During this webinar Roy Verocay shows when and how he applies modern materials for today's high performing sport horses. Starting from a simple pad with pour-in to the most complicated combination in the wide choice of alternatives for standard shoes.

Sponsored by: Glue-U Adhesives

About the Speaker

Glushu clinician and owner of WorldWideFarrierSupply.com, Roy Verocay (CJF), started his farrier career over 20 years ago, learning from the late Bucky Hatfield. Originally from Uruguay, Roy currently lives in Port Orange, Fla. 

Full Transcript

Jeff Cota:

Welcome to the American Farriers Journal Online Hoof-Care Classroom. I'm Jeff Cota, Lead Content Editor of American Farriers Journal. Thank you for joining us. This session is brought to you by our friends at Glue-U Glushu. We'll begin the webinar in just a moment, but first let me remind you that this session is being recorded, and will be posted to the AFJ website tomorrow so you can watch it at your convenience. We'll have a Q&A session after the presentation. You'll notice that there's a Q&A icon at the bottom of your control panel, on the bottom of your screen. You could submit questions there at any time during the presentation. We'll answer as many as possible as time permits at the end of the webinar. If you experience any technological issues, such as audio, or with the display, and I don't interrupt the presenter about the problem, the issue is likely on your end.

So, for if any reason your internet connection, or even our connection should happen to fail, and it looks like the webinar's been interrupted, just go back to the email that you received earlier telling you how to join the webinar and you can reenter. If the webinar session crashes for us all, I'll relaunch the session and wait a few minutes for everyone to rejoin, and then we'll pick up where the presenter left off.

I'd like to thank tonight's sponsor. Glue-U Adhesives is making innovative products since 2006, Glue-U designs different acrylic, urethane, and acid-free silicone products for every purpose. Glue-U products are available at most well-known Farrier supply stores, and Glue-U is pleased to sponsor tonight's webinar. So with that, I'd like to welcome our clinician, Roy Verocay. Roy is a Certified Journeyman Farrier from Port Orange, Florida, who is a Glue-U clinician, and owner of Worldwide Farrier Supply. Thanks for joining us, Roy. Take it away.

Roy Verocay:

Hey, thank you. Thank you Jeff. All right, well, so like Jeff said, we're going to be talking about modern materials today, and how we apply them for support, protection, and comfort, and which materials we use for different things, and a little bit of the history of this type of products. Also, the importance on when to pick what product, for what application. The thing is, what I'm going to be talking about, and some of the examples I'm going to be putting on, are based on my experience, and my weather conditions, my environment, and the horses that I work on. And this might not be working the same for everybody, because if you are in a desert area, it might be very different, the problems that you have with the ones that we have here in Florida, which is super wet and moisture constantly, for eight to nine months out of the year.

So keep in mind that some things might apply to what you do, and some other won't, but I'll try to do my best to answer any questions that you might have if you're in a different environment than what we are here in Florida. We're going to start with the types of materials, and the early stages on what we used to use for packing feet, or trying to give some support and some comfort to the horse. And one of the older ones that were out in the market, and we probably all used them if we've been shoeing for a long time, is Oakum, which is a fiber mix. Here's a picture of it, and you can mix it with different materials that you can combine with pine tar, iodine, Venice turpentine, and then pack it under pad, usually leather or plastic pad. And that would keep some of the debris, and dirt, and manure, and other things, coming under the pad and becoming in contact with the sole and frog, and therefore reducing the chances of having thrush, or abscesses, or other things like that.

The other thing that people started using, and this was happening when I started shoeing, a lot of people were using industrial silicone. It's a silicone you can buy at a hardware store, usually used to seal windows, or showers, or tile, or whatever. The problem with this silicones, is that they're not meant to be in contact with a horse's hoof. They're an acid base, and they tend to deteriorate the foot itself when it's under the pad for a long time, and then you get a smelly, really cheesy looking sole and frog, and usually didn't work very well absorbing the concussion on the ground. It's really bouncy, so the impact on the ground was transferred straight onto the sole. And here we have any kind of commercial silicone that you can pick up at a hardware store.

Then newer technology came about 15 years ago or so. They started coming out with urethane pour-on materials. The great thing about it is the shock absorption. And if you do a bounce test, if you have a patty of urethane pour-on material, and you bounce the hammer, or you drop the ball on it, you would see that the bounce on that, whatever was hitting it, was much less than what you would do in the same paddy of a regular silicone. The good thing about them too is that they bond to the bottom of the foot, so then it reduces some of the filtration of moisture and foreign objects under the pad, and in contact with the sole.

