Blunt harness needles and sharp glover's needles laid side by side on a workbench beside waxed thread and bridle leather.
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Harness Needles and Sharp Needles

ByPeter Joeseph 'Briefcase Maker' Kalafatis

One point is made to find a hole. The other is made to cut one. Pick before you thread.

Harness needles are blunt, sharp needles cut, and the whole argument between them is about what happens inside a hole you can’t see. I hand saddle-stitch everything I make. I gave up the sewing machines some time ago. So I’m biased toward the needle that goes with that stitch, and I’ll say so now and judge anyway. What follows is the work in the order it happens, from the spool to the last pull, with the needle question answered at each step.

Video: Hand stitch thick English bridle leather, from Marcellino NY Briefcase Maker on YouTube.

Start with the thread, then pick the needle

The needle is sized to the thread. Not to the leather, not to your hands.

Macro of a blunt harness needle tip beside the triangular cutting point of a glover's needle.

Buy the thread first. Every other choice falls out of it. Rocky Mountain Leather Supply’s listing for John James saddler’s harness needles gives a chart that does the matching for you. A size 4 is 0.9mm and takes tiger thread of 0.6mm and under. Size 2 is 1.0mm, for 0.8mm and under. Then 1/0 at 1.1mm, 2/0 at 1.3mm, and 3/0 at 1.6mm, which carries tiger thread up to 1.6mm. The listing says the blunt tip eases the needle through holes and helps keep the thread from being pierced.

Don’t buy every size at once. In a leatherworker.net thread on John James harness needle sizes, a member writing as Hazza bought packs of sizes 1, 2 and 3 and found them identical, and said John James told him there was no difference between them. Tugadude quoted a product listing saying the three labels exist because customers asked for different names. Three packets, one needle.

The other camp starts here too. Olga Balasa at Ageberry, in a guide to leather sewing needles, sizes harness needles by thread the same way, and then goes the other direction on point shape. In her experience, she writes, “glover’s needles are the best choice for working with leather by hand.” She recommends them for soft lambskin, thicker hides and suede. That’s an honest position and a common one. Hold it in your head. I’ll come back to it.

Punch the holes before the needle comes out

A blunt needle has no business making its own hole. Somebody else does that.

A harness needle can’t punch anything. That’s the point of it. Sailrite’s listing for a #2 blunt harness needle puts it in one line: “The blunt tip guides the needle through pre-punched holes.” Abbey England describes its UK-made No. 1 harness needle as having a blunt, rounded tip meant to pass through pre-made holes without damaging the thread or the material.

So the needle choice is really a punching choice. Tandy’s guide to saddle stitching marks the line with a groover or wing divider, walks a pricking iron along it to mark and cut the surface, then opens each hole with an awl as the stitching goes. On thick bridle I pre-punch and line up every hole before a needle comes near it, because thick work won’t stitch any other way. The holes have to meet on both sides, through every layer. My notes on punching stitch holes in thick bridle cover that step at length.

My page on The Art of Hand Stitching says hand-stitched holes tend to run a little bigger than machine holes, because they’re punched by hand and sewn with hand needles. That’s the trade. A hole sized for a blunt needle is a hole the needle can find without a fight.

Thread it and lock it on

A needle that slides off the thread halfway through a seam is a needle you will find later, in your foot.

Hands saddle stitching bridle leather in a stitching pony with two harness needles passing through one hole.

Threading a harness needle is easy. Keeping it on is the job. Tandy’s guide says woven polyester usually holds with one loop around the needle, because the weave grips, while hemp or linen wants several loops so it doesn’t slip. It also says to cut the thread at about five times the length of the seam, and to err long.

Here’s where the blunt point earns a second reason. In the thread on John James blunts, a member named CrankAddict found his size 004 blunts ground to a point and sharp to the touch, and asked about sanding them down. YinTx answered that the needle “draws blood every time,” but that blunting it further would make it harder to lock the needle onto the thread. That’s the trade he describes: the point has to get through the strand to lock it on. Too round, and it won’t go through the strand at all.

So blunt doesn’t mean round like a marble. It means rounded enough to slide past thread in the hole, and pointed enough to go through the strand when you want it to. I wax my needles before thick work. It helps both ends of that.

