Kydex Tutorial / Belt attachment thoughts added 12/5/2005
It’s been more than a year that I first promised to write a Kydex tutorial for cpf. I finally decided to take the time and do it.
I had planned to take pictures of the production process, but the most critical steps require working fast and I had no one to take the pics for me, so I had to skip this step.
This tutorial is meant to be a starter’s guide that shows how to get good results with basic tools. To make a knife sheath, you’ll need a press to achieve good results. For flashlights, a press sometimes is not the best way to go.
I'd suggest to start with easy projects. Any flashlight that has a simple round shape (Like many inovas, or the arc-ls) will be a good object to practice. Fancy heads, like all the latest surefire kl's will be much harder to work with.
There are three parts or chapters of this tutorial:
1. Needed Tools and parts
2. Preparations and building the holster
3. Where to get the parts
Part 1: Needed Tools
Kydex is a thermoplastic so you’ll obviously need heat to form it. You have different options.
First: Your electric kitchen oven. This works and is probably the best method, but it has some drawbacks. Kydex smells really bad when hot and the fumes are not good for your health. So you need to have very good ventilation in your kitchen and there’d better be no wife that gets angry about the pizza tasting funny.
If you have an old unused oven or one of those small ovens that are sold for bachelors apartments you’re good to go.
Second: A heatgun. Any model from your local hardware shop will do. This is my preferred method but for the tutorial it doesn’t matter which tool you use.
You need something to cut: I always have an exacto knife and a fine metal saw handy. As long as the kydex is cold, you can either use the saw or scribe and break it. When hot, the kydex is very soft and it’s easy to cut it with the exacto knife.
A drilling machine. In many cases, you’ll want to drill holes to attach a teklok or belt clip.
Cotton gloves: They will help a little in keeping the heat away from your skin.
A dremel or similar tool with a grinder to shape the edges of the holster will help, but sandpaper will work just as good.
Some types of Cyanoacrylate-superglue can be used to glue kydex
Parts:
Kydex
chicago screws
a teklok or belt clip if you don't want to make your own clip
That’s about it.
Part 2: Preparations and building
This is probably the most critical step. Once you have cut the kydex, there is no way to go back and this stuff is not really cheap. So what I do when starting a new design, is making a template from cardboard first. Think about the shape you want, and make the template. Wrap the cardboard around your light as tightly as possible and check if it looks like you want the holster to look. Once you have achieved the desired design, put the cardboard flat on your kydex-sheet and draw around it with a pencil. You can cut directly as well, but be careful to leave some material around the template for an error margin in either case.
Make sure you have the right side of the kydex facing up. More than once, I had the textured side on the inside of my holsters.
Now you’re good to go. Carefully heat the kydex and have your flashlight nearby. Remove batteries and LED’s/Drivers if possible. It’s best to heat the untextured side, if you overheat the piece, it’ll become ugly, but that’s less of a problem on the inside of your holster.
Once the kydex is soft, you can wrap it around your light. If you want to attach a belt clip or teklok, make sure the back side stays flat. Keep up pressure until you feel the kydex cooling down and becoming harder. It will now keep its shape. You’ll probably need to partially heat it up again for some fine-tuning. Since it is now the textured side that is treated, be careful not to overheat it.
If you messed something up, you can heat up the whole piece and it will become flat again.
Once you have a tight fit, you can drill holes, screw in the chicago screws, shape and finish the edges.
Some pictures of sheaths:
1: Sandwich: Consists of two pieces, held together by rivets.
Rivets are not needed if you have chicago screws. They often look better than the screws, but you'll need a special tool to attach them. So for a starters kit, I'd do it without rivets.
2: wrapped around the light:
3: Slimline. Made to be as small as possible. Fixed with rivets on bottom, glued at the side.
4: Without screws, simply holding the light by tension.
This is a prototype I made for the arc4 and HDS. It's on it's way to be tested with the HDS EDC.
A good design to start with.
By the way, here you can see what happens when you overheat the kydex.
It became shiny in the lower part of the holster. Some more heat and ugly bubbles would have appeard.
For a starters kit, I'd probably order from
www.texasknife.com, at least if I where in the US. Some knifemakers will probably sell kydex and chicago screws as well. Knife-Forums like bladeforums.com have some sources too. Everything else can be found in your local hardware store.
Happy kydexing everyone!
Kydex tutorial / Updated with clip options
Roth will see this and add it in the sticky at the top of this Board! Well done!
Re: Kydex tutorial / lots of pics
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