Hi, we thought we'd show you some of the basic Leather working Hand Tools that you'll be using when you come and join one of our workshops and make your very own small leather goods.
In this Part 1, the hand tools we're looking at are the simple tools used to mark out your stitch lines and then punch out your stitching holes.
From Left to Right;
Adjustable Stitch Line Groover
The prime purpose of the Stitch Groover is to give us a neat visual line marked into the leather that can be adjusted to your chosen distance from the leather edge.
Depending on the pressure used on the tool you can mark a shallow or deeper groove line in the leather in which your thread will lay in.
There is a very small barb on the underside of the right angle bar which digs into the leather as you draw the Stitch Groover towards you up against the edge of the leather.
Chisel Hole Punch
Once you've marked out nice straight stitching lines in your leather with the Stitch Groover above, now you're ready to make the holes in your leather, ready for saddle stitching.
Chisel Hole Punches come in all sorts of sizes/shapes etc... the one shown here is a 5 hole punch, the tubes are removable to allow punching stitching holes around corners.
Adjustable Edge Creaser
On some softer or thinner leathers the edge creaser can also be used in a similar way to the Stitch Line Groover to help provide a straight guide line for punching out your stitching holes.
The Edge Creaser is also used to mark decorative lines along the edge of your leather such as belt edges.
On all of our workshops you'll be encouraged to practice using these hand tools on off-cuts of leather so you can get a feel for how each tool works on your leather.