Knife Sheeth +Carving

[Svartsmeden]

Hey!

I´m new at leatherworking and i would like to learn a bit about leather carving. Since I have blacksmithing as a hobby and I´m getting more into bladesmithing, I would like to be able to make some nice leather sheets.

The sheets i make are traditional swedish leather sheets. But since I´ve only made plain sheets without any decorations I would like to get into carving/pouting.

So when do you carve the leather? Is it before or after it´s stitched? With or without the knife in the sheeth?

Anyway, i would like some basic tips about leathercarving.

Ps: excuse my grammar, hope you understand what i mean.

[mattsh]

I have only done one sheath with carving/stamping. I did all of the carving/stamping before stitching. I think it would be difficult to do the carving/stamping after you have it stitched together because of the two layers of leather you would be working with and that would not be solid enough to get good stamping.

Welcome to the forum!

Edited December 31, 2011 by mattsh

[gregintenn]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QynofyY2fL4

I found this video to be a very good basic explanation of tooling leather.

[leatherjunkie]

the leather is carved/stamped after you cut the shape out and before you do anything else.

color, glueing, sewing, finishing is the last steps

[Tina]

Hej Svartsmeden och Välkommen hit och skitbra fråga :-)

There is just one small problem with the typical Scandinavian sheets, they're all formfitted/molded around the knife with the stiching at the back of it.

Doing stamping/tooling on typical American sheet is "easy" but I too wonder when are you suppouse to tool the Scandinavian sheets? Before molding (which means the stamping will fade out) or after the molding, hense the knife will still have to be in there??? I guess it might be a similar problem when doing tooling on a saddle?

[ChuckBurrows]

Scandinavian style sheaths are whole different animal than the way most sheaths are made and decorated. The tooling/pouting is done after construction and the leather most commonly used is known as half-tanned (available from Brisa in Finland https://www.brisa.fi/portal/index.php?option=com_oscommerce&osMod=index&cPath=93_66 ).

The best info on making Scandi style sheaths is Bo Bergman's book, Knifemaking: A Complete Guide to Crafting Knives, Handles & Sheaths, available from various sources including Amazon.com. Another resource is the British Blades Forum which has apretty good tutorial http://www.britishblades.com/forums/showthread.php?22249-Scandi-Sheaths-My-Way

For those in Europe the BB forum is also a good resource since they are more familiar with Euro resources.