Sewing leather revisited - Making a sheath for my Frost Mora carving knife

Historical Note: I'm not sure who made the knife sheathes. There's no 'Scabbard Company' on the livery rolls in the 16th century. Possibly the Worshipful Company of Girdlers or they were a sub-group of the Leathersellers, who handled most of the miscellaneous leathergoods that made up Elizabethan life. It might even be the Cutlers, who were responsible for all the other bits and bobs associated with knives. Any way you cut it, there were a lot of knives in Elizabethan England. Every knife needs a sheath and mine are no different.

Looking at the projects that have been collecting dust, I think the shoes are probably the most annoying thing to have lingering overlong in the workshop. For one thing, the leather and lasts and tools take up a lot of room and for another, I just really need to get them done because I need a new pair of shoes. (Also, I hate leaving things half-finished.)

Unfortunately, while I haven't been completely idle since I parked this project in the driveway awhile back, I also haven't been doing any leatherworking. Cordwaining involves some pretty heavily-developed leatherworking skills, especially sewing, so I need to practice.

You might recall the costrel project, which is a study in heavy-construction sewing techniques. I also need a practice project that uses some of the more subtle stitches and techniques for closing the uppers of my new shoes.

As it happens, my preferred style of knife sheath uses the round stitch to close the seam up the back. And since that's a fiddly piece of business to learn and I'm in need of practice, methinks I hear a knife calling for a new leather home.

My favorite woodcarving knife has to be this Swedish blade made by Morakniv simply called "The Woodcarving 106". They sell on Amazon for about $25.00, which is a pretty good price for a knife you won't want to put down.

It's a strong little workhorse and can hold an edge like nobody's business. You couldn't ask more from a knife.

The problem: they come with a crappy plastic sheath. And that just sucks on a deeply aesthetic level.

The solution: make a new one, of course.

Parts List:

• A knife
• 2 poplar scraps slightly larger than the knife blade
• Shaping tools for wood (knives, spokeshaves, rasps, files, sandpaper... etc.)
• A piece of vegetable tanned leather large enough to wrap around the knife
• To make the pattern: See this post about patternmaking
• Wood glue
• Quality, long-staple linen thread
• Two large-eye long darning needles (or boar bristles if you can get them)
• beeswax
• sticky wax (if you have boar bristles to use)
• Stitch marking wheel or ruler
• curved awl 

A truly razor-sharp knife will eventually cut its way out of any all-leather sheath or die trying. If you make a standard sheath by sandwiching the blade between two pieces of leather as we used to do in Boy Scouts, the knife has an even easier time of it because it can just slice the stitches. Some leatherworkers use rivets instead of stitches and that's fine, but hardly traditional.

First, some woodworking...

I prefer wood cores (of course), so step one is to make a wooden house for the blade of the knife. I used a bit of poplar I had lying around, but any hardwood will do. We're going to use two pieces with a knife-shaped void between them to house the blade.

Cut two pieces of wood, slightly larger than your knife blade. Trace around the blade of the knife on one side of each piece of wood.

Use chisels and a router plane to remove the waste from one side (and one side only) leaving a void where your knife sits flush with the wood, like so.

 It doesn't have to be beautiful, but it needs to fit.

Why did I carve only one side of the sandwich? Because in any joinery project, it's unwise to leave a wedge (like a knife blade) sitting against a seam. You're just asking to get that seam split apart.

Glue your sandwich together using the glue of your choice and clamp it gently while it dries (or use rubber bands as I have done). 

You can use hide glue for the period touch. For knife sheaths, though, I prefer Tightbond III because it's waterproof and I'm more concerned about rust than turning out a period-perfect piece. This isn't really a reproduction of a period piece anyway, though the techniques are sound and were used during our time frame in this capacity.

Note that my pieces are rather thick. Partly that's because I'm using a scrap and partly it's because I wanted lots of room to maneuver when I got around to shaping the glued-up piece. 

Let it sit overnight to cure.

Make sure the knife sits securely in the void you carved out and then use spokeshaves, chisels, rasps, and handplanes to cut it down to the bare minimum of wood. I left roughly 1/8 inch of wood on every side of the knife blade.

Seal the wood. You can use an oil finishes for a period-appropriate sheath, or you can cheat and use polyurethane like I did. The next part of the process will expose this wood core to the damp and my woodworking often takes place out of doors in less-than-ideal conditions. It's your choice. 

