Making a Bronze Awl — The Leatherworker's Piercing Tool

The awl is one of the oldest and simplest metal tools — a pointed bronze rod set into a handle, used to punch holes in leather, wood, and bark. Bronze awls appeared alongside the earliest copper tools and remained essential through the entire Bronze Age because no other tool could make a clean, round hole in thick leather for stitching.

An awl is cast as a simple rod in an open stone groove, then one end is hammered to a sharp conical point while the other end is left blunt and set into a wooden or antler handle. The simplicity of the form belies its importance: without the awl, there are no leather bags, no stitched hide clothing, no bound book covers, and no harness for draught animals.