First, COST was teh issue from the very beginning of the thread — the POST these comments are all supposedly about made COST a primary driver.

You never indicated you refuse (for whatever reasons — good or bad) to wear leather. Therefor, your inability/unwillingness (and it’s irrelevant to the discussion which it is) to wear leather only became part of this discussion this morning. Judging PREVIOUS comments on my inability to read your mind isn’t a failure of my “reading comprehension”

I have no magical mind-reading talents.

Any modifications to the attachment methods that can be made with nylon can ALSO be made with leather. If you look REALLY hard (like about 10 minutes on Google), you’ll find a plethora of leather holster makers who will either make the loops to YOUR personal specs, OR who offer readily replaceable loops in a variety of sizes (and often, configurations).

Nylon is not some magical material that can be altered, while leather and Kydex cannot, short of a professional manufacturer.

I never missed your point that the most popular holsters are only for the most commons weapons.

In fact, YOUR comprehension is suspect, because i acknowledged that very fact — yet pointed out the SPECIFIC “oddball” weapon in question (YOUR Beretta 9000S) was widley available in a variety of inexpensive quality holsters. I also pointed out a couple of holster makers who would be willing to make a holster to fit any particular gun, IF YOU ASK THEM.

There is no magical mold that must be obtained form an esoteric source to properly make a leather holster. Using YOUR gun is easy enough. Making a CAST of your gun is almost as easy, and doesn’t require the holster maker to keep your gun as a mold.

Kydex is even easier — it can be molded to fit your gun in MINUTES, without risk to the gun.

Of course, not every leather design has to be wetmolded to the gun. Even if it is fit only about as well as nylon, leather will retain the gun better through friction. If you want more retention, but feel like you may want to adjust a retaining strap, sewing velcro pile to the sides of the holster, so you can use an Uncle Mike’s adjustable retention strap * is no exactly rocket scientist for a guy making a simple folded holster body for you. (by the way — such a holster will readily acocmodate any similar shaped gun, just as a nylon one would.)

Nylon is not some magical material that is the ONLY thing that can be used in a “less than perfectly boned” environment.

********************

* See, ANOTHER place where nylon shines. . . just not as the holster BODY or BELT LOOP for a concealment holster.

I’m an engineer. Just as I would recommend against building a warship out of balsawood FOR MATERIALS REASONS, I recommend against MOST nylon in MOST concealment environments FOR MATERIALS REASONS.

It provides WORSE performance for EQUIVALENT price.

Since the reason nylon was recommended in the original post was SOLELY because it was “cheaper” yet supposedly provided the “same” performance. He stated that $20 nylon holsters were just as good as leather holsters that cost “somewhere north of $100″

ALL of these statements are FACTUALLY false.

1. Unless you’re talking the absolute BOTTOM of the nylon world (BELOW Uncle Mike’s, BELOW Bagmaster), decent leather and Kydex rigs start at the same price. Even Uncle Mike’s and Bagmaster normally retail closer to $25 than $20 (and that’s a simple OWB or IWB belt holster). If the nylon rig is built “as good as” a quality Kydex or leather holster, it will cost AT LEAST as much. The major cost in holsters (outside of exotic leathers. . . which we are NOT discussing) is workmanship and labor.

2. Nylon has DEMONSTRABLY poorer perfomance than equivalent Kydex or leather holsters. It’s simply the basic properties of nylon versus leather or Kydex — to whit, nylon is more flexible and more slippery (in non technical terms) . . . these are BAD properties to have in the area we are talking about. (In other areas, these are good properties to have. . . but not most concealed carry applications.)

3. Good qulaity Kydex and leather holsters DO NOT start at above $100. They start (as stated earlier) at under $25. Making a $100+ strawman to knock down doesn’t help tehoriginal poster’s case.

I’m NOT “anti-nylon”, I’m “anti- recommending to newbies that they spend as much or more money to get worse perfomance, under the guise of saving them money”.

