I have made a couple leather sheaths and plan to make more, but I've never given a lot of thought to any sort of preservative measures.
I use tanned belt leather cutoffs I get from the "belt lady" at the flea market.
I seem to remember reading somewhere about boiling a sheath in an oil/beeswax mixture? That sounds odd and messy to me, but whadda I know?
Is tanned leather protected enough as it is? Is it enough to just rub in some shoe polish? And is there anything special I should do to the inside of the sheath to prevent interaction between the tanning chemicals and the steel of the knife blade?
Thanks for any help!
Everyone needs to try soaking a sheath in neets foot oil beeswax mix just to get it out to of their system. It will make a sheath a bit harder and protect the leather for some time. It will also 'leak' oil and wax every time it gets a little too warm.
The process for oil and wax sheaths is mix half and half by volume oil and beeswax. Heat it up enough to mix it all together. Use a double boiler to heat the wax. Bubbling wax exploding out of pot will seriously burn you and it's fairly flammable. Oven and bread loaf pan. Heat it to no more than 145F or you will fry your leather. I've fried a few.
When you get to temp and the goop is all mixed up, dip the sheath in and out. It does NOT need to soak. Heat it with a hot air hair dryer to help it soak into the leather. Wipe off the excess. You can optionally, put your knife in the sheath after you pull it out of the dip and wet mold the sheath to the knife. You will have a lot of wax to wipe off your knife but that is good for it anyway. The better way would have been to wet mold the sheath prior to dipping and letting it dry completely.
There is reason you will not see pro leather sheath makers sell sheaths like that. You probably want to copy what the pro's do. All the real old leather I've seen that is oil soaked rots away with time. Leather dry rots too. Some where in between is where you want to be. I am not a pro but I've copied a few. I use Tandy SuperSheen on sheaths. It protects the leather and gives some shine and modest water shedding. You can use a silicon spray to 'waterproof' a sheath if you like. I don't see a lot of advantage to that. Waterproof holds in moisture just as much as it holds it out. Having a knife soak for days in a wet sheath is not good even for stainless.
I finish all sheaths with a good coat of Classic (compare to Briwax)wax buffed in.
