Highly Accurate Eyelet Holes

[kemitchell]

I’d really welcome experience and advice from others on how to accurately place round holes for surface eyelets on facings.

Patterning

I’ve got comfortable marking the centers of holes very accurately on pattern pieces:

• Pattern the leading edge of the facing.
• Mark a seam line inward from the edge.
• Mark a margin line for empty space inward from the edge seam line.
• Mark a center guideline inward from there by the radius of the eyelets.
• Set a compass to the desired space from eyelet center to eyelet center, then walk it up the center guideline from tab to topline, starting one radius’s distance from the margin line at the tab. For boots, sometimes I’ll adjust the spacing and mark again to ensure the last eyelet ends where I want it. Other times I’ll move the topline up or down so the space from top eyelet to top edge is the same as from the leading edge of the tab to the first eyelet.

From there, I can transfer the center holes to leather with awl pricks or pen marks.

Punching

The trouble starts when trying to accurately punch holes perfectly centered on those holes. I’ve tried a few methods:

• Eyeball the placement of the punch and press it just hard enough to leave a faint impression on the surface. Check centering by eye and readjust until I give in and punch the hole.

  Sometimes I miss a couple times and have to press the leather with my finger to erase the lines from the previous attempts.

• Use a drafting circle template to scribe a circle a millimeter wider in diameter than the hole I want to punch on the leather. Then set the punch so its edge falls just within the scribed line, all the way around.

  The plastic templates I have from Helix and Staedtler all have crosshair-like markings of the center at four spots along the circumference. But it can still be hard to know when the template is perfectly centered on the hole.

• Use the circle template, but mark and punch the holes out of the patterns, then trace those holes onto the leather.

I still don’t feel like I’ve really got this figured out for high accuracy and precision.

I have found that I can get more accurate results using drive punches on the bench than using punches screwed into my Italian twist press. That way I can use my fingers to help position the punch more like a pen. I can also just get my face closer to whatever I’m punching over.

Existing Tools

Hollow/Wad/Self-Centering Punches

There appears to be a somewhat niche tool for punching holes around marked center points: a “wad punch”, sometimes called a “hollow punch” or “self-centering punch”. These seem to be used mainly for punching round gaskets out of rubber and other sheet materials.

Osborne makes a set with 1⁄4, 5⁄16, and 3⁄8″ punches, plus wider ones.

SELF CENTERING PUNCH SET – NO. K-156 - CS Osborne Industrial Tools

Maun in Britain make a similar Imperial kit, as well as a metric version with 5, 6, 8, and 10 mm punches on the smaller end.

Wad Punch Set With Centre Punch Metric 5 mm To 32 mm

There are also China-made clones, sometimes marked both metric and imperial, as if they were exactly equivalent.

Amazon.com: NEIKO 02614A Interchangeable Large Hollow Hole Punch Tool Set, 10...

These kits do have punches down to eyelet-esque sizes. But they’ve clearly heavy tools meant for punching relatively large holes through heavy material.

Some shoe and leather stores carry the Osborne kit in particular. It’s expensive, as are the Maun kits on import. The Chinese clones aren’t too bad, but that feels like a lot for what it is.

Bow Compass

The purpose-designed drafting tool for drawing small circles around center points is apparently called a “bow compass”, sometimes “drop bow compass”. Wikipedia has a very nice photo:

File:Rotring S0214750 with Rapidograph 0.5 mm drawing 1.5–15 mm circles.jpg

I’m not sure these are actively manufactured anymore. There are listings for used ones online, but they’re older, mostly Rotring or Koh-i-Noor.

These are very appealing tools, but hardly seem worth the price. They also wouldn’t cut or punch the holes, just mark them.

Tool Ideas

I have a few ideas that I haven’t tested yet:

1. Glue lines of thread across the crosshairs of one of my cicle templates. Where they cross will be the centers. The threads will stop from tracing the circles all in one go, but tracing four rays, around the threads, should be enough to give the same guiding effect.

2. Pick up a cheap set of transfer punches, which are tools used to slide through holes and mark their centers on the other side. Use the size that fits the inner diameter of the eyelet I want to use the closest, set its center on the center point, then run the eyelet down the shaft of the punch and press it into the leather or pattern paper.

   https://www.harborfreight.com/28-piece-transfer-punch-set-3577.html

3. Punch out some discs in the diameters I want in something like nylon, mark their centers, drill small holes through them, then check them and keep the most accurate.

4. Get some stamps made of circles in various diameters, with their center points.

[citizen]

Well I can’t say I’m the best at this but I personally measure and mark up the pattern (as in like one line measured from the edge for each side of the punch) and punch the full-sized holes out of that, and trace the circles from the pattern.

[OldspeedMFG]

In my experience, there is no better way to do this than to transfer the eyelet centers from the pattern, then when you’ve done all the stitching, trust your eyes and punch where the eyelet needs to be. All the prep in the world goes out the window when you stitch a half millimeter off of your line and so your eyelet is no longer centered. If it looks right to your eyes without an eyelet in the hole, it’s going to look even more right with one.

Also, just buy the CSO rotating punch tool with replaceable punches. It’s so much easier to properly place the holes.

[kemitchell]

Thanks, @OldspeedMFG.

I’m definitely gathering that it really pays to do this kind of thing with a hand tool, up close and personal. I suppose I took from videos of the Spokane shops that punching with a press would be a good idea. But I’m learning from experience—and checking out Spokane boots—that even with a lot of practice, that’s not the path to precision.

I’ve got one of the cheaper Osborne revolving punches that Tandy sold me, many years ago. Perhaps it’s time to budget for a 155.

[OldspeedMFG]

I use the 155 and while the finish is crude, the performance is excellent.

[kemitchell]

So I went for it with a rotary hole punch and got mostly good results. One eyelet’s visibly off, at the crook of the ankle of one of the boots. The others look pretty good.

Almost-there-but-not-quite of course got me thinking again, for the next time. I suspect what I should have done was create a small template like so:

Basically, punch the right sized hole into a piece of stiff paper or plastic, then draw and cut a square around it the width of the space between my facing stitch lines, with the hole perfectly centered. Then I could lay the template inside the stitch lines, mark the circle with an awl, and place the punch within the scribed circumference. That could get me holes consistently centered.