DeWayne Hayes

Once the welt is attached, I use a needle to make sure every single hole is lined up and I can see through it.

Now, I use sewing needles as guide pins to make sure the welt attaches to the shell with all holes lines up. I do it like this.

I described this in other threads, but as I was doing one today, I thought I'd snap a few pics to better explain my process for hand-stitching very thick welts. The first time I did a thick welt, I swore I'd never try it again. Deep holes, alignment issues, glue in the holes, trying to get needles through - it was a nightmare. But ultimately, this is what prompted me to devise a better process. That, and Dwight's suggestion to use my drill press to drive a sewing needle through the welt. I have developed a modified version of this technique to instead use a chisel style hole punch in my drill press. This gives me rectangular holes which allow more leeway when aligning everything - and that leeway is really helpful when trying to align the holes in the outer holster shell with the holes in the welt itself. First, I mark where I need my stitch line and then punch the holes in both sides of the outer shell of the holster. I pinch the holster shell together to make sure these two sets of holes likes up. Then I take my welt blank and hold it firmly against one side of the sheath and mark where the holes need to be in the welt. I then use my drill press to punch through the welt, which is surprisingly easy, and makes much straighter holes than I could ever achieve by driving the chisel with a hand held hammer. Now, I stretch all the holes in the welt with an awl, just to increase their shape for guiding my needles through. I then glue up one side of the holster and one side of the welt, making sure not to get glue in the actual holes, like shown below.

Wonderful work! Beautiful. Some tips on those mega hoss welts I've developed over the last couple jobs. 1) I now use my drill press with a chisel hole poker thing chucked up and pre-cut all my holes in the welt before I glue it to one side of the holster. I pre punch my holes in the holster shell, and then use those holes to mark where the holes in the welt need to be. Then the drill press punches them nicely and perfectly straight. At this point, the welt is still a separate piece that needs to be glued in. 2) I use sewing needles as locator pins pushed through the holster holes (3-5 of them) to make sure I glue the welt to the holster side with the welt holes and holster holes aligned. I lay my glue on both holster and welt in such a way that the holes don't get gunked up with glue - in other words, in two "strips" beside the holes but not over them. 2) Once the welt is glued to one side of the holster, I then I glue the other side of the holster (holes pre cut) to the welt the same way - with locator pins in place so all the holes line up. I came about this method because the first one I did with a welt that thick, I hammered the chisel punch through the welt and, like you, had a few that went stray somewhere in those layers and came out the other side out of line with the rest. This made lining up all the holes a real battle! Dwight suggested using the drill press with a sewing needle to punch through, and I just modified that to using a chisel punch, which gives me a wider hole that's easier to maneuver through on those thick welts and gives a little margin for alignment error. I filed on the chisel punch to remove the shoulders so I could punch deeper holes. I can get through 4 layers of 8-10 oz. now. It's really sped up my work and most importantly, no more wandering stitch holes on the back side! I hope this helps. Enjoy that beautiful holster!

And then here it is all sanded and painted.

I should mention, I found a much better way of doing that massive welt on these holsters. I used my drill press to mount my chisel hole punch and did all the holes in the welt before ever gluing it to the holster. I used needles as locator pins when I did glue it in to ensure alignment, and I didn't slick glue over the holes and all - I just did two panels of glue on either side of the stitch line. This kept glue out of my holes, and my word, did it make my sewing easier! The old drill press hole punch method was a game changer - I'm not scared of those big hoss welts anymore. Here's a couple pics in process ...

Hi folks, I actually have two long-slide Glocks (one in 10mm and one in 9mm) so I made a duplicate of the holster I posted the other day for the 10mm. I did this one in Fiebings Pro Dry English Bridle, sprayed through a preval. One thing I notice though that I want to ask you all about. I treated the inside of the holster with pure neetsfoot oil, and must have gone too heavy down near the muzzle, as a few hours later I noticed some oil soaked through to the outer face. I did the same with the black holster, but I reckon you wouldn't see any bleed through with black. I can live with it either way, but do you think that oil stain will diffuse and fade, or is it always going to look like that? Thanks, DeWayne

That makes a lot of sense, thanks for the tip.

I tried skiving a strap and ruined it. My little Tandy skiver tool takes nose dives in the material and randomly cuts too thin. I ruined the piece. So, if I ever try to skive again, it will be with a different tool, more like a chisel I can control better. But even though this strap is fairly thick (8/10oz) it is supple enough to work well, so I'm happy leaving it full thickness. I had a major technological breakthrough today, based on Dwight's talk of using the drill press. I realized if I chuck up my single point chisel, I can easily drive it right through four layers no problem. Next time, I'm going to pre-cut the holes in my welt with the chisel, not a drill bit. Should provide more room for needles when it's all glued together. Heck, from now on, I'm doing all my holes with the drill press - perfectly straight, and no more picking up/putting down a hammer 10,000 times a project. That's progress!

That was 22 rounds with 3 at 7yds and the rest at 10 and 15 yds. Slow fire - if I was shooting fast, it would be all over the place!

Thanks, guys. I have the gun wrapped in Saran wrap and in the holster, with the strap wet on the inside surface and re-molding itself in the proper position. I'll leave it in there for several hours. Already felt like it was loosening up. I was spurred to action as i took the pistol to an indoor range today, and it was so cold in the range, I couldn't get it re-snapped! That's just too tight for good service - needed to be stretched. I learned my lesson though - next time, I won't mount the female snap until after the holster is dyed and dried and shrunk all it's going to. Good to know. Good news is the pistol is a shooter!