And you can use them with a mesh without having to use a pad, because since they stick to the foot they will stay there. Silicones do not adhere to anything, so if you don't put a pad or you pour a silicone under something that keeps it against the foot, it will just fall right out. Even if you try to do it with a mesh, the mesh will not be strong enough to hold it for a long period of time. You can do it for maybe a few days a week, but it's not going to be a long-term solution if you use a silicone.

The market now is flooded with a lot of products that are in the 210cc side-by-side cartridges. We all have, in the past, like 30, 40 different caulking guns, or delivery systems for all the cartridges that they've been around. And fortunate nowadays, pretty much the industry standardized to the 210ccs. The good thing about this new cartridges is that the openings are very wide, so they allow the product to flow out very easily, and then you don't have to struggle, especially in a cold day that the product gets more viscous and it's a little thicker, so it's harder to push through the original really narrow tips. Always, here we have an example of, on the left right here, you have me pouring a foot with just mesh and a foam board. And here you have an example.

Yes, I did put seven nails that horse pull shoes all the time, so I don't want to go back and have to put it back on. So I know a lot of people shoe with four nails. I have horses that I do with four nails, here we got seven. And this one is on an endurance horse that just came back from at the end of the race, and it was a hundred miles on really abrasive terrain. And when the urethane is good quality, it will really bond and stay on the foot, and just not start falling apart.

A lot of people have a problem with the urethane just falling apart and crumbling, because if you're using a soft pour, or a super soft pour, that material's not strong enough to withstand the abrasion. So then it's going to inevitably start peeling and breaking off, and then you're going to see a recess on the pad. It's not going to be to the end of the shoe, and you're going to start seeing the mesh. And once the mesh starts wearing out, the pad probably end up falling out. So depends on what you're going to use it for. In that endurance horse, it was in a pretty much gravel road, the whole hundred miles, and that withstood the abrasion of the road.

Then we have medical-grade silicones now, which actually also absorb the impact and the shock. And the good thing is that this silicone, and we are talking a little bit on the products that I use, and I like the flexibility that the Glue-U products give me, because I have four different densities on my silicone and I can do a lot of things, and put a lighter density silicone at the toe or a harder one towards the heels to support the caudal part of the foot. And it's up to whatever pathology, or whatever problem you're trying to help with that. The silicones also come in the 210. Here you have a couple of different applications. On the left you have a wedge pad, and I'm pouring a silicone. The Glue-U products are color coded, so it's really easy once which color is what, you can pick the one that you need for that particular job. This one is shore A20, it's a horse that was somewhat tender-footed while he didn't have a pad or any kind of protection.

And the shore A20 is the purple silicone for Glue-U, the blue is the shore A10, which is the softest one. And on this other two, right here on the center-right, I have a dual density pour, which is a great thing that you can combine, because you will make your pour, let's say at the toe, until the tip of the frog, with a very, very soft density silicone. And then filling up the back of the foot with something a little more firm that will give support to the foot, especially if you have a foot that is a little weak, and the digital cushion is a little compromised, and now you have a foot that is standing to prolapse in the middle of the shoe. So that way I supported this one on the blue and green. I have A10 and A20 on that combination. And on this one I have A10 and A40, because this horse was having a really severe problem of sheered heels, and he was just dropping right between the shoe for the previous farrier.

On this one, on the left, I combined a bar shoe with a shore A20 for a dressage horse that was having some caudal heel pain. And here on the other two you can see once you remove the shoe at the end of the shoeing, you have the silicones that have bonded together and now formed a continuous pad. So there's no gap in between them allowing dirt or anything to pack between those two. Even though if you, and it is always recommended to clean thoroughly the sole, and brush it real well, and probably apply some sort of product, like copper sulfate or some sort of poultice, that will prevent the growth of bacteria under the silicone.

Because remember, the silicones are not attached to the foot, it's just sandwiched between a pad, and the sole, and the frog, and you can see still how dirty it gets after the shoeing period. And I don't advise to leave it longer than four and a half to five and a half weeks. If the owner can't treat the bottom of the foot and if you're in a really wet condition, like here we are in Florida. Maybe if you are in a very dry air climate you can do it much longer and it'd probably be fine.

