Caring and maintaining your Kydex, Holstex and Boltaron holster improves its longevity and function. Attention should be paid to the attachment points and the fasteners on the holster. Fasteners can back out over time.
A quality thread locker is strongly recommended!
Avoiding damage to your Kydex holster
Your holster is a robust piece of equipment. Kydex can withstand all sorts of abuse, and continue working quite well. However, it is important to be aware of things that could damage your holster in ways you may not expect.
Use: Note that Kydex holsters are fit to an exact pistol or pistol/accessory combination. Using a different pistol in it is not supported or recommended. Using a different pistol that fits “good enough” is likely to result in a pistol with an improperly covered trigger guard, improper retention, or both. These are potentially dangerous situations.
Heat: Heat is the tool we use to form your holster. Be aware that heat can deform your holster quite quickly. Do not ever heat your holster in an oven to try to reshape it. Do not leave it on your dashboard or under a glass enclosed area with direct sunlight. Our experiments show that a holster left in its product packaging (clamshell) under direct sunlight on a cool day can reach over 150 degrees Fahrenheit (65 Celsius) and deform. When washing your holster, do not use water over 100 degrees (40 Celsius). Do not ever set your holster on a heater or radiator or other hot surface as it can discolor or deform your holster. Note that even if you leave your pistol inside the holster, the simple act of heating the holster will cause the Kydex to move away from key surfaces and potentially become unusable.
Physical damage: It’s pretty hard to physically damage a holster to the point it becomes unusable. However, it’s possible that extreme abrasion or cuts on outside surfaces can cause the Kydex to weaken and break.
Washing your Kydex holster
Kydex has a number of distinct advantages over leather or soft synthetics: it can be washed. Washing your holster is the most important thing you can do to reduce damage to your pistol’s finish over time. When carrying your pistol, and especially while training, it is likely that dirt and grit can get into your holster. Kydex is much softer than the finish on your pistol, but bits of dirt, dust, and sand are not. Thankfully, washing your holster is easy. Simply run it under lukewarm water and use a mild detergent to clean the inside and/or outside. After washing, dry, with special attention to drying any steel hardware to prevent rust. You may wish to disassemble any such hardware to ensure it dries completely to reduce corrosion issues. Do not wash under hot water, as this is likely to deform your holster.
Tightening or securing hardware
Your Kydex holster has a hardware that is used to hold the holster together, secure attachments, or adjust retention. The eyelets on your holster are brass, so we don’t need to worry about those too much. It is the screws with barrels (“Chicago screws”) that we need to worry about. These things have a way of slowly backing out over time, ultimately falling out and getting lost. It is important to periodically check the tightness and re-tighten as appropriate. This can be done with common hand tools. If you are experiencing this issue and do not need to remove or adjust the screws in the future, you can use threadlocker or even a dab of nail polish on the threads to help keep them from backing out. At the factory, we use o-rings or spacers in many places on your holster; do not remove these because these also help maintain tension on the screws to reduce the amount they back out over time.
