Obtain the Right Materials for Leather Work

Video Transcript

Hi, this is Eric Sterns with Expert Village. We're covering some basic leather work today going over the construction of a traditional style knife sheath and were going to cover, now, some of the basic tools and materials that we're going to use. First and foremost we need rawhide. Rawhide comes in a variety of different types; some of them are white and opaque. This type is actually translucent, you can see through it to some extent and actually makes a very beautiful knife sheath because it has the unique quality of actually being able to see the blade through the sheath once it's completed. Also, we're going to need a knife. The type of knife that you use is entirely up to you. This knife is sentimental to me because it's the first sheath knife that I ever owned in my life. When I joined the Boy scouts it was a gift that was given to my by my father who passed away about twelve years ago. So, it's not the highest quality knife but it is very much sentimental in value to me, so I'm going to be doing a sheath for it. This is deer hide. It is just a section of deer hide that will be used to give you an idea of the material that's cut and fastened to the rawhide sheath for use in making a fringe and the decorative aspect of it. You can do other sorts of decorations but we won't be getting into that today. We'll also be using a multi tool a leatherman. This has a really pointed punch as one of its tools that's one of my favorite ways to punch holes in rawhide. There are a variety of ways to do that. Some people even, actually, burn a wire. Heat wire and use it to burn holes through, that's another way of doing it. But, this is a favorite tool of mine, it's relatively quick and pretty handy to use. A basic pair of scissors for cutting both the deer hide and also the rawhide, surprisingly enough, once it's wet is fairly easily cut with plain scissors. A big cumbersome looking C-clamp here is used once the rawhide is completed. The knife has to be protected with oil and then put into the sheath itself and it is then clamped between two pieces of wood so that the sheath can dry fitted to the knife. And that's why this is kind of a custom thing, you can't really make the sheath without having the knife to work with.

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