The other one we have for support, and mainly for therapeutic cases, is dental impression material, or DIM, like a lot of people calls it. It's a mix by hand. It comes in two separate containers, and you can mix it with copper sulfate as you're mixing it together, or you can put your copper sulfate and then apply the dental impression material on top before you place your pad and shoe. The dental impression material will not adhere to anything, so you always have to keep it either under a hard bar, or a mesh pad, or a full pad.

And the thing with the dental impression material is that I've seen it a lot where there are cases where the previous area haven't filled in the whole bottom of the foot. In my opinion, it's better to mix more than you need. And whenever you put the first couple of nails, put the foot on the ground, let it bear weight, and then it'll squeeze out the excess out the back of the shoe, or the back of the pad. And then you can trim off whatever is in excess, and then you are for sure completely filled every void between the pad and the foot. When you have gaps or holes, then it's going to have different places where your support is not going to be what you are trying to achieve. And then it's a place where foreign objects, dirt, manure, whatever, can stay in those little pockets.

Like I was saying, it comes in two tubs, a part A and a part B, and you're going to mix 50/50 out of both containers. So one is going to be white, and the other one is going to be colored. So when you pick your fill, you're just going to mix them together, and kneed them together. And the important thing is that when you are mixing, and getting it to combine both part A and B, you don't have streaks and you have a very even color, it's going to end up. On this case, this is going to be blue, or pink, or green. And if you have streaks, those parts of the material are now going to completely cure because they're not mixing with each other.

So make sure, before you put it on the foot, you have a very constant, very even color all the way through. And on this particular ones from Glue-U, you have a shore A15, shore A25 for pink, and shore A35 for green. And in most of the therapeutic cases that I use it, I use the blue because it's soft, and it gives a lot of comfort to the horse. If I am trying to support the boney column on a founder horse, I probably will do a half-fill, and I would do it from a quarter inch behind the tip of the frog all the way to the heel with something more firm, either the pink or the green.

In any case, when you are using any type of support, the final judge would be the horse. And I had cases where I used one that I thought it was going to be the appropriate one for that particular horse, and that horse did not like it and I had to come back and change it to something softer because it was too much pressure for that horse at that particular time. And sometimes over time, you can graduate into something firmer as the feet get better and become healthier. There's no shame.

Shoeing is the best estimated guess on what we do. So trial and error is a lot of what we do. And the same when we are trying to pick what kind of density we are going to give that horse for that particular case. As you can see, once you mix, you have a very, like right here you can see a little bit of the mix that this came out of the back of a pad. So it is a very, very smooth color. There's no streaks, there's no lines. And once you have the excess removed, you are for sure that that whole part under the pad is completely filled.

The way that I prepare my feet before I apply the dental impression material, I clean it really good, I brush it real well, and then I filled every void. For example, this is a copper sulfate mix that I mix with a little bit of Vaseline. And then that keeps that there in place, because if sometimes you put just crystals, they tend to run off or fall off the foot before you can apply your dental impression material or your silicone. And then I make my mix, and I put it on. And as you can see on the left, right here, you want to fill everything except for where the shoe is going to be bearing weight.

You don't want that to be in between your shoe and your foot, because then once that compresses, then your nails are going to start becoming loose, and then inevitably you're going to have C clenches popping out. Maybe shoes coming off. And since this is not, this fill that I did on this horse wasn't made for a frog support pad, it was a flat pad. I used it in combination with a leather pad. That's why it's a flat pad. If I was going to fill a frog support pad, I would have a much bigger bulge at the center of the foot, where that's going to fill up that little frog part that is going to keep the material all the way to the ground level.

This little guy right here was a laminated mini, and you can see how small the amount of dental impression material that we mixed to be able to fill the back half of the foot. And in this case, we used it in combination with a little small mini Glushu and a frog insert, because in my experience, for me at least, it's really, really hard to try to nail on those tiny feet, especially when a horse is uncomfortable.

Here we have a horse that I saw in South America, and this is a ugly chronic founder case, and it had an injury on the other leg. It ended up foundering on the left front, and then I guess it was neglected, and you can see how much of the lamellar wedge you have in front of this x-ray right here on the bottom left. And all this had to be removed, because it wasn't doing any favors to the horse. Also, you see arthritis, here at the fetlock. But he had a good sole depth, the bone alignment wasn't horrible. So what we needed to do was kind of remodel the hoof capsule around the bones. So if you can see from the front, it wasn't even touching, and thank goodness that this horse had enough sole depth, because that's all he was standing on. The walls weren't touching at all, anything on the ground, it was just on the sole.

