TwinOaks

It depends on why the bottom doesn't have any gaps- If it's leather filling up the space between stitches, then you could try something like an overstitch wheel. If you see the top thread between the bottom stitches, you need to increase your top thread tension just a little so the lockstitch is pulled inside the leather.

Welcome to Leatherworker.net! We're glad you found us. Pull up a stool and stay a while. You can find dummy guns at Ring's, and at Duncan's.

presser foot pressure, and a little polishing work on the needle plate. If that's a walking foot machine, you might need to 'smooth' the lower feed dogs.

Heavy molding around the trigger and top of slide is all you've got available, unfortunately. Remember that you've got to leave a little wiggle room for the switch on the light otherwise you get unintended activation. The best option I've found is to oversize a channel for the light and get as tight as I can on the slide. The result still works out to 'less than what I want' in retention, so I always add a thumb break strap to those. If you plan a strap from the beginning, you can just make a 'box' holster for it, and wet mold the slide area.

Tightening down REALLY tight does help, as does making an undersized hole and stretching it just before installation. Good idea on the JB weld. I was thinking something like a little solder would work too. You might also try finding some thin rubber washers to go between the concho and the belt.

Leather hides are as unique as the animals they came from. It's one of the things you have to learn to get around. Grab some more leather and test this oil against some different oil.

Take a look at the holsters and accessories by member "Shorts". She does it with one hand.

I used to wax the edges, but I had the same problem with color bleeding. Since I switched to Bob Park's method (see the edging tutorial by Hidepounder) I haven't had any issues. It really is that much better.

Here's a 15 minute sample so you get a visual of what I'm talking about. But do a better job lining up the ends of the cross ties....like I said, a 15 minute sample. For the rails, roll slowly under moderate pressure. DON'T roll back and forth or you can get doubled lines when you get just a teensy bit off. Oh yeah, work at a scale that's comfortable. In that pic (I finally figured out my MACRO!!!) the rails have 5/16ths between them. Working on micro scale is difficult w/o micro tools.

Lay out the rails first and make them like you would 'beads'. Cut both sides and bevel, then run over them with a beading tool, or if you don't have one, get a screen tool from the hardware store-they're like $3 at Lowes. One end is a convex wheel for pressing the screen in, the other end is a concave wheel for the retaining bead of rubber. Run over leather, it will make a nice set of parallel lines....alternately you could use a small pulley, or hey, why not look for a set of model train wheels? For the cross ties, cut and bevel them in lightly, then add 'wood grain' with a modeling tool or your swivel knife. But don't over do it- the suggestion of wood grain will look better than trying to duplicate wood grain. For the gravel....a backgrounder would do. A pebbler would do better. If you don't have either.....wrap a piece of 80 grit sand paper around the end of a wooden pencil and go to town. (you might also consider a square peg instead of a pencil because it'll let you get into the corners). Heck, if you've got a shop for making custom knives, you could probably whip up a few leather tools pretty easily. A backgrounder is really nothing more than a shaped foot that's been checkered with a file. Pebblers are made on a shaped foot that has multiple divots drilled out of them. Between projects, grab a set of torx bits and try overlapping the impressions and see what you get. P.S. Don't forget to fade the impressions for the gravel as you reach the edges of the belt. It will look better than sharp impressions all the way to the edge (or border).

Shape, smooth, and burnish the edge. Apply dye to the edge. Rub with block of paraffin to get a small build up, then heat to melt the wax. Repeat if needed.

Fine looking sheath. If I can offer an observation...it would look better without the rivet.

One thing about the sno-seal is that you need to follow the directions about heating the leather before applying or rub in really well..... Using a heat gun works just as well to melt it into the leather.

ahhhh, some of Ray's early work, I'm sure. Glad he upgraded to a machine, because his lacing is abysmal.

The whole reason I mentioned wetting the leather (and I didn't mean full casing) was because the back of that piece of leather looked like it was pasted. I was curious if the pasting was creating a hard 'film' on the leather resulting in the blowout. Jovial- Are you by chance running a smoothing tool over the stitches after you're done?

Yep, ease off the pedal and grab the flywheel. You might have to "fudge" the final stitch by a little bit, but that's the best way to put the needle EXACTLY where you want it. Manually turn the machine to get through the leather, then up just a little, then raise the foot and make your turn. Ideally, you should set your stitch length to match the size square you want- i.e. if you stitch at 6 spi, then you'll make 6 stitches, turning on #6, 6 more, turn, 6 more, turn, 6 more, and finish in the hole you started in. Then lock in the stitch and call it a square.

Range bags, sandwich a piece of neoprene between two layers and make Nook/Kindle cases, use on the non-slip side of rifle slings...

