Leather Hatchet Sheath

Do you have a hatchet or an axe laying around without a sheath or with an ugly piece of plastic protecting your blade? How about making your own sheath out of leather to protect your hatchet with style!

Even I don't have much experience or any special tools for leather making, I am going to show you how I made a leather hatchet sheath with everyday tools. Hope you enjoy!

To make this sheath you will need a piece of leather, a snap and a couple tools:

• Scissors
• Awl
• Thick Thread
• Needle
• Hammer
• Paper

Here is my handy hatchet with its improvised sheath made from a zip tie and a piece of cloth. Unfortunately this sheath isn't very practical since I have to put on a new zip tie every time I use it and for that reason I haven't used my hatchet for a while. Since I don't have a sheath, I decided to make my own with nothing but a small piece of leather and ordinary house tools.

Just to give you a heads up the leather I used comes from old samples that used to help people select the material of seats. One mans trash is another mans treasure!

The first step is to select a piece of leather to make a sheath and make sure that it is big enough to cover your hatchet.

Since there is no standard size to a hatchet, the first thing I did was to trace out the outline of the head of my hatchet on a piece of paper. Then I sketched out my sheath design, Since I was limited with the size of my leather, I chose to make a small sheath that would protect just the cutting edge of my hatchet. Another reason why I chose to make a small sheath was that I only wanted to have one piece of leather to limit the amount of stitching and having pieces of different colors.

Once I had my design, I retraced my hatchet on another piece of paper and drew out my sheath's pattern. When drawing out the pattern make sure to make the pattern a little bigger so that you will have enough leather to close the sheath. Then with the help of scissors I cut out the pattern.

Once you will have your pattern cut out place it on top of your leather on the grain side and secure it with tape. With the help on an awl trace the pattern on the leather and then with the help of a pen knife or scissors cut out the pattern.

Then place it on your hatchet and make sue that if fits correctly. Then with a safety pin I locked into place where I wanted to have the leather so that I could stitch the side together.

Once you have figured out where you what to stitch and locked it in place with the help of a stitch groover or an awl give yourself a guideline to help you know where to stitch. Then with the awl punch the sewing holes an equal distance from each other, I put 4 mm between each hole.

The grab a thick tread and a leather needle and stitch trough the holes you punched with the awl. I stitched the entire side of the sheath and a little bit on the top to prevent the top corner of the blade from damaging the flap of the sheath.

Once you have stitched the side of the sheath slide in the hatchet to make sure that if fits. Then fold the flop over the top of the hatchet and make sure it is big enough to cover the top. When the flap is covering the top mark on the flap where you will place the snap. Then you have your mark with the awl poke a hole through both pieces of leather to have the exact placements of the snap.

When marking the place where you will place your snap make sure that the flap isn't too tight on the top.

Then with the help of scissors trim off any excess leather and resize the flap if it is too big.

Then insert your snap on the marks you did with the awl. Since I didn't have a special leather snaps or a hole puncher I used a prong snap that you can set with a hammer.

Once that your snap is installed your sheath is finished all you have to do now is to make it look nice...

So now you have a DIY leather sheath for your hatchet or axe that you can take with you on your next adventure...

I'm not sure if I was clear enough in explaining the steps, but I think the photos will help. Also if you have any questions please don't hesitate to ask. Suggestions and corrections are appreciated. I hope you will enjoy making this Leather Hatchet Sheath.