Idea for Fixed Blade Sheath. Comments Please.

[miguel_SF]

There is a recent post about carrying fixed blades in public that drew a lot of responses and that got me thinking about why I don't carry an FB. All of my FBs are small fighters, except for my Buck Strider Solution and Gerber Yari, which are camping/hiking blades. I decided that I don't carry the fighters because I don't like the way they look in their Kydex sheaths. In an urban setting, wearing an FB is a pretty powerful "fashion statement", and I'm a fairly conservative looking person (coat and tie to the office, "dressed up" a lot of the time away from work). I want to wear the knife - but the Kydex sheaths clash with the way I dress. I thought a bit and decided that a very simple and effective sheath could be made as follows:

Take two leather rectangles, about 2.5" by 7.75", lay one on top of the other and sew both long sides and one of the short sides together. Put 2 or 3 belt loops on one side so it could be worn horizontally on a belt and you're done. The knife slides in the open end, point first obviously, and should be quite secure, invisible (yet not "concealed"), but easily accessible with a short lanyard on the end of the knife handle. Either my Dozier Arkansas Toothpick or my Camillus CQB-2 (my 2 favorite fighters) should fit nicely using these dimensions.

There are not a lot of knife or sheath makers in SF (surprise, surprise), but I should be able to find someone locally to make something like this, and if nice leather were used and the workmanship was good, it would look good and be discrete - my kind of sheath.

Seems simple, but I've never seen a sheath like this. Any thoughts?

miguel

 

[calyth]

I think even with a leather sheath, that's not going to do much as soon as people around you figure that it's a FB in the sheath.
I much rather get a Kydex sheath, and do IWB despite the rules. I'm pretty confident that normally I would not attract the kind of attention that would make someone search me for it.
Besides I'm worried about retention. I still wouldn't count on a leather sheath without some kind of snap to hold a blade in.
Also some hues of leather would make your sheath show up immediately, but if you use some kind of dark color, you can always wear it horizontal at the small of the back and wear the jacket or something.

 

[Buzzbait]

I see two problems with that setup. As Calyth mentioned, blade retention could be a big problem. If you don't use some sort of retaining strap, you'll need to wet form the leather, so the knife snaps into place like on a kydex shaeth.

You'll also need some sort of backspacer on one side of the sheath. If you don't have something hard for the cutting edge to rest on, the blade with cut right through the stitching that holds the sheath together.

 

[miguel_SF]

Thanks for the input.

Calyth: I'm not concerned about people figuring out that it's a knife sheath - just that it not stick out like a sore thumb. On the other hand, if the whole knife slides into this "sleeve" it would take a very observant and knife-aware individual to figure it out; most people will probably be thinking "Hey - where can I get a skinny cell-phone like that guy's?". I'll definitely use the stock Kydex sheaths when I'm hiking, etc, but want an alternative for in town. Since the sheath will be horizontal, not very wide, and right at my beltline, it should blend in with my belt as long as I pick a muted color leather. If it works out, I may have to get a black one and a brown one to match either belt color.

Buzzbait: My preferred grip is inverted (hammer grip with edge facing towards me), so the blade would rest with the edge up and shouldn't actually touch the leather on the inside.

I didn't think that retention would be a problem since I was planning on using soft, thin leather and the fit should be pretty snug, but you both may be right. Fortunately, this thing shouldn't cost me much, so I will have a prototype made up in budget leather to test the fit before I spring for something more exotic. One option would be to vary the height of the belt loops so that the sheath naturally carries with the open end slightly higher than the closed end.

miguel