OWDEN Professional 6Pcs. Leather Hollow Punch Set. Size: 1.0-5.0mm for Belt, Watch Band and Strap Gasket. with a Free mini Cutting mat.

I am not a leather worker or hobbyist. But I am a tool snob and I like precision and versatility, which I am willing to sacrifice for convenience. I needed to add some holes to some nicer leather watch bands I got for my new Galaxy Watch4. The rotary punches I looked at all seemed too big and awkward, with hole sizes starting at 2.5 and going up rapidly from there. Fine for belts, but not watch bands. Also, I wasn't convinced they would punch precisely while squeezing the grips, or that they would be sharp enough to cut a clean, straight hole. So I was happy to stumble across this set. First, it has a great range of sizes. Some big enough for belts and shoes, but plenty on the small size for watch bands. I ended up needing both the 1.5 and 2 mm for two different bands, but there were still sizes above and below those in this set. The best part is how cleanly and straight they cut their holes. Just a few strong taps with a nylon face brass hammer and they were through - even on a thick double-layer leather and suede band. The holes were perpendicular, with clean edges, and the punch-out easy to clear. As a bonus, this set takes a lot less storage space than a rotary punch, and comes with a matt that will be handy for other things. Even has a vinyl storage pouch. No oils, corrosion, or odd smells, either. Just a nice, quality set of punches for a very fair price.

OWDEN products are always very good and this set is no exception – solid build, sharp and reliable. The only thing that could make it even better is if the tips had a slightly smoother, more polished surface. That way the tool would come out of the leather holes more easily without getting stuck. Still, overall excellent quality from OWDEN as always.

I ordered these because I needed another hole in a leather watch strap. There are less expensive sets, but I bought these based on some of the reviews. They came packaged nicely in a plastic pouch along with a little plastic board. I used a little hammer with a nylon tip that came with my watch repair kit to get the hole started and then I grabbed the tool, applied downward pressure while twisting it around. The 1.5mm hole came out perfect, indistinguishable from the original ones. I'm very impressed because to get such a clean cut for such a small diameter tells me these punches must be good quality in relationship to price. I probably don't have a need to use them often, so I don't think I ever have to buy another set of these type punches. Definitely recommended for casual use.

