HandyDave

Great looking holsters. Speacially for first time venturing into holster work. I do several of the pancake style holsters with the added plate on front. But i mainly do it for aesthetics. Like has allready been said its a good little space to add some tooling or a 2 tone look like you got goin on with the black and brown or do the plate in a exotic leather to add some extra style. Since these are your first holsters one thing i should mention is be careful on molding to much into the ejection ports. It can cause a hangup spot for the edge of ejection port. I will usually bone in the hard lines but i dont go over crazy with molding most of retention is in the trigger guard area anyway. Just my opinion.

Great lookin foraging pouch. Ive been planning on making myself one for sometime just havent took the time to do it. I think for handcrafted nice pouch 50 is more then fair. I never understand how so many people charge those super low prices. Speacially on like etsy and such i see stuff and it doesnt look like bad craftsmanship but theyll be asking prices that i couldnt even cover material cost if my prices where that low. I see similar holsters to some i make that i need to charge 80 to 100 dollars for to cover cost and squeak out a touch of profit and the ones online are like 25 30 bucks. Then i get people calling me asking what i would charge for this or that and when i price item they allways say well i seen this or that online for half that price. I tell them to buy the cheaper item if it makes them happy. Then i tell them to keep my number if they want to so when there cheaper item falls apart they can call me but my price will be the same or more.

Good looking wallet. I really like the tooling and the pebbled red pockets. Theres only one thing i see and my eye just keeps going to it is that one bottom corner where the stich goes at angle where there aint a hole right in the corner like the other ones. My corners and intersection lines i allways stab first then feel in my holes in between. Other then that one corner its a great piece.

Heres another pic of whole thing layed out flat. Its still a little stiff because its new. But as you all know the leather will soften up with use. The holster is made from 7/8 oz and the ankle strap is 4/5 oz.

I have a customer who wanted all leather ankle holster for his ruger lcp. Hes retired LEO and still does some light security work. Ankle holster is concealed of course but the customer wanted patriotic decoration anyway. So i messed around and let the leather tell me what it wanted. Its patriotic and kind of a tribute to customers leo career and all other now and then leo's and also has a little captain america feel to it. I messed around with some thinned down fiebings pro usmc black to give project more of a stonewashed softer navy color. Did a distressed star inlay with inlay trim panel being cut out in the shape of a shield/badge. Stitched around inlay with a bright white thread and the rest of stitching around whole piece is done in a blue thread. I finished the back with thin layer of polyester padding and a soft suede liner. This is far from first holster but is my first ankle holster. More pics

Great work. Very rustic looking i like it. Ive only been doing the molded holsters for a little while and there was alot of reading on setting up for proper thread lines with proper distance. And there has been and still is alot of trial and error. Ive got a few holsters thrown to the side where stitch line was to tight and no matter what leather just wouldnt stretch enough to make it work.

Ive got me several sets of unfinshed maple 1911 grips ordered. I plan on doing some serious testing and experimenting. Including some torture testing with submerging in water, leave a set outside for couple weeks and different extreme situations. With something like snakeskin thats why i added about maybe resin coating whole piece because i know the snake skin aint the toughest material for alot of abuse. What is a good sealer/top coat for the exotic leathers? Ive seen all sorts online but i like to here feom real people when i can. Ill deffently keep my leatherworking family here on the forum up to date on my findings during testing and hopefully be able to share some pics of really nice finished pieces.

Ok i mostly am either doing wood projects or leather projects. But im wanting to start mixing and matching. Do some leather overlays onto wood boxes and maybe even try some exotic leather like snake or stingray over wood grips for my 1911. Ive read up on bonding the 2 materials together and glue selections for best most permanent bond. For the pistol grips Andrews leather in florida who makes some really nice leather over wood pistol grip panels has a great youtube video showing how he does his grips. He uses edgekote in his video to finish the edge. My question is does edgekote seal the edge up between the wood and leather? The edge where leather stops and wood starts wood be my biggest concern of starting delaminating. How to seal the edge to give best chance of it holding up over time. Could you resin coat the entire project once done to make sure everything stays one piece?

The belt can help with retention. But ive also had holsters that would loose retention when it was on your belt. I think alot of it depends on the overall shape of holster. Speacily the pancake style. A good molded in trigger guard is allways the best spot for good retention. And with a beautiful tooling on the front the only option really is a good molding on the back to get that snap in retention.

Looks like a great holster specially for your first one. It looks alot better then my first attempts thats for sure.

Great work on bringing a classic piece back to life. Id like to mention how i cut old rivets or messed up rivets. Sometimes i drill them out but i have found if you take a metal putty knife or even a cheap skiving knife. Thin it down and make it sharp. And you can slide it between most objects and rivet. Give it a smack with mallet and it slices right threw rivet. On something like your old belt this trick would have worked real good.

