Leather Ammo Pouch

Benjamin David | September 28, 2018

I put together a nice leather ammo pouch to carry around my extra 270 ammo. I wanted one for a lot of reasons, tossing them in a pocket was dirty and disorganized, as was the case for tossing them in pack pocket, they made noise when loose, etc.

The design process is fairly simple, and making a pattern for a box the size of a cigarette pack isn’t inherently difficult. I made a pattern out of heavy paper, about the weight of a really light card stock, cut, folded and tested the size out. My design has no stitching visible from the front or sides for a neater cleaner look. I cut a block of wood the size of the internal cavity, and slapped together a small jig/press out of scraps. I cut my ammo pouch from one piece of leather per my template/design.

Right or wrong, when I work with leather I almost always mist the leather with a mineral free or purified water, put the leather in a jig/mold and let dry under some light pressure in the jig/mold, in a warm dry place. Even with a light weight leather, and hardly any water saturation, this helps hold the shape. Over doing it on the saturation of the leather will cause the leather to shrink, and ‘harden’. The goal isn’t to remove all the oils and turn it into a board, but that is what will happen if you aren’t careful.

I then spent an evening watching some episodes of various bullshit wilderness and survival ‘reality’ shows on Discovery, Nat Geo, and the like, whilst drilling out stitching holes with my vintage eggbeater hand drill, then cross stitching everything together with some waxed thread and Tandy leather working needles.

The angles were tight and a less pliable leather wouldn’t have allowed me to stitch such tight angles on a small leather ammo pouch so easily.

The ammo pouch was nice, but a little soft. The soft leather on hand that I used, wasn’t my first choice, but its what I had, and so I used it. To get a little more rigidity, I created a poly-type plastic insert. Its the same thing as the template, but trimmed to be slightly smaller. I couldn’t tell you exactly the material, or plastic type, because it was made from a dollar store place mat, as it was more economical, less work, and faster to get than a sheet of kydex. It also has a hip pineapple print in a color that works well with the brown leather.

I added a couple grommets, in the event it got submerged help it quickly drain, but mostly for aesthetics. I added a snap, trimmed the lid shape, and wax treated the whole thing with SC Johnson Fine Paste Wax

Written By Benjamin David

Benjamin is an avid outdoorsman with a wide range of experience hunting, fishing, climbing, and backacking. He brings his knowledge and experience, to Sportsman's Magazine, and is a major content contributor. Leave Ben a comment or question.