New Custom Leather

Shortly after I started carrying, I switched to the Hi-Power mentioned previously in this blog. I wanted something that made the gun easy to conceal over the bowling/work type shirts I tended to wear. The Galco Combat Master fit that bill - a high-riding OWB holster with a significant cant, meaning the gun tucked up underneath my arm and was easy to draw.

Over the past 4 years, the holster has served me well, but over time it has become more relaxed and floppy, not holding the Hi-Power tightly to my side like it used to. I had resolved to get another holster of the same model to replace it. A little over a year ago I went to a party over at Christina's place up in North Texas, where I met Michael from TheHolsterSite.com and EvylRobot.com. About this time he'd jumped into the entrepreneureal unkown, starting his new business making holsters. He'd brought samples of his wares, which were passed around the party during gun show & tell.

Fast forward 7 months, and Michael's business had really started to pick up. He'd done some interesting custom holsters, with some particularly cool IDPA/IPSC race holsters. My holster budget had expanded a bit, and I started thinking about what could be improved from the Galco. The most prominent area for improvement was stiffness. Just like my boots and pants, I'm not easy on holsters. I'm a pretty solid and big dude, and the things I wear need to be well-made and durable, or they're garbage in short order. I'd read about horsehide leather, with its wear and moisture resistance, and its exceptional stiffness. The problem is, horsehide is not in common use in the United States, and there's no real source for domestic horse hide. Because of this, mass-produced horsehide holsters simply don't exist.

This is where Michael comes in. I'd seen on his site that he deals in some exotics, most notably stingray. So we got to talking in IRC one night, and I ask about the possibility of getting a horsehide holster made for my Hi-Power. He'd not worked with horse leather before, but seemed eager to check his supplier and get me a quote. A few days later, we figured out pricing for a holster and magazine carrier to my specifications, and I gave him the go-ahead. Since he'd never worked with the material before and I wasn't in a hurry, I asked him to take as much time as he needed. Over the weeks, we corresponded back and forth about his impressions of the material and his efforts putting together test items. Along the way, I added on a request for a flashlight scabbard as well.

For the holster itself, my requirements were simple: a high ride and cant, similar to my Galco holster, with beefed up belt slotting (the Galco slots had stretched out over time, I wanted to avoid that). The mag carrier, on the other hand, had to be a completely custom design in order to hold two magazines and ride at the 7:30 position that I needed. He was able to come up with a design that created a back channel for the belt to ride in, while keeping the carrier high and close to the body.

When Phlegmfest started to roll around, we found that we would both be attending and my order would be finished shortly prior. So, a personal handoff it was. I arrived at the party, and Michael handed me my new holster, mag carrier, and flashlight scabbard. To say that I was pleased with the holster would be an understatement. Every request had been met, and my expectations exceeded by a great margin. This was a serious piece of leather. It rode beautifully on my belt, fit the Hi-Power perfectly, and kept the gun snug to my side. It was the most solid holster I'd ever seen. Likewise, the mag carrier was a VAST improvement over the Safariland carrier I'd been using.
Unfortunately, as I started to wear my holster back home, I found that the glue between the layers of leather was starting to come apart. I corresponded with Michael about this, and he was quite disconcerted about this development. I took some photos for him, and upon review he insisted that the problem be made right. I mailed the holster back to him, and he found that the issue appeared to be with the glue itself not correctly bonding to the leather, and that the holster would have to be remade entirely. Without going into too much detail, some testing was done with a different glue more suited for horsehide, and he constructed a new holster for me in short order.

The new holster arrived a few days ago, and I am quite pleased - both with the quality of Michael's leather work, and his commitment to great customer service. I got the mag carrier and flashlight scabbard (both of which I've been using since Phlegmfest) together with the holster for a photo shoot:

Here's a couple more photos of the holster:

If you're looking for some custom leather, drop Michael a line. I can't recommend him enough. Both his quality of workmanship and his customer service are top notch.

