2 piece welts, yay or nay?

grogimus

grogimus

Joined
Apr 27, 2012
Messages
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When doing a welt for an all around the body/pancake type sheath is it a no-go to use two separate pieces of leather for your welt? There is an awful lot of waste when cutting it out in one piece. It seems that 99 times out of 100 whenever you try to conserve material you're producing a less than optimum product, I was just wondering if this was one of those 1 in a hundred instances where it makes sense. It seems to me that with a tight fit and good burnishing the joint should be irrelevant.
 
This is the type of sheath I'm referencing.

c87142b85586acefb725da9cad2ce697.jpg
 
All my sheaths have split or two piece welts if at all possible. It does conserve good leather and is easier to adjust for perfect fit. In your photo above I would straight line spit right at the toe top to bottom,

Paul
 
I use 2 piece welts on virtually everything, but I don't fit tight - I leave a gap at the tip (about 1/16" or so) for drainage.
 
Two piece welt for me as well, it just makes good sense.
 
A sheath like you're showing absolutely. Most panckaes no, 1 piece, but the welt is only on the edge side.
 
Thanks guys. It made sense and seemed like it would reduce waste, which made me suspicious of it :D
 
knifeleather said:
I use 2 piece welts on virtually everything, but I don't fit tight - I leave a gap at the tip (about 1/16" or so) for drainage.
Click to expand...

Working on this now and I was looking at doing one sheath with a drainage hole and one without just to check it out. If you have a multiple layer welt do you leave the gap in each layer or just one? Not sure that it matters I imagine, just curious.
 
Drain holes are neither good or bad. If the interior of a sheath has been filled with water, then it will either drain out the hole or you can turn it upside down and drain out of the mouth. Either way the interior of the sheath is wet and must be thoroughly dried NATURALLY. So a drain hole is not necessarily an advantage.

Setting the sheath mouth first in front of a fan for several days is probably the fastest and most sure. Don't try to accelerate the drying with the use of heat….unless it is with a hand held hair dryer which will give you a combination of heat and air flow but it is kept moving so as to NOT concentrate the heat too much in any one area for too long. When you think the sheath is dry…give it a couple more days just to be sure.

Paul
 
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