Birch Bark Handled Puukko

A while back I posted pictures of this knife without a sheath. This post is a follow up to show the Scandinavian style sheath I made for it. This knife was made as a gift for my mom.

The sheath was made from a belly cut of cowhide that I had purchased to make some other sheaths this summer and I decided to use it for this sheath as well. The plans for this style of sheath were based on the tutorial I found on British Blades forum called "Scandi Sheaths My Way" by Gerd Jorgensen. The author has this tutorial on his website here.  Gerd also has a pouch style sheath tutorial on the same page which is also great.

The knife handle was lightly coated with mineral oil and the sheath was coated with neatsfoot oil after it was completely finished drying.

Leather Handled Puukko

This morning I finished the handle on the Polar blade that I wrote about in the previous post. As my first stacked leather handle, I am quite proud of how it turned out.

The handle is stacked leather with green canvas Micarta spacers and hand-hammered brass. I sanded the handle to shape on my belt sander with a coarse belt and then did the final sanding with 100 grit Aluminum Oxide sand paper while the knife was in my bench vise. After sanding by hand, I dusted off the leather dust and used Bick 4 leather conditioner and a piece of canvas to burnish/polish the leather.
 
The only thing I might change about the knife if I were going to do it again would be the glue type that I used for gluing up the leather. I used Titebond II glue which I have seen recommended in some tutorials on line, however I think I would not have had such pronounced lines between leather pieces if I used an epoxy. I noticed that there is a little darkening of the leather at each junction and I think this might be from the glue interacting with the steel tang of the blade. Anyway... I am overall very pleased.