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Sturdybelt and Holster Company. Today I'm going to be making a holster for a customer.
This customer is interested in a holster for his 1911.Its a full size 5 inch 1911 something
like this umm... a couple things that he wants for his holster is - one thing is that he
is left handed. This holster is going to be for left handed carry. The other thing is
this holster is going to be for a western style holster, something that you maybe would
see with cowboy action shooters. Ummm I think there is a group among the cowboy action shooters
that use 1911's quite a bit so, so that is the style of holster that were doing. After
its finished I will put a picture at the very beginning so that you can see what the finished
product looks like and uh you can decide if it is something you want to watch being made
or not. So the very first thing that I did with this project is I created a pattern umm
and my pattern looks something like this umm its a, its going to be folded you going to
have a back piece that is folds back like this and then you have a front piece that
will be folded like this and then your gun fits in there. you'll have stitching along
this side here so uh this portion will fit over top of the belt and thats going to be
the holster. I have to cut this out twice and uh laminate those two pieces together
so the thickness of the holster going to be two ply of the thickness of the leather that
I have right here. which is about uh, Id say about five ounces, uh for or five ounce leather
that Im using right now. There is going to be a little bit of tooling or stamping that
I do along the edge of the holster and this holster going to be dyed a brown color. So.
First thing to do is uh, especially when doing a left handed holster just make sure that
it is in fact going to work the way you want it to work so usually put it up against my
body like this, just to make sure that it is indeed a left hand. Umm and if your making
a right handed holster of course you can just flip this around and it becomes a right handed
holster so you r patterns that you make, can do double duty, they can be used for either
left handed or right handed holsters. So I've just made a little check mark here on this
side to indicate this is the side I want facing up for the left handed draw. So, umm I'm just
going to trace around my pattern onto the leather. I always use a pen for this step
umm don't worry about the ink on the leather because in a future step we are gong to bevel
the edges so all that, bevel and burnish the edges, so all that ink that we are putting
on the leather will uh be removed at some later step. K so as you can see we have basically
uh cut the pattern out at this point. uh one thing that you'll notice uh is that I've left
the radiused corners uh cut square, uh one little trick when your cutting leather with
a straight razor is rather than trying to drag that straight razor around the radius
of the curve the best method for cutting this type of an outside curve is just to take a
series of short cuts... along that line. And it creates a much better result then if you were just trying to drag
that knife around your curve. Of course with most things involving leather work, just taking
your time, and not being in a rush, usually ends up with a better project. Ok so there
we go. umm, as I mentioned this is going to be glued onto another piece of leather and
so uh the actual thickness of our holster is gong to be two of this uh thickness of
leather so umm. You can stick the gun in there to just sort of mock up and see how its going
to work out. Its gong to be a fairly snug fit for this gun but um I've done enough of
these holsters to know that uh that it should work out just fine. Um, one note about when
you are making your pattern is uh... probably the most critical aspect of creating your
patten is knowing where your stitch line should go. A general rule of thumb for establishing
your stitch line, if you what you do is, what I'll do is start with a piece of paper folded
over like this, I usually place the gun directly over the crease that I just made, uh with
the muzzle of the gun just almost at the edge, maybe a 1/16 of an inch away from the edge
of the uh paper, and I'll uh, I'll lay the gun over and then I'll trace around the gun
usually with a pencil. And then what I'll do is I'll, to establish my stitch lines I'll
take a ruler and I'll measure the width of the gun, and then for my stitch line. The
general rule of thumb is generally half, half the width of your gun is where you can place
your stitch line. Umm, I have made holsters that are too tight before so give yourself
a little bit of room for error so um, instead of making it exactly half you might want to
give yourself a 1/16 or an 1/8 of an inch extra wiggle room so you'll make sure that
your gun is going to fit in your holster ok. There's a couple little things that Ineed
to do first, um, the first thing is I need to punch a hole in the top piece right around
here because this customer would like a strap that is going to come down and snap and help
sort of retain the gun in place so I'm just going to take a little punch that is the proper
diameter for my snap and I've already previously measured where about I want this hole... so
I'll put the hole in there. That is where my snap will go. And the second thing is I
