You can’t make a shoe without tools.
And if you understand the tools—and by extension what they’re for—you’ll start to understand the steps required to turn a two-dimensional piece of leather into a three-dimensional piece of footwear.
To help you do that, we enlisted the disturbingly knowledgable Amara Hark Weber, who talked us through the essential tools in her toolbox, as well as a few alternative ways to get the job done.
Of course, this is just the tip of the toolberg. Each category of tool mentioned below has a countless of variations, and there are lots of tools you won’t see on the list below, which is intended to help you get your bearings.
We’d be remiss not to mention a few other resources out there for to the prospective shoemaker: Ken Kataoka and Brian the Bootmaker both have detailed and beautiful videos of their production process. It feels like half the people on our podcast have cited the great Lisa Sorrell’s videos as what got them into bootmaking. Mikhail Bliskavka of Arno Shoes has an overview of the tools he uses and a detailed breakdown of his time in Stephano Bemer’s bespoke shoemaking course on his blog. And of course, there’s a highly active community of shoemakers in the thriving Cordwaining channel of our members-only Stitchdown Discord.
To paraphrase Amara: The main way to learn is to build a lot of stuff—and to be honest, not heartbroken, if it sucks.
Oldstock Swedish Shoemaking Knife
A Sharp Knife (And a Way to Keep it Sharp)
Your knife is among the most flexible and crucial shoemaking tools. It’s used on just about every part of the shoe, from cutting out the shoe’s leather components—the uppers, insole, counter, toe stiffener, insole, midsole, and potentially outsole—to trimming and shaping the soles and skiving (reducing the leather’s thickness at certain strategic points).
There are nearly as many types and styles of knives as there shoemakers.
For Cutting Out or “Clicking” Uppers
Many shoemakers use X-Acto style knives or other knives with disposable blades, though the quality of blade varies between manufacturers—Mozart often seems to be the brand of choice.
L’Indespensable
Vergez Blanchard’s L’Indispensable has a separate handle and blade like an X-Acto knife, but the blades are designed to be resharpened dozens or hundreds of times.
Replacement blades in harder steel are available from several manufacturers, including TINA and Chartermade. There are also disposable knives with crescent-moon shaped blades sold as dedicated “clicker’s” knives. The hooked shape and fine point are useful for cutting curves and details precisely.
For Skiving
One of the most common styles is what’s often called a “paring knife” or “shoemakers knife”: a bar of steel with one end ground and sharpened into a blade. This form makes them cheap relative to the steel quality, and capable of being resharpened and reground many times. They’re fairly flexible knives which can be used to click, skive, and trim outsole leather.
As with everything on this list, there are variations. The blade shape can be rounded or straight, and the handle can be angled or flat. One variable is whether the blade has a single or double bevel.
TINA Paring Knives
A single bevel knife is flat on the back, and angled at the front—similar to a chisel. Double bevel knives are ground to an angle on both the front and back, so the edge sits at the middle of the knife’s thickness. The asymmetrical shape of a single bevel knife acts as a wedge, pushing one side of the leather outwards as the cut is made. Some people prefer double bevel knives because they exert symmetrical pressure on both sides of the leather being cut. As always, what feels intuitive is personal.
The German company TINA is a widely recommended manufacturer of knives in this style. In particular, their 230 and 270 knifes are often chosen for their curved edges, which make many skiving operations easier. Japanese craft knives (“kiridashi”) and bookbinders’ paring knives have a similar shape to straight blade pairing knives and are sometimes used for shoemaking.
Feather Knife
Hand-welted footwear requires carving a holdfast into the insole, then stitching the upper and welt to it. All of this can be done with a regular shoemaker’s knife, but specialized tools can help make the task easier. A feather knife has a narrow, flat blade with a fence—a flat, perpendicular surface that can be pressed up against the leather to regulate the depth of the cut, useful for tasks like carving out the area around the holdfast. Welt knives are another fenced knife with a similar shape, intended for beveling the edge of the welt and heel, but sometimes used to carve the holdfast as well.
For Sharpening Those Knives
Only one thing is strictly mandatory: your knife must be sharp. Which means you need to learn how to sharpen it. A sharp knife allows for precise, controlled work, and requires less force. That’s better for the final product, and it’s much safer, especially if you’re cutting towards yourself, as shoemaking sometimes requires. Sharpening is a deep and treacherous rabbit hole and its denizens often have strong opinions, to put things mildly. That can make it very intimidating, but it doesn’t need to be complicated.
