Quis, to repair your scabbard you do not need carpenter's glue, in fact, I strongly recommend against the use of modern woodworking glues for scabbard repair, the reason being that if some of that glue gets in contact with the blade it will be highly likely to generate rust.
Before you think about gluing anything together the first thing you need to do is to clean away all of the existing adhesive very carefully, without removing any of the wood that it adheres to.
Then you need to make whatever adjustments are necessary to the scabbard in order to provide as good a fit as possible for the blade. During this fitting process you will have the opportunity to make the joint between the top part of the scabbard, and the lower part of the scabbard neater than is presently the case.
Probably the very best adhesive for this scabbard joint is 5 minute Araldite, tinted with a tiny amount of burnt umber powder.
Bring the parts together, insert the blade and ensure you have a satisfactory fit. Sometimes the joint will be a little bit loose, a few very thin slices of bambu will take up the slack, even ordinary note paper can be used for this, but bambu is better. You put one slice on at a time, use the Araldite, until you have a joint that fits together without slack. Test the fit of the blade, it should be perfect at this time.Ensure the faces of the joint from the top to the lower part meet smoothly, this fit can be adjusted by the slices of bambu or paper. When you have everything just as it should be you can go ahead with the glue job.
Remove the blade from the scabbard and make a wedge from softwood that will exert light pressure against the two tongues that slip into the top part of the scabbard. Lightly coat the wedge with silicon car polish, this acts as a release agent.
Lightly score the surfaces of the tongues and the meeting surfaces inside the scabbard top, lightly brush silicon car polish onto your blade and set it aside, but within reach.
Mix your Araldite and put a very, very thin coating onto the meeting surfaces.
Insert your blade into the scabbard and align it to the top surface of the scabbard.
Hold the two parts of the scabbard in position with your left hand, remove the blade, insert the wedge.
Set the scabbard aside and upright, wait a few minutes until the adhesive has dried but not set, carefully scrape off any excess adhesive around the joint, both inside and out. Use a wooden scraper for outside, knives and chisels for inside. Wipe the outside with methylated spirits.
Check the blade for adhesive, remove any adhesive with a wooden scraper. Brush the blade with a toothbrush and methylated spirits to remove the car polish. Spray and brush with WD40 to remove the methylated spirits.
This might sound like a lot of work. It is not. Somebody who has done this job a few times will do the whole thing, including the joint clean up in about 30 minutes. Fitting and aligning can take a lot longer, but that depends on how bad the present fit is.
It is a good idea to check the blade fit before the adhesive cures and hardens. If the fit is not satisfactory, it is reasonably easy to break open the joint, clean it up, and do the job again. If the adhesive is permitted to cure and harden before checking, the job to correct fit becomes more difficult and uses much more time.
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