Category Archives: DIY Projects

Garage born and raised projects that are done because no one else seems to be able to build it like you would. In another words, you did it yourself and it rocked!

First Rawhide Project

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by Woodsbum

A friend of mine gave me an osage orange walking stick that was in serious need of a handle and a way to protect the tip from damage. For those that are not familiar with osage orange, it is a tree that grows in places like Texas and is a very hard wood with thorns that will rip you up. It also produces what we used to call horse apples or hedge apples. The osage orange is also a prized wood for bow construction. In places where it grows, you will also see it used quite often for fence posts since it doesn’t shrink or rot very easily.

Since I had a blank slate from which to work from, I decided to try my hand at using rawhide. I have never used it before and am quite clueless about the process other than soaking, stretching and sewing…. That is about the detail and extent of the knowledge I had about it so I set out in search of some instruction. Library you ask? Nope. Elderly gentleman that looks like Davey Crockett? Nope again. Local books store, Backwoodsman magazine, or some obscure Foxfire volume? No way….. Youtube!

So step 1 in the process was to find rawhide and some nice looking thread to use to sew it all up. On my way home last night the whole Interstate was actually closed down, thus forcing me to find an alternate route home. This made me think that I was suddenly destined to get my walking stick finished and I took the opportunity to stop by Tandy Leather. $45 later, I was back in traffic and slowly crawling home.

The next step is to make your template/pattern and cut out your rawhide so you can soak it….. I bypassed the pattern thing and just cut off a few chunks to soak. After a couple hours sitting in water it was soft enough to work. At this point I eyeballed the sizes and did some chopping.

Soaked and ready for trimming

Once I had a rough guess as to what shape and size I needed everything and it was all chopped accordingly, it was time to punch some holes and get ready for sewing.

Holes poked

I found that rawhide is so forgiving due to its stretchy nature, it is actually quite annoying to work with at times. It gets slimy, pulls and stretches at the wrong times, and is difficult to judge the shrinkage and contraction as it dries. It really is quite fun.

Once the holes are poked you just start stitching it up. I used a cross stitch pattern that I have seen several sheathmakers use for rawhide.

Sewing it up

Rawhide is much easier to work with than leather. There seems to be an inherent allowance for looser tolerances with rawhide than people allow with leather. I like this as well.

Once everything was all stitched up it looked like this.

All stitched up

One thing I need to figure out is how to tie off the ends of the thread. I just tied and cut for now, but I have a feeling that it will eventually pull loose and I will end up having to redo it. To help this not happen with the handle portion I did a sort of end cap thing. Once I figure out how to professionally tie it off, I will go back and do my version of professionally tying it off. My version is much goofier looking, but will work.

Handle section

I will also research how to dye rawhide and go back later to make it a little less…… Uh… Rawhide like? Not sure how to describe it, but it just kind of glows at this point.

For anyone that starts off on one of these projects, I suggest you do some Youtube research and then look at what some professional leatherworkers build. Contrasting the amateurs online with professional pieces helped to make me understand the idea of crossstitching and the sort.

Good luck to anyone that gives it a try. It is really quite easy and isn’t as big of a hassle as I originally thought it would be.

Kydex Projects

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by Woodsbum

This past weekend I finally got a chance to bust out the Kydex equipment I purchased last fall. There were several projects that I had to work on that had become fairly time sensitive. Two of which were IWB knife sheaths for Gunguy that would be more ergonomic and fit his needs better. Considering that this was really the first true project in Kydex, I had quite a learning curve to overcome. Luckily, Kydex is quite forgiving for if you screw it up you can quickly reheat and erase 99% of the evidence.

This is a great example of erasing the evidence.

Reheating a bad form

If you look closely, you can see the Kydex starting to open back up toward the back of the oven. This plastic is actually quite amazing. It has a memory so heating up a previously formed item will literally leave you with a flat pieces of plastic after it heats back up. Admittedly, I reformed several things just to be able to watch it unfold and return to its previous shape. I have no idea what it does to the actual plastic itself, but I can assure you that the shaping properties of this stuff is very amusing.

Once I got the Kydex hot, I used these homemade presses to squeeze the plastic and form it to the knife. As you can see, this is eventually going to wear out and need to be replaced. I do like the design of the locking mechanism. Again, it was made by someone else, but whoever did build these forms really had a good eye for fabrication. I can see myself just replacing the foam when it breaks down rather than buying or making new.

