Training your eye is one of the most important skills you will learn as a farrier. It’s also one of the skills for which time has no substitute. Fortunately, new and veteran farriers alike have a variety of measurement tools that can serve as a guide, whether you’re at a barn earning your living or at a competition honing your shoemaking skills. One measurement tool I still find invaluable, especially when I compete with the American Farriers Team, is calipers. Calipers are like your training wheels whenever you are preparing for contests or certifications. There are a couple of key things you can do with calipers to improve your efficiency at the anvil and accuracy when making nail holes.

First, take your calipers and measure from the central sulcus to the point of the buttress (Figure 1). That will give you the caliper measurement for where your first nail hole should be from the center of the toe (Figure 2). When you put your shoe on the anvil, the center of your heel should be under your first nail hole. Having that information, along with the width measurement, the heel measurement and the toe-to-heel measurement, you should almost be able to fit it in one trip to the foot.

Measure from the central sulcus to the point of the buttress (Figure 1). That will give you the caliper measurement for where your first nail hole should be from the center of the toe (Figure 2)

Another measurement I…