About Awl & Stitch

Awl & Stitch (awlandstitch.com) is a research-based buying guide for people in the United States shopping for leathercraft hand tools — pricking irons, stitching chisels, stitching ponies, starter kits, and the rest of the hand-stitching bench.

This page is the honest "about" for the site: who runs it, why it exists, how it makes money, and what we refuse to do.

Who runs Awl & Stitch

The site is run by The Awl & Stitch Editorial Team. We're upfront about what that means: we are researchers and leathercraft hobbyists, not master leatherworkers or toolmakers. We don't have a workshop full of test benches, we don't hold industry credentials, and we don't pretend otherwise. You won't find invented names or fake bios here, because the site's value is in the research, not in a persona.

Our job is to read what manufacturers publish, capture what marketplace listings actually show (with dates), and work through buyer communities like r/Leathercraft so you don't have to open forty browser tabs before spending money.

Why the site exists

Shopping for leathercraft tools on AliExpress is genuinely confusing from the US. Prices move week to week. Shipping options and delivery windows vary by listing, not by store. Sizing conventions — 3.38mm vs 3.85mm, SPI, tooth counts — trip up nearly every beginner. And most existing guides are built around Amazon, with little AliExpress-specific detail.

Awl & Stitch exists to answer the questions a US beginner actually asks, with data the current top results don't provide: verified US shipping per listing, landed-cost context, and prices dated to the day they were checked. A good example is our guide to the best pricking irons for beginners, which compares listings with verified US shipping instead of repeating seller claims.

How we make money

Awl & Stitch is reader-supported. When you click certain links on this site and complete a qualifying purchase on AliExpress, we may earn an affiliate commission. It costs you nothing extra — the price is the same whether or not you clicked our link. That commission is our only income. We don't sell ads, sponsored posts, or placements of any kind. The full mechanics are on our affiliate disclosure page.

What we never do

• We never claim to have tested a tool we haven't held. No "hands-on," no "in our shop," no invented measurements.
• We never publish fake reviews or invented ratings. Buyer sentiment is attributed to real, linked community threads.
• We never accept payment for rankings or positive coverage. If a pick is on a page, it earned its spot under the published criteria in our editorial policy.
• We never hide the disclosure. It sits above the first affiliate link on every monetized page, not buried in the footer.

How the content is made

Drafts are AI-assisted and human-reviewed. In practice: research is captured and organized with tooling, drafts are produced with AI assistance, and a human editor checks every claim against its dated source before anything is published. When we don't know something, we write that we don't know it.

Talk to us

Corrections, questions, and tips are welcome at hello@awlandstitch.com — see our contact page for what we can and can't help with. If you spot a wrong price, a dead listing, or a claim that doesn't hold up, tell us; we verify and fix it, and the fix goes in the page's changelog.