Dwight

Looks darn good from here . . . May God bless, Dwight

Hey 108 . . . I had to google to find out what thickness leather you are using . . . and from some of the responses . . . I guess you are using like 7/8 oz and layering it to make it thicker. That being said . . . one other quick point . . . your "10" watt laser . . . may or may not be a 10 watt laser. I have two of them . . . one produces 10 watts of laser burning power . . . the other one "consumes" about 10 watts of power but only produdes about 3000 milliwats at it's max burning power. I can tell you for an absolute fact . . . 3 passes of my big guy at 85% power . . . using my air assist . . . and 500 mm/min speed . . . it very cleanly and slickly cuts out pieces from my 1/8 inch plywood . . . on which I had previously engraved the Lord's prayer. I also make the key fobs you see here . . . they're generally out of 5/6 veg tan (scraps from other jobs) and I cut them in one pass at 50% power and I think 500 mm/min speed. The speed may be wrong . . . I'd have to go dig in my files . . . but it cut in one pass . . . no problem. The big thing you do need is the air assist . . . and some serious exhaust system . . . burning leather STINKS bad. All of the little incursions around the edges of the Lord's prayer were easily and beutifully cut by my laser . . . and stacking them on top of each other . . . no one was differently cut than another except the first one. I put in the wrong numbers for the size. One of those "let's see how it works" ideas when getting started. The prayer pieces went to the ladies as a New Year's gift The key fobs went to the guys. I used to cut those key fobs out by hand . . . ohhhhhhhhHHHHHHH how I hated that. Piece of cake now. Anyway . . . PM me if I can help you any further . . . OH . . . and if you haven't learned how to use LaserGRBL software yet . . . LEARN . . . it'll do just about anything you would ever need laser software to do May God bless, Dwight

Used to be a fellow on here . . . Katsass I believe was his handle . . . and he did a bucket of M&G . . . and dunked his holsters in it. He swore by it. He was down in Arizona or New Mexico I think . . . was always laying out the holsters in the sun to darken them. May God bless, Dwight

Nothing you will do to the leather will guarantee you as good and long lasting results for a thumb break . . . as will one of the little Tandy stiffeners. If you are using double leather for your holster . . . sandwich it . . . if only single layer . . . put it on the back side toward the wearer . . . away from the weapon. Can't tell you how many of these I've done . . . so far no problems. And I KNOW there would have been sooner or later having done it another way. May God bless, Dwight

All of that final coat is not needed . . . in fact . . . you will almost undoubtedly wind up with many cracks in the finish . . . especially in places where the leather is seriously bent. You may get away with it by bending it as soon as you apply the finish . . . and then touch up the finish . . . that's your only hope. But like posted above . . . as soon as it is dry to the touch . . . get that work done. May God bless, Dwight

Thanks, Chief

Bruce beat me to it . . . May God bless, Dwight

Thanks, Nick . . .

A buddy's wife got herself a Ruger Security 380 . . . needs a holster for it. Went out to see about a mold for one . . . nada, nein, no, nothing happening. Anyone know if any of their other guns is close enough to use for a well molded holster???? Thanks . . . may God bless, Dwight

Dogs that would mess my equipment up like that . . . just might wind up someone else's dog right quick. If they lived thru the exercise. Dogs are like kids . . . they need edjumacation . . . May God bless, Dwight

p51p28 . . . I just had to say "thank you" for the giggle this morning . . . as I read "wide mouth bars" . . . the image I caught was basically any Navy town . . . and the closer the bar was to the docks . . . the wider mouthed the folks were there . . . I know that is not what you meant . . . but being an old Vietnam Navy boy . . . that was my first thought and I had to laugh at it. But back to your question . . . if you took some kydex plastic (Tandy sells it) or for that matter even some PVC plastic . . . cut it in strips an inch or so wide . . . wrapped them in 3/4 oz veg tan . . . sewed a seam only on one edge . . . you would have a pretty stout bar . . . and all you have to do is leave a tab on each end on each side for a rivet . . . and your problem is solved. If that won't work . . . pop a picture up . . . we'll all take another look at it. But my electrician's tool pouches I wore for years only had a piece of 9/10 oz veg tan . . . and it held them together and open for as long as I had them. May God bless, Dwight

Looks really good . . . design, execution, ammenities . . . But you are a better man than I . . . to do all that hand stitching. I'm a machine guy . . . no machine . . . no do. . . lol May God bless, Dwight

Mom always made me scrub mine . . . only were blue after the third piece of blueberry pie . . . May God bless, Dwight And MERRY CHRISTMAS to you all.

