Choosing Between Handmade and Keg Horseshoes

No joke. How do you decide whether to use an already made shoe or forge your own? If you have a forge at home, do you just make stock for yourself, or are you making some shoes for special cases.

For those who are painfully slow at forging handmades, ( such as myself ), Kegs are the answer. Handmades can be made to exact needs of the horse. Some kegs can be modified to work nearly same. For me kegs take time off the shoeing, though I want to get good enough to do some handmades at the horse.

I would rather use all handmades but people aren't willing to pay me what I feel I should make for them. So I generally use kegs because they are quick and easy.

I use handmades when I use toe clips because I don't think kegs generally have course enough nail holes. I use them when I need a specialty shoe. I also use them on bigger feet that just need a heavier shoe than what I can get in a keg.

You buy different sizes of steel and cut the length you need to make a horseshoe.

Karen not alot of farriers make every shoe they put on
i do know a few in the UK that make all there shoes
you will find the farriers that do this have two or three apprentices
so there is always one App left in the forge
in our camp there is not a week goes by that we dont make some hand=mades
if you can make hand-mades well there are a lot of + over kegs
to give you an idea 1st year app would be exspected to make
anything from 30 to 40 pairs of shoes a day when in the forge
its nice to make them i find

I make handmade shoes whenever I don't have a suitable keg shoe to meet the needs of a particular horse. The quality and selection of keg shoes available seems to get better every year.

But as the great philosopher Mic Jagger says, "You can't always get what you want." So sometimes I make what I need.

I'd have said there are sensibly and logically several factors that would lead the decision.

1. Is the horse within standard parameters?

2. Will a normal keg shoe serve its purpose?

3. Is the keg shoe cheaper? (including time and materials)

It would be indulgent imo for any farrier to decide to make shoes ignoring the above and 'just' because he can and has the skill.

Here all 'can' make shoes but they don't because it would not be efficient nor effective nor prudent. they're made when necessary. that does sometimes include when the apprentice is in training and being assessed in the work place.

The way the apprenticeships work though is that they spend considerable time on block release in college and at placements and doing forge work. The training farriers who employ apprentices also tend to encourage entry into competition work so that their trainees can have their work validated and judged.

True every apprentice that goes on to be a master can make shoes
but one reason i found is they dont cary it on because they dont

like the forge work.
i have seen this in alot of Apprentices going through the system

Everyone that completes their apprenticeship does forge work which includes making shoes.

http://62.3.215.19/fta/PDFs/Guide to the Advanced Apprentice.pdf

http://www.summitforge.co.uk/registeredfarrier1.html

If they want to go on then through the qualification strata then there's further necessity to manufacture shoes to be judged.

http://www.wcf.org.uk/files/2012 AWCF Syllabus.pdf

Even so though, this isn't in my experience ever done at the cost to the customer and by hand-making shoes for a customer to pay for when there is absolutely no necessity considering the criteria in my earlier posting.

i like John would prefer to nail on only handmades but due to old age and idleness i am using more readymades . i am about 50/50 at the minute . all the hairies are in handmades because you can nail em up better , coarser and pitched nailholes make the job so much easier , in fact i believe its the nailholes that give handmade shoes the advantage when it comes to shoeing .

I agree with the nails. You have to cheat the toe quarter on a lot of horses in order to get the nails deep enough using kegs.

Eric Russell

Eric in here in the uk all apprentices have to make shoes as a basic criteria , too many it gets in the blood and like John , David , Gary myself and many others here we carry on using handmades , a lot of mates have never made a shoe since gaining their dip , some of the modern readymades are very good but as you say the pitch just is not there . mustad and kerk 3/4 fullered dont seem to be bad , i like the mustad BM shoes but i have never found a flat shoe that i can nail
chris

Kerkhearts are my favorites at the moment, but price kinda gets up there. St. Croix is more cost effective.

For my driving horses, I like handmades because they last longer. Also for Islandic customers who want 10mm thick shoes, I hand make. I mostly use keg shoes for the same reason as most - the cost and easy to use. Special shoes I make. For my sliding shoes, I like to buy blanks and punch my own holes.

In my area very few people learn to make handmades. Many Farriers around here can't even swing a hammer.

I like the kerks sx8 / Df's up to a 2 or 3. The nails are place far enough off the toe to give me the ability to either fit to the toe or set the shoe back and still use the toe nails. Once you get up to a 3 or 4 I think there's not enough steel for the foot. I wish the sx8 hinds didn't come so squared because it's a lot of work to take it out, which I do on almost every horse.

LOL ,

Eric the reason i like the mustad shoe and kerk shoes is because of that square toe behind , as i said before i like to set the hind toe back on comp horses its the way i prefer
chris

LOL, that's why I mostly stock front pattern SX8 to make hinds. It seems faster to set the toe where I want it and hot cut the heels with a front pattern than it is to take the corners out of a squared hind pattern. I prefer Ray Steele's RG8 to Kerk SX8. But even the toe shape on the his hinds is not that bad. Also, the steel and the shoe itself is of very high quality with a cost that is half of a comparable shoe from other brands.



Kim,

If you aren't buying in bulk, you ought to be buying your kegs from Ray Steele . . . save you a lot of $$$.

dont know what happened there
Tom and eric are those the type of kegs your useing?

Your reply ended up in the Quote it'self. Those look similar to the Kerkhaerts.

i would not like to be fitting them all day long
a word comes to mind SHAPELESS