Repairing A 60-70 Year Old Knife Sheath

[teufelszeug leatherwork]

Hey folks,

i've got quite a problem lying on my workbench: a friend of mine wants a 60-70 year old knife sheath to be repaired/restored. it's ripped at the entry, just within the sewing channel and needs to be resewn.

normally id simply make a new sheath, but he wants it for the vitrine, so at least it doesnt have to withstand as much as a sheath being used daily.

i thought of 2 options:

#1: skiving the inside of the entry area a bit and then glueing in a really thin leather inlay. the old leather probably wouldnt survive the skiving because its really dry and the rip would still be visible/open up again while resewing.

#2 making a really thin strip of leather to put and glue over the ripped area to cover maybe the first 4-5 holes, approx. 0,4'' wide. would work but change the look and it would be a visible repair.

any ideas?

i really dont know what to do with this

cheers,

Jan

[whinewine]

Hey folks,

i've got quite a problem lying on my workbench: a friend of mine wants a 60-70 year old knife sheath to be repaired/restored. it's ripped at the entry, just within the sewing channel and needs to be resewn.

normally id simply make a new sheath, but he wants it for the vitrine, so at least it doesnt have to withstand as much as a sheath being used daily.

i thought of 2 options:

#1: skiving the inside of the entry area a bit and then glueing in a really thin leather inlay. the old leather probably wouldnt survive the skiving because its really dry and the rip would still be visible/open up again while resewing.

#2 making a really thin strip of leather to put and glue over the ripped area to cover maybe the first 4-5 holes, approx. 0,4'' wide. would work but change the look and it would be a visible repair.

any ideas?

i really dont know what to do with this

cheers,

Jan

Jan:

Option #1 would probably be a better (ie, more invisible) option, but, at any rate, the old leather should definitely be treated/conserved in some manner to try to preserve it, otherwise, it will continue to deteriorate & rip & fall apart. It might be already too late, but my first suggestion would be to contact someone who does conservation of historic leathers at one of the numerous museums in Europe. Aside from that, one could use gel superglue to re-attach the entry area. Would it hold? It would depend upon how dry/deteriorated/cracked/beyond repair the leather actually is. Speak to a conservator at a museum first...

Good luck

russ

[Jaymack]

This would be very visible, but you could form, glue and stitch a collar the width of the tear across the top of the sheath. Dye it the best as you can to blend in with the old leather.

John

[teufelszeug leatherwork]

problem solved.

went for option #1. skived a piece of tooling leather as an inlay and glued it together, then just sew it back together and burnished/coated the edges. then i waxxed the hole thing. the customer was happy, even though i had no leather in matching color or dye left.

[Dwight]

A customer brought me a similar problem a while back. I was fortunate in that there was a missing brass ball closure just below the lip of the front of it.

I glued in a piece of raw hide, . . . set the brass ball closure, . . . and hand stitched the edge back together.

It is very hard to see where he pulled his Puma from the sheath and ripped almost a 2 inch opening very much like this one.

I really like raw hide for repairs if I can use it, . . . there just ain't much stuff out there that is tougher for the thickness.

May God bless,

Dwight