Thread: Damascus Hunter
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Old 04-11-2016, 08:14 AM
foreveryoung001's Avatar
foreveryoung001 foreveryoung001 is offline
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Join Date: Dec 2015
Location: Traverse City, MI
Posts: 29
Quote:
Originally Posted by jimmontg View Post
Nice knife and the sheath is great. You only made one mistake with your sheath, if mistake you can call it. The belt flap has the rough inside of the leather showing instead of the smooth side. I presume you wanted the back of the sheath smooth? If you have a skiving knife (about $9 at Tandy) skive the edge of the belt flap on the rough side to about 1/32" and bend it forward instead of back. The edge must be either skived or sanded down to a thin edge so the knife doesn't catch on it and stitch the edge vertically and low enough where you can't see it. A leather expert at Tandy Leather store in OKC showed me that little tip if you don't want the rough side of the leather on the back of the sheath. What did you finish the leather with if I may ask?

That leather expert at Tandy was very helpful, his name is Wayne and since I haven't lived in OKC since 1998 I don't know if he is still there. The Tandy website has a bunch of short helpful videos for a lot of different things. He especially pointed out some inexpensive leather crafting books. A small book about stitching and sewing was very good. Looks like you got the sewing part down. Very good stitchwork there. Your border tooling is immaculate. I have to warn you though, if you get good at leather folks are going to want you to make them things. If you're married expect to learn how to make a cell phone case/wallet and other things lol.
Thanks for all of the pointers. I understand what you're saying and think I will give that a shot on my next one. Working on the next knife now, so looking forward to trying it.

As for finishing, a friend of mine at work gave me a big tub of scrap leather pieces, some leather tools, and a couple of cans of dye, that his father used before passing away last fall. I can't tell you what brand as the labels have long since worn away. I'd say it smells exactly like the wood stain I use, and have a dozen cans of in different colors, but I haven't done any research on it. My friend said that is what his father used, and I've seen a lot of his work, and it is top notch, so figured I could go to wrong.

Once it was all formed and dry, and went over it with a light coating of mink oil, and then a very light coating of some type of wax. I'm at work and don't remember the brand name, but again, it came in the tub of stuff. I'm just learning about the leather stuff, so was really just trying not to screw up. I just followed the steps my friend gave me of how his father usually did things for darker leather. Don't know if it was right, wrong, or indifferent, but I rather like the color and hope it will last.
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