Homemade Kydex press

One of the projects I had to do was for my daughter. When her deployment orders were cut I contacted a very talented knife maker to build her a combat/utility knife to take with her. I also contacted a sheath builder to make her a Kydex sheath that would clip onto her MOLLE gear. The knife is incredible, but the $100 I paid for the sheath was a bust. It not only didn’t hold up, but it broke during a ruck march. When I contacted the sheath maker about it he said that he would repair it, but it would cost me if he had to rebuild it. Once I got the knife back from my daughter and was preparing to send everything back to him to be redone, he suddenly pulled a Keyser Soze and disappeared on me. Needless to say, I will be much more careful about having custom pieces built unless I know the maker’s work. Very unfortunate because I have had a lot of custom work done in the past.

Here is the sheath I build for the daughter’s knife. I still have to do the final sand and polish, but I think it came out fairly decent.

Kydex sheath for Turley Knife

Here are a couple of the knife sheathes I made for Gunguy. I still have to do the final sand and polish for his as well, but wanted him to see them before I did. I didn’t want to do all the finish work on something just to have to redo it because it didn’t come out quite right. Notice how he wanted the grommets on the spine side of the knife? This was so he could comfortably put this inside his waistband and still get to the handle without cutting himself. Most of the loops and straps will get in the way of drawing the knife if they are on the cutting edge side.

Sheath for Izula

Here is the other one.

Sheath for Spyderco

See how I formed it “backwards” so that he could use the grommets to strap on different loops and fasteners? I also made him an adapter for his stock Izula sheath that moves the IWB loop to the other side of the sheath and thus more out of the way.

Izula loop relocation adapter

All said and done, this was actually a fun day in the garage. I will be building other gear out of Kydex as time goes on. Not sure what will be next, but I can assure you that it will be fun!

D Version Hammer Spring

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by Woodsbum

The last real upgrade I had pending on my 92 Beretta was upgrading the hammer spring. I grabbed a factory Beretta D version hammer spring from Brownells for less than $10.

Originally, I was told that this was the primary upgrade needed to drop both the DA and SA trigger weight from 12 lbs for DA and 6.5 for SA to a reasonable level. I do not have any of those spiffy trigger weight things, but I can tell you that the stock trigger pull of the 92 I have was a bit on the ridiculous side. This upgrade was quite welcome.

The process is actually pretty easy. All you have to do is remove the pin near the lanyard loop to drop the plug and spring out of the handle. Just make sure you are careful during the process so you don’t end up shooting the lanyard loop plug across the room. If you use a 5/16 punch to do this, just keep the punch in and the pin still set in the frame on the opposite side. After you swap out the spring you can easily hit the roll pin while compressing the spring to get the plug set back into place. The longest part of the whole process was taking off the grips, so it is really quite easy.

Here is a picture to show the difference between the longer, stock spring and the shorter, D version.

D Version and Stock Hammer Springs

It really isn’t that much shorter, but it definitely does cut a couple coils off from stock size.

After I installed the spring and did a few test pulls on the trigger it is really easy to see how nice this upgrade is. Of course this raised a question as to why the stiffer springs were even installed to begin with. When asking Gunguy, I found out something quite interesting about this. I guess this spring is needed if you are shooting NATO 9 mm rounds due to the hotter round and tougher primer. The fact that I use factory US or hand loaded rounds would negate the need for this heavier hammer spring and thus make it much more pleasant an experience in firing with the lighter hammer spring. This does make sense, especially since Beretta is from Europe and sells a lot of pistols to military and LEO.

Now that I have completed all my upgrades to my 92a1, I will start on modifying and upgrade a different firearm. The next project will probably be ripping apart my 1911 and polishing up all the trigger parts to lighten and smooth out the pull.

This is how my Beretta looks in it’s final stage of upgrades and modifications. I will be doing a range report after I take it out next weekend.

Final Configuration

R.K. Vest Pistol

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by Woodsbum

Every once in a while I get roped into doing an off the wall task to help someone out. This time I ended up helping out a friend of mine with her grandfather’s old vest pistol. They did not know anything about this pistol and had found that it would jam up consistently. It appeared that the feed ramp on the barrel was hanging out too far and was catching the lip of the casing when a new round was fed from the magazine. Being the highly motivated and overly DIY type person that I am, I went ahead and volunteered to polish up the feed ramps to get rid of this lip a bit.

Here is the pistol.

R.K. Vest Pistol

There is not much information available about this pistol, such as how to disassemble it or even what company made it. I finally found something on The Vestpocket Pistol Collector site. It really doesn’t say much:

History:

Gunmaker unknown, but from Spain.
Typical Eibar-pattern, proofing code “star over D” indicates this pistol is from 1931.

