Josh Dabney Servicemember Knife build. (pic heavy)

[Josh Dabney]

It always helps to make a plan before starting. Here we're getting our pattern started

Now you can see I've got a fairly detailed plan laid out for my build. There will be 3 main components 1. the body 2. The "Molle lock plate" or molle swivel
3. The Swivel mount

Here's a good bit of our materials. I ordered that EZ-Lapp diamond shapener not knowing exactly how it was made but I figured I'd pick it up and see if I could figure out a way to incorperate it into my sheath.

For those without a bandsaw these Weiss tin snips cut kydex no problem. Here I cut the sides of the body a little oversize. They do seem to want to slip around while being pressed around the knife

Now I traced my blade where I want it on my material just to speed things up when going from the oven to the press

Since I'm out of Duct tape I put 3 layers of masking tape on each side of the blade and trimmed it with scissors just to give it room to slide freely in and out

My foam for pressing is a Pilates mat that was laying around house not seeing any use :lol: Probably not the very best thing to use but it does work

In the evenheat cooking at 280 degrees. I think I probably could of gone a little higher temp than that but would have to experiment

The low tech pilates mat and a fat man press in action.

Now we're molded and move on with using layout lines just like on my drawing along with drilling the first rivet hole in the tip

Continuing on with laying out our plan. the rivet lines are 3/8" from the knife outline and the outside is 3/4" away

Getting all these lines going on can get confusing opening the door for Mr Murphy to step in so I cut out the perimeter on the bandsaw to simplify things a little

Because I want the sheath to be reversible (right to left handed) and also from verticle to horizontal carry I need my 4 mounting points for the swivel mount to be a perfect square so all 4 holes line up in any position. My rivet lines we're 61mm apart so I marked two holes on the same side 61mm apart and center-punched them. In the pic I'm using a 1-2-3 block as a square to transfer to the other side.

Now the mark made with the square will be square to the two marks on the first side but it's not as simple as measuring down 61mm to locate our last mark because my rivet lines aren't PERFECTLY parallel to each other. I again squared up with the 1-2-3 block and scribed a line. Wherever 61mm lands on the scribed line measuring across the sheath will be our last mark. In the pic you can see how far out of square my rivet line was. And finally we checked to be certain we're square by measuring diagonally at 86mm :35: I though I'd mention I hate metric measurments but it woked out to a perfect mm so what the heck

Now because I want these 4 holes to be perfect I'm drilling 1/8" pilot holes to make it easier for the 1/4" holes

 

[Josh Dabney]

Now those 4 holes are located I quickly layed out and drilled the rest of the holes. From there I put the sheath together by hand then started drilling through my drilled holes and through the un-drilled side adding rivets as I went to keep everything in alignment

Before I go too far I like to clamp things up with spring clamps to get an idea of what kind of fit I've got

While I had used the heat gun method in the past with good results my heat gun broke since my last Kydex sheath. Not being very excited about the fit I threw the sheath back in the oven to heat up for a re-mold. I re-prepped the blade with electrical tape this time and added a little on the handle to "bell" the mouth of the sheath a little just to ease the amount of force it takes to put the knife in the sheath.

Still un-impressed with my fit after molding #2 I decided to put things on hold and run to Harbor Frieght in the morning for a new heat gun as I knew I'd get better results. Not bad for $13

You can see I wrapped a bandana around the main body just to keep the heat away and re-molded the upper section with localized heat

Now we're getting somewhere !

Moving on to the swivel mount I started by drilling through the first hole then using an old 1/4" bit as an alignmet pin to drill the second hole then add another alignment pin then drill the last 2 holes

Using diagonals to find the center of the square

Alot going on in this pic. I drilled an 1/8" center hole through my kydex and into the wood and put a pin in the wood for the kydex to swivel on. Reamed the Kydex for a good fit on the pin. Marked a circle with my compass where I want my slots milled then did the layout for milling the slots

Set up to mill in the 1/4" slots. Plunged through then slowly turned the kydex by hand

Checking out the fit to the body. I think I'll shape the mount something like this

Measuring the hole spacing I need on the Molle Lock swivel plate

This is the nut that attatches the Molle lock to the Molle lock swivel. These need to be ground down flush with the kydex so the Molle lock will sit flat against the swivel. I drilled a hole through extra kydex and ground em right down

Then run the screw through the backside shortened nut to straighten up the threads

Molle locks installed. Now I also ground thes screws down to nearly flush then took them apart and ground another turns worth of length off

Laying out the final shape of the swivel mount

To keep the milled circles concentric to the swivel allign the endmill up with the pin in the x axis (left to right)

Dang does this work good. Having a mill ROCKS !

And here we are cleaned up and mounted up with Chicago screw studs in place.

I added these rubber washers to help smooth up the swiveling action and act as a sorta lock washer once squshed down tight

Lets see just how much swivel action we ended up with

 

[Josh Dabney]

I'm imagining a soldier packing light, out in the boonies and needing to tune up his edge or just take a couple minutes of down time and get a small but needed mental stress break. What better to do than sharpen his pride and joy ? But alas... no sharpening stone. This is why I picked up the medium grit diamond sharpener and see if I could somehow store the sharpener on the sheath so it'ld always be handy whenever it was needed.

Some things I thought about doing was the obvious piggyback setup or connecting it to a rivet so it would swivel out for use. I even considered going the piggyback route and making it so it would be retractable so you could slide it out for use and back in for storage.

After looking at it for a couple days this is what I came up with. The sharpener itself is a rather cheesy affair being a very thin strip of metal glued to an affeminent purple plastic stick :lol: Probably not something a badazz commando wants to be toting around Afganistan and showing of to his buddies.

I had no problem seperating the actual sharpener from the plastic

Here you can see I lined up the sharpener where I wanted it and scribed around the sides with a razor blade

Back to the trusty mill to take a .010 cut into the Molle lock to assist in keeping the sharpener in place

Like a glove :biggrin:

A thin coating of epoxy (hope it sticks to this type of plastic !) and some spring clamps to keep it tight

And here we are ready to go with our diamond sharpener installed on the sheath. Remove sheath from gear and sharpen anytime anywhere.

Sheathed with my original plan

Here she is dang near completed. Still gotta install all the rivets and clean up all the edges but 240 pics later she's basically done :biggrin:

Thanks everyone for the great comments and following along my Servicemember knife and sheath build !

Josh

 

[Stew]

Josh, some great details on that knife.

I love the handle notches. :biggrin:

 

[Denny Eller]

Thank you for posting this build, Josh. You are going to show some serviceman that somebody in Florida really cares about him/her and that means so much to a lonely warrior far from home.

 

[Bill T]

Josh , I must say , not only is the Knife AWESOME , but so is the sheath and this WIP .

You really have set the bar high for the rest of us ...​

Thank you very much Sir !!​

 

[JAWilliams]

That is going to make a serviceman very happy and very proud.

 

[Carey Quinn]

Josh, I haven't chimed in during your WIP but waited 'till the end to say; holy cow! Very nicely done. Someone is going to be very happy and proud to carry that knife.

When I get mine done, I think I'll just quietly slip it into the pile and hope no one sees it at the same time yours is out.

Thanks for the education,
Carey

 

[RickGI]

I love the handle. That is great knife, I really appreciate the thought you have put into this knife. Thanks for your support!

 

[Bennie Lovejoy]

Everything about that knife is awesome. Sheath included.