Making a Kydex Sheath - Simple Little Life

hey guys jeremy here with simple life welcome to another little tutorial video in this video we are going to look at making a kydex sheath now i'm actually releasing this video at the same time as the video where i actually make these knives in this video so if you haven't checked that video out feel free to check that out two videos one day it's crazy so we're gonna walk through the very basics of making a kydex sheath and this right here this first step is probably the most important when you're doing kydex you need to protect your blade you know often when you're trying to fit things up if you're squishing the kydex on if you have the slightest little bit of abrasive dust from your sanding belts or something like that inside of the sheath a lot of times that will just destroy your blade while you're trying to fit this up so definitely tape it up the other advantage to taping a blade like this is to give it some clearance so that after you've pressed the kydex you can take this tape off and there's not really a tight fit on the blade itself see the way we want this kydex sheath to work we don't want the the retention to come from the blade we want it to come from this upper portion of the handle now you see i'm actually taping that off there as well because i don't want it rubbing too hard you know depending on the shape of the knife and what that portion of the handle looks like you can actually have quite a bit of rubbing when you're putting the knife in and out so i always like to put a little bit of clearance on the handle itself and usually i'll do that with just a single piece of painters tape and then for the blades i usually do three pieces of painters tape on each side sometimes two but usually three now that we have it all taped up we are going to measure out our size of kydex that we're going to need i'm going to do a taco style sheath so i basically end up using a five inch by five inch square i end up cutting two squares here because i'm making two sheaths and the kydex kind of cuts like drywall you essentially just have to score it on one side and then you can just snap and it breaks in half now we're going to set this in the toaster oven at 300 degrees fahrenheit and you're going to want to stay here you don't want to walk away this stuff will go from being the perfect temperature to destroyed in a matter of moments uh so once it's like a wet lasagna noodle that's about the right consistency you want and then we're going to put it into our kydex press i've got a video about this kite express i'll link that in the description and then you'll notice i'm kind of pulling the knife pushing the spine into that back part that we had folded over i just want to make sure i get a really nice custom fit and that essentially that back part where the spine is that's going to be like right up against it so we're not wasting space and making the sheath bigger than it needs to be so coming out of the press it looks really good we've got some nice definition there and again this area right in there and there those are the places where we want the retention of the sheath to be i think it's looking pretty good and with that tape on there we should have a lot of clearance for the blade now this part can sometimes be difficult because it's hard to see where the edge of the blade is you'll notice i'm kind of holding the sheath at a 45 degree angle i'm just playing with the light that's available to me so that i can get that clear definition if i were to look at this flat on i wouldn't really see it so well but it's kind of important you want to be able to follow the line of your blade as much as possible and then here we're just going to kind of measure out the spacing for the eyelets that we're going to put in i ended up doing about an inch and an eighth in between obviously depending on the size of the knife and how many you actually want there you can adjust it but i feel it's important to actually measure it out and try to get it fairly consistent i'm just going to use my automatic center punch and put a couple of marks in there so that we can have a good start to our brad point drill bit and i also like to use a one two three block just that i'm drilling nice and straight through and that that sheath isn't causing the the you know the sheath to actually sit crooked on the table once we've got those holes drilled we're going to clean them up a little bit i just used a handheld countersink diapering tool it works really well clean up the outsides the insides and then at this time too since we're going to be putting the rivets on i want to make sure i use uh eraser and get rid of all my pencil marks i find pencil works really good on kydex you can see it just good enough but it also cleans up really easily and then also check the inside of your sheath too make sure the inside is nice and clean a lot of times there'll be burrs on the inside parts of the hole so i usually clean that up a little sandpaper or razor blade and then these are the eyelets that we're going to use they're basically brass and they're powder coated different colors you need to buy them sized for the kydex you see that amount of stick out right there that's about just how much you want and uh you know they makes different sizes the kydex that i'm using this one is a .63 thousandths of an inch and so i make sure i match the rivets to the thickness of kydex and this is the the press that we're going to use i picked up all this stuff i'll put a link in the description below to knife kits.com that's where i get all of my kydex fasteners hardware tools all this stuff so essentially we'll just put these rivets in and we put the flared side down and the bottom die there actually matches the profile and the contour of the flared die and then the top one kind of creates its own flare as you press it into the press now this was kind of a custom made press that i did this was an arbor press and i modified it to hold these dies but they're fairly easy you can also use a drill press good tip from jeff fader of fader knives he just chucks up those dies in his drill press and use it that way so that's a really really good option if you don't want to commit to making your own special arbor press thing and once we've got those done we're going to kind of draw out the final shape that we would like i just kind of give myself some close lines mostly just so i know what i'm doing with the bandsaw and then i'll kind of finesse it and get it to look a lot better on the belt grinder but this is just rough cuts and i use a woodworking band this kydex cuts really nicely it's not too hard on your tools and i used to use my metal cutting bandsaw before but i like the the radiuses the tighter radiuses i can get on this so i've since switched over to using my wood cutting bandsaw and generally uh the shaping and the profiling is fairly simple from here i just eyeball the distance from the edge of the kydex to the eyelets try and get everything to look centered and put a nice