Yep, I couldn't make patterns either.....until I did. Now, I have an idea of what I want to make, and start from there. I don't have any set patterns to use, it's all in my head. So when a customer watches me make something, there's a lot more mystique in how I know where to cut and stitch.

Welcome to Leatherworker.net, and what a first post! Thank you for sharing that with us.

Burnish with jeans- You can burnish with any heavy fabric that'll stand up to a lot of friction. After sanding the edges to make them straight and smooth, moisten them with saliva (yep, lick the leather) and rub the heavy cloth back and forth rapidly to give the leather a friction burn. Do this in small overlapping sections. You'll end up with a slick, darker brown edge. Sealing the leather- Mop-n-glo is just a name brand here in the U.S. Any acrylic floor sealer will work. Or you can use a wood finish/stain such as the Liberon products (they even make a 'leather cream', but I don't know exactly what it is) or if you can find a spray lacquer wood finish....leather's pretty forgiving, just run a test piece if you can. I'll see if I can get another member from the U.K. to chime in on products y'all have. Oiling the leather. This should be done BEFORE sealing and since you've already assembled the holster rig, just do it on the smooth side of the leather...the grain side. Conditioning/oiling the leather will help get rid of most of the creaking, as it's caused by leather fibers rubbing against each other. On some areas, like the holster, it's best to glue the leather pieces together before adding the rivets or stitching.

I used 'blevins buckles' from Tandy a few years ago to build some replacement stirrup leather on a breaking saddle....the owner told me that they broke about 3 months later with a particularly spirited colt, and I just assumed the leather had pulled out...and she just replaced the entire saddle (The saddle was well worn out anyway). I can't help but wonder if it was a set of sub-par buckles. From the pics, it looks like it just has a really poor job of securing the pin to the plate- broken weld or bad brazing? Or is it just cheap cast 'pot metal' for the pins? Can you tell?

Luke, can you direct link it? I looked on the Osborne sight and only see the right handed version. If I read Equiss' request correctly, she's looking for a left handed Skife (osborne's name for it).

That part of it ISN'T surprising to me. One of the things about this craft is the ability to get something totally unique. That quality is what allows us to keep doing what we're doing. It's not a bad thing at all. If you were to purchase an item designed and carved by Bob Park, and paid $x amount for it, you would be pretty ticked off if you found out you could have bought the same thing from me for 1/3 the price. If I could get his designs, that would directly cut into Hidepounder's profit margin. Would you like to have YOUR profit margins slashed because somebody decided they can sell YOUR design cheaper than you can? A perfect example of this is curved belts. A while back, the topic came up on here as several people were making curved belts. They fit better, they required less break-in period, and were typically more comfortable, and wore better because the belt didn't need to be stretched to get the natural curvature that belts get from being worn. I think most makers were at or above the $50 mark for a good quality belt. Guess what you can NOW pick up at ChinaMart for under $10? Pasted back, poorly finished, dried out drum dyed Crap leather belts. Someone took a design (biting tongue on other comments here....) and started mass producing them. Now the leathercrafters who helped develop that design are losing business because of it. We're having to push the edge on design and development a little further with every product, and squeeze every bit of profit from it before somebody else reverse engineers our designs and steals the money from our pockets. [deep inhale] Okay, rant off. Now, is sharing a design necessarily a bad thing? No. There's some things that are ubiquitous enough that there's no longer any secret to them. Wallets are an example. Some long while back, somebody was looking for a wallet pattern. Working off the design elements of Kevin King, I drew up a simple wallet pattern and posted it here. Did I cut into anyone's profits? Not likely, as the design was very basic and only a layout pattern. No material requirements, no special designs, etc. One could look at a store bought wallet and figure it out IF they'd spent enough time building different things out of leather. So, I guess I "open sourced" that particular design......which wasn't all that original to begin with. If I had KK's design notebook, complete with measurements for the overlays, inlays, and all the little things he does that makes his products so unique, and posted those.....then I would have been getting into his pocket. His ability do design new things is what keeps him in demand. There's only so many things you can do with leather, only so many ways to wrap it around a person, or a blade, or a gun, or money and credit cards. The "it" factor of any designer's work is where they make their name and money. If someone has "it" for a while and they're using the designs to make money......I don't blame them at all for not wanting to share that info.

That depends on the cornbread, now doesn't it?

Something you can try, using that same piece of leather, is to flip it and sew with the grain side facing down. That should give you an indication of whether it's the needles or the leather. Don't worry about the quality of the pics, they were just fine........a little large when uploaded, but that's easily dealt with. For most pics, we try to stay on a 800x600 scale so that it fits on the screen better. The viewer can always enlarge the image, but larger pic files take a good bit of time to load.