A spool of braided waxed polyester thread beside harness needles and a half-stitched leather wallet on a worn workbench.
| |

Weaver Diamond Stitching Chisel Review: Entry-Level Chisels Against the Pricey Ones

ByPeter Joeseph 'Briefcase Maker' Kalafatis

A color-banded carbon steel set for under thirty dollars, set beside irons that run from about sixty-five dollars to well past a hundred.

Weaver Leather Supply’s diamond stitching chisel set is one of the most recommended starter tools on Leatherworker.net, and the question buyers bring to it is whether it holds up against Korean and French irons that cost several times as much. This review is assembled from Weaver’s specifications, customer reviews, forum threads and one video review, not from hands-on testing. The short version from those sources: the set is widely liked, one owner reported uneven quality between batches, and the premium irons are sold on hole shape and finish rather than on getting holes through leather at all.

Video: Beginners MUST Watch! Weaver Review 5mm Diamond Stitching Chisel Set, from Ken Bee on YouTube.

The set as Weaver sells it

Four spacings, color bands, carbon steel and a tip about beeswax.

Hands pulling a saddle stitch tight through punched holes in vegetable-tanned leather held in a stitching clam.

Weaver’s product page lists the set in 3, 4, 5 and 6 mm spacing, which Weaver equates to 9, 7, 6 and 5 stitches per inch. The 3 mm set comes as 2-, 4- and 6-prong tools; the larger sizes add a single-prong tool for a total of four. Each size carries a colored band so the sets do not get mixed on the bench. The steel is carbon steel, and the only care advice given is to rub beeswax on the prongs so they enter and leave the leather smoothly. Weaver prices the set from $26.50.

The same chisel shown in Weaver’s catalog carried about 4.35 out of 5 from 472 reviews. One customer, Steven S., wrote that the set “works well, producing a nice looking, uniform saddle stitch.” The critical notes were mild. A four-star reviewer wished the smooth shafts had some knurling for grip, and another thought the prongs looked small at first before deciding they worked.

What the listing does not say matters as much. There is no steel grade, no hardness figure, and no statement of how the prongs are finished. Weaver’s own guide to choosing a stitching chisel adds useful context: it describes diamond chisels as making slanted holes for a traditional saddle stitch look on holsters, wallets and belts, and it recommends French-style irons, not diamond ones, for luxury goods such as high-end handbags and briefcases. A buyer planning fine leather goods is being told by the seller that this is not the top tool for that job.

The Amazon listing showed 4.4 out of 5 from 947 ratings in October 2026, at $28.20 and in stock.

Owners on polish, consistency and the hand

Most reports are warm, and the one sharp complaint is about variation.

The most detailed owner report comes from a 2019 Leatherworker.net thread on Weaver stitching chisels. Member keplerts described his first set, a red-band size, as having steel that was “polished and smooth” with very small, sharp prongs, and rated it five out of five. A later yellow-band 4 mm set was a different story: rougher steel, larger prongs, and a rating of two or three. In the same thread, LeatherLegion said the tools look like “the same chisels sold on eBay for $10,” judged them “not bad for up to 8oz,” and said he would pay more for better steel and presentation.

That comparison to generic imports is worth taking seriously. Another member in the thread, fredk, who imports chisels from China himself, wrote that such tools “generally come from one factory” and are sharp enough to use as they arrive, with a little sharpening helping. Nobody in the thread offered proof that Weaver’s set is a rebadged generic. The point stands as a forum observation, not a fact.

Other threads lean positive. In a 2022 beginner thread on pricking irons, PastorBob said that after trying several sets he had “found the ones from Weaver Leather to be the best” among chisels short of high-end. In another thread about when to punch, OLESKIVER called Weaver’s punches “nice and fairly inexpensive.” And in a recent Getting Started thread, TonyV said cheap Amazon chisels had “Bent, broke and dulled easily” before he moved to Weaver.

The video review embedded above, from the Ken Bee channel, covers the 5 mm blue-band set. Its description on YouTube praises the polish, sharpness and even spacing, calls the short flat handle the main drawback, and names it the best set for beginners.

What the premium irons are charging for

KS Blade and Vergez Blanchard, priced and described by the shop that sells both.

Macro view of a saddle-stitched leather seam showing how braided thread lies on the front and back of the stitch line.

