A leather maul, a rawhide mallet and a leather hammer on a workbench beside a stone slab and poundo board.
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Mallets, Mauls and Poundo Boards

ByPeter Joeseph 'Briefcase Maker' Kalafatis

Three ways to hit leather, and the stack of things you hit it on.

Mallets, mauls and poundo boards are the loud end of leatherwork: the tools that drive a stitching chisel through bridle, flatten a glued seam, set a rivet, and the rubber and stone that sit under the blow so the bench, the chisel and your elbow all survive it. Nobody gets into this trade for the hammering. Then it turns out half the clean work on a case depends on it, because a crooked row of stitch holes starts with a crooked hit, and a crooked hit usually starts with the wrong tool on the wrong surface.

Video: The Leather Element: Which Maul or Mallet Should I Start Out With?, from Weaver Leather Supply on YouTube.

That’s Weaver Leather Supply’s Leather Element episode on which maul or mallet to start with, not my channel. It’s the video Weaver puts on its own guide. What follows goes through the striking tools in the order a case actually gets built, and what goes under each one.

Set up the stack before the first blow

Stone for hardness, rubber for quiet, plastic or wood where the edge goes through.

Hands driving a stitching chisel through thick bridle leather with a round maul on a poundo board.

The surface comes first, because every tool after it depends on what’s under the leather. Three things show up on most benches.

A stone slab. Weaver sells a tooling slab an inch and a half thick, in 6 by 6 and 12 by 12, and says it gives a firm foundation for detailed impressions and dependable support for setting rivets, snaps and spots. On a Leatherworker.net thread about the purpose of slabs, SUP sums it up: “Essentially, it is to provide a firm surface to work on.” Another member, tsunkasapa, adds that a slab cuts the noise a lot compared with tooling on a bench.

A poundo board. Weaver’s Silent Poundo Board is rubber with a self-healing, slightly tacky surface, in 12 by 12 and 12 by 24. Tandy’s poundo boards are rubber about 0.2 inch thick, sold in three sizes, and listed for punches, stitching chisels, stamps, and rivet and snap setters.

A poly board or a block of wood, for when an edge goes all the way through.

Here’s the part that confuses people. The stack flips depending on the job. Weaver’s slab page says to put the stone beneath a poundo board or cutting board for punching and cutting. Both poundo pages say the rubber can go under a stone slab, to soak up vibration and noise, or on top of the work surface to protect a cutting edge. Neither is wrong. Rubber on top protects the tool. Rubber underneath protects the bench and your ears.

Check what’s under the stone too. Northmount, on the same slab thread, warns that a slab set on a concave surface will crack when you pound the middle of it. Some people bed the slab in sand, others on a towel or a rubber pad.

Gluing and folding: the leather hammer

Not for punching. For pressing.

The first hitting on a case is gentle. In my view it’s also the most underrated, because nobody posts a photo of their leather hammer, and it’s the hammer that decides whether a glued edge stays shut. Once contact cement has gone tacky and two layers meet, they need pressing together hard and evenly, and a folded edge needs setting so it stays where you put it.

That’s a hammer’s job. Weaver’s guide to hammers, mallets and mauls says its leatherworking hammer has a rounded face to avoid marring the leather, and lists the work: sharp folds, forming, tapping down stitches and lace, pressing cemented parts together, and blocking keepers. Sailrite’s mallet selection guide describes a smooth forged steel head that won’t mark the leather, and gives it the same jobs: setting folds, setting glued layers, sinking stitches into the stitch line.

Then both draw the same line. Sailrite says the hammer is “not recommended for punching or tooling,” because hitting tools damages the steel face. Weaver’s other guide, on mallets versus mauls, lists using a claw hammer or metal mallet as a common mistake. A steel face on a steel chisel chews up both.

Hammer the glued seam on the slab, flesh side up or grain side protected, working from one end to the other. Then put it down. The rest of the work wants something softer.

Punching stitch holes: the maul

Round face, centered handle, let it fall.

Macro of a worn rawhide mallet face beside the rounded steel face of a leather hammer on a stone slab.

This is where most of the noise in a briefcase gets made. I pre-punch and line up every hole on thick work, because thick leather won’t stitch any other way, and on a bridle panel that means a long row of the same blow, over and over, down every seam of the case. My video punching out holes on a briefcase handle spine is that job. The post on punching stitch holes in thick bridle goes into the chisel side of it.

Weaver describes a maul as a round, domed head on a handle centered underneath, so the force travels straight down and gravity does much of the work. Its hammers-and-mauls guide says the round face means you don’t have to hit dead center, which also cuts down on deflection, and that you swing it with a rocking wrist rather than a hammer stroke, which is easier on the body over a long session. For punching it recommends 1.5 to 2 pounds, and 32 to 48 ounces for heavy oblong and strap end punches. A 3-pound maul, it says, adds power and forgives an off-center hit.

