I'll be adding more photos and text as time allows.
When you are finished making the braid for the hammer tie-down, it will look somethin' like this.
Notice the bulldog clips holding the laces separate in the background.
Roll the lace on the edge of a hard surfaced area to smooth it all out. Also, stretch the braid to get some of the give out of it. If you don't stretch it first, it will stretch after you have it on the holster and it will be too loose.
Thread all four loose ends of the lace into the top hole in the holster as seen here.
I use a lace threader, shown here goin' into the lower hole in the holster. The threader make is much easier to do this job. If you don't have one, run out and get one. If you don't want to run out and get one, you'll probably spend more time and money tryin' to make this work than if you just broke-down and got one.
Once the lace threader is run up through the second hole, run the four lace ends through the eye of the threader. Make sure you have enough lace stickin' through to hold tight and not slip out. Also, make sure your laces are all pulled through tight. You don't want one lace not goin' through with the rest of 'em and creatin' a ball of lace on the inside of the holster while you're tryin' to yank it through.
Yank that puppy through fast. You'll probably break at least one lace, but my theory is that momentum will carry the whole shebang through.
You can see here that I broke one lace, but she got through by golly.
Put your pistol in the holster. Force the hammer tie-down over the hammer. The light leather will stretch and conform to the gun.
Pull the slack out of the braid. Once you've pulled the slack out, check and see if you can slip the hammer tie-down off the hammer. It shouldn't be too easy. The braid will continue to stretch, so you don't want to start too loose. There is enough give in the braid to have it good and snug.
You can see in this photo that I've unlaced the braid down to the surface of the holster and started the knot. You can't really see how to make the knot from photos, so I'll show you some more sketches. However, I did want you to see what it was goin' to look like in real life.
Here you see how each lace is goin' to slide through a loop made by the next lace. Once you have them lined up loosely like this, systematically tighten each one of them up, re-tightening them a couple of times to get them all at an even tension.
When you have 'em all tightened down, the begriming of the knot will look like this.
On the holster it will look like this.
Pull some slack out of the braid so you can work away from the surface of the holster like this. You will notice I'm using a modeling tool to loosen the begriming of the knot so I can thread the laces through. Again, it is difficult to see in photos, so I'll show you sketches.
Pick a lace to start with. Going counter- clockwise, on the other side of the next lace, make a space up from the bottom of the knot that the starting lace can loop up under, and come out the center of the knot.
In this illustration, you see how the begriming lace has passed under the next counter-clockwise lace and come up from the other side into the center of the knot.
Now, take the next lace, counter-clockwise from where you started, and do the same thing on the far side of the next counter-clockwise lace.
In this illustration you see the two laces sticking up from the center of the knot.
Continue this process until all the laces are run up, and through, the center of the knot.
Here you see all four laces coming up from the center of the knot. The knot has been stretched out in the process. You must gently pull on each of the lace to tighten the knot back up. Continue this over and over again until the knot is good and tight. Try not to break any of the lace in the process.
I usually keep pullin' 'em tighter each time around till I snap one off. Then I figure it's time to just trim 'em all off.
Here is what the actual knot looks like when you are almost finished. Notice I only have three laces left.
Trimmed off, it looks like this. Pull it tight to the hole and check to make sure you can still get the hammer tie-down over the hammer of your revolver. If not, start this part all over again with new lace.
