What size of thread and needle for hand sewing a leather sheath?

I did a look up on Tiger Thread and it looks interesting! I'm going to have to try some out, many thanks for the heads up!
 
I just got done making my first knife sheath last night so I'm no expert but I did learn a few things.

Do not buy those big eye needles for leather stitching. I went to Tandy in Dallas and that's what the guy told me I needed. I literally broke 10 of them making 1 sheath. Now I probably did several things wrong that led to breaking them but they are very weak and brittle. I had drilled out all of my holes with a 1/16" drill press because that's the size everything I read and watched said to use. After breaking 9 needles less than halfway through my stitching I went back and drilled the rest of the holes out to 5/64" which made all the difference in the world. I had 1 needle left so had to switched back and forth between the two ends of the thread for every stitch. I broke the last needed on my final backstitch so I ended half a stitch short with no more needles.

The Barge contact cement in the little blue tube is a stringy mess but that's what everyone sells and seems to recommend for newbies. I don't have much experience with contact cement but surely there's something that doesn't make you feel like you've walked through a spider web after using it so I would look for another alternative.

Instead of wasting $15 on a leather slicker you can make 1 very easily. I just got a scrap piece of wooden rod and put a couple of different sized grooves on it with a Dremel sanding bit and it worked great to slick my edges of various thicknesses.

I read a lot about the virtues of waxed nylon thread so that's what I used. I couldn't find it in a natural color so got the plain white and was not happy with how it turned out. It's really really white and then after stitching it just looks dirty. I think I'll go buy a waxed natural colored natural material thread and just back stitch another stitch or two instead of burning the ends as it was suggested to me.

Is it just me or does Tandy make pretty poor quality tools? Everything seems really dull and hard to cut anything(stitching groovers and edge beveler mainly) which leads to having to put too much pressure and things not looking very uniform.

I wish I had seen the thread linked previously in this thread before I made my first sheath. There's a lot of great info there.
 
iirc, there was mention of harness needles earlier in the thread, they are indeed heads above in quality and strength, Tandy does sell them. :)

5/64ths is what I use for the most part on drilling holes. 1/16ths is just too narrow for a big sheath, your hands wont forgive you for a while after one of those. :p

I've never bought any cutting tool that didn't need some work to make satisfactory for leather work. Tandy does make decent tools, they just arent that good at sharpening them. Make a strop out of the edge of some good stiff thick leather for those edgers, use some white rouge on it and strop away! Normally you can get through one sheath before needing stropping, you dont want any drag when edging or the leather will bunch up. Proper and consistent maintenance of your cutting tools in crucial for good quality work. X-acto and Utility knife blades, I sharpen them before every use, if they dont gleam on the edge you wont get a good clean cut. Good quality stones and strops are very important.

Barge cement is good, but expensive. Grab a bottle or can of DAP Weldwood Contact Cement from your local department store. Its much less expensive and comes in a nice bottle with brush attachment. The quart can does not, but you can use that little bottle for a while before it goes loose. Weldwood came highly regarded by Sandy Morissey so I know its good, and I've been using it since even before I started making sheaths back in 2001. I made armor for the SCA for years before that and the stuff stands up to their abuse and sweat.
 
Thanks Leatherman. I was just about to make a leather strop for my knives so I'll make a mini strop for my leather tools too.
 
I usually tune up my new edgers with a round jewelers file then strop it a LOT till I get that nice fine polished edge. A tip on edgers: look for the bent shaft types, the angle for trimming is much more advantageous. Those straight ones are not easy to use and always seem to want to dig in. If you have money burning a hole in your pocket Osborne makes some really nice edgers. I will have to get me one, one of these days.

The groover tool is more difficult to sharpen, but its possible, I use a small ceramic stone and carefully work around that rounded cutter. A scratch awl will help re-round the opening as well.
 
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