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Looks awesome! The only waterstain I've tried is Red - color goes on nice and even, and like you, I've noticed very little rub off. What type of dye did you go back over it with for the antique effect? Dying to see photos of the interior...

Mine would be 1911's, starting with 4.25", then 5", then 3", then 4". After that, it's usually one of the mid sized Glocks.

Thanks for checking it out Joe - For some reason the product pages are showing one extra photo when enlarged that doesn't actually exist. I'll look into it - thanks for pointing it out!

The texture of the flesh side of your holster will largely depend on how well it was split. For example - if you buy a hide that is 8-10oz, the areas that are 10oz will likely have a nice, clean shaving on the flesh. But, the areas that are 8oz were border-line too thin for the splitter's blade(s) to make contact with the flesh, so it could be a little (or a lot) fuzzy. I've been requesting my 8-10oz hides be split to 8oz to help remove most of the fuzzies. For the record, this is Wickett & Craig that I'm referring to. If your flesh is fuzzy, I suggest you sand the back to remove most of the fuzzy strands. I've even hit mine with an orbital sander - just make sure your work surface is clean/smooth so it doesn't mess up the grain side as you sand it. Once the holster is formed and ready for final finish, I'll coat the interior with Gum Trag and burnish the interior to smooth it out. Once it dries, it gets a nice, heavy application of 50/50 water/acrylic finish so it soaks into the flesh pretty well to help stiffen the leather.

Does this help? http://leatherworker.net/forum/index.php?showtopic=9940

Man, I'd love to know how to make those!

I don't know what a CO is, but I'd suggest you look towards your local police. What do they carry? What kind of retention devices are they required to have? What about the off-duty guys? Are they allowed to carry? If you focus on the Law Enforcement crowd, you'll narrow down your search quite a bit. Shooting Club people - I imagine that's an extremely large and diverse assortment of guns. In general, I don't think you could go wrong with a full-size Glock, XD, M&P or 1911.

That's impressive! I can't believe it exerted enough pressure to form the leather that well!

You will need to tool it first. However, you'll need to plan ahead with how/where you apply your tooling. It will need to work into the design of the holster and the shape of the gun. You can look at my website for example photos of how I tool a 1911 holster that is detail molded. You can't tool in the areas you're going to detail mold because you'll 'erase' your tooling when you start molding the holster. But, using your fingers to form the tooled areas is usually fine. You can see some examples on my gallery page, as well as on the product pages (particularly the Avenger style holster). http://www.adamsleatherworks.com/gallery/ http://www.adamsleatherworks.com/products/avenger-holster/

Thanks! It's woocommerce. I've tried all the stuff I could find, which helped a bit. Www.gtmetrix.com gave it a B speed rating last I checked, but it fluctuates a bit.

I hear ya! I used to enjoy playing with the code, so long as I was surrounded by people that knew a lot more than me so I could get coding help. That's when I gave Concrete 5 a try, which is what I used on my previous site. This new site uses Wordpress. It's pretty simple to learn, and there are a lot of great looking templates out there. If you're not super stoked to do your own coding, you owe it to yourself to try a CMS website.

Interesting - thanks for looking. I have been messing with the site over my lunch break, so maybe that had something to do with it. I just checked the belt page and it came up fine, albeit a little slow - the ecommerce plugin is rather slow and heavily embedded into the template file so not much I can do about it. I need to update the gallery page too - it's pulling too many images onto the same page and taking way too long to load.

Wow - I really like that! Very cool

Very cool! Been wanting to try that for a while now.

Buy yourself some Herman Oak or Wickett & Craig and you'll see a world of difference. I have a video on my site in the How's it Made section that might help. That was H.O. leather if memory serves, otherwise it was W&C.

I've been working on an updated website for many months now, but only got around to replacing my old site just last week. This new site will allow for a shopping cart purchase system, instead of the old order form I used previously. I'm hoping the instant-pay isn't a turn-off to repeat customers, and I hope new customers won't mind it either... Anyway, what do you think? Anyone see any room for improvement? http://www.adamsleatherworks.com/

I know, it's crazy how well that listing did! I really like the Class 4 machine. The servo motor is another matter, but the machine itself has been great. Like anything, there is a learning curve. I was getting a lot of skipped stitches and/or exposed bobbin/top thread - especially around curves, but not so much any more. It's dialing in nicely!

