Knife sheaths, when you learn new things there is lots of new work

As if working with steel and wood is not enough I had to learn to work with leather to make appropriate sheaths for my knives. That also means I have to go back and make some sheaths for the knives I already made and as I needed a gift for my brother’s birthday what might be better than making a sheath for him first?

This time I wanted to do some custom carving on the front and I designed some snake/tattoo/tribal style ornaments on my computer. What really worked well was to scan the paper stencil I made for cutting out the paper and use that as a backdrop to get a feeling for the size and what will be visible. As I like to carve in the outside of the blade on the leather there is even less space.

After the black dyed leather of the Kukri III, I decided to go with a dark brown dye on this one. As a contrasting color for the stitching, I chose the very light brown thread again.

The next new thing was some decorative stitching on the sides of the belt loop. It came out perfectly on the brown leather and in the end, I regretted did not do it on the other straps too – next time I will do.

As the blade of the recurved bowie, just like the Kukri, gets wider at the tip of the blade I had to do a folded design again for the sheath, that is open on the straight part of the spine of the blade. There are lots of details to think about when doing such a design but I am happy with the results

What happens is, that if I learn new things this raises the standard I expect of any of my projects and they get more complex. But the final result is always worth it and I like working with leather as much as with wood and steel.