JAB

I am 5' 11" and right around 285. I cannot stand IWB carry. Period. Ever. I can't even stand carrying my NAA mini revolver in an IWB holster. I heard great things about leather/kydex hybrid IWB holsters so I made one to try them out. I made it to fit my CZ 82 as it is a fairly compact pistol. I made it to ride pretty low. Hated it, too. Everyone is different but the closest I can come to IWB carry is carrying my Kel Tec P3AT (which is nice and thin/flat) in a 'belly band' that I wear very low, around my hips, so that the grips stick up just above the waist of my pants. I find that bearable but only use that method when I am dressing up more than usual such as to go to a wedding, etc. If I want, I can put the band on over a t-shirt then tuck a dress shirt in over the gun. It is a good way to carry pretty deeply concealed when wearing thin dress slacks that preclude pocket carry. Otherwise, when I belt carry it is OWB all the way with a tucked in t-shirt under the gun and some type of cover garment over it. I took these pics a few years (two generations of cell phones back and before I traded the Taurus for a GP100 - heck, for that matter it was before I got divorced and moved) ago to demonstrate on another board just how much a bigger guy can conceal under just a Hawaiian type shirt. The 4-inch barreled, 6 shot Taurus .357, my keys and the mini-mag flashlight were all hanging from my belt in the pics. I don't generally carry that much, it was just for demonstration purposes.

I cut a speed strip down to hold five rounds instead of six and when I carry my 642 that goes into the watch/change pocket.  I cut it down because the 642 only holds five, anyhow, and it fits in the pocket better that way.  I have a couple of HKS speedloaders for it, too.  The factory grips on the 642 made it nearly impossible to use that kind of speedloader but since I replaced them with Pachmayr's they work better.  I have a nylon belt carrier that is made to hold two, such speedloaders and a leather carrier that I made to hold one.  I generally stick with the speed strip, though, because it is so unobtrusive.   When I get around to making a holster for my GP100 I am considering integrating a carrier for either a speedloader or a couple of speed strips into the holster design.  I prefer carrying reloads for revolvers on the strong side and integrating the carrier would eliminate having a bunch of separate things on my belt.

Yet another gorgeous creation.   Mind if I ask a couple of questions?  (Okay, I am going to ask, either way - whether or not to answer is up to you.)   Is working with Micarta for scales pretty much like working with wood as far as shaping it, etc.?  Do you have to take extra precautions as far as the dust being more toxic than wood?  Do you just order Micarta blanks or sheets online or is there a better way to get it?   Thanks in advance.

Another vote for the GP100. I like the 4 inch version because it is long enough to use a lot of the 'potential' of .357 but still short enough to carry 'socially', should you decide you want to, without having to use a shoulder holster. I had a Taurus model 66 that I bought used. According to Taurus, based on the serial number, it was built in the 1980s but it looked almost brand new when I bought it. Whenever it was built, it was an older model because it was only a six shot (the newer Taurus 66 models are 7 shot - which I think is a point in their favor.) The only problem I ever had with it was that when I first got the gun it was very difficult to eject a fired casing from one of the chambers - which, of course, made pressing the ejector rod difficult and, in turn, made ejecting all of the other spent casings difficult. After figuring out which chamber was causing the problem and noticing a tiny scratch on the casing from that chamber, I finally found a tiny burr - smaller than a grain of sand - near the mouth of that chamber. It was small enough that it didn't interfere with loading or removing live rounds but big enough to drag on a fired casing. It looked like it was a factory burr so I guess no one had found it in all those years (possibly why it appeared to have not been shot much.) A couple of minutes with some fine grain sandpaper wrapped around a pencil fixed that and I never had another issue with it. I actually traded that Taurus for the GP100 pictured above. As I said, there was nothing 'wrong' with the Taurus. It just wasn't a GP100 (which is what I really wanted.) This is a pic of it:

  Here, here.  That is the one that caught my eye.

Not only a super cool video of a knife coming into being but also a wonderful, recorded memory of working on a project with your father.

Thanks, guys.     Not much to tell, really.  It is a kit knife blade I bought at Woodcraft a couple of years ago because it was on sale and I wanted to try my hand at putting scales on knives.  It has an edge that would probably cut you if you weren't careful but is not what I would call sharp.  I think it would probably take a better edge and I may try to sharpen it more at some point - or if I decide to use it mostly as a wall hanger, etc. I might not.   The reason I say the design is 'weird' is because it has a handle shape like a slightly 'fancy' hunting knife (or maybe even a kitchen knife), it has a finger choil groove and jimping like a bushcraft or general use type knife (and the way the jimping is cut looks kind of strange, to me) but then it has a fairly thick/heavy blade that is sort of a 'tanto' style - which doesn't really go with the hunting knife handle or the bushcraft/general use features.  Finally, it has a false edge on the forward, upper portion of the blade which doesn't really go with a tanto design, in my mind.  All in all, the design is kind of schizophrenic and looks like someone tried to genetically splice a tactical knife, a hunting knife and a bushcraft knife and this is what they got.. 

