Here’s a holster I’ve been working on for entirely too long. It’s finished now, and will ship out this week.
The customer specifically wanted a holster that would be secure if he fell into the water while fishing from his canoe. This holster would need a thumb break, but may also be very wet for hours at a time before it is able to be dried. The finish I normally use may not work for that, and if it did get wet enough to soak through the finish, I wanted to be sure the dye wouldn’t come out and stain his clothes.
This took some experimentation, and I settled on a finish which would allow the leather to get wet, but then allow the leather to dry as well. The dye that worked best was Fiebing’s Professional Oil Dye, which is not water-soluble (as far as I could tell). This combination will also allow the customer to wet the holster and re-form it if it doesn’t fit perfectly due to my use of a S&W model 10 instead of a Ruger Security Six, or to adjust the height of where the gun sits in the holster.
The first prototype I made didn’t allow the gun to seat fully, as the double-steel reinforced mouth interfered with the grip, and on the second prototype, the thumb break didn’t work right. Third time’s charm, I suppose.
