An open leather craft kit on a workbench with the essential tools separated from a pile of unused stamps.
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Is a Leather Craft Kit Worth Buying?

ByPeter Joeseph 'Briefcase Maker' Kalafatis

Some of it you will use for years. Some of it goes in a drawer the first week.

A leather craft kit is a box of guesses somebody else made about what you will need. Some of those guesses are good. I came into this trade by trial and error, standing in city stores turning bags inside out to see how they were built and reading whatever books I could find, because good tutorials barely existed back then. Nobody handed me a box. So I come at the kit question as a man who never had one and has since watched plenty of beginners open theirs, and the six questions below are the ones I would want answered before paying for one.

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

Does a kit actually save money

Sometimes it does, if you would have bought every tool in it anyway.

Hands driving a stitching chisel into vegetable-tanned leather with a mallet, leaving a straight row of holes.

The suppliers say yes. Weaver Leather Supply’s guide to building a beginner leather tool kit says a kit of basic tools can cost less than buying the same pieces one at a time, and Tandy Leather’s beginner’s guide calls starter kits an economical way to get the basic tools in one purchase. Both of them sell kits, which doesn’t make them wrong. It does mean you should read the sentence with the price tag in mind.

The people with leather dust on their sleeves split harder. In a 2019 thread on leatherworker.net titled Which beginner tool kit, the replies leaned almost all one way: buy what each project asks for and skip the box. One member, Hardrada, put it flat: “I’d buy items individually and avoid kits.” Another told the beginner not to buy anything until he had watched several videos on tool selection. Five years earlier, in a thread on the right tools a beginner should be buying, the older hands were kinder to a cheap kit. Their view was that it is a fair way to find out whether you even like the work before you spend real money on it.

That is the honest math. A kit saves money only on the tools you would have bought anyway. Every stamp you never strike, every needle that never sees thread, is money you paid to own a drawer.

My opinion: count the tools you will use on your first three projects. If the kit holds most of them, buy it. If you are paying for forty pieces to get eight, you are buying cardboard and plastic.

What is usually in the box, and what is filler

Look for the tools that cut, mark, punch and sew. Count the rest as packing.

Weaver’s list for a beginner is short and sensible. A steel square, a scratch awl, a snap-off knife or a rotary cutter, a cutting mat, a stitching pony, waxed thread, leather needles, stitching chisels and a mallet to drive them, a groover, an edge beveler, and a slicker for the edges. The page says plainly that “You really just need a few basic tools to get started.” Tandy’s guide boils it down further: a knife, a mat, chisels or punches, needles and waxed thread, a mallet.

Now set that next to what a lot of kits carry. This site once ran a post, Save Time and Money with a Complete Leather Craft Tool Kit, listing one. It held three nail files, two stitching wheels, two groovers, three awls, a spread of needles that included eight curved mattress needles, twenty stamping tools, two thimbles and three wool daubers. Some of that is real. Plenty of it would sit in the bag while a beginner made a wallet.

Weaver’s own sales page for its kits, Why Leathercraft Kits Are Perfect for Beginners, puts the warning better than I can: “Forget cheap mallets and throwaway stamps, the best starter kits include no fluff.” A seller telling you to watch for fluff is a seller who knows how much of it is out there.

Stamps are the giveaway. They’re cheap to make, they look generous in a photograph, and they belong to tooling and carving, which is a craft of its own. If your plan is a card holder or a strap, twenty stamps is a bag of nails in a box sold as a hammer.

Which tools should be bought good from the first day

The chisels and the needles. Everything else can be cheap for a while.

Macro of waxed thread, harness needles and pliers on bridle leather next to a short run of saddle stitching.

Weaver says a good set of stitching chisels will last for years and calls them “well worth the price.” I agree, and the reason is in the holes. A cheap chisel tears the grain, leaves the holes ragged or out of line, and no amount of care with the thread hides it afterward. My page on The Art of Hand Stitching already admits that hand-punched holes run a little bigger than a machine’s: “The hand is limited to how small it can get, especially with thick bridle saddlery leather.” Since the hole is already fighting you, the tool that makes it shouldn’t.

