Every girl needs more shoes

I know, it's been a while since I last put up a post.  But I haven't had a lot to talk about until today.  Well, that's not entirely true.  But it would have been really depressing to read since it would have consisted of whining and pissing and moaning about how horrible it was.  Mind you, I'll talk about it anyway, but it won't be as horrible to read since I'm in a much better mood now.

So!  Since last we talked, I passed my aluminum shoes.  Full set of four fullered shoes.  Aluminum is really easy to work with and responds well to the hammer.  There's just one problem with it...if you leave it in the fire too long, it disintegrates.  It doesn't melt, mind you.  It just falls apart.  Like when a part of a soft cookie breaks off and falls to the ground.  So you have to hold it in the forge with your tongs and count to 15 seconds.  Then you drag the butt end of your hammer across the aluminum and if it leaves a black mark, the metal is hot enough to work.  If it doesn't leave a mark, you put it back for 5 more seconds and check it again.  Never do you set it down.  Or as Bill put it, if you look away from it, it's been in the fire too long.

I spent all last week working on those.  One of the fronts fell apart on me, so I had to make another one.  And technically, my fullers were too far inside for a couple of spots on the fronts.  But Bill was feeling generous and passed me anyway because he understood my intention and the metal was kind of thin to hold a proper fuller.  Those passed on Saturday of last week, so then it was on to bar shoes for me!

Now, the next burning question: What's a bar shoe and what's it used for?  Well, the best way to describe a bar shoe is to imagine a regular horseshoe, then put a solid bar of metal across the bottom connecting the heels.  It's used in cases where the heels are having a problem of some kind and need to be protected or if the horse needs more support on the foot than a regular shoe.  A good example is a horse that's been staying here at the school for about a month now.  This horse had a big section of his hoof that he caught in a wire fence and ripped off.  The hoof wall was dead on the outside of his right hind foot from about the middle of the quarter on that side all the way back to the heel and all the way up to almost the hairline.  The whole hoof wall, right in to the sensitive structures underneath.  So we took a Dremel tool and pared out as much dead hoof as possible, though some had to remain so that a shoe could be nailed on.  Austin made a bar shoe and nailed it on so that the horse would have something to support the foot while the hoof wall was missing.  Repairing the hoof with acrylic wasn't possible at first because of infection.  If you cover up an infection, if only gets worse because there's no way to treat it externally and the bacteria breed like crazy in an oxygen deficient environment.  The bar shoe supported the foot by distributing the weight better across the foot where the hoof wall was missing.  Once we got the infection out, Austin applied an acrylic to the foot to make a fake hoof wall.  Apparently, you can rasp it and nail a shoe into it just like a normal foot.  As the new hoof grows out from the hairline, the acrylic will be trimmed and rasped off from the bottom as though it were part of the hoof until the new hoof grows all the way out.  Cool, huh?

So, back to me and bar shoes.  I've been hearing from a lot of people that the hard part isn't shaping the shoe, it's welding the ends together at the bottom.  That's right, forge welding.  Basically, you take the ends of the metal, bring them together, apply flux, get everything yellow hot, then tap it together to weld it.  On a bar shoe, the two ends meet in the middle of the bottom bar between the heels.  And everyone told me that was the bitch of the whole thing.  Well, I tried it today.  And got a solid weld first try.  *grin*  I credit it to Alberto, who gave me the demo Thursday morning and some great tips.  Like brush all the slag off before applying the flux and make sure the anvil is hot before welding because otherwise the anvil will suck all the heat out of the metal and the weld won't hold.  And you have to tap the weld line gently at first and gradually increase the power of the strikes.  So now I just have to make a second bar shoe and get them passed.  Once I get that, I'll have completed all the minimum forge requirements for the 12 week program.  There's still 4 more shoes I can learn to make after that, egg bar shoe, heart bar shoe, aluminum bar shoe, and patton bar shoe.  But I don't have to complete the list, just up through regular bar shoes.  It's a good end to a week that started really crappy.

OK, here's the part where I tell why I haven't posted in a while.  This week started pretty horribly.  On Monday, they popped a graded barn day on us.  I was assigned two front feet.  I had to trim them to my satisfaction, then call an instructor over to grade my trimming.  Then, I had to make a pair of fullered shoes with toe clips and fit them to the horse, then have an instructor grade the shoes and the fit.  Finally, I had to hot fit them and nail them on and have an instructor grade the finished product.  Took me all friggin' day!  I'm not fast at making shoes.  I've gotten a little faster since, but I've been practicing since that day.  I can knock out a pair in an hour now.  Which is still kind of slow, but I'm trying to balance speed with nailability.  If they want it faster, the shoes probably wouldn't nail on because of shoddy workmanship.  And I hate doing things half assed.  But on Monday, it took me closer to 2 hours I think to make my shoes.  Ugh!