3M Sticky Back Sandpaper
At its most basic, sharpening involves removing metal from an edge removing an abrasive—small, hard particles of some kind and a medium that carries them. Edge tools, like knives, cut by concentrating force onto an extremely small area. As a blade chips, bends, and is rounded over from wear, the cutting edge gets dull. Abrasives reshape the edge by removing metal, but leave scratches that correspond to their “grit,” the size of the abrasive particles. These scratches create an irregular surface that dulls quickly: lower grits means bigger scratches, which remove material quickly but produce a weaker edge, so you generally want to start at lower grits and then work your way up.
Sandpaper adhered to a perfectly flat board will get the job done. Get multiple grits of sandpaper, glue them to said flat board, and work your way up from lower to higher grits. Amara recommends avoiding really cheap sandpaper, even if that means spending slightly more (but c’mon it’s sandpaper). Take as a much time as you need to get the blade really, really sharp—sharper than you think it needs to be.
Japanese Waterstones
Oil stones or water stones are the other common routes, though they’re more expensive up front. The difference between the two is simply what lubricant they work best with—oil stones take oil, while water stones need to be either immersed in or splashed with water, depending on the stone. Both kinds can be natural stone—there are famous quarries in Arkansas, Belgium, and Japan—or synthetic, with an abrasive powder suspended typically suspended in resin or a vitrified binder that forms a ceramic-like structure under heat during the manufacturing process.
This variation makes it hard to generalize, but there’s a huge range of serviceable options, most of which come with their own quirks. In addition to the upfront cost, it’s this variety that can make sharpening stones intimidating to beginners. If you want to go this route, it’s safest to find a set of well-recommended stones in your price range and focus on learning to use it effectively, rather than worrying too much about small performance differences.
Strop and Jeweler’s Rouge
Finally, whether you use stones or sandpaper, a strop will give your edge its final polish. Strops usually take the form of a piece of vegetable tanned leather glued to a flat wooden board—often with a handle—and then saturated with jeweler’s rouge (a fine polishing compound suspended in wax). The soft leather surface and wax binder minimize the stress on the edge, allowing the ultra-fine abrasives in the rouge to polish out any remaining scratches from earlier in the sharpening process—contrast this to a hard stone which pushes the abrasive into the edge.
This step is pretty much non-negotiable, since cutting rigid soling leather or doing clean skiving requires an extremely sharp edge. Stropping your blade regularly also maintains the edge, allowing you to spend less time sharpening and more time making shoes.
The Quick Version: Get one versatile knife, or a clicking knife and a skiving knife if possible. Then make sure you have a way to keep it very, very sharp—either stones or sandpaper, and a strop.
Quarters on a Post-Bed Machine
A Way to Close the Uppers
“Closing” is the process of stitching pattern pieces together to assemble shoe uppers. That requires some means of sewing, whether by hand or by machine. Hand stitching equipment is cheaper, and can stitch leathers that many be too heavy for some home sewing machines. It’s also very time consuming, and can be difficult to achieve true precision (although the same is true of sewing machines! Especially for beginners).
The most common home sewing machines aren’t powerful enough to crank through the 5-7 oz. leather often used for boot uppers. Their flat beds also make it difficult to manipulate the increasingly three-dimensional uppers during closing—particularly when attaching the quarters to the vamp. Notice how, in the picture above, the upper can simply wrap around the post (hidden behind the vamp), retaining its shape. A flat bed machine would prevent this, forcing the rest of the upper to lie flat.
Factories and full-time shoemakers generally use industrial cylinder arm or post bed machines, which can be very expensive, and complex to set up and maintain. Emphasis on “can,” because while many machines have a steep sticker price, older models bought used tend to be much more affordable if you know what you’re looking for.
Sewing Machine Needle Shapes
Still, it’s possible to close uppers on a flat bed machine using thin upper leathers and friendly patterns. But it’s definitely going to make your life a lot more difficult. Even if you end up upgrading, experimenting with the machine your already have can help you understand what you want from the next one. The weight and temper of the leathers you plan to use, and the style of patter you plan to use them on, both influence your choice of machine.
Once you have a workable sewing machine, you’ll need appropriate needles. Amara typically opts for tri-point or leather needles, and recommends avoiding the round canvas or denim needles that beginners sometimes use.
