Sheath Styles: The Dangler

Description

Krik of Black Owl Outdoors discusses what the advantages and disadvantages of utilizing a dangler style sheath for you wilderness knife carry. As well as an explanation into what exactly makes a dangler sheath dangle. Specifically Krik shows you the sheath he handmade for his trusty Mora Companion.

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Tags: black owl outdoors,nature,camping,hiking,backpacking,survival,bushcraft,wilderness,forest,backcountry,dangler,sheath,sheath style,knife sheath,dangle

Video Transcription

hey what's up Turtles Creek here with blackout outdoors today I wanted to do a video talking about the dangler option for basically anything that can be worn on the belt so here's actually a sheath I made for my more companion all leather made out of 8 to 9 ounce leather also the belt loop here and if you notice where my belt with thread through here this is still pretty low where the handles sticking outside don't really like handles of my knives to be sticking too high up on my hip but in addition to that design I kept for this I also built and design the dangler for this and this is the dangler right here some of the features of this include this piece of actual sort of circle ring hardware with the spring gate in it and this is from tandy ball this a tandy Leather and what this allows me to do is take this off of the sheath if I don't want it on there if I'm just wearing it on my hip still functional still completely you know complete sheath if you will but looking at the dangler itself like I mentioned before the spring spring gate right here on this piece of hardware another feature that I choose to incorporate are these snaps and what that does is allow me to put this on my belt without taking my belt off or undoing my belt I can pop this on and off now if I had to change this design I'd probably put the little bit bigger snaps line 24 snaps in here these are line 20 they work fine strong enough but if I was redoing this I'd probably use line 24 and I could I could drill these out and put them in there but this works I'm going to use it and see how these line 20 hold up all that but these is basically the ins and outs of this dangler I designed there's ones that are composed of D rings or excuse me Dino design with D rings that you can't take off of the belt there's ones that don't have these snaps it's the fit piece of leather so these are just some of the things that I chose to incorporate for me for basically it's just convenience but now I'm going to get on my hip showing how it rides and shows some of the other reasons why I like using a dangler in certain instances so you can see how easy and quick that was to put this on my belt now this hangs pretty low because one I designed initially just the sheath itself to ride a little bit lower because I don't like the handle sticking up too high on my hip like as a previously mentioned but the reason and the sort of the circumstances when I'll use this dangler is when I'm going to be using my pack and I want to keep the fixed blade on my hip or on my side but I'm using my pack with the hip belt and I'll show you that right now because if I didn't have this dangler and the knife was sitting up higher you can imagine the knife sitting up here thread it through the belt loop I wouldn't be able to put this hip out on my waist so I buckle that buckle this and then you can see it's covering a little bit of the dangler but it still allows me to keep this on my hip and it's moving freely that's one reason when I'll use my dangler or extremely one sort of circumstance I'll use the dangler another reason when I'll use the dangler and I'll show you that right now is for in the colder months and by what I mean by that is the colder months I'm wearing bigger heavier and longer layers because when it's cold because when it's cold I want my outer layers to be pretty well past where my belt is in my hips because the longer they are the more you know it'll it'll stop drafts coming up it will just keep me warmer all around but if I didn't have a on my belt or wasn't using the dangler on my sheath then the knife would pretty much be sitting up here and this vest isn't as long as some of my winter outer layers or my winter coats what that means is I have to be hiking up really thick layers to get to my knife that's sitting up here as opposed to down here the dangler it makes it really convenient easy in the colder months where I'm wearing heavier outer layers and I designed the sheath to be very tight because this is a really light knife and in honesty I don't want to have any sort of hesitation that this might come out of its sheath because it's just friction there's no retention strap there's none of that so this isn't really easy to pull out one-handed all the time when I bury it down there - it's sort of burying depth you see it's really not easily coming out but that's okay that doesn't bother me I'll use two hands I get this out still knowing that this is in there very tight and that was done on purpose yeah it might not be as convenient as pulling it out one-handed but some people prefer but for me personally if I'm going to wear this when I'm hiking I want it in there securely I want that confidence in there but some folks don't choose the where the dangler when they're hiking because as you can see as you can see if I'm hiking we're walking with this moving in the forest this thing is going to be flopping around and it turns some people off to using the dangler but what you can do with that there's a few fixes now I didn't design this with maybe a little tab coming out here with an eyelet or something like that down here to attach a piece of rope to to fix this to my leg but that's okay I can still do that even though the sheath isn't designed for it and that'll keep find the paracord I'm going to try to do this as I'm still standing here and this is a little bit longer I don't have the exact piece cut the length that I used I'm making it much more difficult for myself to put this song so I'm keeping it on and framed for the sake of filming this video but see if I can do without having too much issue I just want to secure this now a reef knot will probably fine or botch reef knot but pull us up to my mouth to hold it with my other end others are more mouths right now for this kite it's a great resource using your mouth or a hand okay now I pretty much secure this to it well enough and then I can just so I have it attached piece of paracord to the sheath and I'm just going to tie this actually to my leg and then what that does now you see I'm moving it holds it nice and tight to my side it's not flopping around not in jeopardy of getting caught hitting anything like that and like I said before when I'm attaching excuse me I designed this sheath I wanted it to sit in there very tight I didn't want to make a convenient for a one-hand sort of a draw with my knife because if I'm going to wear this hiking and if you're not on trails I prefer not to walk on trails do bushwhack more for sort of just follow the train where to train where it's leading and sometimes I'm going to be putting my leg up like this and crossing a log going over brush anything of that nature that you kind of run into when you're bushwhacking is opposed to walking a cleared path trail through the forest so as you can see with using this little sort of paracord to keep it attached to my leg it also brings a sheath up sort of parallel and even pass parallel to the ground and I want this knife to stay in there very secure so that's sort of how it is I designed it with these sort applications in mind and because of this piece of hardware right here you can see it's swiveling and that also comes into play when you're sitting down this will still rock and move when you're in a chair sitting on a log this can get out of the way when you're sitting down as opposed if it's just fixed on the belt so I've talked about the reasons why I use this why design it the way I did store the applications when I'll use the dangler if I'm around camp and you know I don't want to wear it while I'm hiking or this and that you know the dangler I won't always use it because the way I designed it like I mentioned probably twice now before this is that I designed it to sit still lower on my hip without the dangler because that's just how I prefer a sheath on my or my belt and on my hip but under the philosophy of you know your most important items should be on your body on your person as opposed to in your pack for whatever reason you have to drop your pack you'll lose your pack you still have items on your body at all times that are going to help you potentially in a situation where you lose your pack so if you do want to wear your fixed blade and you do want to hike distances and continue to wear your fixed blade on your hip and you need that hip belt for comfort when you're wearing a pack for 3 4 or 5 hours in the day as opposed to just taking a short jaunt through the woods sitting down and bushcrafting for the day and you you know you still want to keep that fixed plate on your hip through that the hip belt really is important for me specifically and sort of in my experience so that's why I use the dangler as I do and use it when I don't so if you have any suggestions or ways to use the dangler let me know leave a comment please remember that every time you leave a comment every time you tell us you liked the video you thumbs up it really helps us grow it helps us understand that you like what we're doing you appreciate what we're doing and like I said before we're small business and we need your support you're why

to this because you probably enjoy what we're doing and we ask for your support continually because we need it we're trying to grow we're trying to do more in blackout so again thank you for watching this is Creek signing out with blackout doors later Turtles you