Description
A good leather sewing awl should be light, sturdy, and only as long as needed. The blade must be sharp at the tip for easy puncturing but dull along the sides, so you don’t further widen your stitch hole. Our in-house made sewing awl ticks all of those boxes and more.
The front grip lets you hold the awl choked forward, touching the ferrule and hooking the front grip with your middle finger. The flats register the orientation of the blade so that you can feel the proper position. They also keep the awl from rolling off the table and onto your foot. The handle pattern is based on an old design, when awls were crafted one by one and meant to last.
Finding Flat Quickly
Many sewing awls have flats on them, so you can quickly orient the flat of the blade to match the angle of the stitching hole. The flats also prevent your handle from rolling off the table. I put a hexagonal shape on our handles to give a similar registration of the flats. The six flats let you rotate the handle more quickly if you pick up the awl in the wrong orientation.
Finding Depth Quickly
When holding a sewing awl, you often put your thumb on the ferrule or just behind it. I added a groove for your pointer finger so that you automatically hold it at a consistent depth. If you grip at the ferrule, the ball provides a depth gauge.
Customize Your Blade Stickout
Our sewing awl features a blade protrusion of 25mm (1 inch), perfect for a wide range of project thicknesses. They are manually inserted and have a +/- 1.5mm variation. The medium blade is 2mm wide, which works well for 3 – 4mm stitch spacing (6.5 – 9 SPI). You can request a shorter 18mm (3/4”) or a longer 29mm (1 1/8”) stick out to suit your needs.
Wood Handle Options
Our darker wood awls are made from Claro Walnut, a walnut subspecies native to our home state of California. Claro has a beautiful figure on many pieces with lustrous swirls of contrasting black grain and light sapwood.
Our lighter wood awls are made from Ash, a traditional tool handle lumber. Ash is a dense hardwood that holds up well under everyday use as an awl.
What Kind of Awl Do You Need?
Learn more about what kinds of awls you need for leatherworking in our blog post about leatherworking awls.
