But before I get into dealing with the sharp stuff, I thought it might be rather cool to try my hand at sheathmaking... the easiest of which seems to making them out of Kydex. Kydex is a thermoplastic that's easily shaped after being heated, and makes sheaths that hug the tool and provide for a solid fit and retention. I didn't have any sharp knives yet to sheath (don't trust myself yet with that), but I do have aluminum trainer knives that I use during Kali classes at PMA. The pictures you see are the steady results of a few months worth of experimentation.
Here's the first sheath that I successfully made. It's a small sheath designed for one of the mini trainers designed to simulate a folding knife or small tactical. As you can see, the cell texture is pretty burnt or distorted on the surface, as I didn't have a good sheath press and also overused the heat gun. The Kydex kit and the premade belt loop are from Knifekits.com.
A rear view of the first knife sheath. I used Chicago screws to secure the premade belt loop.
This is the second sheath I made, for one of the larger trainers... obviously this is not one of the Sayoc trainers, though I'd like to modify it to something similar by swapping the heat shrink tubing handle for a paracord wrapped one. That'll be a future project. :) I'm particularly proud of how this one turned out...
Rear view of the sheath. The sheathpress I used from Knifekits.com really helped with the shape definition. The tape you see is 3M Dual-Lock self-mating tape - basically Velcro on steroids. I use it to attach to either a Dual-Locked Tek-Lok or belt loop/panel.
Eventually, I thought I'd try my hand at tackling making a double backsheath for the Sayoc training rig, as I frequently have my mini-trainers drop out from it... I've tried screws and I've tried cable ties with mixed results. The middle three rivet holes of the sheath were designed to attach to a Tek-Lok belt clip. However, trying it out during a training session made for mixed results. The way I folded it over still made it a bit loose, and it was difficult to get a positive feel for the angle that I needed to resheath it. Also, because it was a single piece construction, it was difficult to make adjustments, because the heat would mess up the other parts when I attempted to tighten one side or the other. Some suggestions and feedback from my fellow training partners yielded better results in the next project.
This is my improved backsheath system. Originally, I had a small riveted strip connected by screws in between both sheaths, but it turned out to overcomplicate things. If you look carefully, I've had to engrave "L" and "R" on my mini-trainers now because while the overall dimensions of each blade (they're handmade and hand ground by Edges2, I believe...) are remarkably consistent, there is just enough variation to throw off the fit of the kydex sheath if a different one was inserted.
Here is a the same view of the system without the trainers. You'll notice that I've added a small section near the sheath's opening to help guide the blade in and out. Also, notice that the shapes are uneven... ha ha. I "freehanded" shaping these, and perhaps next time, I'll try using some sort of template to make it far more consistent.
A rear view of the large belt loop panels I use to secure the system to the 2 inch belt. Once again, the awesome Chicago screws save the day. :) On nicer versions, I probably would still prefer to use Tek-Loks.
The backsheath system opened up. Inspired by Mr. Justin Garvey's use of 3M Dual-Lock for his Sayoc Tribal Drop Point knife carry system, I also used it to hold things together and make the system more modular. You might be wondering why one side is white Dual-Lock and the other side is black Dual-Lock... I wish I had a fancy artistic answer, but it's simply because Target ran out of black colored Dual-Lock tape. :PThanks for reading. :) It's becoming a steadily more serious hobby of mine. I'll be posting more pics ands projects in the future.
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