Leather for sheaths, veg tanned

Vegetable tanned leather for sheaths

Vegetable tanned shoulder leather, beautiful quality tooling leather.

This is the leather used by craftspeople for leatherwork, as oppposed to "chrome tanned leather" which is what used for couchces, jackets etc.

Veg tanned leather can be stamped, carved, dyed and wet moulded and what we use ourselves at Nordic Edge. 

• 2 mm leather is used for welts in sheaths for blades with thinner spine (1.8-2.2 mm), like kitchen slip sheaths LINK or for belt dangler loops if wanting thinner leather for puuko sheath loops.
• 3 mm leather is the default, standard thickness most commonly used by knife makers and leather crafters (2.8-3.2 mm in thickness)
• 3.5 mm is a thicker, stiffer leather (3.2-3.6 mm approx) used when a thicker stiffer leather is needed. This is the default thickness for mens leather belts.

If in doubt what to get, use the normal thickness 3 mm.

These hides are from the shoulder section and are cut into 30 x 60 cm in size and will be enough for at least a couple of standard sized sheaths. We then get some smaller pieces of 20 x 25 cm from the edges, for those smaller projects like a single knife sheath.

This leather is normal tooling leather ( not half-tanned)  and will stay softer and more pliable.

The leather should be sealed and can be dyed. 

 The sheath can be made by folding the leather around the finished knife, and using contact cement to glue it up.

Then punch holes with an awl (or drill holes) and sow the sheath together before cutting off the excess leather and dying it.

The belt loop is either attached from a separate strip, or made as part of the sheath and folded back behind the sheath and sown on.