Making A Holster Bible Document

[Mrs Barry Hicks]

Welcome everyone to my bit of craziness.

For a couple of days now I have been looking for information on different modern gun holsters. I found lots of holsters including old ones. I also read about things like giving credit to others who designed holsters (modern), though there are a few with names already being used as the name of the holster itself (such as "Threepersons"). There's also the learning curve of abbreviations such as IWB (Inside Waist Belt). Now for some of you this is fine, you have learned the ins and outs by asking here and there and stumbling on toes sometimes to find out about other things. Well I have found all of this to be a chaotic mess. I am going to do something stupid. I am going to try and create a document that is understandable and is sort of like a database to anyone who wants to use it. What I am hoping to do is collect as much information about each holster out there and who made it/when it was designed, images and diagrams, and other stuff like if the inventor wishes to have credit, etc.. For now I will be limiting it to gun holster. I would like to get the leatherworker.net community of holster makers to help with this one. If you have information to share, please feel free to post it here on the forum. I will be creating a PDF that I hope to keep updated at the top of this forum in the near future that will contain and organize this information. Too many gun holster slinging monkeys out there and I am going to try and clean up this holster town as best as possible. But I need you holster slinging monkeys to help this old gorilla fix it up. So would you help me? Don't like being called a gun holster slinging monkey, tough, I just called myself a gorilla so deal with it.

Now let get started....

[joshk]

I'm a bit curious.... are you trying to put something together almost like a portfolio of holsters with info, something that tells you how to make holsters, or a combination of both?

[Mrs Barry Hicks]

joshk, that's a good question. I'm not looking to include how to make a holster, AND I would be more than willing to link to someone else's pages (with their permission) on how to make a particular styled holster. <-- That right there is a whole other can of worms. I'm looking to pull together a database/document to inform people about the holsters out there already. What kind it is and under what categories it fits. Does it have patent or is it copyrighted? If so who owns the rights and what permissions are there. When was the holster created? Where? Some of this is sort of like getting to know about what it is you are making. And it can help in knowing what is out there. I dunno, maybe no one is interested. I am. I might be wasting my time though putting on the board if no one is interested. But I think it could be of great use to this community. Hopefully in the next few weeks I'll have something started and will post it. At least it will make for an interesting read.

[Luke Hatley]

Check this one out before you start yours..John Bianchi's "Blue Steel and Gun Leather"

this will not tell you how to make holsters but the history of them.

Edited March 6, 2012 by Luke Hatley

[dickf]

It would be sweet if you did create a database, so it could be searched. Setting up the fields would help tell you what info you need to collect on each holster. A database would also allow other users to contribute, where a document would be impossible to manage via community (versioning, etc).

[Mrs Barry Hicks]

Luke, thank you! I'll check it out, that would be very useful indeed!

US Gunleather, I am leaning more towards a open file document instead of a database. I'd have to host a database and then have users who could log in and update stuff. I'm just a leather worker. I don't have that kind of time. Maybe one day I will, but for now it's more of a searchable document that can be updated by others.

[particle]

Have you seen http://gundata.org/ before? I haven't spent a whole lot of time on their site, but it appears to be a WordPress site. Their goal is to have users sign up, and I guess after some sort of approval process, you become an editor on the site where you can add new gun models, specifications, descriptions, photos, etc. If you put up bad information, other users can log in and edit the content to correct misinformation. That's at least my understanding of the site. You might consider doing something similar yourself - just a thought.

[dickf]

Have you seen http://gundata.org/ before? I haven't spent a whole lot of time on their site, but it appears to be a WordPress site. Their goal is to have users sign up, and I guess after some sort of approval process, you become an editor on the site where you can add new gun models, specifications, descriptions, photos, etc. If you put up bad information, other users can log in and edit the content to correct misinformation. That's at least my understanding of the site. You might consider doing something similar yourself - just a thought.

Good idea - just set up a wiki. Easy.

[particle]

Oh yeah - Wiki - I don't know what any of them are, by my host has 5 different Wiki installs... MediaWiki, TikiWiki, WikkaWiki, DokuWiki and PmWiki.

[emmanuelleather]

Mrs. Barry-

Ohioians for Concealed Carry (www.ohioccw.org) has an extensive holster maker list at http://ohioccwforums...hp?f=10&t=24991

I'm not sure if this is what you are looking for but it sure is a wealth of information.

[Mrs Barry Hicks]

Wow guys you all are terrific! But I'm not seeing what it is I'm trying to do. These will definitely help! I'm looking to list the different types of holsters out there. Not for a particular pistol but something more like IWB, or the Avenger, or Pancake. These themselves have huge amounts of variations on them. And then there are the Western Holsters. I'll be doing some serious reading with all the info all of you have provided.

Thank you!

Edited March 6, 2012 by Mrs Barry Hicks

[MBOGO]

It sounds like you are going to build a mountain. As Luke said John Bianchi's "Blue Steel and Gun Leather" is a good resource. It seems that the evoultion of the holster hasn't been properly documented to a large degree though. Packing Iron: Gunleather of the Frontier West, by Richard Rattenbury is a good resourse as well.