You may remember in my last blog I refurbished a Khukuri that I was fortunate to find in a skip. If you missed it have a look here.
In this second part of the refurbishment, I will take you through the process of making a leather sheath specifically for the Khukuri however, the process could be used for any knife if you wanted to make your own sheath.
Step one was to make a cardboard template for the pieces so that I could fine tune the shape before cutting leather.
Once I was happy with the shapes I traced around them onto the leather. Remember the leather has an inner and an outer face so make sure you place the templates the right way around before marking them out. For this sheath I used a piece of 2.5mm veg tanned leather. There are two pieces marked out here that protect the blade edges, they will be fastened side by side due to the blade having a 5mm thickness. A normal knife blade of 2.5mm would probably work with just one piece.
All the pieces laid out prior to assembly.
Next I used an adjustable stitch groover to create a line for the stitching followed by a pricker to make the evenly spaced holes along that line.
I did this on all the pieces and then gave them a coat of Bison brown leather dye prior to assembly.
The leather sheath was rather thick when all the pieces were back to back and the holes didn’t always line up exactly so it was necessary to use an awl to open them out a little allowing the needles passage through all four layers. I also added some bees wax to the threads to make life a little easier. The stitch was a very straight forward saddle stitch.
The Casstrom no.3 buckle was sewn in place and press studs added to the keeper to ensure the blade stayed put.
With all the sewing done I turned my attention to the edges. Firstly I sanded them so that all the pieces were aligned with each other, I gave them some more leather dye and then I burnished them. For this I used a piece of aluminium bar although I have found any hard rounded surface will work. Burnishing is the process of compressing the leather fibres together to produce a tight, sealed smooth edge with a glossy finish. There are edge burnishing gums available to help seal the fibres better but I was happy just to use the dye and lots of pressure.
So here is the finished article. I am pretty pleased with the outcome and the rescued Khukuri now has a new home.
