Cross draw holster & cartridge belt

[sbrownn]

Thanks for posting the picture.  The backside looks pretty good.  What would you do further if you needed the backside to look as good as the frontside?  I have tried a number of things but have yet to come up with a protocol that works as good as I would like.

[Josh Ashman]

18 hours ago, sbrownn said:

What would you do further if you needed the backside to look as good as the frontside?  

Hello Sbrown, my honest answer to your question above is that I would change my way of thinking. I don't need, or expect the backside of my stitching to look the same as the front. Anyone who has ever seen the cantle binding on one of my saddles knows just to what extremes I'll take this line of thinking!  In fairness to my saddle building skills, I use rawhide binders and stabbing an awl through 2 layers of rawhide and 3 layers of skirting leather and having it come out perfect on the backside is not that easy. There are people who are remarkably good at it, I'm just not one of those people. At any rate, if for some reason I thought the backside had to be better than my machine could sew I'd probably use my machine without thread to make the holes then hand stitch. The other option would be to stab the holes with an awl and then hand stitch. Back before I had a machine my awl skills were much higher and I could get a pretty nice stitch line on the back side, however I seriously doubt I could do so now. I suppose a person could try a modified version of the Stohlman method for stabbing the holes on a cantle binding and stab halfway through from each side, he says the awl blade will find the hole fromt he other side assuming your layout is all perfect. I've never put this tot he test but I'm 100% positive it requires skills I don't have. 

I admire your pursuit of backside stitching perfection even if I don't happen to share it. Good luck in your endeavors!

All the best, Josh

[dikman]

Josh is right in that the only way to get better looking stitching on the back is to hand stitch. It's the nature of machine sewing and leather, the back will never look as good as the front.

[noobleather]

A nice,very smart looking cross draw rig there.

Thanks for sharing

[Josh Ashman]

Thanks Noob!

Best, Josh