Hey everyone,
I know a few of you follow me on Instagram and would've already seen these, but I thought I'd share my latest custom sheaths I made last week.
I have a knife collector that brings me work regularly typically in the form of custom sheaths. He brought in these two knives from a knife maker in Sydney that are pretty Japanese style, so I came up with this design. It's basically a leather version of a saya, normally made of wood. I did an inlay to look a little like the handle of a katana.
So stingray leather cant be skived really, unless you sand it down from the top. but I needed the top intact for the look of the inlay, so I had to recess the leather under the stingray leather in the inverse shape to what I would've skived off the stingray leather. Basically cut a groove and scoop out some leather so the rayskin sits flush with the leather surface. I then split some calf leather down to 0.4 mm and then turned both edges of a strip to make a 12.5 mm wide strip with no visible cut edge. these were then twisted and glued into place. I then cut out the inlay window, and sewed that over the top.
I stitched it all with 0.4mm cabled polyester thread from Wuta. The poly for strength, cabled for the looks. 3.0mm stitching was the finest I've ever done on a sheath. Because I do all of my sheaths with an awl, it was a challenge to get every stitch nice and straight through 11mm of leather. I managed to do ok, but there were a couple of stitches on the rear that would've been closer to 2.0 than 3.0. but oh well.
My elbows are sore from the effort of burnishing the edges, but I think these sheaths turned out ok. There's some videos on my insta if you want to see more of them. Here's a link.
https://www.instagram.com/p/B3vzxVCA2sU/?utm_source=ig_web_options_share_sheet
Thanks for looking!
Martin
Amazing !
Beautiful work, Martin. I love the twist of leather. I’ve been into folds and pleats lately and this is outstanding.
Yea saw it on your instagram. Seriously awesome Martin. Love the design too :)
Wow!!! That is really gorgeous!! Looks fantastic, I imagine how that work would look applied to a handbag. Cool 👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻
That's a beautifull knife sheat! Really beatifull
I KNOW THIS SHEATH!!!!
Private IG Leather group has been sending it to each other all over the place because of the mirror polish of those edges. One of the pics (which isn't posted here),you can see the whole blue tissue pattern reflected on the edge. Amazing work.
Also, the Katana Nod is sweet :)
@Martin CarswelI Fantastic work Martin.
I picked up on the nod to the katana, that's so appropriate to this style of knife.
Are you using lambskin for the 'handle wrap' or something else?
Gorgeous work, as always, Martin, and a creative adaptation of traditional forms.
How do you pierce the stingray? Does it dull the tools?
Thanks!
Dale