Now in its fourth year, the innovative mail-in forging exercise that’s co-sponsored by the World Championship Blacksmiths’ Competition — held each year during the Calgary Stampede — and American Farriers Journal, is once again offering a tremendous opportunity to expand your forging skills. 

Continuing to grow in popularity as a worldwide educational tool, last year’s mail-in forging exercise drew 124 participants. However, this educational forging exercise is different from traditional shoeing contests since there are no rules as to how you must make a shoe.

For this year’s exercise, all you have to do is forge a Scottish hind preventer shoe and make sure that it arrives in Calgary before the June 15 deadline. By doing so, you’ll receive $224.95 in valuable shoeing supplies. If the mail-in exercise includes 124 entries as was the case last year, the total prizes that will be distributed will equal $35,703.50. The complete list of farrier supplies from 28 industry leaders this year are shown in the two boxes on the next page.

Unusual Forged Shoes

Participants in the three previous mail-in forging exercises have included several innovative farriers who took extraordinary steps in forging their shoes.

Six months before he headed for horseshoeing school, Doug Brown decided to participate in last year’s Calgary mail-in forging exercise. Since the Durham, N.C., resident didn’t have a forge, he modified an old barbeque grill to forge the deep-seated rasp bar shoe. 

BARBECUE GRILL SPECIAL Using a backyard grill, Doug Brown cooked up this shoe as part…