I actually did take a few photos of the process for my gun belt, so I'll try to get those up sometime between tonight and Monday night.
I bought a slab of high melting point paraffin wax locally (~150 Fahrentheit), and I melted some of it (~3 lbs?) in one of those large corn cans. I just melted enough to give me an extra half inch over the depth of my belt (so it had roughly 2.5 inches of wax in there).
I rolled up the belt and dunked it into the wax while keeping it warm.
Bubbles of air formed, and I kind of stirred it to speed this up.
After about 20 minutes (anything worth doing is worth overdoing), I uncurled the belt out bit by bit, wiping off the excess wax with a cotton rag. Sorry, no pics, but I took my time and burnt my fingers quite a bit.
Then I just set the belt in a cookie sheet to cool and harden in an oval shape akin to my waist dimensions.
The holster was done nearly the same, but so as to avoid using more wax, I just tipped the can to soak half the holster at a time. I made sure to wrap my 1911 in two thick bags (the first time), then dunked the holster. I held it long enough to warm up the leather for each half, then pulled it out and wiped it as well, including the insides (good thing, since even then I have a slight excess in there).
Once it was wiped down, I put the bagged gun into it and put it on my belt (the first one I did that evening, which had cooled after 30 minutes), placing it into the normal carry position and burning my fingers some more.
When it had cooled, I discovered that TWO hands were needed to draw the bagged gun. Unbagged, it could be done with one hand, but JUST BARELY. So I repeated the procedure, but used THREE thick bags for the final forming.
Now my holster is Kydex-hard, but leather-awesome. I call it Leatherdex. Grips it really well, and *clicks* into place when reholstering.
*Add.*
Just to avoid confusion, the holster itself is a Galco Concealable, and the belts were made by a shoe repair guy in the PHX area who does all sorts of leather work. I have yet to formally start leather working beyond some (crude-looking) knife sheaths I made about 2 years ago.
