That looks great Embry, very clean. If you're just starting out with leather, that's damn nice work.
You mentioned the diamonds, are you using a stitching/lacing chisel? The diamond chisels are pretty nice, ai think I use 3mm's.
It's a pain in the arse but each time I glue a layer together, I run a needle through eah hole to make sure things are still lined up. Redressing the holes with the punch after its glued up and right before stitching helps those lines stay clean afterwards. I use to wet them when I stitched because I thought it would help the needle but that was a horrible idea and I ended up with a lot of wrinkles.
I don't wrap the knife, I put a little bit of mineral oil on the ricasso and afterwards polish out any patina that occurs on the blade. Wrapping it is a pain and always seemed like it created more work than anything to me.
I dunk the while thing inside and out. Here's a picture of one directly after wet forming, you can see how wet it still is. A little bit of mothers polish took it off in no time. The pattern is probably from me giving it small twists to open up the blade cavity.
View attachment 1312732
Thanks, John. Yeah, I think all the stray marks I made helped hide the half dozen times I punched the needle through outside of the holes...
Yes, I'm using diamond-shaped stitching chisels, 5mm, I believe. I saw one guy making a pouch sheath who glued on the welt, punched holes with a chisel through both layers, glued the other unpunched side to the two punched sides, then used an awl or fid to punch through the already punched layers and on through that third, unpunched layer, right before he stitched. This seemed like an interesting approach that would eliminate a lot of the misalignment problems with less futzing around. Of course, that was 3 layers, not 4, but might still work. I found an Osborne fid on Amazon for $7, so worth a try.
I did put a needle at each corner when I glued the layers together - your pincushion approach would have lined things up a lot better.
I guess the wrapping would work ok with looser pouch sheaths, or things that you construct differently, like an axe sheath. This was way too tight for wrapping. Your method makes sense, and it never would have occurred to me to just buff out the knife.
Oh, and a drill press works great for the welt and any other inner pieces.
I struggle with leather work but if you guys have any questions about what tools I use for things just let me know and I'll take a picture. One thing that helped me was going into a Tandy store and actually handling all of the tools. They'll also let you test them out. An hour in their store is worth a year of website searches. You can see how big the needles are, the spacing on punches, etc.. The nearest one on Montana is over 5 hours away but I was able to go to one in Texas last year. My leather game has drastically improved since then. Between that amd quality leather, you cant go wrong.
As far as needles go, I use harness needles with a very small eye. I'm not sure what size but I'll try to find my order info. Off the top of my head I want to say the brand is John or Johnson, I'll find it and get back to you.
Another thing I forgot to mention is that when I glue up it looks like a pincushion. I use needles every few holes to line things up so when I connect the pieces, things are true.
Hope this rambling helps
Your idea of going to the store is a very good one, and there's a store less than half an hour from here. I went once last year for some rawhide strips for one of my boys, but haven't been back since I started playing with this stuff. I'll definitely check it out.
Yeah, I think I may have used needles that were too big. I tried to research it carefully, but I must have gotten it wrong. Several places people complained about having trouble getting the thread through the eye of the needle, and I could have easily put the tips of two 1mm threads through at the same time. Ordered some smaller ones last night. I think you're referring to John James needles - they and C.S. Osborne seem to be the most common quality brands.
Anyway, thanks for the rambling thoughts - super helpful to learn from your experience. I'm enjoying this a lot - it's fun to finish a project in a day or two instead of a month or two, and to have something useful at the end of it.
Redmeadow Knives
! Congrats Sheldon, you got another nice Cowbell!!! 
greatscoot
and
SpyderPhreak
you guys are up on deck. In addition to the options in the Pocket Blade info thread, I have some Blue Denim micarta also.
pease
let me know your pocket pick, I'm gonna work that in this go around
