Taking a giant leap in the Leather game

Hey fellow Glowforgers! So this past week I finally got the nerve to test out some leather and the two test pieces turn out well so I decided to take “the leap” and shoot for the stars. I have no leather working experience so I am aware I could take this a step further and round the edges but and maybe add some kinda shine to it but honestly I have no idea how to do that, but I love how this gun holster turned out! I just figured I have an inquisitive mind and can come up with something nice. So to make this I hand traced my hand gun and cut out the pattern from chip board then took a photo of that, did a lot of photoshopping and illustrator work and got the pattern digitalized so I could print it on the laser. Then I add the engraves and then the chrome and gold hardware after. This is made of ONE solid piece of leather. [warning: this post has a photo of an unloaded and removed clip gun, I am not here to offend anyone or start a debate just to show of the beauty of leather engraving and a design I was excited about creating.]

Here is my two test pieces if interested that first lead into the holster project:

And Here is all of the photos of the holster, it changes colors in different lighting so I have several different photos so you can see it in all types of lighting:


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Any thoughts on the design or comments about the project are welcome. (Again, I apologize if this offends anyone, I just wanted to share my creation and show the cool engraves you can get in leather.)

If you would like to see some of my other creations I haven’t gotten to share on the forums yet feel free to check out my facebook page: fb.me/freshstartcustoms

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Looks great!

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Very nice. Love the design!

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Oho! Nicely done! :grinning:

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That looks really nice! Very impressive!!

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It’s beautiful!

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Thank you! It took a lot of planning in my head to figure it out lol

Wow, nice engraving! I wonder if there is something you can treat it with to protect the design. My guess is that it will be more delicate than a tooled design would be.

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Nicely done. What settings did you use?

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Yea this seems to hold up pretty decent considering I wiped it down with simple green and a rag. But if you scroll up to the two test cuts that was after I was rough with them I scrubbed those with the orange brand soap and a toothbrush the put them in and out of my pocket several times to act like it was a keychain. But yes if someone knows an easy good sealer for leather I don’t see it hurting any for an extra layer of protection.

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Thick proof grade leather settings for engrave and the cut but had to change the cut to full power instead of 100

Awesome work!!

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Nice engrave. There are some real leather experts on this forum who can provide advice for managing leather.

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Where’d you find the flourish design? :star_struck:

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Congrats, it’s a beautiful piece. I do want to echo this sentiment though:

Above and beyond the safety factor (which is huge), veg tan will hold up better for a project like this.

And, completely OT,

That was our server for years. Horde and alliance … have not played in forever, though.

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Design is nice, and the engraving on it gives it a great finish. Cool project.

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Those look great!!

And BTW: For the Horde!

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I was told this was actual hide I got it from an upholstery shop near by that makes holsters as well so I assume this will hold up well. Thank you for all the other info here, I seen all of your works of leather lately, they look great. How do you do your edges? Do you just use sand paper?