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Looks great! What color is that brown?

So throw some old shred of aluminum cans in your polymer and now it's metallic. Seriously, what a joke. I am interested to see what you guys come up with.

Looks like a take on mine! I do have a question though - was the ink much darker before you wet molded the holster? I would be concerned that it's a semi-permanent finish, as it's ink and not leather dye, and probably doesn't have the penetration. Here's mine from early March: Good luck!

As usual, Jeff, it's top-notch. I'm always humbled when you post photos and I always learn something when I read your posts. Just when I think I've almost figured it out...

I agree. The actual reason XP is extra is because trying to minimize lots of newly sold PC's with a non-supported system costs more than trying to keep everyone on the same page. I've talked about lifecycles in the past on here, but for those that are interested, here's the chart that shows Microsoft's lifecycles: http://support.microsoft.com/lifecycle/?LN=en-gb&C2=1173 I'm not looking to argue, either. I got flamed by Knothead earlier, and what's funny is that all of his 'facts' are untrue. There has never been a chip on the motherboard to prevent an XP install - asking him for a link was a nice was of saying 'You're wrong'. You don't need a wicked graphics card to run a browser (I can't help but laugh about that - a 'graphically intensive' browser). And finally, nobody ever 'scripted' the BIOS to prevent an install of XP. This also doesn't make sense. They're basically all the same, and install time is moot. Nearly every version of Linux can be run from a live disc, installed over a network, and doesn't require a GUI. OS X is like Linux? Really? Makes sense since they're basically the same system. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UNIX_03 end rant.

I wasn't attacking you, I was simply disagreeing with you. My gasket is certainly not blown - you'd know if it was. Also, in my other posts (and in this one that you quoted), you'll see than I'm strongly against Microsoft products for solid reasons and in particular, it's web browser. The IE series of web browser is my largest foe with my 9-5. I appreciate the comment about using the wrong tools for my leatherwork. Never in any way did I try to insult you or imply that you don't know what you're doing. You said that people running 32 bit versions of Windows will experience IE8 running slow. But, and I quote: I commented on that. The browser has little, if anything to do with the video card. It's not 'graphically intensive' in any way and really doesn't stress the card at all. I agree with your statement, 'You get what you pay for.' As a developer, I find it much easier to run different machines for different tasks, and I prefer to run primarily on OS X. I don't have to force quite anything, it doesn't crash, and it has a cold start-up time of about 15-20 seconds. I also run the Ubuntu flavor of Linux for various reasons here at work. I would never suggest anyone purchase Vista or a machine with it pre-installed. I've never heard about a chip on the motherboard to prevent an install of XP - in fact, I'd like to read up on that if you have a link. I do know it's very possible to dual boot XP and Vista. I like geek talk, and it usually ends with me learning more than I knew before the conversation. Have a good weekend.

I disagree - you do not need copious amounts of RAM and a highend gpu (certainly not SLI) to run IE8. Hell, most of the machines sold out there to the typical home-user have integrated Intel cards, and to suggest you need something higher to run a browser is absurd. Is IE a resource hog? Yes. Does it render web pages correctly? No. Does it require a boss system to run? No. I'm sure there are many people out there that run 32-bit flavors of Vista with IE8 without any issues, also. Software engineers always show the smallest possible requirements to accommodate older systems, and typically assume the user will turn off optional features or run a slightly dumbed down version of it. Still, with that in mind, let's look at the official system requirements. As you can see, they're hardly hard to come by. Will IE8 run better with 8 Gigs of RAM on an 8-core chip with dual 8800's SLI'd? Of course, but that's not necessary to run it smoothly (at least, as smooth as it's capable - it's still a hunk of junk). If you want to uninstall it, Microsoft tells you how in this article: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/957700

Um, Ladybug, there's something wrong with your PC. Your home page, whatever it may be, should never take 5 minutes to load and waiting ages for your computer to start back up isn't normal or typical. Also, does Windows say you should defrag the drive that often? You should let it analyze and follow it's directions. I suggest you ditch the 3rd party app you have that 'handles' cookies. Cookies aren't as dangerous as you think, and most sites run much faster with them accepted. This is likely the cause of your slow speed.

Haha!!! I almost spit coffee at my laptop this morning while I read this! You made my day!