You might try reading for comprehension. No where in my posts was cost an issue. In point of fact it is not an issue (within reason). Yes, I’ve seen most of those holsters as well as several more. Mostly I go with the Blade-Tech when I can, nylon Uncle Mikes when I can’t, the leather just don’t work for me for various reasons, all of which are personal choice/comfort related. My point that you seemed to miss is that MANY of these great holsters out there are largely for the most popular weapons and those of us with less common weapons are dealt out. When you can’t find the custom molds to your need you don’t have much choice but to go with a general purpose nylon. As I also mentioned I tend to adjust my belt loops so that my holster is held horizontally by the belt loops as well as the holster fasteners. I’ve had good quality leather slide around as much as nylon on pants I haven’t fixed the belt loops on so the “you need a holster that doesn’t move and presents the weapon consistently at the same place and that means LEATHER or KYDEX but NOT NYLON, GOD NO, NOT NYLON” proclamation leaves me supremely unmoved.

When I’m making the $5 price difference comparison, I am NOT comparing new nylon to used Kydex or leather.

I am comparing new nylon to NEW leather or Kydex.

I spent two minutes on Google, and found new Don Hume leather for $23. Not discontinued, not some special price, just a Don Hume distributor who sells for approximately $10 less than Don Hume factory direct. (Not surprising, almost ANY manufacturer sells at “MSRP” when they sell direct — it’s kinda hard to argue that your MSRP is a reasonable price if even the maker won’t sell it that high, and retail sales are a PITA to a manufacturer anyway.)

Now, you’re looking at saving $5 — less than a Subway foot long sub after tax.

Is Kydex or leather worth an extra $5, even if you’re 90% sure you’ll end up switching to something else?

You bet. Especially since, once you find teh carry method you’re going to adopt, you aren’t stuck with a nylon holster AND having to buy a decent rig as well — you can just keep the last kydex or lether rig you tested as you final solution.

Meanwhile, you can eBay the box of “nice, but not quite what I want” Kydex and leather holsters to recoop your expences.

Judging by prices on eBay (and the obviously widespread myth displayed here that Kydex and leather cost so much more than nylon), you probbaly end up selling your gently used holsters for MORE than you paid for them — which is not typical of nylon. (Frankly, it’s easier to sell stuff on eBay for stupid money than to buy it at reasonable prices. All you need is ONE idiot who thinks a Don Hume MSRP $30 holster that you paid $23 for is a $50 holster.)

You’ll almost certainly sell them for no greater loss than selling gently used nylon rigs.

Not only is nylon a bad idea for most carry rigs — it will likely cost you MORE to try out nylon holsters than to try out leather or Kydex rigs.

Admittedly, there are places where nylon shines — and I named a few. (One more often forgotten — uniformed cops, carrying QUALITY nylon, like Bianchi Accumold. . . nylon is generally more scuff resistant while rolling on the pavement with a belligerent drunk, and nylon decontaminates better after Joe the Crackhead bleeds all over you.) And I do have several nylon rigs lying around in my gun stuff, four to be exact.

1 gets kept because I haven’t found ANYONE who wants a nylon fake-suede IWB collapsing clip on for a pocket pistol. After a week, I ended up using it solely as a pocket holster when I couldn’t conceal anything bigger than a Baby Browning. (That gun has been long relegated to just being part of the “historical” part of my collection.)

The other three get kept because they will fit almost any gun. That’s NOT a recommendation. . . the reason they fit almost any gun is that they really don’t fit ANY gun.

1 gets kept because it’s an adequate field holster for walking around the woods. The 1950′s style retention strap (on a holster bought in the 1990′s and still made and sold today) is adequate for that purpose, even though it’s absolutely a NO GO for defensive carry. I got it to use as a pistol case I could — if need be — carry. It’s spent most of it’s life with a Ruger .22, mag case with both mags, and an old field dressing case with earplugs and a couple of boxes of .22, all on a nylon equipment belt, so I can chuck it into the car on a moment’s notice with my 10/22 (also in a nylon case) and head on out to go kill the fearsome Nilla Wafers, crackers, and paper plates.