Sold!

Cool - that's a good idea! Is your internal back pocket sewn onto a liner, or do you have a pocket on the back? I can't tell how you hid the stitching from that pocket that would otherwise be visible on the back. You're inspiring me to try my hand at another bag...

Looks great! Are the rectangles on the gusset (sewn on just below the opening) there to help keep the bag open?

I was hoping to keep the Boss around for my kids to learn on, but money's a little tight right now so I'm forced to sell to help cover the cost of my new Class 4. There is nothing wrong with the machine - I've sewn around 250 orders with it, which compared to some of the more seasoned holster makers on this forum using the Boss for their stuff, it's seen very little use. http://www.ebay.com/itm/110899573323?ssPageName=STRK:MESELX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1555.l2649#ht_500wt_1358

Youre using dark thread - can you go ahead and antique it again?

Ignore all the various feet and base plates for a while. Just use the standard double-toe foot and flat base plate that allows the use of the lower feed dog for now (assuming your machine has a lower feed dog). As you sew a particular type of project, you will quickly learn which presser foot works best for a given application. The only way to really know which presser foot to use is from experience. For example, when I first got my Tippmann Boss, I quickly realized the standard flat base plate wasn't going to work with my Avenger style holsters because of the way the reinforcement piece wraps around the back on my design (the needle was going through the holster at an angle). So, I had to order the stirrup plate to raise the holster off the base a bit. The double-toe presser foot is the only foot I ever used on that machine, and I never took the stirrup plate off the machine for any other type of project. That doesn't make it right or wrong - it just seemed to work fine like that for me. Along came the Cobra Class 4 that I bought recently. It came with a holster plate and a stirrup plate (among one or two others). From my past experience with my Boss, I knew the holster plate wasn't going to work for me because of the way the plate is designed. It may work fine for everyone else, but not for me and my particular holster design. So, I tried the stirrup plate. It works great, but I had to modify mine to remove the top radius so the holster would stay flat and not rock forwards and backwards. Unfortunately, the stirrup plate won't really allow me to use the left-toe presser foot because the left side is too thin and the left toe only makes a very small amount of contact with the stirrup plate. So, unless I am able to weld a piece of steel to the left side of the stirrup plate to widen the contact point, I'm stuck using the double-toe presser foot. Typically speaking, I could do 100% of my sewing using the left-toe presser foot and the modified stirrup plate (after thickening the left face of it), but the only way to know that is by experience with my particular type of sewing. Bottom line - don't over think it. Just hold the top & bottom thread for a few stitches, then rock-on. Practice until you've burned through a few bobbins to get a feel for the machine, being sure to sew lots of curves too - not just straight lines. Use reverse to practice lock-stitches. Practice stepping up and down off additional thicknesses of leather (the stitch length can get too long if the presser foot slides off the edge of another piece of leather. Above all else, don't expect the stitching to look nearly as nice as hand-stitching. It's just not gonna happen. Thankfully, you can always dampen the leather on the back and hammer the puckering flat. At the end of the day, think of all the hours you can save by not having to hand stitch, and you can quickly look past the "not as nice" look of the machine stitching.

Personally, I usually tool, then dye, seal, antique, stitch, form, seal. That is for using natural/white thread. I always seal with 50/50 Angelus 600 or 50/50 Resolene. If you are using dark brown or black thread, you can antique right at the end, just prior to sealing since you won't be worried about staining your thread. You can also mask off the thread - I've done this a couple of times when I forgot to antique it prior to stitching. But this really only works if you have a definitive border around your tooling to give a clean edge to mask around.

Mine was doing that too, but not so much now. Un-thread the machine and re-thread just to make sure you didn't miss anything. Make sure you have adequate presser foot pressure to make sure it's not slipping backwards when it pulls tension. I don't think that's the case with yours because your stitch holes all look consistently spaced from one row to the next, but wouldn't hurt to try. You can test it by gently pushing the leather into the machine as you sew to help it feed and to make sure it doesn't slip backwards. If that fixes it, tighten the presser foot. I ended up switching needles to a different point style because I wasn't having much luck with the needles it shipped with. User error, I'm sure, but hey - whatever works. Besides, I like the appearance of a different style needle that I wasn't getting with the ones it shipped with. I think your thread size is fine - the thickness of leather you're sewing should be plenty thick to bury the knot.