Clear picture or diagram or reshaped diamond awl tip?

[GeneH]

I have a Vergez Blanchard diamond awl on the way and as I  understand I will have to reshape the tip as well as sharpen and polish it.

Can someone show me good pictures or diagrams what that reshaped tip should look like? 

I"m not really sure where to flatten the tip, i.e. which direction to the sides and which sides to sharpen. The videos I've watched so far are not sinking in.

Thanki!

[battlemunky]

I don't have a VB awl but I have reprofiled my awls and am actually in the process of working on a new one (a Wuta, the one on the right side of each of the pics). Notice how it is much thicker in all dimensions, notably, the tip. I've been working on it here and there and am in the process of basically taking just the first 3 or 4 mm down to be what the one on the left is.

What you are shooting for is to make the pointy part easier to get into the leather but still big enough to hold up to repeated use. You want it thin and sharp as hell at the tip (the cutting part) and the rest can just be polished up so it glides in and back out easily after it has stretch the hole into its diamond shape.

Hope that helps   Congrats on your VB awl, I've never heard a bad thing about VB tools.

[GeneH]

Here's were I start getting confused - (BTW thanks for the quick response and great pictures) is there seems to be a couple distinctly different shapes to the ends of reground awls, possibly because they are used differently. Or maybe it just comes down to who / how we learned to sharpen our tools.

I *thought* I read somewhere around here about nipping just the very end of the awl off to make a more rounded and stronger tip.  Then I picked up from 2 different YouTube videos showing a more rounded, flattened, chisel-ish end. Actually I found this last one just a couple minutes ago. The first one I found spoke English, but this second I don't understand a word. However you can see they are suggesting the flattened tip helps line up with pre-marked slits from a pricking iron. The very sharp pointed tip is mentioned as more likely not follow the pricking iron slits.

Is there a different use for slightly rounded very pointy ends compared to very rounded chisel ends?

Here are the just-discovered rounded chisel tips clipped out of the YouTube video, link after the pictures.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=124-PKajwic   

 

 

[zuludog]

An awl blade should not have an absolutely needle sharp point, it should be rounded off slightly Have a look at this video - 'Sharpening a Saddlers Awl' by Nigel Armitage

Between about 52 secs and 1 min 04 secs he shows an awl that he's already sharpened, and you can clearly see the slightly rounded tip, which is very similar to the larger, right hand picture above. You can obtain this by nipping off the end of a new awl with pliers, followed by shaping & sharpening on a stone & strop,  or just grinding.

However, he leaves the awl blade he sharpens from new still quite pointed. I think either will do, but I'm afraid it's just one of those things you'll just have to try, and find out for yourself, bearing in mind that it's a lot easier to remove metal as you go along than to put it back on again  

More important than the precise shape of the tip is that it should be sharp, and the blade highly polished

Edited November 24, 2018 by zuludog

[480volt]

Given the mechanics of handsewing, the fit of the blade and handle to your hand is more important than the profile of the tip, as long as the blade is sharp and polished. You can drive a slightly rounded point into your thumb just as easy as a sharp point.

[billybopp]

Different people have different tastes in awl shape.  Some like more pointy and tapered, like a rapier sword, some more rounded broadening like a spear point, and some more straight sided like a broadsword.  Each will behave a little differently in the leather and in the way they shape the hole.  All of them cut along two edges of the blade, and just get thicker toward the base along the other two sides.

The rapier tip makes a nice clean hole that is not so different in size between front and back side, but you have to place the tip in EXACTLY the right place and orientation every time which is hard to do.  

The spear point tapers to be much wider along its length, which means that in thick leather the hole can be quite a bit wider on the side where it enters than on the side where it exits, and also you need to be fairly precise with how deep you push it through.  One awl will let you do a wide variety of hole sizes, tho.

The broadsword tapers a bit at the point, but is then straight after that, so holes are about the same size front and back, and you don't need to be so precise with the depth.  The downside is that the blade has to be the right size for the hole that you want so you may need more than one.

Both the spear point and broadsword point will settle into the marks made by a pricking iron pretty nicely and make it easier to get angle and centering right.

The picture below might help a little bit:  

Leftmost is a Tandy all-in-one awl with a spar point, and is an old-school saddler's style.  It's a crap blade, but I managed to get it sharp enough to use for a short time .. but long enough to know I didn't like it!  You can see by the thick leather it's lying across how different the hole is one side of the leather to the other.  The length of the blade also makes it harder to position.

The middle three are Seiwa awls which are broadsword types with little to no taper beyond the point.  There are three sizes since the width of the blade alone determines the size of the hole.  The short blades make them a little easier to position as well.  These are my preferred weapons unless I'm working on something too thick for the blades to penetrate all the way through.

The rightmost one is more rapier-like, and tapers along most of its length, and is sharp for most of its length.  It pierces the leather easily, but is pretty difficult to position properly.

There may be other shapes and other opinions, but this is what I've discovered for myself!

Hope that helps

- Bill

P.S.  Somewhere in this thread, there is a really good description of the classic spearpoint with pictures and description on page 11 of this post: 

 

Edited November 24, 2018 by billybopp
Found the PS I was looking for!

[GeneH]

1 hour ago, 480volt said:

......You can drive a slightly rounded point into your thumb just as easy as a sharp point.

I'll keep that in mind.  Ugh.

[GeneH]

That's really good information, folks. Helps me feel more comfortable reshaping the tip when the awl arrives. I see the point (no pun intended) of gradually changing the shape as I get used to using it. I watched Armitag's video also. Looks pretty straightforward, but I'll go back again so that I don't inadvertently sharpen the wrong, or all sides. The broadsword sounds like a good place to start as I won't be removing large amounts of metal - and I really like the idea of the holes being the same on both front and back. I think I'm more excited about getting and working the tool more than working on the projects. 

 

:

[battlemunky]

I learned so much in the post between mine above and this one. I really <3 this forum.

[zuludog]

I think you'll find these videos useful - 

'How to sharpen leather awl: Dixon Diamond'    parts 1 & 2

'Leather awl blade shape comparison: acute vs rounded tip'

all by leathertoolz

[zuludog]

Also this video - 'Overstitch Wheel' by Nigel Armitage

Besides the use of the overstitch wheel it shows very clearly the saddle stitch and the use of an awl, with a good illustration of the awl blade & tip

[GeneH]

8 hours ago, zuludog said:

'How to sharpen leather awl: Dixon Diamond'    parts 1 & 2

'Leather awl blade shape comparison: acute vs rounded tip'

all by leathertoolz

Ha! This "Leather awl blade shape comparison: acute vs rounded tip" is one of the two videos that started this conversation, but I couldn't remember enough to post the link. Thank you.  :-)   I needed to come back here to get some depth and validation.   Glad you posed these links.  His "Dixon Diamond..." videos are really good following his tip comparison video.  

At 2 min into "Dixon Diamond" he draws the perfect diagram showing a edge-on view.  And somewhere I saw a few seconds of someone actually clipping the end off a spear point. Snip!  I do feel fortunate at this point I've gone through the trials of taking a chip out of a 4 mm V parting tool - those are the most challenging tools I've experienced so far, and if I feel the results are worth the fun and effort, cleaning up/minor mods I know I can learn to do.

 

 

Edited November 24, 2018 by GeneH