Fol­low­ing on from my pre­vi­ous two posts about awls, I should say some­thing about medieval awl hafts since none of the hafts I’ve pic­tured pre­vi­ously are medieval in shape (one is an attempt, but it’s all wrong).

Marc Carl­son has a lot of pic­tures of his­toric shoe­mak­ers on his Footwear of the Mid­dle Ages site. Some of those pic­tures show awls in use (whether as shoe­mak­ing tools, or instru­ments of tor­ture) from which I’ve had a go at draw­ing the out­lines of the hafts and put them in a PDF, includ­ing three mod­ern awl hafts from my collection.

The draw­ings should give you an idea of the pro­files of medieval and renais­sance awls. The sizes are guesses based on my exist­ing awl hafts and how they fit in my hands, and on the scale from the pic­ture. The sizes of the awls from the SO1 ship­wreck are based on pho­tographs from the Mem­ory of the Nether­lands site. The pic­tures are here: awl one (No.8 in my draw­ing), and awl two (No. 9 in my drawing).

The sizes aren’t exact; I think the hafts from “Two scenes with Sts Crispi­nus and Crispini­anus” by the Bernese Mas­ter of the Pinks are implau­si­bly short, and the hafts shown in the pic­ture of Her­man some­o­ne­orother in the 1531 Mendelschen Haus­buch are overly chunky. Remem­ber that these are paint­ings, not pho­tographs and if you use these to make your own hafts, find out what works for you.

Remem­ber also that the blades of medieval and renais­sance awls are always straight, curved awls are a mod­ern invention.