Insert the knife into the wood sheath and wrap it in paper and masking tape as we did when making the pattern for the shoes last year. Note that the sheath goes about halfway up the hilt of the knife. That's on purpose. It helps protect the knife and will keep it from slipping out of the sheath quite so easily.

There's only one seam, up the back, and the edges should just meet. For more information on this style of patterning, see this post here: Wrapping Peasants - Pattern Drafting Part I and this post here: Drafting patterns for leatherworking.

Note #1: Remember to decide how you're going to attach it to your belt before you get to the cutting leather stage.

Note #2: If you want to incise, tool, or otherwise decorate your leather, do so before you begin sewing. I admit that I have at least once forgotten to do that. For tools like this one, I like mine a bit plain.

This is where we begin practicing our cordwaining in the guise of sheathmaking...

Boar Bristles and Closing Awls

Waxed Ends (skip if you don't have boar bristles/just want to use needles)

I'm going to sew this up using boar bristles instead of needles. This is the period-appropriate method of work for shoemakers and bookbinders. The sharp, flexible bristles are attached to the end using sticky wax and cleverness. I'm rubbish at it and need lots of practice, but Francis Classe is great at it and provided us with a great tutorial on how to go about it.  I do a lot of reinventing the wheel on this project, but I can't best Francis at something that he taught me, so if you want to go the bristle route, you should follow that link and learn to do it right.

Some modern shoemakers have good luck using heavy-test fishing line in lieu of the boar's bristle. If you don't have access to a boar or its bristles, there are those who swear by it. I've never tried it, though, so I trust your Google-fu to let you figure it out. I tried to find a link to a tutorial I could share but only found references to a dead site.

Your mileage may vary.

Why boar bristles and fishing line?

We're going to perform something called the "round stitch" which follows a curved path through the leather. In order to pull that off, you use a curved awl to create a tunnel through the leather from the top to the edge. Then, you need to be able to push your 'needle' through that tunnel. 

You can do this with long, slightly flexible needles like long darners and I've had decent luck doing so in the past, but a piece of sharp, flexible, keratin like a boar bristle or a similarly flexy bit of fishing line are a godsend and speed things up.

I'll get more into the boar bristles and waxed ends when we tackle the actual shoes. This is really just a test run...

Curved awls

The two outside awls are the same as in the previous photo. They are made from antiques, which I bought from the extra stash of a cordwainer friend of mine. You don't have to haunt antique stores and bug your shoemaking buddies for their tools, though. These closing awls are still sold new by some specialty retailers, or you can get by with that middle awl with the knurled piece for changing the blades. It was purchased new from Tandy Leather, just last year. Just make sure the cross-section is oval rather than round to prevent tearout.

Closing: The Round Stitch

Use your marking wheel (or a ruler, dividers, etcetera) to mark an even stitch distance all around the edge of your seam on both sides, 1/4 - 1/8 of an inch back from the edge. 

Make sure that the marks on each side a exactly parallel to one another.

My depth is wandering quite a bit here. You can see why I feel like I need the practice.

Use your curved awl to create a hole that angles from the mark made by your stitch marker curving toward and out the edge of the leather. The depth should be just a bit deeper than half the leather's thickness. THIS TAKES A BIT OF PRACTICE. I'd advise using some scraps to practice.

Too deep and your seam will pucker. Too shallow and you'll tear out.

Al Muckart -- a reenactor and craftsman who writes the Where Are the Elves? shoemaking blog -- created a tutorial that illustrates quite well how to do this. I've linked to it in the footnotes at the bottom of the post.

Wet the leather in warm water to make it a bit stretchy. You don't want to soak it too long or to use boiling water. This is not "cuirboulli", which would be too stiff for this particular purpose. Just hot tap water is fine and don't soak it for too long. (You just want it pliable and a bit stretchy, but don't want to leach all the collagen out of the leather.)

Roll the leather between towels to get the excess water out and then wrap it around your wooden core with the knife still in the sheath. Oil the blade and seal the wood and you should be fine for the amount of moisture we're talking about, but now you know why I sealed my wood. (Some sheath makers wrap the knife in plastic wrap, which isn't a bad idea.)

