Riley Bowman: And welcome to the Concealed Carry
Riley Bowman: Podcast, part of the ConcealedCarry.com network, brought to you by HK.
Riley Bowman: Today is Wednesday. I don't know what date it is. March something.
Jacob Paulsen: 11th? 11th? 11th.
Riley Bowman: March 11th. Wednesday, March 11th, 2026. So everyone knows when we recorded
Riley Bowman: this, we are live on YouTube and Facebook, as we typically are with these podcasts.
Riley Bowman: And you're welcome to always join us live, of course. But for those of you that
Riley Bowman: are just listening to us, here we are.
Riley Bowman: We're doing the thing. It's Jacob and Riley.
Riley Bowman: It's been 10 years. In fact, we already did the whole 10-year episode.
Riley Bowman: We are going to talk about some – we're going to do a little follow-up from
Riley Bowman: the 10-year giveaway that we did. So we can do that now or we can do a quick sponsor message.
Jacob Paulsen: One than the other.
Riley Bowman: Okay. You didn't say which one, though. So, all right.
Riley Bowman: Today's episode, it'll become clear. Well, the title of the episode is all about
Riley Bowman: belts for concealed carry.
Riley Bowman: So, surprise, surprise. Today's episode is sponsored by EDC Belt Company and the Foundation Belt.
Riley Bowman: I've been rocking the Foundation Belt for five-ish years, I think,
Riley Bowman: at least. I don't know. Maybe even a bit longer.
Jacob Paulsen: Yeah, it feels...
Jacob Paulsen: Yeah somewhere there
Riley Bowman: Five five plus years yeah uh i i still have like no complaints really personally
Riley Bowman: about the foundation belt um and yes i'm a biased source because we sell them but yeah but.
Jacob Paulsen: We were using them before we started selling
Riley Bowman: Oh for sure yeah but my point is is like we're still
Riley Bowman: rocking these bad boys uh for you know
Riley Bowman: a number of years and still very very happy with
Riley Bowman: them we're not going to just talk about the foundation belt today
Riley Bowman: we're talking about a lot of different belts and what goes into a good
Riley Bowman: quality concealed carry built purpose built belt
Riley Bowman: but those of you that are interested in checking out what i
Riley Bowman: think is one of the finest concealed carry belts on the market you head
Riley Bowman: on over to edc belt co edc belt co.com and you can order your foundation belt
Riley Bowman: today you can also order the foundation belt directly on concealed carry.com
Riley Bowman: And you can also check out all of the belts we sell on ConcealedCarry.com.
Riley Bowman: You just go to the ConcealedCarry.com store and just go to the store and go
Riley Bowman: to shop and select belts. And it'll pull up all the different belts that we have in the store.
Riley Bowman: We'll talk probably about the Wilderness Tactical making some quality belts
Riley Bowman: as well. We sell a number of the Wilderness Tactical models.
Riley Bowman: They're excellent too. I've got a couple of them at home.
Riley Bowman: Still use them occasionally but
Riley Bowman: I do find myself I go right back to the foundation belt for the most part.
Jacob Paulsen: There you go.
Riley Bowman: Yeah. That's absolute sponsors. So a few weeks ago, we celebrated the 10-year
Riley Bowman: anniversary of the podcast along with a huge giveaway.
Riley Bowman: It's one of the bigger giveaways I think we've ever done.
Jacob Paulsen: Yeah. I don't know.
Riley Bowman: We've done a few giveaways, but this one was big because we had a couple of.
Jacob Paulsen: – It was a lot of stuff.
Riley Bowman: We had four guns we were giving away.
Jacob Paulsen: Yes.
Riley Bowman: A bunch of different products from companies like Palm, CRKT,
Riley Bowman: Columbia River Knife and Tool, uh hk there was ammo yeah there was some bad yep some.
Jacob Paulsen: Targets med kit yeah there's a lot of
Riley Bowman: Stuff a bunch of stuff uh so the winners have been selected from that 10-year
Riley Bowman: anniversary giveaway in.
Jacob Paulsen: Some cases many times over
Riley Bowman: Yes and that's one of the things we want to highlight for
Riley Bowman: you right now if you signed up for the
Riley Bowman: giveaway you want to make sure you check your email
Riley Bowman: okay and check your spam folder and all that because we've contacted a few uh
Riley Bowman: originally selected winners that have never gotten back to us and we have a
Riley Bowman: policy of giving you 72 hour window to reply back or we move on to the next
Riley Bowman: winner i think that's more than generous yeah.
Jacob Paulsen: And what we don't want to be is the guys who like well we contacted them all
Jacob Paulsen: if they don't respond i guess they don't get their prizes we want to make sure
Jacob Paulsen: that we actually you know people do win and do receive each of these prizes.
Jacob Paulsen: Absolutely. So we can't wait indefinitely.
Jacob Paulsen: Yeah, 72 hours. That's the deal. So we've already, yeah, we've already moved
Jacob Paulsen: past several people who didn't reply within 72 hours.
Jacob Paulsen: And we have about half of the prizes right now are pending response.
Riley Bowman: Yeah. Yeah. So, and it's been actually a couple of weeks. So people are taking
Riley Bowman: their time getting back to us. Yeah. That's the point.
Jacob Paulsen: So we're not getting back to us at all. Yeah, that's the problem.
Riley Bowman: Right, right. So we've got, hey, just to highlight, we had 15 total prizes.
Riley Bowman: Smaller prize winners uh a
Riley Bowman: couple of uh well we had a hk g36 22
Riley Bowman: long rifle rifle yeah sweet pretty cool um we had a couple of of the brand spanking
Riley Bowman: new tx9 handguns from taris um a mantis blackbeard that's pretty cool right
Riley Bowman: two knives from hk we had trauma kits from Mountain Medical, Victo Spag,
Riley Bowman: a knife from CRKT,
Riley Bowman: some glasses from Tactical RX, a KSG Armory holster voucher, EDC belt,
Riley Bowman: foundation belt, like we're going to talk about today.
Riley Bowman: Some targets from Throom and some palm pepper spray three packs.
Riley Bowman: A couple of winners of those.
Jacob Paulsen: Yeah.
Riley Bowman: I'm just giving you the kind of the highlights of the prizes.
Jacob Paulsen: Could be an email in your spam folder right now telling you that you won one of those things. Yep.
Riley Bowman: So guys, hope that you claim your prizes, those of you that have been selected.
Riley Bowman: We've got a lot of you that signed up for the giveaway and it was really cool to select the winners.
Riley Bowman: It's less cool when you have to move on from the winners to the next winner.
Riley Bowman: I guess it's cool for that person. But, but hey, we have a grand prize winner.
Riley Bowman: I wanted to highlight this one a little bit. So the grand prize was actually
Riley Bowman: a bundle prize. We had a ticket to the to the Guardian Conference for 2026, a quarter free quarter.
Riley Bowman: So three months worth of Guardian Nation membership was included as part of this.
Riley Bowman: An HKCC9 gun, okay, and O-Sight SE optic to go on that gun. It fits right on. You know, it's perfect.
Riley Bowman: A CRKT definitive crossbar knife, kind of a cool-looking knife.
Riley Bowman: A POM home and away bundle. It comes with, like, their usual little POM,
Riley Bowman: you know, units, as well as the MK3, which is a larger unit,
Riley Bowman: including also a home defense unit, which is, like, you know.
Jacob Paulsen: It looks like riot control level stuff,
Riley Bowman: You know.
Jacob Paulsen: Huge old canister. It's like you're running around with a fire extinguisher, but it's pepper spray.
Riley Bowman: Right, right. And then there was also 250 rounds from Mags & Co, 9mm ammo.
Riley Bowman: So it was a pretty awesome prize. And the winner did claim that prize. So that was pretty cool.
Jacob Paulsen: It was locked in.
Riley Bowman: Yeah. Were you mentioning who that is?
Jacob Paulsen: Yeah. They're from Texas. I mean, give a first name.
Riley Bowman: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Jacob Paulsen: I think it's cool for people to hear. It's not a super common name.
Jacob Paulsen: I forget. It starts with a W.
Riley Bowman: Let's see here. Wayland is his name.
Jacob Paulsen: Wayland. There you go. Wayland from Texas.
Riley Bowman: Congrats to Wayland in Texas for the grand prize winner.
Riley Bowman: That was awesome to see you get a pretty awesome bundle of prizes there.
Riley Bowman: I don't know what that would totally be valued at, but a lot.
Jacob Paulsen: It's muy bueno.
Riley Bowman: A couple thousand dollars worth of gear. It was fun to celebrate our 10-year
Riley Bowman: anniversary in this fashion.
Riley Bowman: Thanks again, everyone, for your support of the podcast for all these years.
Riley Bowman: And we'll see where we are in 10 years.
Riley Bowman: Don't know if we'll have another opportunity to do a... That just seems unfathomable.
Jacob Paulsen: Will there even be podcasts in 10 years?
Riley Bowman: Yeah, right.
Jacob Paulsen: Maybe we will have moved on.
Riley Bowman: I don't know. Anyway, guys, again, check your email in case you've been selected
Riley Bowman: and we'll look forward to getting more of those winners contacted.
Riley Bowman: So we're not announcing everybody here, but there you go,
Riley Bowman: Well, let's get back to the podcast topic today, all about belts for concealed carry, Jacob. Yep.
Jacob Paulsen: I suspect that every single concealed carrier listening to this or watching
Jacob Paulsen: this is guilty of having used a non-design-for-the-purpose gun belt to conceal a gun. I have. Oh, sure.
