First try with leather, but...

Self Made Knives

Well-Known Member
I've been putting off dealing with leather since I started. I've made a dozen or so kydex sheaths, but the hunters I'm working on now wouldn't be right in plastic. So, I broke the ice yesterday, but I've got a question about the leather dye. I'm using Fiebing's professional oil dye.

How many coats do I use? Do I let it completely dry between? Or just let it soak in for a few minutes and hit it again? I've soaked this sheath down 3 times and the color is still splotchy and thin in some places, yet completely dark in others. Getting frustrated!
 
Anthony,

I use the same stuff and get the same results. With the color Black I am usually OK but when I go to the Browns it's usually splotchy. I think the problem is slight differences in the leather (I use vegetable tanned cowhide about #8 or #9) I just keep coating it until I'm pretty sure it has soaked up all the dye it's gonna take and it's still not fully covered. I haven't found a solution so I watching post with interest.

Wallace
 
Anthony, I soak the inside of the sheath till it starts to show through the outside. Then I soak the outside. Sometimes it takes more than one coat. The key work is soak!
 
I went ahead and glued the welt in tonight, so maybe after I get the edge sanded tomorrow night, I'll soak it down again. Just doesn't seem like it should take this long.
 
Dying is one of the last things that I do with sheath making. After the gluing and sewing is done, kind of the way Chuck Burrows showed in his videos, but before lacing. First of all make sure you clean the leather well with a deglasing solution. You can buy it or you can get a bottle of denatured alcohol some citric acid from the canning section at the grocery store and mix a little of the latter into the former. Scrub it on with a clean white cloth. I then use one of those 1" sponge brushes and brush the sheath liberally with it. I have not had problems with the dark brown as long as I have the leather good and clean. Another thing to watch for is glue spots. You can try cleaning up the glue with an eraser.

After the dye dries I treat the leather with a dressing and give it a good coat of Renaissance wax.

If you want to get a good ox blood color mix 1/8 tsp of dark brown with 2 tsp red dye. Just though that I would throw that in.

Doug
 
I dip my sheath in a pool of dye. Let it soak a few minutes and then dip it again. Till I get the shade I want. I also deglase using denatured alcohol producing a more even finish. I do a lot of advance aging for my reenactment pieces and want an uneven worn look which gives a sheath character. Then I skip the deglasing step. I also have mixed 25% dye to alcohol as a primer/deglaser and found that helps also as a base coat. Opens the pores of the leather.
 
After deglasing try dampening the sheath first, with water, as you would prepare the leather for carving, then allow it to half dry, then apply the dye. The water will cause the cellular structure to open a bit and absorb the dye better. Try it on a piece of scrap to see how wet it needs to be. Oil will do the same, but according to Chuck as it slowly evaporates over time, it will take some of the pigment with it.
 
Last edited:
Thanks for the suggestions guys, I'll try some of those and read more on that website too. I just can't figure out why anyone would willingly want to work with leather!:9: I've got two more to make after this one, and this is probably going into the "never leave the shop" pile. I needed one for my personal hunting knife anyway, it'll be fine functionally so no big deal.
 
The hardest part of leather work is getting my hands clean and oil free. I am a cannery mechanic at my day job.
 
Ok guys, here's the finished sheath. First time I ever made anything with leather and like everything else, I found there is a big learning curve. I needed 3 sheaths in this blade pattern, one for me and two for customers. I had hoped this one could be a customer's, but it's got a couple mistakes so I'll keep it for myself. Maybe the next two will be a little better. I tried dampening the whole thing before one last coat of dye as suggested earlier, and that seemed to really even up the color.

sheath 1.jpg sheath 3.jpg sheath 5.jpg

Now for the mistakes, there are two obvious ones. First, somehow during wet forming, I got these two random lines in the leather. I was being super careful not make any marks and I'm still stumped how I did it. I didn't even notice them until the sheath was dry. Second goof up, I got a little careless with the overstitch wheel tool! Again, didn't even realize I had goofed at first, but lesson learned.
sheath 7.jpg sheath 8.jpg

Comments/advice welcome, I'm thick skinned.
 
At some place along the line the leather was scratched by something that compress the surface of the leather more than cut into the surface. I think that your stitching looks great. Looks like you even took the time to burnish the edges of the sheath. The dye job looks nice and even. Did you put some leather dressing on it?

Doug
 
No dressing, just dye and finished with a leather conditioner. I sort of followed Justin Wolfe's youtube video on making a sheath like this. So, I kind of just did what he said to in the videos, used the same products he did. His example had scout straps on it and a double row of stitching. I simplified it a little.
 
Next time, if you find marks such as that before finishing, you can burnish over them and at the least diminish their effect.
 
Looks good Anthony, I like that style. My first sheath had some issues to, I don't really enjoy leather work either but it's one of the necessary evils..lol
 
Maybe I'm doing it wrong, but there's too much down time to leather. I felt like I was waiting on something to dry a lot more than working on it. The end result is a lot nicer than kydex though.
 
It's one of those trade-offs that knifemaking is full of. You are going to have to do a lot of waiting for something to dry working with leather and stitching can consume a lot of time (try lacing if you really want a time killer) but many of us prefer leather to plastic.

Doug
 
Back
Top