radius in there this is kind of a fun part it's kind of like handle sculpting there's no real right or wrong way to do it you can kind of make it look however you'd like and then usually all i'll use is two tools i'll use my flat platen and then one of these small contact wheels and this is just to clean the inside part up where the little finger choil is of the knife i kind of keep it looking nice and then i'll also use this slack portion of the belt there too just to kind of even out that radius and once we've got that done i'll take a little exacto knife and i'll kind of cut out all these bits that have melted uh due to the abrasives and then once we're done that we will take some sandpaper and kind of do a little rough sanding on them now before i take the tape off i like to do a general quick fit just to see what it's like and get an idea for the retention now that one was way too tight so actually i'm gonna take a little bit more off right here and again that part there what kind of wraps around the handle that is probably the most important part of the retention so off camera i kind of ground that down a little bit maybe a couple tweaks and then now i'm just gonna use some energy paper and just kind of clean up these edges take care of any burs with this step two watch out for the eyelets because you don't want to scratch your paint off of them there can be a real pain to replace now this next bit is kind of a personal preference but i kind of like my edges of my kydex to be nicely finished and shiny and what i'll do is i'll just take a buffing wheel with some black polishing compound and then for the inner radiuses there i'll use one of these felt bobs on my fordham and really this works really nicely i like it because the edge ends up looking like a single piece of plastic and be careful because you can melt this kydex quite easily on the buffing wheel but you know some people like the look of this a slightly more polished look you can also just leave it sanded finish it's totally up to you so this is a rubber coated nylon webbing and this is what we're going to be using to get a horizontal carry on one of these sheaths i'm actually doing two sheaths at a time but i'm only showing one during the build process at the end i will show you a different version of this sheath it's pretty much the exact same sheath exact same knife but with an option for vertical carry however this one will be horizontal i do also have a video on this webbing on my channel i'll put a link to that in the description this stuff works pretty good you just cut it with a razor blade and then melt the ends with the lighter just to get any of that frayed plastic mostly for aesthetics i don't think this would actually ever unravel because it's all glued in there with the the rubber but all we're going to do with this webbing is basically wrap it around the sheath and then we're going to put a hole in each end and essentially just bolt it on something just like that and we're going to do two of them so each strap is going to be a slightly different length just to compensate for the curvature of the sheath we want you know we want the the knife to lay horizontal and to be even with the belt and so we end up making the one that's closer to the middle of the sheath a little bit shorter just so we can keep a nice level uh even line there and this stuff punches out fairly well i had a another block of plastic that i used to punch onto like a cutting board and i seem to have misplaced that that works a lot better than this wood that i'm using this wood is way too soft and a kind of dense doesn't cut nice and clean but a cutting board or something like that is ideal i didn't want to use the cutting mat underneath there because these punches will punch right through there and this was kind of a newer one so i like to get a little bit of use out of them before i start using them to cut and punch right through and here you can kind of see me estimating how much shorter i want the second one to be again i've made quite a few of these style sheaths so it's kind of second nature but just kind of play with it and uh you'll figure it out so here we're going to do a test fit up bolt these things on and i also want to make sure that i don't have any of the strap hanging down past the edge of the sheath and if i do i can just kind of trim it i'll mark it in there sometimes i'll actually cut these uh different the ends at a curve to match the curvature of the of the sheath and i'm actually going to do that here you'll see me marking it out and just you know you can kind of play with these things dress it up however you see fit now before we put the straps on i want to check the retention of the actual sheath itself sometimes the straps can add extra pressure and so i want to make sure that the sheath itself is good and we're going to put it in here click it in and it's rattling so we had a little too much clearance in there and i'm not entirely happy with that that's just hard on the knife over time same with this one here this obviously a different knife but what i'll do is i'll just take my heat gun heat up the the kydex with the knife in it just to the point where you can kind of see it start to lose its shape you'll see it kind of open up a little bit and then i'll go and repress it without any tape on there so now we're getting a really nice custom fit and again we've made sure that the blade was super clean uh we had rinsed out the kydex sheath so there's no abrasives in there so that's a big thing to think about you want to watch out for all the abrasives when you're shaping and cutting those things can often get stuck inside the kydex and it's a heartbreaker when you go to you know pull a sheath out of kydex and you see big scratches there and there's a piece of abrasive embedded into the sheath and typically when i assemble these things for the final time i will use a little bit of blue loctite it is removable but it just makes sure it's not going to accidentally come undone you know when you're walking around or something like that there you have it a horizontal carry very very simple but very effective and you know you can adjust this for the size of belt that you want forward backwards carry you name it you got it this thing works fantastic and again other options is to a vertical carry and that is just as easy as swapping out the fasteners and putting in a vertical carry clip again i've got all the information on these parts and pieces so go check that stuff out hopefully this video helps you out and i hope you enjoyed it i thank you so much for watching cheers you

Channel: Simple Little Life

Views: 96,711

Keywords: simple little life, simplelittlelife, knife making, knifemaking, knife maker, knifemaker, kydex, diy, how to, making a kydex sheath, working with kydex, kydex sheath, sheath, kydex press, how to make a kydex sheath, kydex knife sheath, diy kydex, knife sheath, homestead knives, diy kydex knife sheath

Id: s_jOt3gQJWc

Length: 13min 13sec (793 seconds)

Published: Sat Jan 23 2021