What I did, I resected and removed a lot of that lamellar wedge. I placed a Glushu reversed, and then I put my dental impression material, which this one is the green one, so it's 825 shore, so it's the denser one that Glue-U offers. And the horse did really well, then it started growing the foot in a more normal manner, and they maintained it. And I got some updates later, and apparently the hope was growing in the way it should have been growing.

For support. Support provides a more solid base to the hoof structures to rest on. So that means that you want to have your support all the way to the ground, and level with the ground surface of the shoe. If you have it above the shoe level, then it is not going to engage the ground and provide support unless the horse is in a softer terrain, and the shoe buries down, and then will load whatever material your trying to achieve support with. It can be tailored to load or unload structures according to the pathology of the horse. So for example, on a laminitic horse, you don't want to load the toe, because that's where most of the pressure at the tip of the coffin bone is being created. But you do want to support it from sinking, so you're going to put your support on the backside of the foot, unload the front part of the foot. You're maintaining positive pressure at the moment the horse is bearing weight, even on concrete or a flat surface, and not necessarily soft ground.

The choices that we pick for whatever, like we talked earlier, for whatever case that we're working on, it is up to your discretion, or the veterinarian's discretion. And then again, the horse will be the ultimate judge on how that's working. If you see improvement, if the horse is worse, if the horse didn't change at all, then you might want to change the way that you provided that support or the material. You might want to go to a silicone, or you might want to go to a dental impression. If you are using pour-in pad, there is a urethane pour-on pad, you can do it several different ways. You can recess it, which you will make a cut and an impression of the inside rim of the shoe, and place it over the flat foam board, and then that pad will be recessed even further in, and you don't want that support or protection to be engaging unless they're in soft ground.

If not, you can actually cut a frog support, and recess the rest. So now you are basically creating a frog support pad out of just a urethane. This is something that I see a lot online and a lot of posts on this. And on the picture on the left side, you can see that this pour-on pad wasn't poured with a foam board, or any kind of pad to keep it flat. So what you have here is a dip on the product that runs from the lateral side all the way to the middle of the frog, and is thicker on this area, and over here. So what happens is when you don't have a constant flat surface, it loads and transfers pressure. So there's going to be more pressure on this sole in the areas where the pour is thicker than the areas that the pour is thinner.

So in my opinion, if anybody's going to pour a foot, you really need to use a foam board, or some sort of pad that you can duct tape on, or make a duct tape pad if you don't have a foam board, just to achieve as flat as you possibly can, the urethane pour-on pad. In this one, for example, you can see once you remove the foam board, the thickness of the pour-on is even all the way across the foot. And now I'm not going to have those pressure points that are going to be transferred through those thicker or thinner areas. And you see this horse, for example, has only four nails. He's a good shoe keeper, so.

Examples for support, you can use them for laminitic horses, prolapse frogs. When you have cracks that you need to stitch, or you need to unload the wall on that side, you want to transfer some of the load to the center of the foot. On top of floating that heel from the crack back, you want to transfer that weight off that wall into the center of the foot. White line disease, you're going to have to probably reset quite a bit of foot.

And I apologize, because I'm not very computer savvy, so I'm missing some pictures. I try to get them, I tried Dropbox and everything else, and some of those didn't come in and I don't know why. I tell, you I much rather be shoeing a horse than sitting in front of a computer like most of you, probably. Wall resections, for any reason. If you are taking a lamellar wedge, or you're trying to remove some infected areas on the dorsal wall from a laminitic horse, or you want to just support that foot, because once you resect the hoof wall, now you don't have the integrity of the foot complete. And then you are going to have feet that are going to start flaring, and if you don't have clips. And so it's a good idea to provide support to the center of the foot.

