Newbie From Africa

[rickybobby]

Welcome Willem,

We have some knife makers here on the forum that have picked up the leather bug (trade) as well. They said it helped with sales of their knives to offer the sheath as well and they made some additional money too!

There are so many styles of sheathes that can be made. Use the "Search" function and type in "knife sheath" or anything related and something should pop up. I have made a few and posted them a couple years ago but there are many others (and most are better!).

I work with veg-tan leather most of the time, its properties allow for tooling and/or molding the leather to the project. All the steps are here in the forum for working with the leather, it is a matter of reading and searching then post some questions and you will be on your way to making your own sheathes!

Beautiful country in your photos!

[Havamal]

Willem,

I love the wilderness and open spaces, I grew up on a small island off the coast of British Columbia, Canada and have spent a great deal of time traveling in past years. I have been to almost every state in the US, all of the Canadian provinces, even the Arctic Circle. My next step is to get off this continent! I have an artist friend that travel to Africa almost every year and do volunteer wildlife conservation projects and they have invited my wife & I to go with them next time. However, my wife wants to go to Scotland as well... I guess we will see which trip prevails!!

Really look forward to seeing some of your work!

[Willem]

Thank you all again for the warm welcome. Now I need to study! I have been sampling here and there, looking at tools, their maintenance, kinds of leathers etc - and of course the work of some of the members here - and it is awesome! There is some really, really stunning stuff here!

Rick, I think your approach is the right one - I need to start of with one item and research that fully - and the skills I pick up there can then be applied to the next item/step. It has been dormant in my system for a long time but I think the bug is waking up and going to bite hard..:D

Matt, from what I have seen Scotland is a beautiful place too, but you have to convince her to experience Africa. I still deal with foreign visitors fairly regularly in the hunting industry (used to do a lot more of it before I got too busy with the knives) as a free lance professional hunter and they all say the same thing - there is a kind of primal feeling to Africa that they have not experienced anywhere else - and it stays with you - most I know have been back at least 3 times.

[ReneeCanady]

Welcome Willem! The pics are beautiful. My step daughter has been to Africa twice in the last two years. First trip she was more so staying around the Tunis area and the second time she was all over South Africa. She currently is in Egypt taking corses and workshops with famous belly dancers. My daughter just graduated this past summer with a archeology major/arabic studies minor. She is our little nomadic child lol.

[Willem]

Thanks Renee! Wow - archaeology, Arabic and belly dancing - sounds like the script for an Idiana Jones sequal Anyway, thanks again for the welcome - I am looking forward to learning a lot here. So far that has mainly consisted of finding out how very little I do know. I am going to have to take it one step at a time - there is so much beautiful work here that I would like to try my hand at that it can become overwhelming - you don't know where to start!