Fig. 44.—Machine-made Shoe—Fore-foot.
Fig. 45.—Machine-made Shoe—Hind-foot.
Machine-made Shoes. Horse-shoeing is distinctly an art requiring special skill for its proper performance. It is also one of the most laborious of all skilled trades. Anything which lightens mechanical toil tends to improve the mental and artistic qualities of the workman, and all applications of machinery which lessen the heavy manual labour of the farrier may therefore be looked upon as improvements. Machinery has lightened the labour of shoe-making in two ways—by supplying various patterns of grooved and bevelled iron in bars, which only require cutting into lengths and turning round to form a shoe, and also by making shoes all ready to be fitted to the foot. Machinery has not yet turned out a shoe as good and durable and well finished as the best workman can produce by hand, but it can produce many forms of shoes as good for all practical purposes, and it has this advantage—all are alike. Bad workmen make bad shoes, but a machine, once able to produce a good model, can repeat it exactly, therefore machine-made shoes of a proper pattern are superior to all but the very best hand-made shoes. Economy, of course, is on the side of the article produced by machinery, and all large firms keeping their own farriers find a great saving by buying the ready-made shoes. Under conditions when shoes must be fitted without a fire, as in coal mines, or in the case of armies during a campaign, the machine-made article has the advantages of regularity of form and a true level bearing surface.
Fig. 46.—Sections of rolled bar iron.
In little shops where often only one man is at work, either machine-made shoes or prepared bar iron offer great conveniences. The prepared bars can be bought seated on the foot-surface and with a single or double groove on the ground-surface. Very narrow bars suitable for tips, "Charlier," or light hack shoes are now widely used, and a special bar—flat on the foot-surface, concave to the ground—can be obtained which only requires cutting into lengths and turning round to form a first-class hunting-shoe.