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You have to apply sealers after all of the forming is done, otherwise it won't properly absorb water for the forming process. I airbrush the dyes on the individual pieces, assemble, wet, form, dry, oil, burnish, then finish - in that order.

Thank you for your help BRL - to confirm, is this the t-stud you buy from McMaster-Carr? Item #90975A007? Do you have to trim the barbs any to prevent them from poking through the leather?

Thanks for posting this, and thanks for emailing it to me as well. It is much appreciated!

Everything BRL said is on the money with what I would have said. I have a hard time making a holster with permanently affixed straps that will be subjected to daily folding. Eventually, those straps will crack and fail, and the holster would simply have to be tossed. By using screws, the owner can order new straps when/if it becomes necessary. BRL - where are you ordering your T posts from? The only ones I've found (locally) from Home Depot are for use with brads - they have tiny holes to nail a brad through - they don't have barbs on them. I have only made an IWB for one customer so far (the one shown in this thread), but he sold the gun that went with this holster so I can't get any long term feedback from him. I assume the contact cement will hold the post from turning for a while, but I'd rather buy them with the barbs for future holsters.

Ahh - that makes more sense now. I didn't remember the hornback skutes being that large. When I asked the salesman how much the hides were, he laughed and said "a LOT!", then he looked up the price and said they were $199. If I recall correctly, one of the Tandy mailers I got said they were on sale for $99 with a regular price of $199.

Wow - those are beautiful skins. I saw Tandy has them on sale - something like $100 off? Thought about buying one for a holster, but I'm glad you posted and put some perspective on the size of the scales. Looking forward to seeing what you do with yours!

Awesome! Looks fantastic! Any pics of the interior?

It's hard to tell from the photos, but you might try molding more curve into the holster so that it's already at the proper curve once you put it on the belt/body. The bending is probably at least partially, if not completely to blame for the binding.

Thanks for the help y'all. Kate, DigiVendor sounds like exactly what I'm looking for! Sounds very easy to use, and it works with PayPal so my workflow doesn't have to change from what I'm already established with. Thanks for the help - it's much appreciated. Eric

Hi Rayban - thanks for the compliments. It occurs to me that I never updated this thread with pics of the final holster I built for this customer. I used Pull-The-Dot snaps. I believe I remember someone here comparing them to standard line 24 snaps - his conclusion was the PTD snaps are more lose fitting (wobbly when snapped), and overall thicker. Of course, they do offer added security over standard line 24 snaps. I bought the small T-studs from Lowes, and screws too. I don't have the sizes handy that I purchased, but can look them up tonight if you need me to. I installed the studs between the reinforcement piece and the holster body. I bought 5-6 oz leather, but felt the leather was too thin, so I ordered some 6-7 oz for my next attempt. This holster was built out of 7-8 oz.

Here is a Don Hume holster pic I found on the web. It's the same method TexasJack uses, though they don't use a screw to hold the clip in place. For what it's worth, I have carried a Kahr P9 in a Don Hume IWB clip-on just like that for close to a year and have never had a problem with the attachment method (or the metal clip, for that matter). That being said, Don Hume's metal clip has teeth formed into the clip that helps it bite into the leather to help prevent it from pulling out. I'm not sure how necessary the teeth are, as the pre-cut hole in the outer piece of leather seems to do a great job retaining the clip, and most of the aftermarket clips don't have the teeth.

If I were you, I'd go ahead and plan on a sight channel. Your pistol might not require it, but if you ever make one for a 1911 with the taller sights, you'll need the extra clearance built into your pattern. 4-5 is pretty thin leather. That explains how you were able to form in the little slide stop recess on the slide! I will be using 6-7 on my IWBs. I tried 5-6, and felt it was just too thin for my taste. You might swing by the hobby store and buy the wooden clay sculpting tools they have - cheap, and a good start for boning your leather.

I've always been fascinated with bags. I've mostly been focusing on holsters, but would like to explore other areas of leather as well, and bags are a natural fit for me. I've seen some beautiful bags posted on this forum, and would love to hear from some of you regarding how to get started. I'd love to eventually make something along the lines of Esantoro's incredibly stellar Maverick bags, though perhaps I should start with something a little more simplified - like a messenger bag. LOL Anyway, are there plans available for this type stuff? Or a good book to start with? I know Tandy has the Art of Making Cases books, and it looks like Volume 2 might be most suitable just by looking at the picture of the book cover. Should I start with this? Any good tutorial videos out there? (I haven't found any...) Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Your boning looks great! I'm impressed that your first holster was an IWB. What weight leather is that? I'd suggest buying longer screws to compensate for the short studs. This will allow you to at least wear the holster and see how comfortable it is, if it's the right ride height, cant, etc. See if anything else jumps out at you before you toss it in a box and move on. Now that you have it assembled, you can measure your current stitch line in relation to the gun, and know almost exactly how much you need to move the stitch line on your pattern. I never get mine right with the first attempt at a new pattern. Scribe a line on the leather where you need to cut around the trigger guard, then cleanly cut out the piece. Take the cut-off and lay it on your pattern and trace the new cut line onto the pattern. Looks like the boning is pretty deep in the trigger guard and ejection port. Were you able to draw the weapon very easily? Did you allow for any sort of sight channel? If the front sight is scraping the leather, be sure to allow room for a dowel on top of the slide when you revise your stitch line - otherwise it'll be too tight should you need to include one on your next attempt. Again, great job. You're off to an excellent start.

