coast? Yeah, I think that's about right.

I posted without seeing "Hi I'm Joe"'s post about Texas. There is some truth to his observation. I know that some companies that have strict security often have problems with people from Texas signing in their logbook and filling in the "Country" section with "Texas" instead of "USA".

Texas. OK, technically "Occupied Texas".

We're more than happy to welcome our friends from the Great White Empty North! You might be surprised at the number of Canadians we interface with in Texas - largely because of the oil and gas business. Welcome to Leatherworker!

I use the orange citrus hand cleaner too. You can get it with pumice and it will get rid of nearly any grime without being too hard on your skin. They sell it in auto parts stores or in the auto section at Walmart or similar places. One must always be careful trying to get something like dye out of your skin. Solvents can go through your skin into your blood stream, or they can severely dry your skin or you can have a bad skin irritation (chloracne).

A friend made a stamp for me using a bolt from the hardware store.

My personal stuff is usually the prototype version - I'll try something to see how well it turns out. Then I make a nice one and that one winds up going to someone else. So the sheaths, phone holders, and holsters that are mine have glue marks, missing stitches, moved stitches, mis-matched stamping, etc.

Very nice!

Gotta give the Aussie credit for trying!

I really like the open-toe end of the holster. Don't remember seeing one done like that before. Nice job! Thanks for posting!!

Nice looking holster!

Nice job!

Hmmm. I like the carving and it has a good look. The inside is great. I'm not a fan of the huge clasps. I have a Kindle cover that was given to me. I usually leave the Kindle in the cover when I read, so I want the cover to fold all the way back and not have anything sticking out. Giving it a shoulder strap was an interesting idea, but I agree with the earlier poster that it should have been attached on the open side. So to me, it was a very nice effort overall, but there were a couple of things that might be different.