A scratch awl and a diamond stitching awl side by side on a wooden leather workbench.
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Choosing a Scratch Awl or a Stitching Awl

ByPeter Joeseph 'Briefcase Maker' Kalafatis

One draws the line. The other makes the hole. Most beginners buy them in the wrong order.

A scratch awl and a stitching awl both look like a spike in a wooden handle, and that is where the family resemblance stops, because one is built to mark leather and the other is built to cut through it. Buy the scratch awl first. That is my argument, and I will make it the whole way, and then I will show you the bench where it falls on its face. I scratched a briefcase pattern onto a brown Sedgwick English bridle bend on camera, and that is the job the round spike was made for.

Video: Scratched Out briefcase Pattern on brown Sedgwick English Bridle Leather, from Marcellino NY Briefcase Maker on YouTube.

Two spikes, two jobs

Round point for marking. Diamond blade for the stitch hole.

Hands scoring a pattern line in brown bridle leather with a scratch awl and a steel ruler.

Start with the cheap one. Weaver Leather Supply sells a scratch awl with a wooden handle built around a round blade two and a half inches long. Its listing gives it two jobs: scoring patterns on leather before cutting or stitching, and piercing holes before hand stitching. Hold on to that second job. It comes back later and bites.

The tool did not start in a leather shop. The Wikipedia entry on the scratch awl files it under woodworking layout, a fine steel point that cuts a shallow groove to guide a saw or chisel, and notes that leatherworkers traditionally use it to trace patterns. A carpenter would know it on sight. So would a sheet-metal man.

A stitching awl is a different animal. The blade is flattened into a diamond, so it has edges, not just a point. Mac-Lace Leather’s diamond-blade stitching awl carries a blade of about an inch and a quarter, and the shop’s description says a diamond blade “cuts fibres rather than forcing them apart,” which it claims leaves clean, angled holes for saddle stitching. A round point shoves the fibers aside. A diamond slices them.

There is a third tool that steals the name. The Speedy Stitcher sewing awl sold by Sailrite carries its own bobbin of waxed polyester thread and makes a lock stitch by hand, the tool for a torn tent, a saddle repair, a tarp. It is a useful thing to own. It is not the awl a saddle stitcher means when he says awl, and buying it for briefcase work would be like buying a staple gun to hang a door.

The case for the scratch awl

Every piece starts as a line, and the line has to be right before anything else can be.

Nothing gets stitched that was not first marked. Pattern edges, hardware positions, the stitch line, the spot where a strap meets a panel. A scratch awl leaves a fine groove in the grain that a pen cannot match on bridle, because ink sits on top of the wax and a scratch sits in the leather. On dark leather a scratch catches the light where a silver pen just smears.

I lay out with a ruler and my eye more than with templates, the way a sculptor would block out stone. Doing that, the round point is in my hand more than any other marking tool on the bench. It costs little, it does not need much sharpening to do its job, and a beginner can pick it up the first day and get a clean line out of it.

The forum advice runs the same way. In a leatherworker.net thread on the minimum tools a hand-stitching beginner needs, one member, ConradPark, lists a round scratch awl and a diamond sewing awl as the essentials, and he is blunt about keeping the diamond away from marking: “Never use the diamond awl for this.” Another member, zuludog, warns off combination awls with swappable tips and tells beginners to buy a separate scratch awl and a fixed-blade saddler’s awl instead.

The other half of the argument is the hole. Most beginners now punch stitch holes with a pricking iron or a diamond chisel, and a chisel that goes clean through leaves nothing for an awl to do. In a 2013 thread on chisels versus awls, one member, silverwingit, draws the line between styles: a Japanese-style stitching chisel punctures all the way, while traditional British stitching uses a pricking iron to set spacing and angle and a saddler’s awl to finish the hole. Buy the through-chisel, and the scratch awl is the only awl on the bench. That is the case. It is a good one, right up until the leather gets thick.

No more needs buying on the first day than a spike, a straightedge and a scrap of the leather you mean to use.

What the stitching awl does inside the hole

Two edges cut, two edges spread, and the thread sits in the corners.

Macro view of a diamond stitching awl blade opening a hole in layered bridle leather.

The diamond shape is not decoration. In a 2009 leatherworker.net thread asking for help with awl blades, one member, Rawhide, explains it plainly: a diamond awl uses two edges to cut and two to spread the leather, the two threads of a saddle stitch then sit in opposite corners of the hole, and doing that the same way every time is what makes a good stitch line. He adds that round holes failed him on a dog harness he made. A harness is not a forgiving test.

That slant is the look of a hand saddle stitch. Each stitch lies at an angle, like a row of rope twists, and the angle comes from the hole. A round hole gives the thread nothing to lean against.

