Making Cases Fit

[Soybomb]

I'm still new to all this but so far the worst part by far is making a design and pattern. I've been mostly playing with gun holsters and am starting to get a little better with them. If I'm sewing 2 pieces of leather together I can place my stitch line at 3/8th of an inch from the edge of the gun and get a pretty good fit.

I tried to make a small holster for a cell phone today (I've broken more of those plastic ones....) and calling it a failure would be far too kind. The phone is .7" thick, I put my stitch line 3/8" out again thinking I could wet it and stretch it a little if it was too snug. It was far far too snug. After getting it wet and using every odd tool within reach to try to stretch it out more, I decided that was the most I could get out of it and let it dry. I almost had to start cutting to get the phone out when I tried it later. :biggrin:

Does anyone have any advice on what guidelines to use to determine where to place a stitch line based on how thick the object is and how tight you want it to be? While the 3/8" works ok for a 1.2" thick gun that I want a tight fit on, it was way way off for the phone. Would 1/2" spaced lines be enough even?

On a side note I've got 7/8 shoulder, and 5/6 belly. What would you make a snap on cell phone holder out of? I'm thinking shoulder for the back for a little sturdyness and the belly on the front for a little extra flex?

Thanks all, you've been a tremendous help in finding out what I'm doing. I don't think I'm far from making something usable :D

Edited June 1, 2007 by Soybomb

[Beaverslayer]

Hey Soybomb,

I had the same problem as you with the cell phone cases. What I did was I took a small piece of "Maple" wood and my dremel and I basically shaped the wood to look like the cell phone. This took about an hour, but now as I make more I get a collection of all the different phones.

Then I can wet the piece of 5/6 oz. and using small spring clamps and some thin strips of wood, I clamp it down over the wooden mold. Thus when it's dried its a very close match to the phone.

I always leave about 3/4 to 1" of overhang from the sides of the phone, that way once it's stiched I can just cut off the excess.

And depending on the type of phone, I've even used 9 oz as the back. In most cases though it's the same 5/6 oz for the whole case.

Good Luck

Ken

[Johanna]

You can always trim and burnish, but you can't make the area bigger. Try doing the stichline leaving some excess, making it a bit more oversized, and then eyeball your trimming, and measure I wonder if there are any hard and fast rules? I guess it would depend on so many variables- thickness of the leather, stress it needs to take, stiches to the inch, etc.

You can also rivet cell phone holders just like cigarette cases, or get fancy and charge extra for an applique braid.

HTH

Johanna

[Mark Garrity]

Soybomb,

Beaverslayer basically nailed it.

Some stuff you just have to mold first, prior to stitching. Alot of magazine pouches for hi-cap mags with a flat piece of leather for the back and all the molding on the front are done this way. Unfortunately there are two down-sides to this: it's almost impossible to do without some type of press, and you need a single-side presser foot on your machine so you can get really close to the raised up molded area. Not a big deal if you are stitching by hand.

When I first started doing holsters it was trail and error. There were no internet forums for advice, and no-one who really wanted to let me pick their brain; and very few books on doing concealment holsters.

The first holsters I made were cut and glued, THEN molded, and THEN hand-stiched because I didn't have a clue how to lay the stitch lines!

[BruceGibson]

Welcome to the forum, Mark. It's great to have you here.

For those of you that haven't heard of Mark Garrity, he's a top-notch maker of custom gunleather. The same can also be said for another member here, K-Man. Mark and Kevin both are, in my opinion, among the top names in the gunleather biz.

[pete]

why not just wrap the cell phone in 2-3 pieces of regular typing paper or the like and insert it before you start stitching? It leaves enough room when you're done to get the phone out easily and still leaves a good shape.

pete

[Billsotx]

Welcome to the forum, Mark. It's great to have you here.

For those of you that haven't heard of Mark Garrity, he's a top-notch maker of custom gunleather. The same can also be said for another member here, K-Man. Mark and Kevin both are, in my opinion, among the top names in the gunleather biz.

You got that right Bruce. I'm glad to see Mark showed up over here. As per his signature, "He is a true artist."

http://www.azcentral.com/guitarmania/guitars.php?id=10

Howdy Mark!