TexasJack

Nice job! Very clean!

Wow! Really, really nice job! Post more stuff. Seriously!

You might put some Listerine (or knockoff brand) on them to keep mold from forming. They do get wet during manufacture, so you may be able to salvage.

The list of people who have had this problem includes everyone who has ever used contact cement. The best solution is to not drip it on the project in the first place. You can keep a piece of foil or wax paper nearby and cover the area near where you are gluing to keep stuff from dripping on it. But the best solution is one offered by Chuck Burrows on his sheathmaking video. The most likely source of a drip is from the cement that's on the stem of the brush when you take it out of the can. (It oozes down to the brush and then drips off just as it's crossing your leather.) What he did was keep an old cement can (and he may have put some solvent in it) and he uses the brush from that empty can to do his application. That way only the tip of the brush goes down into the jar full of cement.

One of the curious things that happens when you are sharpening a knife is that you can get what is called a "wire edge". This is especially true if you sharpen with the blade in the same direction as the belt. A very thin strip of metal will form on the edge of the blade and will make it seem like it's very sharp, but if you use the blade the wire edge folds over and it's suddenly very dull. That edge can be removed with a leather strop. I've never seen a 1x30 belt that goes slow enough to be worth anything for sharpening a blade. At best it can be used to form a new edge on a piece of steel. The belt goes too fast and doesn't present enough surface area. Knifemakers typically use a 72" belt and slow it down as much as possible. Power tools are best at making things go badly very fast. Unless you abuse your knife blades - or let them go far too long before sharpening - you really don't need a grinder or belt for sharpening. Sharpening a knife by hand is one of those basic skills that everybody should have. If you don't have it, work on learning it.

I've done the microwave AND the oven mistake before! Both were on pre-made sheaths (before I started doing leatherwork) and, as others have described, were incredible failures!! If you're not making mistakes, then you're not trying hard enough to do new things. A Greek philosopher once said, "I love my mistakes." You CAN love them if you learn from them. But here's the way you get out from under the embarrassment of screwing up a piece: You simply tell anyone who sees it that it was a "prototype".

+1

Nice!

My wife never throws anything out, which turns out to be a bigger problem than you might think. One piece of leverage that I have used in the past when my wife started complaining about how much I spent on something, I just began adding up the amount spent on her shoe collection. That drew a pretty quick, "Nevermind." An old boss of mine bought a reciprocating saw. His wife questioned the cost of it and he pointed out that he got it to work in renovating their house. (It was very old and had some weird, small rooms upstairs. In truth, that wasn't why he bought it, but it sounded good.) A week later he came home from work and when he walked inside the house there was what appeared to be white smoke filling the room and a thick layer of dust covering everything. Fearing some sort of fire, he rushed upstairs to find his wife. She was covered in white dust and very, very proud of herself, as she had used the new saw to chop out several walls. Of course, it never occurred to her that some of those walls might be supporting the attic, or that they had electric wires and plumbing in them. (She just missed cutting the plumbing, but she did cut off a number of wires.) Turned out to be the most expensive saw he ever bought.

I totally agree with druid on this. Nice job - form fit the magazine next time.

None of the compounds you list are binders or mordants. Except for the metal complex, they are all solvents. There are dyes that can be made at home (use google) but trying to duplicate a commercial dye is impossible. Trying to duplicate almost anything from an MSDS is also impossible, as the document is designed to list hazardous chemicals and safety instructions, not provide an accurate and complete formula or manufacturing sequence.

There's nothing "wrong" with the stitching - it's just that there could be a better layout that will give more strength. I don't recall seeing your last sheath, but I suspect you now see what I see. As I have to remind young folks sometimes, your best friends are not the ones who applaud everything you do; They're the ones that tell you when your zipper is down. People post work on here to have others comment so that they can continue to improve future pieces. Thefanninator makes some pretty nice stuff - including this sheath - but a pro always looks for ways to improve. I once asked a pro about a project I was struggling with and he said something to the effect of, "..I'm not gonna take all that time to tell you how many ways you're going wrong...", and then he pointed me in a much better direction. It's all good.