The awl also cleans up after the iron. Matt S, in the same chisels thread, argues that the awl clears whatever part of the hole the pricking iron missed and reopens holes that have closed. Bridle closes. It is waxy and dense, and a hole punched an hour ago is a smaller hole by the time the needle reaches it.

This is the part of my own work I watch closest. Hand stitching tends to leave slightly bigger holes than a machine because they are punched by hand and sewn with hand needles, and the hand is limited to how small it can go on thick bridle saddlery leather. Every time the needles pass through a hole, it takes skill not to pierce the thread already sitting there. A hole the right shape gives the second needle a path. Most of stitching is feel. You learn to notice through the needle when a strand has popped somewhere inside the layers, and a cleanly cut hole gives you fewer of those moments.

Where my argument falls apart

On thick leather, curves and corners, the cheap spike becomes the wrong tool.

Here is the bench where the scratch-awl-first rule breaks. Thick bridle.

A chisel only cuts as deep as its teeth are long. In the beginner-tools thread, a member named snubbyfan says he reaches for a stitching awl when the leather is “thicker than my chisels are long.” Briefcase work lives in that territory. A handle, a gusset seam, a strap end folded over a buckle: three layers of heavy bridle stacked together, and the iron stops short.

The second failure is the corner. In the 2013 thread, JLSleather says the chisels, irons and punches he had seen were not useful for 45-degree miter corners and that he prefers an awl. A chisel row marches in a straight line. A curve wants one hole at a time, each aimed by hand.

Then there is the trap I set at the start. The Weaver listing says the scratch awl can pierce holes for hand stitching, and snubbyfan admits he began by punching stitch holes with a scratch awl. It works the way a screwdriver works as a chisel. The round point pushes fibers aside instead of cutting them, so the thread has no corner to settle into, and Rawhide’s harness already told you how that ends.

On my own work, every hole on thick leather is pre-punched and lined up before a needle goes near it, because thick work will not stitch any other way. Even then the needles get waxed and pulled through with pliers. My fingers know the difference between a hole that was cut and one that was shoved open; the shoved one fights back on every pull, and the jaw tightens around the third layer. So the honest version of my advice has a hinge in it. For marking and for thin work, the scratch awl comes first. The day your leather is thicker than your chisel, the stitching awl stops being optional, and the cheap spike in your hand is the one tool that can ruin the seam.

Keeping the diamond sharp

Polished faces, a tip that seats in the mark, and edges that stop short of razor.

A saddle-stitched bridle leather seam turning a corner, with a stitching awl and strop beside it.

A stitching awl straight from the box is often not ready. In a 2022 thread on a George Barnsley saddler’s awl, zuludog tells the buyer, “You will also need to sharpen & polish the blade.” The same thread argues blade length. One member likes his awls longer than the job needs so the ferrule never bottoms out on the leather, another prefers them short, and fredk notes that blades sold at one length can measure longer once they arrive.

How sharp is the next argument. In a 2020 thread on sharpening a diamond awl, zuludog describes pushing the blade back and forth on fine abrasive paper with the faces held nearly flat, then stropping, and he wants the edges fairly sharp and polished, not razor sharp. YinTx warns that sharp sides cut a bigger hole that will not close back up, and says high polish gives him his best results. McCarthy wants a thin, rounded tip that can seat down into the prick mark instead of skating off it. fredk adds that if a sharp awl still struggles on thin leather, a cork backing behind the work gives the blade something to push against.

None of these men agree on everything. They agree that a stitching awl is a tool you maintain, and a scratch awl mostly is not. That is a cost a beginner should count before buying both.

A buying order that holds up

Marker first, punching tool second, the diamond when the leather asks for it.

When I started, there were almost no good tutorials, and most of what I learned came from trial and error. A beginner now has the opposite problem: a hundred lists, all telling him to buy the whole catalog. So here is a short one.

Buy a plain scratch awl with a round point and a handle that fits your palm. Mark every line with it. Then buy a pricking iron or a stitching chisel at a spacing that suits the leather you work, and learn to keep a straight row. Buy the diamond stitching awl when one of three things happens: the leather gets thicker than the chisel, the seam turns a tight corner, or the holes start closing on you before the needle gets there. Learn to sharpen it the week you buy it.

Keep the two apart. The scratch awl marks and the diamond cuts, and a beginner who swaps them gets a crooked line or a weak seam. The tools and leather section and the basic techniques page have more on the rest of the bench.

The round spike will never stitch a briefcase. It will just be the first thing that touches every one of them.

General Tools Scratch Awl with Hardwood Handle: A scratch awl with a hardwood handle. See it on Amazon (affiliate link).

Sewing Awl, SEW200-BRK: A hand sewing awl for stitching thick 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).

RITZA Tiger Thread, Brown: A braided waxed polyester thread for hand-stitching leather. 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).

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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