Sheath Making

Trip Start Mar 10, 2007
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Trip End Jan 08, 2008


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Saturday, October 20, 2007

I began work on my sheath this morning by producing a practice covering out of vinyl, working with different stitches to test which would be best, using studs to see their effect in situ and basically decide upon the eventual make-up of the finished article.  It was, as I had gathered from my readin last night, a more difficult procedure than I had anticupated and I made several mistakes with my mock-up that I would have to be careful not to repeat with the real sheath, as constantly pulling apart the glued sides to insert forgotten welts (a piece of leather that prevents the blade from shearing the stitching) would create a sticky mess that I would be hard pressed to remove from the leather.

After trying a variety of forms, from cross-stitch to saddle-stitch, to wrap-stitch and studding, I have decided to keep the look of the sheath very simple and workaday, rather than to risk overworking it, which will end with the whole thing looking quite silly.

I have opted for a stud in the point of the sheath to hold that part fast, and three at the open end.  These again, will hold the leather well, but will also add a small amount of decoration to the plain base.  In order to maintain the simplicity of the design however, I am going to use unfinished, rather than plated and shiny, studs.  These studs need to be hammered into shape once applied and that gives a slightly battered, lived and used look that I rather like.

The next step was to transfer the vinyl design onto leather, so, after a quick experiment in which I added a curved back plate and belt loop onto the vinyl, I traced and cut the design from 4mm leather, which is much harder than it sounds as you have to score the leather repeatedly, and it is not easy to keep the knife in the same groove on a curve.  It was as I was dying the leather outside that the minature disaster happened.  Nipper, one of the dogs, took the opportunity to grab one of the ducklings that lives on the farm and tear off to the other end of the paddock with it.  We chased after her immediately, but she had already chomped down hard on the bird, so, while Robyn severely chasised her, I went to see what had happened to the duckling.  It was still alive, but it was in very poor shape, chirping pathetically with its leg dangling in a broken mess.  I could not bring myself to hit it over the head though, so I decided to look after it and to see if I could splint the leg.  This proved to be quite difficult because the break was high up and it was not easy to get the splint into position.  To make matters worse, the splint, once in position, did nothing to help support the leg, so it had to come off.

The only bright side was that the duckling did eat some food after a little coersion so he looked to be in a little better shape than we had originally thought.  We went out for the evening to Robyn's neighbours, and spent a pleasant time eating, drinking and watching the waves.  It was a good end to the day, although the duckling would not eat when we got back to the house.
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