Breaking In A New Holster

Above, the gun wrapped inside a plastic back in the holster. Photo by Armand Vaquer.

When I first put my Ruger P95 into the new Wright Leather Works holster, I found that the holster was very tight. It was an effort to pull the gun out of it.

I checked around and found sites describing the best ways to break-in a new leather holster.

I used the method as described by Gun Digest and it worked! I used the plastic bag the holster came in to wrap the holster in before putting into the holster. Wax paper can also be used (with the wax side facing the holster). This method is called "blocking". I kept the wrapped gun inside the holster for seven hours.

They start with:

Often, a new leather holster is stiff and tight. This means it will be hard to draw your handgun from the rig, and it also may be hard to fully seat your weapon in the rig initially. 

Many leather rigs have adjustment screws, useful for adjusting to your gun both initially and when leather shrinks from heat, moisture, sweat, and humidity. Getting your gun stuck in your holster can be embarrassing to say the least, and fatal at worst. 

If your leather holster does not have adjustment screws and is too tight to draw from effectively, the solution is to break in the holster with your unloaded handgun.

There's one thing nobody wants to do: soften the leather. It needs to be stiff. But the methods Gun Digest describes worked fine. The gun now goes in and out of the holster easily.

To read more, go here.