steveb leatherworks: the blather

This customer had a favorite scrimshaw blade he carried every day. Being a folder type of knife, some sort of pouch style sheath was appropriate. Being a daily carry knife, required I use a strong, tight to the body style – so it wouldn’t get hung up or snag on stuff. I decided to use a strong, solid 8oz veg tan skirting as my top molded material with a 4/6oz back. This is not easy material to wet mold with out leaving all kinds of tool marks due to the impossibility of stretching it around this odd shape.

A good amount of time and patience was required in this instance to form this thick, protective material to this blade – also accommodating the pain-in-the-ass thumb stud-that are more and more frequently found on folders I normally don’t put a flap or snap on sheaths given the choice – i tend to favor a simple wet molded slip fit pouch to allow one-handed, unfettered access, but this customer asked for the “flap style. Hanging upside from monkey-bars and being shaken will not even get one of my pouch sheaths to give up its blade just to make the point, but he wanted what he wanted…no problem!

Getting to make the sheath in two colors was cool, but put the stress on as far as delivering consistency. Believing that the back of the sheath is just about as important as the front, i dressed up the strap that attach the sheath to the belt. Copper burr & stake rivets insures that this sheath will stay put, but if caught and severely pulled, will release – this is the specific reason i tend not to sew these pieces on knife sheaths – you want the sheath to give if it gets caught.

I’ve included pics of two of my standard slip style sheaths for reference.