Saddle Stitching a Plug
Hand stitching leather is typically done with a saddle stitch—two needles are passed in opposite directions through each hole, creating a durable stitch that won’t unravel if the thread is broken. Roughly speaking, techniques can be broken into two categories: the method traditionally used for saddlery, where holes are made one at a time with an awl while stitching, and a more recent method which uses fork-shaped irons to punch stitching holes in before stitching.
The latter is simpler and strong enough for closing uppers. It requires stitching irons, some sort of mallet or maul to punch with, blunt-tipped saddlery needles, and heavyweight hand stitching thread. A wing divider for laying out stitching lines is useful, but this can be done with a ruler if needed.
French Pattern Hammer
A Hammer
One of the most versatile and important shoemaking tools, a hammer isn’t just—or even mainly—for driving tacks. They’re used for closing seams and flattening stitching lines, manipulating thick soling leather, and smoothing just about any part of the shoe. That’s aided by a wide, polished face that’s curved around the edges and flat in the center.
French pattern cobblers hammers, which Amara prefers for many tasks, also have a wide, wedge shaped back face thats useful for smoothing and manipulating awkward areas. Many cobblers also use a narrow-faced tack hammer for driving tacks and small nails. Hammers with roughly the same pattern can still have different head sizes and shapes that make them better suited to certain tasks. A heavy, wide head makes it easier to compress leather soles after stitching, while a more pronounced curve can help shape a fiddleback waist.
A piece of advice that applies to every tool on this list, but especially hammers, pliers, and awls: if you can find a more experienced shoemaker who’ll let you try out their tools, do it. Most have accumulated a wide variety of tools and can help you get through some of the trial and error involved in the incredibly personal task of building out a set of tools. That’s leaving aside countless other ways having a mentor can help you bypass roadblocks and progress faster.
Rasp
A Way to Wet Form the Insoles, A Rasp
Once the uppers are closed, the insole needs to be fashioned before lasting them. To give the insole the shape of the last, it will typically be wet formed—soaked in water, secured to the last, and then left to dry. That’s usually done with some sort of wrap, often bicycle tube, but Amara prefers using a cheap, non-stretch fabric like muslin.
The wet molded insole is then shaped to take the curves of the last. The rough work can be done with a knife, and then smoothed out using sandpaper or a rasp. This process is repeated for each subsequent layer added to the bottom of the shoe or boot.
Lasting Pliers
Lasting Pliers
Lasting pliers are used to pull the leather upper around the outsides of the last. With thinner leathers, you can-get by with a pair of needle-nose pliers if you don’t have lasting pliers yet. That’s how Amara started out. But for heavyweight boot uppers, that probably doesn’t cut it. And real lasting pliers will be a substantial quality of life (and quality of footwear) improvement.
Lasting pliers have a set of curved jaws and a striking face on the bottom. With the jaws gripping the edge of the upper, the striking face creates leverage to pull the upper around the last and insole, and then drives the tacks that fix the upper in place without requiring the shoemaker to switch tools.
A handful of variables determine whether a particular set of pliers is better at some tasks, or for some shoemakers, than others: these include the width of the face, the angle of the jaws, and the shape of the handle. Roughly speaking, narrower pliers can be useful for precisely shaping the tight curve of the toe, while wider pliers can be preferable for manipulating large or stubborn areas. As always, your mileage may vary, and if you get the chance to try out a few different versions to see what works, take it.
Bulldog Pliers
The other variation worth mentioning are bulldog pliers. Regular pliers (shoemaking or otherwise) have one handle attached to each jaw. When squeezed, the two handles close the jaws around whatever is in between them. Instead, bulldog pliers have a single handle attached to one jaw, and a small lever attached to the other, which is pushed against the shoe in order to create pressure and leverage.
The advantage of this design is that the more force thats applied when pulling on the uppers, the tighter the pliers grip. Thus, they’re often used for lasting the waist—especially on boots in heavy leathers—and were sometimes sold as “shank lasters.” Other shoemakers use them exclusively, or not at all—though as a rule of thumb they tend to be most useful on cowboy boots or when working with really heavy uppers.
A Pair of Vintage Awls
Curved and Square Awls or a Speedy Stitcher
On a Goodyear-welted boot, bottoming requires two seams: the inseam, which secures the upper and welt to the holdfast, and the outseam, which stitches the welt to the outsole.
