The leather facing is glued down with a thin brushing of contact cement and then sewn tightly around the core with a double-running stitch. A little excess width is necessary for leverage when pinching the leather to the core; essentially, you need more than you need. The smooth fit is possible because of the leather's slight stretch, although I expect it to be a double-edged sword, as the angular corner of the tab may cause the leather to wear out there.
I made small crosshair cuts in the leather over the tab hole and tried to glue it down there. It didn't take as well as I would've liked, but it just about works.
The finished scabbard. It's a good fit to my sharp akinakes, but awfully loose for my blunt one. The decoration on the tab is a simplified version of that seen on the original. My experiments last year showed that painted suede is doable with a hide glue sizing, and although I don't know of any scabbards in the archaeological record that were painted, I have rumor of a gorytos from Takla Makan as well as later quivers that were.
By the way, certain literature implies that the Medgidia "sword and scabbard" is in fact a single piece of bronze, perhaps part of a statue.
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