When you receive your mold from EagleWorks, it will look very similar to the one shown here.  Your mold will come on a 9” by 10” backer board.

In this video, we’ll show you how we prep our molds for internal use. 

First, we’ll vent the molds for bladderless vacuum-forming;

Then we’ll trim the edges of the mold;

Finally, we’ll taper the sides of the mold to make releasing the cooled Kydex from the mold a little easier.

There’s a lot of different brands of thermoplastic on the market.  Just so everybody knows what we’re talking about, we’re going to refer to all of them as Kydex in these videos.

Here we are venting the mold for bladderless vacuum forming.  If you need your molds vented, we will happily do it for you, or you can save yourself the charge and do it yourself. 

The idea here is to drill a hole anywhere air may get trapped—and to have enough holes so that drawdown happens quickly so that you get the best detail and definition possible.

This shows how I drill my holes—after much trial and error.  We’re using a 1/8” drill bit to vent the mold.

This is a good example of what you’ll receive if you opt to pay for mold venting.

You’ll receive your EagleWorks Mold on a standard 9” by 10” backerboard.  You will likely want to trim that down to suit your forming setup.  For our shop and the way we make holsters, I try to get them down as small as possible while leaving them in a rectangular format.  

The finished size of the molds will depend on the size of the gun and the holster style.  A sweat guard, for instance, will make the forming mold larger

Adding a chamfer to the sides of the backerboard can, in many cases, make the Kydex easier to release from the mold after it’s cooled.  I’ve got the table on this 12” disc sander to roughly a negative twelve degree angle.

Additionally, note that the vertical surfaces of the mold itself have already been designed with a six degree angle to aid in releasing the mold from the cooled Kydex. 

Just a side note—with all HDPE forming molds, there will be some cupping.  We use an annealed HDPE to minimize this, but you will notice cupping if you set your mold on a flat surface.  This will in no way effect the quality of your finished holsters.

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