Pancake Sheath Construction

[leatherman]

This was asked to me the other day and made me wonder, how do you guys assemble your pancake style sheaths?

Do you make them "on the curve"?

The "ears" are they two layers or do hey include the welt as well? Or are they the welt?

How wide do you make the "ears"? Tight to the sheath or spread wide from it?

I've made them every way asked up there, and a couple others, some failures and some successes.

My preferred method so far does not include the welt in the ears, but it does tend to make the odd pooch where the surface leather has to bend together off the welt. I sometimes offset the ears a bit for stability, but have done them right next to the sides of the sheath when the customer wants a thinner profile.

Lets see yours!

 

[Salolan]

I'm not nearly as experienced as most of you, but I have made 3 like this.

On mine, I did the welt all the way through, though I know Dave normally just does the welt on the edge side and skives to 0 on the spine side. I think it is best to keep the ears as tight as possible while still allowing you to keep the slots parallel(very important to keep the slots parallel).
I'm going to need to design my pattern a bit for the ones I plan to make in the near future. I intend on getting the 2" Weaver oblong punch Dave recommends and I noticed my slots in the pattern were slightly over 2 1/2". I will be able to shorten my ears up a bit.

Chris

 

[Horsewright]

What do you mean by on the curve Dwayne?

 

[leatherman]

meaning with a built in curve, instead of letting the body curve it for them.

I've built in the curve (pain in the butt by the way) and it was so much more comfortable from the get go. But is it worth the trouble?

Holsters are often built this way for comfort, as they do not tend to"work in" like knife sheaths do. I found this out making a trio of holsters for a customer a few years ago. This is what made me try it on my sheaths, and it works, much more difficultly though.

 

[darkmatter35]

I never did a pancake sheath till I followed Dave's sheath tutorial in the Sticky:How To. The three that I did came out beautiful. My 7" overall knife came out the best because of the spacing between the slots ( the sheath rides more horizontal), than my 5.5 inch overall knife. The shorter slot spacing makes it sit a little more vertical. I think letting the body curve the sheath is fine, maybe it will curve more custom to the users body. I does take a little while for this to happen. Even my smaller knife sheath feels much better after a month of carry. The 7" sheath felt real good right from the first carry. I do notice that the pancake style takes up more real estate on my belt.
John S.

 

[Horsewright]

Ah got ya Dwayne, wasn't understanding. I'd be heistant and in fact heistant to the point of not doing that at all but perhaps for a different reason. I would not want to limit where the customer can carry his sheath. So my regular crossdraw right hand pancake can be carried from just left of the belt buckle to centered in the small of the back. 180 degrees on the belt. If I were to preform it we'd be limited to the hip only I would guess.

 

[leatherman]

Thank you! Good info here.

Pancake sheaths are a difficult at best option for the new maker. They look deceptively simple, but if you design it wrong or put it together off it never works right.

The one thing I always do is make sure the ears are more toward the back of the sheath and less in the middle, especially on big knives. The ears themselves being a bit wider in the middle helps them stay put and not roll, I got a pancake back recently in a trade that the ears had rolled considerably to the point where the stitching was sideways. The leather was rather narrow, I see now that it should have been much wider in the middle so they wont roll.