Pounding Shoes

Watching Jeff Engler and Chad Edwards forge a pair of horseshoes is like watching gods from the Iron Age come to life. On a heated anvil, a 2 ½ pound glowing orange shard of steel is slowly shaped with powerful blows from ringing hammers. The ancient process, modernized only with the addition of a 4,000 degree gas powered furnace, is visceral and artistic.

Says Engler, Farrier Instructor for Walla Walla Community College, “We are keeping the traditional skills alive.”

Engler and his student Edwards are relentless and tireless as they slowly forge the molten steel into the familiar U shape. Holes for the nails must be measured and punched through the red molten metal. Ridges which will provide traction must be shaped in each shoe’s surface. Each time one of the fiery shoes is removed from the furnace for shaping, the other, having been pounded as much as it will allow, is thrust carefully back into the flames. Only the glowing steel can be shaped and only a little bit at a time.

Thirty two minutes after the process begins the sweating pair stops work on a serviceable, completed pair of large horse shoes which will be worn by a huge draft horse.

Twenty year old Chad Edwards, from Fields, Oregon says, “My family has a ranch. I grew up around horses. I want to make a career of this.”

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