G19 Pancake-style & Mag Pouch

[xcontributor]

Hello Everyone!

I picked up leatherworking a few months ago, and this is a holster and magazine pouch I made for a longtime friend/customer of mine. I work as a gunsmith and shooting instructor, and have always put a lot of care into gear selection. I have a lot of vintage leather pistol gear, and finally decided I should start making my own. I’ve found JLS Leather’s patterns to be a world of help, and a wonderful starting place to develop and grow my skills before tackling my own designs and drawing from other sources. I love Kramer holsters, and have been using a lot of very old DeSantis holsters for a number of years  (their pre-makers mark ones, and their “LI,NY” stamped holsters, probably from the 70’s-80’s), and want to recreate some of their older designs and build quality. DeSantis is local, so I have seen many of their holsters for years. Any suggestions, criticism, etc would be greatly appreciated!

I’ve chosen to do much of the work by hand; saddle stitched with KS Blade Punch pricking irons, cut with a Vergez Blanchard round knife, edges beveled, sanded and burnished by hand, etc. I am having difficulty using the JLS patterns regarding fitment due to stitching spacing, so I stitched the left side above the sights first, molded around the gun, then stitched beneath the trigger guard. I switched to Fiebing’s Pro Dye and it’s helped greatly over the standard alcohol dye. Leather is Hermann Oak craftsman grade. 

-Brian

[JLSleather]

23 minutes ago, xcontributor said:

JLS Leather’s patterns to be a world of help, and a wonderful starting place to develop and grow my skills

That IS the point.  Show a guy how to, then he does his own.  

 

23 minutes ago, xcontributor said:

JLS patterns regarding fitment due to stitching spacing, so I stitched the left side above the sights first, molded around the gun, then stitched beneath the trigger guard

Not sure what difficulty you had, but the method you describe is often used to make holsters WITHOUT any pattern at all.  My friend Robert made holsters for 10 years before ever using a "pattern".

It does look like you have MORE than enough room behind the trigger guard.. don't know if that's method or the leather maybe soaked to the point of "walking" on you. (?).

By the way, stitchin' looks pretty good, but the whole holster is BACKWARDS

Same pattern, rightey, usen' up a tad o' croc was left over from something ... good while back.

[fallequinox]

Maybe it's for a leftie. 

Aside from possible orientation issues, it looks great!!! 

[Wconn1979]

It looks good to me!

[Jarhead44706]

Looks pretty good.  Thanks for sharing

[JLSleather]

Oh, incidentally, I'm making pretty much all of my holsters these days with double-layer backs ... as in 2 layers of 4 oz instead of a single layer of 8.  Keeps the sweat guard firmer for longer.

[xcontributor]

On 1/6/2019 at 10:49 PM, JLSleather said:

Oh, incidentally, I'm making pretty much all of my holsters these days with double-layer backs ... as in 2 layers of 4 oz instead of a single layer of 8.  Keeps the sweat guard firmer for longer.

Thanks for the insight! It is for a wrong-handed, er I mean lefty gentleman. On that note, that’s a neat idea, I might even add a small reinforcement panel to the sweat guard that extends a bit further down to rigidify it further. The stitching I’m very proud of, KS Blade Punch irons are unbelievable for saddle stitching, and I actually straightened out some of the curves in your pattern to make stitching faster. As far as the stitching around the trigger guard, I actually have it figured out now, I marked my template based on where I stitched with this holster, and for the customer’s second set, I stitched the whole holster up, then wet molded it. Definition while molding exceeded this set. I’ll post some progress photos of the next set shortly!

[xcontributor]

Here is the other pair that completes this set of holsters! You can see the progress I made on this set alone. I’m much happier with the results.