Horizontal leather sheath for a folding lockback

Oct 11, 2026 Last reply: 2 hours ago 2 Replies
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The idea here is simple and appealing: skip the hip entirely and carry a folding knife flat across the small of the back, where it sits out of the way until needed. The maker built a brown leather sheath to do exactly that, mounted on a wide leather belt with the knife lying horizontally.



The construction reads as a careful, traditional sequence. The pattern started as rigid cardstock, drafted with a mechanical pencil and a green circle template, then trimmed with a hobby craft knife on a gridded cutting mat. Shapes were traced onto thick vegetable-tanned leather with a metal awl, and a welt was glued between the layers with leather cement and flattened with a hand roller. Stitch lines came off a wing divider, holes were bored with a rotary tool on a vertical drill press stand, and the seam was saddle-stitched by hand with white waxed thread in a wooden stitching pony before being hammered flat on a granite slab.



The finishing details stand out to me. The pocket was wet-molded around the folding lockback with wooden scales and brass bolsters using a bone folder, two oblong belt slots were punched with a punch iron and nylon mallet, and the edges were sanded, dyed with liquid edge dye on a wool dauber, and burnished with an edge slicker.



The one open question, in my view, is the carry position itself. The finished piece was tested outdoors on grass for retention and draw, but a hard object riding over the spine seems like a genuine concern in a fall, and I would want that weighed against the comfort of the placement.


The wet-molded pocket is the choice I keep coming back to. Shaping the leather around the actual lockback with a bone folder should give a close, specific fit for that exact knife, which matters a lot for retention when the sheath rides horizontally. The trade-off is that the fit is locked to that one knife's profile, so a different folder with other scales or bolsters probably would not sit the same way.

One variation worth trying on the molding step: most people dampen the leather and wrap it tightly around the knife while it dries. Since the maker used a bone folder on the pocket, adding a tight wrap during the wet stage could push the leather even closer to the lockback's shape and tighten the draw. It would be an easy addition to the existing process without changing the pattern or the welt.

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