Smith & Wesson 469: A Proven CCW

Here's a look at an oldie, but goodie - Smith & Wesson's 469. It's a compact double stack 9mm with a blued slide, alloy frame, and DA/SA with decocker/safety from the early 1980's. I got this one on a trade a little while back and instantly liked the way it felt in my hand. The great thing is it's almost the same size and weight as my Sig P239, but it holds 12+1 rounds of 9mm vs. 8+1 for the Sig. The one place where it's noticeably bigger is in it's thickness. I've made it my winter carry gun so the extra thickness doesn't make much difference under a cover garment. In mentioning capacity one cool thing is that it can take any of the even higher capacity magazines that S&W produces. I've read where someone actually used a 30 round stick magazine and a 72 round drum. The more practical application is to use the 15 round magazines from the larger 59 series guns as a spare and leave the 12 rounder for carry.

Dimensions:
Barrel ----Total---- Weight
Length ---Length-- (empty)
------------------------------
3.5 in. ----6.875 in. --26 oz.


As you can see it has definitely seen some use. I like to think that it was a cop's gun and all the character marks are from years of reliable service. After putting it through it's paces I've found that it points well, is more than accurate enough and has been totally reliable. The trigger is a bit different than what I'm used to. It uses a half cock notch that you can feel when you pull the trigger in double action. To avoid that little hitch, the hammer can be put in half cock after decocking. The double action pull is fairly smooth and easy to stage. Single action isn't as crisp as the Sig's, but it's got a better reset.


One area that I had to change was the original front sight. It was a slanted blade with a vertical line going down the center of it that was integral to the slide. It was ok, but was really hard to see in low light. When I changed out the front sight of my Sig with a night sight I picked up a second night sight with the idea of putting it on the 469 slide. Now, most would then have taken the slide to a gunsmith to have the original sight taken off and a dovetail cut to fit, but I felt a little more ambitious. Yes, that's right using a small file set I hand filed off the front sight and cut a dovetail. It's not perfect, but it works. Take a look at my work.
It still needs a little cold blue on the raw steel, but I'm happy with how it turned out. Now I can easily pick up the front sight in the dark. After taking it to the range it withstood 50 rounds without budging. There I found that to get the right elevation using the new front sight and the original rear required holding the front dot right in line with the top of the rear sight. After a little practice it works well and puts me right in the black.

Future modifications might include a refinish and swapping out the rear sight for a slightly higher Novak style, but for now it's the way I like my carry guns: Compact, Light, Reliable, & Carried.

Overall, the 469 is a great CCW gun and one that I plan on using for many years to come. Smith & Wesson replaced the 469/669 with the third generation 6904/6906 which they have sadly stopped producing. If you happen to find one snatch it up. You won't regret it.

AIWB Kydex holster for a Sig P239

I've really only been using one holster to carry my Sig P239 for the last year & a half, Crossbreed's SuperTuck Deluxe, and it works well. One thing that it doesn't do so well is easy on & off for the times you have to go into places that are off limits for CCW. Since I've yet to really make a holster for it and I have a need for a different kind of holster than the SuperTuck I put one together.

This one is very similar to the one I made for my Norinco Tokarev clone, but with a few differences. It's a single piece of very thin kydex and uses j-hooks to latch onto the pants & belt. Since it has a shorter barrel than the Tok I only used one large rivet instead of two small ones. I also played around with the placement of the j-hooks by moving them as far apart as I could and curving them to better match the curve of my body. Well, here it is.
I know the back clip looks a little fragile and I may end up doing another holster with a more substantial section of kydex added between where the rivet is and the backend of the clip, but the way it is adds more flexibility so it can really bend with my body for comfort and it hasn't shown any signs of breaking (yet).

Surprisingly, this is a pretty comfortable holster. It helps that the P239 is fairly compact. When sitting the muzzle is high enough so that it doesn't pinch or poke and instead almost fits inside the pocket where my thigh hits my hip. Here are a couple pictures of it worn.This will be used only with a cover garment like a baggy untucked shirt, sweater or fleece. For tucking duty I'll still be turning to my SuperTuck. Over the next few weeks I plan on testing this one out and putting it to the EDC (every day carry) test.

Here's a short video to show how easy it is to access, take off & put on.

