Friday, July 20, 2007

Farrier Competition Shoes: Torturous Tech Specs for Stoneleigh International

I've just had a peek at the specimen shoes for the International Team Competition at Stoneleigh in England, to be held August 23-26. The sheer number of them and the technical specs make a chilling homework list for invited farrier teams.

What you are looking at (above) is a setdown bar shoe, which would be difficult enough but this one is also graduated from toe to heel. So the branches have to match. But with the bar set down, even the 3-d is 3-d.

Stoneleigh is probably the world's most coveted farrier competition. It is contested with chilling determination and fortitude by invited nations.

Have a look for yourself, the shoes are posted on the NAFBAE website.

I couldn't even draw these shoes to spec, let alone attempt to forge one. They are an intimidating lineup of asymmetric and 3-D conundrums.

The shoe below is a (very) square toe egg bar with interesting placement of the clips.

One of the shoes listed is a lateral resistance shoe. Can someone please click on the comments button and tell me what a lateral resistance shoe does? It's an intriguing name; there's also a lateral extension; I know what that is...no doubt one of these years there will be a combo resistance/extension shoe...