Making 3 Knife Sheaths: 21 Essential Steps to Follow

hey guys welcome back to dare to craftsmanship my name is Dustin today in the shop we're gonna be making cheese for three knives that I finished up recently in videos now the first one is the railroad spike knife and this is made for one of our supporters on patreon cadence James the second knife is the little bone handled knife and this was made for my daughter Corinne for Christmas and then just recently finished up our knife making build along and this knife is made for my brother Devin behind the camera when I'm giving away knives I always like to be able to give them away or sell them with a sheath because that's there to protect the knife and also to protect the person from the sharp knife so today we'll be making these sheets and anytime you're doing leather work or sheath making it's really about following a process be very process-oriented because if you don't follow those steps you can often get into get further along on the build and then you realize you missed something you have to go back and it can either screw up the craftsmanship of the sheath or you have to go back and actually cut out or start all over so again with leather work it's really much about that process so today in this video we're gonna start off by actually making a checklist of all the steps that we need to do that way as we're walking through we can kind of check them off as we go and then we'll know that by the time we get to the end we'll have everything done and the nice thing about doing three she is all at one time is that we can work through each of those steps of the process and you know make sure we finish each before we move on to the next so let's go ahead and get started [Music] I worked through all the steps kind of working through my head wrote them down figure them all out I think this is pretty good it's pretty much from step one to 18 all the way through the whole process I did write it in pencil so if we need to make any changes along the way we can but first I'm gonna do we go ahead and start with step 1 which is tracing the knife on the leather so I want to make sure I have enough room here to be able to add my space for my welt and then I just say enough room on the other side to be able to fold them knife over on the other side so he's had that booth so I'll trace out the blade first around the bottom and the side and then I'll roll it over across the handle and then trace out again and then we'll work our way around it [Music] now when you are marking off where the top of your handle is you want to kind of go right past the widest point now this is kind of an even taper from the beginning to the end of the handle so I'm gonna come about maybe two-thirds of the way up the handle and mark it off there and what that does is it'll help when I when I'm wet mold the knife around the handle it will help it to sit in and mold tight so that way there's a tight spot at the top that the knife has to go through the widest part and kind of click and lock into your sheath measuring out the welt I did my half inch all the way up but when I reach the handle I want to add a little bit more so that way I'm when I'm wrapping the leather around make sure they have enough of the leather can come back together and put the welt inside so I'm going out to three quarters of an inch [Music] now I'm setting up for my belt loop I don't want to start my belt loop exactly in the middle of the sheath because when you bend it around it just kind of makes it hard to bend that loop back so I'm gonna come over about 3/8 of an inch and then start my way up and this belt loop is gonna be 7/8 of an inch wide because it's a for a small knife and a small belt to be my daughter's knife so I'm coming 7/8 normally I would go an inch but this should be more than enough and this will also Center this belt loop so when it comes down here I have enough for the belt it'll be centered in the narrowest part of the sheath I don't want to go too far over because then it's going to be off center I want it to be centered with the narrowest part so this will just come straight down here now that I have the tracing done for the first knife I'm gonna do the same exact thing for the next two knives [Music] just finished up step two and I'm gonna go ahead and cut out the leather [Music] I have all my cheese cut out and now I need to cut out leather for my welts so I'm gonna be just tracing along and cutting that out that way it fits exactly into this profile now the well is the piece of leather that's going to be cut out and stitching glued in between the two layers of the leather sheath and the welt is designed to be there that way when you put your knife in and out you're not actually you don't run the risk of cutting your stitches so it's just in between those two layers [Music] I'm gonna mark off the top of each of these loops with a circle that I can trim and then I'll fold it back and I'll mark off where it's gonna go on the back of the sheath see okay so I'm just gonna make a mark around here so I'm know where not to die [Music] now we're gonna set these up we're gonna do three different types of dyes or three range we want to do the small sum for my daughter I'm doing with my range tan and that's going to be just kind of a rich tan you know orangey dye for the first one the middle one I kind of want to do a kind of a middle dark brown and for the largest one my brother wants it to be really dark so what I'll try to do is I'll hit it B both of these with the same dye and then I'll add more layers of the dye on the largest one FRA brother and if it doesn't go as dark as I wanted to go then I can pick up a darker dye and we'll try it again and put on top of that one we just ran into our first misstep and that is edged beveling that's something I forgot to write down when I was marking off on my steps I want to make sure I go around and I bevel the edge of all the way around the top and around the belt loop because once I die everything and I stitch it down not gonna be able to access that and so I want to finish that whole top offer so I'll double the front and the back of all three sheets once the leather is wet with the first coat of dye it'll take the second and their third or however many coats you want a little easier now that's important because if you don't do multiple coats here die for your leathers gonna look pretty streaky it's gonna make sure you hit it with multiple coats and when it's wet it moves a lot quicker I finished all the leather dye and now is it sitting kind of soaking in I'm gonna move over to step seven which is actually finishing that top edge and the belt loop what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna