Axe Sheath pt 1

At the end of this month is a very important date. The Teacher’s wedding.  Because of certain circumstances I will be one of the groomsmen (which I’m quite happy about). The theme is sort of a fantasy/medieval styled thing and so many of the groomsmen will be wearing a sword or other weapon as well.

Personally, I don’t have any medieval style swords, but I do have a neat looking axe that I purchased at the Michigan Renaissance Festival.

(Forgive the poor quality picture, I’ll replace it later)

It’s beautiful and would be perfect! Except that it’s sharp and the frog I have places it uncomfortably close (and the bottom part (not pictured) scraped up my ankle pretty bad). So, Solution? Make a sheath of course! I grabbed some tools and some leather off of amazon and planned it out with my brother!

After the leather finally arrived I still wasn’t quite sure but now I’m in something of a time crunch so i need to get everything cut out so I can ship the axe down to The Teacher in time for the wedding!  My brother recently had his own wedding a few days ago so he won’t be able to help for this part of it however he did let me know I could use some of his old sewing supplies.  So I dug into that and gathered all the tools I figured I could use!

Here are all of the tools I’m planning to use, some mine some his. The ruler, pencil, awl, rotary cutter, stitching spacer, and needles are mine. Whereas the L-Square, big scissors, and soapstone are my bro’s. I haven’t used all of these tools yet, and I may add more but this is the list right now haha.

So I measured out the designs and started by cutting out a square that was around half an inch bigger than what I needed. Then I traced the shape of the blade onto the leather with the soapstone.  Once I had that I guestimated about an additional centimeter and drew freehanded the cutting lines. I checked it on the axe and started cutting!

Curves with the rotary cutter aren’t as easy as I’d hoped, but they’re a lot easier than using a box cutter like I did when I made my wallet. It didn’t seem to stretch out the leather at all and with a careful hand I ended up with my first piece ready!

As you can see, I also added an additional part for the axe to cut into so it won’t cut through my stitches later on!

I took this cut out, flipped it over and traced it to get the second piece! Which was a little tougher to cut out, and i’m pretty sure it’s nto completely even as of yet but it was starting to get dark so I wanted to get another rough part done before I tried to do any fine work. It’s much easier to see things under natural light than the kitchen light so after I finished the first part for the second bit of my axe I called it a night.

So next time I just have to fine tune some of the parts and make the final cutout for the second bit!  I still have some work to do with making a cover for the bottom weight but I feel pretty accomplished! After that I just have to figure out if I’m going to stitch it up with fake sinew, or waxed thread!

I’ve never used either so i’m not sure what to pick…

So if you’ve got any insights please comment below! Have you ever had a project to make something like this? Medieval styling or otherwise? Feel free to post any other questions or comments, I’d love to hear from you!

Time Flies for Family Visits

These last couple weeks have been kinda busy so I haven’t really had time to take care of the things I want to haha.  My poor wallet has been lying around in pieces since I was just so tired I didn’t finish it up like I’d intended =3= .

On August 28th, pops his gf and I all drove on over to visit my grandma. Along the way we stopped by the airport to pick up my sister and niece so that gma could finally see her newest great-grandchild! It was a great time, but we were running pretty much every day, and when we weren’t running we had a 2.6 year old to entertain and contend with. We visited a lot of family, ate a lot of food (but not as much as I used to, I tried to do well!), and had a ton of fun.
It all seems like a blur looking back on it, but we did a lot haha.  One day we drove around the local Amish community one day to find the general store to pick up some stuff and yums. (I got beef jerky and soap.) It was really nice just driving around the woods and waving cornfields. Unfortunately I didn’t think  to take any pictures until we were already driving home and well past all the Amish houses and such.  Another day we took the little one to a small local Zoo which was pretty fun.  It was just running all week, and me generally catering to my sister’s whims so that we could have a peaceful visit. I don’t dislike my sister per se, but she’s a very stressful person to be around, and medically speaking, I don’t handle stress very well at all. So suffice to say by the time the week was up I was very happy to be coming home haha.

I took Wednesday off from work as well, taking an extra day to catch up on sleep and kind of recover. “No man needs a vacation so much as the man who has just had one.” You know how it goes haha.

I’d intended to, over the weekend,  get outside a bit, finish my wallet, maybe do some other cool stuff to tell you guys about. Instead I slept in, got some kind of shiatsu massage on Saturday. I’d been complaining about my back hurting (Hunched over staring at  a laptop at work every day and all that.) and my dad’s gf told me about this lady so she took me to go see her on saturday. I came out of there feeling like I could lift a truck, but as the day progressed my back got really sore as though I’d been working out hardcore or something. So I stayed in and ended up playing skyrim all day haha.

Sunday I was still pretty sore and spent most of the day generally lounging P:

This week rolled by pretty damn quick and before I really knew it it was the weekend again! Well, this weekend I had plans and went to the Michigan Renaissance Festival for the first time which I think will warrant a post all it’s own. Hopefully I can get that posted up sometime this week.

Busy busy busy

I was initially planning for my next post to be about my next wallet attempt but it’s been a little over a week since then and I haven’t had the time or opportunity to reattempt.

Look forward to it though, I’m sure looking forward to making a new wallet haha!

In any case I’ve been busy mostly with work during the weeks which I anticipated. But I didn’t anticipate so much to be happening over the weekends for this month! Last weekend pops and I headed out to visit my grandmother from the 9th to the 11th. It was a short trip because well, pops was really only going for an event and his lady hasn’t been feeling well so she was staying home this time. We head out again the 28th iirc and we’ll stay for a whole week with some of my other family members coming up to visit.

So the morning of the 9th we woke up bright and early and got on the road by 9 am. Drove a good 500mi (well, pops drove. I played with the radio and we talked lots.) and arrived by 7pm. Chicago traffic was hell it took us 3 hours to get through the city whereas usually it only takes us an hour and a half… We arrived in time to still get in on some good ol’ Wisconsin Friday Night Fish Fry (I had catfish) and pops was complimented on all the weight he’s lost and I was complimented on finding work so quickly.

A few relatives stopped by gma’s house on the 10th to see us and see gma and have lunch and all that good stuff. I ended up falling asleep on the sofa whilst we were visiting but I woke up in time to see them go so no one held it against me haha. (They provided me the excuses of being tired from work, and from the drive, which were both true, but regardless.)

Then the morning of the 11th came and we were on the road by roughly the same time I suppose, I don’t remember exactly. But the time change wasn’t on our side for returning home so we just ate awful things, drive thru, etc, and got home in time to crash for Monday morning.

A fast and exhausting weekend to be sure!

After that, it’s simply been back to work and taking care of general life stuff so I haven’t had time to craft. Monday I drove around to find an item for another project Ive been working on, Tuesday was grocery shopping, and Wednesday I went to a friend’s book event! Yesterday was the uninteresting but oh so necessary cleaning day.  So perhaps today or saturday since sunday I’ve got plans too!

August is such a busy month!