This horse, it was brought to me with collapse heels, like super underrun, low heels. The way that we went about it, we used a wedge pad, backed the toes quite a bit. We aligned it with the x-rays, with veterinarian. And on top of the wedge pad, I had on the first time, because he was so tender, and he had quite a bit of thrush, we used medicated packing, which that's another thing that I didn't put in the front of the presentation. But medicated packing is a super good alternative if you have a horse that is super thrushy, or really messy feet. Until you get that under control, you don't want to seal that with a urethane, or dental impression, or anything else. So on this case, I put in for the first four weeks with medicated packing, and the next time around we switched it to a dental impression material.

Then we graduated as he started realigning, and the heel angle started becoming more parallel with a toe angle. We graduated him to a flat pad, we kept the dental impression and then about a year later we finally got him in just straight, normal, plain shoes, and he's doing well. And the problem with horses like this is that the hoof, the heel has migrated so far forward. So inevitably, if you want to bring the heels back, you're going to have to take some heel. But then by transferring the weight that is so loaded on the caudal part of the foot, you're transferring some of that weight to the toe, and that allows the heel to grow straighter and in a more conducive way to actually grow heel. Because if you don't fix that problem in the beginning, that heel is going to keep migrating forward, and whatever heel he grows, or she grows, is going to just not be where you want it. And you're not going to gain any height on the heel.

Protection. You want to provide protection to horses that are in difficult terrain, or whatever they're doing requires the foot to be protected, because they're wearing the sole or the frog more than they're actually growing it. The protection is to cover the bottom of the hoof in general, so it prevents the unnecessary wear of the sole in very abrasive footing, and absorbs some of the forces of impact while riding over rocky or uneven terrain. You here in Florida, the ground is very soft, but we have roots and things on the trails, for example, that they end up bruising the feet. And even if you have shoes, because the horse will step on it, and hit in between the shoe and then you have a problem anyway. So we provide protection with some kind of fill and pads if we have to.

And here is that endurance horse that I showed in the beginning with the urethane. This is what the ground looked during the whole race. So you can see how gravel and abrasive that ground is, and if you don't support that and protect that foot, inevitably that horse is going to wear down the sole quite a bit. And in this case, for example, this horse didn't have any kind of pad or protection, and it was in an area where there were rocks. This looks like a piece of concrete, or something, that it got wedged between the shoe, and pushing on the sole, and the client is like, "Oh, he's lame." And apparently they didn't even pick up the foot before I got there, because they would've seen that, I'm sure.

Examples for protection. Like I said, endurance racing horses come back after every loop ,and they get vet checked. All it takes is one horse to step in a rock, or anything, to bruise that foot. And when the horse does not pass the vet check, it's out of the race. So you want to minimize, especially on international events that horses travel across the planet to go compete. And the owner spent so much money trying to get the horses and everybody there for a team, and then the horses out just because they stepped on a rock and ended up with a sole bruise. Then mounted patrol horses are another type of horse that usually can use a protection, because unfortunately when there's riots, and things like that, people will throw bottles, will throw nails on the ground so the horses will step on it, and then just be out of commission. So those horses, you want to be protecting their sole as much as possible.

For comfort, we're talking about trying to get this horse back to a sound level. And it's not because he has any kind of pathology. It could be that the horse was barefoot and wore the foot more than the hoof growth allowed. Basically what you're doing is adding an extra layer of material between a thin or soft sole, and the ground, and that will eventually let that sole grow and regain the depth that you need. So you're restoring the depth on worn down hoofs, or hoofs that have been trimmed aggressively and now the so is too thin, or the frog is too thin, and anything they step on, they are uncomfortable. In those cases, I usually try to use the softest material that I can. So either if it's a urethane, the soft or super soft, and if it's a silicone, I will use probably the A10 just to absorb as much of the shock as possible.

Then in combination with synthetic or leather pads, just to get some height, and get that foot off the ground, and let that sole grow back to its normal thickness. Silicones tend to work best for these cases in my particular area. Again, you guys might have different opinions, or different techniques that you use, for whatever area you're at. And these kind of cases usually is a temporary use of pad material, because once it recovers normal thickness, I will just transition them back to a normal shoe, or without any kind of pad or packing, or I just going back to barefoot, which if that's what the owner is trying to achieve and that's what they need, is what we're trying to go for. All right guys, well if you guys have any questions, I guess we can start with that.

Jeff Cota:

Great, thank you very much.

Roy Verocay:

You're welcome.

Jeff Cota:

Yeah, if anybody does have any other questions, you can please add them to the Q&A session, or in the chat there, and we'll go ahead and answer those. In the meantime, we have a few. Before we started the webinar, we were discussing the business of farriering. So when using products, such as pour-ins and impression material, how do you break down the cost when billing clients?