need to create a couple slots on the back piece um because I'm going to have a strap
that come around and holds the holster to the back piece. so I'm going to make those
slots right now.I'm
also going to punch one hole in the center. the center hole is going to be for a chicago
screw that is going to help keep it all together. Ok so that is pretty easily done. So that
the inside of the holster and the outside of the holster are both this skin side of
the leather, you are wanting to glue the flesh side to the flesh side. so what I'll do is
drop this down on a section of the leather and I will trace out my pattern once again
with ink.Ok so I've traced the outline of the second piece, um, before we proceed, uh,
I'm going to cut a slit basically in the middle of this, uh of this portion that folds over
and I'm just creating a little slit where my strap is going to be feed through so....umm...I
'm just gong to ...cut and my strap will be feed through that little
slit there. So the next thing that I'm going to do for this is uh, I'm actually going to
create the strap that comes and holds the uh pistol in place. It's approximately 1/2
of an inch thick, or wide rather. And I really don't care about the length at this point,
we can trip it to the proper length if we need later.So there's that. It's going to
be our strap. Very simply for the construction of the strap, so that the strap has a good
feel in the hand, uh, we are going to bevel the corners of the strap, by simply running
our bevel tool down the edge. like so in the front. on the frontside. Flip it over and
give it a bevel on the flesh side, like so.. And while we are at it we'll take a damp sponge
and just dampen those edges up. Just a little bit of water. I like to take just a little
bit of glycerin soap, just a tiny little nubbin of glycerin soap and I'll just run that along
the edge. Could you show it to me. Its just a little piece of soap. No. I mean up against
the leather. Hold on. Hold on. Ok. so I just work the soap into the fibers - both sides.
It really helps the burnishing process. After I get a good amount of that glycerin soap
on there I'll take my little hand burnishing tool. This is just from Tandy, and I'll find
a groove that is approximately the width of the leather and I'll just give it a little
burnish. Glycerin soap really helps a lot. You don't need to do a lot of this, its pretty
uh - it gets a good edge pretty quick. When the edge gets hard and shiny you know you've
put a good burnished edge on a piece of leather. So thats that. Ok just to explain what is
going on here, this strap is actually going to fit through this slit that I've just created
like so, and uh, its going to go over top of the holster. I made the width of the strap
the same width of the slit that I cut into the leather. Um, and the way the sharp is
going to be fastened to the holster, is I'm going to skive down one end which is just
simply removing the bulk of leather, making it thin on one point, I'm just going to punch
a couple holes in it and I'm gong to rivet it to the, to the holster. Its gong to be
held in place by rivets. So I'll just, I don't know about an inch, 3/4 of an inch or so,
I'll remove. This is a skiving tool. Its basically just a razor blade. This particular tool is
not as sharp as it once was so.... so this is just gong to take literally uh 10 seconds,
I'm just gong to touch this to my belt and remove a bit more material - skive it down
a little bit more. Right now I'm just putting a couple small holes, punching a couple small
holes in the end of the strap I just skiver so I can fasten it to the holster using rivets,
obviously two rivets are better than one so that its not going to pivot on us. Alright,
so, I've just inserted our strap, although you can't see what the holster is gong to
look like on this side, we have our outline of the holster on this side, um, I'm just
gong to punch through with the leather punch so that we can rivet this in place before
we glue it together. So... that is what we end up with. Lets go over to the uh... So
I'm just going to put in a couple very small little tiny rivets to hold that leather, you
can't, there you go, sorry , to hold that strap in place. I'm using this rivet setting
tool, this is from Tandy, and the dies are also from Tandy, um, so, put our push studs
in there, flip it over, put a couple caps on. I bought this tool just because um, I
was getting a little bit annoyed with setting....setting rivets by hand. This
just does much better work of it. So we just moved our rivet and snap setting tool to a
place where you could see a little bit better. Uh, while I'm putting rivets or snaps in I
thought I'd do all these operations together. I've changed the die in this tool, this is
now a dies that is used for line 20 snaps, its the size of the snaps Im gong to use for
this holster, so the bottom piece...go like that. Whenever you are using snaps or rivets,
um, in a holster, its beneficial to always try to uh, capture the metal part of the snap
or rivet in between the leather. Because you don't want any um gun rubbing up agains that
metal its gong to destroy your finish. so, its important that we do it at this point
before these two pieces are glued and stitched together. It just gets placed on the bottom
die and you just run your... top die down. And thats what you end up with.
