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Today was devoted to working with the sheath blanks the knifemaker's aunt and the knifemaker's lady friend cut yesterday from colored leather scraps. Did you know when making sheaths, there are left-handed knife sheaths and right-handed knife sheaths. The knifemaker's aunt knows about scissors, but handedness matters with knives? Who knew?
Well, the knifemaker knew and he stopped mid-strike in a project he was working on and whipped around to stare at what the knifemaker's aunt was doing. OH my! Being left handed herself, the old girl was folding the sheaths to hold left-handed knives. The problem with that is there are more right handed people in the world
than there left handed people.
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| These are the right handed sheaths. |
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| These are the left handed sheaths. |
Why would that be? A scientist at the Center for the Integrative Study of Animal Behavior at Indiana University
suggests reasons for why the percentages favor right handedness but besides knowing that, what is the difference with knives? The knifemaker's dad explained that right-handed sheaths curve to follow the shape of the blade. When a right handed person pulls a knife out of a right-handed sheath, the sharp edge of the blade is down. If a left handed person pulls the same knife out of the same sheath, the sharp edge of the blade would be upside down (the sharp edge on top). The mission for the knifemaker's aunt was to limit the number of left-handed sheaths in favor of the right-handed ones. The deciding factors for which blanks to use for which handedness came down to what the front and back look like (remember from a previous post that some scraps had marking on the back) and how the template was turned when the tracing happened.
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The silver time stamp on the backside of this sheath became
the interior of a left-handed sheath -- a silver lining, so to speak! |
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| The bags of left-handed and right-handed sheaths ready for sewing. |
The only problem, if it can be considered a problem, is some colors of the leathers became only left headed sheaths. For example, orange was a hot color that was frequently marked with time and date stamps. Those lefties are lucky to have such a lovely color. Blue, majenta, and red leather was used in a proportionate split between left- and right-handed sheaths. Tomorrow starts the blacksmithing...YEeHAaAA!!
