-
The BladeForums.com 2024 Traditional Knife is available! Price is $250 ea (shipped within CONUS).
Order here: https://www.bladeforums.com/help/2024-traditional/
Chopper
- Thread starter Sam Salvati
- Start date
- Joined
- Mar 29, 2007
- Messages
- 5,846
Wow, great knife. I mean it. I like that one a lot.
I've done leatherwork with anything from an SAK and a needle to a full set of tools, some of which are really pointless to anyone but a saddlemaker. Unfortunately, my stitching never really got *good*, but luckily, I found someone to teach who is a fuss budget neat freak.
The gouge for recessing the stitches is a good thing to have, it helps a lot if used on the front side of the sheath for keeping the awl lined up after you do the marking with the stitch marking wheel. A very professional sheath can be done with just the gouge, marking wheel, a stitching awl, 2 needles and some waxed flax thread. Until I made a horse for Sierra we used an old vise with leather lined jaws for holding the sheath during stitching.
I'd personally skip HF for the tools, but for $10, you'll at least know what they all are if you need to get better ones later. An awl can be made if you can get a rock solid heat treat and temper on something that small (I can't), but the good osborne one at tandy is $8. The gouge, there are two kinds, get both the adjustable and the straight one. The adjustable one will follow a guide and that can be very handy. Often sierra will waterform, then glue up the sheath with the welt in, trim and have me make it perfectly even with the belt grinder (slow speed, 80 or 120 grit) and then she'll use that to guide the adjustable gouge.
If you waterform and get a good solid glue up, then neat stitching is easy to do. Even with the awl to punch the holes as you go, you'll want a sailor's stitching palm and a pair of pliers handy. We use glover's needles most of the time, though when I'm messing around with a gun holster I end up using lacing needles *shrug*.
While much of the book is inapplicable, the al stohlman art of hand sewing leather is my higest recommended buy.
So, in the end, Tandy sells the best budget tools, IMO, though you can easily get leather of twice the quality (especially for tooling) at 75% of the price from Siegel.
I feel funny giving advice, since I don't do the sheaths much anymore unless Koyote Girl get stuck on a design problem, but she does put out some top quality working sheaths using the methods I taught her.
I've done leatherwork with anything from an SAK and a needle to a full set of tools, some of which are really pointless to anyone but a saddlemaker. Unfortunately, my stitching never really got *good*, but luckily, I found someone to teach who is a fuss budget neat freak.
The gouge for recessing the stitches is a good thing to have, it helps a lot if used on the front side of the sheath for keeping the awl lined up after you do the marking with the stitch marking wheel. A very professional sheath can be done with just the gouge, marking wheel, a stitching awl, 2 needles and some waxed flax thread. Until I made a horse for Sierra we used an old vise with leather lined jaws for holding the sheath during stitching.
I'd personally skip HF for the tools, but for $10, you'll at least know what they all are if you need to get better ones later. An awl can be made if you can get a rock solid heat treat and temper on something that small (I can't), but the good osborne one at tandy is $8. The gouge, there are two kinds, get both the adjustable and the straight one. The adjustable one will follow a guide and that can be very handy. Often sierra will waterform, then glue up the sheath with the welt in, trim and have me make it perfectly even with the belt grinder (slow speed, 80 or 120 grit) and then she'll use that to guide the adjustable gouge.
If you waterform and get a good solid glue up, then neat stitching is easy to do. Even with the awl to punch the holes as you go, you'll want a sailor's stitching palm and a pair of pliers handy. We use glover's needles most of the time, though when I'm messing around with a gun holster I end up using lacing needles *shrug*.
While much of the book is inapplicable, the al stohlman art of hand sewing leather is my higest recommended buy.
So, in the end, Tandy sells the best budget tools, IMO, though you can easily get leather of twice the quality (especially for tooling) at 75% of the price from Siegel.
I feel funny giving advice, since I don't do the sheaths much anymore unless Koyote Girl get stuck on a design problem, but she does put out some top quality working sheaths using the methods I taught her.
