WaddWatsonEllis Belduque WIP

[WaddWatsonEllis]

I'm flummoxed ... half Irish and out of superlatives ... what a gorgeous finish!

[Josh Dabney]

This sheath is gonna have alot of carving involved.....  maybe not what you've got in mind though,  LOL

WWE was a little concerned that the strap of his Botas would squeeze the sheath a bit too tightly and either crush the sheath or just squeeze it tightly enough to make drawing and inserting the blade a task instead of the joy that it should be.  In talking about how to adress this concern he had suggested a wood core sheath or a metal throat to reinforce the sheath on the top to prevent any issues.

We made the decision to go with the metal throat that will be constructed of German Silver to compliment the bolsters and wire work.  I figured it like this.   We're going all out with damascus and silver wire in creating the pride of the WWE knife collection and knife this durned fancy deserves a sheath to match so to keep with the theme of All Out why not do both and have a curly maple sheath with German Silver throat and toe  

Pretty much everything on the sheath is a first for me so bare with me as I figure things out as I go      I do have a game plan for everything that needs to be done so we'll see how it goes Pards.

WWE and had discussed all the details of the sheath except the matching curly maple body,  SURPRIZE buddy !

WWE, I sure hope you like the idea pard,  If'n not we could still go with leather and turn this one into kindlin,  LOL

[Josh Dabney]

Let's git this sheath'n party started with pickin us out a piece of maple for our body. I've trace the area I want to cut and marked where I'm going to drill allignment pin holes.


I've drilled the holes, split the board in 2 and cut it out on the bandsaw.   If I had the correct woodworking tools I would've split the board on the bansaw and planed the cut sides and put the board back together the way it came apart but sometimes you hafta make due with what you've got so I went this route of splitting the board and flipping the pieces flat to flat making the cut sides the outside of the sheath body.


This is how she's gonna fit together to become the Belduques sheath



Here I've traced where the blade will go on the inside of one of the halves and marked roughly where I'll be carving out the wood for the blade to fit into

[Advertising]

[WaddWatsonEllis]

Josh,

It is uncanny how you read my mind ... I had just sent you an email telling you that I trusted whatever you wanted to do ... but (not in the email) I had always thought that a sheath similar to the rifleman's knife of the 1815-1850 (i.e Mexican War) would work just fine ... and they had wooden sheaths ...

I also thought that the Searles Bowie was very similar in size and shape ... and that the sheath made for it would work well ...

[Josh Dabney]

Here I'm cutting my outline in with the utility knife so when I'm chiseling out the inside I dont create any cracks that go outside of the area for the blade.


Now I've got my "safety cut" done and I'm going back over it with a wider deeper cut just to begin getting this wood out of the way.


I thought I'd throw up a pic of my small wheel attachment to help everone understand exactly what that is.  It's on the right side here and I ended up having to pull the 10" contact wheel from the other side to get full use of the small wheel, which is a 3/4"

[Josh Dabney]

This pic is actually the second side I did but I wanted to show exactly how I used the small wheel and the pics of the first side weren't the greatest but this one is better.  I colored it some with a sharpie to really make the tiny hollow grinds show in the pic but for no other reason 


From there I smoothed up the interior also with the small wheel leaving only the outside ridges where the small wheel won't reach to still be dealt with


The heavy lifting of removing the outside ridges was done with a 1/4 chisel and hammer


Going over everything to remove all the high spots and clean out the corners with this carving chisel

[Josh Dabney]

Again we're going to perform a little magic trick to transfer our carved side to side #2 so we'll end up with matching cut-out's for our blade to sit in.

Here you can see that I've loaded side #1 with a tiny line of carpenters chalk that is normally used in a chalk line, or chalk box.


Now I carefully assembled the sheath with the allignment pins in place and spring clamps holding the works tightly together then blew a bunch of air into the sheath from this can of compressed air.


Voila,  Now we've got a faint tracing on side #2 that I went over with my fine point sharpie for a more permanent mark to work with.

[Josh Dabney]

A bunch of grinding, carving, and chiseling later we are here,  ready for our first test fit.


Of course we dont want the Belduque to be riding in a bare wood interior so I've cut 2 pieces of pigskin lining leather to line the inside of the sheath with.  Here we start to get a "feel" of how our fit is and it's still a bit tight up toward the spine


Back to the small wheel


And back to the carving chisel

[Josh Dabney]

Test fit #2,  Getting close now 


You can see here that on this test fit the leather is overlapping the sheath and is sandwitched between the 2 sides.  Although our fit is good now the wood is going to be tighter together when the leather is out of the way so it's time to fit the lining into the sheath body.


Here I've cut the top side of the leather to fit into the sheath and used a pen to trace the edge side pushing the pen into the corner as I went.


Side 1 fit up and ready to glue up with contact cement.  I cover both sides with the cement then let them tack up and stick them together and rub them down real good.

[Josh Dabney]

Here I've marked and hollowed out this area of the wood to help guide the blade into the sheath.


I fit up and cemented lining #2 in place and quickly did test fit # 3 which surprize, was a failure, LOL.  Too tight.