Damn skippy - that makes both of us. I've been a loyal user of Mozilla products for years now. Since browser topics seem to come up a lot, I thought I'd also share some info that many people probably don't know (or care) about. Those that know about IE's inability to read code can totally ignore the rest of this post. *Disclaimer* I don't work for any of these companies and the statement below are all of my own views. Take it or leave it - it's advice and it's free, and there are likely others who disagree with me. I'm a web designer+developer (yes, left AND right brain) by trade. It's what I do for a full time gig, 9-5, and I've been doing it for several years. I like to think I'm pretty decent at it, and I take pride that my code (depending on who I'm working with) validates. As a designer/dev, I have to consider the big 3 every day. I'm not talking autos, but browsers - IE, Firefox, and Safari. As some of you know, IE has a big stink that seems to follow it wherever it goes. It's my experience that most folks complain about IE and Miscrosoft in general, but when prompted to move to a different platform, end up defending Windows (and, shutter..Vista) against Apple's OS X and the many wonderful flavors of Linux. So for those not in the know, here's the point - IE is simply wrong. In the web design world, we use different languages to code pages to do different things. In a perfect world, all browsers would interpret these languages the same, and all of our websites would look the same in all browsers. Well, the world isn't perfect and the one guy that skipped the most classes is IE. If you've ever been a hardcore IE user and fired up Firefox for the first time to go to your favorite site, only to realize that your site looks 'different' or 'wrong', you can consider yourself seeing that site interpreted properly for the first time. IE's ability to parse these languages is sketchy at best, as it spent most of it's time trying to score beer and sleeping in. There's a standard by which the ability of browsers are judged for accuracy. It's called the ACID test. I encourage you to check it out: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acid3 It should be noted, that IE has NEVER PASSED an ACID test. This is the previous version over the latest and will be the most forgiving for those of you without the most up-to-date releases: http://acid2.acidtests.org/ Try it and see your results. (The latest test, Acid 3 is the one that counts the most, though.) Because of IE's shortcomings, we developers typically have to write 2 different versions of files - 1 for IE and 1 for everything else. If this sounds like a major pain in the ass and wildly unecessary, it's because it is. By simply switching browsers, it's possible you'll experience better speed due to the lack of hack files needed to load pages properly in IE. As you know, we're currently dealing with IE8's crap, and designers are still supporting IE6 because die-hard Microsoftians refuse to switch. I ask you, what is it doing for you? So, now that you know a little more about why people complain about IE and why it's a laughing stock in the web design community (if anyone claiming to be a web designer or developer says anything positive about IE, they are tricking you), I emplore you to look into an alternative that's ready to show you pages as they were meant to be seen. My opinions about the big 3... Mozilla's Firefox has been around the block and pretty much has it's sh$t together. It's a solid choice for speed and kick ass plugins that are free. It's available on nearly every OS, as well. Google chrome is built off of the Safari engine WebKit. These two render pages nearly exactly the same (they both pass the Acid test), and are also very fine options. I use a Mac at home for work and fun, and thus opt for the built-in Safari gioven the choice between the two. I also use it (Safari) for testing on my Windows machine, and it's proven to be snappy and responsive.

Chrome is quick and it's based off of the webkit, so it renders properly. My only hangup with it is that Google pairs it's updater crap along with it and thus requires more ram. Safari isn't a bad choice, either.

A while back (approx 3 years ago), I wrote a small automator workflow to open images in Preview, scale them to 50% of their original size, and save a new copy on the Desktop. All you do is drag your images onto the Automator icon (can be multiple) and let it do the rest. The only caveat is that your images have to start from a folder - they can't be on the Desktop (it saves new images there - we don't want any conflict). Anyway, enjoy! http://project107.net/public/ScaleMe.zip

Agreed - my thoughts exactly.

You can't totally remove IE from a Windows machine - it's software that's required by Windows, so you can give up trying to remove it. You can, however, save your favorites as an HTML file and import that file into Firefox with little effort. I'm feeling saucy this evening, so I took some screenshots for you (we've got different OS's, but the process is still the same). Click the 'Bookmarks' menu item and select 'Manage Bookmarks' Select the little star-thingy and choose 'Import HTML' Go find your saved HTML file and viola - all of your favorites as bookmarks in Firefox. Also, you may find this interesting: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/957700 specifically,

Good calls - I've made some Kydex clips, but dressing the edge is something I haven't been happy with, so I haven't used them. Thanks for sharing woolfe - great looking setup.

I'd like to know how you got the edges of the Kydex so smooth.

You're right. Just about any piece of updated software will require SP2. You should do this before you install anything - and, while you're at it, you may as well just get SP3, instead. AVG is a decent free av program that's been around for a while. The people that say they have massive amounts of protection apps and that lots of antivirus programs didn't 'catch' certain things, are doing something wrong. You should never need more than a decent antivirus program with updates, and some routine monthly maintenance. If I were to direct someone with little PC experience, I'd suggest AVG Free (http://www.avg.com/ ) and CCleaner ( http://www.ccleaner.com/ ). I'd also tell them to READ the readme's before tinkering with them. Bottom line is, if you don't go where you shouldn't, you won't have anything to worry about. Or you could forget all of this crap and come over to the dark side with us Mac folks - we'd be happy to have ya!

This mirrors my experience. The jet black goes on nice and even and there is little to no buffing required to clear the surface. They penetrate much deeper than Fiebings, for sure.

+1000000 I couldn't have said it better.

I think it looks good, too. The image below is what BOOMSTICK is talking about. Gotta have an area to get a good grip.

Glad you got it fixed - it sure gets frustrating using a slow machine when you know it was once fast. As other posters have suggested, you may want to take a long hard look at Firefox (www.mozilla.com/firefox) as a default browser. It's a solid browser without all the bloat, and some of it's available (read: FREE) plugins are great. It's snappy and responsive and you won't need to learn anything new, really.

colt, I use Photoshop to make my patterns. My workflow involves scanning the gun, then designing the holster around it. It's all kept to scale, so when it's printed, it's the right size. Also, if the pattern gets boogered up down the line, I can just reprint it. In Photoshop (or other comparable applications), the pen tool is what you use to get perfect curvy lines. Also, this is how you can make sure that your slots line up.

Not quite - we're talking about how it renders webpages, not how it behaves under certain OS's (the OS should never interrupt or alter the render of the page). The different modes have everything to do with standards and trying to render old pages the same as previous versions of the browser. If it sounds redundant and bloated, that's because it is. What a joke. TwinOaks - installing IE8 isn't really a fix for your lag issue. It (your lag) is caused by something, and depending on what that 'something' is, you may have just carried it over to your new install. Anyway, hope you got your issue sorted!

Looks great, Art - nice and smooth boning on that.

IE is awful and still can't pass the acid test - it's utterly useless.