These are pretty good for the money. It is nice to have dedicated hole punches, rather than a hole punch kit with one shaft and several different sized tips. However, these punches are quite short and we often maul our pointer finger knuckle where it attaches to the hand, as it is difficult to hold the hole punch while fitting our hand below the level of the top of the short hole punch. When we strike the hole punch, we often strike that knuckle first, which is consistently painful. Also, these punches have some type of coating, perhaps black oxide, likely to prevent rust from forming on the metal while warehoused in humid climates, or during transpacific shipping. These coatings, often found on eastern leather craft tools, interfere with the use of these tools, specifically in regards to leather craft. Often punching/stitching irons with these coatings make it exceptionally difficult to remove the iron from the leather once it has been punched, which can damage the leather during the attempted extraction. The same is true for these hole punches. They have about a millimeter of sharpened steel showing at the tip of the punch, but it is common to punch through significantly more than 1mm of leather. These punches can get stuck in the leather. Not as badly as stitching irons, but some twisting and pulling can be necessary to remove the punches from the leather, potentially causing the same type of damage or stretching, or fatigue of the leather. There are also grind marks around the punching tip of these hole punches. Basically where the punches were tapered into a cone, and sharpened, there are many, hundreds? of ridges around the punching end of the hole punch. I believe the black oxide coating may have also been used to cover up these tooling marks. But, these ridges act somewhat like velcro, or ridged nails or screws, the ridges lock into the material of the leather, and make extraction of the punch more difficult than it needs to be, and again, potentially damaging your leather project. You can fix all of these problems, if you take sole responsibility for your actions, and are competent working with tools and modifying tools. I fixed my punches, and they are significantly better. I chucked up each punch in my cordless drill, though a corded drill is even better, and used small strips of sandpaper, pinched around the tip of the punch, which was spinning at max speed in my drill. These punches arrive sharp, so please keep in mind you're pinching with your fingers, only separated by the width of your sandpaper, a circular knife blade spinning at several hundred or perhaps, thousands of RPM. FIrst, I started with about 220 grit, high quality sand paper. After a few minutes, and a few strips, I'd pretty much removed most of the gritty black oxide, or whatever type of coating it is, except for that left in the tooling grooves ringing the conic section, the tip of hole punch. Then I stepped up to a silicon carbide wet dry sandpaper at 400 grit. I proceeded to spin the punch at max speed in my drill and sanded off most of the tooling rings, and the black oxide in their deepest valleys. Then, I stepped up to 800 grit SC sandpaper and removed the last of the tooling marks left by Owden's manufacturing. I may have used the paper wet at this stage, can't recall, I did all the punches in a couple of sessions. After the 800 grit removed the very last of the tooling marks and black oxide, I began to shape the conic section of the hole punch. The hole of each punch is roughly the correct size, I have not metered them, but I expect them to be accurate, but, the punch tip flares out quite wide, so while the actual hole of the hole punch is 2mm, the tip of the hole punch quickly flares out to 4mm, then 5mm. The effect of this is the punch can stretch out your leather around the hole. So if you have a rivet that needs a 2mm hole/shaft to sit in, the outside dimension of these punches can create a 3, 4mm hole. Basically, the tips are too thick for the size of the hole being punched (not on the 1, and 1.5mm punches, they're sized relatively well). So, I thinned the punch tips, so they didn't flare out so wide. You have to make sure you don't heat up the tips. You might have to step down to more aggressive grits to do the shaping, I think I did, I think I went back down to 220, shaped them, and then went back up the grits to 800-1000. After that, I used a spongier strop loaded with Tandy's Jeweler's Rouge, the white stuff, but you can use any honing, polishing compounds, wet, dry or waxy. You just want a mirror finish on the conic hole punching area of the punch. So after those couple hours of work, these punches are FANTASTIC. With our old Tandy punches, we had to POUND the punch to get it through leather, not with these Owdens. Just this morning, I taped the punch just to get ready to strike it, and just that tap put in a perfectly sized, totally clean (not hairy at all) hole. We can punch SO much faster now. If we've marked out four locations for a 2mm hole on the bottom of a handbag, it's just bam, bam, bam, bam. DONE! I swear, you don't know how much time you are losing using those multi-tip punches, and using punches that have a coating on them... how much time you spend spinning, twisting, trying to pull the punch out of the leather. It really adds up. If you want to do leather work professionally, it is all about speed AND accuracy. These Owden punches will get you both, if you make the modifications I discussed. And I'm finding, we have to modify all of the leather working tools we purchase. We don't buy super high end tools, maybe they don't need modification, but anything that is reasonably priced, even expensive stuff, they'll still require some modifications, just to make them work better, more cleanly, more quickly, just the way you want them to work. OR, you can go out and buy a set of this type of punches and spend $150 on a 5 punch set, or buy them individually for $30 each. Maybe they won't need any work. Maybe your time is worth that expenditure? Maybe you don't have the tools to modify your tools? Maybe you don't have the skills? It's all up to you, and what you want to do. But this set now works excellently after a couple hours modifying them, taking the coating off the punching tips, thinning the tips down a bit, and polishing them to a shining mirror finish. They punch effortlessly, and just naturally pop right out. We've used them on the little, like 4 inch pounding mat included with this set, but really we use them on a large slab of Poundo. But, we plan on switching to an HDPE cutting board, but old tools and techniques die hard. AND ONE LAST THING! We wish that there wasn't a 1mm and a 1.5mm punch in this set. We wish the 1.5mm was a 6mm punch instead. We don't need our leather punches in 0.5mm steps, but we do need LARGER punches. We do wish that we bought a set that went from 1mm to 12mm, or even up to 25mm! OR EVEN BETTER, if they were in SAE, Imperial measurements! But whatever. This set of punches is great, is a great value, and work very well if you modify them. ALL THE BEST!

These punch holes through even very thick leather, and it doesn't take much. The measurements are all correct, and as long as you're using the right tools, they should hold up. I haven't tested them EXTENSIVELY, so please note that. However, also note I only had access to a metal hammer and I was using it intensely on the smallest hole punch without any sort of cushion on the top, and it held up very well despite my abuse, so take that how you will. I still used cushioning underneath the leather so as not to damage the actual blade, though. With proper tools, unless there's a defect in manufacturing itself, these hold up fairly well.

While I was making a hat from a pattern I needed to punch hundreds of holes that were 1.5 mm and so I used that size for all the holes. And there were quite a lot, trust me! This thing held up just fine for all of that and it came with a nice little piece of plastic that is great to punch into. It was actually slightly firmer than a different block I had so it was more efficient to use and it didn't damage the tool. Overall these are great punches and I would buy them again if needed.

very sharp and well machined. came oiled to prevent rust and the coaster sized cutting mate is a nice dense quality. nice attention to detail.

Great tools. Very sharp and well made. Would recommend and buy again. Thanks

Sharp and solid

Had a men’s watch with a thick leather watch strap. I needed to add a hole. The results were amazing- the appearance of the new hole may even surpass the way the original holes were made! I used the second smallest (men’s watch), which leaves me to think the options are versatile with this kit! Hammered twice, to be safe- but the tools are so sharp, it even when into the included mat a little. So glad I purchased this. Will be great for belts, purses, very handy little kit!

I received the hole punches and this is my first time doing this kind of work, so I can't really judge the overall quality yet. As you can see in the photo, my leather is quite thin (around 1 mm or less), and the punches leave fairly decent holes. I definitely need more practice, but overall it works. Also worth noting: the set includes a solid mat for punching, which is very handy.

I was pleasantly surprised that I did not need to clean off any oil or residue from this set. Was able to use it right out of the package. The two punches I used were exceptionally sharp and did a great job on leather and fabric.