Leather projects - help

[Gcckoka]

So today I went to buy some leather , if you guys remember I lost my sheath on my husqvarna hatchet and I want to make a new one , also I bought a piece of leather to make a home and also portable strop. what do you think is the leather good ? will the thinner one which I bought to make a strop work well and sharpen well ? I am waiting for my father friend to give me the rivet punch , I will carve a wooden burnisher to smooth the edges I have natural bees wax. I dont have the punch of a clip but I will take to a man who makes that after I am finish , so this are all the tools which I have , I bought soft rivets I was told that it has to be softer than the blade or it will dull it . I know it is a first sheath ever made by me and doesn't have to be perfect , but when I do things I want to make the best I can. any opinions and advices are welcome

 

[crosslandkelly]

That looks like it will do the job nicely.

 

[Gcckoka]

should I add extra layer of leather under the place where the rivets will be ?

 

[tombear]

If you are going to use the natural beeswax as a stiffener for the leather, as in dipping it in molten wax rather than mixing it with something and rubbing it on please bare in mind that unless you add something or store the item in direct sunlight it will go mouldy suprisingly quickly. It will look like someone's lightly sprinkled a fine pale green dust on it. It wipes off easily enough but it can be avoided altogether if you add something antiseptic like pine resin to the wax. Perhaps the proper leather workers could say what they use or do to the wax to stop it going off? I now use a large double boiler to dip any stuff that needs it but before that, when I didn't have lots of wax I used a hairdryer and the back of a spoon to rub the hot wax into the leather. In fact to finish off, even out the colouring I still use that method if the leather comes out a bit patchy. Of course you don't want to scorch the leather and you can just hold the job near a fire to warm it up . A electric heat gun as used for paint stripping , held at a distance does the job very well.

ATB

tom

PS the card from cereal packets is great for making patterns before you put knife to leather. You can normally find some to match the thickness of the leather so you don't have to guess the allowances for bends and what not. It took me a embarrassingly long time to work out to keep the final cutting templates as I nearly always have had to make replacements even if it is ten years later. dDoh!

 

[Gcckoka]

So I am still waiting for the rivet punch , I was sitting here looking at the leather and I just couldn't go to sleep , I wanted to make something so I got an idea something which I really want , a axe belt loop , so I did the measuring , cut out the pieces pushed holes in with a nail trimmed the edges with a fillet knife put on bees wax on the edges took a hair dryer , heated up the wax and smoothed it with a home made burnisher , when I put the rivets I saw that they were too small so I trimmed around all holes and pushed the rivets and it kept snapping off and I dont know whats the problem , is it snapping of because that I dont have the rivet punch or should I buy bigger rivets ? please help.

How does it look for a first ever axe belt loop , cut and trimmed with a fillet knife

 

[LordBlackadder]

Hi, I'm new to the Bushcraft forum but I've done a bit of leather working. I have no formal training but I've made a few projects when I did medieval living history. You do need a proper rivet tool for the rivets. Otherwise the rivets deform and shear off like yours have. You also need the right length rivets for your thickness of leather. I used to get a lot of my bits from leprevo.co.uk if they are still going. I can also recommend the carnauba wax as a finish.

 

[Gcckoka]

 

[Hairy man]

Hi to everyone, hope all are well, ive been enjoying reading the threads, i wish i could reply individually, but will try and include all in this post, ive been enjoying leather working for about 3years now, self taught, no expert, far from it, lots of trials and errors, ive found out lots by doing things the hard way, i found sometimes its easier to burn the holes in the leather with a hot pyrography pen, unsing the hand held punchtires the hands quickly, and instead of rivets, chicago screws, bought off amazon or ebay, various sizes etc, ive found pinterest brilliant for looking for ideas, to create your own look, ( ive settled into the wild west frontier, native american with a nordic twist look) but overall its about having fun, keep it simple, and trying different teqnuiqes, i hope this helps, good luck to everyone, i shal try and upload some pics some of my efforts, small portion of what ive made.