Intro :)

S

swestypants

Joined
Oct 12, 2016
Messages
3
Hey all!

My name is Sara, I'm a graphic designer & illustrator who recently picked up an expensive hobby. :cool:

I started playing with leather when I made an elk leather butterfly chair for my new home office. Not long after that I started looking into trying my hand at making a knife sheath for my boyfriend as a birthday gift. He had a gorgeous Half Face Blades Crow Scout knife that desperately needed a sheath.

I know my tooling needs some work, and there are a few things I'll do differently in the future, however I'm really proud of how it turned out - and my boyfriend loves it and ultimately that's what counts. ;)
zmy1xx.jpg

33kw3d0.jpg

16c7x4m.jpg


I mocked the sheath up in craft foam after vectorizing it in illustrator (that designer in me had to) and once I felt comfortable with the foam version I started cutting leather.
30db1jp.jpg


I broke quite a few needles on it, so I've been on the hunt for something better than Tandy.. my stitches didn't stay straight through the layers on one side, which was frustrating because I tried to stay conscious of that, and to get to that point in making the sheath to make such a silly mistake bummed me out. But I'll be even more conscious of that in the future.


My grandpa loved how it turned out as well.. so now I'm trying to come up with a pattern for his knife that isn't overwhelmingly huge but doesn't leave too much of the guards (Is that the correct term?) hanging out too far.
10xt6k2.jpg


Looking forward to continuing to learn and get better at my new hobby. :)

- Sara
 
Last edited:
Wow
That's beautiful
Welcome to BF
You will get a lot of tips and advice from experienced members.
So you came to the right place.
😁


Sent from my KIW-L24 using Tapatalk
 
I like it, I've always been interested in leather crafting but have yet to try my hand at it
 
Nice work. Get rid of the Tandy needles and get some John James needles.

Leave a little border at the top of the sheath instead of stamping all the way to the edge.
 
Nice job! I'd agree on the border at the top. Ya picked a tough tooling pattern to start with. Hard to pull off well and you did it pretty nicely. Strive for a little more depth on the next one in your stamping. It doesn't go around sharp corners well as ya found out down at the bottom. I'd suggest at the junction of your two channels to do a flower center or something similar and then having your stamping coming off in two separate channels instead of trying to stamp in one continuous channel all the way around. Hope that makes sense and I'll try to find some pics that will maybe better illustrate what I'm trying to get across. Anyhoo welcome and nice job on a first effort. I'll let other guys that do a lot of handstitching help ya with your stitching holes.
 
Horsewright said:
Nice job! I'd agree on the border at the top. Ya picked a tough tooling pattern to start with. Hard to pull off well and you did it pretty nicely. Strive for a little more depth on the next one in your stamping. It doesn't go around sharp corners well as ya found out down at the bottom. I'd suggest at the junction of your two channels to do a flower center or something similar and then having your stamping coming off in two separate channels instead of trying to stamp in one continuous channel all the way around. Hope that makes sense and I'll try to find some pics that will maybe better illustrate what I'm trying to get across. Anyhoo welcome and nice job on a first effort. I'll let other guys that do a lot of handstitching help ya with your stitching holes.
Click to expand...

I think my depth issue has a lot to do with me not wanting to bother my neighbors - I need to figure out how to effectively stamp without having people on either side of me complaining...oh apartment life.

The stitching holes were as small as I could go -- I was snapping the eye of the needle off every 3 or 4 stitches. I would think any thicker of thread to compensate for that would have caused the same issue. I have some new needles on order to experiment with. Hopefully they'll do the trick.
 
Look at getting some of the harness
Needles from tandy. Ive stitched a couple
Dozen sheaths with em and I have only
broke one.
 
Agreed, it does sound like your using the "big eye" needles that plenty of leather craft suppliers sell cheap. They really aren't worth it as the eye flexes on every stitch and eventually breaks from work hardening.

Harness needles are the way to go, but are a bit hard to thread. Once you get the trick of it you wont have much of an issue.
 
Couldn't sleep the other night, so got up about 2:30 and whipped these 4 Rangeflap holsters out. The one with the brand is an order the other three are for a show. Fortunately I can tool away and not worry about waking the wife. Do you have a poundo board under your tooling rock? If so and its still too loud try sticking some folded up newspapers under the poundo board. If ya don't have a poundo board ya wanna get one it will help a lot with the noise. Tandy sells em. Anyhoo some ideas that might help keep the neighbors happy.

kahvch3.jpg


These are four of my Rangeflap holsters. I've just finished sewing in the lining and sanding those edges. The one on the bottom I did with a Carlos Border stamp. I use the hour glass stamp but it works the same as your tear drop meander stamp, or running W as its also sometimes called.

7wURUDY.jpg


In this close up you can see the little flower center and arrowhead stamp I use. This is how I start and stop this pattern. It was also done under the strap on the flap but ya can't see it because of the strap. So instead of one single channel I've divided it into 3 using the flower center and arrowhead stamps. Give this a try next time and it'll help a bunch. Also gives your pattern a stop and start which would take care of the border issue mentioned at the top of your sheath. Hope this helps and again a nice job on your first effort.
 
I found the best thing was to call Tandy and talk to them about needle size, awl size, and appropriate thread. Good job, now go make 12 more, then 12 more after that!
 
Oh, and get Al Stohlmans book on stitching👍
I use to cheat and punch with a awl from Tandy, but I would put it in my drill press (not turned on) to make punched holes that where straight. Now I just settle for the back of my stitches a little crooked. Each one gets a little better
 
Cody Hofsommer said:
Oh, and get Al Stohlmans book on stitching👍
I use to cheat and punch with a awl from Tandy, but I would put it in my drill press (not turned on) to make punched holes that where straight. Now I just settle for the back of my stitches a little crooked. Each one gets a little better
Click to expand...

I figured out (by accident, trial and error and practice) that if my awl goes through the same direction/angle from front to back, the stitches seem to stay straight.
 
1) nice work
2) I'd like to see that chair as well
3) Your grandfathers knife is a WW1 French trench knife called "the revencher for 1870"
It's a very nice one and very collectable(sought after)
 
Thanks everyone, sorry for the delay in response, had a couple pistol classes this weekend. Still exhausted. Ha!

I'll definitely look into those needle suggestions. I think the biggest issue with my particular local Tandy location is that it's hit or miss whether someone who knows there stuff is actually working. Even to the point of this one guy not knowing the system and charging my card twice.. that was fun to clear up.

Anyways, Dave, thanks for the tip on the corners. Never would have thought of that, and none of the resources I had found on those style stamps talked about doing something like that.

Hengelo_77 said:
1) nice work
2) I'd like to see that chair as well
3) Your grandfathers knife is a WW1 French trench knife called "the revencher for 1870"
It's a very nice one and very collectable(sought after)
Click to expand...

Thanks! I'll try and get some good photos here this afternoon. Need to clean up my office a tad first. ;)

Thanks for the info on the knife too! Explains why he was so nervous shipping it across the country to me.
 
Welcome, nice job for your first sheath. I found that doing google search for leather sheaths turned up some beautiful examples of tooling from Paul Long (BF member sheathmaker) his clean designs helped me understand transitions as does Dave's example above. They are both great leather artisans worth picking up ideas from. Good luck and keep working on your skills.

Cody mentioned Al Stohlmans book highly recommend to all hand stitchers.

Not sure what thread you are using, but since I switched to "Tiger" thread I don't hate hand stitching so much...
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top