Bird Knife Sheath 3

Bird Knife Sheath Continued

After the leather had dried I used contact adhesive to bond the back loop to the back. Here are the two pieces before I stuck them together. 

Once bonded together I was able to punch the holes for the snaps that would hold the knife sheath to my bird vest. These two pieces will be stitched together in a later step.

Here are the snaps set. 

For the flap I chose to use a button stud instead of a snap. Here is the screw on the backside.

To keep the screw from marring the knife I chose to glue a thin piece of deer hide over the screw. 

I bond all seams before stitching. It makes it easier to stitch and it also helps in the edge finishing. Here are the two pieces prior to bonding with contact adhesive. 

After they are placed together I like to go over the bond line with the hammer to make sure the surfaces are touching and bonded. 

Then the pieces are stitched together. Here all three pieces are stitched together, the pocket, the back, and the flap. I use the double needle method so this seam will last a long time!  

Here is the sheath in its final shape. The edges still need to be finished at this point and the leather needs to be oiled/nourished. 

 Here you can see the back flap with its snap. This will be used to attach the sheath to the loop on the bird vest. 

After the wet forming cycles the leather is left very dry and is in need of oiling. I like to use Obenaufs products and start with the "leather oil" after the oil has soaked in I will treat the sheaths with Obenaufs "LP" to give it a good protective coating. The oil darkens the leather at first but it will soak in and leave the leather a tan color. I think that the oil gives the leather a pleasant color. 

Here is the knife sheath being installed on the side of my Filson Bird Bag.

Bird Knife Sheath 2

 Bird Knife Sheath Cont.

When I wet formed the pocket I made it slightly over sized with the intention of cutting it down to size. I used my skiving knife to cut it down to size. 

 Here is the final fit, I like to have a little of the knife stick up so that I can easily grab it and pull it out. 

 Here are the templates that I made and the leather that I will use for the two pieces. The templates have the overall shape and all the fold lines that I will use as a reference when wet forming these pieces to shape. 

  The back loop needs to be skived so that it has a nice smooth transition. Before skiving it is always a good idea to sharpen up your knife. Here is my leather strop that I use to tune up the edge of my skiving knife. 

 After a few cuts I have a nice taper skived into the piece. 

 Here I am adding a decorative line along the border of the piece. I don't like a lot of ornamentation in leather work, I am pretty utilitarian. But I do like to add some subtle details.

Then it is time to clean up the edge with an edger. Later on this edge will be burnished. 

 Here are my three pieces prepped.

 Then I wet formed the folds and bends into the two pieces.

To be continued... 

Bird Knife Sheath 1

A Sheath for a Bird Knife

Every serious bird hunter needs a bird knife, it is an essential bit if gear that you can't live without. If I had to choose between my bird knife and shotgun shells, I would pick the bird knife every time.

Actually that is false, to be completely honest I have never been successful at using the gut hook on my bird knife, and I usually make a mess of a perfectly good quail when trying. That being said I think that a knife is a very useful tool, and I carry one daily. Since I have a bird knife I figured that I might as well carry it when bird hunting.

My bird knife is very special to me, it was a Christmas gift from my father. It is a Boker Brand Bird Knife and I have carried it in the field for a few years.

I decided that I wanted to make a knife sheath for the bird knife that would mount to my bird vest.  I use a Filson bird bag and it is pretty minimalist, so having a sheath for my knife will free up some pocket room.

As with any other project the key is in the planning. For this sheath I am going to wet form the leather to make a pocket that will fit the knife. You can wet form leather in many ways, but for this project I am going to wet form the leather over a mold to make the pocket.

The first step is to make the mold. I did not take any pictures of the mold making. But essentially you make two pieces that the leather will be pressed between to create the shape you want. Here are some of the molds that I have made in the past for other projects, with the bird knife mold in the front.

The molds don't need to be fancy. All of these molds are made with scrap wood and cutoffs that I have saved from other projects.

After the mold is complete, then I got out my leather and selected a hide to work with. Because this is going to be used in the field when quail hunting I wanted a fairly thick leather that would be very durable. The leather that I used is 8 oz (roughly 1/8" thick) veg tanner leather. Veg tanned leather is the best for wet forming.

 Once the leather is selected you need to trim it to a manageable size. For this project  I cut the leather to about 5" x 4". It is important to cut the leather larger than you need because it is difficult to get it straight in the mold and it is much easier to trim that to add leather.

Then the leather is moistened with water. I believe that the proper term is "cased". For a shape like a knife sheath where the leather needs to really stretch I prefer to soak the leather in hot water for a few minutes and really saturate it.

Once the leather is saturated and pliable it is put on the mold. At this point I start the molding by hand and get the leather to form to the shape the best that I can. This also helps to keep it in place when the top piece of the mold is put on. 

Then the top part of the mold is put on and clamped in place. This is where the shape really forms. The leather is left in place for several hours to set the shape and start to dry. Here you can see what the knife pocket will look like.

I have found that if left in the mold (forming tool) for too long the leather does not really dry well and can grow mold (the bacteria growth mold). So after a few hours I remove the leather from the mold and staple it to a board. The stapling is to help keep the shape and prevent any warping during the drying.

Here you can see the shape of the final knife pocket.

While the leather was drying I am made a pattern for the back/cover and the strap. I like to use manila folders for this. They are nice and stiff and are cheap. In this picture I am laying out the basic shape of the pattern for the two pieces.

To be continued...

Deer Season

The End of Deer Season

This year the end of Deer Season was uneventful. I was not successful this year.

Between the effects of the drought and the increased predator population the deer numbers are not looking good. In my area I am just not seeing the deer numbers that I am used to seeing.

So it is time to unpack my hunting pack and put the gear away for another year.

Hopefully next year will be better.

Harvest

Harvest for Rose'

The Grapes were at 21 Brix so it was time for our first harvest of the year. We harvested about 2 tons of grapes that would be used for Rose'.

Harvest starts very early in the morning getting the buckets and grape bins ready for the pickers. The pickers put the grapes into 5 gallon buckets, that are then dumped into large grape bins. Each grape bin can hold up to one half ton of grapes. Typically they are around 850 pounds when we pick.

 Here it is a little after 6:00 AM everything is ready and the pickers arrived shortly after to start.

The Pickers move very quickly through the vineyard picking grapes. This group spent all night at another Vineyard harvesting and then came to spend a few hours harvesting in our Vineyard before a little sleep and back to it. They are a very hard working bunch.

Here is a bin full of our grapes ready to be taken to the winery to process

Here is 5 1/2 bins, 2 tons (4000 pounds) of grapes delivered to the winery. At this point my job is done. 

 But I stuck around to capture some of the process to share. Here the bins are being dumped into the press where they will be pressed into juice. Different wines are processed in different ways, for some they remove the stems but in this case the winemaker prefers to leave the stems on during the press.

Here is a view of the bottom of the press where the juice is collected in a tub below the press. 

The juice is pumped from the tub/press (show in the background) into a storage container. 

Here is the inside of the container while it is getting filled up. 

Here is the outside of the container. It is roughly 300 gallons and was almost completely full when we were done. The juice will sit in this container for 24 hours. This allows the particulates to settle to the bottom. Once settled the juice will be transferred into the stainless steel barrels on the left to ferment.