Template? Nope!

This is a fairly easy project, so I just winged it with a rectangular piece of kydex, that I planned on folding over like a taco, with the 1911 7 round magazine in between the two layers of kydex. It was important to form the holster for my 1911 mag with ammuntion inside. so that the round that protrudes from the top would form the KYDEX® sheet to itself. I picked my favorite ammunition, and made a dummy round.
DO NOT ATTEMPT THIS WITH LIVE AMMO! in the picture you can see the dummy round, with a golden saber hollow point as my bullet of choice for the .45 - but that is a whole nother article!

Here is a view of the Toaster, and the pieces that will eventually make up the press. Basically I clamp a re-enforced piece of 3/4 inch plywood to my workbench, with layers of foam in between.

For this project, I wanted a flat back to mount a belt loop on, so I put the back of the holster right on top of the work bench, and then used the foam on the top to establish the form fitting top while keeping a flat back (or bottom). The toaster was preheated to 350 degrees, I'm using a piece of .60 kydex, and i've found that that heats up very quickly when the toaster is preheated. Preheating also helps even out the temp so that you don't have to worry about scorching one section of the kydex. Watch it, it cooks fast! less than 2 minutes brought that little piece up to forming temperature.

To the right you can see the two pieces that will form the holster. The belt loop was formed from .90 KYDEX® sheet that I had laying around, and it has 2 tabs that will be used to attach it to the holster. I had planned on these being the only two pieces, but as I found out later in the project, the KYDEX® sheet just wasn't thick enough for the Chicago screws, so I later added one more litte strip as a spacer on the outside. It's visible in the final pictures. At this point, I clamped the belt loop onto the holster with the magazine inside to give it rigidity. I based the placement of the belt loop on the fact that I wanted this holster to ride high on my belt. It is designed for concealed carry, and I want to make sure that my extra magazine is just as concealed as my firearm. Lineing everything up exactly as I want it, I then drill the holes that will hold the belt loop on to the other piece. I do this first with a small drill bit as a guide, and then go back and bring it up to the 3/16th of an inch for the Chicago Screws. After drilling the holes, I use a countersink to clean up the edges of the holes. There is usually a little debris still attached, and most of the time the countersink will do it with a couple rotations. Sometimes though, you do need to pull out a razor knife to get it cleaned up.

The next step was to clean up the rough edges that are formed when you shape the KYDEX® sheet to the object. They never end up true, and the bandsaw does a great job of getting it to where you would like it. After a quick shaping on the bandsaw, it's over to the sander to make quick work of those rough edges, and to true up anything that wasn't already perfect. I also do this with the belt loop. The final step was to add in the extra material, and screw down the belt loop and extra material. I then took it back over to the sander, and shaped the extra material to fit the contours of the holster.

Next I addressed the hold point. The magazine doesn't have to many contours on it to hold on to the holster, and I want to make sure that it only comes out when I want it to. To do this, I used the heat gun to heat up the point where the magazine catch hits the magazine (heat the holster), then insert the magazine and press the KYDEX® sheet down into the grove. This will provide just enough grip that I know it will never pop out unintentionaly. After doing this, the only thing left is the fine sanding, which I do with fine sanding films that are sold for sanding plastic models. These will add a nice level of finish to your holster. The only thing left to do is to use this!