Now we are at the step you can actually glue these two pieces of leather together, umm,
the only thing to be mindful of when you are glueing stuff up, if there is an area you
don't want glue, u, touching or getting into,uh sort of outline where those spots are, so..
I'm actually going to be feeding a strap of leather through here, so I don't want these
two pieces to actually be completely glued together, because I want to be able to have
this free where I can stuff a piece of leather, a strap of leather through there, so I've
taken a pen and drawn a box around these two areas and I know that I want to keep glue
out of that general area. Everywhere else is fine to glue. Another thing that Ive found
when I'm glueing is I like to... the glue can sometimes mess with the burnishing of
your edge. So I just like to keep it pretty light at the edges with the glue if I can
help it. So The glue that Im using is a product that I got from Tandy - its called EcoWeld,
its a water based contact cement. Seems to work well, especially when you are glueing
stuff that is flesh side to flesh side, its really going to bond well together. And I
just use one of these little daubers to apply the glue. ANd I should also note that whenever
you are laminating two things together, whenever you can laminate first and then cut you are
going to get a better edge, If I were to cut these two pieces out first and the try to
get them lined up perfectly and glue them and line them up perfectly at the same time...
its a really hard thing to do. So whenever you can, glue and then cut. So when we traced
around with this piece it helps us keep things lined up the way we want it so when Im placing
this here now on top of here... try to get it as... close to that as I can. if your a
little bit off its not that big of a deal. Just grab a tool. Just to make sure these
two pieces are bonded well together, Ijust got a little roller recently from Goods Japan,
which is a good place to shop for leather crafting tools, and uh, I'll just make sure...its
a little bit like baking. Alright so now, I will uh, now that its glued...um, Im going
to take my knife and Im gong to.... Ok so at this point in the project we have our two
pieces of leather that are glued together, um, the next thing that Im going to do is
use this tool here which is a stitch groover, and Im going to establish where my stitching
line is going to go. In addition to uh, establishing where the
stitch is going to go, the thread, Im also going to use a pair of scribe, scribing tool,
and Im going to, I don't know maybe 2 or 3 mm off of the stitch line, Im going to establish
a second line and that second line is going to be my mark for, for my tooling. So, what
Ill do is I still have this little damp sponge, I'll just around the edge, just really lightly
get the leather a little bit wet so it will take an impression a little bit easier. And
I'll go around. I'll put one of the points into the stitch groove that I just created....
Ok so that just creates a second line that is very faintly there. I'll probably do this
off camera, but I'll just re-wet this area here and then I'll take a stamping tool and
I'll put in my design, my decorative design around here, and around the front part of
the holster as well.Ok, so I've just taken my sponge, got it pretty damp and I just went over the area that I'm
going to be stamping into the leather. This is called casing your leather. Umm, you want
the color to come back, to return to uh... to almost sort of normal before you begin.
So....I'll start up here... and just following the line that I created with the scribing
tool... I'm just going to... go all the way around.
best that I could with what I made with this scribing tool, um, and follow that line with
this uh, sort of half moon decorative stamp. I like to do that because I like to keep the
tooling off of the stitching line a little bit, I think it looks a little bit neater
than it being sort of crowded onto the stitching. So... there's that done.
It's not as simple, as just sort of running a stitch line around the perimeter of this
whole pattern. Its actually, stitching is going to occur in three separate phases or
steps. The reason being, is um, Im not going to put stitch along the edge here until Im
ready pull, fold this over and then at the same timeI will stitch this front piece, these
two pieces together. Um, so..the first thing that Im going to do is, I'm going to stitch
from this point all the way around to this point and I'm going to stop. And then, I also
want to put a stitch line in on the very bottom of the holster so I'll do that next, I'll
just run one simple line on the bottom, and I'll stop. And then the third and final thing
I'll do is uh, fold over and stitch these two pieces together. so you can see that our
holster is beginning to resemble a holster. This is going to fold over like this, we are
going to stitch it. This folds back like this. We have our strap, is eventually going to
snap onto the front there. so you can see its sort of beginning to take shape a little
bit. OK, this is a Cobra Class 4 leather sewing
machine from Leather Machine Company. I'll start at this point here, and uh, back in
a couple of stitches and go forward locking in my stitch. I'm using a brown nylon thread
size uh...277 thread, and my needle size is 25.
