1911 Thumb Break

[Matt Alsaker]

I built an IWB holster for a couple friends of mine who are police officers. One of them asked me to build a concealment holster with a thumb break for his Springfield 1911 Operator. He carries the handgun locked and cocked (this is important later). The department he works for requires a thumb break when carrying on or off duty. This is the second design for this holster that I came up with (modeled after one of the patterns from Will Ghormley's 1911 pack). The first holster I did was awful. The thumb break (on the snap side) kept disengaging the safety. So I did a new thumb break and I no longer have that problem. However, there is limited room on the rail of the handgun for the nice level spot to put the snap for the thumb break since the safety is on the side. On the right side of the handgun, I just molded the safety into the strap for the thumb break. On the snap side, the snap rests on top of the safety. So far I have not had issues with the safety disengaging again, but having the snap rest on top the safety doesn't seem ideal to me. Anyone have any suggestions?

[Shooter McGavin]

Heres what I do. I have quite a few of these out there and just happened to be in the middle of building another so I snapped some pics for you. I've never had any complaints with this particular design, and I wore one myself for awhile and sent the first two to a friend of mine to wear every day to give them a better test than I can on weekends. No complaints to date.

Hope the pics help.

[TexasJack]

Shooter, you did an amazing job with those pictures!

[Matt Alsaker]

Shooter....thanks for the feedback and pictures. The pictures really helped. I'll modify my template and give it a shot over the weekend.

[Shooter McGavin]

haha. I took about 20 pictures and these 5 were the only ones worth showing

[triage1998]

Dan~ Nice work!

[steelhawk]

Shooter, I really appreciate this as well. I'm making my first thumb break holster for a Deputy Sheriff friend of mine. Your pics have left me very assured that mine will come out good. I made a test holster that came out pretty well, but I needed a length adjustment on the wrap over strap. It was 1/4 too short. Fortunately it was a quickie holster with scrap leather.

[Shooter McGavin]

Dont forget some kind of bumper pad between the snap stud to prevent metal to metal contact with the gun!

[Josh Ashman]

Dang nice work Shooter, thanks for sharing! Whenever I see high quality work it pushes me to raise my own standards and in the area of thumb breaks you've set a very high bar.

Josh

[steelhawk]

Dont forget some kind of bumper pad between the snap stud to prevent metal to metal contact with the gun!

I got some little black plastic thingies from Tim at High Desert Leather in Utah. They should fit in the snap just fine.

[Matt Alsaker]

Took Shooters advise...played around with the thumb break...and had the friend who I'm making it for give me his thoughts...here's what I came up with. I moved the snap lower (I'm going to have to get some pieces of stainless steel to reinforce the thumb break on the back side) and designed the strap so I could mold it over both the left and right safety. My friend is going to have a couple other guys wear test this one to get me some additional feedback. The thumb breaks are sure a pain.

The entire holster was supposed to be the nice dark brown color the back plate is. I used a high density sponge. The holster body did not dye as nicely, so I let it dry then went over it with black. This weird almost mahogany under tone came out, which looked kind of cool. Until I wet the gun to mold it then the color developed this effect that looks like cracking. I am use Fiebing's Pro Oil Dye. I'm going to stick with black for now until I can practice getting the dye on more evenly.