Finished this one recently

[sheathmaker]

This is a sheath for a Harvey Dean D Guard Bowie. It was done with wickett and Craig pre dyed Black skirting split to 7/8 oz. It is fully lined, top grain inside and out. The only dye used was final finsh to the edges. Silver (nickel) spot trim with basket weave center pasnel. Sewn with black thread using both of my machines.

Edited to add: I forgot to mention that this sheath is about 15 inches long as you see it. It was BIG D Guard.

If you have any questions....post them up and one of us will try to answer.

Paul

 

[Texas Slim]

Beautiful as always Paul. I'm so glad to see you participating here and look forward to your future posts.

 

[cjpgeyer]

:thumbup:Very nice...like the design :thumbup:

 

[leatherman]

Your sense of design never ceases to amaze me, very nice.

I love how W&C will split heavy leathers to your specs. Is the pre dyed leather easy to work with? Is it also oiled?

 

[DC KNIVES]

Paul, mi amigo, beautiful work. See ya in a few weeks.Dave

 

[sheathmaker]

The Wickett and Craig leathers vary slightly in ease of carving and tooling.

Russet, the natural color cuts, tool ,carves, oils the very best of the four colors I use. I have zero complaints.

Chestnut, is very close to russet, in workablity. It tools really well, but for carving is very slightly less desireable than the russet

Brown, Is okay to tool, but the carving leaves a bit to be desired. It seems as you go darker in color it has less memory for the carving and tooling. Beveling is slightly more difficult to get good and deep, and often the tooling seemes to fade (lose it's origianl depth)

Black is the worst of the colors in all areas mentioned above.

I think the problem lies in the casing of the various colors. The darker the color the harder it is to get it cased properly.

The main thing is to recognize that these small variances exist and plan ahead to overcome any potential problem. For instance, I rarely plan any carving for a black piece. It is also worth mentioning, that the differences mentioned above are for the most part very slight and I still use all four colors from W&C and plan to continue doing so. The real benefit is not having to screw around with dye except for the final finish on the edges, and the finished colors are, in my opinion, fantstic, particularly the chestnut.

 

[leatherman]

Very good! I have been wondering about the pre dyed leathers for a while now, Its really good to see some real world experience with them. I wonder if the difficulty in casing the darker colors could be caused by increased oil or wax in the leather added during the process? When hand dying I find that the darker colors require additional applications to get them solid, and even with the oil dye I use it tends to dry the leather a bit.