9

Laser-cut leather knife sheath

TUTORIAL

Make a lovely leather sheath, without

aching hands or messy mistakes

Laser-cut

leather knife

sheath

aking a leather sheath the

traditional way requires a great

deal of skill, and is physically

demanding on the hands. Ensuring

holes are accurately sized, placed,

and aligned on both sides is really

quite tricky. But if you have access to a laser cutter,

you can make all of those issues disappear. You’ll end

up with perfectly spaced, symmetrical holes that are

exactly the right size for your needle. This removes

most of the hand-achingly hard work associated with

leather-work. As an extra bonus, you can also engrave

the leather if you wish (but we’ll barely be scratching

the surface of that).

ROUGHING IT

You’re going to rough out on paper the shape your

sheath needs to be. Lay the knife on a piece of paper

and draw all round it to get your basic profile.

At the blade end, the sheath will be almost flat. At

the handle end, it will conform to the shape of the

handle in a tight sliding fit. Wrap the leather round

the handle, around 4–5 cm from the handle’s end.

Hold tightly and make marks on both edges of the

leather, around 10 mm out from

the handle edge. Then unwrap the

leather, and measure the distance between

the two marks. This will give you the required total

width of your sheath at its widest point. Divide this

number by two so you can accurately design a ‘sheath

half’ on paper. You will then recreate this in your CAD

software (e.g. QCAD), add the stitch holes, duplicate it,

and ‘flip’ the copy around to ensure that there’s perfect

symmetry on both sides.

CUT IT OUT!

Once you have your design file(s), it’s time to do a little

experimentation with the cut/engrave settings, and

your specific laser system and leather. These settings

M

Below

Ensure a perfect, tight-fitting sheath by wrapping the leather

round the handle, marking, and measuring. Allow 5 mm extra

‘outside’ the stitch holes

Alex Eames

RasPiTV

Alex Eames loves

making things and

regularly blogs/

vlogs at RasPi.TV

He makes a living

designing and selling

RasP.iO products.