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Neomet's version of Manny Bragg Futuristic Holster.


Neomet

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There were a couple things I really, really liked about the MB holster. The retention, the lock, the ease of draw, and the ease of flipping off the lock at speed. There were however quite a few things I did not like about it. These included:

The holster sits behind the hanger. I don't like feeling like I am going for my wallet when drawing a pistol.

At it's closest position it is way beyond 2" from the inner belt unless I really cant the holster in which just doesn't make sense to me.

The hanger. Hate the design, the too long screws from home depo to attach it to the belt and frankly, the way it looks.

The way the lower portion of the holster rests on the femoral head of the leg. This was a particularly big issue as the holster is for the wasp waisted Ms. Neomet and it put enough pressure there to cause pain days after wearing it at a match no matter how we positioned the holster. This is a problem with quite a few holsters for her but the MB was the worst.

Since "futuristic" apparently means erector set construction this holster let me change, flip, cut and reattach a lot of the components to arrive at this point. The holster now sits in front of the hanger. I moved the lateral spacing bar in, drilled a new more inboard locating hole in it and am using only two of the three cant adjusting screws. I cut off the third area from the lateral bar so it would not dig into the body. I opened up the rake adjustments just a touch so I could mount it directly to a Safariland mounting bracket.

The end result is we have the full benefit of draw/retention of the holster body but it fits much better, easily complies with the 2" rule and has no parts which are significantly lower than the belt to dig into the body. Seems to be working really well at this point.

IMG_20140911_120748_515_zps79591dec.jpg

IMG_20140911_120912_494_zps62634818.jpg

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That looks good. Have you tried to get it lower? It looks like it would position the gun with some room to spare if you could attach an extension to the tek-lock and lower the gun a bit.

I know what you mean about the positioning. I had to move mine inward on the post to get the gun within the 2" rule, and also angled it inward. Hmm, I wonder if I can attach my MG to the Stoeger BOSS hanger...

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It will work with the Invictus hanger albeit with some more cutting of metal. I didn't drop this one down that much because it was for Leslie and I was keeping any point of contact away from the femoral head and she likes the gun high.

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The holster sits behind the hanger. I don't like feeling like I am going for my wallet when drawing a pistol.

Umm what exactly is the problem with that? I mean, location of the gun is specified in the rules, not location of the holster/hanger. As long as the gun sits where it is supposed to, it doesn't matter if the holster is attached a bit forward from it.

At it's closest position it is way beyond 2" from the inner belt unless I really cant the holster in which just doesn't make sense to me.

How did you measure that? On my SLB holster, the distance between the gun and inner belt is fine in the default settings, no need to even move the gun. See http://www.brianenos.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=189227 -- have you got the rule wrong?

The hanger. Hate the design, the too long screws from home depo to attach it to the belt and frankly, the way it looks.

On my SLB, all the screws are of the correct lenght, making the installation easy.

The end result is we have the full benefit of draw/retention of the holster body but it fits much better, easily complies with the 2" rule and has no parts which are significantly lower than the belt to dig into the body. Seems to be working really well at this point.

IMG_20140911_120748_515_zps79591dec.jpg

That actually doesn't look like a very smart installation. It looks like the gun is not pointing down but angled forward. Since when drawing the gun from the SLB/USA-holster you need to first draw in the direction of the holster to free the gun from the locking, with a setup like yours you will end up drawing the gun in backward direction and then pushing it up and forward. That is not very economical movement. Would be better to do setup so you can just draw up and push forward.

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"Umm what exactly is the problem with that? I mean, location of the gun is specified in the rules, not location of the holster/hanger. As long as the gun sits where it is supposed to, it doesn't matter if the holster is attached a bit forward from it."

The problem I had is that in the stock configuration the holster sets the pistol behind the hanger rather than even or in front of it. It is set up far enough behind the hanger that I had to move my hand backwards to aquire thie grip when I mounted the hanger in the "normal" position on my hip. Both the wife and I have small waists and we could not move he hanger far enough forward to get the grip where we like it without the hanger going around the belt and ending up on the front of the leg which did not work. A clumsy explanation and since I have modded the holster I can't take a picture.

"How did you measure that? On my SLB holster, the distance between the gun and inner belt is fine in the default settings, no need to even move the gun. See http://www.brianenos...howtopic=189227 -- have you got the rule wrong?"

