Finally heat treated the blade to a dull cherry red and quenched it in warm vegetable oil, then tempered it immediately at 400*F for about 1 hour with good results - takes an edge beautifully without being brittle and seems to keep it well. That was an issue I was finding with the previous piece I made, where I tempered for only half an hour at 375*F , and allowed the knife to get cold prior to tempering. This seemed to result in some chippy-ness that would make the knife unsuitable for things like wood carving and also prevented the knife from being as sharp as it could have been, which may have been a function of both the edge geometry and heat treatment, still gets sharp as hell but I've seen sharper. That said it's still great for softer mediums like paper, fruits, and cardboard!
I decided finished the knife and decided to leave the handle portion in its as heat treated state for added rust protection and just to give it a more unique look. The sheath was a bit of a first for me as I haven't made too many completely leather knife sheaths aside from the ones I've made for my kiridashi. In my first attempt I goofed up a bit and it didn't occur to me that I should punch the holes through the leather before bevelling for burnishing the edges and had to start over :( .
Attempt number 2 went more smoothly, as I took no chances and drew up a template on CAD and was more careful in the steps I did things. I also decided to add a little feature to make use more simplistic - usually with these sheaths the knife can only go in one way ( as far as I know) as the welt is shaped to the knife for only one configuration. That would be fine and dandy the sheath was a fold over over kind ( the ones made from a single piece wrapped around the knife) , but I found that with a symmetrical one people tended to forget - especially at first, which way the knife went in, resulting in excessive wear and tear on the leather. My solution was to just make the welt work for 2 configurations as you can see in the pics below - so that the blade can go in both ways but still be snug without wiggling about. Anyhow, on with the pictures!