Really like the asian inspired tooling on the veg tan pieces very well done. I think the bags would sell and you could use the same duffle pattern and do your tooled pieces all sorts of different ways not just asian designs. Only thing would be your margins since you said it was all hand stitched and all the other extra work you put in. I dont know if you could price high enough to make them profitable. I get the calls all the time wanting prices on stuff and when you tell them price most times they bring up how they seen other "handmade" items on etsy or other online stores for half of what i need to charge to be profitable. Theres a huge difference when you press cut a stack of pieces then run them threw a sewing machine and project is done in one day. Compared to hand cutting every piece hand tooling hand sewing and project takes you double to triple the time.

Thanks everyone for the kind words. It was a fun project. And a good piece to practice my carving. My family and friends love it when im practicing new techniques and making new patterns cause i allways give my first test pieces to them. I got 5 younger sisters and there allways asking me to make this or make that. Of course they get everything on me what they like to call the family discount. I told them if they started payin for all the stuff i make them i wouldnt have to seek outside customers lol. But its great free advertising for my stuff when they show it off. Well free for them. I probably would have never made a purse or laptop bag if it wasnt for my sisters wanting them. And now i make as many bags as i do holsters and such.

Thats really cool. I love the old advertising stuff. He was created in the late 20's and there is still a few companies that use his character. All the big electric companies used him at some point but he was fazed out mostly by late 70's early 80's. I know its not ok to recreate trademarked logos and such. But i only did it on this pouch as a gift for my friend. He about had tears in his eyes when i handed it to him. I told him i was workin on something for him as a thank you for the wiring help. But i didnt tell him what till i handed it to him.

A good electrician friend of mine helped me get my workshop wired and powerd up. So i wanted to give him a custom leather piece for helping me. I usually do gun leather,belts and bags so the tool pouch was a fun different project. I do alot of stamping but have only done a few carving pieces. The reddy kilowatt character on the small front pocket on this pouch is by far the hardest carving ive done to date. I hope the leather family here enjoys.

Very nice piece. Im sure your sons friends are gonna be super jealous.

The customer wants double prong and belt to be 4inch full width. I tryed to talk him into letting me taper down to 3 inch for ends. Cause there are 3 inch buckles everywhere. Ive even messaged a couple of the companies that sell the 4 inch belts with buckles i need to see if they will divulge there source for the buckles. I guess they consider it trade secrets cause i havent got no response. Thanks for all the help guys.

As title says i need a source to find good heavy duty 4 inch double prong buckles. I find plenty of belts for sale with these buckles but search after search and cant find a source to buy just the 4 inch double prong buckles. Hopefully someone here will be able to help me. And thank you.

I do alot of the lighter holders with my scrap. And small folding knife pouches. And can coozies and such. Usually about once a month or 2 ill take my scrap box cut every small project i can get out of it and throw away the scrap thats left un usable. But even the smallest piece of scrap can be incorporated somewhere. Earrings are great way to use the tiny pieces up. My father sets up at flea markets on weekends and i give all these small projects to him to sell for me. And we split the take. And since there scrap small projects they dont have much time or material cost. I love big custom builds but the quick small projects cover all my material cost and keep everything runnin.

I did the 2 mag pouches so basketweave looks like it just goes up and over. But i intentionally did the holster different direction and added a groove line around it just so its matching the rest of piece but also stands out a little. The 12 oz piece of black leather sewed to main panel back is there so customer can put his screws or whatever he wants to use wherever he needs to too fasten to wall.

I allways have trouble getting pics on here. Heres another before i got done with pistol and mag

Hey guys and gals i just finished a piece for a great customer of mine. He wanted something nice to hang on wall of his camper that would hold pistol and couple extra mags. So when he and his wife are out on road seeing some of the country he will have close access if need came along. Ive made many holsters and mag pouches but this is first time ever making wall art. Let me know what you all think.

Thanks alot for the input guys. When i said i use 2 loops allways with no problems i meant 1 loop but woven threw 2 holes instead of up and back threw same hole. This was my first test at using this method and it worked so good until i bent the strap and casings fell out. The loop leather is 5/6 oz veg tan and strip is 5/8" wide for 38 speacial rounds. I cut the slots 1/2" long using 1/4" hole punch on ends and sharp chisel to finish.

Heres the pic of strap bent where the casings will fall out freely.

Ok here is couple pics of the test piece i did doing the ammo loops wovin up and back threw same hole. This was first time i tryed this method and as i said in initial post the 38/357 casing hold just fine when strap piece is flat or slightly curved. But when bent as in pic casings fall freely out of loops. I like the simplicity of this method just need figure out what i did wrong.