Jacob Paulsen: I just think it's one of those places where you're sort of like,
Jacob Paulsen: well, I got to buy all this stuff that the guy told me to in the class.
Jacob Paulsen: I gotta get a new gun all this stuff and
Jacob Paulsen: yeah he talked about belts but I have a belt
Jacob Paulsen: like at least I should try the belt I have right so I think that's just where
Jacob Paulsen: most of us start is with no gun belt at all let alone maybe an optimal belt
Jacob Paulsen: but yeah no belt oh I shouldn't say no belt I should say not a gun belt yeah
Jacob Paulsen: well I mean a standard kind of traditional it holds up to pants
Riley Bowman: If you are if you're new to concealed carry,
Riley Bowman: I would say There's a high probability you never even considered that what you
Riley Bowman: use for a belt, assuming you're carrying on the waist, which we,
Riley Bowman: you know, generally advocate for as being the best practice.
Riley Bowman: It's not going to be everybody's solution, but most people are probably carrying on or near the waist.
Riley Bowman: And if you're doing so, you might not have considered that, yeah,
Riley Bowman: there's a difference in using just a normal belt and using a belt that's purpose-built,
Riley Bowman: purpose-designed for supporting concealed carry on the waistband.
Riley Bowman: And that's really what we want to share with you here today because we know
Riley Bowman: there's going to be some of you out there who have never even thought about it.
Riley Bowman: Or maybe you've thought about it, but you just don't know.
Riley Bowman: What really matters and what makes a difference. So we'll talk about that.
Riley Bowman: We'll talk about what goes into, you know, these optimized for concealed carry belts.
Jacob Paulsen: I think we also need to clarify what they are not and that they are not like a duty belt.
Jacob Paulsen: We're not talking about a duty belt or a battle belt for those of you who your brain might go there.
Jacob Paulsen: But, you know, some of you have an experience, you know, maybe with law enforcement
Jacob Paulsen: or in private security or, you know, military, whatever it might be.
Jacob Paulsen: And when you think of like a gun belt, you think of something that's a little
Jacob Paulsen: bit more substantial than what we're talking about.
Jacob Paulsen: A big duty belt is going to have
Jacob Paulsen: it's going to be pretty significant because it has to support a lot of gear
Jacob Paulsen: from, I don't know, I'm not a cop, cuffs, radio, I don't know,
Jacob Paulsen: a bunch of M-A-G's and taser and I don't know, whatever other stuff they put on their belts.
Riley Bowman: Yep.
Jacob Paulsen: So that's not what we're talking about when we talk about a concealed carry
Jacob Paulsen: belt or if I use the word gun belt, I'm I'm really thinking of something more
Jacob Paulsen: EDC concealed carry focused.
Riley Bowman: Right, right. Likewise, there's certainly a place for kind of a duty belt style
Riley Bowman: or like a range setup perhaps, you know, that you only put on when you're going
Riley Bowman: to the range and you're doing outside waistband work or something.
Riley Bowman: Our intent is not to talk about that so much today because this is,
Riley Bowman: after all, the concealed carry podcast.
Jacob Paulsen: Yeah, but you need to know what you might run into if you just Google gun belt.
Jacob Paulsen: But another variation of belts that could be in that category would be like a competition rig.
Jacob Paulsen: I don't even own one of those, but you have a few. So a competition rig is designed
Jacob Paulsen: for some sort of competitive shooting sport that holds all sorts of stuff on
Jacob Paulsen: it too, primarily a whole bunch of mags.
Riley Bowman: Yeah, and even if we were to look at those, those are, again,
Riley Bowman: they're purpose built, purpose designed for that specific use.
Riley Bowman: I mean, a competition belt by nature is specific to that sport,
Riley Bowman: really, is kind of what we see.
Riley Bowman: Because what I use in USPSA isn't even what I would use if I was competing in IDPA, for instance.
Riley Bowman: Of course, IDPA is typically done from concealment.
Riley Bowman: At the very least having like a concealment vest over top
Riley Bowman: of things and and uh the in fact
Riley Bowman: by rules you can't even use the you
Riley Bowman: know the the belt that goes over our top you know like the competition belt
Riley Bowman: that we use in uspsa actually the by rules your belt has to go through your
Riley Bowman: belt loops you know in idpa so anyway not not really the intent of this podcast
Riley Bowman: but just since you mentioned it Yeah.
Jacob Paulsen: The point is gun belt could refer to a lot of things.
Jacob Paulsen: And I think we're trying to talk in today's episode about this sub niche of
Jacob Paulsen: that, which is a concealed carry belt or an EDC belt, if you prefer.
Riley Bowman: So if you're like me or like you, I suspect, in the beginning,
Riley Bowman: I mean, I remember I carried for a few years with just kind of a normal leather belt.
Riley Bowman: It wasn't uh i wouldn't say it was a weak weather leather belt but it was traditional
Riley Bowman: just a normal leather belt walmart.
Jacob Paulsen: Style you know i i bet you today they're probably like 15 bucks on amazon or
Riley Bowman: Something sure i.
Jacob Paulsen: Mean yeah it's it's black and it's got a buckle and holes every inch or something
Riley Bowman: And yeah yeah i mean it's i think probably one one i the one i used for quite
Riley Bowman: a while was uh was just a two-layer stitched leather belt it was a decent belt
Riley Bowman: it was it was not just your
Riley Bowman: you know cheap off the shelf walmart but it wasn't like a high-end one either
Riley Bowman: i think i paid like 40 bucks for it i.
Jacob Paulsen: Was the cheaper the better for me that's that's where i was absolutely
Riley Bowman: But you know i had that belt for quite a few years it served me well in fact
Riley Bowman: i think i still have it somewhere i just it hasn't hasn't been on my waist in
Riley Bowman: quite some time but uh so that's that's what i used for a number of years and
Riley Bowman: you know so it's non-reinforced um i wouldn't have called it flimsy at the time,
Riley Bowman: but I would now knowing what I know and, and, and using different gear now,
Riley Bowman: I'd be like, ah, that thing was flimsy.
Riley Bowman: Uh, but I thought it was like a pretty stout belt at the time, you know? Sure.
Riley Bowman: So at the time I thought that's, that was the right,
Riley Bowman: thing that was the right play you know that was just a decent quality um relatively
Riley Bowman: thick but not overly so leather belt uh and i at that time i also carried on
Riley Bowman: my hip or you know slightly behind the hip like four o'clock four four thirty
Riley Bowman: four something like that and it worked okay you know.
Jacob Paulsen: I mean i didn't know what i didn't know right and i think that's the point of
Jacob Paulsen: the kind of where we're starting off this episode is if you've never used anything
Jacob Paulsen: other than a pretty standard traditional belt and as far as you know it's it
Jacob Paulsen: just does what it does yeah and you you don't know what you're missing out on
Riley Bowman: Yeah so one thing i i noticed
Riley Bowman: after a few years of carrying wearing that belt is that it uh started to sag
Riley Bowman: kind of in you know the location where my gun was carried all the time um and
Riley Bowman: you know i didn't think that was i just thought that was natural and normal and like to be expected,
Riley Bowman: and so I didn't think anything of it.
Riley Bowman: I didn't think or realize that the belt was not helping me carry my gear and
Riley Bowman: support the gear more effectively than, you know, some of the other options out there.
Riley Bowman: So I think the first time I encountered a.
Riley Bowman: A reinforced belt of some kind was, oh man, early 2010s, you know,
Riley Bowman: I don't know, 2010, 2011, 2012.
Riley Bowman: I don't remember, but I remember the first belt I bought, I think I bought it
Riley Bowman: from, it was some gun store and it was, uh, it was a, a reinforced belt.
Riley Bowman: And I don't know whether it was steel or if it, you know, some are using like a,
Riley Bowman: like a, some kind of polymer plastic ribbing inside
Riley Bowman: there you know i don't know what it just said it was
Riley Bowman: reinforced i'm like all right cool it's reinforced but it was
Riley Bowman: definitely noticeably stiffer than what
Riley Bowman: i had been previously using and the first thing i noted from
Riley Bowman: the moment of putting that on was oh like
Riley Bowman: now the belt doesn't flex as much with the weight of the gun and it was notable
Riley Bowman: at the time to me and so all of a sudden i'm like oh this is the way to go and
Riley Bowman: so then i started using a number of different brands over the years of just
Riley Bowman: straight-up reinforced belts.
Riley Bowman: So, I mean, what was your experience?
Jacob Paulsen: I remember my first belt was a wilderness instructor belt, like my first, you know, gun-ish belt.
Jacob Paulsen: And it appealed to me, and this is going to sound so silly, but it appealed
Jacob Paulsen: to me because I saw an ad or someone, whoever, whatever the source was that I learned about it,
Jacob Paulsen: It said that you could repel with this thing. Like a helicopter could come and
Jacob Paulsen: pick you up and you could hook in on your belt.
Jacob Paulsen: I was like, that sounds awesome. That just sounds like I will never need that. And it sounds so cool.
Jacob Paulsen: So I was in. I was just like, yeah, I want that. I want the thing that a helicopter
Jacob Paulsen: could come and pick me up with.
Jacob Paulsen: So, yeah, I got the Wilderness Instructor Belt. And I love that belt.
Jacob Paulsen: I wore that belt. I still have that belt.