Two blunt points in one hole

This is the step the needle was designed for. Everything else is setup.

A saddle stitch puts two needles through the same hole from opposite sides, one after the other. Tandy’s guide describes it that way: both needles pass through each hole from opposite sides, and casting the thread locks each stitch. The second needle goes into a hole that already has thread in it. If that needle cuts or splits the first thread, the stitch is weaker before it’s even pulled tight.

My own page says it plain: as the needles enter each hole, skill is needed not to puncture the thread, which a machine doesn’t have to worry about. That’s why I’d argue a harness needle belongs in a saddle stitch. It isn’t a guarantee, though. In the John James thread, mike02130 said even a blunter needle will pierce the thread sometimes, and that the fix is to pull the first thread away from the second needle as it goes in. Tugadude said his dropped stitches stopped once he pulled the first thread down and toward himself, freeing the top of the hole.

So the needle does half of it, and your hands do the rest. My page on hand stitching admits the part that cuts against my own trade: unskilled hand stitching is worse for the bond than unskilled machine stitching. A machine doesn’t care how tired you are. A blunt needle in a tired hand still finds a way into the thread, and a stitch can look clean on the outside with a split strand buried in the middle layer, waiting. What I can tell you from the bench is that the skill isn’t strength. It’s feel. You learn to know through the needle when a strand has popped inside the layers, and you learn it only by doing it long enough that your fingers stop sending complaints up the arm.

Where the sharp needle earns its place

Everything I just said about blunt needles is true in a punched hole. Take the hole away and it falls apart.

A finished saddle-stitched bridle leather gusset seam with pliers and harness needles resting beside it.

Now the turn. Sharp leather needles aren’t a mistake. They’re a different tool for a different job. Sailrite sells a pack of glover’s needles with a triangular point, made to pierce leather, suede, vinyl and plastics. Colonial Needle’s John James leather needle assortment describes sharp, cutting points that go through dense material, for sewing leather, suede and vinyl and for repairs.

On soft, thin leather with no pre-punched holes, a harness needle has no hole to find, and it wasn’t made to make one. A glover’s needle cuts its own way. In my view that is exactly what you want on a lambskin glove, or a quick repair on a suede jacket where nobody is going to pre-punch anything. Balasa adds that glover’s needles carry a larger eye and are made slightly thicker so they resist bending, which matters when the point is doing the work of an awl. Her preference makes sense from that side of the bench. Soft leather, single needle, no awl: the sharp point is the right call.

And here’s the harder part. I stitch in the air, with the work in my hands, as my page says, and every hole is punched first. That’s a slow way to sew. My guess is a sharp needle sews faster on the right leather, and in a two-needle stitch its edges are aimed at the thread you just laid. My opinion: if you’re stitching a saddle stitch through pre-punched holes, use harness needles. If you aren’t doing either of those things, you’re doing different work, and the glover’s needle may well be the honest tool for it. The mistake is mixing them, a cutting point inside a two-needle stitch.

Pulling through the thick parts

At three layers of bridle the needle is no longer the hard part. Getting it out the other side is.

Thick work is where needles break and fingers give out. Stitching through three layers of the thickest English bridle is hard on the fingers, and I pull the needles through with pliers when the leather won’t let go. TomE, in the needle-size thread, said he has bent needles with pliers when overstitching thick leather and never broken one. Rocky Mountain Leather Supply’s listing says the John James harness needles rarely break at the eyes when under stress. Bent is fine. Snapped at the eye, with thread still in the hole, is a bad afternoon.

Grip the shank, not the eye, and pull straight along the line of the hole. A sideways pull widens the hole on one side and leaves a stitch that sits crooked. That’s my opinion, not a rule from a book.

At the end of the seam, Tandy’s guide backstitches two or three holes through existing stitches without casting, melts poly thread ends or glues linen, and taps the stitches flat with a smooth-faced hammer or maul. I’ve written up backstitching and burning the thread ends separately. Check both faces before you call it done. On The Maker page I wrote that the side nobody sees is where a weak stitch gets found out, and a needle that cut its thread on the way through is the first place to look.

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).

Prym Leather Hand Needles, No. 3-7: A six-piece assortment of leather hand needles. 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).

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

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

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