Scabbard developement

[Eric C]

Hello everyone. For quite a while now, I've had an unfinished scabbard for my Clontarf sitting on the shelf. Since the weather is keeping me away from the forge today, I thought I'd work on the scabbard a while.

So, when I glued up the scabbard a few months ago, the sword fit snuggly into it. There are some things I would change now, after seeing the one Pete did for my wife, but that's beside the point. Anyway, as I was saying, the sword fit snuggly at the time.

This morning I took the scabbard out to the carport but got too chilled to work on it when I got to it, so I came back in for a while. I finally had enough of sitting inside, so I grabbed the Clontarf and headed out the door. I sanded on the scabbard a while before I decided to place the sword into it. Well, the sword no longer fits. It goes mostly into the scabbard, but then sticks. It reminds me of Gladiator, when the Praetorian is trying to draw his sword on Maximus but it is stuck. Maximus tells him, "The frost sometimes makes the blade stick." Sorry, ADD kicked in.

Anyway, here are the conditions: It is cold and damp outside today. So I am wondering if the wood has swelled just from being out today, or if it swelled/shifted since I worked on it last and is irreparable.

Any suggestions?

[Peter Remling]

Is it lined and if so with what?

[Eric C]

The only thing inside the sheath is some wool that is around the throat. I should have cut the wool down some, but I left it full length. The rest of the scabbard is unlined.

[Peter Remling]

You can try a couple of things, First it is more likely that your scabbard core shrunk then swelled. If it was inside for a while, even in normal humidity you can loose some moisture/size. This is actually preferable to swelling. If your wood swells you can only dry it out and hope it shrinks back to it's original size, but it will warp and it will swell again sometime in the furture.

If the wood has shrunk, you can oil it and hopefully it will swell back to it's original size/shape. Oil a cloth (a gun cleaning kit patch works well) and rub it on the inside of the scabbard. Reoil the cloth a few times and continue until the inside appears to not be absorbing anymore. Oil the outside of the core until it too seems to stop absorbing any more oil. Hang it from something so that it doesn't come in contact with anything you don't want stained. Wait several days and oil your sword and sheath it. If it doesn't fit properly repeat the entire exercise. If it fits and the sword can be removed easily just make sure you keep the inside of the scabbard oiled periodically.

If it doesn' fit after repeating the exercise 3 times, it's just not going to work and consider starting over.

[Eric C]

How do you oil the inside of the scabbard?

Also, I was playing around with it a few minutes ago. I trimmed up the wool a little and pulled out the cut away pieces. I slid the sword into the scabbard a few times, moving it around to slide in at a different angle each time. Sometimes it went all the way in smoothly. Other times it jammed up at different points. The problem is in the tip of the scabbard. Since this will be covered with a steel chape anyway, I was wondering about cutting away some of the tip to do away with the sticking. It seems to have something to do with the work I did to hollow out the scabbard before I glued it together.

[Peter Remling]

You oil the inside with a gun cleaning kit. Oil a patch and slde it into the scabbard as if you were cleaning a barrel.

If you do decide to cut the bottom away, glue some of your sheepskin to the inside of your chape before attaching it. You definately don't want metal against metal, it will either dull your tip much quicker than normal or speed up oxidation due to condensation issues. Lining the inside of the chape and oiling will help prevent this.

[Eric C]

Okay, I think I'll cut off the wooden tip today and set up for this. There is still a lot of shaping to do before the sheath is ready for presentation.