How To Make A Kydex Sheath - Boat Knife - UltiClip

all righty guys today we're gonna be making a Kydex sheath for this boat knife from the last video and we're going to be utilizing and the ultimate carry solution slim 3.3 clip on that sheath so if you're interested in that stay tuned so our first step here is going to be to clamp the knife in the vise just to hold it in place so that I can put some tape on the blade I do this to give it just a little bit of space in the finished sheath and also to protect the blade while we're working with it here normally I am NOT making a Kydex sheath for a blade that has already been sharpened so in this case I don't cut all the way to the edge of the blade I leave a little bit around it and it didn't negatively affect the process at all but you can see that I'm using an exacto knife there those are cheap exacto knives from Harbor Freight I think it was like five dollars for that little kit when I'm marking out my pieces of Kydex I'm giving myself a full inch on both sides of the blade and then I am just marking out my two slabs of Kydex here normally I wouldn't be this long but I had a little extra and it wasn't enough to do anything with so I went ahead and cut out some long pieces I'll take a razor blade and scribe a line on the Kydex here and then it's just enough that you can snap it with your hands then we're gonna be putting it into my oven to start gaining heat here I don't set my PID differently I just go ahead and turn on and then keep testing it with the temp gun there re so while uh while the Kydex is heating up and before we press it i want to go over a couple of items that i'll be using today so that you're not confused when you see them and wonder what they're for first of all is this goofy looking thing this is a good respirator for those who have beards it allows you to breathe through the mouth and come out the back here with the filters so pretty awesome you don't you don't get a good seal with a normal respirator with a beard second of all are these gloves these are cut resistant gloves they kind of have a rubbery surface tomb I like using them to pull the Kydex out of the tempering oven or I'm sorry out of the oven and it's so your fingers don't get hot and keep a clean pair of these just for this task and then lastly you'll see me using two different types of eyelets I'll zoom in on them here I'll be using the quick clip eyelets to do all my shaping these eyelets suck for making cheese for the record don't buy these if you don't have to I have some that I don't use so I utilize these eyelets to shape the sheath so that my good eyelets don't get scratched the DIY holster eyelets would be the good eyelets these will not crush when you're trying to put them together these will so I with a quick clip eyelets still crush then you have to get a pair of pliers and smash them out it's a real big issue with the DIY holster eyelets they're way more robust so if you're gonna buy eyelets buy DIY holster eyelets alrighty now that the public service announcements over we can get back with a build you can see like I said that I am testing the temperature of these pieces of Kydex as the temp is coming up in the oven I'm targeting around 280 ish degrees Fahrenheit which makes them nice and pliable I'll lay down one sheet and then put the knife in between lay down the other sheet being very careful to keep the knife pointing straight into these squares or these rectangles of Kydex and then gently closing the Kydex press over them and clamping them down that's a DIY press there it's just too cheap hinges from Amazon and then some moldable Kydex foam there that foam is not available anymore from that manufacturer so I can't put the link to that below but I will have the link to a bunch of other items like the Kydex itself and the clip and things like that down below for your convenience so after I get it pressed here I open it slowly when you saw me insert my fingers my goal there is for these two pieces to remain stuck together it makes working it extremely easier so that's what we did and they actually stuck together so it made this process easier I then take a set of calipers that I have set to three eighths of an inch and I'm using that to mark off from my knife around 3/8 of an inch for my holes that I'll be drilling that's a good rule of thumb in this case actually went a little wider after I took the clip out and put it on the sheath I needed a little more space but you can see that I'm trying to also kind of get an idea of how the sheath will be shaped this would be a very simple square sheath so I have two parallel lines I drew on the side as guides and then I go ahead and I mark out my holes my top set of holes I set those based on a previous sheet that I'd made for kind of one of my utility knives around the shop that's turned out to be kind of a test knife I tried to match that cuz I really like that ride height after I had that top set of holes done I did the next set of holes at 3/4 of an inch down and the next set of holes at 3/4 of an inch down so the reason I did that is a lot of tech locks come in an inch and a half to three quarters of an inch increments in their holes so the user of this knife ever wanted to use a different mounting option and at least be able to use a tech lock on this sheath I then take a an automatic Center punch and Center punched some holes where I had my marks and