Awesome New Photo Tool - Hugin

I was trying to find a solution for a coworker today, getting a wide area of the office into a single photo. This was a daunting task, as the area needed to be covered was around 100 feet wide and only about 40 feet deep. I figured I could perhaps stitch several photos together and make a panorama. As you may know, I do not use Windows or Photoshop. I kicked the Microsoft habit back in 2oo1, and haven't looked back since. I use Linux exclusively as the platform for all of my computing needs, though I will occasionally utilize my wife's OS X desktop for the sake of convenience (it is the only desktop system in the house at present time).

I'd researched photo stitching software a few years back, and only found complex and inadequate guides to sortof putting photos together with The GIMP. I use The GIMP as my primary post-processing and editing program, and am quite happy with its performance. For the uninitiated, it is full-featured photoshop workalike with active development. It is open-source and it is free. Check the link above for more info.

However, this post is not about The GIMP. I took my photos and set about finding a way to stitch them together for my coworker. A short Google search brought me to Hugin. I run Debian Linux, and Hugin is included in the standard repositories. I installed the application with its requisite dependencies and suggested optional related packages. The entire install footprint ended up at a mere 60MB. I ran through the steps presented to me by the program, and waited a few minutes for it to process the images (five 12 megapixel images from my Nikon D90). The results were astounding. This application is so well-developed that I had an incredibly impressive image in TIF format in a matter of 5 minutes, and there was nothing manual about the process.

I got to my usual coffee shop this evening, and thought I'd play a bit with some 30 second time exposures of the outdoor porch area. I wanted to see how Hugin handled this, given the differences in exposure and color temperature in such an environment, as well as knowing that the darker shots were underexposed due to the limitations I imposed on the camera when capturing the images.

Here are the images I started with, scaled down to 1024 pixels wide (if you click on them) for your viewing pleasure:





I simply dumped these photos into Hugin for processing, and out comes this, after about 3 minutes on my single-core not-current-technology laptop:

The photo (if you click it) has been scaled to 2048 pixels wide and converted to png format, but otherwise no post-processing has been done. The resulting TIF image was 5989x2037 pixels.

This is one impressive piece of software. There are many options that I haven't taken a look at yet, but this is what it produces out of the box, choosing the "photometrics" (which I believe evens out the exposure) and "difference" blend mode. Kudos go out to all of the developers of this software. This has got to be one hell of a project to get such a complex piece of software working so elegantly.

Check out the project page at:

http://hugin.sourceforge.net/

This is cross-platform software, and there are releases available for Windows, Mac OS, Linux, and FreeBSD. If you find this software as incredibly useful as I do, consider making a contribution to the project. There is a small link at the bottom of the home page for PayPal donation.

New Shooter Range Report

I mentioned yesterday morning that I was heading out to the range with a young lady who has been a friend of the family for over two decades. We'd not talked much in the last couple of years, so when she said that we should do something together, I naturally suggested going to the range. She accepted, and told me about her only previous shooting experience with her then-boyfriend. It was reminiscent of some of the "What NOT to do" posts I've been reading recently. From her descriptions, he'd set her up with some sort of .40 S&W handgun, gave her no proper instruction, and let the recoil do the rest.


So we set a range date for Saturday morning, with barbecue to commence afterwards in nearby Lockhart (the barbecue capital of Texas). Saturday came, and I arrived at her family's house. We reviewed the Four Rules together again, and I with started a familiarity lesson in the use of the firearms I brought along for the day. A good hour and a half later, we prepared to head out.

She hadn't expected us to spend anywhere near the time we did working on safety and operation lessons, and as it was nearing noon by the time we approached Lockhart, we opted for lunch first. We picked Smitty's Market, and had a nice meal of brisket and pork ribs, topped off with cones of Blue Bell ice cream for dessert.

Once we were sufficiently stuffed full of meaty goodness, we headed to the range. We started out with the Walther P22 at a range of 5 yards, using paper plates as targets. Going into this, she'd let me know that she was afraid of guns mainly due to inexperience, and that her previous experience had not helped. Knowing that the best way to remedy such a problem was to provide a safe and fun shooting experience, I looked for a more secluded part of the range for better personal interaction.



