Custom leather sheath for the Pathfinder Knife

Let me start out by saying that there is nothing wrong with the leather sheath made by Blind Horse Knives. It holds the knife securely, is comfortable on the waist and is made well. Truth is though...there is just something special about using something you've made with your own hands.

This is my first try at making a knife sheath and I think it came out alright. I'm a fan of the "woodlore" style sheath and I thought that making one for the Pathfinder Knife would be a fun project.

Making a knife sheath isn't actually all that hard, and in fact can be as simple or complex as you want it to be. Since this was my first sheath I wanted something fairly straight forward.

I started out with a 6oz tooling leather that I picked up from Tandy Leather Factory, along with some other supplies (dye, needles, sinew and tooling dye). Before any work began with the leather I sketched out a rough design of the sheath I wanted. The easiest way to ensure a proper fit was by tracing out the profile of the knife on paper and drawing the sheath around that.

From there I had a template with which I could use fit around the knife. When I knew that the fit was good, I traced out the template onto the tooling leather using a charcoal pencil and cut it using a box cutter razor.


After slightly wetting the leather I tooled the leather, and formed it around the knife. When it dried it gave me the rough shape of the sheath.


From there I dyed it and cut out pieces that I needed to make the welt for the blade and the firesteel loop (which i dyed as well).


To secure the pieces before stitching I used shoe "goop" to glue the leathers pieces in place. Once they were together, I drilled out hold for the stitching using a 1/16" drill bit. I threaded the needles and stitched the sheath up by hand using a saddle stitch (sorry, no pictures of this process).


At this point I had a workable sheath, but I wanted to waterproof and seal it. The method I used to achieve this was by hot waxing. One thing to mention is that by hot waxing using parafin wax, the sheath will trap water that falls into the pocket and will rust the blade. You can avoid this by creating a drain hole which will focus the water out. The way I did this was by cutting a section of the welt before stitching so this take some foresight on your part if you want to do the same.


Resources

• Check out my initial impression of the Pathfinder Knife
• Hot waxing leather by SkogKniv

I've gone about it all wrong...

For those of you who follow my ramblings regularly (if there even IS a those of you) you'll undoubtedly have noticed that my postings have been rather sparse as of late...meaning non-existent. This is has been due to the fact that I recently had some surgery that I have been recovering from.

In reality what i SHOULD be saying is that I've been going stir crazy from not having been able to leave the house in three weeks. Without being able to going outside, I felt as though I had nothing to post or share. I've eagerly been waiting for today when I'd get my stitches out and would be able to once again venture out into the world.

The wide world

Truth is, today I found out that I'll be stuck indoors for another 4 weeks, even though my stitches are now out. Obviously this was upsetting, because the whole time I was looking forward today, so that I could get one with my life and things could return to normal.

But that's just it...things DIDN'T return to normal. In fact, for the next little while, THIS IS the norm..and since the beginning I refused to accept that.

What it really comes down to is the ability to adapt to your situation.

Many times in a survival situation, you hear stories of people who just tried to wait it out...to wait a just a little bit longer and things would hopefully return to normal. Things are pretty grim when you think that way, and it's actually the people who accept the situation for what it is and ADAPT that are the ones to walk out of it.

I've fallen into the same trap.

"It's a trap!!!"

Rather than taking the situation and adapting to it, I've put off and thought "only one more week and the stitches are out" "two more days" etc. Really all along I should have just accepted that things would be different, and focusing on the things i COULD do. Survival is about knowledge and preparation and there is plenty I could be doing right now.

I guess that shows that there's a lesson to be learned in everything.

Stay tunes for more posts.

Feb 27th Winter hike

So for the next few weeks I'm stuck at home recovering from some surgery that I had. Of course knowing that I wouldn't be stepping out of my house for about a month meant that I had to get into the woods for a short winter hike.