How to Make a Knife Sheath

Knife sheaths not only protect knife owners and those around them from accidental injury, but they also act as accessories to outfits, hunting styles or knife related hobbies and interests. Here is an easy method for you to construct a customized leather knife sheath.

Difficulty: Moderately Challenging

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• Knife
• Leather
• Ruler
• Pen and paper
• Adhesive
• Binder clips
• Leatherworking toolkit
• Snap-style button
• Cord
• Leather dye (optional)
• Leather oil

Using a Pattern

1. Buy leather, leatherworking tools and accessories at a craft store or through a leather supply company like Tandy Leather Factory. Choose leather that matches your knife hilt or your style, texture and color preferences.

2. Fold a piece of paper, and with a felt tip pen, practice creating a pattern for your sheath by tracing the outline of your knife. Remove the blade and, measure 1/4 of an inch away from your marks. Lightly dot with your pen following the original measurement.

3. Cut the pattern and try wrapping it around the knife blade. If the pattern does not fit well around the blade, continue Step 2 until you have a satisfactory pattern.

4. Lay your leather on a flat surface with the part of the leather that will be on the inside of the sheath facing up. Place your pattern on the leather and trace. Cut the leather along the outline using leather cutting shears from your leatherworking toolkit.

Preparing and Constructing the Sheath

5. Wet your sheath leather and any remainders. Wrap and work the sheath leather around your knife blade. Lightly glue the edges and hold them together with binder clips until the glue dries and the leather cures or hardens.

6. Remove the knife from the sheath and create a belt loop by cutting, with the tip of your knife, two identical inch long matching vertical lines through the part of the leather which will be the back of your sheath. Cut a piece of leather from your remainders approximately 5 inches long and less than 1 inch wide to create the loop. With your pen, make a dot at each end of the piece, puncture the dots, inset the two snap-style button pieces at opposite ends with your leatherworking tools and then lace the piece through the two vertical holes.

7. Mark a series of close, evenly spaced dots along the top on the same sheath leather back piece approximately 1 inch down from the top. Cut a square piece from your remainders the width of the back and approximately 2 inches high. Mark along the bottom edge with a series of dots matching those of the previous sentence, puncture all of the dots and after choosing a stitch method, stitch the two pieces together with a leatherworker's stitching needle and cord.

8. Draw close, evenly spaced dots along the outer non-folded edge of your sheath with your felt tip pen. Puncture the dots using your leatherworking tools, thread the cord through the holes using your stitch method and tie off at the end.

9. Apply leather dye to your sheath to give it some added color. Maintain your sheath with a leather conditioning oil to reduce future leather cracking and create a waterproof seal.

Tips & Warnings

• Place your ruler or a piece of cardboard under the black binder clips used in Step 1 to reduce the chance of outside sheath surface damage while curing.

Resources

• Tandy Leather Factory