Different Kind Of Knife Sheath

[Fonzarellis]

I was at a Bushcraft gathering recently and everyone was doing the show and tell thing with knives and sheath design. One of the guys mentioned he wanted a side draw belt sheath for his Svord Peasant folder. Since this was such an odd shaped knife, I knew it would have to be a wet-mold project which I had never done but was game to try. He agreed to let me take the knife home and see what I could come up with.

Now I am a big fan of tooling my sheaths but I know that tooling and wet-molding don't make great bed partners so here's what I did...

First off I had to make a custom mold to shape the leather. I rounded out the bottom edges to make a more appealing transition then cut out the leather to a rough size. I wet the leather in distilled water, blotted with a dry towel, and started the shaping process with my fingers. After the leather began to stretch a little, I put it in the mold and started to apply pressure and eventually clamped it down tight.

I was surprised how easy it was and how well it came out on the first try. I gave it a rough trim and cut out the back to match. I gave the molded piece a little shape on top and here's how she looked prior to assembly.

He wanted it to match a sheath he already had so I gave it a few coats of Mahogany dye and after allowing it to dry, I buffed off the excess. I made sure I burnished the top edge of the molded piece before assembly. The rest is stitching, final trim, shaping the edges, burnishing and applying some Tan-Kote and Satin Sheen. Just for grins, I put a top coat of Atom Wax and buffed it up a bit.

I intend to add a couple of small grommets to the corners to make it convertable to a "necker" but I made it with the belt loop as originally intended.

It was fun making this and I can see a few more wet-molded projects in the near future.

Thanks for looking.

Edited June 1, 2015 by Fonzarellis

[Rohn]

Looks great. Very nice work and I enjoyed all the pictures and a review of the process.

[DS STRAPS]

Very nice!

[Fonzarellis]

Thanks folks. Super simple looking sheath and it turned out better than I expected. I'm on several forums and I've never seen anthing like it especially for this knife.

[Dan28]

That is a really nice looking sheathe. I also took something away from just the background of your pics that I think is a great idea, using rubber bands to keep your dye daubers attached to your dye. Though I buy my most used dyes in the 32 oz bottles.

[Fonzarellis]

What's really funny is that those are hair bands. I like the smaller bottles cuz I set them inside a big roll of blue masking tape to make sure I don't accidentally knock it over while working. You can always refill them from the larger bottles an reduce the bench clutter a bit. I'm still at the experimentation stage on different colors of dyes. I recently discovered that the Dark Brown Antique is a perfect compliment to the Saddle Tan Dye and would make a really beautiful two tone project.