Two or three years ago, I bought a couple of knife 'kits' on clearance at the Woodcraft store. They came with just a blade and some hex key head, Chicago screw type attachment hardware. I bought them more because they were on sale and I wanted to try my hand at putting scales on than because the knives, themselves, really overwhelmed me and that is especially true of the one in this post. One of them was a large, modern take on a 'tanto-ish' blade. When I got it home and started looking more closely at it, I began thinking that it looked a little outlandish. I had a hard time envisioning what kind of scales would look 'right' with its sort of odd design. When I did a couple of paracord wraps this past weekend, I decided to see what such a wrap would look like on this knife. I tried a Stryder (Strider?) style wrap but really wasn't satisfied with my results. I did everything 'right', I thought, but it just didn't come out looking very smooth. An underwrap might have helped but I still don't think it would have looked right. It looked like this: Well, while looking up different wrap styles, etc. I came across a video on youtube showing how to do a Solomon Sword style wrap. The guy in the video did the wrap on the handle of a wooden sword. He used red and yellow cord and I thought it looked good. I then decided that such a wrap - complete with the bright colors - might not look bad on the above pictured knife Now, I wouldn't necessarily choose these colors for most knives but my idea was - as the blade, itself, isn't entirely practical - to give it a look that would be at home in a Japanese Manga-inspired video game. Regardless of the colors, I like my results with this style a lot better than with the Stryder style. I also like how one color is more 'dominant' on one side and the other color is more 'dominant' on the other side: I now have some semi-formed plans to come up with some kind of slightly over-the-top sheath to go along with the somewhat over-the-top style of the knife. I'm not going to get in any hurry about it, though. I doubt I'll ever really carry the thing so the project will mostly be a way to practice some new leather techniques and just for my own amusement. I hope to have an interesting wall-hanger type knife/sheath when I am done.

I guess the Lenoir City location isn't having a clearance sale although they do have a firearms section.  I was in there yesterday evening and the only sign pertaining to .22 ammo was the same one that they have had up for months - the one that reads, "We are currently out of .22 ammo."  I remarked to the guy working that department (who regularly works in sporting goods) that one of these days I'm going to come in, that sign will be gone and they will have .22 ammo on the shelf.  He just kind of chuckled and said, "It'll never happen."

peejman, I just got this image of a big, kind of burly guy with a full beard (kind of a Spots looking fellah) sitting in a wooden rocking chair with a pair of knitting needles and couple of balls of paracord.  Someone says to him, "Jimbo, what the heck are you doin'?"  Jimbo replies, "What the hell's it look like?  I'm makin' myself a bug out bag entirely out of paracord.  Gonna make some badass, tactical mittens, too!"

  Thanks for the offer, I really appreciate it but I'm just west of Knoxville.  I think part of my problem is that I probably need to make a jig for tying them.  My fingers are just too thick and although they aren't exactly short I guess they are relatively short which makes it hard to tie the fist by wrapping it around my fingers.  Right now, though, my biggest stumbling block is figuring out the sequence in which I should pull the strands tight once I have all three turns in place.

  Man, if I had your skills in making blades and scales I wouldn't sweat the paracord thing very much.     Thanks, guys.  Honestly, the whole paracord thing was beyond me for a long time.  I have tried a couple of times over the past, five years to learn how to make even the simplest of paracord survival bracelets only to get frustrated at my apparent total lack of ability to grasp even the most basic concepts.  Then, this past weekend I watched a couple of really good instructional videos online and something just 'clicked'.  As I said, though, I still haven't gotten the Stryder (or is it Strider) wrap pattern right which is why I went with this pattern that I came up with on my own.  I still have a long way to go before I could be considered anything approaching 'good' at working with paracord.   And now for a little confession - I hope this won't damage my 'man card'.  When I was a little kid, my mom had this square 'loom' sort of thing that was used to make pot holders.  I used to love using it and making pot holders, myself.  You hooked a series of strands running up and down and then wove another series of strands through it.  I thought of that loom this weekend when watching all those paracord videos and that was the inspiration for the method I used for the wrap on the machete and the Paklite in the other thread.  Who would have thought that I could apply something learned making pot holders thirty something years ago to a knife or machete?   One other thing that might actually help some folks who are having difficulty.  At my mom's house last night I noticed a sort of macrame flower pot hanger that she had.  When I saw it, I did a double take and was like, "Wait a minute.  That's a cobra stitch, just like you use to make a basic survival bracelet."  I then noticed a few, other interesting knots and so on.  So it has occurred to me that if you want to learn more about paracord wrapping, weaving and so on and you don't know anyone who does that you could probably learn a lot from a wife, aunt, grandmother or so on who does macrame.  There is a lady I work with who likes doing decorative braiding, knotting and so on.  Yesterday, she taught me to do a really cool round braid (as opposed to a flat braid.)  In and interesting example of synchronicity, yesterday evening I watched a video online where a guy had used that same technique as part of a paracord project.  That lady actually tried to teach me some of the same knot styles used in paracord work a couple of years ago but it just wouldn't stick.  Yep, I've realized that a whole lot of paracord braiding, knotting and wrapping is basically just macrame for guys.   Now if I can just figure out how to tie a %*^$! monkey's fist.