So at this point we have completed two of the three stitching lines that I need to put
in. Uh, I did this one first, I went all the way around as you can see - Iocked in the
stitches here and here. I put the stitch on the bottom here and I locked in the stitches
on both sides. The final thing that we need to do is to fold this holster over and glue
it and stitch it here. Before we do that, I'm going to take it to the sander and get
our edges onto this this finished up first because once it is folded in this configuration
it is hard to get onto a sander, its easier when its open like this. so we'll do that
now. I've glued it, and I just have to stitch along
my line. One thing that makes this step little easier is I took my sponge and I put some
water down the front side and the back inside.. and that allows the leather to fold a little
bit easier. So, it helps get things lined up a little bit.
I've completed that stitch. I've also taken it to the sander and I got that edge fairly
flat and even. The only thing Im going to do now is Im going to uh, finish my edges
by beveling uh both sides to take the corners off. So I'll do that right now off camera
and I'll come back to you when I'm done. Beveling tool, and uh, I then took a sponge and I wet
the edges a little bit all the way around and I also took a little bit more of that
glycerin soap and I rubbed it into the fibers on the edge of the leather. And now what Im
gong to do is m going to use this - this is a tool that I use for getting a good edge
on my leather work. Its um, its just a burnishing tool that is chucked up into my drill press.
And uh, use it to establish a good burnished edge.
I'm ging to figure out where to put the top part of the snap. With the gun in there this
is what it is gong to look like. This snap comes over like that and uh, a good way to
sort of establish where to put that snap is by pressing *** the snap area and you
can just barely see that there is a little circular impression that is done on this flesh
side of the strap, and that is where I know i need to put my hole. Ok so we have our 2
snap components in place and just as we did before...set that down into the little dish...
give it a good squeeze, and our snap is in place.
I'm just gong to use a circle stencil to get a nice radius curve for the pull tab for our
strap, so I'm just gong to find a circle that is approximately the width of our strap. I'm
going to leave about an inch below the snap, something to grab hold of to actuate the snap.
Thats my circle. So I'm going to use a professional oil dye,
its a Fiebing product - I'll use a dauber to apply the dye. I'l put just two or three
coats of this spanish brown colored oil dye onto the leather. I'll let that dry and than
after I let that dry I'll give it a good buff with a soft cloth, and then I will apply this
to the outside - which is carnauba creme - which I really like, it conditions the leather,
but it also seems to do something with the dye where it dissipates the pigmentation of
the dye and it gives it a really nice look- and I'll let that dry and my final coat is
just a coat of Acrylic resoline. We have completed the holster, this is how
it has come out. A couple things we did off of camera that Ill just briefly explain to
you right now. We have this strap here that was uh used a chicago screw. Let me take this
gun out - you can see unloaded. So, this strap was just uh, a simple chicago screw is holding
it in place. I skived both ends of the strap and punched a hole in both ends of the strap
so its being held in place just by uh, by this simple chicago screw. Pretty simple.
As far as dyeing and finishing I used Spanish Brown professional oil dye from Fiebing or
Fiebing how ever you say it and um went over with Carnauba creme and then finished it with
Acrylic Resoline as well. One of the tricks that I like to use when applying acrylic resoline
is I like to get a piece of cloth and dampen the cloth first and then apply the resoline
to the cloth and then apply it to the holster. Its just one of the things I do. so as you
can see this is a left handed. Gun fits in nicely, comes right up to the end like we
want. This strap fits perfectly. so this will go over, the belt will go through here and
will fit like that on the persons side. So uh... so there you have it. Um, if you have
any questions please feel free to ask. Please subscribe. And like it if you like it. Thanks
so much. I appreciate it. Bye bye