Beginner's finish- carved leather

[Davm]

I've been critiquing my work.  The rawhide lace.  If you search around on the internet, nothing about it.  First off, if you look at some of the old holsters from the wild west, the rawhide wraps are right next to each other.  The only way you can get that is if you slant the slits at about 45 degrees so that the top of one slit lined up with the bottom of the next slit.   Well I did that and got the spacing set.  The lace was given to me and is about 3/16" wide. (I took a woodcarving tool and ground it down to make a slit tool) Tandy sells 1/8" lace but it is not as wide as you see on some original "Old West" holsters and the 3/16 is better.  I have a Tandy rotary wheel with 10 points per inch that spaced the slits apart about what I wanted so I used that.  The bottom of each slit starts at the point impression and then slants up at 45 degrees.  The slits are parallel to one another. Unfortunately I didn't think about this-on a holster you have curves and if it is an outside curve that will splay the wraps farther apart and if it is an inside curve the wraps will get bunched up too tightly so... if you want it to look right the spacing between the slits needs to be modified on the curves.  I didn't realize it so on my holster on the outside curves the wraps are a little apart- something to correctly on the next holster. I am going to make the same holster a couple of times as I have several revolvers of the same size.  I'll try to post a photo. The swivel knife curves could have been a little better although by the time you shade and bevel that sort of compensates.