Jacob Paulsen: I still have. I think all of my gun belts I've ever owned. They have their own
Jacob Paulsen: little section in the closet.
Jacob Paulsen: But, yeah, I wore that belt for years. And, yes, it made a huge difference.
Jacob Paulsen: Immediately you can notice, because that's the first thing, the primary objective of the belt,
Jacob Paulsen: when we're talking about the CDC concealed carry application,
Jacob Paulsen: is that it's supposed to spread out the weight of the gun around the waist so
Jacob Paulsen: that you don't have – if all the weight is centered in one spot,
Jacob Paulsen: then you really have potential health issues.
Jacob Paulsen: It's not good for you, for your body, to be supporting all the weight in one place.
Jacob Paulsen: So the belt is distributing the weight of the gun around the body.
Jacob Paulsen: And it needs a certain amount of rigidity in order to do that.
Jacob Paulsen: And so, yes, going from almost no rigidity to suddenly serious rigidity, that was notable.
Jacob Paulsen: Because when all you're doing is holding up your pants, it really doesn't matter.
Jacob Paulsen: You can take some string or a rope and tie up your pants through the belt loops.
Jacob Paulsen: It'll keep your pants from falling down.
Jacob Paulsen: But when you put the gun on there, all of a sudden, that holster on there,
Jacob Paulsen: now you have an issue where you have that weight, a couple pounds.
Jacob Paulsen: And so, yes, a belt is distributing that, and it made an immediate difference.
Riley Bowman: So, yeah, likewise, all that, what you said, I noticed that right away is that
Riley Bowman: all of a sudden that reinforced belt was supporting the load of the gun much
Riley Bowman: better and it felt better, you know.
Riley Bowman: And so that became kind of my new norm for a few years.
Riley Bowman: So I think that's probably the first place I wanted to start with is just pointing
Riley Bowman: out, first of all, to carry a gun concealed on your waist.
Riley Bowman: Uh ideally it's to you want to have a belt
Riley Bowman: that has reinforcement of some kind ideally reinforced
Riley Bowman: uh mostly in this kind
Riley Bowman: of up and down you know plane uh supporting
Riley Bowman: the so the belt's not sagging so much uh
Riley Bowman: downward towards the guys gravity is going to
Riley Bowman: do its thing right you got a gun on your waist yeah and so obviously
Riley Bowman: gravity is going to want to pull that down and so i mean the belt can still
Riley Bowman: be flexible uh you know kind of the side to side plane if you will or but you
Riley Bowman: want in the vertical plane along the face of that belt to be ideally fairly
Riley Bowman: stiff to support that gun weight so yeah.
Jacob Paulsen: And i think this this is one of those things that we've talked about before
Jacob Paulsen: where you you kind of end up sometimes in extremes and without balance
Riley Bowman: Yep and.
Jacob Paulsen: That's probably the first like the first big aha for me after the obvious one
Jacob Paulsen: of just like no gun belt, two gun belt, you know, that, that was like,
Jacob Paulsen: Oh Jesus, way more comfortable distributing the weight.
Jacob Paulsen: But then the first big, big aha came when I realized that more stiff is not equal, more better.
Riley Bowman: Well, more stiff, you could argue, is better for supporting the gun.
Jacob Paulsen: Oh, sure, sure, sure.
Riley Bowman: But there's a downside, I think, is what you're trying to point out.
Riley Bowman: Right, right. It comes with a cost.
Riley Bowman: Yeah, so I remember there was a belt in particular that I had at one point that
Riley Bowman: I was like, man, this is the jam, you know, because it was a really stiff belt,
Riley Bowman: which meant it supported the gun really well.
Riley Bowman: But you know i i'd only make it three quarters of the way through the day before
Riley Bowman: i'm like oh man you know it's just uncomfortable dig.
Jacob Paulsen: It on the side a little bit
Riley Bowman: What you're saying is a stiff we can go really stiff
Riley Bowman: with a belt but then it's going to start impacting our
Riley Bowman: comfort uh and i remember
Riley Bowman: the first time we had a conversation about this with
Riley Bowman: uh brian eastridge a few years ago he's he's actually the creator
Riley Bowman: of the foundation belt and he was just talking
Riley Bowman: about how our torsos are shaped our
Riley Bowman: waists are shaped and i don't remember the exact terminology he
Riley Bowman: used at the time but i remember in my mind the way i made sense
Riley Bowman: of it is you know that that our bodies are oval
Riley Bowman: or you know in some cross sections almost like
Riley Bowman: a jelly bean in shape you know if we were to do a
Riley Bowman: cross section right through your through your belly or through your
Riley Bowman: midsection there look at your waist i mean you're kind
Riley Bowman: of either an oval or almost like a jelly bean and
Riley Bowman: well when you take a belt and particularly that a
Riley Bowman: belt that is stiffly reinforced and especially when it's reinforced in a uniform
Riley Bowman: fashion okay from in other words from you know north to east to south to west
Riley Bowman: and back to north again right then what that really means is that reinforced belt wants to be a circle.
Riley Bowman: Right. And this is, I remember this was a conversation I had with Brian and
Riley Bowman: he's just like, Hey, you know, a standard belt, it's just like,
Riley Bowman: it's a circle and you're trying to fit, you know, a jelly bean or oval into a circle.
Riley Bowman: And like, yeah, you could do that. And over time, the belt will settle in and
Riley Bowman: break in a little bit too, but you still kind of end up with these like almost
Riley Bowman: pinchy points. And for me, it's like right sort of in the back corners of my hips.
Jacob Paulsen: Just almost right behind the center of the side of his. Yeah.
Riley Bowman: You know, I'd feel like this extra pressure back there and stuff.
Riley Bowman: And so that's, that's when I realized, okay,
Riley Bowman: you know, that stiff belt was, was great to a point, but you can go so stiff,
Riley Bowman: especially that now, and especially where it's uniformly stiff like that,
Riley Bowman: that now it's going to start kind of compressing in on those corners a little bit more.
Jacob Paulsen: And you see advertising for, you know, can still carry belts where,
Jacob Paulsen: the one that sticks out in my mind that I'll just never forget is these guys
Jacob Paulsen: were, the ad basically said, it's so stiff you can stand on it.
Riley Bowman: Yes. Yes. Right?
Jacob Paulsen: You could stand on our belt and it will not sag or bend or fold. Like, you know.
Riley Bowman: They made a big deal of that to the point that people were taking pictures of
Riley Bowman: themselves standing on their belts.
Jacob Paulsen: Yeah, probably it was great viral marketing. Right? Like, check out my new belt.
Jacob Paulsen: This is me standing on it.
Jacob Paulsen: But, yeah, there was that huge aha moment for me where I was like,
Jacob Paulsen: man, if you wear a hula hoop, it's going to be a problem.
Riley Bowman: Yes, yes. And I'm going to talk about hula hoops again here in a minute.
Jacob Paulsen: Yeah, we're going to have to come back to it. But, yeah, so there's this balance
Jacob Paulsen: of stiffness where we need the belt to be stiff enough to support the gun,
Jacob Paulsen: to distribute the weight of the
Jacob Paulsen: gun, and to prevent sagging of the gun wherever it is on the waistline.
Jacob Paulsen: But if it, you know, the stiffer that belt gets, we start to jeopardize comfort.
Jacob Paulsen: And there's some other practical application things beyond just comfort too.
Jacob Paulsen: Like if you, if the body, if the belt is not conformed to the body's shape,
Jacob Paulsen: then as you move, you cause other problems beyond comfort.
Jacob Paulsen: I mean, comfort continues to be an issue as you move, let alone when you stand still or sit still.
Jacob Paulsen: But we also effectively start to print the belt.
Riley Bowman: Yeah, so that's kind of what I mentioned. I was going to talk about hula hoops.
Riley Bowman: And I have experienced this. I have felt this. So you can get to a point that
Riley Bowman: your belt is so stiff on your waist.
Riley Bowman: And it becomes especially noticeable if you carry forward of the hips.
Riley Bowman: So like appendix style carry.
Riley Bowman: You'll feel this a bit more because of just where that gun is sitting.
Riley Bowman: But um in other words like where
Riley Bowman: the belt is tightest on you is going to be at you
Riley Bowman: know kind of where your hips are right right and where it has
Riley Bowman: a little bit less pressure is in the in the front and back um
Riley Bowman: and so when you have a really stiff belt it can be like a hula hoop and you
Riley Bowman: stick your waist inside that and you can have belts that are so stiff that like
Riley Bowman: It almost feels like there's a hula hoop on your waist to the point where it's
Riley Bowman: almost moving independent of your body.
Riley Bowman: And that can cause some printing issues. And also, it just feels strange,
Riley Bowman: actually, because I like my gun to feel close to my body and that it's moving
Riley Bowman: with me and not independent of me.
Riley Bowman: And so I had that belt I was referencing a minute ago that was really stiff.
Riley Bowman: Like there would be times like I would, I would twist and I'd,
Riley Bowman: I'd feel like my torso moving separate from like everything else.
Riley Bowman: And that was just like a really strange feeling.
Riley Bowman: So I did want to talk about concealment a little bit because I think this is
Riley Bowman: important, an important distinction to also make in this discussion that, um.
Riley Bowman: When you go to a stiff reinforced belt, particularly a more traditional one,
Riley Bowman: like, you know, they've made these for a number of years now.
Riley Bowman: It works pretty well, I think, if you're carrying on the hip.
Riley Bowman: You know, you might have some comfort issues. And we're going to talk about,
Riley Bowman: you know, the alternative to having a uniformly stiff belt.
