[madman]

Anyone here have any good info on working with Kydex? I had a thread bookmarked at "that other place", but now that they've vanished like an Afghani terrorist we all love to hate I'm left informationless. Specifically, that thread referenced using the oven to heat up Kydex instead of a heat gun, and it gave an exact temperature to use as I recall. I was working on my first-ever Kydex holster yesterday, and I obviously got the oven too hot, since the edges of the Kydex baked onto my wife's good cookie sheet. :roll: Fortunately I'm still alive (with the promise that I'll replace her cookie sheet & henceforth I'll only use the one that's already "ruined" for Kydex cooking.

Funny thing, when Kydex gets too hot it not only bakes down to the sheet, it also starts to "shrink" or "retract", so that it's substantially thicker around the edges, which requires sanding with a dremel to even it out.

Anyhoo, here's a couple of pics of the results. It's not pretty, not even close, but it's functional. I can hold it upside down and shake hard and my P3AT won't pop out. When drawing, a simple finger flick pops the holster free. Also, I moulded it to fit *over* the belt clip, because I don't want to have to remove the clip when I switch to pocket carry.

 

[Guest]

Be careful about putting plastic into an oven. At my last department we issued the Safariland SSIII security holster to officers to the Glock 19's. Someone got the bright idea to tell some of them that if they went home and heated the holster in the oven that they could get the gun in and out easier than the suggested 100+ draws that the factory reccomended. Well, they went home and heated the holster and forgot not to jam the gun down into the hoslter as they had to at the range (becasue the tolerances of a new holster are extremely tight), in the process they blew out the back of the holster and ruined the secondary safety. In essence they destroyed a 120.00 holster. My suggestion, for what it is worth is, if you have a new holster break it in by practicing draw strokes and reholstering.

 

[yzguy]

um... I'm pretty sure this was in regard to MAKING a holster at home, not putting a bought holster in an oven (I'd never do or reccomend that). If you want to modify a holster, take a pencil tourch and only lightly heat the area you want to modify (that I have done ).

 

[Flyer]

At my last department we issued the Safariland SSIII security holster to officers to the Glock 19's. Someone got the bright idea to tell some of them that if they went home and heated the holster in the oven that they could get the gun in and out easier than the suggested 100+ draws that the factory reccomended. Well, they went home and heated the holster and forgot not to jam the gun down into the hoslter as they had to at the range (becasue the tolerances of a new holster are extremely tight), in the process they blew out the back of the holster and ruined the secondary safety. In essence they destroyed a 120.00 holster.

Umm....
No comment.
Flyer

 

[Guest]

I didn't reccomend it.....FLYER... :lol: ..I just caught it at the range while teaching. One of the things that we look for is that all students have their weapon properly snapped down in the holster. A few had the backs blown out. I have seen alot of things in my years but this by far is the worst.

 

[cloak]

That probably kind of smells of the house if the holster starts to melt some.