The Armour Archive

We are all familiar with this laced setup.

http://www.essentialnormanconquest.com/ ... c16001.JPG

Sir Vitus and Cian have done it for SCA swords, Aaron S. of course, for real ones.

Does anyone have a tutorial or step by step on how to cut and tie the leather to make of these for an existing scabbard?

Thanks!

Glaukos the Athenian

Glaukos the Athenian wrote:Does anyone have a tutorial or step by step on how to cut and tie the leather to make of these for an existing scabbard?

EDIT - I missed the "existing scabbard" part.

We were discussing this very topic around the fire at Pennsic, Glaukos, because a brother and I wanted to make them.
I know Gregory Libeau/Gerhard did one and touched upon it in Interpretive Re-creation recently.
Of course Vitus.
Robert Coleman/T-Bob had some decent threads on them, back in the day, I believe.
I'm at work so I can't do much of a search but those are just off the top of my head.

I'm going to chime in and say that there's one problem that I see occuring with an existing scabbard.
Lacing the leather through the top requires slots to be cut into the perimeter near the mouth. And that really needs to be done prior to stitching the scabbard together.
Just cutting slots and running the thongs of the strapping through an existing scabbard would be a constriction point for the weapon unless you made some contingency to make the mouth wider or thinned the leather to compensate for the additional leather you're thonging through.
On my old scabbards, there was a polycarbonate tube that acted as the wood core on an real scabbard. The leather skin (4 oz) and the laced belt were done externally to the poly tube, and so there was no constriction at the throat.
On the later solid leather scabbards I had made, the leather was skivved at the mouth to compensate for the additional leather thickness.

The lacing itself is pretty self evident from the image you posted. The long scabbard belt is 2 pieces individally attached to the scabbard. The way I would do it was to use belts longer then needed so I could cut them down after.
The half of the belt laced through the scabbard was 36" long minimally (and usually 1.5" in width). Nearly half of this (18-22") was cut into a swallow tail. The ends of this swallow tail are what you lace and wrap the scabbard with.
The other belt was usually 48"-60" long of the same leather cut from the same hide. And it wraps the scabbard about 4" from the throat and intersects the swallow tail portion locking it in place preventing shifting along the scabbard. In my opinion this was true ingenuity on their part.
Anyhow, the pics you've posted and others I've seen posted on the archive are much better than any verbal description I could possibly give on how to do the wrap and lacing.
-Cian