Nice homemade hose knife @ ~US$100

[Paul Henry]

Your description of wet-forming the leather is interesting. I've never known anyone to use heat in this process. I've wet-formed all manner of knife sheathes, gunstock wraps, and watched my wife build saddles, canteen covers, etc., all using cold water. I don't see why the heat would be necessary to the process. As long as the leather soaks sufficiently, it will stretch and form to the surface.

As long as the end result is what you want, though, that's all that matters!

I;ve worked with hide shaping on many occasions, but have only ever worked cold and thorougly wet as well, and then being patient in allowing it to dry.

I did once experiment with cuir boille , which is a method the ancient romans used to make very hard shapes like scales or breastplates to act a bit like armour ,the boilling water treatment radically skrinks the leather and makes it incredibly hard when dry , so any shaping or cutting or making holes is best done first, but dealing with a hot bit of heavy leather is really not easy.
I was experimenting making bookcovers because of the hardness, but didn't persue it as it was just to difficult to work with