Dwight

Tat2edcowboy, . . . thanks for your service, . . . I had to see the pics enlarged before I could discern the flames, . . . and that would also look good on a horse named Peterbuilt or Kenworth. Seriously, . . . good job, . . . I'm waiting for my grand-daughter or grand-son to come along. If one comes around that is into horses, . . . I'll be making one saddle, . . . if not, . . . well.......................... I've always wanted to take a whack at it, . . . just never took the plunge, . . . glad to see someone who did. Keep up the good work, . . . looking forward to seeing # 2. May God bless, Dwight

Sometimes I dye before I stitch, . . . to get one color of stitching on a different leather color (white stitching on a black belt for example), . . . but I personally always stitch before I put on the final finish. The reason I do that (especially if I am using Resolene) is that the Resolene will then also protect the stitches. Resolene is one hard finish, . . . it will keep your stitches cleaner much longer than they would if they don't have the Resolene finish on them, . . . it will protect them somewhat from abrasion, . . . and it will help to tuck in the ends, . . . making it much harder for the stitches to "undo" themselves. The proceedure is something akin to: cut out the pieces, . . . glue them in place, . . . mold and form, . . . do all the edging and burnishing, . . . dye then stitch / OR / stitch then dye, . . . apply final finish. There are exceptions to doing holsters this way, . . . but it is more or less the process I use on all of them I make. Just my $.02 May God bless, Dwight

I don't have an up to date catalog, . . . but Weaver's used to advertize the rainbow in threads. They are in Northern Ohio, . . . Amish country. May God bless, Dwight

I use a Dremel (maybe 5% ), . . . a drum sander mounted in a drill press (maybe another 5% ), . . . but 90% of all my sanding is done on a cheapie belt sander I paid either 40 or 50 bucks for at Harbor Freight. It does my holsters, . . . mag pouches, . . . and OoooLaaaaLaaaa, . . . does it ever do belts. I would quit making belts if I had to use much of anything else. I can even up a 40 inch belt blank in all of about 3 minutes with it, . . . maybe 5 minutes on a bad day. Like earlier said: it eats leather for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, . . . you need to be careful with it. I, too, use 80 grit on mine. It also is impossible to keep clean, . . . even with a vacuum pulling all it can while you sand. That is just a hazard you learn to work with. May God bless, Dwight

Scott, . . . I use my sewing machine for these projects, . . . but when I do have to sew by hand, . . . I either stand up over my work, . . . or I place it in the front of my work bench where I have a place where I can punch my awl through the leather into a hole especially placed in the edge of the desk for that purpose. Using either method, . . . my holes are 90 degree perpendicular to the leather, . . . making it all work out right. If you have a small drill press, . . . putting the chisel in it, . . . DO NOT TURN IT ON OF COURSE, . . . and use the leverage of the arbor to punch down through, . . . straight. In any of the above ways, . . . you first glue the pieces together, . . . then work on it as though it was one piece from the beginning. Hope this helps. May God bless, Dwight

If you go to Harbor Freight, . . . get the manager to open up the special order catalog, . . . they have what looks like a pretty good looking walking foot machine. How long it will last and what is the quality is anyone's guess, . . . but last I heard it is real close to your budget, . . . and is supposed to sew up to 3/8" of dry veggie leather. I started to buy one (manager told me to order it, . . . pay for it, . . . take it home and use it for up to 29 days, . . . if it didn't work out, . . . he would take it back) but so far my Tippmann does every thing I need, . . . and more than this one would do. I was going to buy it for belts, . . . but I'd rather be the holster guy, belts on the side. May God bless, Dwight

Another thing you might do, Jerry, . . . get yourself 3 or 4 wing nuts at the local hardware store. They should be 1/4 x 20 threads. Put one on each of the top tensioners above the tensioner wheel itself, . . . and use it to lock the tensioner. I have never been able to get mine to stay where I put it until I did that. Oh, . . . and the 3rd and 4th nuts are to replace the ones you drop onto the floor and can't find. Go to your Tippmann box where you stashed # 3 and # 4 and get a spare May God bless, Dwight

