Sheath for a Friend

[BrokenolMarine]

Some of you may recall I made a sheath for a friend who got a knife for Christmas. He liked it a lot, but I told him to be careful because the knife he received was VERY sharp and he wanted a low profile sheath and I didn't add a welt, which I normally do. He stopped by early this week, and had stuck the point of the VERY sharp knife thru the bottom of the sheath and wondered if I would "repair" the stitches he had cut. I told him I would use the old sheath as a pattern and make some improvements. It would take a few days. No problem.

I started by carefully disassembling the first sheath.

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Once that was done, I used the parts from the first sheath to lay out the new and improved sheath and begin cutting out and tooling the new pattern. I used a heavier and higher quality leather.

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Next up, I laid out the stitch lines and the holes for stitching the belt loop and the sheath together at the end.

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I started dying the leather, with a black background and red letters for the initials. The body of the sheath would be a rich brown.

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So far so good, I dyed the brown and cut out the welt I would need to protect the stitches and dyed the edge. Note that no dye was allowed in the area for the glue up of the belt loop. I wouldn't dye the area on the inside where the welt would be glued to insure good adhesion of the contact cement.

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More to follow, since rather than a build along, this will be a HOW I DID IT.

[BrokenolMarine]

After gluing down the belt loop and giving it time to cure, I drilled the holes I had premarked, using my benchtop drill press. Then I prepared to sew them using two needles and the saddle stitch I use about ninety percent of the time. I chose a dark brown thread for this project.

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Taking my time, and sewing around each pattern twice, I'll insure the loop will remain tight and secure. Plus the thicker thread in the pattern looks better in my opinion.

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To prep for the next step, I cut a thin strip of touch rubberized materail and glued it on the inside edge of the welt using the contact cement. I left it to dry for a couple hours then came back and trimmed it with a razor blade to match the profile of the welt. This is knife point kevlar. I tested it, he'd have to TRY to stick the knife thru the rubberized barrier.

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Next up, I brushed on a layer of contact cement on one side of the welt and all the way around the inside of the sheath. In addition, I coated the inside of the stitching to LOCK that in place. It's going NOWHERE.

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After the first coat of contact cement dried, I painted a second coat on the welt and the matching one side of the sheath, when that dried to tacky, I positioned the welt and BOOM, contact and cemented. YOU get one shot. I clamped it and left it to dry for a couple hours.

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[BrokenolMarine]

Once the sheath came out of the clamps, I drilled thru the existing holes as a guide, to drill thru the welt. Then applied the second coat of contact cement on the back side of the welt, and the off side of the sheath and folded the sheath over and contacted the welt once the cement was tacky. Boom, into the clamps.

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Once they were out, I drilled the holes one last time, careful to keep the sheath flat on the block under the press so the holes stayed vertical. I saddle stitched the sheath, again with the brown thread, then put one last coat of brown dye on the areas where the stitching had eposed bare leather.

I then burnished the edges and applied a finish coat to lock in the dye. After that dried, two coats of british bee's wax.
Buff and polish. She looks pretty good for an old guy.


Knife and sheath....

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Knife IN the Sheath.

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[RetiredSeabee]

You do good work, and are a good friend as well.

[Hatchdog]

Not only your normal excellent work producing the sheath but some great engineering using the Kevlar piece to keep JH from piercing it again.

[rickhem]

Really nice work!