- Joined
- Dec 25, 2019
- Messages
- 159
Hello everyone!
I'm finishing a coffin handle bowie and though it would be nice to show how my process of making a sheath works. I'm not a pro doing leatherwork and my intentions with this WIP is to show others bladesmiths/ knifemakers like me that don't like making sheaths but think it is a important piece of the package for a custom knife.
It's important to do a disclaimer here, I will not be show the brands of the products I use because I live in Brazil and the chances of the reader finding the same stuff I use is slim, that been told I'm showing the general process here and you can find the specific products in other great sheath tutorial here on BF
The knife i'm doing the sheath for is this small bowie, 8" blade made from 14C28N stainless and spalted maple burl handle.
The idea for this sheath is a two piece construction with a brazilian gator skin inlay, a custom stud build from scratch and a detachable belt loop. The stitching will be done by hand.
I start by tracing the outline of the knife on paper and adding a 1/2" larger than the blade to compensate the area where the stitches will be, it can be a little bigger or smaller depending on the knife, in this project the botton side is smaller than the top because of the size of guard.
After that i cut the template and trace over the leather. I use leather with around 1/8" thick.
After tracing the pattern on the leather i cut the pieces with a utility knife
You don't need to cut all the thickness of the leather in one cut, specially with thicker leather the chances of mistakes are much higher, so take as much passes as necessary and you will end up with something like this.
After the pieces have been cut I smooth the edges a little on the belt grinder with a 120 grit belt but leave the edge square, this step is just to remove any irregularities that may affect how the groove for the stitches will turn out
With the groover with a rounded point and a divider I trace where the stitches and the gator inlay will be
With the outline of the area where the gator skin wiil be I can stamp the leather to give a more pleasing look. To do it the leather need to be wet, just a wet sponge will be enough to make the leather maleable to accept the stamping. To minimize the expansion caused by the stamping process I glue some masking tape to it"s back.
And it will be looking like this after
Then I remove the middle panel.
This pannel will be used to fill the back of the exotic skin afterwards.
To give a little space for the gator skin the edges must be tapered.
I cut the gator skin the same size that the sheath and grind the edges to allow the contact cement to glue to it
I don't have a specific moment where I paint the cow leather, but it must be before any glue comes close to it because if it touches where it is not supposed to be the paint will not adhere to that spot. To mark where is the limit to grind the gator skin I use and owl and the front part of the sheath.
Then I glue the panel that I've cut from the leather part to the back of the gator skin, so it will be flush with the frame .
Now it's time to leave the leather beside and start making the stud
I'll be using 304L stainless. The piece that I had laying in the shop was flat but had enough thickness to make it. In the following steps there will be some questionable setups, DO AT YOUR OWN RISK. And yes it would be easier and safer if I had round bar stock... but I used what I had
After cutting a piece of the bar I square it in all sides and end with something close to a cube. After that I trace two lines conecting the points to finde the center and use a punch to mark it to drill.
Then I drill the hole for the screw that will lock the stud in place.
For these studs a M4 screw will do just fine.
Now for the questionable part, making it round.
I use the angle grinder and the drill press at the same time to turn the square piece to a round shape and then start working with files to give it's final shape. This drill is new to me, I have a cheap chinese import drill press and used to fix the angle grinder on the drill's table with a c clamp with the disc facing downwards, with it upwards like the picture it will unscrew the stud. Just after the stud went flying around the shop I realised that this bigger drill press was sturd enough to really use as a lathe. I ground an old file to use it as a lathe tool and got a decent results.
Next time I will just buy some round stock. As my college professor used to say in the classroom, we pay the price of our own stupidity.
With the stud now round I made the round groove with a 4mm chainsaw file and domed it's face with a flat file on the drill press and finished with sandpaper and polishing compound and ended up like this.
To attach it to the sheath it's just a matter of making a hole through all the three layers of leather and screw the stud in place. Because the gator skin is very hard a normal screwhead will be good.
To protect the blade from the screw I apply a thin leather to the inside of the sheath and to make a nice touch it folds on the throat of the sheath making a nice lip where the guards sit against, unfortunatelly I forgot to take pictures of that part.
