I began another sword from aluminum stock. Once I had the blade shaped, I worked on the handle.
I covered the handle in wood and shaped with a wood rasp and a sander. I glued three pieces of yarn around the handle with white tacky glue. This will give the leather wrap some texture.
yarn
This is the front side, with the glue almost dry now.
almost dry
I took a piece of vegetable tanned leather and cut it as close to the final shape as possible. I coated the handle with barge glue. I wet the leather until it was thoroughly damp, then began wrap it the handle with thin yarn. I pulled each wrap pretty tight. Wet leather can be formed and will hold its shape. This yarn will be removed later. It is only temporary and used to hold the leather in place while the glue dries.
wrapped
tightly wrapped
When the glue was dry, and the leather dry not wet any more, I removed the yarn.
handle
When it is completed, the handle will have ridges where the yarn underneath was wrapped. The front side looks really nice. The back side is not as perfect as I would have liked, but I think a few well-placed stitches will pull it together.
back side
The back at the seam area has a few gaps but I will work on those. If you use the right sized yarn to overlay the leather you will have nice wrap marks in the finished product. My over wrap yarn was really thin, so it did leaves wrap marks, they are just too small to really see in the photos.
Go ahead, make a mess, make a leather-wrapped-sword handle, have some fun
