My first encounter with Kydex

[Johnny J]

I've been wanting to play with Kydex for quite some time, so I bought three 80 mil, 1 ft sq. sheets off eBay.

The first picture is my press, made from some scrap plywood and a piece of foam I fished out of the trash at the shipping/receiving dept. where I used to work. The hooks and chains were to clamp it down, but a much more expedient way to get good clamping pressure is to sit on it for 5 min. (I weigh 152 lbs). I also was not about to buy a grommet press and dies for a one-off project, so I did the riveting the old fashioned way: brass tubing, a tiny pipe cutter, and a ball peen hammer.

The knife is a Schrade Old Timer that Robert Williams reground for me to turn the curved spine into a usable hawk bill. The neck knife sheath has excellent retention, though the brass washers turned out to be completely unnecessary. Even without the washers, you cannot pull these rivets apart, and omitting the washers allows you to make a closer fitting sheath.

The revolver is a S&W model 64 that I got a good deal on. I cannot conceal this on my body. My GF has me in very fitted clothing ("With a body like yours, you shouldn't hide it!" she says) so I opted for the man purse option. I wanted a small holster that I could sew into the man purse to keep the revolver in place.

Lessons learned:

The way I did it works fine, but if I were going to make a lot of these, I would certainly buy a good Kydex press, a grommet press, and grommets. Peening the tubing by hand results in some deformation of the tubing. A #6 screw will fit inside a piece of 3/16" tubing before peening, but not after. Not a big deal, you can use smaller screws, but still it's not professional.

I like how thin Kydex is, and how easy it is to work with. It's very forgiving: if you screw up, you can re-heat the same piece and form it again. I also like the excellent retention without having to add straps, snaps, etc. It's also very cheap ($4/sq. ft). However, there's no way around the fact that it's a piece of plastic with no farkin class. There's nothing like the beauty of a nice leather holster or sheath. But working with leather adds a lot of time, expense, and bulk to your project.