Riley Bowman: But I think that system works pretty well if you're carrying on or behind the
Riley Bowman: hip, having that style of stiff, reinforced belt.
Riley Bowman: Uh, when, one thing I remember noticing with a stiff belt is that it actually
Riley Bowman: made my wing or claw on my holster more effective.
Riley Bowman: And that's something, you know, we can go down that rabbit hole a little bit
Riley Bowman: here, but for those that aren't familiar, the claw or wing on your holster,
Riley Bowman: uh, this is a more recent development in holster technology.
Riley Bowman: You know, it's become really a thing in the last decade or so.
Riley Bowman: They've been around for a while, but for a long time, holsters didn't use this technology, right?
Riley Bowman: But once we started adding that claw or wing to the holster, it helps tuck the grip.
Riley Bowman: It basically helps orient the grip in towards the body.
Riley Bowman: And that's dependent upon the belt actually applying pressure to that wing.
Jacob Paulsen: Yes.
Riley Bowman: And so if you're using, you know, sometimes I've seen questions come up on online
Riley Bowman: in various forums or whatever.
Riley Bowman: People are talking about concealment issues and they're using,
Riley Bowman: you know, a fairly modern holster. It's got a wing on it and they're like,
Riley Bowman: I'm still struggling to get this grip to tuck in.
Riley Bowman: And it's like, well, what are you using for a belt? You know,
Riley Bowman: and a lot of times it's pretty common to find out they're just using a standard
Riley Bowman: belt. And that's going to be part of the explanation of why that wing is not
Riley Bowman: applying the leverage that it's supposed to.
Riley Bowman: And so I noticed when I first started using a really stiff belt,
Riley Bowman: it was like, oh, wow, now this thing is really concealing well.
Riley Bowman: But to a point when the belt is so stiff, like it can only suck into the body so tight.
Riley Bowman: And you said like you could almost like see the belt start to print.
Riley Bowman: And I've experienced that.
Jacob Paulsen: Yeah, it's... Well, speaking of printing, too, remember the buckle.
Jacob Paulsen: So, yeah, I mentioned my Wilderness Instructor Belt, and I loved my Wilderness
Jacob Paulsen: Instructor Belt. I think they...
Jacob Paulsen: And they're just great. But that's one that has a very specific application.
Jacob Paulsen: And EDC carry with the t-shirt is probably not the intended application of that particular belt.
Jacob Paulsen: And it, like a lot of other concealed carry belts, has a very large buckle.
Jacob Paulsen: And that buckle, I mean, I've had experiences where friends who know I carry
Jacob Paulsen: a gun saw the buckle through the shirt and thought it was my gun.
Jacob Paulsen: We're like, hey, you're printing. And I'm like, that's not my gun. That's my belt buckle.
Jacob Paulsen: And it's like, talk about a problem. Good job concealing your gun,
Jacob Paulsen: but your belt buckle is still freaking huge.
Jacob Paulsen: People think it's a gun coming through your shirt.
Jacob Paulsen: Another common one we see a lot, we see a lot of these companies who make belts
Jacob Paulsen: with what I'll call the Cobra buckle.
Jacob Paulsen: And it's a generic enough thing now that everybody can go source some Cobra
Jacob Paulsen: buckles and put them on their belts.
Jacob Paulsen: But it's a relatively bulky buckle.
Jacob Paulsen: It just it just prints I mean maybe not depending on what you're wearing or
Jacob Paulsen: if you're wearing loose enough clothing and things so some of you might say
Jacob Paulsen: oh it's not an issue for me I don't have that problem you know so clothing can
Jacob Paulsen: solve all all concealment related issues but
Jacob Paulsen: certainly if your belt buckle is printing through your shirt more than your gun
Jacob Paulsen: I'd say yeah i'd say that's a
Riley Bowman: Problem that's a problem for sure yeah yeah no i agree with that yeah i had
Riley Bowman: one with the cobra buckle which i think the buckle is awesome oh great it's
Riley Bowman: very efficient it's easy to click in and click out you know undo and all that
Riley Bowman: um pretty cool little setup,
Riley Bowman: but uh that you know that was a belt that was just too stiff uh it caused some
Riley Bowman: comfort issues for sure like it'd be interesting to go back to one of those
Riley Bowman: now and i'm sure i'd very quickly dislike it because I'd be like, oh,
Riley Bowman: wow, compared to, you know, what I'm using right now,
Riley Bowman: it's, it's just not even, it's night and day difference in terms of comfort.
Riley Bowman: So, so, um, let's talk a, kind of shift a little bit.
Riley Bowman: Unless, you know, I mean, you're welcome to obviously.
Jacob Paulsen: I was going to talk about some good buckles.
Riley Bowman: Okay, yeah. Since we're on the topic of buckles.
Jacob Paulsen: Yeah, yeah, buckles. So one I like that I recently have been using here and
Jacob Paulsen: there. Here it is. I found it. The Wilderness Tactical Swift Belt.
Jacob Paulsen: Have you seen this buckle? I'm going to show you a picture.
Riley Bowman: Yep, yep. Just, yeah.
Jacob Paulsen: So it's an interesting kind of setup because it's one of these where you kind
Jacob Paulsen: of have a fixed width of the belt.
Jacob Paulsen: You kind of set, you know, how big you want this belt to be.
Jacob Paulsen: And then it's kind of a quick on and off to attach, which is similar to a Cobra buckle, for example.
Jacob Paulsen: But it's super low profile. The Wilderness Tactical Swift belt has a very low profile buckle.
Jacob Paulsen: It's just not taking a lot of space, but it's highly efficient.
Jacob Paulsen: Of course, we've talked about the Foundation Belt from EDC Belt Co.,
Jacob Paulsen: which I have on right now. I assume you probably do too.
Riley Bowman: Oh, yeah, absolutely.
Jacob Paulsen: I don't know if they made up the name for this buckle or if it's like an industry
Jacob Paulsen: standard thing, but they call it the tri-glide that's a thing
Jacob Paulsen: the tri-glide buckle and it's made out of brass it's extremely low profile I
Jacob Paulsen: can't imagine you coming up with a belt buckle that takes up less space under
Jacob Paulsen: the shirt and on the belt than this it's tiny
Jacob Paulsen: so I really appreciate those kinds of buckles in the case of an EDC can still
Jacob Paulsen: carry belt they're taking up very little room, very little space Yeah.
Riley Bowman: Uh, I've got some other belts that are very similar with that,
Riley Bowman: that Swift belt, uh, buckle style.
Riley Bowman: They're a little bit different, you know, they look a little different,
Riley Bowman: but they function the same way. Sure.
Riley Bowman: We're just, it's basically like a hook, you know, that you're,
Riley Bowman: you know, putting through the loop or something on the belt, um, or the belt itself.
Riley Bowman: And, uh, those are pretty effective. Uh, you know, I haven't had any issues with those at all.
Riley Bowman: So, you know, honestly, if the foundation belt was set up like that,
Riley Bowman: it wouldn't really bother me one way or another as far as that buckle is concerned.
Riley Bowman: They're both, like you mentioned, the tri-glide like is used on the foundation
Riley Bowman: belt or that swift belt style is, you know, all the same to me as far as good
Riley Bowman: low profile, easy to use.
Riley Bowman: One thing, if you travel a lot, if you fly a lot, I haven't been flying as much
Riley Bowman: the last year or two, but it's actually...
Riley Bowman: It's, it's, I'll tell you this, you will not set off metal detectors using something
Riley Bowman: like the foundation belt because the buckle itself is not steel or containing the iron.
Riley Bowman: As you mentioned, it's brass. It's been nickel plated.
Riley Bowman: It's nickel plated brass, but it, you know, there's nothing about this belt
Riley Bowman: that will set off metal detectors.
Jacob Paulsen: Which is super convenient.
Riley Bowman: And I've, you know, they tell you, you're supposed to take your belt off when he goes to the airport.
Riley Bowman: Pretty often, I don't take mine off. Now, some of their scanners now,
Riley Bowman: of course, will still pick it up. they're like oh there's something there and
Riley Bowman: like i'll just lift up my shirt and they look at it they're like okay you're
Riley Bowman: good carry on so i you know i just go right through with my.
Jacob Paulsen: Belt i appreciate not having or and there's other situations you know i went
Jacob Paulsen: to a hospital recently i had to go through a metal detector yeah um you know
Jacob Paulsen: i've got a sheriff's office on occasion here there for uh any number of reasons
Jacob Paulsen: and have to go through a metal detector so yeah like yeah don't have to take
Jacob Paulsen: my belt off um and sometimes they'll ask like oh what about your belt mike it's no metal
Riley Bowman: Yeah you.
Jacob Paulsen: Know i'm good so yes i i appreciate that that it's not a metal that i have to
Jacob Paulsen: worry about in that respect yeah yeah
Riley Bowman: By the way i do want to recognize we've got a lot of great you
Riley Bowman: know we've got a lot of comments coming on uh facebook especially a little bit
Riley Bowman: on youtube uh appreciate those of you that are commenting um there's not not
Riley Bowman: all comments or questions we're going to be able to address just so you know
Riley Bowman: some of these will probably take us off topic uh but real quick I think we should
Riley Bowman: just handle Brian's question real quick, Jacob.
Riley Bowman: Is it better to carry in a holster on a belt, since we were talking about,
Riley Bowman: you know, on the belt carry, or just carry in a front pocket?
