Advice on holsters

F

Fish

New member
I planned to post this in the handgun forum but thought in may fit better here under general.

If you guys are like me you purchase a nice handgun, extra mags, ammo, piece specific cleaning widgets etc. But the shopping spree isn’t over yet. You need a good holster for you firearm to call home. I have (at last count) almost a $1,900.00 in leather from Galco, Bianchi and Gould & Goodrich that I use for assorted carry guns, some guns like my P7’s I have three or four holsters for the same gun!

But anyway, I was talking to a leather smith once about breaking in a leather holster and he advocated a solution used for shoes. Its called Totes Liquid Silicone. It’s mainly used for water proofing and cleaning, but it softens the leather really well.

Just one word of caution! It will darken the leather by about two shades or so. So if you are devotedly attached to the color don’t do this. I treat all my leather holsters with this stuff and it cuts down on cracking, and scuffing and it also relaxes the inside as well which cuts down on rough initial wear on a guns finish.

The stuff is available from any shoe store that sells leather goods, I get mine at the Shoe Emporium in Burbank, at Glendale Mall.

Fish
 
Actually - this belongs in the GEAR section.

That is a good tidbit - I have used saddle soap and an oil baseball players use on mitts to soften glove leather. I forget what it was called. Worked good though.

Never really thought of this as an issue...
With IWB holsters - you WANT the leather stiff to allow easy reholstering.
 
Easier way! Take your holster stick it in hot water. <only works if you got a food saver or something like it> Soak it for about 20-30 minutes. Make sure to wrap the barrel with plastic wrap so the water wont rust it. Stick the Gun with the plastic into the holster. And put it in one of those food saver bags and stick it on the food saver. Let set for 30-60 minutes. After that take it out of the bag and leave gun in there and let stand for 24 hours. And you will have a molded holster.

DJ......
 
The holster business that Terri and I have is a franchise of sorts and we learned something from the owner when we bought in that is unique and worth sharing. Besides the concealment holsters that we market (and I am sold on after 25 years of carrying concealed) part of the business is molded leather IWB holsters. To be honest they are not the best IWB's I have ever seen and I don't especially promote them because of what I feel are flaws. But the neat thing that we learned that is worth sharing is the molding process we were taught to use at gun shows. We submerge the holster "blanks" in a crock pot set on low until they are completely saturated. We then take the gun, place it in plastic wrap and stick it in the holster to be molded. We then place it all in a food saver, vacuum wrap machine (the same food saver many people use to seal left overs, etc.). The holster molds exactly to the contours of the gun. I've tried it on old holsters I've had lying around and it works on any that do not have a heavy lining. It forms much tighter than the old bone molding method and is a lot faster and easier. Just leave it in the wrapper for 10 minutes to an hour and you will have a nice custom molded holster.

George, you're right that this belongs in Gear and Accesories but I could not pass up the opportunity to share that little tid bit. ;)

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Gunslinger

I was promised a Shortycicle and I want a Shortycicle!
 
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