Thin Awls

[WyomingSlick]

Just buy some glovers needles and drill a hole in whatever tickles your fancy for a handle, and mount the needle in there. Since they come in very small sized you should be able to make a fine of an awl as you want, plus they will allready be plenty sharp

[barehandcustoms]

Looks like everything listed above is 2mm in size. I did some more checking around but that seems to be the minimum for the high end and low end awl makers. My guess is that anything smaller than that tends to bend or break. If you just want quality thin diamond awl blades then your answer is already listed above.

I may do some more digging around and see what is out there. I am kind of curious to see if other industries have similar diamond shaped tools that could be used to do what you want. Maybe there is a jewelers tool that gets down towards 1mm to 1.5mm in size.

Edited August 20, 2014 by barehandcustoms

[DavidL]

I do 9 spi and 7 spi with the 38mm vergez awl which is actually 38mm long but 3mm wide. After a month and experimenting with stropping the awl is now 2mm and I only sharpen the tip now. You could just shave off a fraction of a mm using a stone which you will need anyways to touch up the blades. A blade could possibly be 1mm for anything as small as 14 spi, but you won't be able to find it online most likely.

[Macca]

Try & find the 33mm long blanchard awl blades over there, they are 2.3mm at the widest point, they are ok for 9SPI, decent steel & can be ground even smaller as required (you might want to thin them a little for 9SPI, depends on the leather you are using & how far you push the awl through). I ground some down a bit for 12SPI+ work.

Careful though, go a lot thinner & the blade will snap if you put any up/down pressure on it, they are hard steel, but brittle when thin.

Edited August 20, 2014 by Macca

[Hi Im Joe]

I do 9 spi and 7 spi with the 38mm vergez awl which is actually 38mm long but 3mm wide. After a month and experimenting with stropping the awl is now 2mm and I only sharpen the tip now. You could just shave off a fraction of a mm using a stone which you will need anyways to touch up the blades. A blade could possibly be 1mm for anything as small as 14 spi, but you won't be able to find it online most likely.

You stropped 1mm off an awl blade?

[DavidL]

meant to write honed and stropped.

[Hi Im Joe]

Ummm...ok.

[papadanny]

I have put small leather "washers" on my awl to not make to big a hole when necessary.

[DavidL]

how wide of an awl does 7 SPI need? Im thinking 3.5mm or maybe 4.

[whitIL]

Thanks to all the people who took the time to respond and make suggestions. It is wonderful to have a place where so many people will share and help. As the discussion developed I realized that I don't even know how to measure the width of a diamond shaped awl. I can measure my Tandy awl several different ways.



I don't see any awls mentioned above that are significantly smaller than what I have (depending on how you measure). I have to admit that some of them look a lot nicer.

I'm going to take some time to think it over and perhaps buy one or two of the awls people have mentioned.

Simon from GoodsJapan wrote to me, "Generally very fine stitching holes are recommended against as such holes have the effect of weakening leather to the point that it can tear off at the stitch line easily, like a cheque being torn off along the perforated line". That makes sense to me, yet I see watchbands that have much smaller holes than I can make. Are those all sewn with a machine? Why don't they tear like a perforated check? Can a leather sewing machine sew with many different size needles and threads?

There is so much I don't know.

--Whit