I had to peel side 2 off and repeat the small wheel and chisel routine one last time then put the lining back in temporarily for test fit #4,  LOL  which was finally successful 

Having already cemented and removed lining #2 I just didn't have full confidence that I would get a good bond on the leather so I made a new liner and cemented it in place.



This is where we currently are with opperation Belduque Sheath.   

Stay tuned in fer more knifemaking trials and tribulations with the Belduque  Pards

-Josh 

[Dave Cole]

Looking great bud.Dave

[Josh Dabney]

Here we are back to working on the Belduque's Sheath.

I'm using the small wheel  here to hog off some wood before gluing up the sheath.  I'm using this just because it's what I had on there from yesterday, LOL,  but the contact wheels do take a more agressive bite than the flat platen or slack belt so it's really ideal for what I'm doing here, which is just getting rid of bulk and thinning the sides to a more workable thickness.


Here I'm using the slack portion of the belt to even things up a little. 


Now we're thinned out a bit and ready to assemble our sheath.  You can tell that I'm not yet thin enough to worry about the rough and slightly scorched 36 grit surfaces.


Just getting everything prepped for glue-up.  Got my sheath parts, allignment pins, glue, spring clamps, paper towels, and a couple scraps of leather to pad the vice jaws handy.

[Josh Dabney]

I always glue up both surfaces to be stuck together.  Not sure if it makes a difference but it makes me feel better  


I spread out the glue with my finger then wipe a small area on the inside perimeter clean of glue to help prevent glue from squeezing out into the inside of the sheath when clamped up.


Had I not done the previous step this much glue would be on the lining that I worked so hard to do  


Can you really use too many clamps, LOL.  Probably a little overkill but hey,  you don't get a second chance to do it right.  Also you'll note that I put the blade in the sheath.  I do this for 2 reasons.  1. To make sure it still fits, as this will be the permanent size of the inside.  2.  If glue does squeeze out into the inside of the sheath the way to get it cleaned out is to put the knife in, pull it out wipe it off and repeat until it comes out clean.

[WaddWatsonEllis]

Josh,

As long as there are no metal pins,  a round over bit in a router will probably take most of the wood off the 'top' of the scabbard, and once the wood is angled down (if you plan to angle the scabbard sides down to the sharp side), a small (1/8" or 3/16") roundover bit could save you a lot of sanding ... wish I were on the right coast (for just this work); My router table wouel make short course of it ....

And as alwys, Josh, just beautiful!

[Josh Dabney]

Now we've got ourselves a sheath Pards !    Now I've switched up the grinder to an 80 grit on the flat platen to begin tuning the shape of body.  My plan is to dome the front and keep the back fairly flat while rounding over the entire perimeter and putting a little taper on the bottom 3 inches or so.


Right now we have several goals.  remove all the 36 grit scrathches and begin setting up the shape we want.   By setting up I mean that we can encourage the slack belt to give the desired amount "dome" by sanding in facets down the length of the sheath so when hit it with the slack belt it'll sand all the points off those facets and give us the desired results.



Now we're ready to take off the platen and switch to a 220 grit belt to blend everything together

[WaddWatsonEllis]

Josh,

Never mind my advice ... your eye trues it better than I could ever do in a machine ...(genuflecting and backing out of the room *S*),,,

U DA MAN!!!!

[Josh Dabney]

WWE,

A router could very well work the edges in this application but it's really not a problem doing it on the grinder.  Running full tilt she's going a little over 3600 square belt feet per minute and it will literally just make this wood disappear if care is not taken with it, LOL.  

Now  we're working the shape on the slack belt.   The slack belt is kind of interesting because there is so much versatility depernding on how much tension you put on the belt.  I'm starting out with the belt real tight so it's got some give but with a light touch it can make a nearly flat grind.   Also grinding down in the middle of the area between the wheels will be pretty flexable but the closer you get to the top wheel the stiffer the belt will be.   This is nice if you want to thin down one spot you can go up high and make a couple passes then right back down to the middle to smooth things over.


Moving on I switch to a 400 grit belt and take all the tension off the belt.  With the belt this loose and running slow it won't dig in no matter how you put the wood to it.  It just smoothes everything over nice and neat without issues.

[Josh Dabney]

WWE,

In this instance the router would be the begining of the shaping process and it would still need some hand work to finish it up, but if you had it set-up and handy it definately would give ya a quick start and get rid of some bulk in a hurry 

Now we begin the first steps of the finishing process of soaking down with the vinegaroon and hitting it with the heat gun.  I did 3 rounds of this.

[Gun Butcher]

Love that last pic Josh. If the bic wasn't there that knife would look 5 ft long

[Josh Dabney]

And we'll conclude todays festivities with a couple shots of the Belduque in it's new home,  which has been steel wooled with 0000 and is in the condition I want it to perform the metal work.




Thanks again to everyone who's followin along with Belduque and stick with us for the next steps,  making a German Silver throat and toe.  

This should prove to be a learning experience for everyone,  myself included  

-Josh