I'd has this leather working day booked for almost exactly a year but suddenly I found myself having to get a wiggle on to get some bits prepared top take down to Kent. I'd previously been down to Kent to do a medicinal plant 1-2-1 day in 2016 as part of my long leave award work sabbatical.
Gary was hosting Paul (The Bardster) and Bob (Paul's leather work and wood turning Facebook page can be found here) and as the attendees met up, mingled and made a brew we all had a look at a fulsome display of Paul's work.
Soon after ten o'clock we convened around one of the two large work tables to get the tuition started.
The main part of Paul's talk was centred around the types of leather and the saddle stitch that utilises two needles. Previous attempts of mine have used a round awl, rather than a diamond shaped one but future attempts of mine will be undertaken whilst armed with a pricking iron (above left). It was useful seeing proper stitching done at first hand.
There was a decent spread of leather types available for people's chosen projects which were everything from wrist bands to knife sheaths...
...Talking of sheaths...I also forged this tapered tang knife with Kaos Blacksmiths (who doesn't appear to be doing regular sessions any more) which I then handled at home using Birch, Walnut, horn and vulcanised spacers.
So I started marking out a template and, after a false start of which leather to use, I started cutting the leather.
Followed by a session of marking and pricking the edge of the leather template with a view to getting some stitching underway.
I've got a roll of decent sized salmon skin leather pieces that I was going to sound Paul out about incorporating in the sheath...But annoyingly I couldn't find it so I did ask with the view to making some more and using it.
Now I ended upcoming away with an unstitched Mora knife sheath via one of Paul's templates. So hat happened to the plan to make a sheath for the afore mentioned knife? Basically I came to the conclusion that the squarish profile of my knife wasn't conducive to making an easy, and indeed a nice looking sheath so I pulled the plug.
Unfortunately this was after soldiering on to the point where it wasn't worth starting to stitch it. Hugely frustrating but it wasn't meant to be. I still came away with a better understanding of leather work and Gary emailed all attendees a list of leather working suppliers and information that Paul had written out so I know how to improve my tools without spending a fortune.
So what am I going to do about sheathing my little knife? Have a look at the Youtube video above...