Then, on Tuesday, we got the client in that always wants clips on their horses.  I had a pair of hinds that day and the horse was a leaner.  This big fat ass horse putting all his weight on me and I was trying to fit hind shoes with quarter clips.  Let's just say that I was conducting primal scream therapy in the barn that day.  I was the last one under a horse and frusterated as hell.  The shoes weren't fitting well, my clips looked like crap, and did I mention the horse was a leaner that didn't like to pick his feet up?  It's hard to burn on a shoe when the horse doesn't cooperate.  You have to be able to hold a really hot shoe on tongs with one hand and pick up the foot with the other.  Then you put the shoe on the foot and hold your breath, because the smell of hot shoeing is horrible.  Imagine the stink of rolling up hair into a cigar and smoking it.  The smoke comes up off the foot and right into your face, so you're working half blind and not breathing.  If you make the mistake of opening your mouth, you can taste it in the back of your throat.  >.<  For those of you that have ever smelled your clothes after being in a smoky bar or nightclub, this is worse.  Even my bra smelled of fried hoof, and that was through my t-shirt. 

This might make a few of you surprised.  I basically told one of my dormmates she could kiss my ass today.  I know I've talked about the barn princess Isabelle before.  Well, today I was hunched over looking at my horse's feet to make sure the angles visibly matched on the feet.  I heard this voice from behind me saying, "Is that really necessary, sticking your ass in my face?"  Without looking back, I replied, "Yes, it is.  I'm checking my horse's feet."  I then walked to the other side of the horse to check from the other side and added, "You can kiss it while it's there if you'd like."  All I heard back was this terse little "No, thank you".  But I was grinning like a bandit, let me assure you!  Makes me glad I only have to put up with her for another two weeks.

That's right, I'm almost out of here.  Two more full weeks.  I probably won't be able to pass the time limit for the practical portion of the journeyman's test, but we'll see.  And anyway, Jerry agrees with me that quality is better than quantity.  I've discussed it with him and he assures me the quality of my work is quite good, so I'm happy with that.  =)  And I know that with time and practice, I'll just keep getting better.  I've been able to work on horses with chronic founder and crappy feet and make them better.  And with the success of my welding today, I now have the basic skills to make many more shoes that a vet may require for therapeutic purposes.  I do hope to get the basic shapes for egg bar and heart bar shoes even if I don't actually make them so that I can practice once I leave here.  Time will tell, hmm?

This is me, signing off.

Fun with Sliders

Much coolness!

So, having passed my sliderettes and gone on to sliders, I passed them on the first try, too!  They passed last Monday, so I started in on my fullered shoes.  I know, I know...what the hell's a fuller??  Well, if you look at a normal mass produced horseshoe, they have grooves on each of the sides that the holes sit in.  Those grooves are fullers.  In other words, my shoes now have to have grooves for the holes to sit in rather than just having the holes flush with the surface of the shoe.  Yes, there's special tools used to make fullered shoes. 

I worked all week on my fullered shoes, because I wanted to get them right and because the metal used is slightly thicker than what I was previously using.  And because I had to turn in a full set of four, a pair each of fronts and hinds.  The first shoe I worked on I had to scrap because the fuller was too far to the inside and it wouldn't have nailed on.  Wait, wait, I know...what do you mean 'too far to the inside'?  Well if the holes are too far toward the inside edge of the shoe, they won't drive into the hoof wall.  They'll drive into the sensitive part of the foot and then all kinds of problems ensue.  The horse's foot will bleed, it hurts the horse, and it could potentially form an abscess.  Nails don't go into the sole or the white line, they go in the hoof wall.  So the nail holes have to be far enough to the outside of the shoe that it nails into the wall, but not so far out that the shoe is unstable because there's not enough metal left to hold the nail in the shoe.  Tricky, huh?  Yes, even in making shoes there's a catch.  lol!  But back to fullered shoes.  I finished the full set today and they passed first try.  So now, my next shoes to make are a full set of aluminum fullered shoes.  Tomorrow's task...

