Video: The Hammer of God: A Classic Blacksmith Detective Mystery, Courtesy of "Father Brown" on the Hoof Blog

In this mystery of riddles, a man lies dead in the churchyard. The blacksmith's hammer is found nearby. Surely he committed the murder.

But not so fast...

What Is This? Can You Identify This Reader-Submitted Image?

by Fran Jurga | 10 February 2009 | Fran Jurga's Hoof Blog

What is this? If you know the answer, please send an email to fran@hoofcare.com and I'll publish your guesses and information from the reader who sent this in later this week. Please do NOT use the comments button to leave your answers because then the first correct answer will stop others from guessing! Super bonus points to anyone who can expound on this subject.

© Fran Jurga and Hoofcare Publishing. No use without permission. You only need to ask.

Fran Jurga's Hoof Blog is a between-issues news service for subscribers to Hoofcare and Lameness Journal. This blog may be read online at the blog page, checked via RSS feed, or received via a digest-type email (requires signup in box at top right of blog page).

To subscribe to Hoofcare and Lameness (the journal), please visit the main site, www.hoofcare.com, where many educational products and media related to equine lameness and hoof science can be found.

Questions or problems with this blog? Send email to blog@hoofcare.com.

Can someone tell me about this shoe?

My friend Xavier took this photo...it was on a display board and is not an antique shoe out of a museum.

I have a theory, what's yours?

And can someone explain why and when you'd want to double-fuller like that? It would be a good forging test to get the arcs parallel; this farrier did a good job. A smooth arc on a single crease is an art...but parallel ones?

Maybe one of the British farriers can tell us if there is a name for double fullering. However, this is not a British shoe, as far as I know.

Leaving a comment to explain your theory about this shoe is easy: scroll to the bottom of this post and click on the word "Comments". A new window will open. Type your comment in the box on the left. On the right, click on "name/url" and a little box drops down. (Or at least it does on my Mac with a Firefox browser.) Type your name or nickname in the box marked "name".

Then hit either "preview" to look over what you typed in the big box, followed by "publish comment". And you're done!

If that's too much to ask, you can email your comment to me and I will post it for you.

If you have a Google or Gmail account and are signed in, you can ask the blog to automatically email other comments about this shoe to you so you can respond to people who respond to you.

The Hoof Blog has a new policy of moderating comments, by the way, since some people have been getting a little edgy and maybe a little too presumptuous of my laissez-faire attitude, so it may take a little while before your comment shows up on the blog until I approve it.

And if you don't like horseshoes, please don't feel obliged to preach to those who do. Just wait til there is a subject you do like. Let's accentuate the positive, my friends. There's plenty of hoof to go around.