How to Make a DIY Kydex Press for Only $20, Perfect for Knives and Hatchets

today we're diving in talking about how to build a DIY codex press so you can make cutex cheese just like this in under 20 dollars so stay tuned we're going to show you all the materials you need the tools you need and we're going to dive right into this so stay tuned if you like these kind of videos like And subscribe and let's get going so the first material you need is some type of wood so when I was at the hardware store you know I was looking around for the cheapest thing possible and the cheapest thing I came across was this common board so this is a one by four by eight foot long it ran from anywhere from six to seven dollars and I'm sure you could find these probably cheaper or they might be more expensive depending on where you live but this is going to be the basis of the Kydex press is the wood the next thing we bought was a squeak free door hinge and it was only three bucks okay for our foam we're gonna be using this kneeling pad and I got this from Home Depot for like seven or eight bucks pretty cheap and I only went with one of them because for my application we're going to be making this small press so from here to here it's about 13 inches we're gonna split it in half and that's going to give us enough room to make knife sheaths and small Hatchet sheets and stuff and you can see I already have it marked out here on the back what I'm going to do I'm gonna go ahead and cut this portion off because it has the hand hole there if you find a piece of foam that doesn't have that hole you're gonna be able to make a bigger kind of Express but you know we're just going to make this little compact press so this isn't going to be much of an issue and it seems like a really high quality piece of foam some of the kneeling pads you get aren't really high quality foam but this one seems to be pretty good foreign there we go okay and I've already measured this out but we can measure it again to make sure we're going to be spot on with it so about 13 and a quarter inches and we're gonna go about six and three quarters inches right there to make our cut the way I'm going to make this is we're going to make it to where it hinges back here and then it closes forward so if we're going to put a knife on there and make a sheath the knife handle would stick out right here or probably a little bit further in and we would still be able to press that over but we're going to make it probably two boards width so we're going to use two foot long boards here and then we'll make the top so we'll need to cut four 12 inch sections here we're gonna cut two pieces for each the top and the bottom that run the width and we're going to press those together and screw them down that way it makes it a little bit more rigid when we put a lot of pressure on it with our clamps foreign [Music] okay so we have one section that's 12 inches long you can see how that's gonna lay right on there where I'm gonna make it twice as wide so we're gonna have two of these and this is going to be in the middle but we're going to cut three more sections of this all right we got our next sections cut out here and these are only seven inches long we're gonna cut four more of these out okay we got everything cut for the most part okay so I want to show you guys what this kind of looks like mocked up and this is the side view so if you can imagine our hinge and everything being back here and this is going to flip up and then come down and let's say your knife would be going in this way with the sheath getting you know formed around it this is kind of what it's going to be so for each of the lids we're gonna pretty much connect the two pieces of wood by screwing down these two pieces like this and the same thing for the bottom and then the foam is going to go in the middle I just want to show you guys kind of a mock-up of this we're going to go ahead and screw these things together and get them kind of you know sanded down and stuff make them look nice I mean you don't have to do all that either but we're gonna make this thing look as nice as we can so for this project you really just need minimal items it's not a lot you know a handsaw or any kind of saw to saw your wood up and maybe a screwdriver a drill if you have it I am going to go ahead and take the drill and make some pilot holes and we don't that way we don't run the risk of splitting this wood uh then you just need some screws and that is about it guys uh you don't really have to get too fancy with this this is like the bare basic way to make a codex breath I do for all these [Music] all right so we got all those put in there we're gonna do the same thing for this side and then we're going to complete the other lid and then we'll catch back up with you all right we got both sides finished I think they're looking pretty good wood was a little bowed right here but that's okay I mean we don't need pinpoint pressure placed on these you know the phone's gonna be doing all the work so right now I guess what we'll do is you know I'm gonna go through later and kind of trim up some of these I kind of over cut some of these but I'm gonna go through and sand with my orbital sander and I'm going to clean all of this stuff up but let's mock this up again and see kind of what it looks like just going to place it here on the back and later on you know if I were to get some bigger pieces of foam then we're going to have plenty of room but what we're going to do is show you here we'll go ahead and just screw this piece onto the back here and then I'm going to put the hinge on the inside I'm going to push this down a little bit like this and then we'll screw that in foreign get these screwed in too all right put those in there seems pretty Rock Solid but this was like a super heavy duty door hinge that I found and it was one of the cheapest ones this was only like 350. it was a lot of really flimsy looking hinges and they were like 12 15 bucks so I feel I figured this would be super heavy duty it looks really tight tolerant so I know it's going to hold up to all this pressure we're gonna put onto this so I don't have any shorter screws so I'm just going to go ahead and send these through and take my angle grinder and cut them off in the back because uh yeah I don't feel like running down the hardware store and buying some more of these foreign boards I got I swear they got so many freaking knots in them this was one of the better boards that I found that's the sad part about it all right there we go I seriously they stick out a little bit but I'm gonna take my angle grinder and cut those off here in a minute [Music] see where a good place is to kind of Mount this okay we're just gonna go with it being completely flush back here in the back all right well we made that hinge work and the hinge is super smooth this was like a squeak free door hinge wow that is just super smooth but this is going to give us the ability to upgrade foam you know in the future because this doesn't look the prettiest but hey I'm not into making things look the prettiest you know is it going to perform and look with this pressure back here that we've created once we get our clamp on you know we could do a couple different clamps look how much pressure I was creating so that's going to form our Kydex really really well and it's probably going to be more like this when I'm working on it foreign look how smooth this thing is so this is the basis of our DIY Kydex press you know super cheap super simple and I want to say this probably cost let's see I think about six bucks for the wood