Crossbreed Holster Modification

Increasing retention for your everyday carry holster

I have been using a Crossbreed holster for about three years now and I can say that I'm very happy with it.  The holster is very comfortable, I can go on extended drives in the car, put any other 9mm/40 S&W/357sig sized Glock in the same holster, and the list goes on.  The one thing that I became increasingly perturbed by was the waning retention that the holster gave while carrying...so I decided to fix it!

1) As with any project involving firearms, don't be a statistic.  No ammo should be near your project and TRIPLE CHECK that your firearm is unloaded.

The photo below shows that by simply turning the holster upside down, the pistol would slide right out, indicating that the holster didn't have much bite on the gun.  Keep in mind that with the holster against your body, the retention will actually increase, so it wasn't quite to this point yet but I definitely needed to improve how the holster mated to the pistol.

To complete this job, you'll need a heat gun, two damp cloths, your holster, and yes, your pistol.  What achieves the retention on the holster and determines how much it takes to insert/remove the pistol from the holster is how deep the pocket is inside the trigger guard.  Since the shape of the holster needs to be retained, you'll need to have your pistol inside while performing the steps below.  A common hair dryer will not work as it won't get hot enough to soften the kydex.

Place the damp cloths around the holster to protect the other kydex parts of the holster and to also keep excess heat away from the pistol.  Start to slowly heat the trigger guard area of the holster until it softens the kydex.  I found that the kydex went from rock hard to WAY soft very quickly.  The kydex actually went from concave to convex almost instantly.  Since I knew I was going to have to push down on the inside of the trigger guard while the kydex was hot, I was wearing a pair of Mechanix style gloves during this process.

It took me two times of heating the kydex and pressing inside the trigger guard to achieve the retention that I wanted but I'm very pleased with the end result and did not have to send it back to Crossbreed as it is such a simple task.  Even with taking these photos, this entire project took me less than 15 minutes.  This is worth your time if you want to make these adjustments yourself.

Before:

After (notice you can see a slight outline of the actual trigger, indicating the entire trigger guard area is deeper):