New Horseshoe art Sticky

[Thats Hot]

Rough guess is that there's at least 20-25 shoes in that eagle. Assuming $3 each on shoes, He's probably not making much at $125

I was thinking the same thing, I use a lot of used shoes and there is a lot time on clean up of the used shoes for yard art. I don' buy used shoes, they are free here. So I don't ask as much for a yard art.

[BD1]

'' I use a lot of used shoes and there is a lot time on clean up of the used shoes for yard art.''

The recycled shoes can be a pain to clean up for sure. I soak them in white vinegar and that helps . I recently bought a Dremel tool and it is awesome for clean up too. I used the thin wire wheels and it does a great job in the grooves. The baby cutting wheel works well for the hard stuff in the grooves too. The Dremel kit was on sale when I bought it. It's the larger one with all the goodies, http://www.amazon.com/Dremel-4000-6-...remel+4000+kit
Works really well on buffing my silverware art .

[DSW]

Used shoes are great, but the problem I have with them is it's tough to find enough matching ones to do some projects. Small single/double shoe items it's easy to use used shoes. With things like the wine racks/ Christmas trees that have to stack shoes, it's tough to use assorted sizes. The farrier who does the shoes on one of my customers horses usually deals with people who have one or maybe two horses, so the used shoes he gives me is sort of a grab bag of mixed stuff. I guess if I dealt with a farrier who did a riding school or one of those places that does carriage rides, I might get more matching shoes.

[Equilibrium]

I didn't care for the horizontal bar much myself. It detracts from the piece.
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Centaur Forge sells most decent sized horse shoes in pairs for $2.10 to $3.90, http://www.centaurforge.com/ and they've got free shipping on most orders. I happen to know this guy doesn't pay for any of his shoes though. I tried contacting a few farriers before buying the shoes I used in my pumpkin and apparently they give them all to the "guy who sells at the local feed store". He makes the rounds gathering up all the shoes from them regularly and he hits up the horse farms in the local area too because I tried that route also. I don't know what a fair price is for the eagle. I do know that at $200 his wife priced him out of the market or the eagle wouldn't be sitting there collecting dust.
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Other issues he has (enlarge my photos and look)... his welds are blobby and sloppy and his paint jobs aren't anywhere near the quality of Thats Hot's paint jobs or that of others who have posted photos of their work here. At $125, people probably just bought them and re-painted them at home. At $200.... potential buyers are most likely expecting a paint job that doesn't look like the artist handed a few cans of spray paint to a 5 year old kid with instructions to "have fun".

[Riceman]

My local feed and Tack store sales Plain size 0 shoes for $1.79. Each size up is about $0.10 more. I have tried to get used shoes but people want more money for them than I pay for new shoes.

[Thats Hot]

The twins...

[Thats Hot]

Nice legs..

[Equilibrium]

Ribbit....a frog. Still need to pick up some brush on white and black paint for the ball bearing eyes.
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[DSW]

Nice one. What it needs is a longer tongue though. A fly he's catching would be even better.

[Equilibrium]

I thought about putting a sparkplug bug on its tongue but figured I'd wait to see what it looked like after I painted the eyeballs. What I really wanted was metal warts all over the frog. I couldn't figure out how to splatter it with my MIG though.

[Thats Hot]

Ribbit....a frog. Still need to pick up some brush on white and black paint for the ball bearing eyes.
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I like it....

[Equilibrium]

Thank you. Only 5 horseshoes and didn't take long at all to make.

[John T]

One of my wifes friends has horses, so my wife gave her a horseshoe pumpkin I made...

friend says... let me ask my farrier if he has any old shoes....

so I get the # and call the guy....

He says, "sure thing come on down.. I got a pile in the yard Help yerself"

This is the "pile"

I took about 40 or so... he said come back when you need more.

[ewehrum]

HOLY COW!!!!! I need to go there! I would pay for shipping and for your time if you shipped me a bunch... lol

[John T]

HOLY COW!!!!! I need to go there! I would pay for shipping and for your time if you shipped me a bunch... lol

Thanks,
But I don't want to look a gift horse in the mouth....

[BD1]

Holy horseshlt ! That is a lot of shoes !

[ECAVE]

I need to find a stash like that!!
Nice find. My family is going crazy over the pumpkins. Lol

[DSW]

Nice pile of old rasps there as well, I'd love to have a half dozen or so to play with in the forge. They'd make good draw knives or even good files for hot filing. I wouldn't mind trying to make a few rasp snakes or lizards with them either. I count at least 20 that I can see easily in that pile.

[Randall_H]

I've been welding horseshoes together for yrs and was wondering today if anyone has thought about using silicon bronze wire to weld new shoes together, thought it would give it some additional bling

any thoughts?

[Equilibrium]

John T> You shameless tease. We'd all be in horseshoe heaven if there was a farrier near us that had a pile like that!!!

[Thats Hot]

The new crab..

[Thats Hot]

The first turtle.

[Thats Hot]

I can not keep enough Snowmen...

[John T]

speaking of horseshoes...
what kinda rod you figure this is? 6010/6011?

quite the build up. ... I reckon it got the job done though...

[shortfuse]

"hardfacing" on a horseshoe...never saw that before, but if ya don't have any new or replacement shoes, I guess it would work! Just about any rod would probably be a little harder than the original shoe steel, which is fairly soft (except for the Mexican shoes made from hard rebar).