On sheathing my tools

For quite a while I have been accumulating sharp tools - various gauges, axes, knives, scissors, etc. Recently, while looking after children who were crafting, I realized that handing a child a very sharp carving axe without blade cover is probably not wise. So when suitable scraps of high-quality vegetable-tanned leather appeared and I was able to borrow leather-working tools from a friend, I went on a sheathing-frenzy and got all tools that I carry around on a regular basis sheathed.

As you can see, I also made a tool-rollup for my smaller knives an gauges.

To make the sheaths last, I used following basic principle: never rest a blade on a seam. All blades must rest on leather. My leather was quite thin and flexible for sheath-leather, so I chose to bend the leather around the blade. For thicker leather I would have added a third layer of leather in the blade-seam, so the blade rests on the side of this third (middle) layer.

For straight blades, bending the leather around the blade is easy (see e.g. third item from the left in the tool-roll, a knife with the straight blade lying to the left). For curved blades such as the axe I had one layer of leather on each side of the blade and then folded a narrow strip lengthwise along the blade and sewed to each side-piece, following the curve. The scissor-sheath is just one piece wrapped around with edges sewn together.

Formalities:

• Tools sheaths: hole-punching awl, leather sewing needles, fire lighter (to melt ends of synthetic leather thread)
• Tools tool-roll: normal sewing needle, leather strip cutter (for strip around tool roll)
• Materials sheaths: scrap leather, leather sewing thread
• Materials tool-roll: linen fabric, scrap leather, linen yarn
• Time: each sheath 15-45 mins (carving knife vs. axe), tool roll maybe 1.5 hrs