A basic set of beginner leatherworking tools and leather offcuts laid out on a plywood bench.
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What It Costs to Start Leatherwork

ByPeter Joeseph 'Briefcase Maker' Kalafatis

Under a hundred dollars buys a working bench. The leather and the hours are the bills that keep coming.

Starting leatherwork costs less than a decent pair of boots if you buy small and buy right, and more than a used car if you let a catalogue talk you into the whole wall. I’ve been at this since 1995 as a hobby and since 2010 for pay, and I learned it the slow way, by trial and error, studying how bags were put together in city stores and reading books, back when a good tutorial was hard to find. Nobody handed me a shopping list. Here’s one, with real prices from three American suppliers, and the places where cheap holds up and where it bites.

Video: The Only Leathercraft Tools You Actually Need to Start, from Sailrite Workbench on YouTube.

The short list, and what a kit costs

Seven or eight tools do almost every first project, and the kits know it.

Hands setting a leather drive punch on scrap leather beside a more expensive hand-finished punch.

Weaver Leather Supply splits its beginner recommendations into tiers. The first tier, the tools it calls must-haves, is short: a steel square, a snap-off knife and a cutting surface. For that last one the page says plywood is another cost-effective option, which is the cheapest good advice in the whole catalogue. Weaver’s longer guide to building a beginner kit fills in the rest: a scratch awl, a stitching pony, waxed thread, needles, stitching chisels, a mallet, a groover, an edge beveler and a slicker. It also suggests looking at good second-hand tools.

Then it sells you the bundle. Weaver’s Beginner’s Leathercrafting Tool Kit lists at $95. In the box: a stitching pony, a stitch groover, a scratch awl, an art knife, a 5 mm diamond stitching chisel set, a steel square, a 50 metre roll of black Ritza Tiger thread and two John James needles. No mallet. No beveler. Rocky Mountain Leather Supply’s beginner picks page leads with a 24-piece kit on sale at $109.99, down from $159.99.

My opinion: a kit is a fair way in if it’s a short kit. Eight good tools beat twenty-four you’ll never pick up, and Rocky Mountain’s own page warns that beginners who buy bulk sets find “half the tools don’t work properly or never get used.” The site has an older piece on buying a complete tool kit that argues the other side, and both can be true depending on what’s in the box.

Where cheap tools are fine, and where they bite

The awl can be cheap. The edge that cuts and the teeth that punch cannot.

Rocky Mountain lays out an economy pick and a premium pick for each job, which makes the gap easy to read. An economy round awl runs $3.99. Its premium awl is $22.99. An economy 12-ounce maul is $12.99, and a Barry King maul starts at $99.99. An economy set of Japanese pricking irons is $12.99, the premium irons from $19.99. A snap-off craft knife is $9.99. A stitching pony starts at $34.99 in the economy version and $94.99 for the quick-release sitting pony.

Weaver shows the same spread on punches. Its round drive punch lists at $7.20 in hardened steel. The Master Tool round punch, handmade in the United States, lists at $52.00. Same hole. Seven times the money.

The fight over which end to buy is old, and it’s on record. In a 2021 Leatherworker.net thread titled You can’t afford starting with leathercraft, one member called it ridiculous to expect a beginner to spend several hundred on tools. Another answered that “the most expensive route is through cheap tools.” Both have a point, and they’re talking about different tools.

My opinion, and it’s the only rule I’d tape to the wall: spend on the things that touch the leather and leave a mark you can’t take back. The knife edge. The chisel teeth. A dull blade drags and tears the fibres, as Tandy Leather’s cutting guide warns, and a bad iron leaves crooked holes you’ll be looking at for as long as the piece lasts. A cheap awl scratching a line, a cheap maul hitting a cheap iron, a sheet of plywood under the punch: none of that shows in the finished work. Weaver’s Diamond Stitching Chisel Set, in carbon steel, starts at $26.50, which sits between Rocky Mountain’s two tiers.

The early bench costs something that doesn’t show up on a receipt, too. I nearly quit more than once in the beginning. A bag went across the room. Then I came back to it, and that part was free.

Leather is the bill that keeps coming

Tools get bought once. Hide gets bought every project, and the mistakes eat it.

A vegetable-tanned leather shoulder beside a bag of mixed leather remnants for a beginner's first projects.

Here’s where a budget leaks. Springfield Leather sells a 3 lb remnant bag for $15, a mystery pack of veg tan, oil tan, buffalo, lining and other offcuts that runs from palm-sized to a square foot or more. Import bellies list at $22 a piece on its veg-tan search page. A Hermann Oak single shoulder or butt, 100 percent vegetable tanned, is $45 and averages about 5 square feet, though Springfield can’t promise which cut you’ll get and warns of brands, scars and loose grain. Weaver’s beginner page lists veg-tanned single shoulders from $56.

