A Quick Look at Our Phantom Material

At Holster Builder, we’re proud to offer a wide variety of holster making supplies so that you can thrive in your business. Although our Kydex supplies are often what our customers are after thanks to the massive popularity of Kydex holsters, there are other options out there to create unique holsters that people will love. One of those other materials is Boltaron, which we’ll be featuring in a future blog.

Today’s post, however, is all about Phantom. What exactly is this mysterious material, you ask? That’s a great question, and we’ll be breaking it down in detail below, so if you’re looking for a way to try something new and add a different element to your holsters, keep reading to learn more.

What Is Phantom?

You can find Phantom right here on our website, but if you follow along with Eclipse Holsters as well, there’s a good chance that you’ve seen it there too. We started experimenting with it to build our Eclipse Holsters using a see-through material. How cool does that sound? It’s a pretty unique way to showcase your firearm and it’s a lot different than anything else you’ve seen on the market.

So what is this material exactly? In short, it’s a clear material that’s durable and mold-able, allowing you or your customers to enjoy something that’s a little bit different.

A Few Tips

When we first started working with this material, we had a couple of issues with heating it. Although everything functioned well, it ended up making the end product a little bit too foggy. In other words, it started out clear, we’d peel off both sides of the protective coating, and then put it into the heat press for the normal amount of time. We got great definition and were thrilled at how sturdy and heavy duty the material was, but we just didn’t love the fact that it was coming out so foggy.

After several tests where we changed up a number of variables, we ended up with the same issues. In the end, we reached out to the super-friendly folks at Allegiant Holsters for some advice because they were consistently getting great results with incredibly clear holsters that you could see through perfectly.

We asked for tips on what they do to get such great results and then we created a video over on our Facebook page highlighting what the process looked like and what techniques worked best for us. The first thing we did was adjust the tension and pressure on the heat press to be quite a bit looser, and that worked wonders. Secondly, we set the temperature to 344 degrees. (One quick note: that temperature may work as a good starting point for your heat press, but because they’re all a little bit different, it may require some experimentation to get it just right.) Lastly, we pulled the product out at about a minute and twenty seconds and that seemed to do the trick well for us.

We hope that this post has shed some light on the process for you, but be sure to check out the video for a full explanation of what we did!

The Takeaway

At the end of the day, the thing we want to highlight the most is that we struggle with the same thing you all do. We’re working to build our business and help people just like you are. We want to see you succeed, and that’s why we hope to be a resource for all holster makers out there. Have a question? Don’t hesitate to reach out to us because we’d be happy to share some tips and tell you about the various things that we tried. It’s what we’re here for!

Order Your Holster Making Supplies Today

Whether you’d like to try your hand at Phantom material or you’re more comfortable sticking with Kydex supplies, you’ll find everything you need to craft your next masterpiece of a holster right here at Holster Builder. No matter what you’re in the market for, we think you’ll be pleased with our selection.

As always, if you have any questions or if there’s a product you’d like to see us carry, feel free to contact us. We look forward to hearing from you!