Much to our benefit, it was a somewhat hot day and range traffic was sparse. We happened to come up just as the last CHL shooting qualification test let out, and got the entire bay to ourselves. We started at a relaxed pace, and assured her that I would be there to help her with anything and to answer whatever questions she had. We got our targets stapled to the boards and placed, and she took her first shot. The first piece of brass came back and hit her in the chest, reaffirming why I recommended not wearing an open-top shirt to the range. I'm glad I remembered that little piece of advice. She was obviously nervous, so we spent time discussing specifics of the guns and ammo, and what they do and do not do. Apparently the myth that guns just "explode" is alive and well. I explained what conditions would cause such a thing to happen, and than it is almost entirely an ammunition problem, most often associated with improperly loaded handloads or squibs. As time went on, she got a little more relaxed.



We moved on to shooting a Marlin Model 60 .22LR rifle at 10 yards. She found immediately that she liked the rifle much more than the pistol. Aim was much more natural (as I would expect), and her consistency improved the more she shot. We worked a bit with grip and stance, and moved on to working with the Browning Hi-Power. While the loud report and recoil was a bit daunting at first, she found that the larger and more complete grip made it easier and much more fun to shoot. After she was comfortable with the gun, I grabbed the camera and got some great shots with brass in the air, such as the one below.



Time flew by, and before we realized it, the time was nearing 5:00. It's a ways back to Austin, and it was election day for the local mayoral and city council elections (I needed to be back before the polls closed at 7:00), so I put up a couple of Dirty Bird targets to give her something to take home. She shot her favorite gun - the Marlin Model 60 - again from 10 yards, and got all 17 shots inside the 9 ring. We wrapped it up and headed back. She thanked me profusely for taking her out and having the patience to help her work through everything. It was definitely my pleasure. She had a great time and is already wanting to go out again, even arranging to bring her brother and sister along for the next trip.

Just checking in...

For the handful of people who have been kind enough to follow my blog, I apologize for the lack of posts. Work has been a bit crazy, and then I was stricken with the cold for a good 5 days. I have a few ideas for posts in the works, so I'll try and get something up soon.

In the meantime...

For your viewing pleasure I have a photo of my FM Hi-Power, taken in the very professional environment of my kitchen counter top - the closest thing I have to a seamless background at the moment. Oh, how I miss having a studio to work in.

(click to enlarge)

A Photographer's Taste In Art

At risk of becoming a meme-poster, I read Bayou Renaissance Man's recent What Your Taste In Art Says About You quiz results post and decided to take the quiz myself. The results are somewhat expected, and as a photographer - the ideals of impressionism in reflecting reality in one's art are kindred to the visual nature of most photographic work.

There are exceptions in more abstract photography techniques, but even those are generally extrapolations of visual reality. One such technique is called Camera Tossing, a movement headed up by my good friend Ryan Gallagher, which involves capturing the natural physical motion of a tossed camera during flight. You can view much of his own work at Kinetic Photography. Go ahead, click the links - it's quite beautiful and intriguing stuff. I'll make a more extensive post devoted to the technique and my own camera toss work soon.

Anyhow, here's my results:

Your result for What Your Taste in Art Says About You Test...

Balanced, Secure, and Realistic.

7 Impressionist, -4 Islamic, 3 Ukiyo-e, -25 Cubist, -19 Abstract and 7 Renaissance!

Impressionism is a movement in French painting, sometimes called optical realism because of its almost scientific interest in the actual visual experience and effect of light and movement on appearance of objects. Impressionist paintings are balanced, use colored shadows, use pure color, broken brushstrokes, thick paint, and scenes from everyday life or nature.

People that like Impressionist paintings may not alway be what is deemed socially acceptable. They tend to move on their own path without always worrying that it may be offensive to others. They value friendships but because they also value honesty tend to have a few really good friends. They do not, however, like people that are rude and do not appreciate the ideas of others. They are secure enough in themselves that they can listen to the ideas of other people without it affecting their own final decisions. The world for them is not black and white but more in shades of grey and muted colors. They like things to be aestically pleasing, not stark and sharp. There are many ways to view things, and the impresssionist personality views the world from many different aspects. They enjoy life and try to keep a realistic viewpoint of things, but are not very open to new experiences. If they are content in their live they will be more than likely pleased to keep things just the way they are.

Take What Your Taste in Art Says About You Test at HelloQuizzy