  You're welcome - and let me say that there are a lot of folks who are a lot more experienced (and a lot better) at paracord wrapping, survival bracelet making and so on than I am.

I had a pretty sad and sorry machete that was given to me. It was pretty rusty and one of the plastic handle 'scales' was busted. I decided to clean it up a little and do a paracord wrap handle. To begin, I busted the rest of the plastic handle off and cut the handle pins with my Dremel. I ended up with this: I wasn't concerned about ending up with a 'show piece' (wasn't going to happen, regardless) so I just went at it with a wire brush chucked into my cordless drill followed by scrubbing it with steel wool and 100 grit sandpaper by hand to get the loose rust off. After wiping it down with rubbing alcohol, It looked like this: A couple of coats of Krylon matte green 'camouflage' rattle can paint and I had: I knew I wanted an 'underwrap' to help stabilize and further cushion the top wrap. I know some folks use gutted paracord for an underwrap but I kind of see that as a waste of paracord so I did an underwrap with some much cheaper, nylon cord I had (which is also thinner and softer than paracord and so easier to wrap tightly in such a manner.) That gave me: Not wanting the white of that cord to 'shine through' the overwrap, I decided to give it a quick shot of the Krylon, too. It stuck well and dried quickly: I started out trying to do a Stryder style wrap but can't seem to get that pattern to look smooth and tight so I ended up doing a modified version of the same wrap I came up with for the Paklite from my other thread. In this case, I started by passing the cord through what had been the hole for the bottom pin. I used the underwrap as stand-ins for the finger choil hole and on the second, bottom pass. As I said, it was never going to be a show piece but I like how it turned out. Except for the red at the end of the lanyard, this was also one strand of paracord - I fused the black and the green. It took something like fifteen to twenty feet of cord, all told. The way I did the weave, the black is more 'dominant' on one side and the green is more 'dominant' on the other:

This weekend I picked up a Buck Paklite I decided to try my hand at doing some kind of paracord treatment on the handle. I looked up a couple of tutorials for various handle wrap styles but ended up coming up with one on my own. I am almost certainly not the first person to use this style but I did come up with it independently, not from any tutorial, etc. I think it turned out pretty good. It provides a nice, positive and pretty comfortable grip without being extremely bulky. I was pretty pleased as, for whatever reason, I seem to have had a 'mental block' about working with the various paracord stitches up to this point but after doing this (and watching a couple of tutorials) I have now at least figured out the cobra stitch and maybe a few others. The wrap is one piece of paracord, somewhere between six and seven feet long. I started by centering the cord in the lanyard hole (middle of the length of cord) and then passing each end of the cord in opposite directions through the hole at the finger choil and back through the lanyard hole until I had three strands running lengthwise to the handle on each side with both ends ending up at the blade end of the handle. I then started going around the handle, each end starting in a different direction, alternately weaving them over/under the three lengthwise strands. I did realize after I had finished that I got out of sync on one pass of one of the strands (that is why the 'stitch' about halfway up the spine of the handle doesn't look exactly right) but decided it wasn't bad enough to warrant unraveling the whole thing back to that point. Not yet, anyhow. This weave will also work, in a slightly modified form, on a solid handle as I will show in another thread about a different project I did this past weekend. Yeah, for me this past weekend was pretty much all about paracord.

This is interesting.  There is a rolling frame for a trailer sitting at my late grandfather's house that I am planning to get.  It looks like it was once a full trailer but the wooden 'floor', etc must have gotten in bad shape and I am thinking he or someone else was planning to rebuild it and removed those parts, leaving only the metal frame and axles, etc. which are still very solid.  I will put a 'floor' in it and use it for a utility trailer, etc.  I had noticed that most utility trailers around here don't seem to have tags but when I looked it up online at the .gov site it seemed to be saying that they are supposed to have tags.  For clarification, I called the Loudon County Clerk's office I was told that yes, absolutely the law requires a tag for such a trailer.  Further, (again, according to the .gov site) supposedly when you have a trailer that was 'built' rather than one that is factory made you have to have it inspected and approved before you can even get a tag.   I am now hoping that maybe the web site just isn't very clear (it isn't) and that the person at the Loudon County Clerk's office was full of crap.  As many trailers as I see that don't have tags and that aren't apparently getting pulled over for it, I am starting to believe that such is the case.

