My First Knife Sheath

[mattsh]

My brother bought a knife from a custom maker and needed a knife sheath so he asked if I could make one for him.

The knife is by A.D. Sharpe (how ironic) out of North Carolina. Let me just say that this knife is wicked sharp and built like a tank. When I first saw the knife I asked my brother what he has used it for so far and he said "chopping small tree's" whoa! But after handling it I can see why. This thing is a beast. Kudos to the maker.

An interesting thing about it (that you can't see) is that as I was putting this sheath together the blade is so sharp and heavy that if you didnt put the blade into the sheath with extra care it was cutting the welt all to shreds. When you are out in the woods or on a hunt you are not exactly focused on being "careful" putting your blade away. So I got to thinking about what I could do to help alleviate some of this "shredding" that was taking place. Years ago I had read some articles about Cuir-bouilli. It's a process used to make leather armor. It makes the leather extremely hard, but yet brittle. So I thought about it and decided that I would take a sponge and wet just the inside edge of the welt and then using a solder iron I would scorch the wet edge and essentially make a hard surface for the blade edge to run against. Think of it as differential heat treating of a knife blade, making the edge hard so it will hold an edge yet leaving the spine tempered so the blade does not become brittle. I was quite pleased with the results and that hard edge is holding up very well, the knife blade just "scates" along it and slides right into the sheath instead of trying to shred the welt all to pieces and yet the rest of the welt is pliable without making the whole thing brittle. I am interested in hearing if anyone else has ever done this.

So here's the sheath.

And here's the knife that belongs to it.

Pics are not the best from my cell phone, as I still need to get a digital camera...ugghh....on of the many "toys" (as my wife would say) that are needed.

[Peter Darby]

Interesting solution to a problem that the shape of that knife would be hard to solve otherwise. I have used Cuir Bouilli in a couple of projects. I once decided to harden a leather drinking jack but dropped it into boiling water by mistake by the time I got it out I had a rock hard teacup. I am not even sure that I could use a drill to put stitching holes in.