Romey

They are forge one peice , will be pictures when done, im actually working on 3 different sets, a light riding set, a old timey looking set and a reining style set.

Thats excellent work!! And Kudos to you for spending the time with them.

Thank you Duke, I think we should listen to our critics closer then our friends. Critics can show quite quickly if they are talking out the south side of a north bound cow, If they arent, then it can be benificial to listen to someone of a SOUND mind. I can handle about anyone or anything so nothing gets to me much, I dont sweat em, but I appreciate it. Im sure some of my lines arent perfect tho i think the curve of the sheath is making them look further off then they actually are. Its my stitching actually that I jacked up! LOL Its only second time I basket stamped though and no question room for improvment. Thanks for all your comments every bit helps :angel_not:

very cool

I have eaten Bear numorus times, tastes like pork, I have eaten Lion, tastes like Lion. Without getting on a large tagnent of viable wildlife conservation somthing I can and am qualified to talk at length about. Controlled hunting IS conservation. On that note. Nice looking rig you made your son.

Good lookin stuff Luke

Ray ban, thank you very much! No i havent tried the Leather Tonic before but have tried simuliar. I will probably go on to put more sheen on my sheaths in future so will use a neatlac or somthing. The reason I use snow seal once in awhile is its famous amoung old time hunters, guides and trappers for water protection on leather (boots) and its something a customer can put on thier sheaths time to time and not so much mess up or over soften as can happen with oil. I know alot of sheath makers dip thier sheaths in melted beeswax/carnuba wax mixure , well you add mink oil and you got Sno Seal. I have even used johnsons floor paste with OK results, as its just carnuba wax and it dont darken. BTW I seen your sheaths, very impressive! Don, Thank you very much! As you know Im a Bladesmith first but I do enjoy leatherwork and hope im getting better each time. Wait till you see the spurs in working on though

On my sheaths i chuck up a awl or somtimes a needle in press and do the FRONT side and welt of the sheath then glue it and use hand awl to find the back side. If i use the needle i turn the press on it seems to burnish the hole a bit if i use awl i just press through. Anyway thats how i keep the holes straight.

Any silversmith or engraver is gunna probably be higher especially on a custom order. ones i know START at 50 a hour as base price. Maybe you can contact some new ppl coming out of the GRS school. they wont know about the silversmithing but will be the ppl to go for to engraving at lower costs as they would be fresh students wanting practice stuff and exstra cash.

Thats outstanding Paul, great work

Cool stuff Don!

WOW some ran out of Zyban! Thank you for your comments Candyleather :flowers: . Photos that are 800x600 from 48 to 140kb are hardly large as well as its linked from a different server. But hey thanks for your concern cowboy!

Paul , That is a stunning package! Hard to make a Fisk look bad aint it and you make it look even better .

Well Kev, one would think so but thats not always the way it works for me!haha

That is nice, real nice great idea.

Paul your sheaths are always so intricate and clean. very inspiring work

Paul that is absoloutly stunning sheath, amazing thank you for posting.

very cool stuff, good work

Thanks folks, knife makers cant make sheaths right,hehe. Its not my best but I like it. Its all pretty rudimentary leather work I suppose for a lot of folks around here and as I said many posts I am more concerned with fit then looks on a sheath (but only slightly more) You can turn this upside down and shake it for all you worth and it wont fall out yet thumb and finger will draw it out easily fact someone near cut themselves doing that as they mentioned how tight it was and pulled HARD and it don’t take a hard pull at all, near cut her forearm. Its all about the welt and the inside shape of it. The color is just russet wickett and Craig with pure neats foot oil finish. I used a type I hadn’t used before and it came out ALOT darker then I expected. A close eye will see that its still evening out when I took the pics. I wipe it on once and right back off after heating it a bit under a heat lamp, Sun don’t come out much around here.. then back under a heat lamp till dry. My friend Ken who is a excellent leather man and saddle maker uses a hairdryer when sun isn’t out for him, I think hairdryer works better then my heat lamp idea, more experimenting is in order. The edge I did with elk antler and water. Then edge koted brown once the edge was shiny enough to reflect light. I believe I got the water idea from Bruce Johnson here on the forum and so far for the slickers I use water has worked the best and its cheap so TY for that Bruce. I used Snowseal as the final coat which is carnauba wax, bees wax and mink oil I believe, Neat time ill neatlac or something for a higher gloss though. But I do likes my snow seal Pete its just 3 pieces of leather, the slicked belt loop, skived stitched, folded and stitched again, The skived welt, and the body of the sheath. I generally like 9oz but this was 11ish and still not to big for this particular knife. Thank you all mucho appreciated.

