It's not a Jake Powning, but not bad for a first effort. Its a scabbard for an ebay fake bronze warring states sword. The customer sent me a pic of a period chinese soldier with scabbard and found some motifs from the same period. He picked the bird motif and I just started from there. Its a bit thicker than my usual scabbards due to the thick blade and irregular casting, but it fits well. The handle is currently being readied for the leather wrap so the sword is out in the shop. I'll post a finished pic when the whole package is done. What do you think?

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It's a little difficult to see because of the lighting, but what I CAN see looks like damned fine work.

Good for you!

The scabbard looks really nice, Tom. Did you do all of the carving by hand, or did you use a Dremel tool, or what?

Wow, that looks great, Tom! I'll be looking forward to some closer detail shots, too! Great work!

Thanks folks. Here is a pic of the birds in detail.

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Tom, you do really nice work. I bought a Windlass Drac from a guy on eBay, and it came with one of your scabbards (the guy is also a member on SFI). It had the burgundy colored finish, but I stripped it down to bare wood and refinished it with some gunstock oil. Very nice! :cool: You can't even see the seams on the sides. :eek: The leather frog is well done too. Keep up the fantastic work. :)

Tom, that looks great! You really do some fine work there.

I only wish the sword was better made. It had some very warped places. At the base of the blade, the edges are offset by as much as a !/4 inch. Also the forward part of the hilt is very irregular and the pommel is too small. The scabbard seems to big for it, but the fit is as good as I could get it. It will stay in upside down, and come out clean when pulled, but it just looks disporportionate in size to the pommel. I may saw off the bottom of the scabbard and match the coat. It might pull the dimensions together.
On the other hand it does have some interesting inscribed lines in the blade. The whole thing was a green black when I got it. The customer wanted it sharp so I had to get down to bright metal on the edges. I left the major portion of the blade the original color and scribed out the lines. I may work on it some more to see if I can get the two to come together a bit more and not clash so much. The copper belt fitting needs blackening for one thing. I'm not satisfied with the wrap either.
Nice and tight, but it could look better. :\ Anyway, here are the two together.

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Nice scabbard! Nicer than the sword it was made for in fact.