Hunting knife sheath

[riy]

Made myself a lefty sheath for my trusty Buck.

Thanks for the tip about masking tape on the flesh side while stamping basket weave - really helped prevent stretching.

Cheers everyone, have a great week.

[Leescustomleather]

Nice knife, nice sheath! I struggled with getting my hole through the welt square to the edge also. I mounted a sewing awl blade in my drill press with the motor off and used the lever action of the drill press to easily push the awl blade through perpendicular to the edge, A little beeswax on the awl blade will help it to pull back out. Also, much easier on my hands too.

[PastorBob]

+1 for hard to punch straight holes through a welt.  I still do it by hand, but try to leave a little extra material around the edge so if it goes awry, I still have some room between the edge and the stitches.  Nicely done on the basket weave.  Tape sure does help.  I normally keep a 2" and 1" roll of blue painters tape on my workbench for such occasions. I have found that if you leave the tape on for too long, it will really pull up fibers on the back side when removed. I try to remove the tape almost immediately after stamping. 

[Hags]

Ditto all above. Nice job.  I have used blue tape in the past, but now I use clear packing tape. Same effect,  but less expensive. 

[caressofsteel]

Nice. You may want to use a french skiver on the main edges and a thinner welt; so you are not punching the holes through so much leather. Might help them go through straighter. The stitching on the front of the sheath looks great.

[battlemunky]

But are you a lefty?!? THAT is the question! I'm teasing of course but I have a few unintentional lefty items, I think a lot of us do. It's almost a rite of passage. The stagger on your stitching is great! Aside from the wonky stitch line on the back, it looks good, keep it up!

[Outfitr]

Looks good, should last a lifetime. Something thick like that with a welt that's not flat I use my drill press and have a small block of wood that the bit goes into with the edge of the wood fairly close to the bit, all clamped down of course with the drill press vise. That way I can hang the bulging part over the edge of the wood to level out the stitching area so it's perpendicular to the bit. Also I use a well worn burned off small wool dauber to dye edges to get a crisp edge line, especially important with black dye against light leather.

[riy]

Thank you all for the tips. I love the honest feedback in this community. Going to try these things out on a sheath for a chunky Ka-Bar Becker next.

I am a lefty - lucky catch because I was about to make a right hand sheath at first. I agree that it may be time to invest in a French skiver. Recently bought the Tandy safety skiver which is unfortunately very right hand oriented. Found out that I love chucking those safety skiver injector razor blades into the XL (carving) hobby knife for cutting patterns, so it's not a total loss.

[TomE]

That's a good looking sheath!  I use a peg awl haft for sewing heavy leather.  I have better luck guiding the awl with the larger handle.  https://osborneleathertools.com/product/peg-awl-haft-143/  

[battlemunky]

On 7/25/2022 at 10:06 AM, riy said:

Thank you all for the tips. I love the honest feedback in this community. Going to try these things out on a sheath for a chunky Ka-Bar Becker next.

I am a lefty - lucky catch because I was about to make a right hand sheath at first. I agree that it may be time to invest in a French skiver. Recently bought the Tandy safety skiver which is unfortunately very right hand oriented. Found out that I love chucking those safety skiver injector razor blades into the XL (carving) hobby knife for cutting patterns, so it's not a total loss.

Oh really, which Becker? I have a few BK-2s and a couple BK-16s. The 2s are a bit too beefy but its always good to know if you need to beat your way out of a dumpster, you have the option of doing so. The 16s are wonderful all around users. Most of the Beckers are badass knives.

As far as skivers go, I grabbed Tandy's largest French Skiver when I was first starting out and didn't know any better. It's good for edging the lips of holes so you can eke out the use of a line 24 snap but mine sucks as a normal skiver. Those red handled Japanese skivers from Amazon are pretty good and look pretty ambidextrous but not being a lefty I honestly don't know how to rightfully discern but they do work better than my French Skiver does. Not even sure of it's a Tandy thing or no, mine is pretty sharp and smooth, just doesn't bite well enough to do any real skiving.