Welts, Skiving, And Knife Sheath-Making

[TexasLady]

6/26/11

I'm making 14 small knife sheaths to give to my classmates. They will have double-loop lacing around the edges. Since they are made out of scraps, each one is unique, but similar. The leather I'm using is very thick, over a quarter inch. For the welt, I split the piece of leather in half. The edge of the sheath, with the two pieces of leather and the welt, was quite thick. I've finished two of the sheaths. But now, I've come to the realization that I need to see a tutorial on 'knife sheath making'. Where do I skive down the thickness of the leather? Or, for small knives, should I skive the whole piece of thick leather? Thanks. - TexasLady

[TexasJack]

You're already on the right track - you can skive whatever you want. If you just want the edges thinner, skive both edges of the sheath and the welt so that the final thickness is closer to what you want. You are using VERY thick leather for a sheath, so it's understandable that you'd want to reduce that a bit.

There are a number of tutorials around here - try a search.

[TexasLady]

6/29/11

Thanks, TexasJack, for your helpful reply. I did do some word searches, hunting for a tutorial or some photos showing the process, before writing this, but couldn't find anything. On the other hand, there's so much good information here that it's quite time consuming to search through it all. And let's face it, my home computer is just 'slow'. I skived the edges on sheaths #3 and #4, and they are looking more like what I'd envisioned. - TexasLady