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The history of thermoformed Kydex as a knife sheath material.
The use of Kydex sheaths in the custom knife field has become commonplace nowadays, but I have become aware that most people do not know much about how the development came about. Before Kydex we essentially had leather or metal or wood. I believe that there were some injection molded plastic scabbards for butcher knives... and some laminated fiberglas scabbards for military knives... but that about covers it.
Knifemaker Jerry Price of Springdale Arkansas is generally credited with the first use of Kydex as a material for knife sheaths sometime in the late 1970s, using flat pieces sewn or riveted together with leather edges, but without making use of the thermoforming properties of the material.
The journey that led me to make kydex sheaths began at the 1981 New York Custom Knife show. There I was approached by a well-known holster designer named Bob Angell to make some special combat knives for him. They were to have several unique features, he would make the unique leather sheaths for them, and they would be called "Vorpals". The original two prototypes made from his drawings were full tang spear-points with long ten inch blades, the tangs were to be rounded-edged under the handles, and the upper grind was to be taper ground... sharp for about 1/3 the length then tapering to full thickness at the handle. A Pull-The-Dot snap boidy was to be screwed into the handle of the knife near the front, and this would engage a matching stud in the sheath, so that the knife would hang vertically, handle down, on the strong side. By thumbing off the snap the knife could be drawn very quickly through the long open front side of the sheath.
I made those two knives for Bob Angell, and a couple more for some other people, using the original design and with Bob's leather work. The concept was highly original and very tactically appropriate, as the very large knife could be drawn amazingly quickly from a concealed location by a movement that did not appear to be threatening. But... while Bob graciously granted permission to continue offering the knives based on his idea, he was not particularly interested in making more sheaths for me. And besides, the leather was rather bulky, and depending on the snap for retention of the knife seemed somehow inelegant, so I began searching for a way to modify the idea and streamline it.
At that time, I had a young fellow named Doug McGowan who was working in the shop with me learning about making knives. Doug and I were sitting around one day brainstorming about other materials that could be used to make sheaths. Doug mentioned that he'd had experience in a theater props department making stage armor, and they had used a material called Kydex (a proprietary name for a brand of PVC/Acrylic alloy) to form-fit armor directly onto a human torso (using a sweater to avoid burns from the 350 degree thermoplastic). The concept of thermoforming a plastic sheath directly onto a knife-blade was quick to follow. I was able to buy a sheet from a local plastics warehouse, and a few experiments later I had a hard plastic scabbard that could carry the knife upside down as in Bob Angell's concept, but which would be much slimmer and and utilize the shape of the knife itself to hold the blade securely. The name "Vorpal" is of course based on the famous poem by Lewis Carroll called "The Jabberwocky" in which the "The Vorpal blade went 'snickersnack'". The sound the knife made when being drawn by a fast punch out of the clamshell open-front sheath sounded just like that! Bob was happy about my interest in further developing his concept, and after I refined the original knife design I first showed the Vorpals with Kydex sheaths at the 1982 New York Custom Knife show. I feel confident in the claim that these were the first thermoformed Kydex knife sheaths ever made and offered to the public. Fellow knifemaker Bob Terzoula was just down the row from me at the show, and was very impressed by the way the sheaths looked and worked and asked how it was done. I was happy to share the technique with a colleague. He started using it, and showed a couple people, and I showed a couple more, and before long the process had spread far and wide. Many makers are now using Kydex sheaths and many innovations and refinements of technique have taken place over the years, though few know the story of how the whole story originated.
I still make knives and fit them with Kydex sheaths, using essentially the same design originally developed in 1982. Others have followed different directions, but I have always sought to make sheaths as smooth and streamlined as possible, using integral folding tabs or snaps, and almost never using rivets or eyelets. My archive webpage is here at: http://www.shirepost.com/Vorpal.html and includes a serial number list of every knife I've ever signed.
It is a subject of great enjoyment to me to see that so many have taken this simple idea and done so much with it. Enjoy!
