Backstory to this Knife Roll:

My step-daughter is highly creative and competent in the kitchen. She can turn pretty much anything into a fabulous meal. For her high school graduation present I made a leather knife roll so she could take her favorite tools to college. The leather will protect the blades and provide a safe transport for years to come.

Along with slots for her knives the roll has a detachable gadget bag, business card holder, place to put notes, and a thermometer holder. Laser engraved into the leather are her initials along with her favorite food quote by Virginia Woolf.

While the piece looks complicated, it was a fairly easy one to make. It is basically four large sections attached together. Once it was assembled I added a few simple attachments to make it more useful and beautiful.

If you look on the internet you'll see lots of examples for great knife rolls. Mine is an amalgamation of many designs I found online and I'd like to thank the great leatherworkers who inspired my project.

Also, I want to give thanks to the staff at our local Tandy store. They were very helpful in answering questions and providing tips.

As you look at other rolls you will notice that some designs have pockets for the knife handles rather than the knife blades. While that works ok, personally I feel having the blade in the pocket provides better protection.

And a final note, this Instructable is about making this particular knife roll but does not cover basic leather working skills.

Overview Of the Process:

We'll go over these steps in more detail later but here is the general flow of the process:

Arrange your knives and tools on a rectangular piece of butcher paper and measure its size.

Choose a piece of leather that is about 400% larger than that size.

Create a paper copy of your irregularly shaped piece of leather by tracing it out onto butcher paper (or several pieces taped together).

Arrange the knives and tools onto the paper copy in a way that you end up with: a piece where the knives will set a piece that will cover the blades to form pouches a large piece to serve as a top flap that folds over and protect the handles and tools and a piece for the end flap where the carrying handle and strap go



Cut the sections out of the paper copy and tape them together to make a paper mockup of the knife roll.

Insert your knives into the paper mockup.

Make adjustments to the design.

Using the final paper design as a guide, cut out the parts for your roll from the cowhide .

Assemble the major parts by riveting, sewing and/or gluing them together.

Add handles, buckles, etc.

Insert your knives and tools.

Take a look at what you've created and be very proud of your achievement!

Now on to the details!