Placement of a keeper strap - high or low?

[HoosierQ]

I am making a leather sheath for my ESEE-5. This sheath will not be a pouch type so I will have a keeper strap with a Sam Browne button closure.

My first instinct is to place it low on the handle near the guard so that not only is knife retained overall, but it is kept nested down in the sheath. However, it seems that those low mounted ones are frequently cut as they curl around the blade on the draw. One can always hold the strap out of the way of course but that's not something I want to count on.

I have made very few sheaths with keeper straps. Do you all recommend high or low? My thought if I go low would be to make it easily replacable if it does get cut badly...not gluing it in...maybe just threading it through some holes and not fastening it at all.

Any thoughts given your experience would be appreciated.

I am going with this leather treatment, both tooling and finish. I am going to stitch the belt loop right to the back to get some clearance for the scales and attach the keeper to that. The belt loop "assembly" will be quite a bit wider than you see on this rather small knife.

 

[Greg45]

I think straps should be kept low on the handle. If they're too high and the sheath is turned upside down, the knife can slide out a little, exposing the blade. That's bad stuff. Plus the lower straps look better to me.

Here's one way to do it, which I "borrowed" from Chuck at Chuddy Bear Sheaths. The strap is attached to the back with a Chicago screw, which makes it easily replaceable, but it also lets the strap swivel out of the way of the blade when opened. I've gotten used to just rotating the strap down and out of the way automatically when I unsnap it.

It also lets me swing it around to the other side of the sheath if I want to, for times when I may be using the knife a lot and don't want to lay it down, but don't really need to strap it in.

If you're making a strap that goes all the way around the handle, Dwayne Puckett's idea, shown in Nick's tutorial, works well. It stays out of the way better than others and can be replaced if it ever does gets cut.