Either create your waxed ends or thread two flexible needles on either end of a piece of strong hemp or linen thread. I stipulated "long staple" which refers to the length of the fibers that were spun to create the thread. The longer the staple length, the stronger and more durable the resulting thread.

Working from both sides at once, sew back and forth across the gap. Note: people who make puppets and stuffed animals refer to as a "ladder stitch" while other leatherworkers may call it a "butt stitch". Shoemakers call it a round stitch, so we're going with that from now on.

The rest is stitching and letting the leather dry.

That open end is on purpose. It's traditional for to leave that little curled fishtail on Scandinavian knife sheathes.  I'm not sure if there's a practical purpose to it other than making the sewing easier because you don't have to ease the pattern around the point. It will be cut back a bit when I'm finished.

A lot of Nordic fishermen settled along the coast in Washington state, and I've seen antique fileting knives that have sheathes like this where the tip was cut to a little fishtail shape.  I'll just be slicing mine off at a pleasing (to me) angle.

Yes, that's blood on that bit of tissue you see above. Remember to respect sharp tools. And remember that the sharper the tool, the less damage it does when it does cut you. 

Now we just have to let the leather dry, then dye it to our desired color and finish it with a bit of wax and polish.

Further Reading:

1. Cordwhatnow? A layman's guide to shoemaking tools & terms School of the Renaissance Artisan, posted January, 2014
2. Basic Techniques of Construction (Including waxed ends and how to use them)
   by Francis Classe at his Raised Heels cordwaining blog
3. The Round Closing Seam in Shoemaking (PDF)
   by Al Muckart of the Where Are the Elves shoemaking blog

Shoemakers and Tailors: Because naked people have little or no influence on society...

Mark Twain said "Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society."  Which brings us to the next parcel of research in our quest.

Before this project even began, I was already thinking about what I would wear and how I would make it and whether for the sake of authenticity I needed to wear a costume while I was about my monthly tasks. One year ago today, I was writing the words: "Going into this, I honestly did not give much thought to clothes. I am mostly known as a costumer, of course I was going to be doing most if not all of this garbed in the period manner. As much as possible and a bit more, please."

At the time, I fully intended to be dressed like the fellow in the engraving at right. This renaissance tradesman has always struck me as the iconic figure of the man of the period, standing ready to make a living by the calluses of his hands. I bought fabric and sat down to make the costume I would wear for each and every aspect of this year's project. I would put it on whenever I was going to be doing anything for this project.

If you've been following along, you'll already know that this turned out not to be true.

Seriously, though, Espresso Monkey tees are totally correct for the period. 

In the end, I decided that unless the clothing either changed the outcome in some manner, or unless the venue called for it, I was going to focus on the nuances of the trade and focus on creating and using the correct tools, wearing the correct and current safety equipment, and not get slowed down each night when I got home by changing into doublet and hose.

Don't forget that I am, as I often point out, not a reenactor. I'm not here to step into the life of a 16th century tradesman, I am here to study the lives of all 16th century tradesmen. Which isn't to say that I didn't make the costume...

Of course all period artisans spent their time leaning against trees with their tools scattered at their feet...

As previously noted, I didn't really try to become a tradesman in any real sense until my recent stint as the baker in the living history encampment of the local renaissance faire. If you've stuck around that long and were paying attention to those photos from the faire, I was wearing the costume created to match the bloke in the engraving.

Before I started this project about half the people who knew my work knew me primarily as a costumer. (The other half of my world thought of me only as an author; this is the first time I've made any effort to combine the two disparate halves of my life.)  Because I've been a costumer for going on twenty years, the Worshipful Company of Merchant Taylors (Tailors) seems a bit of a dawdle. Much as could be said for the Joiners and Carpenters.

This blog is not the place for dawdling.

Because costuming is something I'm already known for, "learning to sew" would ring just as false as pretending I'm learning joinery. (Google tells me that fully half of you got here by following the link on Garb for Guys, my costuming blog which has featured a good deal of my carpentry as well.) Even were that not the case, it doesn't matter because I'm not here to lie to you regardless.

Really, in the current bundle of projects, shoemaking is the only area where I know nothing going in, so at least there should be plenty of "Scottie is an idiot" moments for your amusement.

How will this work?

The Joiners, the Merchant Taylors, and the Cordwainers will be concurrent projects.  Remember when I said I had a plan to stack projects in a logical fashion? This is how it begins.