Short Tutorial on How To Make a Kydex Holster

I've been asked how I go about making these holsters so I did a very short tutorial on the steps I take to make one of these holsters (the IWB for the Tokarev specifically).

1. Create a paper template which is used to judge how much kydex to use and the general shape. I used the gun for this part and taped a chopstick to the top of the slide for the sight channel.
2. Using the template I cut the kydex using metal snips.
3. Usually I'll put the whole piece of kydex in a toaster oven set at about 225 for handful of seconds watching it till it starts to flop and then take it out and wrap it around the gun and add pressure. In this case the kydex was a little too long to fit in my small oven so I took a different tactic. Using a heat gun I did an initial fold on a soft & squishy folded blanket. Wear gloves from here on out to protect your hands. Things get hot.
4. Then I focused on different areas heating and pressing to make it a snug fit. I indent the trigger guard a little extra for retention, pulling the gun out before it gets completely rigid so that it's not too tight.
5. Once the fit is right I used a leather punch to make the holes for the rivets. This works for the thin kydex for thicker stuff you'll need to drill the holes. Then I punched the rivets in and tested the gun fit again.
6. At this point I start trimming off overhang with the metal snips.
7. The clips are integral with the holster so they are formed after the mold of the gun has been set. I cut out the general shape for the clips as if they were straightened out and using a 1.5" wide paint stirrer cut in half as my "belt" & "pants" I heated the clips and started folding them around the stirrers. Then I cut off the excess length.
8. Test the fit one last time and if it's too loose use folded wet paper towels to protect the molded sections that don't need adjustment and then heat up the parts that do and add pressure.
9. Once everything is cut & fitted then comes the time consuming part, finishing. My preferred tool for finishing is an emory board. Keep several of different sizes on hand for some of the hard to reach parts. Sand all edges and corners so things are smooth to the touch. Do this part well and it'll look professional, do it poorly and it'll look like Bubba made it with a dull knife.

This is a very general writeup, but it'll work for most single sheet kydex holster designs.

OWB Kydex Holster for a Beretta 92FS

When I first got into guns several years ago my brother-in-law bought a Beretta 92FS. Shooting his was my first experience with this well loved firearm. I was taken by it's good looks and easy accuracy. Since then I've never really had a chance to own one myself mostly because I tend to lean towards smaller more concealable handguns, but I still love the look of it. A while back my brother-in-law mentioned he was interested in getting a holster for his Beretta. He doesn't CCW, so he was just looking for something he could carry it in comfortably. This Christmas I drew his name for presents and decided I'd try my hand at making that holster for him. This is my first attempt at a OWB (outside the waistband) kydex holster.

I got inspiration from Comp-tac's belt slide holster since it is a fairly simple single sheet design and looked to be stable & comfortable. As I don't own a 92FS I luckily have a coworker that was gracious enough to lend it to me for a night to get the fit just right.

The split loops had to be cut using a dremel so they aren't as clean as I would like, but they are functional and solidly lock onto the belt. The sex bolts (yes, they are really called that) I got after searching around Ace Hardware and if the holster were going to be used for CCW I'd probably paint them black.Here it is worn. It really is nice and comfortable and with this long sweater I could probably get away with wearing it concealed except for a bit of the bottom showing. As my first OWB holster I'm very happy with it and I hope the B-I-L likes it as well. I think I'll have to make one for my wife's Ruger, maybe a paddle holster this time...I swear I must be addicted to kydex fumes.

Tokarev IWB Kydex Holster with J-hooks

Ok, I got around to putting together a carry holster for my Tok (Norinco 213). At first I flirted with a complicated IWB crossdraw design. It involved a trailing support arm that could have been made of either leather or kydex and would have to be angled just right to allow concealability, comfort & a good draw. It's an intriguing idea, but overly complicated and though I might mess with it in the future today I just wanted something easy that I knew could work. In the end, I decided on a very simple IWB scabbard design using a single piece of kydex. The dual J-hooks add a little bit of stability by being able to straddle a belt loop. I used the thinnest kydex I had (.63) to minimize any added width which as an added benefit gives the clips just a tad amount of flexibility so that they can be maneuvered onto the belt. It surprised me how light it ended up.


