Quality of Blanchard Pricking Irons and Beginner Purchase List

[TomE]

Vergez Blanchard is not the Blanchard of old.  I purchased one of their pricking irons that looked like a high school shop project - very rough and unfinished.  After hours of carefully smoothing and polishing the tines, it is useable.  Similarly, I ended up reshaping their screw crease until I was happy with it but not as happy with it as with older Gomph and Osborne creases.  Finally, I played around for 6 months with their plough gauge knife, changing the taper and adding a small bevel to the backside to prevent the plough gauge from pinching the strap so hard that it would hang up.  Vergez Blanchard did not respond to my emails asking about the plough gauge knife.  All of these tools were expensive and I am now satisfied with how they perform but it required some work.

I do a lot of hand sewing of 9-20 oz leather - bridles, reins, halters - and I commend you for your plans to learn how to use a sewing awl.  Using a correctly sized, sharp awl produces smaller holes that close around your thread and look neater IMO.  An awl will produce a hole in thick leather that is about the same size on the front and the back.  Using a sewing awl is also more versatile than pre-punching holes in dealing with unusual shapes, tight spaces, multiple layers, angling holes when stitching under a loop, etc.   I greatly prefer the Rocky Mountain European pricking irons over the Blanchard iron I purchased.  I mainly use the 2.7 mm spacing (9 SPI) and I rarely use the 2 prong iron - I just tip the wider iron on edge and lighten up on my maul when turning a corner.  You could consider a pricking iron for your common hole spacing and an inexpensive set of overstitch wheels to cover other hole spacings.  My awls are all Osborne awls.  I bought one expensive awl that was a piece of junk.  No reason to spend a lot on a fancy awl haft.  Find one that fits your hand and focus on learning to sharpen the awl.  Al Stohlman's book and Nigel Armitage's videos will show the method.  As you sharpen an awl repeatedly it gets smaller and more suited for fine stitching.  So having several inexpensive, sharp awls that are in various stages of wear will give you a range of sizes.

I would buy a quality stitching horse or clam.  I modified a Weaver stitching horse with notched out aluminum plates, based on a plywood version shown in a Stohlman book, and this is handy for working with straps and buckles.

  

   

Edited May 10, 2023 by TomE

[Klara]

7 hours ago, mike02130 said:

The first thing you need to learn is how to  saddle stitch using your new pony that you made yourself. 

Yep. If you have some experience working with wood and a few tools and scraps lying around, a stitching pony is easy enough to make. 

If you work with an awl (following Al Stohlman's technique - the instructions in The Art of Handstitching Leather can't be beat), any cheap stitching iron will do (or a wheel, which should be much faster) because you are only marking where you will poke the awl. 

Top brand names may be easier to sell second hand, but probably not for the price you paid for them. And the difference may well be the amount you'd pay for a cheap set from Amazon or Aliexpress (which you could keep lying around unused just in case you need to make or repair something someday). The difficulty with these sets is finding one that does not contain too much stuff that's unnecessary or unusable (I am pretty sure that the threads would be pretty crappy, for example. There I pay for brand names.  Same for needles - John James it is. )

We've recently had a similar topic - I still stand by my list of minimum tools (on page 2):

 

Though for your bags you will probably some way to close them, which might need another tool (set).

 

[Burkhardt]

20 hours ago, Klara said:

Yep. If you have some experience working with wood and a few tools and scraps lying around, a stitching pony is easy enough to make. 

If you work with an awl (following Al Stohlman's technique - the instructions in The Art of Handstitching Leather can't be beat), any cheap stitching iron will do (or a wheel, which should be much faster) because you are only marking where you will poke the awl. 

Top brand names may be easier to sell second hand, but probably not for the price you paid for them. And the difference may well be the amount you'd pay for a cheap set from Amazon or Aliexpress (which you could keep lying around unused just in case you need to make or repair something someday). The difficulty with these sets is finding one that does not contain too much stuff that's unnecessary or unusable (I am pretty sure that the threads would be pretty crappy, for example. There I pay for brand names.  Same for needles - John James it is. )

We've recently had a similar topic - I still stand by my list of minimum tools (on page 2):

 

Though for your bags you will probably some way to close them, which might need another tool (set).

 

You forgot the part about Ebay because Aliexpress and Amazon sell better stuff.