1 gets kept because it’s a shoulder rig that has held anything from a PPK to a ChIef’s Special, to a 1911 to a 4″ Model 65. It’s slow, uncomfortable, awkward on and off, and doesn’t conceal well. . . but I can hang my #3 gun on a hook in te gun closet with two spare reloads and a flashlight onboard “just in case”. While I’ve worn it out a a few times, and lent it to friends who needed a temporary carry rig, it’s really my “grab and go” 3 AM system so in one place I have a gun, spare ammo, and a light. If I had to base my opiniomn on shoulder rigs off THIS rig, I would be admantly opposed to them in any shape or form, but hey, it was free from a friend.

1 is a pancake rig I used as my first carry holster. After two weeks, I upgraded, and it instantly became my back up rig for the spare gun I kept at work in case my primary was somewhere else or down. Another free holster, it has the advantage that it can sit at the bottom of my range bag and get ignored, and if someone ABSOLUTELY needed a holster for a service sized piece, we could probably get it to fit in this. But you could say that about an old GI flap holster, too.

I don’t think Caleb is saying that nylon sucks for everything, I think he is saying that for competition or for carry it sucks, and I can’t help but agree with him. My carry holster isn’t nylon, and my P90 rides in a kydex holster.

That being said, I have a few nylon holsters, and for what I use them for, they work out nicely. My MkII rides in a nylon holster when I go afield, I store three of my pistols in nylon holsters, and for the type of fun shooting day that I typically engage in, nylon holsters work just peachy.

James

IF the man’s students were faced with that choice, I imagine he’d agree with you. What he’s saying, and what everyone is still ignoring, is that his students aren’t spending their weekends going to gun shows and shopping for the best deal on used kydex. You can insist that they should all you want, but he’s not dealing with what they should do but what they do. He’s trying to give them the help that he can.

He’s also not advising people to buy a bunch of different nylon holsters. He’s advising them that they probably will buy a lot of different holsters over their lives (and if you disagree with that, I disagree with you.) Again, is that the best way to find the holster that works? Probably not. Is it the way most people who carry guns do it? Absolutely. All he’s saying is that their first holster is very, very unlikely to be their last, so it might as well be something that’s inexpensive, can be a useful backup (read: used with more than one model) and can be thrown in storage or in the trunk of your car for those times when you may find yourself wanting a holster. I have an old nylon piece in my trunk for just such occasions.

There are people who shoot USPSA in my local club with nylon holsters. They don’t work as well as my old FOBUS, which didn’t work as well as my SERPA, which isn’t in the same league with the space-gun race holsters . . . . but all those choices work. They work in different ways for people with different priorities.

Most of the smaller guys will happily make whatever you think you want — probably a LOT cheaper than you think. Kellog Custom leather, for one.

Custom Kydex may be even cheaper, and kydex yields teh saem kind of imporved performance over nylon as good leather does — just in a different way. Look at Buy brown Industries.

Considering that most people do NOT carry concealed with a rail mounted light, it’s not surprising that most large manufacturers aren’t geared up for off the sehlf product variations for your particular rig.

Just becuase a zillion sweat shops sew crappy shaplkess bags that happen to fit your gun with accessories doesn;t mean that’s the only (or best) way to go.

And if you’re already carrying a Glock with accessories, it’s a fair bet you’ve been doing this long enough to know what carry position and method works best for you — so you migt as well order a couple fewer pizzas over the next few months, and order a quality custom rig.

“Custom” DOES NOT mean “$300 handtooled shark skin, rubbed between the thighs of a 14 year old virgin for final molding, and oiled under the light of teh new moon.” Sometimes it merely means, “Dude, can you whip this up for me?”

You can make (and mold to custom fit) Kydex holsters AT HOME — all you need are the gun, some Kydex sheets, a work table and a sharp knife, an oven, and some Chicago screws. The stuff is a low temperature thermoplastic, for God’s sake — and it’s NOT not “unobtainium”. even a crappy molding job will give you a better, more secure, rig than almost ANY nylon holster out there.

The problem with nylon isn;t that it’s cheap (as I illustrated above, it isn’t). the problem is that it is a generally CRAPPY material to make a holster out of, outside of a few specialty applications where the lack of friction isn;t an issue.

Actually, it was more about the “Made in Vietnam” part of it. If you have a good leather holster to recommend that fits a Glock 21 that has accessories on the P rail then please let me know.