A bridle leather bend with a scratched briefcase pattern beside a scratch awl, wing divider, silver pen and soapstone.
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Marking Leather: Scratch Awl, Pen or Chalk

ByPeter Joeseph 'Briefcase Maker' Kalafatis

Every mark you put on leather is a bet that it comes off or something covers it. Lose, and it rides on the bag for good.

Marking leather comes down to one question, and it’s not which tool is best. It’s whether the line you’re about to draw will be cut away, sewn over, rubbed off or left on the face of the piece for the next twenty years. A scratch awl, a stylus, a silver pen, a stick of chalk and a lump of soapstone all answer that question differently. Buy for the answer, not the tool. I’ve scratched a briefcase pattern out on brown Sedgwick bridle, the way the video below shows, and I still think the awl is the tool most people should be most careful with.

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

The scratch awl: cheap, sharp and permanent

It cuts a line into the leather. That line is forever unless the knife or the thread takes it.

Hands drawing a scratch awl along a steel rule to mark a cut line on thick brown leather.

A scratch awl is a steel point in a handle, and that’s the whole of it. Weaver Leather Supply’s scratch awl with a wooden handle has a round blade 2-1/2 inches long, and the listing gives it two jobs: marking patterns or scoring lines before cutting or stitching, and piercing holes ahead of hand stitching. It’s one of the cheapest tools on the bench.

Sailrite’s guide on how to mark leather puts the awl to work on patterns, cut lines and stitch lines, with the stitching covering the scratch, and suggests running it along a straightedge so it doesn’t wander. It also points out that the awl leaves a visible scratch on the surface. It does. That’s the point and the danger at once.

On a cut line, the scratch goes with the waste, as long as your knife rides the inside of it. On a stitch line, the thread lies in it. Anywhere else on the grain, it stays.

My opinion: on thick bridle the awl is the best marking tool there is, because a pen line sits on a waxy surface while a scratch is in the leather and doesn’t smear under a hand or a ruler. I work with a steel rule and my eye more than templates, and an awl line is the only kind of mark I’d trust to stay put while I lean on a long panel. I covered the knife side of that in Cutting a Briefcase Out of a Bridle Leather Bend.

So buy a scratch awl first. Just don’t let it near the face of a finished panel unless you mean it.

Wing dividers and the stylus: pressing, not scratching

A dent is easier to forgive than a scratch, and harder to see.

A wing divider is two steel legs on a pivot with a screw to lock the spread. Weaver’s 8-inch wing divider lists plotting curves and border lines, adjusting patterns and spacing lacing holes among its uses. Sailrite likes dividers for stitch lines and pattern lines because they adjust, and because one leg rides the edge of the leather as a guide. Set the spread once and every line on the piece sits the same distance in, which no hand with a pen will match.

For laying out the stitch line on a heavy piece I’d reach for the divider before anything else. Thick work only sews straight if every hole is punched and lined up before a needle goes near it, and the line the divider leaves is the line the chisel follows, which is the subject of Punching Stitch Holes in Thick Bridle Leather.

The ball-end stylus is gentler still. In a 2010 leatherworker.net thread on laying out patterns, a member writing as katsass described dampening the leather, laying the pattern face up on the grain and tracing it with a ball stylus for a slightly pressed line with no ink. He admitted the lines can be faint, and said a light coming in low and level helps you see them. A lamp raked across the bench, in other words.

The same thread had a warning worth hanging over the bench. Dwight wrote that “stylus lines or scratch awl lines are as dangerous as are ink lines.” In my view he’s right, because any line you can see is a line you can put in the wrong place. Another member, TwinOaks, said he’d drawn enough lines in the wrong place that he mostly avoids marking, and marks the flesh side when he has to.

Pens: silver, white and the ballpoint you should put down

Contrast is the reason to buy one. Removal is the reason to test it first.

Macro of a wing divider pressing a stitch line along a leather strap edge beside a silver pen line on dark leather.

On dark leather, a scratch can be hard to see, and that’s where the pens come in. Rocky Mountain Leather Supply sells a German-made silver marking pen and pitches it for patterns on darker colors that are hard to write on, with a silver line that’s easy to follow. Its page doesn’t say whether the mark comes off.

That gap is the whole argument. In a 2014 leatherworker.net thread on marking sewing lines on black leather, the original poster, goldenstonebazaar, tried a silver metallic marker that wiped off the surface. Stitched over, though, “particles of glitter become embedded in thread and holes.” A member named Northmount warned that the Tandy pen leaves permanent marks too. The same poster found a white water-soluble quilter’s pen left no trace on the finished side, and that an ordinary ballpoint left a line still visible under thin thread.

