Steve Prescott found himself in a small pickle.

The Raleigh, N.C., farrier prefers gouging to keep his clinches tight, but he didn’t have the tool in his rig. Prescott decided to improvise.

“I took an old clinch cutter and made a gouge out of it,” he told attendees at the 2014 International Hoof-Care Summit in Cincinnati. “What you’re looking to do is just make a gouge that fits the nail.”

Prescott marked where he wanted the gouge to be at the center of the business end of the clinch cutter (Figure 1).

Placing the tool in a vise and using a rat-tail file, he cut a groove on one side of the clinch cutter (Figure 2).

Turning it over, he filed down the backside (Figure 3) to complete the quick project.

“It’s fast and cheap,” Prescott says. “You can make a small one to fit small nails and a big one to fit draft nails (Figure 4).”

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