First holster and need advice

[JoelR]

I've been working on my first holster now for a few days. Keep in mind, the last time I worked with leather was in Boy Scouts making a knife pouch from one of Tandy's kits about 20 years ago. This forum has been a HUGE source of help, information and inspiration.

I'm making a belt slider (flat back with a fully-formed front) for a new M&P 40. The holster is trimmed, stitched, formed and the belt slots cut. I've been working on the burnishing and I understand that is a skill in-and-of-itself so I'm not overly concerned about that and am starting a batch of vinegaroon tomorrow for the color.

Here are a couple questions I have on fit-and-finish:

Do I burnish the belt slots? If so, how?

I was a little sloppy with burnishing the slide-guard so, how do I un-burnish?

The opening of the holster needs burnished and the edges of the opening are a little rough. Sanding is not working too well - seems to be making the edge more rough than smooth and I can't even get s partial burnish to sand and enhance. Do I need to harden the opening more, re-sand, and hand-burnish or is there another way to go about this?

How do I get rid of the fingernail marks from forming?

Is there a way to remove scuffs from the finish side?

Other that all that, I'm more than thrilled with the holster. I used a "Space Bag" and my central vacuum to mold and am MORE than happy with the results. Great retention (I wet-moulded before stitching), and looks good so far in-the-white. Can't wait to see it finished.

If pictures would help, let me know and I'll try and post what I can.

Thanks all,

Joel

Edited May 29, 2009 by JoelR

[JoelR]

Got around to taking some pics this morning. Hopefully the quality is good enough to show the items I mentioned above.

Edited May 29, 2009 by JoelR

[ArtS]

They taught you well in the BSs. You did an excellent job on this. I'm going to have to try one of those space bags.

I use several things to burnish edges. When you start wet them first so they will lay down. For the slots I use a deer antler. It works great. You can also use this on other parts.

If you have a very smooth handle with rounded edges you can use that to smooth out the nail marks. Any smooth piece of hard wood can work out for smoothing them out.

I also use a piece Cordura or Denim and rub the edges with that. After I dye it sometimes I'll rub some wax on the edges and rub them down.

Hope this helps.

Art

[JoelR]

Thanks for the tips Art. I did the final wet molding and enhanced the profile a little. I was able to work the fingernail marks out with some clay forming tools I had lying around.

I burnished the edges of the opening a bit before re-forming and found that after the second wetting, the burnishing disappeared on those edges but remained for the other edges. I can only guess that I did not burnish enough with the denim for the edges to "hold". They were not as dark as the other edges so I guess that should have been the indicator for me.

For burnishing the slots, I chucked up a #2 pencil, sanded it round and went at it. Looks OK but certainly not as dark or hard as the other edges. Probably because I could not put a whole lot of pressure on the pencil. I picked up some nylon spacers at Lowe's and am going to see if I can turn a gouge in them and use them for tight-space burnishing on the drill-press.

I picked up some bee's wax at Tandy over the weekend so I'll see if I can add that into the burnishing mix and see if it helps. I recall reading a thread where a 50/50 (I think) bee's wax and parafin wax mix was used with good results. I may have to try that since I have about 20# of parafin sitting around.

Vinegaroon is being made. Test pieces looked OK after sitting the solution in the sun and shaking it up every few hours. I'm going to give it more time to see if I can get the leather even darker. It was a blue/grey after 24 hours of steeping the steel in the vinegar. I went with the advice fof the salesperson at Tandy and did not get the Neetsfoot (sp?) that everyone talks about here. She stated that she has found that it tends to leach out of the leather when it gets warm. I don't remember what she recommended (not at home - orange container and indicated it was a leather conditioner so this may not really be what I want) but it did not seem to really soak into the vinegaroon'd leather.

