A frequent criticism of contest shoes is that they often lack practical use in everyday shoeing. Although I will argue that the lessons learned in making any shoe are transferable to your work, this criticism remains. With this in mind, I wanted to offer a shoe for this mail-in challenge that would have plenty of lessons, as well as practical use.

For the fifth annual Summit Mail-In Forging Exercise, sponsored by VICTORY, here is a concave shoe with clips and stud holes that has some tough steps, but will result in a functional shoe that can be nailed onto some sport horses.

More On This Concave Shoe

This shoe will teach finesse while giving you a useful shoe. Look at these views of the finished shoes to the right. I like forging challenges that feature concave stock. First, I like it in this challenge because you aren’t going to the drill press. If we didn’t use concave in this exercise, you wouldn’t have to stud punch — you could just drill holes. With the stud punch, you have to create the collars. I used to hate using concave on shoes I had to drill and tap because I didn’t want to put in…