Thought I would update here with some actual work I've done, for once. :)
A couple of years ago, I started up some tutorials on how you could make a scabbard. I actually have yet to finish those, but I made another one a couple of weeks ago, when I finally got some steam up to do anything, and I thought I would show you.
This is a scabbard for a grosse messer I bought some years ago that has been needing some dressing up. The first issue I had to think around was that it is a backsword, and only has one edge, so i added a smal rise for the back and end of the scabbard.
The whole thing was glued together with wooden glue after I put the main pieces of the scabbard into the bathtub for a bit, and then, instead of just sanding the edges even, I bought a small plane to make my work a bit easier.
Then we cover the wood up in some fabric, in this case some actual linen I had lying around, and in some other cases it's bedlinen (cotton) from Ikea. If you want it historically accurate, go that route, but we're just gonna cover it all up with leather anyway so I don't feel like it matters much, it just gives one more layer of strength to the build.
After the core is done, it's time to start fiddling with leather!
1. Make a pattern by taping over some baking paper around the core.
2. Cut it open and put down on leather. Mark up and cut out.
3. If you want to add any risers under the main leather covering, the time for marking them out is now. You might want to put down something to mark out where a belt would go around the scabbard, or make other shapes and adornments on it? For this scabbard, I wanted to just make some nice and pretty shapes and loop the belt fittings over those.
4. I decided waves was too hard to do nicely, so decided on triangles. Added a border and a lip up by the opening of the scabbard to make the final coverage match the width of the knife's crossguard.
5. For the border and zigzag I took some round leather straps I had lying around, flattened them by rolling a pen over them to match the thickness of the leather lip I have around the scabbard's mouth, and then glued them to the wooden core.
All in all, a nice start I would say. Part 2 coming in a bit. Leatherwork, tooling, coloring and metalwork(?)!