Nope. 2" from the inside of the inner belt to the closest portion of the pistol is the USPSA rule. Simply putting the holster on the belt and putting an STI Open pistol in the holster resulted in a measurement of over 3 1/4". Not sure why mine is different than yours. Again since I have modded it I can't photo this for you.

"On my SLB, all the screws are of the correct lenght, making the installation easy."

Again, not the case with mine. On a CR Speed belt they were at least a 1/4" too long and had to be cut down. I'm fairly sure there were comments similar to this from others in this forum when the SLB first came out here. Regardless, if they are the correct length now and as supplied the holster places the pistol inside of 2" I am glad. Those were two of my major annoyances when I got mine.

"That actually doesn't look like a very smart installation. It looks like the gun is not pointing down but angled forward. Since when drawing the gun from the SLB/USA-holster you need to first draw in the direction of the holster to free the gun from the locking, with a setup like yours you will end up drawing the gun in backward direction and then pushing it up and forward. That is not very economical movement. Would be better to do setup so you can just draw up and push forward."

​I think the photo exaggerates the level of rake in the holster as it sits only slightly tiled rearward when worn. This is the position that we found to bring the best draw for my wife both in repeatability and from timing draws. Personal preference. If we wanted we can still rotate the holster clockwise as there is plenty of rake adjustment left.

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"How did you measure that? On my SLB holster, the distance between the gun and inner belt is fine in the default settings, no need to even move the gun. See [/size]http://www.brianenos...howtopic=189227 -- have you got the rule wrong?"[/size]

Nope. 2" from the inside of the inner belt to the closest portion of the pistol is the USPSA rule. Simply putting the holster on the belt and putting an STI Open pistol in the holster resulted in a measurement of over 3 1/4". Not sure why mine is different than yours. Again since I have modded it I can't photo this for you. [/size]

The SLB holster has been designed for USPSA/IPSC usage, so it wouldn't really be likely that they wouldn't comply to such a basic rule.

Here is a picture of mine with the STI Edge. Holster mounted on DAA belt. No problems fitting the 50mm/2" rule.

2014-09-16%2000.00.37~2.jpg

In the picture you can also see that the screws used for mounting the holster on the belt are of the exactly correct lenght for making the installation easy. I have some older DAA magazine pouches that have screws that are just long enough to make it in the final position. Mounting them on the belt was a PITA as I had to squeeze the mounting brackets with plier of some kind to make the screws go through and use my third hand to tighten the screws. Seems they switched to longer screws also.

If you for some reason are not happy with the distance of the gun from the belt, that can also be adjusted by changing the mounting hole used on the arm (marked with yellow in the pic). My holster is in the location that it is by default from the factory and it could be moved about 1/4 inch out or 1/2 inch closer to body.

Skitch.png

If that still isn't enough, there are also the adjustment screws for sideways tilting the holster, though personally I prefer the gun pointing straight down, not to my leg and not too far from it.

Ps. I'm in no way affiliated with SLB, just a satisfied customer. Had the older model for years and just switched to the version with magnets a week ago and couldn't be happier.

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Wow, I really only meant to show how I got the holster to work for Ms. Neomet, not start an international debate! I agree yours does meet the 50/2 dimension. I will simply say that ours did not with the pistol oriented straight up and down. It was obvious enough that she was warned by two ROs at different club matches that the holster would be illegal at an upcoming level 3 match. Initially we did angle the pistol inwards to get it within two inches but it made for a clumsy draw.

I think your photos show that the mounting screws do protrude past the hanger. Mine were further out but it could be because mine was mounted on a CR Speed belt. Even at the distance yours protrude they will lay open a thumb that goes over them at speed during a sloppy draw.

Trust me, I have no innate desire to mess with things, particularly after paying what this holster costs. I have a very small workspace, few tools and no great skills as a fabricator. In fact if I didn't think the holster was basically as good as I do it would have either found its way onto the classifieds here or it would have stayed in the back of my closet which are the normal options for things I buy that do not work for me. For us, the design of the holster body was great in some very unique ways. It just did not fit.

As you mentioned in the other thread try it as it comes first. That is always the right answer. I put this out for those that may have had issues that were similar to our experience. Nothing more.

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