seven bucks for the foam and if you had to go out and buy screws or something like that you could pick up a little box of those cheap ones like I had for probably three or four bucks so I mean under 20 bucks you're getting a nice Kydex press and then three bucks for the hinge and this is gonna perform it's gonna get it done and this is actually a more expensive foam I'd say if you went to Ross and found like a gardening foam you could probably find it a lot cheaper and honestly that's probably where I need to look instead of going to Home Depot or Lowe's you can find it a lot cheaper but this thing is going to perform okay guys right now I'm gonna go through and I'm just gonna sand this down clean it up a little bit because we got some rough edges and things if we're gonna make this thing super nice I want it to be nice and we're going to cut these off all right DIY kind Express is finished and guys it doesn't have to look the prettiest I know the foam could be a little bit better I mean it could be squared off all the way around but guys it doesn't really matter I mean this one looks good if I would have bought two mats you know 14 bucks total we could have had two nicely squared off mats but this one's still gonna get the job done even how it has the rounded corners and like I said if you find a nice squared off mat then you're not going to run into this problem but this foam was really thick and it's really high quality foam so I went with this anyway so what we're going to do to put this to the test to see if we can get it to work the way we want to is I have this Kydex sheath right here and it doesn't really fit too great right now because I kind of left this out in the sun so what we're going to do is reheat this thing up we're going to get rid of all of the lines and curvatures and everything and pretty much make this to where it's just regular Kydex again with just the rivets already pre-installed which is another way that you guys can make cheese you know you could take two if you're going to make a pancake style like this you can take two sheets of Kydex go ahead and draw out where the Blade's gonna be and go ahead and insert the eyelets and everything that way it's done before you actually go to the Kydex press so that's what we're going to do we're going to get our heat gun out and go ahead and get this to where it's just like two normal sheets of Kydex and then we're going to insert the knife into the Press here and get it going and redo this sheath [Applause] buttoned out all right so you can tell this thing is completely fresh so no curvatures in it nothing we're going to take this to the oven and I'm going to go throw that in there get it up to temperature and then I'm going to bring it back out and throw it in our cotta Express so I'll be back with you after we get it out of the oven get it to where I want it all right I think we're gonna go about right there go ahead and place the foam on it we're going to place two of these clamps there's one in place all right sticking with that budget theme these two clamps only cost about three bucks from Harbor Freight and I got these things years ago so they do hold up I mean it's not going to be the highest quality clamp when it comes to the clamping strength and all that but if you have two of them you know it does pretty good you can see how compressed this foam is on the sides so we're gonna let this set for probably I don't know 10 more minutes and we'll be back with you and we're going to see the results of this thing maybe 2D this heavy duty hinge back here working really really nicely and all he has those three screws down here three up here and it's holding nothing special guys we didn't have to go in and bolt nothing down I mean we did use quite a few screws to kind of keep this together but that's just because of all the pressure that we're going to be applying to this through these clamps but overall I I think this turned out amazing I mean we're gonna have to see but there should be no reason I've made a lot of Kydex cheese there should be no reason this sheath doesn't turn out just perfect and this is a huge knife I mean this is a big survival knife probably the biggest knife I own and there's plenty of room in there I mean you can see that doesn't even go all the way through plenty of foam here so that just goes to show you right there you don't have to get too fancy with it you don't have to have an extreme amount of foam just enough to get this done if you did I mean I think it looks pretty good all right we're back after about 10 minutes we're going to take the clamps off here see how good this did that perfectly Center Line there you can see the definition I know this got a lot of crud and stuff on it once upon a time I had to use this thing as a shovel because my truck got stuck in a thing of sand but look at that definition on this thing really really nice that foam worked out really good but overall look at the definition of this thing I mean for just a under 20 bucks to make a press like this I mean super super high quality all right guys thanks for checking out this video I hope you liked this video the DIY codex press and for under 20 bucks I mean you could make a lot of different combinations of Kydex presses I mean there's no right or wrong way to make one of these honestly and if you wanted to make one super high quality I mean there's tons of different types of laminate Boards out there a really really nice plywood you don't have to get the cheap stuff and you can get really creative with this but I went to the hardware store got the cheapest piece of wood that I could find which was these one by threes or whatever kind of strip wood this is I don't really know I just got the cheapest thing and I think about a 10 foot length was enough to make this and yeah we just started piecing this together works really well so about seven bucks for the wood I would say add a couple bucks for the hardware if you didn't have screws already laying around it was around seven bucks for the kneeling mat for it's a gardening kneeling mat and then about three bucks for the hinge and you got yourself a DIY Cottage press for not much money invested so kind of expresses costs a lot of money if you go on to different Kydex press websites I mean they can run way up there so this is going to be perfect for my application and we're going to be doing a lot of different Kydex sheets on the channel we're going to start making some more shoes for the axes and stuff you know I've already made them for these hatchets but I have this cold steel Trail Boss ax over here we're going to be making a sheath for that one come very soon and also some more of my survival knives and things like that we're going to be making cheese for and I just wanted to show you guys with this one you know kind of how it formed the sheath and everything I know we didn't go through and make a belt loop or anything like that but I just wanted to show you that the definition is possible with a very simple Kydex press like this and it doesn't have to get too fancy all right guys if you like this video please consider subscribing to the channel check out my other videos on my main Channel page we have a ton of outdoor related videos and just tons of gear reviews so if you like that kind of stuff please check that out alright guys thanks for watching we'll catch you guys later

Channel: Blue Collar Outdoors

Views: 193,135

Keywords: Kydex sheath making, Kydex press, DIY projects, How to make a knife sheath, Plastic knife sheath

Id: TEO63r4b1RU

Length: 18min 28sec (1108 seconds)

Published: Sun Jan 22 2023