Wood knife sheaths?

[hoochiepapa]

The one I made is pretty thick, but I am hard on equipment and I wanted it to last. I took it on a pronghorn hunt, split the pelvis with the bowie, and the whole rig performed quite well.
My dad gave me a knife from Oslo, Norway, one of those that you can bend and straighten back up without breaking, and it has a leather-covered wooden sheath. I don't use it, he did, for elk and everything else, but it's safely put away.

 

[Sunkmanitu Tanka]

Instead of wood I used some very thick rawhide. First I made an oversized pattern. I roughly cut a thin wooden template in the form of the knifeblade.The wet rawhide was then wrapped around the knife AND the wooden template but so as to form a center seam sheat. I wrapped the entire form with some shrink foil and then left to dry completely. I then used a baseball stich to sew up the (prepunched) centerseam rawhide sheath. Then I made a template for a deerskin sheat that fitted like a glove to cover the rawhide center sheath... This knife sheath is rock hard - very safe in use and very easy to make.

 

[crockett]

Wick- for what its worth I'll relate my limited experience. That one I saw was down at Tupperware- they had a collectibles show a few years back. The guy didn't like me pawing over his $30,000 knife so I did the best look-see I could but to me the inside wood part looked like the dried out corn husks they use for tamales. I don't know what kind of wood it was. It had to have some thickness because I THINK the leather cover was thin- like glove leather.
As I said, I tried to duplicate it but it wasn't easy and after a while I was afriad to take the wood down any thinner, even so, the sheath I ended up with was blocky and didn't look right. I ended up totally confused on how the originals were made. Maybe venner thin sections wrapped around a blade and glued together- I simply have no idea.
I've made a few Bowies and have settled on regular leather sheaths simply because I can't make the wood leather covered types. That is on my wish list to learn how to do correctly.

 

[Many Klatch]

I based my wooden knife sheath design on technology available to a sailor with a knife, some scrap wood, canvas, leather, thread and various paints. I was looking for something that was tough and water resistant.

I kinda passed by the whole thin and beautiful concept :grin:

Many Klatch