Riley Bowman: And so I just thought I'd get your quick take on that.
Jacob Paulsen: It's the good old usual depends, right? Yeah.
Jacob Paulsen: I think if we take into context all the various things that an average person does on an average day,
Jacob Paulsen: then probably we tend to find that IWB on a belt is the most efficient way to
Jacob Paulsen: conceal a gun that's easy to access for deployment in a self-defense context.
Jacob Paulsen: But there's exceptions, right? So I think that that's what you find most people
Jacob Paulsen: do because it seems to be the most universally applicable effective option.
Jacob Paulsen: But it doesn't make it the most effective option for every person or in every
Jacob Paulsen: context or with every gun.
Riley Bowman: Yeah. I agree. It depends. Some quick feedback to that question from me would
Riley Bowman: be I have found in my study for a number of years now,
Riley Bowman: the concealed carry lifestyle that the best well-rounded approach to carrying
Riley Bowman: a gun for typical daily use is on the belt.
Riley Bowman: And the way to evaluate this, Brian, is to consider the pros and cons.
Riley Bowman: And I think that pocket carry has more cons than just carrying on the belt.
Riley Bowman: The biggest con of carrying on the belt is that there's maybe a higher probability
Riley Bowman: of printing issues or concealment type issues.
Riley Bowman: You just have to balance that a little bit more as far as the holster you're
Riley Bowman: using, the gun you're carrying, and of course the belt's part of this and whether
Riley Bowman: that's gonna effectively carry it in a concealed fashion that's also comfortable.
Riley Bowman: The pocket though, just has a couple of major drawbacks.
Riley Bowman: Number one being it's just slower
Riley Bowman: to access unless you can start with your hand on the gun in the pocket.
Riley Bowman: That's the only way that that's faster. Otherwise it is all around less fast.
Riley Bowman: And there's going to be situations where you need a gun, potentially,
Riley Bowman: that you can't start with your hand in the pocket.
Jacob Paulsen: I think the probability is higher that you need an immediate response,
Jacob Paulsen: not a surreptitious draw.
Jacob Paulsen: Right. So it's less likely to be an advantage than it is to be a disadvantage.
Riley Bowman: Another major disadvantage of pocket carry is you're almost certainly limited to pretty small guns.
Jacob Paulsen: Yeah, low capacity, small,
Riley Bowman: Difficult shoe. Low capacity, hard to shoot, exactly. And so that's the big
Riley Bowman: stuff there that I would consider Brian.
Jacob Paulsen: Last thought on Brian's comment is the way that his question is worded suggests
Jacob Paulsen: that he may be thinking holster on belt as an option or no holster in a pocket as the other.
Jacob Paulsen: So it's just worth noting that even if carrying in a front pocket,
Jacob Paulsen: you should still have a pocket holster involved.
Riley Bowman: Oh, for sure. Yeah, always. In fact, the next comment, I think there might have
Riley Bowman: been a reply to this was from Alberto, and he said, always holster.
Riley Bowman: So that's probably his opinion on that if that wasn't clear,
Riley Bowman: also Jeffrey comments saying I'm guessing this is what he carries HK VP9SK in
Riley Bowman: an Omni ISWB on a 1791 belt does a trick.
Jacob Paulsen: If it works for you brother
Riley Bowman: Hey it's a great choice of gun that's for sure.
Jacob Paulsen: No problem. Yeah. I mean, obviously you should be carrying a KSG Lexington instead
Jacob Paulsen: of that Omni ISWB, but you know, teach their own, you know, whatever,
Jacob Paulsen: whatever is all good. That's right.
Jacob Paulsen: 1791 is a leather business. And so companies that make holsters tend to be in
Jacob Paulsen: the belt business, especially if you make leather holsters, because if you make
Jacob Paulsen: leather holsters, it's not a far stretch for you to start making belts.
Jacob Paulsen: Yeah. The same materials are already in house. Like we need a couple of pieces of hardware.
Jacob Paulsen: We need a couple of patterns, cut it different, sew it different.
Jacob Paulsen: Yep. So you tend to find the holster companies are the biggest sellers of concealed carry belts.
Jacob Paulsen: In fact, our company is an exception in that way in that KSG Armory does not
Jacob Paulsen: make or sell any belts, which is our holster business.
Jacob Paulsen: And we support or primarily promote the EDC Belt Co. Foundation Belt,
Jacob Paulsen: which they don't make any holsters.
Jacob Paulsen: So anyway, I just put that out there that you tend to find the holster companies
Jacob Paulsen: make belts and belt companies make holsters and they tend to go hand in hand
Jacob Paulsen: because it is a system and it tends to work together.
Riley Bowman: For sure. For sure. I think this is a good point to transition a little bit.
Riley Bowman: I actually wanted to address maybe what are some of the different pros and cons
Riley Bowman: of different styles of belts.
Jacob Paulsen: Yeah.
Riley Bowman: And so you mentioned specifically like there's leather belts out there, obviously.
Riley Bowman: Most leather belts not all but most leather belts typically are,
Riley Bowman: again there are some exceptions and of course i'm thinking of like
Riley Bowman: we'll come to that next belt or you know
Riley Bowman: click style belts but most leather belts in the
Riley Bowman: traditional sense are a buckle with holes
Riley Bowman: right you know about every inch or whatever okay and so that's a very traditional
Riley Bowman: belt design been probably used for hundreds of years and uh the problem with
Riley Bowman: that is that you're limited to every inch adjustments yeah.
Jacob Paulsen: So adjustability is is the is the point here right and I think you're spot-on
Jacob Paulsen: This is going to sound a little bit bizarre to the unindoctrinated, right?
Jacob Paulsen: To those of you who are new who have never used a gun or concealed carry belt.
Jacob Paulsen: But having the ability to adjust it by quarter inch, half inch,
Jacob Paulsen: is actually pretty substantial as far as like it's a big deal.
Jacob Paulsen: I find myself adjusting my belt quite a bit. And so having the adjustability
Jacob Paulsen: to, you know, I call it infinite adjustability.
Jacob Paulsen: So infinite adjustability is a really nice feature to be able to say a little
Jacob Paulsen: tighter, a little looser.
Jacob Paulsen: And a lot of that's context for me it's like i'm home
Jacob Paulsen: now i careth not if i print so i'm
Jacob Paulsen: happy to loosen my belt a little bit get a little bit more you know increase comfort
Jacob Paulsen: decrease concealability because i'm at my house you
Jacob Paulsen: know that that kind of thing um so so it
Jacob Paulsen: takes very little adjustment sometimes to make a difference uh it's
Jacob Paulsen: like oh you know what like the shirt i'm wearing today turns out
Jacob Paulsen: it's a little tight on me and my gun's printing a little bit i think i'll just tighten
Jacob Paulsen: down this belt just a little bit you know cool cool
Jacob Paulsen: i'm good now that grip is now tucked a little bit
Jacob Paulsen: tighter you know put a little more pressure on that
Jacob Paulsen: wing whatever it is and and now i'm golden so yeah this idea of infinite adjustability
Jacob Paulsen: matters a lot and there's generally two ways infinite adjustability is provided
Jacob Paulsen: by a belt the first is velcro and the second is is a click style belt we have
Jacob Paulsen: to be careful with saying click style belt because there's also a brand of of click belts.
Jacob Paulsen: But anyway, so the click belts are what they sound like.
Jacob Paulsen: This kind of these little, uh, like Ridge style, plastic middle piece of the belt.
Jacob Paulsen: And as it's going through the buckle, ratcheting, ratcheting,
Jacob Paulsen: that's the word I was looking for. Very well said.
Riley Bowman: Yep.
Jacob Paulsen: And so it's, it,
Jacob Paulsen: Our grand prize winner just tried calling me back.
Riley Bowman: Oh, wow. Yeah.
Jacob Paulsen: How about that? Sorry, Wayland in Texas. I'll call you back.
Jacob Paulsen: So, yeah, so the ratcheting style kind of thing. And those are like quarter-inch
Jacob Paulsen: adjustments. Sometimes they're even tighter.
Jacob Paulsen: Most of them are quarter-inch adjustments. And a lot of brands now that make
Jacob Paulsen: and sell those in lots of different materials. You can get that in nylon belt
Jacob Paulsen: or leather belt, whatever.
Jacob Paulsen: And then Velcro, as I mentioned. The Velcro, a little bit different, obviously.
Jacob Paulsen: But, you know, it's a similar kind of thing. You're just kind of putting the
Jacob Paulsen: belt material through something and then tightening it as much as you want and
Jacob Paulsen: securing it with Velcro.
Jacob Paulsen: Both of them noteworthy to, say, make noise.
Jacob Paulsen: So I don't know of any, like, real silent adjustability belt options.
Jacob Paulsen: If you've got the click thing, then you go click, click, click,
Jacob Paulsen: you know, as you tighten it up. Or if you loosen it, maybe they don't.
Jacob Paulsen: I guess you don't make any sense if you loosen it.
Jacob Paulsen: And on the Velcro, same thing. It's like, you know, to pull the Velcro apart,
Jacob Paulsen: then tighten it, loosen it, and put it back.
Riley Bowman: Yeah. Some people have made the comment about, you know, noise being a problem,
Riley Bowman: like, especially with, like, Velcro belts.
Riley Bowman: And I have never found myself in a situation where I felt like I was giving something away.
Jacob Paulsen: It doesn't bother me at all.
