Hand stitching or rivets compared on a workbench, with a half-stitched bridle leather handle beside brass rivets and a setter.
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Hand Stitching or Rivets: What a Beginner Should Learn First

ByPeter Joeseph 'Briefcase Maker' Kalafatis

Judge a leather joint by what it carries, not by how it looks.

A leather joint gets judged by the weight it carries, and anyone starting out who has to pick between hand stitching and rivets is really picking how much a mistake will cost. A card slot carries a card. A briefcase handle carries the whole case, plus everything shoved inside it on the way out the door, swinging at the end of an arm and set down hard on a concrete platform twice a day for years. Those two joints do not need the same answer, and nobody learning the trade should pretend they do.

Video: HAND STITCHING VS RIVETS – For English Bridle Leather Briefcases, from Marcellino NY Briefcase Maker on YouTube.

My bias, up front. Every Marcellino briefcase comes off one bench, and on The Maker page I put it as plain as I can: “I shape it, I stitch it, I finish it.” The stitch is the one part of the work I will not hand to anyone else, so you know which side I start on before I open my mouth. I also made a video on this exact question, hand stitching against rivets on bridle leather cases, because it sits under every first bag anyone builds. This is the long version, including the part that does not flatter my side.

A handle and a card slot are not the same joint

Scale the fastener to the pull.

Hands pulling two needles through a punched hole to set a saddle stitch in thick brown bridle leather.

Start with the load. The way I see it, a seam in leather does one of three jobs: it holds layers flat, it closes a pocket, or it takes a pull. The first two are light duty. The third is where things tear, and on a bag the pulls gather in a handful of places, where the handle meets the body, where a strap meets its ring, where the gusset holds up everything sitting in the bottom.

That third joint is where a beginner’s choice counts.

It is also where the evidence gets interesting, because the people who test joints for a living keep finding that the fastening method decides more than the material does. A 1984 piece in Fire Engineering on firefighters’ life belts makes the point with numbers. Webbing rated at 6,000 pounds could hold about 8,000 in a well-built harness with the load spread evenly, while poor stitching might hold only 4,000. Same strap. Half the strength, lost in the thread. That piece is about synthetic straps, not bridle leather, so the figures do not carry across to a briefcase. The lesson does. The writer also warned that “rivets will adversely affect a seam of peak efficiency,” and suggested them mainly for hooks and accessories.

Rivet makers see it from the other end of the bench. A Pethardware article on saddlery rivets recommends closed two-piece rivets for bag straps, handles, leashes, collars and harness, the places where both sides show and the load never lets up. It also treats rivets as reinforcement at the point of maximum strain on a joint already stitched or glued.

So the thread people and the rivet people agree on one thing. The load decides. Neither of them treats a card slot and a handle as the same problem, and neither should you.

The case for learning the saddle stitch first

Two needles, one thread, and a stitch that fails one hole at a time.

Here is the argument I would make to any newcomer, and I would make it hard. Learn the saddle stitch before you buy a rivet setter. It is the stitch that holds tack together under a 2,000-pound horse, and on my page about the art of hand stitching I say flat out that a hand saddle stitch is a stronger bond than a small sewing machine stitch.

The reason is in how the thread lies. Two needles work one thread, crossing in every hole, so each stitch locks on its own. Tandy Leather’s saddle stitching instructions say the finished seam beats a machine stitch and keeps its integrity even if one side of the thread is cut. Michael Magnus, writing for The Art of Manliness, put the difference in a line I like: with a saddle stitch, “where one stitch is broken, only one stitch is broken.” A lock stitch, by his account, can let go in a chain of five or six once one gives. That point has come up on this site before, in Patina Is a Record, Not a Flaw, so I will not chew it twice.

The second reason weighs more with me. I sew in the air. The work sits in my hands instead of being pushed against a metal plate, which lets me reach shapes and corners a machine cannot get to, and I stitch with the whole body, shoulders and hips and all, not just the fingers. When I had helpers who sat down and moved only their hands, I made them stand up and go with the piece.

Anybody can copy the motion. I watched people do it at my bench and do it fine, for a while, and then the fingers started to hurt and the eyes slid off the line. The skill is not the motion. It is feeling the thread, knowing through the needle that a strand just popped somewhere inside the layers where nobody will ever see it, and knowing it before you pull the next stitch on top of the damage. Learn that early and your fingers start reading the leather for you: how hard to pull, when the thread is about to bite into the grain, whether the hole on the far side came out where the near one went in.

In my view, a rivet teaches none of that. A rivet teaches you to punch a hole and hit something. Useful, and over in a second, which is about how long the lesson lasts. The stitch teaches you to see the line.

Where my own page argues against me

Unskilled hand stitching loses to unskilled machine work.

The back of a practice strip of leather showing clean saddle stitches next to crooked, frayed ones.

Now the part I have to own. The same page that calls the saddle stitch stronger also says that unskilled hand stitching is worse for the bond than unskilled machine stitching. I wrote that. I meant it. Each time the needles go into a hole there is a chance of spearing the thread already sitting there, and a machine does not make that mistake. A stitch can look clean on top while the hidden layers are already holding next year’s failure.

