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Just read an old farrier manual that said some draft horses used to get shoes weighing over 5 pounds each.
I found this in a 1920s textbook at a used book store in Omaha. It got me thinking about how much the work and the tools have changed since then. Do you think modern forging and materials have made that kind of weight totally unnecessary, or is there still a place for that kind of heavy ironwork on certain jobs?
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jana_price5mo ago
Actually, those old 5 pound shoes were often for oxen, not draft horses. Oxen have cloven hooves so they needed a two-part shoe that added up to a lot of iron. For a single horse shoe, even for a big draft, that weight seems really high. Modern steel is stronger, so we use less material for the same job. Do you think the manual might have been talking about a paired set for an ox?
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the_ben5mo ago
You might be onto something with the ox shoe idea. But I've seen old farrier books list single draft horse shoes hitting five pounds before. They used a lot more iron because it was softer stuff that wore down fast. A big Percheron or Shire needs a huge shoe, and with the old methods they'd just pile on material to make it last. Modern alloys let us make them thinner and lighter for the same wear.
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kim.charlie3mo ago
@jana_price did you account for the extra weight from frost nails? Those old books mention them a lot. They'd drive big square nails through the shoe into the hoof wall. Meant to freeze up and hold better in winter. A set of those things adds some serious heft. Easy to miscount that as iron weight if you're just reading the shoe specs.
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