The other cool thing that happened was that on Friday, we had two horses come in that needed slider plates put on.  One horse already had sliders on, so that one turned into a reset.  The other needed a pair made, and that was the horse I was working on.  Park got the reset.  Just luck of the draw, by the way, and not engineered that way.  Though it was guaranteed that we were the ones to work on those two horses, since we're the only two that were here that could even make sliders.  Anyone else that could make them was off at a forging and shoeing competition down in Texas.  From what I hear, they're doing pretty damn good, too.  Alberto has been placing first and second and Jonothan got a third place.  I'm not there because I'm not terribly fast at either forging or shoeing.  I place quality over quantity.

So!  It looked like I was going to have to push the envelope of my forging skills and knock out a pair of sliders as fast as I possibly could.  Then we measured the horse's feet.  5 1/2 inches on the diagonal.  Double that to 11 inches, then add 1 1/2 inches to account for the fact that it was sliders, and that was the length of steel needed to make a shoe that fit.  Wait a minute...that makes 12 1/2 inches...I used 12 1/2 inches of steel for the pair I made that passed...

Yep, you guessed it.  My pair of sliders got slightly widened and put on a horse!  All by myself.  Coolness!  Of course, now I have to make another pair of sliders as display pieces, but that's not a big deal.  The big deal is that I got to put my own handmade shoes on a horse all by myself!  And I did a good job, too, imho.  Yes, photos are following, further down in this posting.  *grin*

First, this is the pair of sliders I made.  Yes, the ones that went on the horse, so I don't actually have them anymore.  But like I said, I'll make another pair to show off.  And remember what I was saying about the nail holes and notice how far out to the sides of the shoes they are.  That's where the hoof wall actually sits with respect to the shoes.

This is a slider compared to a sliderette.  The slider is the fat one on the left.  Notice the shape is the same, just the widths are different.  Sliders make nice flat surface for reining horses to slide on when they make that sliding stop.  The toe is also either rolled or rockered so that it doesn't dig into the ground like a blunt surface would.  Probably the toe of the sliderette is also supposed to be either rolled or rockered, but I'm not certain and they didn't tell me to make it that way so I didn't.

This is the actual shoe on the foot.  If you look close, you'll see the trailer of the shoe extending past the heel of the foot.  Yes, it's supposed to look like that.  I believe we discussed that in a previous blog, but this is what it looks like.  The horse was very good about letting me put the sliders on, except for leaning on me some.  With all his heavy muscls developed from sliding, his butt was somewhat heavy...

Now, some of you have asked what it looks like when I'm shoeing the horse and how I hold the foot.  While this isn't the best picture of that, it does serve to somewhat illustrate how I hold a hind foot to work on it while at the same time showing off the slider I put on that particular foot.  If you look close, you'll see that my left elbow is actually hooked over the top of the horse's hock and his lower leg is running down the side of my left hip with his fetlock tucked into my crotch.  Yes, this is the most comfortable position to work in.  The horse's leg is supported by my legs quite well, which leaves both my hands free to work on the foot.  My legs are together down to the knee, so my thighs make a stable platform, while having my feet spread and pigeon-toed in gives me secure footing.  Go ahead and try out the position yourself and let me know how long you can stand crouched down and pigeon-toed before your legs start to shake.  Trust me, I can stand for a lot longer now than when I started.

By comparison, this is how I work on a front foot.  The position is similar, but the foot is gripped beteen my thighs.  Holding on to the toe of the foot gives me a stable platform for working.  And it's also the best point of control if the horse starts to pull the foot away.  This was a different horse on a different day, by the way.  But the concept is the same for every horse.  Again with the closed thighs and pigeon-toed stance.  This one is a better example of just how bent over I am when working, though, as on the other photo I was done with the foot and just showing it off.  This one, I was actually working on the foot at the time the photo was taken.

These are the fullered shoes.  The photo's not the best, but you can somewhat tell that there's grooves in the sides where the nail holes are located.  The top pair are fronts and the bottom pair are hinds.  Fancy, huh?