I just took a pair of calipers and measured my 12 -15 year old, . . . $8 wallet I bought in a dime store. The back measures .033 thick, . . . which would translate to 2 oz leather. The pockets inside are in the .04 range which is about 3 oz. Use what you want, . . . but there is no way I could make and use a wallet that was thicker than 4 oz on any of it's pieces, . . . unless I wanted to do some "serious" stamping and tooling. May God bless, Dwight

Kbar, . . . get yourself a cheap, . . . DIAL caliper from Harbor Freight tools or someone like them. Don't get the digital, . . . too much trouble to use for this. When you lay the two pieces of leather together, . . . flesh side to flesh side, . . . you then measure the overall thickness. For a sturdy "dress only" belt, . . . you want to be in the .165 to .200 range, . . . and kind of think about the length. For a 48" belt, . . . you definitely want to be in the .200 thichness range, . . . for a 28" belt, . . . then the .165 is good enough. If the person is wearing a gun on it, . . . then I use .190 as my minimum, . . . and .250 as my max. I have never had any problems with them, nor have my customers complained. The reason I stress using a dial caliper, . . . 6/7 leather is just that, . . . somewhere between 6 and 7 ounces. That "somewhere" can range from .093 all the way up to almost .120 and still be "legally" correct. I've found that using the caliper to buy my leather, . . . and check what I'm using for a particular project, . . . has saved me from some real aggravation. One final note: use vegetable tanned leather for both pieces, . . . contact cement them together, . . . flesh side to flesh side, . . . and either get a 32oz mountain dew or a "large" coffee when you go to stitch that thing if you don't get someone to stitch it for you on a machine. At 5 stitches per inch ( a good standard ), . . . you are talking in the neighborhood of 1100 stitches in a 36 inch belt, ...................... ugh! May God bless, Dwight

I also suspect that you are trying to do the boning with the leather in a pretty wet condition. For the boning to really look good, . . . you have to be patient and let the leather get back to a good "cased" condition, . . . At least that has been my experience, . . . May God bless, Dwight

Years ago I had an old Marine cover that had turned white on the outside, . . . still OD in the inside. I cut it apart, . . . very carefully, . . . and used it for the pattern for my suede hat. When I first saw myself in the mirror, . . . I thought it looked just like McArthur when he waded ashore in the Phillipenes, . . . hence the name. May God bless, Dwight

The only thing I do different from this one, . . . I put a loop in the back of the buckle end, . . . a keeper to slide the other end into, . . . it can make the belt look better on some folks, . . . especially the ones that are, . . . ummm, . . . shall we say, . . . uhhh, . . . rotund? Without the keeper, . . . that inner end can kinda go off in some unrehearsed direction, . . . has that "unkempt" appearance. May God bless, Dwight

Katariina, . . . Greetings to you also from the other side of the Atlantic pond. Do a Google search, use this: "Double Loop Lacing" and don't take out the quotation marks. One of your choices will be a you tube video of the type lacing done on a billfold, . . . and while it will take a lot of lacing and a lot of time to do, . . . when it is done, it will look very good. For my guitar straps, . . . I just sew the two pieces together, . . . sand the edges, . . . and burnish them like I would do for a belt. May God bless, Dwight

I was in the TB factory one day, . . . getting my machine repaired, . . . and I watched one of their assembly people put one together. He used a grease that looked just exactly like clear Vaseline Pet. Jelly. He said it was a silicone grease, . . . and I watched him as he applied it with a small brush, . . . the type called an acid brush, . . . used a lot by plumbers. I had earlier tried the oil thing, . . . stay away from it, . . . as oil will collect on the bottom side of all those moving parts, . . . and at the most inopportune moment, . . . it will drip down on your piece of leather, . . . and you will be SOME KIND OF UNHAPPY. I have since gotten a similar grease, . . . and brushes, . . . and every now and then, . . . I take the plate off of mine, . . . pull out the guts, . . . wipe the old grease off them, . . . apply new grease, . . . put her back together, . . . and well................................... it works like a sewing machine. The trick is not to use a light weight lubricant, . . . it'll drip, . . . May God bless, Dwight