The outside of the holster has the majority of the molding while the inside is fairly flat since that's the side that's against the body.
I canted the holster a little rearward so that the barrel lays comfortably along the inside of my thigh when worn at the appendix position. It's still high enough to allow me to get a solid grip.
It also works in other IWB positions, but I really like it at the appendix spot.
I wore it this evening for a few hours at the mall and though I noticed it, it never hurt to wear. Now I have a way to carry my Tok concealed so I call this one a success.

Thin is IN! - Tokarev Grips Update

This is an update to this previous post.

In the world of concealed carry handguns, thin is most definitely in! Anyone will tell you that it's much easier to conceal a thinner gun than a f--, um thickness challenged one (those Glocks might be listening). Whether it be in your pocket or IWB tucked, a flatter pistol carries better. It's one (of the many) reasons why the 1911 platform is still so popular with the CCW crowd. I just peeked at BOB O's pocket pistol pdf on mouseguns.com to check out what rates as thin these days. My PM9 shows that it's 1.10" in width overall and measured at the slide it's about .90", pretty thin for a 9mm don't you think? Well, according to my eyeballing with the tape measure my Chinese Tokarev clone measures at a measley 13/16" or under .82" at the slide. Lately, I've been considering carrying the Tok, partly to give it some exercise and partly because I love it's ultra simple design. It's pretty close to a 1911 design that was stripped of everything that it didn't need in order to shoot (though it does sport an external extractor). There's no beaver-tail, no grip safety, no firing pin safety, really no safety to speak of if you don't count half cock. Most 1911 folks scoff at the thought of such a thing, but in a way I find it refreshingly simple. In original form it's not exactly a thing of beauty with it's awkward grip angle and dull finish. Those clones from the Chinese like mine sport so many tooling marks it looks as if all the parts were cut & milled just enough to fit together and that's it. I like it though. It's like that 5 lb hammer you use to bang stakes in the ground. It's scarred up, dirty, maybe a little rusty, but it does exactly what you need it to do and when you swing it just right and hit that stake square all it takes is one whack.

A while back I fabricated some ultra thin grips for the Tok to maximize it's flatness. They worked, but made it look a bit like a Radom and made the grip stick out a bit. So after seeing a bunch of bobbed 1911's I thought I could easily do something similar to my Tok. So a couple of minutes cutting, molding & sanding and here you go. You'll notice that since the last effort I've gotten an untrimmed Hogue slip on grip to hold it all together and give a nonslip surface to hold on to. I'm really digging the profile now. Isn't Kydex great?

Check out how thin those grips are! Notice that I took a little bit of metal off the backside of the hammer to keep hammer bite at bay. I'll see if any more needs to be removed after my next range session. One of these days I my try my hand at refinishing to give some more corrosion resistance than the original faded blue gives it.

Pondering the differences between my Tok vs. my EDC Sig P239 I'm struck by many of the similarities. Yes, the Sig is DA/SA with a decocker and sports a short 3.6" barrel, it looks squat & chubby in comparison to the Tok's long & lean 4.5" barrel. In the end, though they both contain an equal amount of firepower, 8+1 in 9mm, with no added on safety levers/switches/buttons. Granted if used for CCW I would never carry the Tok cocked with one in the chamber so it will have to be cocked on the draw.

Guess it'll need a holster so that I can practice with that...hmm another project.

Kahr PM9 Kydex Pocket Holster

Inspired by my previous pocket holster for my Charter Arms snubby I decided my Kahr PM9 needed some new duds. I added a distinct bend to the tail which does two things. It gives it a squared off look when it's in my pocket and it helps hook onto the pocket to allow the holster to fall away from the gun when drawn. I haven't added any anti-skid tape to it yet, but I don't think I'll need to.

I made sure to cut enough away from the grip to allow a solid grip and the outside pocket side is nice and flat with just a hint of curve here and there.

Comparing it to the pocket holster for the snubnose revolver it's shorter in length (muzzle to grip), but has more height (top of slide to bottom of grip). I prefer to shoot with the Pearce grip extension so I leave it on for pocket carry.

Everytime I make something like this I gain renewed appreciation for the folks that make these for a living. The inital molding of the kydex isn't hard, but all the little details to make it fit just right for the gun, pocket and for the hand add up and take time. In the end, it sure is nice when it turns out the way you want it.