Some of you may have seen the knife before , I finally got around to making the sheath. My stiching didnt come out quite as well as I normally do but its a gift for a friend and if they dont like it tough kattywhompus. Thought id show the edge to as several leather workers have commented on it. Thanks to Ken Nelson down in Rapid City SD at Dakota territory saddles for straightening me out of some of my stamping issues I had.

Thats the most sense I heard on this subject from this forum yet. I think one can get to hung up on tree fit when overall saddle fit, pads, type of work one is going to do, ect is the other equation. Unless a person is exactly fitting a perticular horse, and I really dont know why one would do that, we should be fitting horses in general, all horses as best we can, atleast I have to. In spring and summer I may have to be on 3 horses a day for long periods of time. unless there is a huge differance I and every hand I know only hauls one saddle ever, My opinion is get me close, Ill get the rest of the way. I will switch saddles on the same horse depending on the country im riding in though if i can or need to.

Techniquely a choil is a strength thing, Anymore its a asthetic thing and often i see it in the lineage of whats known as a "spanish notch" going back to Italian,Spanish and Portugal bladesmiths of the renaissance period. Though i have seen musuem peices from much older and far vaster cultures that had a Choil. As Scouter said it does allow easier sharpening but this is just a side effect. The dropped edge allows the Ricasso of a blade to remain full thickness at the plunges. Some decorotive notches have religous porposes such as a Kukri of the Gurka tribes of India. I beleive that English and early American bowies retained this and double guards (Quillion) from the above mentioned southern european sword schools such as Ingrenalli that started out being somewhat of a blade catcher as I have seen very very old text of some spanish sword schools showing it caught with the Choil and Quillions locking up a opponents blade.

Its ont of the nicest covers i have ever seen for sure

Very nice work indeed! As for tone, you bet it will effect the tone, Lay your arm along the top of a accoustic and strum compared to strumming freely, and thats just your arm. YOU as a player may not hear it as readily but someone with sitting infront of you will. I also beleive binding electrics effects tone as well, All string insturments are a resonating intrument, even electrics. On electrics i beleive it makes the tone slighly darker, not nessicaricly a bad thing. Good example of this resonation in electrics is a telecaster (hairdtailed bridge) and a stratocaster floating bridge. Same woods, same pickups(single coils for instance) , 2 totaly different sounds, one twangs and one quacks. Even the bridge material, the saddle material,(brass,stainless steel,carbon steel , 6 saddle bridges (modern)or 3 saddle bridge (vintage) makes a differnce in tone. Resonation is vibrating sound,muffle the material its vibrating through and in,youll muffle the tone. Kinda like a wind chime,touch your finger lightly to it and youll deaden it a little, hold it with your fingers and your completely deaden it.

No problem. Sounds like you got the right stuff, To make a simple strop for leather workers, being most everyone has a marble slab of some sort, one can use spray adhesine on the paper, stick it to your slab do your stropping and peel it back off. MOST spray adhesives leave little to no gunk or if so its easy to clean up. As for rolling the rounding the eage with a leather strap yes you will if its not hard leather, There is more kinda of leather then just soft vegtan. I had some saddle billet blanks rolled up for a long time that never got used and thats what some of my strops are made from, they are hard and thick. Some others is thinchap leather. Just exsperiment most all has scrap this or that laying around, charge it with green compound and try it.