As I’ve said more than once, I’m old and fat. This means that the “high speed” gear of a younger, fitter, person doesn’t work for me. If I were to try an appendix carry, my Done-Lapped-Over would totally block access to my firearm.
I wear a belt to keep my pants up. No belt and my pants fall off. Some of that is because of the gear I carry in my pockets. A couple of knives, wallet, spare mags, you know the drill.
My original EDC was a small 9 mm which I carried in a pocket holster. Any belt was enough to keep my pants up and my firearm in place.
I finally upgraded to Alien Gear holster systems. I like them, they work for me. Their IWB works for me, as does their OWB versions.
They do have an important requirement, a belt.
I have no idea what happened to my original belt. I replaced it with a 100ft of braided para cord attached to a Gerber belt buckle. I made that myself.
This works “ok”, the problem with it as a belt was my belly lap got pinched and scraped by the belt buckle. When I added a holster with a firearm to it, the belt would twist and the buckle bit harder.
Upgrading to a “real” gun belt stabilized everything but left me with a new buckle that was biting my belly. Driving any distance, such as to any of my clients, and my belly would be raw. It was just not working.
I’ve lost weight and firmed up, so that is no longer an issue.
Regardless, during that period of time I had to stop wearing pants and switched to a shoulder holster. This worked, but it wasn’t something I had on when I was just working at home.
It got worse when I transitioned to carrying on my pants. That Alien Gear holster shell moved to my pants and gun belt and wasn’t available for my shoulder holster.
Which brings me to my newest holster.
As part of my losing weight, my pants started falling off. Unless I cinched my belt tighter than was comfortable, my gun would pull my pants off. I found myself using my shirt as sort of suspenders to hold up my belt on that side.
This leads me to getting some “real” suspenders. Not the stretchy kind, but solid load bearing suspenders. The first pair I got were for holding up your tool belt. They have big padded shoulders and are black webbing and look awful. I replaced these with a nice pair of Y Suspenders from Hide & Drink.
These look nice and just painplain work.
I still wasn’t wearing my EDC every day at home. Comfort being the excuse. I was watching a video by Paul Harrell where he explained why he wore an older style of USGI web gear, it might be ALICE got me thinking.
So I picked up a m1936 web belt with M1911 leather holster along with a .45 mag pouch. I added a WWII repo medical pouch and m1936 suspenders.
The web belt arrived yesterday, I’ve been wearing it with 1911 and two magazines while awake and at home.
Damn if it isn’t the most comfortable combination I’ve worn, so far.
The position of the mag pouch isn’t perfect, but it isn’t horrible. The holster is in the right place for me. The belt fits my fat belly/waist. The suspenders aren’t here yet, but with that addition, this will be darn near perfect for around the house and yard.
The flap holster is such that it is very non-threatening to gun people and cops. They know the firearm is there, but that flap signals that the pistol isn’t coming out rapidly. For anti-gun people, I don’t want to talk to them anyway. If I’m at all concerned, it is still easy access and rapid enough.
When sitting, nothing is poking into me. It is just comfortable.
Maybe those old farts knew something?
Comments
6 responses to “Old Gear Still Works?”
Heh heh, I think them old farts knew lots more… I haven’t tried the alien holsters yet. I have a We the People iwb that work’s really well. I want to try the under the belt Urban some time.. but im not a fan of appendix carry..
Alien gear is the shit. Only thing I haven’t figure out yet, is how to directly bolt the full shell to the paddle. The swivel mount hangs too far out for me and bounces a lot. The belt loop OWB works, but I have no easy way to disarm should it be necessary.
I do not have any grief with Aliengear. Solid holster.
One thing of concern, but with some situational awareness it will not be a problem. The backing is soft/flexible. Good for wearing, but has the potential to grab the trigger during a reholster. This is true for any “hybrid” type of holster.
Just be careful, and you will be fine. Try to show off and holster as fast as you draw, and have a bleed kit standing by.
I have an Aliengear hybrid 2.5 as part of my EDC. The non-leather Aliengear hybrid holsters have a steel shank in between the neoprene layers of the soft side of the holster, which means deformation of the backing is minimized and also handgun retention while not under belt tension can be set tighter than a traditional hybrid.
A good thing about AlienGear – they list for a LOT of guns. So they’re often my first choice when trying to find a holster, albeit not always my eventual choice.
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In some applications I’ve also become a fan of “slide” or Yaqui-style holsters. Not great for retention, but quite flexible in terms of what they will carry with the trigger guard fully covered if you take the care to get a decent fit.
For me, the stereotypical OFWG gun nut, suspenders make AIWB possible. Perry system stretchy suspenders.