The holes for the inseams are punched using a curved awl. These awls have a curved blade and a flat point that is oriented horizontally (imagine a spoon). The stitching holes for the outseam are made with a square awl. Similar in shape to a curved awl, the primary difference is the point, which is flat and oriented vertically (imagine a shark’s fin).
Speedy Stitcher
One alternative for stitching the outsoles is to use a speedy stitcher—essentially an awl with a hollow needle and a bobbin of thread mounted to the haft which exits through the end of the needle to create a lock stitch, sort of like a manual sewing machine. They’re useful for stitching through heavyweight materials like rubber outsoles, and create a stitch that’s strong enough to get the job done.
A Way to Seal Edges
The exposed fibers at the edge of a piece of leather absorb water, potentially damaging the leather and speeding up wear unless sealed. Sealing edges also serves a cosmetic purpose, creating shiny, consistent edges that look polished… because they are.
Burnishing edges can seal them without dedicated tools. The edges are trimmed to the desired shape and then sanded, beginning at low grits and proceeding to progressively higher ones. Once a smooth, even edge has been achieved, a burnishing agent—typically either Tokonole or Gum Tragacanth—is applied and then rubbed with a cloth or piece of canvas, before wax is applied, heated, and polished. This process is often used on small leather goods made from veg-tan, and while there are many variations and techniques, the principle is the same.
Heel Iron
Instead, many shoemakers use wax in combination with heel and edge irons. Waxes might be the one thing you don’t want to ask about—secret recipes abound and many shoemakers are extremely protective of them.
What does Amara use? She’s sworn to secrecy too, but says that you can use Yankee wax and the shoes will come out just fine.
Irons come in an enormous range of shapes and sizes, but what’s common to all of them is a metal surface that is heated—often using an alcohol lamp—and then used to melt wax into the leather, compress it, and harden its surface.
Edge irons are used to finish the edge of the welt and come in a range of sizes each designed for a sole stack of the corresponding thickness. They also come in a variety of patterns, which produce slight differences in the shape of the final edge. Waist irons perform a similar function beneath the arch, sealing the edge and creating a smooth, clean transition into the sole. Heel irons typically have a long, curved face with a step near the top of the face intended for finishing the tops of the heels.
Amara recommends that beginners buying just one iron choose a heel iron, because they have multiple different surfaces and aren’t limited to working on a single thickness of leather. Like all tools, they can be versatile in a pinch: there’s nothing stopping you from using a heel iron on the edges, waists, and for glazing the uppers, or using them at room temperature for smoothing and manipulating the shoe.
Where to Go From Here
Like we said at the top, this guide isn’t detailed enough to get you started on its own. Instead, think of each heading as a jumping off point for your own research—just don’t let that research keep you from actually getting started. Of course, to do that, you’ll need to buy some of these tools.
Many schools and shoemakers that regularly teach sell tools to their students, giving you the added benefit of some hands on guidance if there’s someone like that near you. Online, there’s ZegZug and Starko Tools, a made-to-order toolmaker based in Ukraine. If you’re looking for lasts, Lisa Sorrell carries them in her online store, and Springline—which manufactures lasts for many of the Northampton-based brands—also sells to individuals. Finally, there’s eBay. The price of shoemaking tools has gone up a lot in the last decade, but most of these tools were produced at much larger volumes in the past than they are today, and many of those old tools survive.
We’ll send you off with one more quote from our interview with Amara:
“There are shoemakers who are super amazing, who learned from a book. It’s astounding. It has to do with the person’s aptitude for craftsmanship and also what their personal goals are. If you have crazy feet that can’t fit in a manufactured shoe and you’re able to build yourself footwear that works for you, hallelujah… If you’re trying to do this on a professional level or for other people, then there might be a different standard. I’ve taught who’ve been making shoes for a decade and they love it.”
“They progress on their own and come in for an hour or a day, and it makes a big difference because there are things that are counterintuitive or that you wouldn’t think of that make a difference. It depends on how the person’s mind works and their aptitude for craftsmanship. It’s like some people just get geometry and some people just get algebra. And this is like geometry and algebra combined, so things may make more or less sense in certain areas.”
Beyond that, the best advice we can give you is to charge in, and find someone to help you if you get stuck… just do your diligence first and be respectful of their time. Only one thing is non-negotiable in shoemaking: you won’t make anything if you don’t start.