I still love a finely crafted leather holster, but maybe a bit less in the hot summer months…
The thermometer in my car read 101°, but that didn’t account for the fact that the humidity level was 3,012%.
Besides picking the worst day in 2018 to do outdoor range work I was still having fun, sweltering or not. I was learning the United States Air Marshal pistol qualification. If you’re not familiar with it, it’s hard. Really hard. It involves shooting and drawing both gun and magazines exceptionally fast while maintaining precise accuracy performance. It’ll challenge just about anyone, and few can run it clean.
So, the bottom line was this. It was hot, scorching hot. It was also humid – recall that 3,012% humidity factor. That means I was sweaty and gear was damp. I was shooting a Sig Sauer P229 that uses steel magazines, and my carry gear was all leather – an outside the waistband holster and a dual magazine carrier. Here was the problem. As the humidity and sweat increased things started to get sticky when drawing from the holster and extracting magazines from the carrier.
Sure, they would still come out, but the draw was inconsistent and tugged here and there as the leather got damp and more flexible. The feel was inconsistent and certainly not fast. Normally, I might not have noticed or complained, but the Air Marshal Qualification does a great job of exposing subtle gear and technique problems because the time limits are so aggressive. If you’re off by 1/100th of a second on one string, you fail the whole qualification.
Kydex is unaffected by moisture and humidity and my draw inconsistency improved noticeably.
Nevertheless, those little annoyances like an extra tug required half-way through gun or magazine extractions got me thinking. In some cases, I make gear choices based on convenience. The leather magazine carrier I was using has a wide snap loop attachment, so I don’t have to thread my belt to take it on and off. That’s convenient and supports my laziness factor. It’s the same with that particular holster. However, those conveniences were costing me dearly regarding performance in these heat of the summer conditions.
Read the rest: Drifting Away from Leather Holsters and Magazine Carriers? – The Mag Life
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