Interesting to note, I had the cider vinegar and steel wool sitting in an open cup to start out. Once a gallon jug became available, I transfered the solution to that and tore up the steel wool into chunks that I could fit into the container mouth. The section of steel wool that had been fully submerged in the vinegar was noticeably warm. I also found that while I have no problems with the smell of distilled white vinegar, but cannot stand the smell of cider vinegar...

JR

[JoelR]

Just remembered: The leather conditioner that was recommend and I have tried is Lexol.

JR

[TwinOaks]

Good to see you're making progress and the pics show you're doing a great job.

Good burnishing is the result of lots of friction and pressure. Motorized is the way to go. One day, I'll even manage to get my edges looking like Hidepounder's.

About the 'roon: Yes, it will get warm. There's a chemical reaction taking place, and temperature change is one of those indicators. It will also produce gas. Keep this in mind if you ever make it in a glass container. It isn't as easy to clean up as you might imagine.....

To recondition the 'rooned leather, you'll need to heat it a bit. You can use a hair dryer, lots of hand pressure while rubbing, or an oven. When I use the brew, I wet form to the weapon and allow to partially dry so that it keeps the molding. Then I stuff the holster with paper towels (moisture wick) and place in my convection oven at ~140-150F for about 20 minutes. As soon as it's cool enough to not burn me, I rub in Aussie Conditioner, then let it sit for a few hours.

A note about forming the holster on the pistol. As the leather dries, it may shrink just a little bit. The result is incredibly good retention....and a very slow draw. I've gotten around that by placing the pistol in a ziploc bag while the leather dries. Just that few thousandths of an inch is enough to allow a smoother draw, without compromising retention. Another thing I've done with good success is to spray the interior of the holster with 'dry-lube'. It's a spray on teflon lubricant. It really slicks up the interior.

[JoelR]

Thanks for the compliment and advice TwinOaks.

I just sampled my vinegaroon and the black looks supurb. I was impatient with this latest sampling. I followed the same procedure with the prior two, which turned out grey but could be made more black with oil: Dip for two minutes, allow to sit for about two minutes, rinse with cool tap-water. To this point, the latest test looked the same as the other two. The difference this time was I used a hairdrier on high to dry the leather instead of sitting them on the deck in the sun. The latest sample was midnight black without adding oil. I understand that heat increases chemical reactions, so this may be the case. We'll see what it looks like tomorrow.

The retention seems fine at this point. A little tight and I expect it to loosen up quickly. We'll see after a couple of IDPA practices how well it holds up.

Now, that I think I have a good basic understanding, time to decide what to do with the rest of the belly I got. Either an concealed rig for the same firearm, a concealed rig for the 1911, or a rig for the CZ52 - I've always wanted to see a formed holster that would accent the sexy lines of that hand cannon...

Edited June 1, 2009 by JoelR

[Bronson]

I used a hairdrier on high to dry the leather

Careful with that. If you heat it too much, too quickly you'll end up with very hard brittle leather.

Bronson

[JoelR]

Yeah, Bronson, I'm a little hesitant to use the hairdrier with the actual holster beacuse of that. The sample did not get "hard" but did stiffen up a bit.

As a control, I dipped another piece of scrap that was cut from right next to the last piece but let it air-dry. It was definately blacker than the first two, but nowhere near as black as the last. So, my guess is the heat is simply boosting the chemical reaction and the vinegaroon is not really strong enough yet. May be a usable tip for those who need to rush an item.

[JoelR]

Here are the results of my first attempt. Far from perfect, smells like cider vinegar and the cant is WAY too steep for anything other than a 5-o'clock position. Otherwise I'm happy.

Starting on the IWB tuckable. Tried a reinforcing band using an awl for the holes instead of the drill-press. I'm either doing it wrong or it takes a lot of practice to get neat stitching this way.

JR

[carljc72]

Stitching will get easier pretty quickly. The best advise I got (from this site of course) was to have a super sharp awl. Once the awl will slide through the leather like it is butter, your control will improve and the stitches will look better. Good job so far...and good luck. Carl