Gluing Edges Instead Of Stitching

[YinTx]

One other way to think about this:

1) Yes, the glue is stronger than the leather.

2) When you pull on a glued seam, what separates is the leather from the leather. That is to say, the leather will delaminate/peel and the glue bond will hold. As such the bond is only fractions of an inch thick into the leather, where the cement managed to fill into the voids of the leather. *It does not penetrate the entire thickness of the leather.* So you are testing the tensile strength of a very thin sheet of leather in this case. It will fail.

3) The stitch causes you to place the *entire* thickness of the leather into play. When you test the tensile strength now, you are testing the *entire* thickness of the leather and the thread as a single entity. This can be incredibly strong, particularly when you are using a thick, strong thread and a thick, high quality leather. You have to either break the thread, or tear the thread through the entire thickness of the leather.

I don't know anyone that can pull apart a newly sewn 12 oz veg leather with 1mm Tiger thread. I do know folks that can pull apart a glued only leather seam.

Just a different perspective, good or bad. I'll be stitchin.

YinTx

[cleanview]

Read these all this morning and thought about it through the day. Wanting to be bull headed, but reminding myself that 200 holsters in I still consider myself new. There is always so much to learn. My first thought was that my daily carry holster has unstitched lining at the barrel end of the the holster and looks fine. Then I began to think, well if it is able to come apart it will even on stitched linings. I made a cowboy SAS type belt that I wear daily in my job as a work belt. I sweat profusely, I mean ALOT. Today I examined it (hoping to prove myself right) and some of the most abused areas I could see some separation.

Well, I guess I will go back to stitching the lined areas as well.

On that note, some of you may wonder if the time and effort you put into articulating your point of view on matters such as this (and many others) fall on deaf ears or is worth the effort. I hope you know that your time and effort is not without appreciation.

[Paramedic04]

I honestly am not going to stick a loaded firearm that I paid hard earned money for in a holster that's not reinforced with stitching and take the chance on a negligent discharge and injuring myself, someone else, or damaging my very valuable self defense tool. THAT'S why I always stitch and sometimes double stitch in areas on my holsters.

[JasonL70]

i would be surprised if an unsewn holster would survive even the first insertion of the gun during molding, unless it was a very loosely fit holster to begin with. the cement may hold, but the leather it's bonded to would probably tear.

Don't be out off by hand stitching. it's easy, and will look very good if you use the proper tools to lay out the holes. I was thinking of just using cement before i made my first holster, but decided to just go down to my local tandy shop and have them teach me how to stitch. the guys at my local store were all gun enthusiasts as well as really into leather working (a rarity at tandy it seems), and the happily sat down and taught me various methods. it was much easier to get a professional looking end result than i had imagined.

Edited July 30, 2015 by JasonL70