Then there’s bridle, the kind of hide I build briefcases from. Springfield’s Hermann Oak bridle side is sold by the square foot, from $17.00, and a side averages 21 to 24 square feet. Do the multiplication and one side starts somewhere around $357 to $408 before any discount. I’ve written about why bridle is a hard first leather, and the price is only one of the reasons.

My opinion: buy the remnant bag first and ruin it on purpose. Then buy a shoulder. A side is a commitment you make after your cuts come out straight. And even on a side, not all of it is premium. For briefcases I use only the bend, the butt section where the fibre is tightest. The belly goes in the trash, and the shoulder goes to small parts. My channel has a video of inspecting a black English bridle hide, and the walkthrough on reading a bend before you pay for it covers what to look for. A beginner paying side prices for belly leather is paying steak prices for the fat.

Thread, dye and the small stuff

None of it costs much. All of it runs out.

The consumables are cheap per unit and endless in total. Weaver lists a 50-metre spool of Ritza 25 Tiger Thread at $11.10 and a 4-ounce bottle of Fiebing’s Leather Dye at $6.99. CÍ Official, a leathercraft tool maker, says in its 2024 budget guide that round waxed thread averages about $2 a roll and that affordable chisel mats run around $10. Rocky Mountain lists an A5 self-healing cutting mat at $6.99, water-based glue from $10.99, harness needles from $6.99 and punch pads from $6.99.

CÍ’s guide also lists what it calls must-buys beyond the basics, a glue spreader, a bone folder, thread snips, sandpaper, an edge beveler and a burnishing stick among them, and it notes you don’t need a specialised spacing tool when a marked sewing gauge does the job. That’s the pattern with the small stuff. Every one of them has a fancy version. The cheap one does the same job until your hands can tell the difference, and most of the time they can’t.

The second wave is where the money creeps. Weaver’s tier-two list, the tools it says to add once you’re ready for intermediate work, runs to a marble tooling slab, a German-made revolving punch, a rawhide or poly mallet, a poly cutting board, a rivet setter and a slicker. Its recommendation list puts a wooden strap cutter at $38.50. Each earns its place. None of them is a reason to delay the first cut. My opinion: buy each one the week a project needs it, not the week you read about it.

Three first budgets, and the money I’d skip

Under a hundred, around one fifty, or a hide-sized number, and the machine on top.

A hand-stitched leather card wallet and key fob made as first projects, beside a stitching pony.

These are straight sums of the listings above, before tax and shipping.

StartWhat it buysAbout
Bare benchRocky Mountain economy knife, ruler, awl, irons, maul, needles, mat and punch pad; Weaver thread; Springfield remnant bag$97
Kit plus shoulderWeaver $95 kit, a $12.99 economy maul, a $45 Hermann Oak shoulder, plywood underneath$153
Straight to bridleOne Hermann Oak bridle side at $17 a square foot, before a single tool$357 to $408

The bare bench makes a card wallet, a key fob and a dozen mistakes. The middle one makes a belt and a few straps and lets you learn on leather that isn’t a mystery. The third is what a briefcase maker’s hide costs, and it isn’t a beginner’s number. The earlier piece on hand stitching or rivets is a good guide to what to make with the first two.

Now the turn, and it’s on me. I just spent a whole section telling you to save money on the cheap tools and spend it on the knife. The real money I ever wasted didn’t go to knives. It went to machines. I owned sewing machines once, and I gave them up. As my page on The Maker says, every Marcellino briefcase is saddle stitched by hand, sewn in the air, where the hands get shapes and corners a machine can’t. Weaver’s own recommendation list puts a Master Tool Little Wonder stitcher at $460.00 right next to a $25.75 stitching pony. My opinion: buy the pony. If you still want the machine in five years, you’ll know why, and you’ll know what the hand stitch costs in hours. That figure isn’t in any catalogue.

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).

Mandala Crafts 150D 0.8mm Black Flat Waxed Thread: A flat waxed polyester thread, 0.8 mm, in black, for hand sewing leather. See it on Amazon (affiliate link).

John James Saddlers Harness Blunt Point Needles: A set of blunt-point harness needles, five sizes with five needles of each. See it on Amazon (affiliate link).

Fiskars 18 x 24 Inch Self-Healing Cutting Mat: A self-healing cutting mat, 18 by 24 inches. 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).

WORKPRO 18mm Retractable Utility Knife: An 18 mm retractable utility knife with snap-off blades. See it on Amazon (affiliate link).

FASTTOBUY Leather Stitching Pony: A desk-mounted stitching pony for holding work while sewing. See it on Amazon (affiliate link).

General Tools Scratch Awl with Hardwood Handle: A scratch awl with a hardwood handle. 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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