And this is a comparison between a basic front shoe and a fullered front shoe.  The basic is on the left.  The astute observer might notice that the basic shoe has three holes while the fullered shoe has four.  Why?  I don't know.  That's just how I was instructed to make it.  But looking at it from the perspective of someone that has to put it on a horse, four nail holes are better.  Why?  Because in order to affix a shoe firmly to a foot, you have to use three nails.  Now, you could use the shoe that has only three holes, but what if you quick the horse?  When that happens, you can't use the same hole again because you've just made the horse bleed.  If you have only three holes, you're shit out of luck, now aren't you?  But if you have four holes, you've got a spare.  And it also gives you choices.  What it the hoof is badly broken out just where one of those nails is supposed to go?  With four holes, you've got a back up plan in case one of the nails just won't nail on for whatever reason.

Anyway, I think this edition has run a tad long.  But there was so much to talk about!  As usual, if there's any questions or requests, feel free to put them in comments.  I do check, honest.  =)

This is me, signing off.

Shoes, glorious shoes!

Forgework is finally starting to make sense!  I passed my clips Monday and started in right away on sliderettes.  And the first pair I made were good enough to pass!  So now I'm on to full sliders.  My goal is to get a pair made and passed by the end of Saturday so I can move on to fullered shoes.  I know, I know, what the hell does all that mean?  Well, give me a few to explain.  I even have pictures to help illustrate what the hell I'm talking about.

 This first picture is of a basic hind shoe.  This one passed at the beginning of last week, which is when I started working on clips.  I must have knocked out three dozen clips or so before I felt good about them.  The other problem was that I first was using a borrowed clip starter and all my clips were turning out too wide.  So I spent $36 and bought a new hammer, a cross pein hammer.  It has a normal head on one side and a thin, wedged head on the other.  I've been told it can be used for shoe welding too, which was one of the selling points.  But more on clips in a minute.

This second picture is a comparison of a basic front shoe versus a basic hind shoe.  The front shoe is the round one on the left, the hind shoe is the more triangular one on the right.  You see, a horse's front feet are a different shape than the back feet.  These shoes would fit a perfect shaped foot.  Of which there is none, of course.  What happens in the real world is that you start with a basic keg shoe and shape it to the foot you're shoeing.  Some few shoes come preshaped to either a front or hind shape, but a keg shoe is a keg shoe and they only come in one shape.  We have to know the basic shapes so that we can form the shoes to at least a close approximation of the foot before final shaping to the actual foot.

Now, back to those blasted clips.  I know I've described them before, but this photo is angled to show them to their best advantage.  The top two shoes are fronts with toe clips, the bottom two are hind shoes with quarter clips.  Toe and quarter refers to the part of the hoof the clip is touching.  The toe is the front of the foot, the quarters are the sides, and the heels are toward the back.  These are the full set of shoes that passed.  Hell of a lot of work, let me assure you!  And then you burn them on to the bottom of the foot.  The clips are burned to the sides of the foot, too, so that they sit flush with the outside of the hoof wall. 

 Once those were knocked out and passed Monday, I started in on these babies.  These are sliderettes.  An astute observer would notice that they're kind of similar to hind shoes in shape and you'd be right.  That's because sliderettes and their bigger cousins, sliders, are only put on hind feet.  They're used in western style riding, during reining comeptitions.  You know those sliding stops you see so much in competitions?  These shoes are specifically designed to help with those.  Sliders are big flat shoes that extend past the heels of the hind feet.  The flat surface allows the horse to slide farther, while the trailers on the heels dig into the ground to keep the horse's feet from going out from under them completely and protect the back of the horse's leg just above the foot from dragging on the ground.  The only difference between sliderettes and sliders is a quarter of an inch of width.  Sliders are fatter than sliderettes.

This photo is a comparison between a basic hind shoe and a sliderette.  Notice how much longer the heels are and how they turn back out compared to the heels on the basic hind shoe.  The piece of metal you start with is only an inch longer for the sliderette than for the hind shoe and the nail holes are placed in the same spots for each shoe.  Oh, and in case it wasn't clear, the extra metal on each heel is called a trailer.  Other shoes can have trailers as well, for a variety of purposes, sometimes even on only one side and not the other.  Trailers grab the heels as they hit the ground and direct the motion of the foot, so another reason to have trailers on the sliderettes is to direct the foot into a straight line as they both drag equally.  Yes, this means that a trailer on only one heel would direct the foot to turn in that direction.  We're learning a lot tonight, aren't we?

Anyway, now that I've filled everyone's heads with more information than they probably wanted to know about shoes, I guess I better wrap this up.  It's almost bedtime and sleep is important to me being able to work in the barn tomorrow.  Today was a good day and I'm hoping tomorrow goes well, too.

This is me, signing off.