Some Recent Work

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I haven't posted much of my work lately, but thought I'd throw these out there for comments & critiques.

Kahr P9 - the customer requested I build this for his Kahr K9. He said the fit was perfect, so I guess I'll add the K9 to my gun list! The tooling got a little sloppy in places - for some reason, this hide doesn't seem to cut very smoothly with the swivel knife. I'm sure it's something I'm doing wrong, so if anyone has any suggestions on how to get my swivel knife to slide through the leather more smoothly, I'd like to hear it. For what it's worth, I sharpened, then stropped it till it had a nice polish on it and it didn't really help.

I made this holster for my dad's Springfield XDm 3.8.

Still working on my revolver holster skills.... This is a Ruger LCR.

The dye on this one came out a little splotchy...

The reinforcement came out a little too dark on this one. That's the problem with mixing leathers from different makers... The reinforcement on the mag pouch is Herman Oak - the rest of the leather is Wicket & Craig, which is much lighter in color than the H.O. I tried to compensate by applying less dye to the reinforcement, but I still put too much on.

I attempted a badge holder for the first time a while back (without an actual badge), but wasn't at all happy with the direction the design was heading. After posting my struggles on the board, someone was kind enough to post their examples. To whomever you are (sorry I didn't look up the post before I started typing this one), thank you for your input! I obscured the badge information - not sure if it's okay to show the guy's name or not...

Thanks for looking!

[troop]

still looks great. are you getting your leather "holstered"? i get mine "holstered" from W/C and it is so tight it is really hard to cut through. i sometimes have to use it to cut designs on for notebooks and stuff and it is really hard to carve on.

Tony

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I asked them about it a while back, but opted not to get it that way. Since I offer tooling as an option, I'd rather stick with the normal, easier to tool stuff.

[Eaglestroker]

The holsters all look great, but man that badge holder looks awesome!

[katsass]

Particle, you always do great work. I also really like your badge holder....... or maybe it's the five point star that perks me. Been partial to the old style Ranger's badge forever ..... even though the one I wore for so long was a seven point star. Good looking stuff. Mike

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Thanks fellas - I admit, I was pretty pleased with the badge holder. With my first attempt, I was laying out the pieces by tracing paper (card stock) templates that were cut out by hand so the circles were less than perfect. Multiple pieces to the pattern = multiple chances for less than perfect circles. Glue them together, sand the edges flush, and you have a mess on your hands with an overall out-of-round piece. This time I used some old architectural dividers with very sharp points on them, adjusted them to size with my ruler, then scratched the patterns on the leather. I was able to cut almost perfect circles this way, and the little hole in the center is barely noticeable and is completely covered up once the badge is installed.

I agree about the star - beautiful badges. I think this badge is his spare - never been used I guess, because it was perfectly polished with no signs of wear.

[bitone40]

As always beautiful work my man . I love the way you make the black holsters look, and as far as that splotchey one for the glock , I was running into the same problem when I would use the oil dye on the piece 1st and then sew and wet mould, some places would be darker than others and I didnt care for the look that much , I guess the oil dye's don't mix well with water on top of them. Now I just dye (oil dye)after the moulding unless I use spirit dyes which can be used before or after moulding and not leave any water marks. Now adays I just use the oil dye for black holsters and the regular dyes for all other colors. I was having a hard time getting the black spirit dye into the compressed leather after moulding and the oil dye soaks right in with no problems . Again beautiful work . Thanks for sharing

[mattsh]

Them some mighty fine holsters, as always, awesome work! I really like that badge holder it totally rocks.

[Haystacker]

Wow. I really like the way you did the reinforcement piece on the first holster. I like the style very much. I do a lot of LCR holsters. It is such an ugly little gun that it is hard to make the leather look good. However, that being said, if anyone can make an LCR holster look good - it is you. Great work.

[particle]

Thanks fellas! I appreciate the compliments.