My New Sheath Project

[treadhead1952]

Hi All,

I wanted to come up with some new sheaths for some of the knives in my collection. Just about all of them came with one, but some, as in the case of my Arkansas Toothpick, just did not fit, the knife was too large and wouldn't sit all the way down into the sheath that came with it. Forget about drawing it out once you did get it mostly in there, not exactly what one would want in such a large sharp two edged knife. Since I have been browsing around looking at some of the offerings that others have come up with I saw a number of very nice and well designed ones. For my first effort I chose one of the knives that I liked, a large Bowie design from the collection and went to work. I made a pattern using some card board, traced it out on my 7-8 ounce belly cut that I have and then trimmed it out. I used some scrap cuts to furnish the two sections that I wanted to add between the front and rear parts to give the necessary thickness as well as protect the thread from the blade. At it's widest part across the blade it is nearly 3/16ths of an inch thick. Following the advice I received in another post I angled my basket weave stamp when I started tooling the leather. I used the larger of the two basket weave stamps I now have, the X510 to do most of the stamping with the D436 Camouflage and Border stamp to go around the edge. I used the Adjustable Groove Cutter to run a bead around the edge of the rear part first and layout the four lines that would be used for the stitching on the belt loop. It also laid out the area to be tooled on the front piece. Once I got the basket weave pattern and the border stamped, I used the round back edge of the top of the basket weave stamp to hide my over stamps from the basket weave pattern on the outer perimeter of the front and belt loop area.

Once I had all the tooling done I started gluing up the two spacers to the rear panel and folded over the belt loop and glued it up with Contact Cement. All the stitching was laid out with a #6 Pounce Wheel and then punched through with by Awl and hand sewn using the old two needle saddle stitch method. I ran a false stitch line across the top of the front panel. Before I started to stitch up the front and rear together I applied some Eco Flo Super Sheen to the edges as a Dye resist. Next came some dark brown Eco Flo Dye to the areas where I made the border with the D436 Camo Tool. Once it dried I used Briar Brown Eco Flo Color Tint watered down and applied with a sponge over the whole thing inside and out. Letting it dry I used more of the Eco Flo Super Sheen to seal it all up. Next came some more of the Contact Cement to glue the front panel to the spacers and rear panel. Now I could sew it all together using the same saddle stitch method as before. I had saved the false stitch threads at the top and used them to start the stitching and anchor the front and rear together. They ran down about an inch and a half and then were sewn back through the same holes for about five or six loops. I started with a long single thread with the two needles at that point to go all the way around the sheath. Next came sanding the edges down smooth first on my 8" electric grinder then switching to 320 grit wet sand paper to finish the edges. Once they were smoothed out I applied a coat of Fiebings USMC Black to the edges. A couple more coats of Super Sheen were applied to seal it all up, I may go with another coat or two after everything has had a chance to get good and dry after a day or two.

[Rickey]

Nicely done. Then only thing that I do not like is the black around the edge. With the very bright stain on top it just does not work for me personally. The basket weaving on the sheath is very nicely done. Very straight!

Regards,

Rickey