I've never understood how folks can get so hung up on flat horn vs round horn anvils, turning cams or no turning cams etc.etc. . These are tools to me, if they work for me then I use them.. if they don't work out for me but do for someone else, then they should use them I remember being in shoeing school and stating to Bud Beaston the 1st week or so, that my clips would be lot better if the anvil I had,had better edges. Bud turned a shoe on the anvil I was working on,pulled 6 or so beautiful clips on it and said to me that he agreed, the problem was the anvil! I'm sure that a very useful shoe could be turned on a wood stump or less by a competent smith. Point being that to me, some tools make a job easier but it is your hands,eyes,and brain that makes a horseshoe from the material . Regards Ray Steele
I made front to hind patterns. One on the horn and the other on the turning cams. Which is which? I can't tell. Of course my turning cams are hand made . . .
I'm impressed that if you can tell from a cell phone picture which end of my anvil I used to bend a piece of hot metal and I can't tell myself holding it in my hands.
Had a 50/50 shot at it. Toe looks more broad on that one. Like the bend was sharper. Of course could just be the angle of the picture
They are mirror pattern. One is about 2mm wider at the heels. Not sure how you know if the sharper bend came off the horn or the cams.
I don't care if someone does it differently. . .however I feel it takes more skill to properly use a round horn than it does to kink it around in a pair of cams. You take a Farrier that uses a horn properly and put their work next to a Farrier that uses cams and the one using the horn will have a nicer and more eye appealing job IMO Sent from my DROID RAZR using Tapatalk 2
George, you might look at your own behavior. You've not seen my work and are simply talking out of your ass. Your refusal to acknowledge that there is more than one way to do a job is pure inorance. Your standard is not necessarily THE standard.
I'm not pointing to one. You seem to forget that the profession is horseshoeing. Not forging, blacksmithing, or snobbery. It doesn't matter how we make the shoes, so long as they fit and we help the horse.
So, race track shoers are terrible because they don't run everything through a forge and they use stall jacks? Horses can't go well being cold shod? How is a bar or frog plate that is arc welded in inferior in any way to one that is forged? Yes, I can do some blacksmithing, but I see no sense in taking the long way around the barn when there's a door right in front of me. I don't see how you get the idea that you're on some moral high ground because you use one method instead if the other. If the horse receives the treatment he needs, regardless of how the shoes are made, maybe I'm not so mediocre.
Folks, can you imagine what the conversation must have been like when the poor sob produced the 1st metal anvil to whoever were the attending blacksmiths of the time , I can see it now, couple of guys arguing over their preferred rocks, one had been gathered as it rolled down the hill, round as the day it broke free of the gravel bank, the other guy with his favorite 400 pounder ,smooth and flat topped from the water wear of the river or stream bottom, bet they both jumped to the same conclusion when they saw the iron, something like" iron for an anvil, where does that fool think he'll ever get with that, nothing beats a good rock"! Maybe rocks will come back into fashion, better stock up. Regards Ray Steele
I don't "need" turning cams any more than I "need" a round horn. It's only half an Anvil. The other half is aluminum. It's light and quiet, but the rebound sucks.
It's a 5 hit quickie. No crisping the quarters. Made that way to show how you can build curves that flow over a set of turning cams.
