Been at this 20 years and I still miss the old days sometimes

Last week I was fitting a set of shoes on a big draft horse and got to thinking about how much has changed. Three years ago I used to forge all my own shoes from bar stock, now I mostly grab pre-made keg shoes and just adjust them. I mean, it saves time but there's something about hammering out a shoe from scratch that felt more real. My old mentor back in 2005 would probably shake his head at me. Anyone else feel like the trade lost a little bit of the art side?

2 comments

2 Comments

julia_burns91mo ago

Oh man, you really hit it with "the art side" of things. I feel that so hard. I used to spend hours on a single hind shoe for a thoroughbred (filing, shaping, the whole nine yards) and now I just grab a pre-sized one and weld on a trailer. My old boss from the 90s would definitely give me the stink eye too if he saw my shop now. There's a real satisfaction in that hammer-on-anvil rhythm that a pre-made shoe just doesn't have, even if it's faster.

michael5191mo ago

Respectfully I gotta push back on this a little. That hammer-on-anvil rhythm is nice but the pre-sized shoes are actually better for the horse in a lot of cases. I've seen guys spend all that time hand-forging a shoe only to nail on something that doesn't fit the hoof wall quite right because they got the shape slightly off. The pre-sized ones are heat treated and tested for consistency across the whole batch too. There's a reason the industry moved this direction and it's not just about being lazy or fast.