Plum handle for a Mora knife

(And a sheath from an old shoe)

I've got a lot of locally felled purple plum at the moment and thought it would be nice to nice a plum handled knife. I was so caught up in doing it that I forgot to take pictures of the handling process. 

I decided to sand the handle to help bring out the grain. I now remember why I prefer to tool finish wood pieces. I find sanding to be a little tedious and as a result I rushed to process and moved on to smoother grits before I should have. Once I've got some more sandpaper I'll try and do it properly.

Unfortunately the blade is also slightly off centre. I'm interested to see whether is drastically affects how it performs.

For the sheath I have a couple of old pairs of Softstar moccasins. They're great shoes, especially if you like thin soled, flexible footwear. Unfortunately there are a couple of things wrong with this pair. Firstly I let the soles wear too thin and they couldn't be repaired. 

Secondly, the dog ate one of them.

What an idiot.

I decided to use the heel section as it was likely to give me the longest relatively straight section of leather. 

I cut several strips from it, orginially with the intention to make a sheath similar to the birch bark ones I've made before.

After some trial and error I found that the leather was too flexible for that style of sheath. I didn't feel up to the task of sewing leather, so I made a simple wrap to protect the edge.