Making a Leather Knife Sheath

by Bill Scherer

At the Rattlesnake Rendezvous (a primitive skills campout), I met a fellow by the name of Ken Peek. Ken was wearing a really nice looking knife case. He was kind enough to let me have a close look at it. The thing that really caught my eye was the simplicity of the design. The sheath required absolutely NO STITCHING. It was made of a single strip of leather, cut to fold over onto itself once on the blade and then again on the handle. Then it was woven in and out of the slits to hold the whole thing together. About a month ago I was mounting a deer bone handle to a knife blade and decided to try my own version of the sheath. This is what I came up with (see photo). It took about an hour to do, and most of that time was cutting the slits to just the right size. The dimensions in the photo are for a 4 inch blade. The handle length of the sheath should be doubled, since it will fold over. If desired, add a leather thong to hang the sheath around your neck.

Birch Bark Sheath
The big difference between the bark sheath and the leather sheath is the big wide slots on the bark sheath instead of the narrow slits on the leather sheath. This is because the birch bark is more fragile and prone to spitting if there is too much stress on it. A disadvantage of the bark is that there is no way to unfold it and clean out the inside of the sheath.

E-mail your comments to "Bill Scherer" at scherer_william@hotmail.com

© PrimitiveWays 1998 - 2003