Set those two facts side by side and the advice bends. The strongest joint in the trade, done by someone who learned it last month, may be the weakest joint on the bag. On a card slot that hardly matters. On a handle it is the difference between a case that lasts and a case that drops a laptop on a train platform, and the owner does not care how noble the stitch was while he picks up the pieces.

The rivet makers push harder. American Bench Craft, which builds its goods with rivets rather than thread, argues that rivets do not weaken with time the way stitches do, that stitch holes can weaken leather near an edge, and that a stitched seam is hard to repair without leaving marks, while a damaged rivet can be pulled and replaced. That is a company describing its own method, so weigh it with that in mind. My opinion: the claim about time cuts against a well-sewn seam in thick bridle leather. The repair point is fair, though, and it stings. By their account a bad one comes out and a new one goes in fast. Unpicking and resewing a handle is a job for someone who already knows the stitch, which is exactly the person this advice is not for.

So a beginner ends up holding a strange tool. The stitch worth learning is the one most likely to fail in new hands, like being told the best hammer in the shop is the one most likely to find your thumb.

Where a rivet is the honest choice

Until the stitch is ready, the rivet is the safer bet.

My opinion: the honest first move, for a newcomer building a bag before their stitching is ready, is to rivet the joints that take a pull and hand-sew the joints that only hold things flat. No guild handed me that rule, and it runs against the grain of my own bench. I say it anyway, and I can say it with a straight face for one reason.

I put hardware on my own cases. On handles I use Chicago screws. On a case built to haul a heavy load, I would rather the lock go on with rivets than trust it to thread alone. So the man who will not let anyone else touch the stitch puts screws in his handles. Funny how that works.

Not every rivet earns the job, either. My opinion: a hollow tubular rivet is the weakest thing you can put on a bag, a solid tubular holds a good deal better, and copper is strong but I can’t stand the look of it on a case.

Go that way and learn the fasteners properly, because a badly set rivet is its own kind of failure. The common types for a leather bag:

  • Solid rivet and burr. A post through the leather, a washer (the burr) pressed over it, the post trimmed and peened round. Tandy’s guide to setting hardware says to leave about 1/8 inch of post when cutting before you dome it over.
  • Double cap rivet. Two pieces, finished on both faces. Tandy’s guide wants the post standing at least 1/16 inch above the leather and no more than 1/8 inch before the cap goes on.
  • Chicago screw. A post and a screw, nothing peened or crushed. Weaver Leather Supply sells plain Chicago screws for belts, bags, cases and bridles, with grippers to lock the screw in place.

Post length is where most first rivets go wrong. The guide from Buckleguy says to measure the full stack at the exact point of the rivet, lining and glue included, allow for the leather compressing, and aim for roughly 2 to 3 millimetres of post through the stack. It also says to test-set on scrap with the same layers, and that more force rarely fixes a crooked rivet and usually makes it worse. Same as a stuck pipe fitting: lean harder and you strip it.

On a handle or a strap end, the Pethardware advice about closed rivets applies. Under a steady pull, the open cone on the back of some rivets can deform. Pick the closed kind where the back will show or rub.

None of that makes a rivet the finished answer. It makes it the safe one while the hands catch up.

What to practice before a stitch carries weight

Sew the light jobs by hand until the back comes out clean.

A finished bridle leather briefcase with hand-stitched handle anchors standing on a concrete floor.

The saddlery trade does not rush this. The English apprenticeship for a bespoke saddler ran typically two years, and it lists the ability to double hand stitch and single or back stitch among the basics, along with the judgment to balance stitching “to a high standard in an acceptable time and cost.” Two years, for apprentices at it every day. Think about that before you trust a weekend with a handle.

The drill is plain. Mark a line, punch it, sew scrap. Then turn the scrap over. On my page I say the side nobody sees is where a weak stitch gets found out, and clean on both sides is the bar I hold. If the back is crooked, loose, or the thread is frayed where a needle went through it, the stitch is not ready for load. Your thumbs will tell you it is fine. Turn it over anyway.

A few details from the instructions are worth getting right early. Tandy says to cut thread about five times the seam length, while the Art of Manliness piece says at least 3.5 times; they disagree, so err long, because running short mid-seam is worse than wasting a foot of thread. Both finish by stitching back over the last holes, Tandy calling for two or three backstitches and Magnus for at least two. Poly thread can be trimmed and melted, and Tandy warns against scorching the leather while you do it. Linen gets a drop of glue instead.

Start where a failure costs nothing: card slots, key fobs, a flat sleeve. If you still need tools, this rundown of a complete leather craft tool kit covers the basics. Sew those by hand. Rivet the strap ends and the handle anchors on your first bags if your stitching is not there yet, and do not be embarrassed about it.

Then one day the back of a practice seam comes out as clean as the front, every hole, the whole length of it, and the choice in the title stops being a choice. For that leather, at that thickness. The next hide is thicker.

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).

304 Stainless Steel Chicago Screws Leather Assorted Kit: A kit of 90 stainless steel Chicago screw sets in seven sizes. 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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