Homemade sheath for body armor

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gunnutery

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I know Gerber doesn't really get much attention in blade and non-firearm forums, but I happen to like Gerber products. My most recent knife purchase was a Gerber Warrant. I'd been keeping my eye out for a good, affordable, aggressive looking fixed blade for keeping under my uniform shirt at work. When I saw the Warrant and the price I decided it was the one.

It came with a molle ACU camo sheath, which I actually like a lot, but the ACU really only fits in with my ACU interceptor armor and the sheath is now fixed onto it. I didn't just want the knife itself to just sit there waiting for action in the closet though.

I've worked with kydex enough, but I'm not the best at it yet either and I wanted to try my hand at a nylon sheath. I'm handy enough with needle and thread I knew I could do it.

I wanted to incorporate some newly acquired Velcro to adhere to my ballistic vest. The first pic is the material I started out with. There's a strip of kydex included to make the sheath a little more ridged.

sheathstart.jpg

I was hoping it would be a little more straight forward and quicker with the help of my sewing machine, but alas, the nylon was a little too much for it and the thread kept breaking. I had to resort to sewing the whole thing with fishing line... by hand. I'm hoping this post will also act as a reminder to NEVER sew Velcro with a sticky backing again. :banghead: The stickiness was probably the reason completing the project took about 5 hours (maybe more, I lost track). At least I had a couple beers handy for the day off. Regardless, I'm still very happy with the results. I just hope when my new vest arrives in about a week that it'll work with that too. I tried my uniform shirt on and the placement in the last picture is the right placement because it doesn't print too badly since it's so close to the shirt pocket.

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Sheathfront.jpg

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Did you put a welt in the sheath to prevent the blade from cutting through the fishing line thread?
 
No I didn't. I'd thought about how to do it, but everything I thought of seemed a bit overkill and thick. I still think I could add something in if need be. But for the time being I'm not too worried about it. The blade is thick enough and the nylon is just thin enough on the width that I don't think it'll be easy for the edge to catch the "thread."
 
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