You guys motivated me to make a lot of progress on another holster, I'm getting close to being done, so here's the first dump of pics. should have it finished up with one more evening of work.
This holster is for my 4" 586, it's the same style and angle (slightly canted) as the one I made for my 629. I't a LOT of pics, its hard to capture a process otherwise and I trimmed out as many as I could to make it as succinct as possible.
The first step is making the pattern, I found the manilla file folders to be perfect for this. Draw a centerline, triple check to make sure the gun is unloaded, lay the gun in and trace the outside. Then you lay out about 3/4" standoff from the outline and draw in a smooth curve the roughly aligns with everything.
Then you cut it out and fold back on the other side so you can trace the mirror image and layout the piece that will act as the belt loop (the angle this leave the holster will also determine the cant of the holster)
Finally you cut it out and label it for the gun and and the handing, lay it on some leather, trace everything out and cut your holster blank (I also went ahead and marked and cut out the locations for the rivets that will hold the belt loop)
Cut out, holes punched and getting ready to bevel the edges
edges beveled front and back
Then on to the tooling, use swivel knife to cut the border, case the leather and tool in a smooth bevel around the border