There has always been the concept of "caveat emptor", . . . let the buyer beware, . . . at any time and any place there was retail sales going on. In my sales, . . . if I would not buy the product, at the price I offer it, . . . then I won't sell it to someone else. I have sold seconds, . . . but in every case there was a steep discount, . . . and full disclosure as to why I was selling it so cheap. If a person does that, . . . quality does not suffer, . . . I say that especially in leather work because one can find some kind of flaw in just about any hand made / custom made leather item produced. That is in my opinion, part of the beauty and attraction of leather work. If I wanted everything perfectly the same, . . . I'd just punch press out the Kydex and go on about life. I try to treat my customers as I would want to be treated I guess is my bottom line. But then again, . . . there are unscroupulous varmints out there who could not care less, . . . fleece the flock is their motto. May God bless, Dwight

If you are handy with wood working tools, . . . and if you have a couple of 2 x 4's laying around, . . . you can make one like this. I use it for all kinds of stuff, . . . plus molding holsters. The 8 ton press from Harbor Freight at $19 was THE expensive part of the whole thing. May God bless, Dwight

John Bianchi's videos showed sewing the loop down, then going off the loop leather, . . . diagonally, . . . to start the next loop. I also had a commercially produced belt a number of years ago, . . . it was done this way also. The foot doesn't make that big a difference as the loops will be lying flat anyway, . . . or at least that is my experience. After sewing, . . . come back and form the loops as they should be. May God bless, Dwight

I did mine, . . . I took a flat board, . . . ran a small groove in it with a saw, . . . glued a small wooden dowel into the groove, . . . coated the dowel with valve grinding compound, . . . and commenced to back stroke that edger on the dowel until it became round. About a half hour. I love it now, . . . it started life as a # 4, . . . now it is a # 4 round. I keep it sharp with a rounded piece of leather stuck between two boards, . . . coated with jeweler's rouge. May God bless, Dwight

Your are an artist, my friend, . . . I could copy that, . . . but would never come up with it myself as an original. I consider myself good at just getting the mechanical stuff together, . . . much less the esthetics. May God bless, Dwight

$14.95 plus tax will get you a good starter gun at Harbor Freight. I bought two of them, figuring I'd break one quickly (kinda klutzy if you know what I mean), . . . about a year ago, . . . haven't opened the second one yet. I like it, . . . but i am not as good with it as I would some day like to be. May God bless, Dwight

I have a lot of trouble with making stuff if there are parts that are supposed to be the same, . . . as in rounded corners. I get some kind of aggravated when three rounded corners look like each other, . . . and their illegitimate 4th brother looks different. That's why I built this little device, . . . it may not make em all perfect, . . . but at least they are uniformly imperfect. I said 1 inch in the post, . . . but they can be of any size you need, . . . my smallest is made from 1/2 inch conduit, . . . and is the most used. And if my guess is correct, . . . the owner of that holslter said it is very comfortable to wear even for extended periods of time. That is the benefit of the extra leather that spreads the intrusion over a greater area. May God bless, Dwight corner cutter.bmp

Thank you, Capgun, . . . that is a really good idea. Matter of fact, . . . might even do one of those in the near future, . . . just to see how it is received by the guys here. Most folks I know in my age group seem to trade pounds, . . . one loses 15 while the other gains 15, . . . May God bless, Dwight

Mine is a 2007 (?), . . . is aluminum, . . . and has the HS designator. If you want to be certain, . . . get their number off the WWW, . . . call and ask for Ben, . . . he'll tell you. The whole bunch is super to work with. May God bless, Dwight

If he wants something to go on, . . . go off, . . . look up the Carjacker holster. I've made a similar type a couple of times, . . . and it lays very close to parallel to the belt. May God bless, Dwight

Rueben, . . . you can still make him a laminated belt, . . . and it WILL be a better product for him. Start your bullet loops back around in the left side, . . . leaving just enough open leather for his cross draw rig if he uses one. As he loses weight, . . . you only move the tongue billet on the other end , . . . and re-sew and burnish the right end of the belt, . . .should take all of about 15 minutes. I won't do a single layer belt for any of my customers, . . . unless the bullet loops are sewn on, . . . and so far I have talked every one of them out of that. Line it with some 3/4 or 4/5 leather, . . . May God bless, Dwight