Needles and thread come next. I hand saddle-stitch everything, and I gave up the sewing machines years ago after owning more of them than I like to admit, so I have spent a long time with a needle in each hand. Wax the thread. Wax the needle too. On heavy bridle I pull the needle through with pliers, because fingers alone won’t do it all day. A kit full of thin, sharp sewing needles is the wrong kit for this work. Weaver’s guide wants leather needles that are larger with rounded points, which it says are kinder to your fingers.

The rest can be cheap at the start. A square is a square. A mat is a mat. An edge beveler from a starter box will do the job until you have done enough edges to know what a better one would give you.

Before you buy the good chisels, know this. The tools don’t do the stitching. Helpers who sat at my bench could copy the motion, and still the fingers got sore and the attention wandered before long. No kit sells focus.

In my view, if the money only stretches to one good tool, make it the chisel, and buy everything else cheap.

Project kit or tool kit

One teaches you a single thing well. The other gives you a drawer to fill.

There are two kinds of box on the shelf and they solve different problems. A tool kit is the knife, the chisels, the mallet, the thread, with no leather in it or only a scrap. A project kit is pre-cut leather for one object, with hardware and sometimes thread, built so the first thing you make turns out like the photograph. Weaver sells both, from a beginner’s tool kit with a stitching pony, a groover, needles, a knife and a chisel set, to a round key fob kit sold in a pack of ten.

Tandy’s guide points beginners at small first projects: keychains, cord wraps, coasters, simple card holders. It also says, and I think it’s the most useful sentence on the page, “You do not need a full workshop to begin.” A key fob uses a knife, a punch, maybe a snap setter. You learn to cut a clean line and finish an edge without staking a whole hide on it.

The catch is that a project kit can hide the hard part from you. Somebody else picked the leather, cut the pieces square and sometimes punched the holes. One member in a 2008 leatherworker.net starter thread warned that some kits come with pre-punched holes that don’t line up well. When the holes are wrong before you start, the kit teaches you the wrong lesson.

My opinion: one project kit is fine, to see whether your hands like the work. Then cut the next one yourself from a piece of leather you chose, even if it comes out crooked. The crooked one teaches more.

Can a beginner buy used tools instead

Yes, if you can hold them before you pay.

A finished leather key fob and card holder, simple first projects made with a small set of tools.

Weaver’s beginner guide suggests second-hand tools if they are lightly used and good quality. The old forum hands go further. In that 2014 thread, one member, WyomingSlick, recommended older Craftool bevelers and stamps from before 1970 over new ones, often for less money. In the 2008 starter thread, a member writing as whinewine said that “craftools are notorious for being quite variable in quality,” and advised buying in a store where you can see and test what you are getting.

Hold the tool. Look down the edge of a knife and the faces of a chisel. Check that the prongs sit in a straight line and none is bent. A used chisel with one tooth knocked out of line will walk every row of holes you make with it, and you’ll blame your hands for weeks before you blame the steel.

Used tools also teach you what you like. Two or three cheap old bevelers in different sizes will tell you which one your hand reaches for, and that tells you what to spend real money on later. A sealed kit can’t do that, because it hands you one of each and calls the question settled.

So is it worth buying

Worth it as a door. Not worth it as a workshop.

Here is the part I owe you. I spent five sections arguing against the full box, and this site sold one. That 2022 post called a complete kit “a great investment” for anyone starting out, and there was a button on the page to buy it. I can’t pretend I didn’t see it, because my name sits on the byline.

The post wasn’t all wrong, either. I learned by trial and error with no kit and no good tutorials, and I nearly quit more than once. A bag went across the room. I stayed away, then came back to it. A beginner today who opens a box and finds a needle, waxed thread and a chisel that work has fewer reasons to throw anything, and a kit that keeps somebody at the bench through the first bad month has paid for itself in the only coin that matters this early.

What a kit can’t do is choose the leather, or tell you that bridle is a hard first leather, or settle whether you should learn hand stitching or rivets first. Those answers come from making something and getting it wrong.

My opinion, plainly: buy a small kit or a single project kit if it gets you started this week. Throw out the stamps if you don’t tool. Spend your next money on one good set of chisels. The box was never the craft.

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).

Leather Carving Hammer Mallet: A nylon-headed mallet with a wooden handle for striking chisels. 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).

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

IRWIN Carpenter Square, Steel, 8-Inch by 12-Inch: A steel carpenter square, 8 by 12 inches, for checking right angles. 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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