Put em in the battery drill . . . run the edge against a rough honing stone . . . they grind down in no time. Course that's only good if you need just a few. . . . but it works if you do. Grab a piece of maple or cherry . . . drill your 3/16 hole in it . . . use it to test and see if you have em ground down enough. May God bless, Dwight

That's why you have a land line . . . (you actually can make or take calls with it in saran wrap . . . or at least "some" phones will) May God bless, Dwight

This is easy peasy . . . posting pictures on here. First . . . do a Goggle search . . . get Adobe Photoshop Elements 2.0 out there . . . it'll be free to down load if you search around a bit. Put your pictures you take from your phone in a folder marked "raw pictures" Open the picture up in Adobe . . . and in the top left corner of the tool bar . . . you can outline the part of the picture you really want . . . go to Image . . . tell it to Crop . . . and you will have what you want. Go back to Image again . . . tell it to Resize the picture . . . resize the big side to be 1000 . . . and tell it to save . . . it will ask you how good a picture you want to keep . . . select something in the 300 to 600 area . . . then save it to a folder marked "fixed pictures". Then when you want to post a picture here . . . go down below where it says choose files .... double click it . . . scroll to the fixed pictures folder . . . pick it or them out . . . tell it to post them. Done . . . piece of cake. And in your spare time . . . you can use Adobe to do all sorts of photoshopping of your pictures . . . it is one of the slickest little free programs I've ever had. May God bless, Dwight

If you want a real . . . top of the line . . . model for your mold. Take your Iphone . . . lay it on a piece of saran wrap . . . cut the wrap to go around it nice and tight . . . pull it tight . . . and scotch tape the edges. Ain't no better model out there. May God bless, Dwight

Not sure who bad mouthed neatsfoot oil . . . but I would not think of any thing else. It is pretty much a natural product . . . and the rest of that high priced stuff you mentioned came out of someone's chemical factory . . . that will do "who knows what" to your product. Neatsfoot oil cannot be applied by dipping or over brushing . . . but add a coat . . . then another . . . and just MAYBE a third . . . and you will have a very pliable and LONG LASTING product. That other stuff . . . ain't nobody knows what it will do . . . except for olive oil . . . down the road if you use it . . . your product will stink . . . guaranteed. May God bless, Dwight

You did not say what you are making . . . so I'll tell you how I handle holsters . . . double layer CCW belts . . . regular belts . . . suspenders . . . cowboy gun belts . . . knife sheaths . . . etc. First . . . determine what to do . . . cut it out . . . give it ONE and only light coating of neatsfoot oil on the HAIR side . . . just enough so that when the coating is on there . . . it all looks wet for a while. Let that hang or lay somewhere for 24 hours in a place where the temp is controlled and 70 F or above . . . Second . . . do whatever tooling and stamping is necessary . . . let that dry for 4 hours. Third . . . use Feibings pro oil dye . . . and first dilute it with Feibings dye reducer . . . on a 1 to 1 basis . . . meaning equal parts of dye and reducer. Fourth . . . DIP dye the project . . . it has to be completely immersed. I use regular baking pans that are about 10 by 15 . . . pour the dye in there about 3/4 inch deep and run whatever needs dyed thru the dye . . . belts go end to end like a snake slipping across a pond or a puddle. Set em up some place where they can dry for 24 hours . . . buff the heck out of it on both sides and the edges Burnish the edges . . . add Resolene (also mixed 50/50 with water) . . . let dry for at least 8 hours . . . preferably 24 . . . voila . . . project completed This has worked for me for 20+ years. My Tandy store got in some stocking issues a couple years back . . . so I tried both the USMC black and the water based black . . . when the Pro Oil base dye got restocked . . . I took the remainder of the USMC and the water base . . . gave it to the folks teaching kids basic leather work . . . as a present. Have not looked back. Again . . . just my way of doing things . . . have NEVER had a complaint on a black dye job. May God bless, Dwight

Been messing with a Bible cover for a friend . . . have come to the conclusion it is not a holster or a belt . . . or a piece of Roman soldier's armor . . . them I can do. This has me stumped . . . need someone to kick me in the right direction. Thanks . . . may God bless. Dwight

Fading and darkening have always been my experience . . . And I probably beat my stuff up a lot worse than most . . . don't mean to . . . it just happens. So over time . . . a scrape here, smudge there, scar on the side . . . those things "occur" That's when an oil smudge becomes irrelevant. May God bless, Dwight

I buy a couple yards of marine vinyl from Joann Fabric when they have a "buy one . . . get one free" sale . . . every couple months or so. Get 72 by 45 piece . . . makes a lot of patterns. Is about the consistency of 2/3 oz leather. May God bless, Dwight

That only works if you make the nose the projected "extra" you might need. Otherwise . . . the nose doesn't slip into the loop and overlap . . . and you wind up with one of the most uncomfortable wrecks of a belt imaginable . . . And if you make the nose big enough for a projected 8 or 10 inches . . . that is almost as uncomfortable as the other way. Really it's a quandary any way you go . . . just have to guess right on what his weight will do May God bless, Dwight

Get me a couple of things . . . the size of his belt he is wearing now . . . and your mailing address. I'll conjure up something for you . . . This is one I did a number of years ago . . . it shows you a piece of the curve . . . May God bless, Dwight

If you make it like a regular belt . . .examples were best seen on the old Bonanza show . . . straight cut belts . . . that worked fine for Pa and the boys when they stood up from their stage chairs and went off to do a scene. Put on the belt . . . do the scene . . . .take it off. If they wore it for any length of time in the day . . . it needed suspenders to keep it up . . . it fell off . . . or was cinched so tight it was not funny. A true western gun belt has to be cut on a slight curve in order for it to fit correctly . . . ride correctly . . . and not be uncomfortable. Cutting a straight wide belt will make your customer go find someone else when he wants the next one. Yours will wind up in an empty drawer . . . shoved towards the back. May God bless, Dwight