Pancake Sheath Question

[jrmysell]

I am making a knife as a gift for someone and am going to be making a pancake style sheath. I want to do a basket weave design on the front, and dye it and use antique for the tooling. I plan on tooling, then doing the dyeing, then putting the sheath together. When forming the sheath to the handle, everywhere that I've looked says to soak the sheath to form it. My question is, will this effect the tooling or the dye? I've read that getting the leather too wet while tooling will cause them to lose definition. Am I overthinking this and everything should be fine or will I possibly run into trouble doing this? Just to clarify, after forming, I can then use resolene, antique, and resolene again to finish it?

Thanks everybody.

[Josh Ashman]

Hello Jrmysell,

I'll take a shot at answering you. Tooling, then dyeing, then assembling, then wet forming, then resisting with resolene, then antiquing and finally top coating with resolene will work OK. Anytime I form tooled leather I  loose some definition, the best way for me to minimize this is to have really good definition to start them not get too carried away with the forming. To get the moisture "right" for tooling I dunk the leather in water for a second or so then let it sit in the open until the surface starts to return to it's natural color. Some people will dunk it then stick it in a plastic bag for a period of time, some put it in the fridge for a while. I've never tried the fridge but when forming leather for saddle work I do use a bag and let it sit for a half day or so. But, for tooling smaller pieces like a knife sheath or holster a quick dunk then sitting out in the open for a few minutes seems to be sufficient for me. Once it's tooled I'd let it dry for at least half a day, maybe a full day then dye it and let it dry, again half a day at least. Then assemble and do a quick dunk to form. From there you'll get some mixed results, but for me there isn't much you can do to get around them. Resolene, for me, isn't that great of a resist. Neat-Lac works better but I'm not sure you can get it anymore. Regardless of what you use to resist, when you antique it you'll muddy up the stitching. If you're not looking to have white stitching this isn't a problem, just something to be aware of. If you do want white stitching then you can resist and antique before assembly however this limits the forming you can do and when you form and top coat you'll still get some transfer to your stitching, at least I always do. Letting every step thoroughly dry helps to minimize this. I also will use an old t-shirt and saddle soap to try and rub off any excess dye and antique before stitching if I want to keep it as white as possible. I suppose you could tool; dye; glue and assemble, but not stitch, form; resist; antique; top coat then stitch. If hand stitching you could stab your holes before you top coated them as the top coat will often transfer the finish a little and make your stab holes less noticeable. Then again if your awl and thread are sized about right the thread will fill the holes anyway. 

I say it's an art not a science so it's best to build one and see what works then tweak the process if you don't like the results. Keeping in mind that different hides and different thread will all respond a little differently.

A few other thoughts, I keep a small tub of water by my work bench, clean water creates less issues. When I hand stitched with waxed thread I used an overstitch wheel to clean up muddied stitching and generally had less issues with transfer to them. I use the liquid Fiebings acrylic antique and really like it, but if you get something finished with it wet and go to rubbing it with your thumbs very much it will likely rub right off, at least it has for me. More dry time can help with this, but it's still likely. 

Anyway, there is a lot of info, hopefully some of it is helpful! Good luck with your sheath!

Josh  

[jrmysell]

Thank you. This is exactly what I was looking for. I have some natural Barbour's Linen Thread that I'll use, but I plan on dying it for most of the first few sheaths I do, so that shouldn't be a problem, but I could also wait and stitch at the end too. I will use "sticky wax" and wax the thread myself. I was mainly worried about getting it wet enough to form it, but not lose the stamping. Once again, thanks. 

[SLP]

I had a very similar question a while ago when I was working on a holster. Check out the link to that post. There was a lot of helpful information. I think the best idea was to tool, dye, stitch, form antique then tear out the stitches and stitch again to maintain white threads. I think a vacuum press would be helpful so you don'y have to use thumbs to get a little definition. I don't think you need a $400 setup. I recently got a Roarockit kit for $60 that works great.

[jrmysell]

Thanks for the tip, I could stitch twice, and just use a cheaper thread I have to use it up. I plan on antiquing after forming, it was more the basket weave impressions fading, I guess that's the best word for it, from soaking the leather to mold it. But that thread is more what I was looking for than I found, as I was just searching for pancake sheath tooling. Didn't even thing to look for holster threads.