let the wetness of that leather dye activate the edges so I'm gonna use my burnisher and I'll burnish those edges that way everything's finished on the top and all the way around the edge of the belt loop I scored both sides and roughed up both sides of where I'm going to attach the belt loop and that's because I'm working with the smooth side of the leather so you want to make sure you kind of score it and rough it up so that way the glue has something to stick onto and grip onto when you know when you're attaching it if you're working on the other side the rough side it's not a big deal you don't really have to do it but on the smooth side you want to make sure you score it and rough it up so now I'm just mixing up the contact cement make sure it's nice and well mixed I'm gonna add a little bit of context cement to both sides of where I'm going to attach and I'll let that glue dry completely and then I'm gonna go back and I'll add once that's completely dry we'll add another layer on to both sides and I'll let that kind of dry partially and get tacky and then I'll be able to stick that together it'll hold really well I'm gonna go ahead and bend these over and glue them down and clamp them but I'm just adding a little bit of water right in the bend where the leather loop is going to bend just to help it Bend a little bit smoother and nice and cleanly now context cement will basically bind up pretty much instantly but I'm gonna leave these clamps on for about four or five minutes that way I know they're nice and secure and tight before I start marking and drilling out my holes I'm gonna start marking these off before I drill them on the drill press and I want to I'm just doing this by eye kind of measuring everything out evenly and separating it so that way I get a nice kind of half circle you know shape around the outside of this [Music] I'm gonna be using artificial sinew for my stitching and I'll be doing the saddle station I'll be doing that all the way around the leather but for this one I'll be putting a needle on both ends to the saddle stitch and kind of working my needles back and forth through the same hole but I'll show you that a little bit more in detail I'm gonna start my needle going through one side and when I bring this through I'm just gonna even up my two threads so I know that I have the same amount of thread on either end one needle through the next hole I'll pull it tight and then I'll take my other needle and I'm going to go back through that same hole that I just came out of to the other side let me just go ahead and pull those tight and we just can keep continuing doing the same thing so through the next hole with one needle pull it through all the way and then my second needle go back through that same hole pull it through and I'll just continue all the way around that same way I made it all the way around to my initial stitch and now I'm just back stitching over my first two stitches again and it will help to lock everything in place I'm cutting these about an eighth of an inch or so and then it'll leave me just a little bit left over and I'll just burn those flush that's nice it just it's in jazz that makes it into a little lump and because of this an artificial sinew it just binds together in a whole really nice and tight that's the first one now we'll go ahead and do the other two [Music] I just found my second misstep and that's actually cutting a groove down a few grooves down the middle of the fold and those just are going to relieve that leather so that way when I fold the leather and when I wet mold it I can pinch really tightly on the spine of the blade [Music] [Music] my next step is going to be gluing in the welts now there's a little bit of stuff that I need to do to prepare these waltz before I do that first is gonna be scuffing up and scoring the smooth side of the leather and then we're gonna go ahead and fit it to the sheath I'll probably trim the top a little bit and then also trim about an eighth of an inch or so off the bottom that way when it's all folded and done there'll be a little recess a hole at the bottom of the pocket of the sheath that way if you ever got water for something like that inside your sheath it would have something to run out have a space to run out of the bottom I'm gonna go ahead and glue it up now I'm gonna follow the same process with the glue up that I did for the belt loops [Music] I'm gonna glue and fold these all together but I want to wet the spines before I do that that'll just help the leather to soften up a little bit and bend a little easier make a nice clean Bend I'm gonna wet all three sheaths and then I'm gonna glue up both sides of all three and then I'll fold them together as I fold this I'm just making sure that I'm putting my main connections lining up exactly where I want them to go before I squeeze down too tight because once you get this down it's really not gonna be able to move too much so it's okay if there's a little bit of difference between the outer edge because we're gonna clean all this up on the sander next [Music] [Music] you can see here that the welt kind of overlaps a little bit all three of these so I'll trim these up clean these up with the knife and then I'll use my edge beveler to bevel the edges of the front and back [Music] [Music] step number 12 is marking your holes and drilling and I want to adjust I'm using a groove tool and this tool will actually cut a groove all the way along and I'll be able to use that to mark my holes in some it I know that way they're the same distance all the way from the edge all the way around [Music] [Music] the trick I'm gonna show you guys is something that I've learned and I've kind of developed over time because I've done this really wrong a bunch of times and it's come out looking horrible but the the idea is like how do you drill through the sheath so that way all of your lines come through is even as possible in the back because there's no guideline on the back we're just going straight through with a drill press and I have a piece of wood here with a recess drilled into it and I have my drill bit set up just on that edge so I can use this as a lip and that way when I'm drilling I can kind of put my sheath on and I can look to make sure that I'm drilling straight up and down and as I'm working my way down I can just keep that on there and keep looking down this and it should come out pretty nice and even so I'll show you guys at the end how that works on the backside oh come on nice and even cousin be able to sight down keep them going straight up and down [Music] [Music] music not all now to go back and open these holes up a little bit more because