Technical Data:

SYSTEM: self-cocking pistol with internal hammer
CARTRIDGES : 6
CALIBRE : .25 ACP
BARREL LENGTH : 57 mm , 6 grooves right hand twist
WEIGHT EMPTY : 390 g
TOTAL LENGTH : 116 mm
TOTAL HEIGHT : 83 mm
TOTAL WIDTH : 26 mm
TRIGGER : Single Action
SIGHT : fix groove
SAFETY : safety-lever
FINISH : blued
GRIPS : hard rubber

Here is what I see with the feed ramp.

Feed ramp

The way that the barrel comes out is a bit bizarre. If you lock the slide to the rear, the barrel twists on lugs and then slides right out. I have yet to get the whole pistol apart to get a size for new springs. I did polish up the feed ramp for her, though. It would be nice to get the pistol apart to do some work on it with some fine sandpaper to smooth out the action a bit, but this should help it a lot.

Polished up a bit

Here is a bit of information such as schematics and such about the pistol. I still can’t get it disassembled, though. I am working on it and have faith.

Basic disassembly

Full schematic:

Full schematic

This is really a neat little pistol. I have hopes in getting it apart to smooth everything out as well as find a new spring to tighten up the action a bit. If you know anything about these or have any resources for these pistols, please comment and let me know.

Beretta 92 Steel Parts

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by Woodsbum

When I was in the Navy, I carried the M9 constantly. I qualified Expert with it several times, got really proficient with it, and after discharge I finally settled on version this pistol as a personal firearm. The one gripe I had with it was the lack of steel parts and over use (in my opinion) of plastic and MIM. The first chance I had, I purchased the steel parts kit from Beretta and got to swapping things out.

The steel parts kit is about $70 and includes the following:

Trigger
Magazine release
Safety lever assembly
Recoil guide rod

After ordering and installing the recoil guide rod, I see that the website says that the recoil guide rod doesn’t fit the 92a1. It seems fine on mine, but I will have to research and figure out why it “doesn’t fit.”

Now here is the kit. The packaging was a lot to be desired. The parts were just tossed into the box and the plastic bag that you would think should contain the parts was empty. The parts were just bouncing around.

Kit as it was just shoved in a box.

The actual parts themselves do feel much nicer than the MIM and plastic ones. This is especially evident with the trigger and magazine release. The factory originals just feel cheaply made and easily broken. Of course that is probably just conjecture and prejudice on my part, but the steel does feel much nicer. These

Old MIM trigger and magazine release

The recoil guide rod from the factory is actually a piece of plastic that holds the compressed spring. The new one is actually like the M9 I carried in the military. It is nice, sturdy and steel. It is kind of tough to get the plastic one apart to get to the spring. There are little tabs that hold the end of the plastic together that need to be pried off with a regular screwdriver. Once that is done, the rod just slips into the spring and you insert it spring first into the slide. The rod slips into place as before. Below are the parts. You can see the way that the plastic rod has the end attached.

Guide rods

Putting the trigger in is a bit odd. The old trigger has an actual spot for the spring to rest where the spring must be moved and rested on the rod that goes through the top of the trigger. Here are a couple pictures. This first one shows how there is an actual spot for the trigger spring on the old trigger.

Old trigger

This is how the trigger assembly looks with the springs removed.

Trigger assembly without springs

Once you get the spring installed and it all put together, it should look like this.

Trigger assembled

There are several companies that make after market trigger springs that make this a lot easier. I think I am going to do some research and pick on up eventually. If I do, I will post up the information here.

The next pain is the installation of the magazine release. There IS a trick to it. Check out this video to see how it works. Once you figure out to put in the correct side first, the rest is easy.

Next comes the REALLY tough part. I have to swap out the decocking mechanism. This is a bit on the rough to do side. As you can see, this is definitely MIM.

Decocking lever

To perform this upgrade I did a Youtube search and found a video about installing a Wilson low profile safety lever. It gave me the information I needed to be able to do this install. I did have to go find really small punches, however. Thankfully there is a Harbor Freight down the road.

Now I only have a few more modifications to make this the way I want it. I will be getting a skeletonized trigger, VZ G10 grips, and a couple Wilson Combat springs to finalize this build.

This last video is a complete (except for the safety lever) upgrade of the Beretta parts. I used this initially, but found that the guy doing the work was almost too good at putting the parts in. He made it look way too easy. It really was much more difficult than he made it seem.

I really love the feel and function of the Beretta 92/96 frame pistols. Many people tend to hate on them for whatever reason. Considering the abuse I put mine through while Active Duty and then still qualified Expert with it at the range on a consistent basis, I feel that these are great systems.