My friend Ricky Wallace is a longtime knife maker that lives and works a hundred or so miles west of me here in Northwest Florida. Ricky’s a US Army Veteran, fishing guru, boat overhauler, and a genuine nice guy with a knack for fixing pretty much anything that breaks. If he can’t fix it, hell, he’ll just make one. The late Lewis Grizzard would call him a Great American. So would I. He’s also a photogenic feller, with a busy channel on YouTube. Ricky makes leather sheaths for all the knives he creates, and he’s been a great help to me in my knife making pursuits. I sent Ricky the first of my leather knives to actually leave my place and head out into the great beyond. He turned around and did the following video. Thank you, Ricky, and thank you for your service, Sir.
Wikipedia says Buck Knives were founded in my old hometown of Mountain Home, Idaho, back in 1902. They also give credit to San Diego, California. Rewriting, or completely eliminating history is the flavor of the week in what’s left of America, so I choose to stick with the Idaho origination story. It’s my Blog.
Several weeks ago, my friend Gerry at Dakota Defense announced on Facebook that he had a few Buck 112 Ranger Autos available, and I got one. It arrived in record time, which is one of Gerry’s trademark moves–you order, he ships. No playing around. I was blown away by my new knife–my first Buck, and my first lock blade. I was so impressed with this Buck 112 that a few days later I ordered one of the classic Buck 110’s. Then, I got to thinking–rarely a good thing, but I got to thinking as a holster-maker, why not make a sheath? I’m left-handed, I have thousands of dollars worth of equipment, hard-won experience making gunleather, stress, blood loss, pain, scars, etc. Hell, I can make a knife sheath. It’ll be easy! One week later, after a half-dozen or so failed attempts, sure enough, I had one. But wait, there’s more.
Since I’m happy with the plain, left-handed, beautifully conformed to me leather Buck 112 sheath I have painstakingly created for myself…why not make a few more? As a holster-maker, pain, frustration and expense are my stock in trade. What could it hurt?
To wrap things up, I managed to finish a couple I’m happy with. Both for the Buck 112. Both for you majority right-handers. One is a hammer stamp design I adopted after seeing a holster that Mike Barranti built. The other is a simple basket stamp. Both are made from premium Hermann Oak leather, and lightly antiqued in mahogany. The borders on both of these are a little half-flower Barry King stamp that I’m partial to. Neither one’s on the website yet, but I’ll try and put them both up some time today.These are both in the Shop now. Just click the link up top.
Thanks for reading. Happy Tuesday–I hope you’re having a great week.
Natural OWB with rope basket stamp, Barry King half-flower border, lined with roughout back panel.
This one’s a favorite. I built it last week along with a dozen others, but I only lined two of them. The other is the hammered finish I put in another post a week or so back. I like it, too, but I really like this one. That doesn’t happen too often. I should probably use the past tense talking about this–this one’s not mine anymore. It’s got a new home in South Texas, and it was interesting packing it up in that Priority Mail box and putting it in the hands of the Postal Service. It’s my hope the Postal folks don’t take it on a month-long tour of the Southwest. They did that with one a couple of months ago.
It was only here a few days after it was finished. I’ve got some I’ll probably die with, and others that aren’t finished yet, but already have “dibs” called on them. I’ll miss this one. But only for a few days–I’m building a couple more just like it.
That’s it for now. Thanks for riding along. It’s 7:30 PM here on the Redneck Riviera, and I’m calling it a day.