I'm finishing a coffin handle bowie and though it would be nice to show how my process of making a sheath works. I'm not a pro doing leatherwork and my intentions with this WIP is to show others bladesmiths/ knifemakers like me that don't like making sheaths but think it is a important piece of the package for a custom knife.
It's important to do a disclaimer here, I will not be show the brands of the products I use because I live in Brazil and the chances of the reader finding the same stuff I use is slim, that been told I'm showing the general process here and you can find the specific products in other great sheath tutorial here on BF
The knife i'm doing the sheath for is this small bowie, 8" blade made from 14C28N stainless and spalted maple burl handle.
The idea for this sheath is a two piece construction with a brazilian gator skin inlay, a custom stud build from scratch and a detachable belt loop. The stitching will be done by hand.
I start by tracing the outline of the knife on paper and adding a 1/2" larger than the blade to compensate the area where the stitches will be, it can be a little bigger or smaller depending on the knife, in this project the botton side is smaller than the top because of the size of guard.
After that i cut the template and trace over the leather. I use leather with around 1/8" thick.
After tracing the pattern on the leather i cut the pieces with a utility knife
You don't need to cut all the thickness of the leather in one cut, specially with thicker leather the chances of mistakes are much higher, so take as much passes as necessary and you will end up with something like this.
After the pieces have been cut I smooth the edges a little on the belt grinder with a 120 grit belt but leave the edge square, this step is just to remove any irregularities that may affect how the groove for the stitches will turn out
With the groover with a rounded point and a divider I trace where the stitches and the gator inlay will be
With the outline of the area where the gator skin wiil be I can stamp the leather to give a more pleasing look. To do it the leather need to be wet, just a wet sponge will be enough to make the leather maleable to accept the stamping. To minimize the expansion caused by the stamping process I glue some masking tape to it"s back.
And it will be looking like this after
Then I remove the middle panel.
This pannel will be used to fill the back of the exotic skin afterwards.
To give a little space for the gator skin the edges must be tapered.
I cut the gator skin the same size that the sheath and grind the edges to allow the contact cement to glue to it
I don't have a specific moment where I paint the cow leather, but it must be before any glue comes close to it because if it touches where it is not supposed to be the paint will not adhere to that spot. To mark where is the limit to grind the gator skin I use and owl and the front part of the sheath.
Then I glue the panel that I've cut from the leather part to the back of the gator skin, so it will be flush with the frame .
Now it's time to leave the leather beside and start making the stud
I'll be using 304L stainless. The piece that I had laying in the shop was flat but had enough thickness to make it. In the following steps there will be some questionable setups, DO AT YOUR OWN RISK. And yes it would be easier and safer if I had round bar stock... but I used what I had
After cutting a piece of the bar I square it in all sides and end with something close to a cube. After that I trace two lines conecting the points to finde the center and use a punch to mark it to drill.
Then I drill the hole for the screw that will lock the stud in place.
For these studs a M4 screw will do just fine.
Now for the questionable part, making it round.
I use the angle grinder and the drill press at the same time to turn the square piece to a round shape and then start working with files to give it's final shape. This drill is new to me, I have a cheap chinese import drill press and used to fix the angle grinder on the drill's table with a c clamp with the disc facing downwards, with it upwards like the picture it will unscrew the stud. Just after the stud went flying around the shop I realised that this bigger drill press was sturd enough to really use as a lathe. I ground an old file to use it as a lathe tool and got a decent results.
Next time I will just buy some round stock. As my college professor used to say in the classroom, we pay the price of our own stupidity.
With the stud now round I made the round groove with a 4mm chainsaw file and domed it's face with a flat file on the drill press and finished with sandpaper and polishing compound and ended up like this.
To attach it to the sheath it's just a matter of making a hole through all the three layers of leather and screw the stud in place. Because the gator skin is very hard a normal screwhead will be good.
To protect the blade from the screw I apply a thin leather to the inside of the sheath and to make a nice touch it folds on the throat of the sheath making a nice lip where the guards sit against, unfortunatelly I forgot to take pictures of that part.
......Cool stuff