At the moment, I'm thinking a ground-up and skin-out demonstration of costume taken from around 1570 or so; the mid-point of Elizabeth's reign is a nice place to work. I've already been making enquiries in knowledgeable places for information on Elizabethan underwear (which is not a Google search term you want to use lightly; just trust me on this one). Meanwhile, I'll make some shoe lasts and knock out a pair of shoes (he said lightly as if the idea didn't scare him) and follow that with the drafting and execution of a pattern for men's and women's clothing from period sources and made from as close to period materials as I can reasonably acquire.

There's a surprising amount of woodworking involved in all of these projects, most especially hat-blocking and last making. Meanwhile, I shall also be finishing my joiner's toolbox and making a reproduction of an item of Elizabethan furniture yet-to-be-determined. Probably some sort of chair.

Joinery, sewing, and shoemaking is all work that must be done entirely by hand and it will probably continue and finish by late November if not early December. Updates will be posted as they warrant. These projects will be concurrent with and inform many of the other projects that will be taking place between now and the end of the year.

It's the ninth month of what I'd intended to be a 12-month project, so this is how things are starting to shape up going into the home stretch.

~ Scott

Clothes Make the Man

"Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society."
                                                              - Mark Twain

Going into this, I honestly did not give much thought to clothes. I am mostly known as a costumer, of course I was going to be doing most if not all of this garbed in the period manner. As much as possible and a bit more, please.

I live near Seattle, so a lot of this will be undertaken in the Pacific Northwest. But it might well be necessary (or just more fun) to take this show on the road. Which might make costuming a bit dicey.  I'll be traveling in places and talking to people where I am not known. Places where wandering about in trunkhose and doublet might not be taken as well as you might hope.

For all that I love making a scene, I can't imagine my life would be made easier or the project made better if I wore costumes to the library on a research trip.

While I won't be wearing a costume the whole time ( I do have to go to work once in awhile, you know) there will be times when the outcome of that day's project will be altered subtly by my manner of dress. Even if only in tone. There are also times when wearing or not wearing a full costume might be safer.  I'm more than happy to take my lumps for your amusement, but dying is right out.

This woodcut is the inspiration for the workingman's outfit I am about to make.

An English chap of the mid 1560's stands against a tree, a working stiff of some sort, tools arrayed in a pile at his feet. I've heard him called a surveyor because of the dividers in the foreground, but  I'm not so sure. There's also a pick axe, handsaw, and claw hammer. Not to mention the apron the man's wearing, which makes more sense for a carpenter or something than for a surveyor.

I like the elegant simplicity of it. I read this as galligaskins ('Gascon hose', probably of wool), plus a doublet and jerkin. Worn with a vestigial ruff at the collar, probably attached to the shirt collar. Made in appropriate fabrics and with the correct accouterments, it should pass unnoticed in any tavern, field, or guildhall of the 16th century.

It's simple and looks made to stay out of the way while working. Perfect for my needs.

The first version I plan to make will be grey wool bottoms and white fustian or wool top. A simple color scheme that works well and adheres well to what we know from the research being done into English wills of the period by UK historians and seamstresses Ninya Mikhaila and Jane Malcolm-Davies. According to their research into the wills of the county Essex, 40% of doublets mentioned were leather,  24% linen canvas, and 21% fustian.

You will note that linen was the watchword of the time -- 100% cotton cloth (calico) was virtually unknown in Northern Europe at the time due to the technical difficulties posed by the short fibers of the plant.  Fustian was as close as we got, a fabric woven of linen and cotton. The longer warp threads are linen because the English didn't have the technology to make strong enough threads of short-fiber cotton, so it was used for the shorter width-wise strands on the loom.

Clockwise from the upper left, in our fabric stash I found a nice grey wool, a heavy unbleached fustian canvas, a lighter white fustian, and a pale green linen tablecloth to use as a lining.

Yes, a table cloth. Why not?  It will make a nice lining for the Gascon hose.

The wool is a safety measure as well as being chosen for its warmth. Wool is apparently slightly more fire-retardant than most untreated cloth, which will be nice when we get to the cooking, baking, and blacksmithing portions of our curriculum. Also the Pac Northwest is typically damp and cold, so woolens are ideal.

This is the outfit you will be seeing me wear in most of the photos and videos to come.  All that needs to happen now is for me to sit down and make the things...