Question... I have been looking at cinquedea scabbards in paintings and pictures of origional ones...

What do you think... all leather or leather covering a wooden core? Vegetable tan leather for the origionals with all kinds of tooling. I suppose it would have to depend on the size of the cinquedea. The one I am making is the DelTin with the 18 inch blade. It has a bit of heft to it and I don't think just leather will do it well.

I did catch the series of posts about the suspension system on the back of the scabbard which is quite neat.

Never mind - inappropriate post

Base it on originals. Everybody who's guessed at cinquedea scabbards makes silly things, in my opinion. There are plenty of references available.

I would choose two layers of leather: a hardened leather (baked, perhaps) with a tooling leather on the outside. I would not use a wooden core, and certainly not a fully-formed one.

Attached are some that I've put on myArmoury.com before.

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Nathan,

thank you for the additional pictures.

Second picture is the one I was looking at in detail from another post about wearing cinquedea... as it was the only one I have seen so far with both the front and back shown. Where do you think the seam is hidden?

Tooling leather and no wood core it is then.

I am thinking about 8 or 9 oz leather could work. Partially wet form the leather... then do some basic tooling (I am not the most gifted artist) and sew it all up. That little chape looks very doable.

I am a bit intrigued by that double layer of leather idea.
I could try wax hardening the inner core... I have a few pounds of beeswax on hand. 2/3 oz tooling leather on the outside... interesting ideas.

I do love the way those scabbards look with all of the tooling.

See the attached photo. It's comprised of two layers of leather. The inner "core" was formed and baked hard. The outer core is a more supple leather of probably 2-3 oz and is tooled with various designs.

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The Wallace Collection catalog mentions only "leather" for the cinquedea/scabbard set shown first below. You can see the thickness of what I presume to be only the outer layer.

The second image shows a ballock dagger scabbard with wood core. I'd hesitate to say that cinquedea scabbards never used such a core, but it may, indeed, depend on size. I could have sworn I had an image showing a wooden cinquedea core but I can't produce it at the moment.

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Thank you gents. This has really helped.

Dear Christopher,

From personal experience, I can tell you scabbards are definitely only one thickness of leather, semi-tanned (scabbard butts), of varying thickness, up to 3mm max. For full discussion of manufacturing technique of hardened leather see my article "As Tough as Old Boots?" about hardened leather armour techniques of manufacture. IAAConference proceedings 2003. No oven necessary.

From the V&A in April 2007...

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Precisely: cuir bouilli was made from semi-tanned leather, now sold as 'scabbard butts'.

Does anyone know, why they did choose to make the Cinquedea's scabbards entirely from leather, without a wooden core? Was it because of weight or stability reasons? Or what else could have been the reason?

Regards,
Thomas

hris Dobson wrote

Quote:

From personal experience, I can tell you scabbards are definitely only one thickness of leather, semi-tanned (scabbard butts), of varying thickness, up to 3mm max. For full discussion of manufacturing technique of hardened leather see my article "As Tough as Old Boots?" about hardened leather armour techniques of manufacture. IAAConference proceedings 2003. No oven necessary

.

Hi Chris, Thanks for the reference, but I am struggling to find a copy I can read, have you got a link I can go straight to?

Thanks

Tod

Package from Tandy just arrived... so if I can find my camera I will post some picks when I get home of where I am going.

Tod,

It's not published online, but you can get a hard copy here:

http://www.masterarmourer.com/online%20shop.html

Or you can search for the artists handbook by Cenino Cenini online for crest techniques, but I'm republishing as an eBook next year in colour with more material, for example see here:

http://www.masterarmourer.com/fine%20reproductions.html

Click on the link for 14th Century vambrace

Here is what I ended up doing... its about 5oz tooling leather, tooled dyed java brown and sealed with tankote. The attachment on the reverse is with a thong made of black dyed hemp twine waxed wth beeswax. The thread used to sew it all together is waxed linnen thread double needle harness stich

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Hi Christopher,

That is absolutely great - really, really well done. I think you have captured the essence of this style of scabbard perfectly.

Tod

I think that looks quite good, too. Any chance we can see some better quality photos that show the work in focus? I'd really like to see the details more clearly.