Tom Maringer
The use of Kydex sheaths in the custom knife field has become commonplace nowadays, but I have become aware that most people do not know much about how the development came about. Before Kydex we essentially had leather or metal or wood. I believe that there were some injection molded plastic scabbards for butcher knives... and some laminated fiberglas scabbards for military knives... but that about covers it.
Knifemaker Jerry Price of Springdale Arkansas is generally credited with the first use of Kydex as a material for knife sheaths sometime in the late 1970s, using flat pieces sewn or riveted together with leather edges, but without making use of the thermoforming properties of the material.
The journey that led me to make kydex sheaths began at the 1981 New York Custom Knife show. There I was approached by a well-known holster designer named Bob Angell to make some special combat knives for him. They were to have several unique features, he would make the unique leather sheaths for them, and they would be called "Vorpals". The original two prototypes made from his drawings were full tang spear-points with long ten inch blades, the tangs were to be rounded-edged under the handles, and the upper grind was to be taper ground... sharp for about 1/3 the length then tapering to full thickness at the handle. A Pull-The-Dot snap boidy was to be screwed into the handle of the knife near the front, and this would engage a matching stud in the sheath, so that the knife would hang vertically, handle down, on the strong side. By thumbing off the snap the knife could be drawn very quickly through the long open front side of the sheath.
I made those two knives for Bob Angell, and a couple more for some other people, using the original design and with Bob's leather work. The concept was highly original and very tactically appropriate, as the very large knife could be drawn amazingly quickly from a concealed location by a movement that did not appear to be threatening. But... while Bob graciously granted permission to continue offering the knives based on his idea, he was not particularly interested in making more sheaths for me. And besides, the leather was rather bulky, and depending on the snap for retention of the knife seemed somehow inelegant, so I began searching for a way to modify the idea and streamline it.
At that time, I had a young fellow named Doug McGowan who was working in the shop with me learning about making knives. Doug and I were sitting around one day brainstorming about other materials that could be used to make sheaths. Doug mentioned that he'd had experience in a theater props department making stage armor, and they had used a material called Kydex (a proprietary name for a brand of PVC/Acrylic alloy) to form-fit armor directly onto a human torso (using a sweater to avoid burns from the 350 degree thermoplastic). The concept of thermoforming a plastic sheath directly onto a knife-blade was quick to follow. I was able to buy a sheet from a local plastics warehouse, and a few experiments later I had a hard plastic scabbard that could carry the knife upside down as in Bob Angell's concept, but which would be much slimmer and and utilize the shape of the knife itself to hold the blade securely. The name "Vorpal" is of course based on the famous poem by Lewis Carroll called "The Jabberwocky" in which the "The Vorpal blade went 'snickersnack'". The sound the knife made when being drawn by a fast punch out of the clamshell open-front sheath sounded just like that! Bob was happy about my interest in further developing his concept, and after I refined the original knife design I first showed the Vorpals with Kydex sheaths at the 1982 New York Custom Knife show. I feel confident in the claim that these were the first thermoformed Kydex knife sheaths ever made and offered to the public. Fellow knifemaker Bob Terzoula was just down the row from me at the show, and was very impressed by the way the sheaths looked and worked and asked how it was done. I was happy to share the technique with a colleague. He started using it, and showed a couple people, and I showed a couple more, and before long the process had spread far and wide. Many makers are now using Kydex sheaths and many innovations and refinements of technique have taken place over the years, though few know the story of how the whole story originated.
I still make knives and fit them with Kydex sheaths, using essentially the same design originally developed in 1982. Others have followed different directions, but I have always sought to make sheaths as smooth and streamlined as possible, using integral folding tabs or snaps, and almost never using rivets or eyelets. My archive webpage is here at: http://www.shirepost.com/Vorpal.html and includes a serial number list of every knife I've ever signed.
It is a subject of great enjoyment to me to see that so many have taken this simple idea and done so much with it. Enjoy!
Tom Maringer
