( http://www.myArmoury.com/talk/viewtopic.php?t...hlight=diy ). I stripped the grip wrap and stained the bare wood, as seems to be more historically appropriate. Since I've also been wanting to try scabbard-making, I made a scabbard for this dagger. It's my first attempt at such a project and it turned out better than I expected--better than the dagger, in fact.
This entire project is only vaguely historical. It's late 15th century-ish, but I make no claims to historical accuracy. I just made things up as I went along, with occasional reference to original pieces.
The scabbard core is poplar with two hemp risers and a cover of chamois. I shaped the core with a Sur-Form rasp, block plane and sand paper, in that order.
The only way I could have made the chape more difficult would have been to carve it from a single block of steel. :D I used 16 gauge steel because I happened to have a sheet of that. The good news is that this thickness was very forgiving of my trial-and-error forming. I used a bench vise for the majority of the forming, positioning the steel just-so and carefully tightening the vise. I also used a pair of needle-nose wire cutters, inserted into the rough chape, as an internal support while I hammered the piece lightly on an anvil to refine the form. Then I filed it, ground it, drilled and cut it, sanded and polished it, etc. I screwed up my original plans for the decorative cutout ( a trefoil pattern) because I had the wrong bit size and tried to improvise. To fix the resulting ugliness I just drilled one big hole and cut a "v" shape down to it. I actually like the finished cutout better than my original plan. The chape worked out O.K. in the end, but I'll do it differently next time, using a lighter gauge steel and forming it a bit more gently so I don't have to file out vise marks, etc.
The suspension is purely speculative. I wanted two risers to keep the lace in position and I know that sword and dagger scabbards ca. 1500 were sometimes suspened via a basket-weave knot. I don't yet know how to tie that knot so I just used a turk's head knot, which worked perfectly in the narrow space between the risers. This suspension is very tight and secure.
So, I have a complete dagger and scabbard set (plus lots of new skills) for around $25 in materials. It's no great beauty but it looks and works as it should. I certainly couldn't find anything as good for that price. Maybe I should make a better dagger for this scabbard....
I guess I need to try to make some sword scabbards now, but I have no idea where I'll find a chamois that size :lol:
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