Riley Bowman: You know, like, see if you can hear this, right? Like, that's about the extent.
Jacob Paulsen: It's not a big deal.
Riley Bowman: I'll get closer to the mic even, you know? Like, I mean.
Jacob Paulsen: This looks kind of funny to watch.
Riley Bowman: Right? I guess I could have done it using this one.
Riley Bowman: Okay, there you go.
Jacob Paulsen: That was close to the mic, yeah.
Riley Bowman: I think Velcro or hook and loop is universally used enough in today's world
Riley Bowman: that I've never worried about that at all.
Jacob Paulsen: Yeah, I can't imagine. I'm in the
Riley Bowman: Restroom or something in a stall, and I'm like somebody's going to freak out
Riley Bowman: because they hear Velcro? I don't think so.
Jacob Paulsen: Yeah, you're probably not adjusting your belt in a place where sound is an issue
Jacob Paulsen: to begin with for the other reasons. So, yeah, to me it's not an issue,
Jacob Paulsen: but I think it's worth saying out loud that the price of infinite adjustability
Jacob Paulsen: is some noise when you make an adjustment.
Riley Bowman: Yeah. So the ratcheting style belts have become quite popular over the last
Riley Bowman: few years. And I've used some of those.
Riley Bowman: And I don't dislike them. You can get some really cool designs.
Riley Bowman: They usually have a buckle to them that can have any number of designs to that
Riley Bowman: buckle. They can be quite fashionable.
Riley Bowman: I don't usually worry about that so much because I'm not normally exposing it
Riley Bowman: because it's part of my concealed carry setup, right?
Riley Bowman: So I don't really care so much what the belt looks like necessarily, but...
Riley Bowman: But there's some cool belts out there and some cool brands making them.
Riley Bowman: I have seen some that marketed themselves as being gun belts or concealed carry focused.
Riley Bowman: And then when I got my hands on them, was a little bit unimpressed with the
Riley Bowman: lack of reinforcement to them as far as like how rigid they were supporting
Riley Bowman: the gun, you know, in terms of fighting against gravity.
Riley Bowman: Then I've seen some others that have become quite popular. And I'm not going
Riley Bowman: to mention specific brands.
Riley Bowman: That are actually really stiff, surprisingly so, like more so than what I would want to have.
Riley Bowman: And they have all the same problems, like what we talked about earlier,
Riley Bowman: that they're uniformly stiff throughout the belt.
Riley Bowman: And so you're taking something that wants to be a uniform circle and you're
Riley Bowman: trying to conform an oval inside of that.
Jacob Paulsen: It's not functional. What I tend to see, well, and it's worth noting too,
Jacob Paulsen: that you might need more than one belt based on different things you wear.
Jacob Paulsen: I have two concealed carry belts I regularly use.
Jacob Paulsen: One is kind of the Monday through Saturday belt. The other one's the Sunday
Jacob Paulsen: belt. So on Sunday, I'm dressed nicer.
Jacob Paulsen: I don't want to use a nylon coyote tan belt with my suit.
Jacob Paulsen: That i wear to church so uh there i'm putting on a leather belt yep you know
Jacob Paulsen: so i think you have to have different styles for different things too i mean
Jacob Paulsen: you know edc belt co doesn't make a leather belt so i'm using a different belt
Jacob Paulsen: a competing belt in that case and that's okay but with leather
Jacob Paulsen: Okay i guess what i want to talk about i want to talk about construction here
Jacob Paulsen: because there's a couple different ways to create you know the reinforced thing
Jacob Paulsen: to make the belt be be reinforced One way is just thicker, like more layers of material.
Jacob Paulsen: More layers of material. In the case of leather, we generally see two or three
Jacob Paulsen: layers. Three layers starts to get really freaking thick.
Jacob Paulsen: And so that becomes a thing. In the case of nylon, we generally see,
Jacob Paulsen: again, two or three layers of the nylon webbing kind of material.
Jacob Paulsen: So that's one way. We just add more layers of material.
Jacob Paulsen: The other way is some sort of like material in the middle.
Jacob Paulsen: We put material in it. And you talked about this a little bit at the beginning
Jacob Paulsen: of the episode. when you talk about a steel core or some sort of polymer plastic type core.
Jacob Paulsen: We see scuba webbing used. There's some sort of material that's in the middle
Jacob Paulsen: of the material that is a solid-ish material.
Jacob Paulsen: So those are things to look for. When you're looking at a belt and it's describing
Jacob Paulsen: how it's made, how it's manufactured, what's included, you can look for that.
Jacob Paulsen: If you see something that's like triple layer leather with steel core,
Jacob Paulsen: It's like, okay, that's going to be one of those things that you could repel
Jacob Paulsen: off of for sure, but it's never going to conform to the body, the shape of the body.
Jacob Paulsen: Which, by the way, I noticed earlier when you talked about chopping someone
Jacob Paulsen: in half and saying that their body would be shaped like a bean, you talked about me.
Jacob Paulsen: You know, is that because I'm getting a little bit, you know, big? Is that?
Riley Bowman: I'm a jelly bean.
Jacob Paulsen: Okay. Just making sure, you know, I wasn't getting made fun of. You know, got my.
Riley Bowman: I mean, what I mean by that, by the way, is that typically, and this is true of many humans.
Riley Bowman: I mean, there's going to be different degrees of size, obviously.
Riley Bowman: But like generally we're round across the front.
Riley Bowman: We're rounder around the hips and across the back is more flat.
Jacob Paulsen: Flat slash even concaved a little. Yeah.
Riley Bowman: And that's what I'm talking about, like jelly bean shape.
Jacob Paulsen: Yeah. No, well said. So I think those are all, like, we got to think about the
Jacob Paulsen: construction and how we're achieving it.
Jacob Paulsen: Along these same lines, if I can transition us a little bit,
Jacob Paulsen: you got to think about belt width.
Jacob Paulsen: So traditional belts that, you know, I was buying before I was concerned about
Jacob Paulsen: having a concealed carry belt or a gun belt, all the belts I owned were one
Jacob Paulsen: inches wide, one inch wide.
Jacob Paulsen: Yeah. And traditionally, you can't buy a pair of pants that aren't going to
Jacob Paulsen: accept a one-inch belt, whether it's jeans or my suit pants or some slacks or whatever it is.
Jacob Paulsen: Those are all going to be fine with a one-inch belt. But we tend to find it's
Jacob Paulsen: more difficult to achieve the objective on a concealed carry belt or a gun belt
Jacob Paulsen: with only one inch to work with.
Jacob Paulsen: It's hard to build it in a way that's going to be stiff enough to get the job
Jacob Paulsen: done. And so you tend to find that most concealed carry belts are one and a
Jacob Paulsen: half inches. That's a very kind of standardized size.
Jacob Paulsen: Certainly you can go buy them that are one and three quarters or even two inches,
Jacob Paulsen: but you start to then have issues with traditional clothing. Yep.
Riley Bowman: Absolutely. I think where today's market has settled is that most gun-focused
Riley Bowman: belts, especially concealed carry belts, are one and a half inch belt.
Jacob Paulsen: Yes.
Riley Bowman: Which, that is good to point out because I have seen some pants that have belt
Riley Bowman: loops that are like one and a half inches is like max.
Jacob Paulsen: Well, and it's sort of like a margin of error kind of problem.
Jacob Paulsen: Like if, like my, my, I have pants for sure where you, if you measured the belt
Jacob Paulsen: buckles, you'd be like, well, the company who made these pants said it's a one
Jacob Paulsen: and a half inch, but it's really not. Yeah. It's just, it's just shy of that.
Jacob Paulsen: Or, you know, I bought this belt and the belt company said that it was a one
Jacob Paulsen: and a half inch belt, but it's, it's really not.
Jacob Paulsen: It's more like 1.55 inches.
Jacob Paulsen: Right. So there's this tolerance of manufacturing both in pants and in belts
Jacob Paulsen: where you might think you got it because you got a one-and-a-half-inch belt
Jacob Paulsen: loop and a one-and-a-half-inch belt, and you go to put that together, it doesn't work out.
Jacob Paulsen: Sometimes it's about thickness. It's like, no, it should work.
Jacob Paulsen: It's a one-and-a-half-inch loop and a one-and-a-half-inch belt,
Jacob Paulsen: but because the belt is so thick, it flexes the buckle in a way that it won't fit.
Jacob Paulsen: So anyway, that's worth understanding and considering that your average pair
Jacob Paulsen: of jeans probably have tolerances to the degree it's not a problem.
Jacob Paulsen: But certainly in dress clothing, I tend to find that my margin of error is much tighter.
Riley Bowman: Yep. All good points to point out there and to be aware of as you're shopping
Riley Bowman: for things, shopping for clothes, pants, belts, all that.
Riley Bowman: Let's talk now, we've alluded to it.
Riley Bowman: It's sponsored today's episode, but let's talk about kind of a more recent innovation in the belt market.
Riley Bowman: It's not the only belt company doing this now. There's only a couple of them.
Jacob Paulsen: I think it was the first.
Riley Bowman: I think it is the first for sure. So we talked about some of the downsides of
Riley Bowman: having a uniformly stiffened belt.
Riley Bowman: So a few years ago, you know, six, seven, I don't know how many years now,
Riley Bowman: Brian Eastridge, the creator of the foundation belt.
Riley Bowman: He got to thinking, and I think he did a good job thinking with all of this,
Riley Bowman: and he created the foundation belt, which is not uniformly stiff throughout the belt structure.
