How To Make A Kydex Sheath Taco Style | Knife Making

hey guys welcome back to the shop today we're gonna be going over how to make a Kydex sheath with a taco construction opposed to a pancake construction we're two sides are brought together a taco construction is one piece of Kydex that has folded over to spine I've been making a few of these taco type Kydex cheese and I've really enjoyed working in this configuration opposed to the pancake design I actually find that it's a little easier to construct these sheets and to grind them than it is to do the pancake design so what you've seen me do here so far is tape off my blade I generally put one layer of masking tape on each side of my blade so that is not only protected but it also gives just a ever so slight amount of space on the interior of the sheath once it's pressed I ordered my Kydex off of Amazon and twelve by twelve sheets and in order to get my pieces to the appropriate dimension we're gonna be using a razor blade here to scribe some lines once you've gone over to line a few times you can easily break this Kydex by hand the piece for this knife will be around six by five and a half inches and then turn on my oven and put the Kydex in the oven so I can start heating up what you're seeing here is my DIY Kydex press the foam is about eight and a quarter wide by around twelve inches long I purchased this foam off of Amazon however I think that this foam specifically is now discontinued I used two pieces of wood attached by some really cheap hinges that I also found on Amazon I have my oven set to high so I am constantly checking up with the temp gun and targeting a temperature of around 285 to 295 degrees Fahrenheit once that temperature is achieved I will pull it out of the oven with rubberized gloves and then wrap it around the spine of the knife during this process you must take care so that the spine lines up with the crease of your taco the way that you would like it to with more basic designs I like the spine to be lined up inside of the crease however with some more aggressive drop point designs the tip will move towards the side of the eyelets or the opening of the taco sheath and this is fine however you may need to do this a couple times to achieve the look you're looking for in this video I will be working on three knives you can see that on knife number one my tip did Fincher towards the opening of the tacos sheath I decided to finish his sheath out anyway because I want to see how the finished product would look and it did not turn out as bad as I thought that it would with this tip configuration in the sheath I marked out a line 3/8 of an inch away from the edge of my knife and that will be where I drill my holes for the eyelets I then marked out another line at 3/8 of an inch from the original line and that will be the edge of the sheath during these steps I make sure to space out the holes towards the top of the sheath by three-quarters of an inch since it is a common spacing for tech locks and lt clips I will be drilling quarter of an inch holes in my punched locations to accept quarter inch Kydex eyelets once the holes are drilled I will cut out the profile the sheath roughly on the bandsaw and then move on to the belt sander to clean up that profile I try to get fairly close to my lines that I drew on the sheath with the bandsaw to minimize the amount of grinding that I have to do I leave a generous amount of material towards the top of the sheet since this is where the retention will be decided with the grinder to achieve the appropriate retention I normally use a wheel of some sort either a contact wheel or a small wheel on my small wheel attachment to grind down into the area between the beginning of the edge and the first eyelet this is something that you will get better at as you make a few of these Kydex keys and you will know around what dimensions to look for I will show you here a close-up example of the retention and I target with my sheath however this like I said is something that you will need to feel out for yourself so this is what it looks like straight off the grinder notice that that section right there that I just pointed to is where you will be retaining the knife in the sheath if you go too far into that radius the knife will not click into the sheath and if you go too shallow you'll have a hard time getting the knife out of the sheath I then use some sandpaper in this case 220 grit sandpaper to hand finish the edges this is why I do not completely put this sheath together with eyelets before grinding because a lot of grinding media gets into the sheath so once I have the edges finished with the sandpaper I will clean out the insides of the sheath with a little bit of simple green or some Windex or I'll bring it inside and rinse it out in the sink once I have the sheath cleaned I will test fit it with the knife by pinching where the top eyelet will be just to get an idea of how my fit is at this step if I feel like it is way too tight I'll go back to the grinder and take a little bit more away from that radius using an arbor press with some dyes from DIY holster we will be setting the eyelets into the sheath I want to note that the eyelets that I use are also from DIY holster I've had very bad experiences with the quick clip eyelets busting when using it this Arbor press the following clip shows this sheaths retention that nice tactile feel and audible sound is what I'm looking for when making a Kydex sheath at this point we are very close to being finished with this sheath the last thing I like to do is add a thumb ramp this will allow you to get the knife out of the sheath more easily with one hand to achieve this ramp I will use a heat gun to heat up that area of the sheath and then some rubberized gloves to push that thumb ramp in once the Kydex has softened I will then hold that thumb ramp there until the Kydex is cool enough to hold its shape also note that if for some reason your sheath does not have the retention that you're looking for at this step in the game you can heat up that area as well and pinch it around your knife to achieve your desired retention here is a demonstration on why the thumb ramp isn't Vonage with a Kydex sheath as I mentioned earlier the holes towards the top of sheath are spaced out by three-quarters of an inch and this is the point in the game where you can put on with every type of clip you see fit a tech lock and Alti clip even some straps or paracord are all good solutions I really hope you all enjoyed this video if you did hit that like button down below and also consider subscribing to the channel where I will bring some fun knife making content your way in the future until the next time I'll catch y'all on the flipside [Music] you

Channel: Red Beard Ops

Views: 95,362

Keywords: red beard ops, knifemaker, knifemaking, knife maker, knife making, kydex sheath, kydex, kydex holster, kydex press, kydex press diy, kydex foam, kydex sheath press, kydex sheath diy, making a kydex sheath, how to make a kydex sheath for a knife, how to make a kydex sheath, kydex sheath making press, taco sheath, kydex taco, simple little life, walter sorrells, simple little life kydex, walter sorrells kydex, kydex sheath guide, knife making tips, knife making hacks, sheath

Id: sYNcViSGzAw

Length: 7min 39sec (459 seconds)

Published: Fri May 29 2020