then head over to the mini mill here and drilled out those holes I'll be using 1/4 inch eyelets here so I can use a quarter inch bit here to drill out those holes pretty simple process here after I drill the first two holes I'll insert these eyelets so that the whole thing stays together so I'll drill a hole put an island and drill a hole put island in and I'll always have two eyelets in the sheath while I'm drilling holes so that never gets it never gets off center or miss mismatch on my holes and then take them and kind of mark out my outer lines of this sheath head over to the bandsaw to knock off the majority of the material and then head over to my belt sander with a worn ceramic 80 grit belt and shape the edges of the shieff to sheath roughly you can see them shaping here I'll use that to inch Weil at the bottom to get the radiuses on the top of my sheath this takes a little trial and error to get used to to get the appropriate fit but you need to take down enough so that the blade can fit in and also enough so that the blade will snap in but not so much that the blade will loosely snap in so it takes a little trial and error on your first couple cheese end up getting kind of an eye for it but it's just one of those things that practice helps out you can come back and mess with this within angle grinder I'm sorry not an angle grinder with a die grinder and try to get it a little lower if you go too heavy I normally err on the side of too heavy of retention and just so that I can take a little bit more away and get it a little tighter or a little looser I'm sorry if I go too heavy I've seen people also heat them up and and re squeeze them to get the retention just the way they like it so a lot of options there I also take a piece of sandpaper and I will sand out the surfaces that the knife will will glide into and makes it a little smoother you can see there also that the way I construct these cheese's so that I can take them apart and clean the inside after I'm done grinding there's a ton of crud that gets in there that I don't want scratching up my knife so I'll go ahead take them apart sand up all the the edges the way that I like them I think that's a 220 grit piece of sandpaper and then I clean the inside of these sheath pieces so as not to have any grit that can potentially scratch my knife stuck in there at least not from the beginning the nature of a Kydex sheath is that you'll get some grit in it and you can potentially scratch your knife in the future if you're not careful in cleaning it regularly I then used an arbor press here with these dies from DIY holster these things have been awesome way better than the hand setting method I was using before i erase my lines that I drew on there with a pencil and I go in here and I press in each one of my eyelets for the sheath to be put together very painless process with this with these dies I used to crush an eyelet every once in a while even a good eyelet with the hammer method but this is kind of foolproof it would be nice if I had had arbor press both it down somewhere but and you can see I have a really good fit up there I you know dropped it but I have a really good fit up the next step is to take some Chicago screws and just screw in this ulti clip clip into it for back pocket carry I'm gonna show you next on how this thing fits in your pocket so I just use a kind of a slight tension here I don't go too heavy the fight the user may want to move this around that the carried in your left and a right pocket and at that time they can use a little blue loctite our red loctite if they never want to leave never want to move and that's I leave that up to them so you can put in your back pocket like this you push a little clip down and you have a nice little carry option there you can also use it in your front pocket but I generally like using it in the back and you can notice that a lot of my other videos you'll see my quote-unquote utility cleaver they're being carried in this orientation so I hope you guys really like this sheath build here I'll go ahead and put the links to a lot of these items down in the description below and I'll also put some links to some other DIY videos I've made just so that you're just getting started with knife making is give you a place to start so if you like this video please consider hitting that subscribe button down below as well as the Belle notification button said you can be alerted whenever I have a new video posted on the channel also at the end of this video I'll have some in screen notes or other links that you can click on I'll put up a knife build playlist there if you want to see some of the knives that I've build and I'll also put up another video that you may like so with all that I'll catch y'all on the flipside [Music]

Channel: Red Beard Ops

Views: 28,379

Keywords: jkeetonknives, j keeton knives, knifemaking, knife making, how to make a kydex sheath, how to make a kydex holster, kydex sheath, kydex sheath making, making a kydex sheath, knife sheath, knife kydex sheath, diy kydex sheath, diy kydex, edc kydex, how to make a kydex knife sheath, kydex press, kydex knife sheath diy, sheath making, how to make a diy sheath, how to make a knife sheath, ulticlip, ulticlip 3, kydex clips, ulticlip review, kydex sheath tutorial, outdoors55, SLL

Id: pAcLKfEeItc

Length: 10min 49sec (649 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 18 2019