I made some holsters for my paired blaster pistols. I haven't done finer leather work before so this was an excellent learning opportunity, and I had a great time doing it.
My first step was research and prep - I found a few tutorials on the YouTube, procured a few new tools and a nice bit of leather and went for it.
So the next step, pattern making. I folded some paper in half, offset a line (half the main body thickness) and traced around the profile of the barrel and trigger guard; I offset the line about 5/8" to give some room to stitch the piece up (more on that later). I went around with it a bit, figuring out where I wanted to put holes for hardware, added an extension to the top (it was originally straight across just below the grip and it felt wrong the more I looked at it) and test fitted it. so far, so good.
Cut,
X2 and drop in holes for my hardware.
I went ahead and put in a stitching groove all around at this point, which may have been a bit early, but didn't affect the outcome badly. It did help me lay out my tooling pattern better though.
I doodled up a simple geometric pattern that evoked the blocky aesthetic of the Westar-35 design and also played off my kit's Danger Stripes motif.
I made these in two layers, with the back of the hardware sandwiched between to keep it from scratching up the surface of my blasters and adding unwanted weathering.
Glad I remembered to mirror everything instead of cutting everything double. Not that I've ever made such a mistake....
Beveled and slicked the edges - I beveled all around the outside face, and only the inside face at the top and bottom openings. I don't have a slicker yet so I used the handle of the beveler, and it worked out ok.
Remember how I mentioned an offset earlier? It wasn't quite enough. I forgot to account for doubling the material thickness (duh!) so I adapted and cut a filler strip for each piece.
Note, I pre-punched stitching holes all around.
I got some lovely blue leather stitching thread - it's fairly subtle against the black leather but I love the little detail it provides.
Once again, adapting - I had a work meeting that only required 60%(give or take) of my brain so I kludged together a stitching pony and kept my hands moving.
Lather, rinse, repeat and test the fit - I was really happy with how they were turning out.
The next thing to do was wet-molding. I put each holster body into a pitcher of cool water for about a minute, slid a blaster in and started pressing and creasing the leather to the shape of the blaster body. The top I flared out a little bit to make it a bit easier to slide them back in. I had to work carefully, shaping the leather to the angles of the blaster without adding obvious tooling (thumb) marks and without ruining the linework I'd tooled in.
Final construction step - add retaining straps and belt loops. Threw some light grooving around the edges to give a more finished look.
I am waiting for the leather to be 100% done drying, then I'm going to pluck up my courage and start beating up my brand new work.
