Redhound's Scabbards

Redhound is the name of a character played at Empire, a larp game run by Profound Decisions.

As an old warrior, Redhound tended to be armed with an assortment of weaponry most of the time, but the player was finding this occasionally tricky due to a lack of appropriate scabbards.

To make life trickier, most of his weapons weren't particularly standard in size and shape, so some custom leather work was required!

The brief was for a set of relatively plain, aged scabbards - gear Redhound had been using for years - with some variation in belt attachment options.

Quick note for those unfamiliar with larp: all the weapons here are made of foam and latex, which is why they may look a bit unusual!

The first scabbard was for a machete, but with an attached pocket for small items.

Rather than hanging the scabbard from two straps to hold it at a strong angle, we decided to go for a straightforward belt slot design, built in at a gentle angle so the scabbard would hang fairly straight down the leg.

The scabbard was moulded to fit from roughly 2.5mm thick leather, and the seam hand stitched with artificial sinew.

I added a bit of light twisted thorn stamp work, and a few holes below the pocket section for tying handy things to.

I quite like how the contrast turned out between the buffed surface of the pocket and the rougher inner side of the hide here.

The second part of the project was a paired set of scabbards for some 'horn' handled knives.

Although a pair, the knives actually had slightly different profiles, one having a curved blade and the other being straight.

These were again moulded to fit from 2.5mm leather and hand stitched.

You can see the continuation of the stamped thorn motif here.

For these scabbards some flexibility of position was desired once strung on a belt, so they had simple belt loops attached by single rivets to allow a bit of swivel.

The final part of the project was a 'scabbard' of sorts for a hand axe. This one was an interesting challenge due to the shape of the axe head, and also the angle of the head on the shaft.

Larp axes often end up 'sheathed' via a simple metal hoop - the shaft goes down through the hoop, and the axe head being wider stops the whole thing falling through completely.

The shaping of this axe head made this tactic less than ideal though, so I said I'd have a go and see what I could come up with.

After some tinkering with paper templates I came up with this solution. Slits in the back allow the 'scabbard' to be threaded onto a belt, and a hole in the bottom functions like the usual axe hoop. Shaping the leather to support the axe head allowed the shaft to hang fairly straight down the leg (which it hadn't before), and the envelope-style flap adds some security and a bit of weather proofing.

I also continued the thorn motif on the flap to bring all the pieces together.