Sailrite’s poly maul, polyurethane on a steel base with a wooden handle, comes in 1 and 3 pound weights, and it names driving stitching chisels and punching thick leather as the maul’s work. Montana Leather lists the Barry King round maul in 16, 20, 24 and 28 ounces and says the round style allows “more angled control.”

My opinion: on a row of stitch holes through bridle, the maul earns its price. A chisel that goes in true on every blow gives you a seam you’ll never have to apologize for, on the face side or the back. The best line on the subject is Weaver’s: “Let gravity provide the force—don’t muscle it.”

Setting rivets and snaps: the mallet

Lighter, flatter, and better on a setter than on a chisel row.

Hardware comes after the holes. A setter on a rivet is a short, sharp job, a few hits and done, and that’s where a mallet makes sense.

Weaver describes a mallet as a cylindrical or barrel-shaped head, light and versatile, and lists setting snaps, rivets and grommets and driving stitching chisels among its jobs. Rawhide mallets, its other guide says, wear faster than poly but give a steadier, more consistent hit on stamps, punches and rivet setters, and a 20-ounce rawhide suits copper and tubular rivets. A worn rawhide end can be sanded back. Sailrite calls its rawhide mallet soft water buffalo hide, 9 ounces, for setting rivets, snaps and other hardware, and says the soft head absorbs shock without bounce-back and protects the tools.

Poly mallets are cheap and they last, Weaver says, but hit one hard and you can get “stuttering or double bouncing,” with the tool jumping off the granite. In my view, on a rivet setter that bounce shows up as a cap set crooked.

Set hardware on the slab. Weaver’s slab page names rivets, snaps and spots specifically. The leather sits flat, the anvil or setter sits flat, and every blow reaches the post instead of soaking into the bench. The post on hand stitching or rivets covers which joints deserve a rivet at all.

The delicate jobs, lining up a lock or placing a handle, where one small miss means a new front panel, I do alone, with nobody else in the room. That’s not a tool. It’s still the right setup for a mallet.

Where the soft board stops helping

Rubber saves the chisel. It may also cost you the clean hole.

A finished bridle leather briefcase handle with straight saddle stitches and set brass rivets on a workbench.

Here’s where the neat picture above starts to come apart.

The easy advice for a beginner is to punch on rubber. It protects the chisel teeth, it quiets the shop, the Tandy listing names stitching chisels by name, and Weaver says its board helps keep punches and knife edges from dulling or chipping. All true as far as the sellers go. Then you read the Leatherworker.net thread asking whether poundo boards dull punches, and the floor shifts.

The poster who started it, MedusaOblongata, says a Springfield Leather video claimed poundo dulls punches and hard plastic is better. Nobody in the thread proves that. Tugadude guesses the rubber might hold something abrasive. TonySFLDLTHR, posting from Springfield, thinks the real point was density: a poundo board is soft enough that punching on it gets bouncy, a less solid surface than poly. Soft under the chisel means bounce, and bounce means a hole that isn’t quite where the last one said it would be. Another member, mike02130, has tried many surfaces and settled on HDPE for cutting and “an end grain cut-off from a log” for punching.

So the soft board I’d hand a beginner may be the wrong board for the exact job I care about most. My opinion is that rubber belongs under the stone for quiet, and something firm but forgiving, poly or end grain, belongs under the chisel. I hold that loosely, because the thread doesn’t settle it and neither does anything else I found.

The same goes for weight. The urge on thick leather is a bigger maul. Weaver’s own common mistakes list includes a tool that’s too heavy and overstriking instead of controlled hits, and the guide puts it plainly: “The goal isn’t to hit harder. It’s to let the tool do the work.” I hand-stitch everything, and every one of those holes was made by a hit that had to land in the same place as the last. A heavier tool doesn’t buy that. A bench that doesn’t move, a stack that doesn’t bounce, and a wrist that’s done it for years might. The kit post on what a complete leather craft tool kit saves you will sell you a mallet in the box. It won’t sell you the wrist.

WUTA Rawhide Mallet: A rawhide-head mallet for striking chisels and punches. See it on Amazon (affiliate link).

WUTA Leather Carving Hammer: A poly-head maul for leatherwork. See it on Amazon (affiliate link).

Leather Carving Hammer Mallet: A nylon-headed mallet with a wooden handle for striking chisels. See it on Amazon (affiliate link).

Weaver Leather Supply Silent Poundo Board: A self-repairing poundo board for punching and stamping. See it on Amazon (affiliate link).

Weaver Leather Supply Diamond Leather Stitching Chisel Set: A set of 4 mm diamond stitching chisels for punching saddle-stitch holes. See it on Amazon (affiliate link).

Dritz 750T Double-Cap Rivet Tools: A metal rivet setter and anvil set for double-cap rivets. See it on Amazon (affiliate link).

As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. A commission may be earned if you buy through this link, at no extra cost to you.

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