Mods: yes, this is the right forum. The holster concepts involved could be applied just as easily to a bottomfeeder.
Sometimes we learn more from failures than from successes. In making homebrew holsters out of scrap or low-cost leather, failure IS an option and "reaching too far" can sometimes tell you what might actually work.
This is the holster I'm using right now, slightly tweaked from this picture in ways that aren't important:
Here's a back-side view showing a peculiar feature:
There's some real oddities on this setup that aren't going to be obvious even with pics. The oval "back plate" is actually two sheets of medium-grade leather sewn together at the edges. I had originally intended to also stitch around the "cylinder hole" but that turned out to be un-necessary and hung up the draw. The "back plate" could have been a single solid piece of heavier leather but first, I didn't have one and second, the original plan was to have a gap in the edge stitching that would let my belt go through the two sheets, to form the "belt loops"! Well that spectacularly didn't work out - it caused a lump in the middle that severely screwed up the draw. So I took two pieces of scrap leather and mounted them at those edge points as belt connections.
This was never intended as a long-term solution - it was a rig meant to hold the gun during the time it had those extreme barrel mods going on. Those are going away soon when I revamp the gas system at the same time I do the magazine feed - should be this month finally!
In some ways though this is a neat setup. It's a bit like those "hybrid leather/kydex IWB rigs" like the SuperTuck or MTAC, in that it's flat on the side that faces you. The "cylinder hole" system helps with that, on a revolver.
The top leather (the black bit that goes across the two-stage loading gate) is odd in that as it hits the back plate, it's sewn "edge on" - at about a 90deg angle. This works surprisingly well.
The "fail" part is that the rig doesn't hug me tight enough. Unless it's mounted "just right" on my belt, the 42oz+ gun has a tendency to "flop over". The belt connection borders on "bad joke" - loose, sloppy, etc.
BUT.
I've had some thoughts on this thing.
What if I had made the bottom plate significantly wider than the area where the gun goes? I could then do belt slots right through both back plate layers forming a very stiff, wide and stable area of support. I could also do multiple belt slots for different tilt angles and ride heights, like this Simply Rugged "Pancake" rig:
Photocredit by Gunblast: http://www.gunblast.com/SimplyRugged-PMR30.htm
In other words, picture a Pancake holster except the whole main two-layer body is dead flat, and a third layer rises up in the middle to grab the gun. This "Flatjack" (?) holster would be more assymetrical than a Pancake, but otherwise share similar "tight grab to the belt" and "wide base of stability" characteristics.
It gets better - using the same "IWB conversion straps" Simply Rugged sells for their Pancake holsters, a "Flatjack" could be converted very successfully to IWB as long as the gun wasn't too big. And in theory, the top layer surrounding the gun could even be kydex, possibly using the same kind of replacement modules that Comp-Tac uses on the MTAC series. Although I think a leather top layer would allow the whole thing to be more flexible...hmmm.
Needs experimentation next
. But I'm going to mod the gun some more to close to it's final destination before making a rig that will hold the slender-again barrel .
Sometimes we learn more from failures than from successes. In making homebrew holsters out of scrap or low-cost leather, failure IS an option and "reaching too far" can sometimes tell you what might actually work.
This is the holster I'm using right now, slightly tweaked from this picture in ways that aren't important:
Here's a back-side view showing a peculiar feature:
There's some real oddities on this setup that aren't going to be obvious even with pics. The oval "back plate" is actually two sheets of medium-grade leather sewn together at the edges. I had originally intended to also stitch around the "cylinder hole" but that turned out to be un-necessary and hung up the draw. The "back plate" could have been a single solid piece of heavier leather but first, I didn't have one and second, the original plan was to have a gap in the edge stitching that would let my belt go through the two sheets, to form the "belt loops"! Well that spectacularly didn't work out - it caused a lump in the middle that severely screwed up the draw. So I took two pieces of scrap leather and mounted them at those edge points as belt connections.
This was never intended as a long-term solution - it was a rig meant to hold the gun during the time it had those extreme barrel mods going on. Those are going away soon when I revamp the gas system at the same time I do the magazine feed - should be this month finally!
In some ways though this is a neat setup. It's a bit like those "hybrid leather/kydex IWB rigs" like the SuperTuck or MTAC, in that it's flat on the side that faces you. The "cylinder hole" system helps with that, on a revolver.
The top leather (the black bit that goes across the two-stage loading gate) is odd in that as it hits the back plate, it's sewn "edge on" - at about a 90deg angle. This works surprisingly well.
The "fail" part is that the rig doesn't hug me tight enough. Unless it's mounted "just right" on my belt, the 42oz+ gun has a tendency to "flop over". The belt connection borders on "bad joke" - loose, sloppy, etc.
BUT.
I've had some thoughts on this thing.
What if I had made the bottom plate significantly wider than the area where the gun goes? I could then do belt slots right through both back plate layers forming a very stiff, wide and stable area of support. I could also do multiple belt slots for different tilt angles and ride heights, like this Simply Rugged "Pancake" rig:
Photocredit by Gunblast: http://www.gunblast.com/SimplyRugged-PMR30.htm
In other words, picture a Pancake holster except the whole main two-layer body is dead flat, and a third layer rises up in the middle to grab the gun. This "Flatjack" (?) holster would be more assymetrical than a Pancake, but otherwise share similar "tight grab to the belt" and "wide base of stability" characteristics.
It gets better - using the same "IWB conversion straps" Simply Rugged sells for their Pancake holsters, a "Flatjack" could be converted very successfully to IWB as long as the gun wasn't too big. And in theory, the top layer surrounding the gun could even be kydex, possibly using the same kind of replacement modules that Comp-Tac uses on the MTAC series. Although I think a leather top layer would allow the whole thing to be more flexible...hmmm.
Needs experimentation next
. But I'm going to mod the gun some more to close to it's final destination before making a rig that will hold the slender-again barrel .