Riley Bowman: And so let me just describe this belt to you really quick. It is made primarily
Riley Bowman: from nylon, a nylon webbing material that is the outside and inside portions of the belt.
Riley Bowman: It's got a portion of it that is a nylon inner layer as well.
Riley Bowman: So it is actually technically three layers, but they're compact layers.
Riley Bowman: But there is certain portions of this belt that has, you referenced it earlier,
Riley Bowman: scuba webbing as a stiffener in there.
Riley Bowman: Okay. And that portion is just a little bit thicker. It's really almost like
Riley Bowman: you probably can't even see it on the camera, those of you that are watching live.
Jacob Paulsen: You can't tell. If you're holding it in your hand, you can definitely tell.
Riley Bowman: Yeah. You can feel, you can tell where the stiffer parts are.
Riley Bowman: But basically the idea behind this is that and it's more geared towards those
Riley Bowman: that are carrying like a forward of the hip although i think it works pretty
Riley Bowman: well with on the hip carry as well i've certainly done yeah.
Jacob Paulsen: Three to four o'clock even but yeah
Riley Bowman: But the idea here is that the back portion of the belt yeah so where it goes
Riley Bowman: across your back is not reinforced like at all it's just nylon material and
Riley Bowman: you can see like this portion here is super flexible whereas up here i mean
Riley Bowman: i I can bend it, but I can't.
Riley Bowman: I can do whatever I want to the back portion. Right.
Riley Bowman: So this is the, basically the front half of the belt is reinforced.
Jacob Paulsen: I would call it more like. It's like two thirds. It's more like two thirds of
Jacob Paulsen: the belt's reinforced. Whereas that one third that's across the small of the back is not.
Riley Bowman: Yeah, exactly. So the idea here then is that.
Riley Bowman: We're taking that jelly bean shape and making a belt that more easily conforms
Riley Bowman: to that, which increases comfort dramatically.
Jacob Paulsen: It's worth noting that every time in this episode we've referred to comfort,
Jacob Paulsen: you need to understand that it's also about health.
Jacob Paulsen: Like if we if we drug a doctor in
Jacob Paulsen: here a chiropractor or people who really understand the body
Jacob Paulsen: they would they would i think support the idea that like when your belt doesn't
Jacob Paulsen: feel comfortable it's also not good for your body um you know you you need to
Jacob Paulsen: support like a good structure uh when we talk about about you know your spine
Jacob Paulsen: and your back and your tailbone and And weight distribution,
Jacob Paulsen: like it's, yes, like comfort be good, but also comfort in this context is also
Jacob Paulsen: adding to like a healthy structure.
Riley Bowman: Yeah.
Riley Bowman: I mean, some people already have hip issues, back issues, sciatic pain,
Riley Bowman: you know, and which are things that I've even dealt with at times.
Riley Bowman: In fact, it's been years, but just like a month or two ago, I had a little bit
Riley Bowman: of sciatic kind of flare up.
Riley Bowman: And I'll tell you, that would not have been, you know, I remember I used to
Riley Bowman: have major issues with that back when I was doing construction work.
Riley Bowman: Sure. And I was wearing a tool belt, like on a daily basis.
Riley Bowman: Uh you know which was a belt but
Riley Bowman: also had suspenders too to take some of that load off the off the
Riley Bowman: hips but even with that like i remember having a lot of uh my dad struggles
Riley Bowman: with it i struggle with it sciatic pain and uh i could tell you that normal
Riley Bowman: belts back in the day especially if they reinforce it all made that just almost
Riley Bowman: excruciating at times well.
Jacob Paulsen: I i remember like it It hit me the hardest when I was at S12 with Mickey Shook
Jacob Paulsen: and Paul Sharp, who's a member of the ShivWorks Collective, and he was teaching at S12 that year.
Jacob Paulsen: He drove out and he showed up.
Jacob Paulsen: He had driven all the way from Boise, Idaho-ish area all the way to basically Nashville, Tennessee.
Jacob Paulsen: It was a long freaking drive. Yeah. And he was recovering from something. Yeah.
Jacob Paulsen: Paul, if you're watching this, I'm sorry. I don't remember the detail.
Jacob Paulsen: But I think Paul was recovering from maybe a surgery or something was going on.
Jacob Paulsen: And so he had been kind of stripping gear off the belt because he was in pain
Jacob Paulsen: and he was trying to recover.
Jacob Paulsen: And, you know, finally he got a foundation belt, put it on, put all the gear
Jacob Paulsen: back on, and then drove seated in a car across, you know, about half the country
Jacob Paulsen: and showed up in Tennessee and was like, man, my back feels better than it has in weeks.
Jacob Paulsen: Yeah. He was pumped. Like he came right to me. He's like, dude,
Jacob Paulsen: we got to talk about this belt. Yeah.
Jacob Paulsen: So it is about not just comfort, but health.
Jacob Paulsen: Like in having reinforcement where the gun is so we can distribute the weight
Jacob Paulsen: around the entire body, but having flexibility where your body actually moves
Jacob Paulsen: and where your body is flat, that creates not just comfort, but health.
Riley Bowman: I've said for years, the way I've described the foundation belt,
Riley Bowman: like this is the tagline I would have created, stiff where you need it, not where you don't.
Jacob Paulsen: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Riley Bowman: Because that's pretty much exactly how I describe this is, I mean,
Riley Bowman: it's stiff where you carry the gun and it is not stiff where you typically don't.
Jacob Paulsen: Some irony to this is even though the manufacturing process is such that there's
Jacob Paulsen: not the reinforcement material in a section of the belt,
Jacob Paulsen: it costs more to manufacture it that way than if you had the stiff reinforcement
Jacob Paulsen: material all the way around.
Jacob Paulsen: It's sort of like taking the sugar out of stuff and making it sugar-free,
Jacob Paulsen: so that makes it more expensive for me to buy.
Jacob Paulsen: So it's the same kind of thing here. like manufacturing this belt because of
Jacob Paulsen: what makes it special and unique costs more to manufacture.
Jacob Paulsen: And luckily it's still very affordable, it's competitive, et cetera.
Jacob Paulsen: There's probably just lower margins.
Jacob Paulsen: But anyway, something to understand is that there's a reason not every belt
Jacob Paulsen: company has adopted this design technique despite it being absolutely,
Jacob Paulsen: unquestionably, undeniably more comfortable and better for you.
Jacob Paulsen: And that's because it's a pain in the neck to figure out and manufacture this way.
Riley Bowman: We're getting close to the hour mark, and I thought I would just kind of summarize.
Riley Bowman: I mean, this is a lot of the discussion we've had and also where I'm at personally
Riley Bowman: opinion-wise on belts and why, you know, after five, six plus years of using this belt.
Riley Bowman: In fact, this one right here that we're holding, this is actually one I used
Riley Bowman: for I think at least three years.
Riley Bowman: And the whole reason it's not being used is because it's too big for me.
Riley Bowman: I lost a couple inches off my waist, and so I needed to retire this one.
Riley Bowman: But, you know, it really doesn't even show that much wear, except right here
Riley Bowman: where my holster clipped on, and I'm using very aggressive DCC clips.
Riley Bowman: It's just slightly frayed.
Riley Bowman: But you wouldn't even really notice that if you were looking at me,
Riley Bowman: you know, if I was wearing this and you could see the belt, like,
Riley Bowman: you probably wouldn't even really notice that.
Riley Bowman: It held up exceedingly well over several years of use.
Riley Bowman: Summing it up uh it is all those things
Riley Bowman: we've talked about like what's important to me is that
Riley Bowman: it's that it's reinforced and reinforced
Riley Bowman: in the right ways in the right places to support my carrying
Riley Bowman: of the gun okay it checks that box uh infinitely adjustable yep i can't like
Riley Bowman: we i think we kind of almost glossed over that a little bit i don't think we
Riley Bowman: intended to necessarily but for me just let me hit that again i find myself
Riley Bowman: making use of the fact that i can adjust my belt.
Riley Bowman: Day to day and even with you know throughout the
Riley Bowman: day oh yeah um every time i go to the bathroom you
Riley Bowman: know like there's just times where it's like you know i'm gonna
Riley Bowman: do a little less tension or a little more tension you know depending on
Riley Bowman: the needs uh throughout the day as you
Riley Bowman: pointed out sometimes you're like i just need to make sure where i'm
Riley Bowman: going you know my next stop whatever i'm going
Riley Bowman: out in public i really want to make sure i'm concealed uh i
Riley Bowman: can tighten it just a little bit and add a little bit extra
Riley Bowman: tuck into the body uh it's nice to be
Riley Bowman: in a lot of those adjustments are like i would
Riley Bowman: describe as almost micro adjustments like minor it's amazing
Riley Bowman: how much of a difference a small adjustment can make both in terms of comfort
Riley Bowman: as well as concealment and so having that like infinite a level of adjustment
Riley Bowman: it to me is really important so it checks that box uh and then and then finally
Riley Bowman: that it's comfortable and this absolutely checks that box.
Riley Bowman: I wear this belt with my pants, with my gun every day, all day.
Riley Bowman: Typically 14 plus hours sometimes 16
Riley Bowman: hours and you and i have crossed the country in fact
Riley Bowman: i remember one drive in particular on the way back from a show an expo i don't
Riley Bowman: remember if it was in a rate or what it was but we were coming back from pittsburgh
Riley Bowman: oh and you and i drove as far as we could in one go and i think we made it as far as hayes kansas yeah.
