Kukri Scabbards

After Rob over at Cat Scratch Creations made some larp-safe kukri (foam and latex around a structural core), their owners then came to me about custom scabbards.

This was an interesting challenge, as kukri have a pretty unusual shape compared to most knives - varied width, and with a bend to boot!

The kukri themselves were made for characters in the Navarr nation at Empire larp, which is why the scabbards pictured below feature a lot of brown, with bits of green, dark red, and thorny patterns.

I decided that to be able to draw the kukri from the scabbard with relative ease, it was going to need to be a partially open design.

This in turn meant I'd need to use some sturdy leather and mould it to hold shape well.

Rob made me a wooden blank a little larger than his kukri blades to use as a mould, and I ordered some 3mm veg-tan to work with.

Moulding the leather around the blank involves a whole handful of clamps! I use narrow strips of spare leather to protect the main piece from the clamps, and to give a good flat edge for stitching later.

The open half of the scabbard gets bound in place with some scrap linen, which holds everything in place without leaving any marks.

The first scabbard was fairly plain, in dark brown with some dark burgundy straps.
Probably the most important lesson learned along the way was to glue the lining in before stitching that main seam!

Below are some more images of completed scabbards. These have all been a custom orders, so each has it's own colour scheme and detailing.
Both the original scabbard (shown above) and the dark brown shown here had rabbit fur linings, whereas the green strapped one had a matching green suede lining.