Holster Project Update #2

Mexican Loop

Well, two things are going on here. I finished fabricating the brass plates for keeping the holsters open, and put together the tools for the copper rivets.

On the other hand, I plastic wrapped my guns and wet-molded the holsters last night. This morning I pulled the Vaqueros out and the leather was very stiff and hard in the shape I wanted.

One side note, if you're going to wet-mold cheap leather you can not give a crap about the appearance. I ruined the finish, but fortunately I'm going for a beat-up look.

Soooooo... I'm going to let the holsters dry completely and give them a try. The problem I'm seeing is that these are mexican loop holsters, which means the buckets get crushed between two layers of leather. So, I'm going to convert these holsters to my version of a Hollywood holster; the bucket of the holster is riveted to the backflap, so the bucket doesn't get crushed. This isn't a problem with holsters that slide onto your belt, you just feed the belt through. On my drop slides though, it's a permanent installation. I could install snaps instead of rivets, but, well, that's not period. 

However, I've set aside the brass plates and I'm keeping those in reserve, just in case the wet molding idea doesn't work.

As I get further down this project, I'm beginning to see myself shelling out money for new holsters. But that's OK, these crappy holsters will get mounted inside my bucket.