Hmm, yes - I think that's probably the best/simplest option - using PayPal shopping carts. I'm not sure how the linking is handled between PayPal and the files, but I guess that's handled via one of the shopping carts PayPal works with at the link below? https://cms.paypal.com/us/cgi-bin/?cmd=_render-content&content_ID=developer/solutions_dgd Looking back over my notes, the guy wants the option to sell individual chapters, bundles of chapters, or the entire "series" (book). So, the shopping cart might be the best approach. I'm familiar with Concrete5 and really like it - haven't looked at their e-commerce options though... Looks like they have only one $95 add-on, plus you have to buy another $45 add-on for selling electronic downloads. Although, I guess that's circumvented when using the PayPal cart...

I know we have some web gurus on this board and I'm hoping someone here can help me out. I would like to find out more about selling electronic files online. Most importantly, I am helping a friend of a friend figure out how to sell his electronic book online. I also have something in mind for my own personal goals, but really I need to figure out how to help this distant friend sell his PDF file online. Web-based stuff is not my primary role in my 8-5, but I can do it when necessary. However, I've never sold electronic files. What is the best, least expensive option? I did a google search, and it seems all of my search results were sites trying to sell their marketing software. Would it be good to provide a subscription-based registration to a CMS-based website, where people have to pay first to gain access to a restricted area with a link to the electronic files? Or perhaps put the file on a non-linked (not accessible via the navigation menu) .php page on the website, let the customer pay via PayPal and receive a link to the page via the PayPal receipt? If so, how do you prevent the search engines from finding your "protected" file? Or is there an easier way I'm totally overlooking?

Hey, that looks great!! Did you have to back the ostrich? Or does it mold and hold the shape on its own? I haven't worked with exotics yet.

Along the line of the Duncan and Rings dummy guns - for those of you that are concerned about exact tolerances between one manufacturer's 1911 and another, how do you handle the variations between a dummy gun and a real gun? My 5" 1911 from Duncan looks a stick of butter that's been left out in the sun too long. But, people use Duncan's aluminum dummy guns all the time to form holsters. What do you pro's that are concerned about using the "exact" gun for the given size holster use for your molding? Because I know you're not using Duncan's dummies. Rings doesn't carry everything. Are you having your own polymer dummies molded from customer's actual guns?

Interesting - in that Pistolsmith thread, the OP said "I have spoken to them about casting new guns and they seemed interested. They were unaware that holster makers used these for there business until recently, but now that they know it it might be a good reason to expand." Why are they forming the rib on top of the slide, if not for holster sight channels? What else would they be for? My Duncan 5" 1911 didn't have the sight channel rib on top, but I sure wish it did!

Thanks everyone - now if I can only get my "other" side job out of the way so I can get back in the garage and cut some more leather!!!

Well, the learning curve strikes again! I accidentally cut the belt slots too long on my last tooled avenger, so I offered to make the customer another holster. Of course, he gladly accepted! I just got a couple more orders for tooled holsters - one with all black (not sure how that will look, but it'll be fun to try), and another on a pancake style's reinforcement piece.

Since your design is pretty much symmetrical, you could try drawing a reference line down the center of your pattern that indicates the Center Line. Lay your pattern on a clean piece of pattern paper (card stock, etc.), transfer the center line marks to the clean piece of paper, then without moving your original pattern, trace around one half of the pattern - starting at the center line mark, go down and around the pattern till you hit the other end of the center line mark. Then, flip your pattern over, align the center line marks again, and trace around the other half. Now you have a symmetrical pattern that you can cut out - it may not be 100% perfect, but it'll be at least 95% there. That's actually pretty much what Stohlman recommends in his holster book - but he suggest you fold the pattern in half and trace around the other half. I think folding the paper automatically introduces inaccuracies because depending on how thick the pattern material is, it will rarely fold cleanly and exactly on your center line.

Thanks fellas! Ferretface, glad you like your holster! Hope it works well for you for many years of service.

For what it's worth, I was on the phone with Herman Oak today asking a couple questions about their leather. One thing the guy on the phone said is that he has several holster makers that make Law Enforcement holsters, and they all buy 9 - 9.5 oz. leather (9-10 oz). Not sure I want to buy anything that thick, but thought it was worth mentioning since your LEO friend mentioned the thickness issue.

Thanks - I do back stitch. Actually, I over stitch. What I usually do is run a test stitch on scraps of the same thickness as my holster. Then, I'll measure the stitch holes to see what spacing I'm getting over a distance of about 4 holes - usually, 4 stitches is about 3/4" if I recall correctly off the top of my head. Then, I'll transfer that 3/4" dimension from one corner on my holster, and measure 3/4" prior to that and mark a tiny hole. This is where I start stitching. Stitch all the way around, and then back over the initial 3/4" long section you started with. Make sense? I've found that turning corners (and rotating the piece around 180 to lock the stitch) can affect tension, resulting in exposed bobbin or needle thread. I just think it's easier to over stitch instead of back stitch. Regarding the dye, I'm using the Fiebing's Pro Oil dyes - they seem to even out much better than the regular dye. Airbrushing it is the key.