Very cool.  I think you just crossed over from "Bowie Knife" into 'Bowie Short Sword' country.

Thanks, fellas!

Nice sheath for a nice knife.    When the law changed, I decided that I might like to carry a belt knife with a blade of about four and a half to five inches or so.  Then I discovered a problem.  The problem is that a sheath knife, my cell phone and - if I belt carry - my carry gun all 'want' to be in the same spot on my belt.  I guess I could re-position the cell phone or carry the knife on my off side but I don't like having stuff hanging all over my belt like Batman.   I could pocket carry the cell phone on my weak side and pocket carry my 642 on the strong side with the knife on my belt but I also don't like having my pockets stuffed full.  I will not carry a gun SOB and having a big knife hanging down in that position just plain wouldn't work.   I am very warm natured so wearing shorts and t-shirts whenever possible in warm weather is very nearly a survival tactic.  However, I've just about decided that when the weather turns cool enough that I go back to wearing long pants instead of shorts when I am 'out and about' I am going to try the boot knife/ankle carry approach for a fixed blade.  I have also considered possibly making a vertical sheath for a fixed blade and trying that in the SOB position.  I did see, somewhere, a pocket sheath that someone had made that held a cell phone, fixed blade knife and maybe a flashlight.  That would be a pretty good setup but the knife would probably have to be limited to a blade of three inches or less and wouldn't be any more immediately accessible than a pocket knife which, for me, largely defeats the purpose of carrying a fixed blade in the first place.  In fact, in the pocket I could probably carry a folder with a larger blade than a fixed blade would allow.

  Or maybe they used up their quota of close calls for the rest of the year and can now relax but remain vigilant.   Okay, that is my burst of optimism for the week.  We now return to our regularly scheduled, cynical world view (some may call it pessimism - I call it realism.)

Good read.  I, at least, had not seen this before.  Thanks for posting.   Hmmm...you know, if the F.B.I. had followed this line of thinking after the Miami shootout and focused on finding/developing a better 9mm projectile/round (and training their agents to hit what they were shooting at) rather than blaming the 9mm caliber for 'failing' that day then a whole lot of the caliber debate, as well as the very existence of the .40 S&W, could have been avoided in the first place.  I have a suspicion that developing a better performing 9mm round would probably have required less time, energy, r&d and money to be invested than coming up with a whole, new caliber (.40 S&W) that - in the end - really doesn't appear to outperform the 9mm with the aforementioned, better performing rounds.

      That was pretty much my thinking when I read the article.  I wouldn't be surprised if, by 'destroyed', Evans actually meant, "A couple of officers got new, personal shotguns for just the price of a replacement barrel."

If it deterred a thief then it would be a good thing.  Unfortunately, with some of the bold/arrogant or just downright unconcerned thieves that have been on the news, lately, I can see them thinking, "Surveillance cameras?  Awesome!  I can get those without even having to go in the house.  I hope it is a good system so I can get some real cash out of them."

  Nah.  Empty burlap sacks and scrap canvas with a full-support, ergonomic strap system made from an old mule harness rig.  And it is probably one of the most functional, rugged and bad-ass looking packs ever.   Dangit, now I want to see the pack I just described.

  "Wish You Were Here" is certainly their best song but I'd have to go with Dark Side of The Moon or The Final Cut (dang near a Waters solo album) as the best, overall album.   As for your latter statement, I saw an article with more info this morning that pretty much drained my excitement, too.   http://music.msn.com/music/article.aspx?news=890109&ocid=ansent11   I didn't realize that this album was to be made up of 'vault stuff' until I saw this in the article:     So this is not new music from Pink Floyd.  It is music that was recorded 21 years ago and that wasn't even good enough to make it onto what was arguably the weakest album they ever made.   Further:     Really?  To me, the best part of any Floyd music was always the lyrics.  The music was good and often painted a sort of 'sound landscape' behind the lyrics but the lyrics were what got me.  Of course, I also think that Waters lyrics were the best but Gilmore et. al. wrote some interesting lyrics after he left, too.   A Pink Floyd instrumental double album?  Yawn.   It is sad to see the remnants of what was, IMO, one of the greatest bands of all time having fallen so far and, apparently, become so desperate that they would feel the need to release an entire album of second-rate material from two decades ago.  I can't help but liken it to the idea of someone releasing a double album of Jimi Hendrix tuning his guitar.