I may not be the best to speak authoratatively on hide glue and scabbards; I've only made a couple recently. But absolutely no problems, not even discoloration.

In fact, I prefer to go with a thin layer of wool felt, rather than bare wood, on the scabbard interior, the felt being glued on of course with the hide glue. A lot of potential contact, albeit through any pores in the felt. And as I said--not a problem in sight, even when leaving the blade in the scabbard for two or three weeks straight.

Ed,

I make my scabbards from Home Depot wood too and I ran into the same problem. I narrowed the problem down to the Elmers. The wood glue is the problem. Whenever I would use Elmers or other water-based wood glues, I found that even a slight amount of excess inside the scabbard touching the blade would leave tarnish/discoloration. It did not matter what I did after, no amount of scabbard treatment or oiling would take care of the problem. I have a scabbard I have had for a year now that I made that will still discolor the blade if left in it overnight.

On my last scabbard project, I replaced using wood-glue with using a synthetic epoxy (Gorilla Glue) to glue my planks to one another. Guess what? Problem solved. I can leave the sword in the scabbard indefinately and it does not develop the same problem. The Home Depot poplar is quite dry enough for your purpose, and once given a linseed oil coat on the inside, the wood itself does not retain much moisture at all.

How to fix your existing scabbard? I have to say, it would be nearly impossible. You would have to scrape out the wood-glue excess inside the scabbard. I would not say your scabbard is useless though. I would suggest to just use it to carry your sword at period events, etc - then store the sword out of the scabbard. Make plans to do a new scabbard in the future were will not use wood glue, but an epoxy or resin that is not water-based to glue the planks together.

Good luck!

You might try the tung oil trick I mentioned before giving up on the scabbards. It worked in my case, the scabbard in question has been in my truck console with the knife in it for about a year now. Being parked outside all the time, year round, it has now been subjected to some pretty extensive climactic abuse and not a hint of the corrosion/blackening has re-appeared.

Wow, thanks guys for all of the help here. It sounds like many people have seen this problem with the Elmer's glue before. Now I am curious and want to nail it down, so, I am going to buy two more planks of the same wood and try a different glue. I'll post back with the results. Perhaps I was more sloppy with the glue than I thought.

Titebond here, too. No problem with the dagger scabbard I made several years a ago.

I have had this problem to one degree or another with every scabbard I own, both ones I made myself and ones I purchased. I've used a variety of woods and glues, the least corrosive in my experience is simple Elmer's wood glue or hide glue.

I'm starting to think that while glue and/or wood can cause this problem, it is also a matter of what gets trapped inside the scabbard when you put the sword in. If you put it in on a humid day, perhaps, the moisture gets trapped inside. A dry day, nothing.

Sometimes I can put a sword in a scabbard for weeks with no discoloration, other times I leave that same sword in that same scabbard for a day and see something. It just doesn't make sense.

Sirs-My understanding of period scabbarda is the this is why they had lanbs' skin glued to the inside with period glue. The lanolin in the wool protected the steel.

Hi James,

James R.Fox wrote:

Sirs-My understanding of period scabbarda is the this is why they had lanbs' skin glued to the inside with period glue. The lanolin in the wool protected the steel.

To my knowlege this was true of some early-period "viking" scabbards, but not for medieval ones.

Just don't use too much glue - to a degree to which it starts leaking on the inside of the scabbard.