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Spyderco Tenacious Sheath

This is the first sheath that I have made for a folding knife. There are a few different ways to make a folding knife sheath, the most traditional being a pouch with a flap coming over the top and closing with a press stud.

This type of sheath that I have made is a wet formed friction sheath though. This type of sheath will only fit the type of knife for which it was made, unlike a traditional pouch which will take a variety of knives.

The advantage is that there is no movement of the knife within the sheath which means it doesn’t need a covering flap (for normal use anyway, not mountaineering or anything!), which also makes the sheath smaller.

This process should work for any knife like this really as long as it’s sufficiently contoured to take a wet forming; most large knives with pocket clips should be.

Gallery

Creating

I started out by laying the knife on the leather and marking a rough outline of it. I then cut a generous square around the outline as I would need extra leather to fold over for the wet forming. I was possibly a little too generous but it’s better to have too much than too little and at under 3 pence per square inch it’s not worth worrying about little cut offs.

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The next job was marking out the cutting lines as can be seen in the images below (I have overlaid them on the second image to make them easier to see).

I first made vertical parallel lines along the sides of the knife and then a perpendicular line across the top where the belt loop would fold over. I then marked out the belt loop by narrowing down the top and rounding the end where the loop would be sewn.

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I then cut around the top side of the sheath but left the bottom as it was since that would be the part to be wet formed. I lengthened the belt loop slightly over where I had marked as I realised it might not fit a wider belt if it was too short (you can see the original scratch line in the photo).

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I stitch grooved the back also going around the belt loop. Although this would be inside once folded over I wanted the groove to disappear into the loop as it ran around the top for purely aesthetic reasons.

I made a groove where the belt loop would fold over and also down the inside where the leather would be folded over the top of the knife.

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The piece was then dyed. Rather than dying it when it was finished by sponging it wet I decided to try soaking the whole piece in water for 30 seconds or so and then dying it as it was quite sodden.

This worked way better than dyeing it at the end! The colour is much more even and it only needed one coat as it soaked in a lot better. I also didn’t have to polish a lot of pigment off the top once it was dry.

The only problem was I’m not overly keen on the ‘tan’ colour of dye, but it’s not too bad—just not as nice as the darker browns!

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I let the dye soak in for a bit and then gave the leather another 30 seconds in the sink as it had begun to dry out a bit. I could then wrap the Tenacious in cling film and start the wet forming.

This is a simple but time consuming process! All you need to do is shape the leather to the contours of the knife using your fingers and a modeling tool. The problem is that the shape starts to disappear as the leather dries, so you need to keep pressing into the contours every 15 minutes or so for a couple of hours.

Once I had made the initial contours I pushed a few needles into the leather to hold it roughly in place and stop it creeping outwards and slackening off the shape too much.

I also marked a line for cutting the edge of the sheath by using the width of my modeling tool as a guide and running the overstitch wheel along it. It didn’t have to be dead accurate as it would be sanded anyway.

Eventually as enough moisture leaves the leather the shape will start to hold. At this point I folded over the belt loop underneath the sheath and left the whole thing to dry overnight.

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Here is the sheath the next day. You can see how well the shape of the knife is imprinted inside of the sheath, this is what holds the knife firmly in place without any sort of strap or closing mechanism as it will snap into place inside the sheath once finished.

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I then trimmed off all the excess leather around the edge of the sheath. Stupidly I then glued it closed before realising that I needed to sew the belt loop down first! Oops…

Thankfully the impact glue has a bit of ‘adjustment time’ which I turned into ‘pulling it back apart’ time.

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I positioned the loop exactly where I wanted it on the back of the sheath and then marked around the bottom of it. I then filled in the little mark with glue and glued down the bottom of the loop.

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Once dry I marked some stitch holes and drilled them with my Dremmel (1mm bit). I then made a stitch groove both inside and out, trying to make it quite deep on both sides to stop the stitching getting rubbed too much on the trousers and by the knife inside.

I then saddle stitched the loop to the sheath. I went back about three stitches at the end to make it nice and strong and knotted it inside where it can’t be seen.

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Once the loop was stitched I then re-glued the sheath closed.

The next job was the main stitching. I made a stitch groove which followed the contour of the bottom of the wet forming and then marked the stitches with the wheel, starting at the point at which both stitch grooves crossed on the corner.

Again the holes were then drilled with my Dremmel. Once drilled I then followed the line of holes on the back of the sheath with the stitch groover to make the back groove.

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I then waxed up some thread and saddle stitched the whole thing together. I got a good length of thread on the go as well, I wasn’t falling for the running out of thread mistake for a third time!

I tried to do the saddle stitching properly as well to include the knot (see photo). I hadn’t realised I should be doing this on the first couple of things I stitched.

It was a nice day so I did it on the back step with the neighbour’s cat watching me with much curiosity from a shady patch in the corner!

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Once I had the stitching done I could test the sheath properly for fit. It was good but the neck of the sheath was a little narrow as I had squashed it so flat against the knife when wet forming. I dampened the opening and flared it out a little to make it easier to insert the knife, being careful not to distort the main part of the wet formed case.

I then used the Dremmel to sand the edges of the sheath down flat and flush with each other. I should have spent a little more time on this and made sure the edge was the same thickness all the way along relative to the stitching; it’s a bit wobbly and is probably the worst part of the sheath.

Still, I’m learning from my mistakes and that’s the main thing!

I finished off that edge with a bit of fine sandpaper and also ran the edge beveller along both sides of the seam.

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I then burnished the edges of the belt loop and the opening of the sheath.

Finally I applied a coat of neatsfoot oil to the belt loop and inside (using my fingers), two coats of black Edge Kote to all edges and then three coats of carnauba cream to polish and harden.

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