Will this work?

[fredk]

You don't need a proper leather working awl but could use one of these pokey-hole tools

They can be bought cheaply.

Put your leather over a plastic cutting board and push the pokey-hole tool through

[fredk]

Been thinking on this

You have a sewing machine?  put a 'leather' needle in, put leather under needle and turn machine manually, without thread. That will punch your holes 

[dikman]

I've used that method myself to get even spacing of my stitching holes. Just used an ordinary needle and then followed up with an awl for saddle-stitching (used an old Singer hand-cranked 201).

[Bird Lady]

Been playing around with things all week. So frustrating when experiments take hours or overnight to dry to see if they worked or not.

I think if I can make this work, I'll need to invest in a scissors dedicated to cutting leather and a decent awl. But, I'm hoping that, and maybe some goop to stiffen with, will be all that I need, for now.

Found microwaving a bit of leather in a bowl of water, I think I tried 60 seconds, shrinks the leather and if quickly positioned over the form (bit of a wrestling trick with something so tiny) will dry pretty hard. But, I suspect there's no way to control the shrinkage or shaping too much. Didn't try less time though. Might play with it for another idea though.

Dunking it in boiling water worked fairly well to hold the shape but wasn't really hard. though it did allow me to still sew through it.

Those ideas seem fuddly, hard to be consistent and require hours of waiting time without knowing the outcome.

I've been experimenting with ways to do it consistently and faster.

Have an idea the works for shaping and is easy to duplicate, but, I'm back to how do I make it hard or at least stiff.

The attached photo is where I'm at. It was definitely a duh moment when I realized how simple it could be. The tongue is a piece of felt. I can control the bend and size completely and make the upper and lower beak parts with slightly different shapes.

Elmer's glue on the smooth side (is there a term for the "finished" side?) seems to add a bit of durability but only marginal stiffness. Elmer's on the rough/suede side adds a bit more stiffness and darkens the suede. I could live with the darkening or just add a bit of paint to the glue I suppose.

Would I be able to paint Resolene, or something else, on and use that to stiffen it better than the glue? Or would the Resolene not do much more than the glue is doing? Leather in image hasn't been treated with anything yet.