Edge-Works Kydex holsters

Author: Charles E. Petty

Magazine: American Hangunner (March-April 2002)

Kydex ® is a thermoplastic material, meaning it is a substance that it can be formed when hot. The neat thing about Kydex is that when it cools, it retains the shape into which it has been formed. Actually, the material has been around for some time and I saw a few holsters made with it at least 10 or 15 years ago, but it has really become popular within the last year or so. Before that, it has been widely used for knife sheaths.

The latest entrants in this field of polymer holsters are the G-Code holsters and accessories from Edge-Works Manufacturing Co. It begins by handmaking a prototype holster, and when the design is right, it is digitized and mated with a CAD program to make the mold. That is then fed to the CNC machines to do the real metal cutting. All of this is done in-house. The entire process is proprietary and has only been developed over the last 5 years.

Sheets of Kydex are pre-heated and then compression-formed into the mold. The parts are assembled with rivets and the edges are hand-polished. The G-Code design has a couple of neat features. It's got a very well-designed tensioning adjustment they called "ProSafe" and the inner half of the holster has a "shirt guard" that extends all the way up the length of the slide. The idea is to prevent you from catching shirt material when reholstering, and it also prevents the gun from digging into your body when you move or bend.

G-Code holsters are available in either left- or right-handed styles and for all Glock and Government Model pistols as well as the variants of the Beretta 92. There are paddle and belt mounts and also an accessory to position the holster at an angle.

The holster wears comfortably and holds the pistol securely. There is a distinct click when the pistol locks in or is drawn. But you can get a full hand grip with the gun entirely in the holster so the draw is smooth and virtually effortless.

Reprinted with permission.