Knifemaking and sheath design

D

DC KNIVES

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The thread on not wanting to do sheaths, got me thinking about other makers like myself that also do leatherwork.For those that do sheaths for thier own knives, do you have a sheath design prior to starting the knife or do you wait till the knife is done before coming up with a design? For my fellow sheathmakers, do you ever look at knives on the forums and try to picture a sheath for it,or am I the only crazy leather guy?I think the point is do you look at it as a package that compliment each other? I know sometimes I have an idea for a knife and immeadiately will be thinking what kind of sheath will look good with it, and may even change some design features on the knife to make the sheath fit better.Your thoughts folks.Dave
 
Dave, I doubt there is much thinking about a sheath design as the knife is being made or designed by the knife makers. If there was, then some of these massive guards both single and double would be toned down quite a lot. I have one on my bench right now that has a really massive double guard, unbalanced guard, thick guard, wide guard etc. etc. etc. I am limited by the knife maker's design to either make a sash sheath where everything stops at the guard with no belt loop, or build one of those hyper ugly stacked up sheaths that is about an inch thick at the mouth. I won't build the thick sheath so this maker has the choice of sash or he can find another maker.

Handle to blade ratio is another place where I think the knife maker never considers what the sheath will look like although this is by comparison, is relatively rare.

I agree with you, Dave, the knife and the sheath should compliment one another, and the designs of both should flow together. Thankfully this is easy to accomplish about 90% of the time.

Paul
 
Good topic Dave !

Hopefully this thread will morph from your original question into a "HOW TO DESIGN YOUR KNIVES WITH A SHEATH IN MIND" where you leather pro's assist the masses in improving our knife/blade/guard designs to be more suitable for sheathing.

Personally, I mostly consider the larger details of the sheath when designing a knife. I think about color selections, lacing or stitching, inlay or carving, basic style pancake vs pouch but generally don't really have a fully laid out sheath plan prior to finishing the knife.

Paul,

I gotta admit to building quite a few "hyper ugly stacked up sheaths" LOL

I also agree that this isn't the most desirable look for the welt. I've tried several times to taper the width of the sheath body at the mouth to accomodate the thickness of the handle material/guard but ended up scrapping them due to an overall ugly final product and less than ideal fit. These were pancake style boot sheaths for boot daggers and keeping the sheath as thin as possible would've been a definite plus.

The thing that's drawn me to the stacked welt is that I can pretty much always get a great fit using this method.

Any tips on how to avoid the hyper ugliness of the stacked welt in the future ?

-Josh
 
Dave,

You are not alone! I have some nice sketches of sheaths to knives Ill never lay my hands on. Simply I see this excelent custom knife and my imagination goes on. And true, some knives are just impossible to make a nice sheath for :) For few knives I had custom made for me (form maker who do not do leather) I had sheaths in mind long before blades were finnished.

grover (mkleathers)
 
Lol, there is another way to try something different.My mentor Sandy, had an extra sheath and he sent it to me, with the challenge to make a knife to fit the sheath.You should try it sometime.Dave
 
Great thread and really good comments. For my personal knives I mostly pick the knife for a specific job, then try to get a sheath built that helps make that even better.
When building a sheath for someone's blade you have to guess at what would help function, sometimes not a easy task. Guessing at what looks good is a little easyer but not much.

If I try for function first and then try to make it pretty, it seems to make a bigger share of the customers happy.
 
I'll tell you this guys, Paul's video on sheath making is the best$40.00 I've spent in a long time. I have patterns for all my knife designs but, his pattern making method made me re-think mine.
 
Dave good pos.t I do a lot of leather work. You make me a lot of knifes And when ordering iI already have a idea on what the sheath will be. I have it totally built in my mind before I start making my holsters and gun belt for it so every thing matches down to the knife.. KT
 
I do it both ways, many times I know what the sheath will be like before making the knife, sometimes I just come up with it later.

I have made knives to fit a sheath when I wind up with an extra for whatever reason. I've had people buy a knife and want a left hand or something different on the sheath so I wind up making a knife to fit the sheath I have left over.
 
I've been messing about with designing and making seaxes, which fell out of style about 900 years ago... very few of the originals still have handles, so the shape is mostly speculation. I've learned quite a bit about the handle shapes from looking at the surviving sheaths, in a way reverse engineering the handle from the sheath. Oddly enough there are considerably more sheaths in existance than handles, and in my experience the sheath takes as long or longer to make than the knife it is for...(it could be because my leatherworking skills are not as advanced as my metalworking and woodworking skills)

The leatherworkers that made the sheaths for the seaxes were very, very good at it, judging from the remains.

I have also been given a sheath and told to make a knife to fit it, it is an interesting exercise!
 
I never try to anticipate the type, or visualize sheath construction, until I have the knife in hand. Making custom sheaths is facinating in that so many knives require different approaches and seldom do I have duplicates in my shop. Pattern making can be as challenging as the construction of the sheath. In my opinion more knifemakers should attempt to make the sheaths for the knives they fashion. I have no doubt that many would alter the physical characteristics of the knife in order to make sheathing more friendly. Trailing point knives are particulary nasty to sheath with so little gained in usage---just a pet peeve of mine!! When a sheathmaker's work is almost completely in the field of hand made/custom creations it is useless to try and save patterns for repetitive construction. The amount of accumulation would soon get to the point that it would be quicker to make a new pattern than to find one that you had saved. As a rule, most of my customers send me their knives with the instruction to make a sheath that enhances the knife. Embellishment and color can be designated as they desire as that is a personal matter. I think that it is very important that the knife and sheath be a compatible unit both for the utility factor and for sales enhancement. Sometimes this is a difficult situation when a knifemaker has definite ideas of what he wants in a knife sheath----that is not either of the afore listed. Bummer!

In this posting I find several sheathmakers of great talent, imagination beyond the norm, men that I am proud to have known and some that I would like to know. I think that all would agree that knifemakers would be enlightened greatly if they were all given sheaths and then told to make knives to fit them---the shoe would be "on the other foot"------Sandy
 
Sound wisdom from the "Godfather of MOO", thanks for posting Pops.Dave
 
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