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SOG Gov-Tac Sheath

This is the first dagger sheath that I’ve made! As such I will include quite a lot of photos, the finished thing is at the bottom if you’re not interested in the making!

I decided to make a sheath for my SOG Gov-Tac as it came with a particularly nasty kydex sheath. I don’t like kydex at the best of times and the Gov-Tac one is particularly awful!

I had a look at the various dagger sheaths I already have and worked out the basic sort of pattern to use which would be a back piece folded over for a belt loop, a welt and then a front piece to cover the blade.

I also wanted to try and make this one a bit fancier looking as I had only really done plain sheaths up to now. I used different coloured pieces as well as adding some tooling to achieve this.

This sheath took me about 20 hours in total to complete.

Gallery

Creating

Designing

I began by drawing out a rough design. I traced round the profile of the knife and then added space for the welt and so on.

It’s easier making these sorts of measurements for stacked pieces than for folding pieces in half as there’s no loss of size to account for!

I transferred my design into Illustrator so that I could make matching pieces easily. I needed to print it, check the fit against the knife and then adjust it few times.

Once I had the final design I was ready to go!

Front Piece

I cut out the front piece and made a shallow stitch groove around the outside. I didn’t make it too deep because I wanted to re-groove it after dying to make a contrasting border, which would be a theme of the sheath.

I realised that you need to be careful when making this sort of sheath to cut the piece out the right way round; I marked it back to front by having the leather upside down but thankfully realised before I’d actually cut it!

The first piece of tooling I wanted to make was a tiger on the front, it would be the tiger from the Garforth Kenpo Karate Crest that I designed.

I made a print out of the logo sized to fit the front piece. I then cut out the tiger and taped it on. With the piece wet I then drew around the outline of the tiger pressing on hard with a pen, this created a imprint on the leather underneath.

The imprint was just a faint guide. Next I cased the leather again and then went around the outline of the tiger tapping down on a precision screwdriver with a hammer. This isn’t the proper way to do this but I don’t have a lot of modeling tools!

This seemed to work pretty well and made a good impression of the tiger, though it was pretty tedious to do!

Once tooled I brushed black dye into the tiger. The design came out well although some of the finer detail in the feet and claws was lost a little.

I then dyed the rest of the front piece a tan colour. I still don’t like the tan dye really but it makes a nice contrast to the black. I also added the press stud to the front and re-grooved it.

Next I needed to make the welt. I cut two identical welt pieces and glued them together to make a 6mm welt total.

I then checked that the fit of the welt was OK to the actual knife, it didn’t want to be tight but also didn’t want to allow a lot of movement of the knife inside the sheath.

It was a good fit, so I dyed the side of the welt and glued it to the front of the sheath. I gave the inside a coat of neatsfoot oil since it would be hard to get to once the sheath was finished.

That completed the front part!

Back Piece

On to the back piece! I cut the strip out using the template that I’d made at the start. I then measured where the little cut outs needed to be and marked these using an ellipses template.

Once the piece was cut I made a shallow stitch groove all around the edge and also gouged out a groove where the fold would go.

I then skived down the end where it would be tucked into the welt. If you’re using a skiver be careful, they’re razor sharp those things!

I’d been struggling a bit with black dye on previous projects so I gave the back piece a good soak in the sink before dying it.

This didn’t seem to make that much of a difference, I still had a lot of pigment sat on top once it dried and needed to polish it down, soak it again and re-dye it and even then I wouldn’t call it a good black colour!

Not sure where I’m going wrong with that really…

Once dyed I then re-grooved the original stitch groove to give this distinctive border; I really like this effect!

I also made the retaining strap, this is just a simple little piece with the other end of the press stud on. It’s also got the same grooved after dying border design that matches the back piece.

I made it longer than it needed to be so it could be measured to fit snugly to the bottom of the press stud and trimmed.

Once I’d worked out where it needed to go I double riveted it to the inside of the sheath. I used two rivets because I don’t like sheaths where the retaining strap spins round!

With the retaining strap fitted I could then apply a coat of neatsfoot to the back and glue the main belt loop closed to complete the back piece.

Rear Belt Loop

I had decided to make this sheath both vertical and horizontal carry, so the next piece to make was the secondary belt loop which facilitates the horizontal carry.

The piece features the dragon which is the other half of the logo—the fact that he is hidden round the back may not be lost on martial artists :)

The dragon artwork was applied to the piece and tooled in the same way as the tiger on the front.

This is the finished piece:

Horizontal Carry Strap

The final piece to make was a removable strap which would wrap around the belt loop when using the sheath horizontally.

This was made using the same template as the retaining strap, the only difference was I added some little stars to it. I didn’t use an expensive stamp for this, I used a torx bit! Doesn’t look brill but it’s not bad…

I then wrapped it around the belt loop and simply measured where to put the bottom of the press stud to complete it.

Assembly

With all pieces completed it was time to put them all together.

The first job was to glue the front and back pieces together and then mark and drill the stitch holes.

I bought a Dremel Workstation 220 for doing the drilling which turns your Dremel into a little pillar drill (drill press to the Americans). This made drilling the holes straight much easier!

You can see in the following two photos how well the holes line up. There are a couple that aren’t great but that was me not holding the sheath firmly enough under the drill rather than a fault of the drill.

They’re certainly a lot neater than when doing it by hand (for me anyway!). I’d recommend this piece of equipment to anyone using a Dremel for leatherwork.

The only problem was that the drill bit seemed to be heating and melting the glue inside the sheath so that it kept getting a hard case of glue stuck to it that I had to cut off. This also swelled the drill bit so the holes are slightly too large really (the bit was 1.5mm). Still, it made sewing it easy!

With the holes drilled I then worked out the exact position for the rear belt loop and made the holes in that to line it up. I also marked on the back where it was going so I didn’t sew it into the wrong place!

I then sewed up the sheath, as I say this was pretty easy due to the holes being a bit big!

Maddeningly I ran out of thread with three holes to go—when will I learn! I drew out about seven times the length of the stitch run in thread but this must not be enough when going through four pieces of leather.

I cut a strip of leather the same size as my belt and wet formed the back belt loop around it a bit to get it to take the proper shape.

I then sanded the edge and burnished it with my new bone folder.

Finally I applied black Edge Kote to the edges and then polished the sheath with several layers of carnauba cream.

With the sewing complete the fit of the knife was quite tight due to the thickness of the guard relative to the blade stock. I had to wet both the front and back of the sheath and kink them out a bit to make space for it and it does fit fine now.

If I was to make this again though or a similar sheath I think it may be necessary to add a couple of long, triangular pieces into the top of the welt to give the mouth of the sheath a little extra room whilst still allowing the bottom to grip the blade.

All content © Ian Atkinson 2000–2010, not to be re-used without permission.

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