Jacob Paulsen: We slept on
Riley Bowman: Stopped and basically you know put the seats back in
Riley Bowman: the car and slept for a bit and then continued you know the next
Riley Bowman: you know four hours later or whatever and got the rest
Riley Bowman: of the way home and i was carrying and
Riley Bowman: i did you know i tallied it all up on that trip but by
Riley Bowman: the time you know i got home and still it went
Riley Bowman: throughout the day carrying but anyway i had been carrying a
Riley Bowman: gun and a holster using a foundation belt on my
Riley Bowman: person for like 34 hours straight
Riley Bowman: before it came off of me and that
Riley Bowman: part of that was like 20 hours straight of driving
Riley Bowman: yeah you know and i was i never even
Riley Bowman: thought of the gun the whole time yeah so to make that that's the point i want
Riley Bowman: to make here some of that was made possible because of features like infinite
Riley Bowman: adjustment but it was hugely made possible because of how this belt is designed
Riley Bowman: so that it's maximizing comfort while still accomplishing the job of supporting the gun properly yeah.
Jacob Paulsen: I we can't i don't think we can speak enough about the foundation belt
Jacob Paulsen: i don't think it's the best belt for every circumstance like i said
Jacob Paulsen: i don't i don't use it depending on what i'm wearing you know
Jacob Paulsen: where it just doesn't kind of gel with the with the clothes i have on but
Jacob Paulsen: it is a fantastic belt and it's very very affordable and currently available in
Jacob Paulsen: two colors maybe there'll be a third color before you know it but i think that
Jacob Paulsen: the point is you know look at what you're currently using is that the best option
Jacob Paulsen: for you does it make sense to maybe add an additional belt for certain circumstances
Jacob Paulsen: that would be more comfortable or support your loadout better?
Jacob Paulsen: I think that's a valid question to ask and to consider.
Riley Bowman: I really appreciate this comment from Henry on Facebook. He says that he's got
Riley Bowman: his own setup currently.
Riley Bowman: He mentioned specifically he has a bad lower back.
Riley Bowman: And he says, but that belt is nice. I would definitely try it, he says.
Riley Bowman: That's a great comment. And I'll just say, if you have a bad lower back,
Riley Bowman: the foundation belt is definitely an option I think you should check out.
Riley Bowman: I think you should give it a try.
Jacob Paulsen: Yeah. And our willingness to exchange those if you get the wrong size or something,
Jacob Paulsen: it drives our customer service guy bonkers.
Jacob Paulsen: He complains to me all the time. He thinks that we should charge you people
Jacob Paulsen: fees when you do exchanges, and I just keep saying, nope, no fee.
Jacob Paulsen: So we'll take care of you and make sure you get what you need if you order a
Jacob Paulsen: belt from us. It's very important.
Riley Bowman: There's instructions on the product listing.
Jacob Paulsen: Yes, you should probably read those before you order because that will save
Jacob Paulsen: us all a little pain and money.
Jacob Paulsen: But yeah we'll happily do an exchange we'll make you pay for
Jacob Paulsen: shipping if we do an exchange but we don't charge you a fee so that
Jacob Paulsen: that's something and one other feature i'll
Jacob Paulsen: just add is as long as we're in this like shameless plug the point
Jacob Paulsen: of the of the podcast episode is that something
Jacob Paulsen: i think you need to understand about the foundation belt is that the velcro doesn't is
Jacob Paulsen: not necessary to for the for the belt to stay in place yeah like the buckle
Jacob Paulsen: keeps the belt in place the velcro is there just to have a place for the tail
Jacob Paulsen: of the belt to be secured and it adds some security I suppose to the belt as
Jacob Paulsen: well but it's the buckle is
Jacob Paulsen: all that is needed for the belt to stay where you want it that's
Riley Bowman: Really I mean that's what a tri-glide buckle is all about is it's doubling back
Riley Bowman: the material so that is really what locks it in place so yeah,
Riley Bowman: I think that is I didn't actually have that looped through correctly at the
Riley Bowman: beginning part of the episode, but those of you that are watching,
Riley Bowman: you can see that's really how that triglide buckle is supposed to be used.
Riley Bowman: So, yep, yep, that's good stuff.
Jacob Paulsen: I was at an event
Jacob Paulsen: know which event it was anyway it was in recent
Jacob Paulsen: history and i saw somebody wearing a foundation belt and they did not do it
Jacob Paulsen: properly they fed it just kind of once around the outside and i saw him and
Jacob Paulsen: i was like hey just so you know that's not how that belt is designed to be worn
Jacob Paulsen: and he's like i know i like this better yeah it's like cool but in your case
Jacob Paulsen: then the velcro is holding it
Riley Bowman: Works it works.
Jacob Paulsen: It'll work
Riley Bowman: Uh but uh yeah yeah.
Jacob Paulsen: But yeah i think i think that's the point is to evaluate some
Jacob Paulsen: of these things and and um it's something if you
Jacob Paulsen: want to kind of get a list of belts that that we have
Jacob Paulsen: tested and vetted if you're like maybe i don't want the foundation
Jacob Paulsen: belt um if you want a little hint on the ksg armory holster website we have
Jacob Paulsen: a page called belts where we uh link to several different belts that we do not
Jacob Paulsen: sell ourselves but that we have tested and we feel uh good about those belts
Riley Bowman: Yeah, that's a great point. They're all quality belts, absolutely.
Riley Bowman: Some are similar looking at least or somewhat similar in design to the foundation belt.
Riley Bowman: And that's one of the reasons why you'll see that there's some similarities there for sure.
Jacob Paulsen: So, yep, yep.
Riley Bowman: We definitely, you know, not intending for this to be a sales pitch only for the podcast today.
Riley Bowman: That's kind of why I saved really,
Riley Bowman: you know, talking and focusing on the foundation belt to the end here.
Riley Bowman: We wanted to make sure we talked about these different features,
Riley Bowman: different things to look for in a belt, bring it to your awareness,
Riley Bowman: because a lot of what we discussed today, I wasn't even aware of 15 years ago.
Jacob Paulsen: Yeah, I was clueless.
Riley Bowman: Would have made my life so much easier if i'd
Riley Bowman: understood those things sooner and if products like foundation belt existed
Riley Bowman: sooner too but uh i can't i've tested a few other belts and i do like a few
Riley Bowman: others but i just found my find myself continue to come back to the foundation
Riley Bowman: belt for my own personal use i know you do most of our team i think is that's what they're using,
Riley Bowman: and a lot of professional shooters and instructor types out there using the foundation belt as well,
Riley Bowman: So that's what I call a clue.
Riley Bowman: People like it. It works. It's comfortable. It does what it's supposed to do.
Jacob Paulsen: Yeah, get yourself some more support around that waistline, you know,
Jacob Paulsen: support your loadout better.
Riley Bowman: Just a quick shout out. Sponsors today, again, were the EDC Belt Company Foundation
Riley Bowman: Belt, which you can find at edcbeltco.com.
Riley Bowman: Or just go over to concealedcarry.com, navigate to our shop,
Riley Bowman: and you can select by category belts.
Riley Bowman: And you'll see all belts available for sale on concealedcarry.com.
Riley Bowman: And you can, you know, choose from any of those. You'll see the foundation belts
Riley Bowman: listed right there alongside all those as well.
Riley Bowman: I think there's – we sell fewer of the leather options now than we used to.
Jacob Paulsen: Yeah, but we do have leather options.
Riley Bowman: But there are some.
Jacob Paulsen: Yeah, one of which I use weekly, and I like just fine.
Jacob Paulsen: But, yeah, we have several – I think we have three or four different brands
Jacob Paulsen: of belts on there that we've tested about it.
Riley Bowman: We've got the Wilderness Tactical belts are on there for sure.
Riley Bowman: You'll see several options for those. By the way, the link for those that wanted
Riley Bowman: to check things out on the KSG Armory holsters that you mentioned a moment ago,
Riley Bowman: ksgarmory.com forward slash belts.
Jacob Paulsen: That's not hard.
Riley Bowman: Yeah, that's pretty straightforward. So you can find that resource there.
Riley Bowman: So, guys, thanks for your support of our sponsors. Thank you for support of
Riley Bowman: the podcast and everything we do here at concealedcarry.com.
Riley Bowman: Anything else?
Jacob Paulsen: Not for now. Thanks, all.
Riley Bowman: We'll sign off and let you go with a reminder to train right,
Riley Bowman: train often, and train safe so you can fight hard.
Jacob Paulsen: Fight fast, and fight true. Take care.
Riley Bowman: A reminder that laws vary from place to place, and we encourage listeners to
Riley Bowman: seek local legal advice to understand applicable laws.
Riley Bowman: Concealed Carry, Inc., its brands and properties, and the Concealed Carry podcast
Riley Bowman: is not a legal service, nor are we attorneys at law.
Riley Bowman: We make our best faith effort to share Concealed Carry-related insights and
Riley Bowman: information about firearm-related incidents and the laws pertaining,
Riley Bowman: based on our own understanding and experience.
Riley Bowman: But things can be different where you live, or laws may have changed by the
Riley Bowman: time you listen to this. We cannot be held liable for your actions based on
Riley Bowman: the information shared in this podcast.
Riley Bowman: Please exercise care with all things pertaining to firearm use,
Riley Bowman: concealed carry, and always practice following basic firearm safety rules.
Riley Bowman: More information about safety can be found at concealedcarry.com forward slash safety.