Although the shoemaker in old tales is pictured as being a solitary worker, after the early 1700s shoemakers began to join together in individual shops. Each of the members would specialize in a particular procedure in the process of shoemaking.

Some of the members would do several of the tasks; for instance, the clicker, whose job was to cut the leather for the uppers, was often the maker, who measured the customer's feet and who made the final assembly of the shoes. Other members of the shop would include the patternmaker, who made the patterns from which the leather was cut; the closer, who prepared and sewed the leather uppers together; the finisher, who lined, dyed, and waxed the shoes after the maker had fastened the soles to the uppers.

Another procedure in the early shops, which later became a trade in itself, was making the lasts. The lasts are carved from wood, and they serve as models of the feel that the shoes will fit and as working molds over which to make the shoes. The clicker uses a number of different knives to cut the leather for the uppers.

One of the more unusual looking tools is the large round or half-moon knife, with some of the earliest known examples dating back to about 1500 B.C. The closer takes the leather from the clicker, trims it, and sews the pieces together into the upper portion of the shoes. The maker then uses the lasting pincers to stretch the uppers onto the last, where it is tacked prior to sewing the insole. The temporary tacks are removed, and the sole is sewn, pegged, or nailed to the insole and the uppers. The sole was sewn to the uppers by first making a hole with a curved awl. Through this, the waxed thread was quickly inserted, using a flexible hog bristle as a needle.

The variety of tool styles and sizes used by shoemakers is quite large; one 19th century tool catalog offered the shoemaker 17 different styles of shoe hammers and 140 different styles of sewing awls. Edge irons were available in some 20 profiles, with 7 or more sizes each. They were used to finish the edges of the sole after it was fastened to the uppers. The similar glazing irons, the two-handed glazer, and the long stick are used to burnish the leather. The colted long stick has a stone on one side that was used to abrade the protruding pegs on the sole before burnishing. Inside the boot, the other ends of the pegs were removed and smoothed with the bladed peg cutter and the toothed peg breakers. If the soles were nailed, the metal cobbler's foot was used inside the shoe to clinch the nail-points.