After the sword is completed, it's time to make the scabbard.

I haven't made one with such proportions yet - my experience so far was only with dagger-sized scabbards. Our forum-mate Julien M. was so kind to provide me the advise I needed - Julien, thank you so much.

As a beginning, I took a plank of wood (beech in this case, I couldn't find ash or poplar) and split it in to equal, thinner planks. The contour of the blade was traced on both pieces, as I verified for myself that I've placed the blade in the same way on both planks. After that I traced a second line at some distance from the "blade line".

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The next step could be somewhat controversial.
Some people might want to carve the planks first, and after that to cut the planks. I personally prefer to cut first - after some time with the jigsaw two halves of the core were ready.

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BTW, I've never seen this article.
My personal "know-how" to make scabbards comes from Ye Olde Gaffer's scabbard page http://www.yeoldegaffers.com/project_scabbard.asp and another similar in Russian (think it's somewhere in tforum / tgorod pages).

Anyway - it's quite good and very interesting. And although for now I don't plan to use router, the article could be very useful in future.
Thank you so much for sharing it!

personally i stay away from the router. i like to use the good old fashioned chisel and hammer when i hollow cores. takes more time, also takes a little bit of practice. i consider poplar soft for carving with chisel, its pretty easy to tap the hammer into the wood and accidentally dig out a big chunk if you don't pay attention to the how the grain is running.

You could do another pass with the chisel... but also consider 60 and 100 grit sandpaper for final fitting....

Ye Olde Gaffer is correct that one must be CAREFUL to not leave any imbedded sand behind - having used 60, then 100 grit sandpaper for final forming? I CAN say that a good paper towel cleaning, followed by an initial swab of the channels with the oil of your choice (QTips, and a small rag) appears to eliminate this issue - both cleaning, and providing initial oiling. I've not seen a blade scrape with over 6 cores. One warning: on doing this, do NOT allow any oil to contact the core edges that you are about to glue. If this happens, immediately wipe that edge with a small amount of Acetone (yes, the wood will survive nicely).

In addition - chisel or router... you want to "smooth" any vertical transition edges that your blade may encounter during insertion... ie, don't leave a sharp "edge" that the blade tip can catch on.

The ultimate metric: You should work the core for fit to the point that the blade is smooth, BUT: you should ideally be able to insert the blade, hold everything upside down, and JUST have the blade stay put. You can test this by clamping the halves ACROSS the core width prior to gluing (don't put force on the channel - move the force to the glue edges).


....and you have a VERY nice throat profile :). I suspect that the initial product will look a little like the "paint stick" I described - don't worry. Rounding of the core is actually pretty easy, fairly quick, and transforms the "paint stick" into a very nice shape. You CAN do this by hand... I have tended to use a small 1"x30" belt sander.

2 things that did take me a while to get right an either of the sheaths i made was to get that snug fit. taking out too much just ruins the fit and there not a good way to fix it, and glue.

something to think about other than sand paper is a card scraper. this is usually a sheet of flexible metal with a good edged on it. its held at 90 degrees from the work and literally scraps the surface of the wood flat. I've never used one in a core, I've always been able to get the core smooth enough by chisel and hand.

the glue you use can case trouble. my last sheath i put a healthy portion on the sheath, when i stored my blade and brought it out next month the edges were tarnished, something in the glue caused it and because i couldn't clean out the inside of the sheath, it caused some trouble. instead, use a limited amount of glue doesn't need to squish out when you clamp it. most wood glues these days are 4x stronger than the wood around it. and if you put a sealer over the sheath (linseed oil) this also will hold it together. then wrapped in leather, i don't think you'd have to worry about it coming apart too much.

Well, I've already finished the carving and gluing.
As a whole - one very,very big dagger scabbard :lol:

As I've always had some real embarrassments with sanding the core (because of the tiny sand particles), I finished it in Japanese way - only with chisels.
Not sure, if I've made a mistake but I impregnated the inner surface with bee-wax. I managed to cover both almost without any spill over the contact surfaces.
The glue I used was "Henkel" PVA glue, quite good and strong, although its fast drying (about 10 minutes) was an issue.

Looking great, as with the rest of your project!

Here's a trick I learned for a perfect scabbard fit.

Get the scabbard interior sanded down so that it's just a bit too tight for the blade (with scabbard halves clamped for fitting). Stick adhesive-backed fine sandpaper to the blade and insert/withdraw a few times. That removes any tight spots without affecting the fit in other places. Un-clamp the halves, remove dust and you're ready to glue.

Ha! Fantastic work, Boris. Very inspiring. I'm storing this information in my brain for the time that I finally try this myself. O:

Guys, thanks for all these advises!
Although I won't use them now for obvious reasons (my core is already chiseled, fitted, waxed and glued) they could be quite useful for future projects.

Well, this is the core after I removed the clamps

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And one clever trick I learnt from above mentioned Russian tutorial - in order to facilitate gluing, you could use several wooden sticks. To do this you just need to
* take one of the planks and drill several pairs of tiny holes (I used 1.8 mm drill-bit) on the contact surface. You need a pair near the mouth, a single hole at the point and another or two pairs distributed evenly between them
** match very well both planks (you could use the sword itself too) and clamp them tightly - but three or four clamps are enough indeed
*** remove the sword (if it's in) and drill the other plank THROUGH holes already drilled
**** take several wooden sticks about an inch long (matches, tooth-picks or so) and glue them in the holes of one of the planks
***** apply glue over the contact surface and just insert the sticks protruding from one plank through the holes in the other; then clamp the core
Then you would get this as a result (the front pair is very well visible, the rear is somewhat obscured)

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As these sticks are tiny, they do not spoil the core in anyway, but could save a lot trouble when gluing the core. When the glue is dried out, the picks are cut off

The mouth of the core (although the sticks were already cut off the pair is still visible just behind the mouth)

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And the sword in

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After a lot of filing the core got its shape

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The mouth

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It looks a little bit asymmetrical, and it is - the lower plank is thinner at this end. And although at the other everything was OK, I had no choice - this was the only way to avoid some quite unpleasant cracks in the wood.
I also wonder, would it be better, if I make the side-walls (these were the edges are) thinner? I really have some material there, that could be removed.

The famous wooden sticks (alongside the diagonal of the picture) after filing and some additional sanding

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The sword inside the core

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I have some gap here, but it's easy to be fixed

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And finally - really my FIRST attempt to tie a sword knot

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Looks quite ugly, especially at the back, but it was made with wide and thick leather strip.

The core finally finished, this time with belt-grinder

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And the mouth is filed until fit - this time without gaps

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The last couple of days I had some interesting encounter with the raisers of the scabbard.

As a material I used some scrap leather about 1 mm thick, which was cut into 5 mm wide straps. These straps were glued with quick-drying PVA glue to the wood.

The front of the first raiser with a triangular section added

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and at the back

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Second raiser front

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and back

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The mouth of the scabbard

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Somewhere at this point, I felt something wasn't just OK and stopped.
The work was resumed on the next day, after brief but careful reading of some sources.

Well, I was seriously disturbed by the thickness of the raisers.
When all done so far has been finished, I took a critical look at the raisers, and didn't like them much - in my eye they were just thin. Some written sources like

excellent Julien M.'s thread http://www.myArmoury.com/talk/viewtopic.php?t...mp;start=0

and your tutorial http://findlithui.deanandsandy.dyndns.org:808...ore1.1.pdf

showed me my raisers need to be thicker - approx. twice. And another - I don't need full circles around the core (except at the mouth).