Rocky Mountain Leather Supply sells the KS Blade “Diamond” V2 Japanese-style pricking irons, made in South Korea, at $149.99 in 3, 4 and 5 mm spacing. The retailer’s case for them is longer, thinner teeth that punch deeper and reduce the need for an awl, extra weight that keeps the tool in place, and a tidy opening for the thread. The same shop’s Vergez Blanchard irons, hand finished near Paris by a firm the listing dates to 1823, run from $34.99 for a single tooth to $399.99 for a fifteen-tooth iron, with two-tooth sets mostly at $64.99.

Those are seller claims, and forum users test them hard. In a 2021 thread in praise of KS Blade irons, member Danne praised the irons for centering on a line and for their weight, conceded they “cost more than a lot of the alternatives,” and later said the ruined holes he had shown came from user error rather than the cheaper tool. Tugadude replied that results depend on both the tool and the hand holding it.

Blanchard draws sharper criticism. In a 2023 thread on Blanchard quality, TomE wrote that “Vergez Blanchard is not the Blanchard of old” and said one of his irons “looked like a high school shop project” until he reworked it. In an older 2018 thread, member 480volt took the opposite view, preferring Blanchard’s tooth geometry over C.S. Osborne’s.

The case against diamond holes on fine work

Where the forum advice turns away from chisels, and where it defends them.

The disagreement here is less about Weaver than about the diamond shape. In the Getting Started thread, GatoGordo said diamond tips are easier to line up than French irons, but he dislikes the holes they leave, and he prefers Japanese-style tines that are “pointed and easy to line up.” YinTx, in the same thread, preferred KS Blade punch irons and ranked Vergez Blanchard a distant third. Member wizard of tragacanth pushed back the other way, writing that Japanese irons “are a luxury” and that “Good stitching is possible with diamond shaped tines.”

Weight of leather is another split. In the 2022 beginner thread, TomE preferred European pricking irons and an awl, arguing that stitching chisels cut holes too large for the thread. LeatherLegion’s “up to 8oz” remark points the same way from the opposite end: entry-level chisels are happiest in light and medium leather. For heavy multi-layer work, chiefjason said in a 2020 holster thread that he found chisels too much trouble and went back to pre-punching with an awl. The site’s own notes on punching stitch holes in thick bridle leather cover that heavier end of the problem.

None of this settles which hole is better. It does show where the Weaver set sits: a diamond chisel that does what diamond chisels do, at a price that leaves money for leather. The seam it produces is a saddle stitch either way, and the reasons that seam holds when one stitch fails are set out in Why a Broken Stitch Doesn’t Sink a Saddle-Stitched Seam.

Score, size and getting the most from a cheap set

The practical advice owners repeat, and how to choose a spacing.

Three unlabelled leather-stitching threads, braided polyester, waxed linen and twisted polyester, laid side by side on a workbench.

Weaver’s guide pairs 3 mm with fine goods such as wallets and watch straps, 4 mm with most general projects, 5 mm with medium items like handbags, and 6 mm with heavy work such as saddles and belts. Forum users mostly start smaller. DoubleKCustomLeathercraft, in the Getting Started thread, called 3 mm his go-to and advised beginners to buy cheap Tandy or Weaver diamond chisels first and upgrade later. In the 2022 beginner thread, zuludog also pointed new buyers to 3 mm diamond chisels from Weaver or Tandy.

Three handling tips recur across threads. Lubricate the prongs: Weaver suggests beeswax, and Matt S in the holster thread stabs his into a bar of glycerine soap. Use a soft mallet, not a steel hammer, as zuludog warned. And when pulling a chisel out, hold the leather down with a wooden block so the piece does not lift and distort. Matt S added that the chisel should be perpendicular to the leather before it is struck.

Given keplerts’s report of a rough second set, buyers would do well to look at the prongs closely on arrival, and to keep fine sandpaper on hand if a batch comes in coarse. Owners of cheap chisels in general report that polishing the tines changes how they enter and leave the leather, a point made in a 2018 Leatherworker.net thread on polishing stitching tools, where DJole reported that sanded and stropped chisels went in and came out of leather far more easily.

The arithmetic is plain. A full Weaver set in one spacing costs less than one two-tooth Blanchard iron, and roughly a fifth of what KS Blade asks. Owners of both kinds call the premium irons finer and easier to align. The threads cited here never present them as the only route to a straight seam. For a beginner still deciding how much hand stitching to do, the site’s piece on hand stitching or rivets is a sensible first read.

Weaver Leather Supply Diamond Leather Stitching Chisel Set: The listing this review covers, showing 4.4 stars from 947 ratings at $28.20 when checked on October 19, 2026. 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.

Sources

You Might Also Like

Similar Posts

Leave a Reply