Of course, trying to find a picture when you want one is always impossible. Look at the loop on this one: First sheath since... The way you have it sewed - straight across - will put a lot of stress on that thread. A double line - made into a box or a "D" shape will give you more strength and will have some stitches parallel to the loop and thus parallel to the stress.

I would have made a loop of stitches - like a "D" on it's side. A single line of stitches will have to take a lot of stress. Also, shape the loop with a piece of leather or strip of wood so it already has the space for a belt and doesn't have to be stretched (i.e., stressed) to fit a belt. I'm no expert, nor do I have any right to claim that I am. I'm just echoing what guys who are experts showed me. A frog is a means of holding a sheath onto a belt that fits externally to the sheath. I did a quick google to try to find what I meant and I see a couple of similar things. Here's one on sale on Amazon: Sword frog Here's another version: LARP Sword Frog

Nice basketweave! Not crazy about the belt loop. I'd want stronger stitching and more room for the belt. In order for 45 deg. to work on such a long blade, the belt loop needs to be fairly close to the center of mass. Otherwise there will always be a lot of torque on the belt loop. This would be a good application for a frog.

When thread is pre-waxed, it's hard to predict how much wax will be on it. If you wax it yourself, you'll know.

I can't add much to this thread except to say that whenever you use that wheel, be extremely cautious. It is well documented on the knifemaking forums that a buffing wheel is by far the most dangerous tool in the shop. It can grab a blade or almost anything of that size and fling it with remarkable force in a fairly random direction.

Nice video.

That's a really, really nice job! They could use that as an ad for the pattern.

Nice looking work!

The GP100 is a great pistol. You won't regret buying one. As for the sheath, I like the overall look. If it was me, I think I'd cover the entire trigger guard.

There was a Woody Allen movie - back when he was funny - called "Sleeper" (I think). In it, the main character is frozen and then thawed out in the future. As the doctors are reviewing what's in his stomach (like granola) one of them says something like, "That was back before we found out Twinkies and HoHos were health foods."

Yeah, I do possess a degree in chemistry. Everything is made up of chemicals. Some are very bad for you, some are OK, and some totally depend on the dosage. The chemical you are concerned about is commonly used in baking powder and is, as camano ridge pointed out, generally regarded as safe. Among other things it is a chelating agent which means it binds to metal atoms and forms a large molecule that can be washed away. (Chelate comes from the Greek word for "claw".) You'll often see sodium EDTA, which is also a chelating agent, in bread. It's also the chemical given to people who have heavy metal poisoning (like lead). Your stomach contains hydrochloric acid for digesting food. Hydrochloric acid (sometimes referred to by it's old name "muriatic acid") is often used to remove iron stains. Best example of the effect of dosage I ever heard was this: If you take one aspirin per day, after 10 years you will have consumed 3,652 aspirin and unless you are allergic to the stuff or have stomach ulcers, you will not see any adverse effects. However, if you sit down and try to eat 3,652 aspirin at one time, you will have a very adverse effect - it will kill you. So something like disodium pyrophosphate that you normally only consume in small quantities is not going to affect your health, despite the fact that in high concentrations it can be used for cleaning out rust stains.

An ordinary man can live a long and fruitful life and then fade away into history with little more than his name on a stone. But one who teaches others what he has learned will have a bit of himself living for many generations. I don't think we always appreciate those who take the time to make patterns or layouts or instructions and pass them on to others. Even when we acknowledge someone who answers our questions or critiques our work or points us in a better direction, do we value the effort enough to do the same as we develop our own skills? Sitting on the desktop next to my keyboard are DVDs from one of the guys I consider a master at his craft. I have some others on a shelf from another master who not only has answered questions for me online, but has also called me and talked me through problems I might have spent years solving. So thank you, Jim, and all those folks that push us in a better direction!

Nice!