Show off your Horse Shoes

[OldKat]

@Carl Russell 3979 wrote:

I finally have a minute to expound on the ice shoe thing.

Practical application of animal power depends on giving advantage to the animals when applying their power to a task. Frozen conditions, especially ice, or at least hard packed frozen snow, offer incredible advantage for transporting logs, or any heavy load for that matter.

Borium and drill-tek offer some protection against slipping if you are just traveling on a icy road, or crossing some icy patches on a skid trail, but when you get 600, 800, or 1000 BF on a sled on ice you want to have shoes with fail-safe traction.

I got several pair of these drive caulk shoes about 15 years ago, and found them to be excellent. There are dropped forged steel so they wear very little. The weak link is that they haven’t been made for years, and I eventually ran out of caulks. Last winter I was told of an old-timer who had a bucket of shoes in his barn, including three un-opened boxes of caulks.

I only use these shoes in the winter, to save them explicitly for use on ice. During the 3 other months, I use a store bought pulling shoe, which are virtually useless right now with all the rain and ice we’ve been getting. I plan to put on the drive caulks this weekend, then get the bobsled out and start packing a trail.

They do look dangerous, but I have found that the horses get very few injuries, and it is always winter when I use them, so the cuts are clean, and generally heal quickly. The biggest problem is they cut up the barn floor wicked.

Carl.

That is funny Carl. Strangely enough I can relate to it. I say our summer here is 9 months and the other three months are “not-summer”, as there is no real winter (Except maybe this year. I saw yesterday that Houston was ahead of Philly, NY and Boston for December snowfall)

Interesting stuff nevertheless.

[Carl Russell]

One other solution I have used to advantage is to sharpen the caulks of the pulling shoe. I cut a “v” out of the center of the front bar and sharpen the 2 resulting caulks. The outside heel caulk I sharpen with the bevel on the back side of the caulk, and the inside caulk I sharpen laterally with the bevel on the side facing the other foot. The orientation of the caulks is similar to the way I set up the drive caulks. This works pretty well, and I’ve used them for several winters while I was out of drive caulks.

Yeah, they used to say Vermont has really long winters, followed by 3 months of damn poor sledding. Really, I only use the sharp shoes Dec-Mar,Apr.

Carl

[Carl Russell]

This winter I am trying another method. I used the brazing rod with Drill-tex and put some gripping points on the caulks of pulling shoes.

Carl

[Matthew]

I have seen a blunt caulk you can drive in on the inside hole so the horse dosen’t cut thair leg if they step on themselvs.

[Anonymous]

I am limited in my IT. skills and can’t seem to post my pictures. I’ll put them on my facebook page.

Carl I don’t know if they are as good as the old ones but I’v been using a new drive in stud or cualk for two years now. And like them alot. They are a two piece stud the outers are mild steel and inner is borium. As the stud wears the mild steel is worn away faster than the hard borium. So the more the stud wears the sharper it gets. Untill recently all I could find were little things meant for light horses but these new ones are as big and beafy. They are intended to be pressed into the shoe. However due to drilling the shoe also weakens it and we had problems with front shoes breaking. This year I cut the shanks off and MIG welded them in place. Last year we had four horses running drive in studs and one with pulling shoes tipped with borium tits. The studs out lasted the nail holes and shoes.

I get the studs in pagages of 50 from Brubacher’s Harness Shop in Wallenstein Ontario. I think the cost is $1.50 per stud for the #7s
My facebook page is Tristan L.W. Kelley

(Tristan I cut and pasted this in from the photo gallery….CBR)

[Mark Cowdrey]

Carl,
That setup looks similar to the shoes John Hammond made and put on for me. See the 3 pictures I posted in the gallery under “Working Horses”. They have worked great for me. It is a front hoof that is shown. I run the rim pads fronts only.
Mark

[IMG]http://www.draftanimalpower.com/photoplog/images/41/1_P1010002crpd.JPG[/IMG]

[IMG]http://www.draftanimalpower.com/photoplog/images/41/1_P1010004crpd.JPG[/IMG]

(Mark I copied and pasted these from the photo gallery….. CBR)

[Livewater Farm]

carl can not help but notice all the good (sh–) in you shop around the anvil I am HOARDER OF ALLL KINDS OF METAL comes from my days as a blacksmith one comment I have found drill tek to be tooo coarse and the grainuals will break off if struck hard against a rock or hard ground I found a fine grain borium slowly built up to any style ice caulk will wear better without chipping fine grain allows you to build to a nipple style point along toe and heal caulks just my experience
Bill

[J-L]

I found the same to be true Livewater, I’d always use somewhat finer Borium and braze it on good and solid. The trick is to bring it to a point or ‘nipple’ like you say. With all the rocky ground we have here, the bigger chips just tended to be too brittle.

[Carl Russell]

I have been testing the points with the hammer. I also have found that by heating the metal to a point where I can make a small pool before applying the Drill-tex. I have had pretty good luck so far, and the stuff wears really hard too. The rest of the caulk wears down around it.

Yes Bill, I tell Lisa that all that Sh– is my “Gold Mine”. She isn’t so convinced:eek:, but I did show her the video of Ben’s Mill. At least she understands theoretically now anyway.

Carl

[Carl Russell]

I took the liberty to copy and paste photos from the gallery that were posted by Mark and Tristan….. go back to their posts to review the pics.

Carl

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