The forum doesn’t agree on the Tandy pen, either. In another thread on the best pen to write on leather, a member called lightingale said its marks rubbed off pigskin with finger pressure once dry. Same pen, two leathers, two results. That’s why the advice is always to try it on a scrap from the same hide.

Keep the ballpoint for paper. If one has already hit the grain, Getting Ballpoint Ink Out of Leather Without Making It Worse is the place to start, and the short version is that the cleaning is harder than the not-marking.

Chalk, soapstone and soap

Good for the flesh side and the suede, risky anywhere the thread will run.

Chalk looks like the safe choice. It isn’t always. Sailrite says chalk pens can mark the flesh side without hurting the grain, and should be used only where the flesh won’t show, because the marks can be hard to get out. On the black leather in that 2014 thread, chalk brushed off the face but left a whitish powder near the stitching.

Clover, the sewing-notions company, runs through tailor’s chalk, chalk wheels, water-soluble pencils and air-erasable pens in its Tool School post on marking tools. It’s written for fabric. Its main instruction still carries straight over to leather: test the marker on the material you’ll actually use before trusting it. It also notes that heat can make chalk harder to remove, which matters to anyone who irons a crease line after marking it.

Soapstone comes from the welding supply, as a member named cardinal leather pointed out, and Dwight brought it into the black-leather thread. He said it makes a grey mark on almost any leather that buffs right off but won’t blow off, and advised marking just to one side of the sewing line rather than on it. The original poster also reported that a sliver of white soap left no trace on the finished side.

In my view chalk and soapstone belong on suede linings and on the flesh side of a panel, where a dull pale line can be brushed away and nobody will see what’s left. On the face of a waxy bridle, any powder that gets into a stitch hole is there for keeps.

What I’d put in the drawer

Three tools cover nearly everything. The rest are for the odd job.

The flesh side of a leather briefcase panel with soapstone and chalk marks, a finished briefcase in soft focus behind it.

If you’re buying for the first time, here’s the drawer, as my opinion and nothing more.

  1. A scratch awl. For cut lines and pattern outlines on firm veg-tan and bridle, where the knife or the thread will take the line.
  2. A wing divider. For stitch lines and borders that have to sit the same distance from the edge all the way round. A creaser can do some of the same work on a strap.
  3. One removable pen, tested. Silver for dark leather, white or water-soluble for the rest, and only after you’ve tried it on a scrap of the same hide and stitched over the test line.

Then, for the odd job, a piece of soapstone or tailor’s chalk for suede and flesh sides, and a ball stylus if you trace patterns on damp veg-tan. Every one of these is cheap. The leather isn’t. A mark in the wrong place costs more than the whole drawer.

The hand stitch is a good argument for marking well, too. My page on it says a key part of hand stitching is how clean the stitch looks on both sides, and a stray pen line or a glittered hole shows on both sides just the same.

Where the awl turns on me

The tool I trust most is the one that can do the most damage.

Here’s where my own case gives out. I’ve told you the awl is the best tool for bridle because the line lives in the leather and won’t smear. That’s the same reason it’s the worst tool when you’re wrong. A silver pen line in the wrong place comes off, or at worst gets cut away. An awl scratch drawn a quarter-inch off on the face of a panel is a scar you put there yourself, and no conditioner closes it.

Every hide I bring in gets looked over for flaws, and a scar sends it back to the supplier. It would be a strange thing to reject a hide for a mark and then cut one into it with my own hand. The post on removing scuffs from smooth leather is clear about how little can be done for a mark that has broken the grain.

So the awl stays in the drawer, and it stays the first tool I’d buy. I just keep it on the waste side of the line, or under the thread, and nowhere else. TwinOaks had it right. The best mark on a finished face is the one you never made.

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

WUTA Wing Divider: An adjustable stainless steel wing divider for marking a stitch line. See it on Amazon (affiliate link).

Leather Craft Embossing Carving Stylus: A stylus for marking and embossing leather. See it on Amazon (affiliate link).

Jmuiiu 7-in-1 Adjustable Leather Groover: An adjustable stitching groover for cutting a channel along the stitch line. See it on Amazon (affiliate link).

54 Pcs Leather Marking Pen Set: A set of marking pens for leather and fabric. See it on Amazon (affiliate link).

OZXTYO Tailors Chalk, 4 pcs: Four pieces of tailor’s chalk. 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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