my next step will be doing the stitching for all this and I'll be doing the same saddle stitch this way I will be able to easily access these holes from the back with the needle [Music] [Music] now that we have everything stitched up I'm going to go ahead and dye the edges the same color as the sheath and I'll burnish it at this point as well when I'm doing my wet molding for my shoes I'm gonna have to wrap all the blades in cellophane plastic wrap just to make sure they don't get wet because they're all high carbon blades and if they get wet they're gonna rust so they're gonna be sitting inside these she's my other trick is to use some oil I use some three in one oil and I'll coat the blades really well and oil and then wrap them up that way when I put them the cheese when the wet molding they won't have any chance of getting wet or getting rusty okay guys it's the next day I came down last night I just took all the knives out of the cheese and unwrapped them from the cellophane just to make sure no water got inside I didn't want to get any rough spots starting so let me show you now the shoes have had some extra time to dry and now the knives just fit really nice and snug in each one they fit fit great I'm really happy with the fit I'll show you that so now the next step is to actually use the groove tool and add a little detail to all three sheets now my grooving tool is already set to the same depth as what I did my stitches for so I'm gonna run this across the top of the sheath to add the detail on the top and then I'll come back and I'll adjust the depth of this to actually meet up with that tool and then I'll run a second groove line all the way down the edge [Music] moving on to step 15 now which is finished dying and I put that in specifically because when you know at this point there's always some spots I want to go back and hit with a little bit more dye to even it up the back of these usually kind of dry out a little bit more so they're a little lighter so I'm going to hit all three backs a few spots and also the belt loops to make sure they're nice and clean before we move on to oily [Music] now my next step is to actually burnish and finish the edges but I'm gonna use the wetness of the oil so I'm gonna oil the leather sheath first and then I'll use while the leather is still wet from the oil I'll use that wetness to burnish the edges [Music] [Music] ma'am I'm super happy with the way these turning out I love this rich dark color of the sheets when you boil them up and just look beautiful this was especially we really wanted this thing to get dark and you guys remember I talked it a little bit about maybe you know adding more layers and getting you know really dark and maybe go into black but I just think the warmth the richness of this dark brown just beautiful and the oil really kicks it just makes it that much nicer now usually what I would do is I'd come back over a lighter thing like this and I'd add edge coat each coat is kind of like a waxy paint that goes on and just protects that edge completely and it makes a nice even look now a lot of times I like that look but for some some cheese you know I think it just looks nice to have the kind of edge you can see all the layers built up in there and you get a little variation I think for all three of these I like the way they're gonna look just the natural edge so I will be using edge coat on these but just leaving the edges of the leather the way they are alright we made it to step 18 our final step we're gonna go ahead and put on the carnuba cream and we'll buff it to get a nice shiny finish [Music] I'm briefly using the heat gun just to warm these cheese up also to help that carnuba cream dry and help the wax that's in the sink to the leather a little better [Music] alright guys well these turned out really nice I'm super happy with him I love the look of all three they really turned out you know the way I wanted them to and I think a big part of that was being able to write down all my steps and follow those steps I had to fill in a few little spots but really just like having everything written down and be able to follow along especially with leatherwork is really important you don't want to miss a step I have to go back and tear things out it really can you know it ends up giving your product something that's not as fully and highly crafted as you want and if you want to get to an end product that has a really high craftsmanship and looks really nice and professional a lot of times is really important to write those steps down and give yourself a guideline beforehand so these all turned out really beautiful I love this really dark one this was the knife that I made for the knife talk build along this is for my brother Devin this sheath turned out really nice and nice and dark which is what he wanted and then also I made the railroad spike knife this was made for cadence James one of our subscribers and that turned out really nice as well fits really well in there and nice and clean and lastly is a little bone Hamelin I thought I made for my daughter Corinne for Christmas I love this little knife and now she has a nice sheath to be able when we go backpacking and camping stuff like that would be nice and fun these all turned out really nice if you haven't already and you're interested in seeing I made videos for all three of these knife so you can go and check them out on my earlier videos and also put a link in the description down below that way you can find a nice and easily so thank you guys so much for watching if you haven't already we'd love for you to subscribe and like this video and leave some comments let us know what you think about these she's and then you know just our channel in general we love to build that community check us out on Instagram with our craftsmanship I love putting up stuff there and lastly if you want to find another way to support the channel you can go we set up the patreon page go check us out over there for you know a fairly small price you can support the channel every month and it makes a big difference for what we can do here so thank you guys all so much for watching and we'll see you in the next video [Music] you

Channel: The Art of Craftsmanship

Views: 207,991

Rating: 4.935657 out of 5

Keywords: bushcraft, bushcraft sheath, bushcraft knife, making a sheath, knife sheath, leather sheath, how to make a leather sheath, diy leather sheath, sheath making, leather work, leather shop, knife shop, sheath making steps, railroad spike knife, bone handle knife, custom knife sheath, knife talk, knife talk build along

Id: zJJXH2Cngms

Length: 31min 8sec (1868 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 26 2020