Thank you - good idea. I wonder if water would work better than neetsfoot to re-wet mold the strap? I hate to reintroduce water, but it may be the only way to get some stretch. I know what I'll do - I have a dud holster that has the same issue. I'll try it on that one and see what effect I can achieve with water. That way, if I have a problem, it won't matter.

I'll tell you what I did run into with this holster ... The snap arrangement fit perfectly when I made it - I established the position for the female side of the snap while in wet moulding and then punched it when dry. Everything lined up nicely. BUT ... After I dyed the holster and let it air dry all night, the holster shrunk a bit, most noticeably the retention strap. I had to pull on the strap for a while to stretch it a bit to re-establish the snapping geometry. It's easy enough to unsnap, but getting it re-snapped can be finicky. I reckon I should have left the gun in the holster when drying, but I didn't want dye on the gun and also wanted the interior to have air circulation to dry. I think I'm going to try coating the inside of the strap with neetsfoot oil and wrap a thin piece of leather over the back of the pistol to stretch on the strap overnight and see if that helps. If not, I may get in there and do some surgery to move the female end of the snap up a mm or so. Concealing that work will be the trick, but I think the head of the snap will cover any changes on the exterior. And whatever it looks like on the inside will be hidden and dyed black, so hopefully not noticeable. I reckon it was the alcohol in that pro dye that caused the holster to shrink. I went at it pretty heavy. I do love how stiff it made the holster though, overall. This was a pretty spongy piece of 8/10 oz veg tan, and it's nice and hard now.

Just for fun! Not too many 6" barrel 9mm pistols out there - you get higher velocities than you can with most other 9mm handguns. Just something to have.

That's a brilliant idea - kind of a 'semi-automatic sewing machine!'

Right, that's why I did it - I was matching the thickness of the trigger guard. I think most (including Bianchi) make a thinner welt and just flair the shell out at the trigger guard during wet mould, but I had it in my head to just match the trigger guard. That idea is now out of my head, and will never be acted upon again!

I will NEVER attempt a welt this thick again! Yikes!

This is my latest project - a leather holster for a Glock G17L "long slide". This is a fairly rare kind of Glock with a much longer barrel, and finding a factory holster in leather is almost impossible, and in cross-draw, just non-existent. It would be a custom order, if you could find anyone willing to do it. So - I had to roll my own. The holster itself was simple as I didn't use a lining - I reverse engineered a pattern from a standard Bianchi Glock offering and added extra length for the barrel, but with a six layer welt of 8/9 oz leather, my gosh - I wanted to cry. Even though I used my drill press to drill the holes in the welt, and they seemed to line up with my chiseled holes on the holster shell, my drill holes were too small, just slightly larger than my needles. This means you add in a little contact cement gunk, and those holes became a nightmare. I had to use my awl and my chisel to work on each hole stitch by stitch, trying to get it where I could see daylight for my needles. Painstaking literally - my fingers and wrists are aching today. By the grace of the leather clad gods, I somehow got it done and the stitching turned out looking really nice, if I do say so myself. Always trying to make a factory-looking stitch by hand ... Finished the edges with Fiebings foam tipped edge dye applicator, and finished the leather with Leather Balm + Atom Wax (I really like this stuff). It's not really waterproof, but this is a target pistol - I can't imagine a rainstorm scenario. I suspect it's the only cross-draw leather holster for a Glock 17L in the world! (Which just means I'm the only person who wants one, I reckon!) DeWayne

Thanks guys. And Dwight, I can't claim any credit for the holster design, I reverse engineered a Bianchi Model 19L holster to make a pattern, but I made it a cross-draw rather than forward tilted design. Couldn't find a cross-draw with a thumb break that I liked, so had to roll my own! And as to the scar (or whatever that spot is that wouldn't take dye), I'm happy to say, I loaded a toothpick with some dye and slowly pecked at it until it blended perfectly and disappeared. I don't know why it didn't take dye when I sprayed, but for whatever reason, I'm happy that I could fix it - my OCD would have caused me to look at that spot every time!

As I said, I went ahead with my English Bridle Pro Dye. After I finished with leather balm/atom wax, I note there's a tiny scar right in the geographic dead center of this holster that didn't take dye. Couldn't have planned that if I tried. But I reckon I can live with it. If I tried to fix it, I'd no doubt create something more noticeable, and as the holster ages, it'll probably get scuffed and aged anyway. DeWayne

Thanks folks. I decided to go ahead with my original brown plans, so will save the black for another day. Thanks, DeWayne

Hi folks, I just made another pistol holster and was intending to dye it English Bridle brown, so I used brown nylon thread. However, I'm considering maybe dying this one black instead. So, I'm wondering, of course, will the thread take on the black dye, or when all is said and done, will I have brown stitches on black? Thanks, DeWayne

No, when I back stitch the whole thing (i.e. double stitch the whole thing) I just pull through my last stitch hole and cut the the thread off very tight to the hole, and press it into the waxy thread next to it. By this point , that hole is tight with four thicknesses of thread, so I'm not too worried about the thread backing out of it. Also, I stitch before wet forming, and that causes the leather to shrink and tighten around the stitching anyway when it dries - so I imagine those holes are all pretty darned tight to the thread.

I hear you, guys. It's the standard for a reason, I'm sure. What I have done before, like on these two sheaths, is literally backstitch the entire thing - just so I could achieve a uniform fat stitch line. It's tedious, but I like the robust look. Just trying to explore if there might be a way to do it with a single line, ending tidily with no backstitching. May be the impossible dream ...