Roy Verocay:

Well usually... And that's a really good thing that we were just talking before we started the webinar, but a lot of people are reluctant to use extra products because they feel like they're actually losing money. Because inevitably, when you are going to shoe a horse with just plain shoes, it's going to take a certain amount of time. But then if you're going to fit pads, you're going to cut them, you're going to rivet them, and then you're going to use your pour-in material; either urethane, silicone. Or if you're going to use a dental impression material, it's going to take you longer to shoe that horse. So what you need to figure out is, well first of all, the cost of the materials that you're using. When you purchase a tube of whichever product you buy, you have a price tag for that product. Let's use round numbers. Let's say a tube of a urethane is $20.

So once I open a tube, I don't care if I don't use the whole tube. That tube is sold to that client, that's it. Because I don't know if I'm going to use that tube before it goes bad, so I need to make sure that that tube is already paid for. The other thing is when you're going to add your reg, if you're going to put pads, if you're going to put rivets, all that is going to come into account. But the part that a lot of people oversee, and that's where they start thinking like, well, I'm losing money because it took you longer to shoe a horse. Again, using round numbers, let's say you charge $10 to shoe front feet and trim the back. So that takes you, let's say, 30 minutes.

So if it took you 15 minutes extra to do your pads, your pour-on material, whatever it is, then you have to charge an extra five on top of your materials, because that time you could have been spending it doing another horse, working on another horse. So usually you have to figure out what your hourly rate is for labor, and then you're going to have your basic price for whatever you're doing, then you're going to add that labor cost and then your materials cost. So then you don't feel like, "Okay, I don't want to really do this kind of work, because I don't feel like it's bringing any revenue to my business." So that's how I go about it. I just figure out my labor cost, and I add it to the materials cost, and then that's where we go from.

Jeff Cota:

Great. We have a comment and a question. Great presentation. Thank you.

Roy Verocay:

Thank you.

Jeff Cota:

Do you have any strategies for applications of pads and silicone, or dental impression material, in or around punctured or wounded sole areas?

Roy Verocay:

Well great, I wish I would've put some examples of that on the presentation, but when you're trying to put these things together, all of a sudden there's so many things that you can do. And the way that I do it, for example, if I'm going to do, let's say, a pour-on pad, what I'm going to do is before I set my foam board, I'm going to cover the area that I do not want the material to be on with Play-Doh. And then when I put my pour, it's going to go around everything on the Play-Doh, but that little spot. So once I remove my foam board, then I can pick and clean out the Play-Doh, and that leaves me an area where it still can be treated.

Or if I'm doing something like, let's say a hospital plate, that's super easy because I can form my dental impression material, for example, leaving that area uncovered, and then I'm just going to cover the rest with the hospital plate. And then medication or a gauze with medication can be applied in that particular spot. You do not want to cover any kind of light tissue with urethane, silicones, or dental impression material, because inevitably, it's going to end up festering and becoming a much bigger problem in the long run.

Jeff Cota:

Absolutely, absolutely. And she says, "Thank you."

Roy Verocay:

You're welcome.

Jeff Cota:

Now we're entering the cold season, many parts of the country. How does climate affect the pour-in pad materials? For example, how long does it typically take to set up in cold versus warmer climates?

Roy Verocay:

All right, well that's a problem that we do not have here in Florida.

Jeff Cota:

Yeah.

Roy Verocay:

It doesn't get that cold. But even in the fluctuation of temperature here in Florida, we are in the 90s in the summer, and we can be in the 40s or 50s in the winter. So it still will slow down because it's a chemical reaction. So when the two parts mix, either mix by hand, or both tubes are going through the tip, getting mixed all the way to the end of the tip, this materials, when they're combined, is an exothermic reaction. That is what makes the product cure and actually firm up. So the colder the weather, the longer it's going to take to set that product. And I used to live in Tennessee, and we did have days of 20 degrees or below freezing. And what I did is warm up the sole with a heat gun, and then keep my material in the truck, or wrap it in like a heating blanket.

They also sell right now some glue heaters. So you can put your tubes in, and plug it to the 12 volt in your vehicle, or at 110 in the trailer or your rig. And that will keep the optimal working temperature for these materials, which is around 60 to 80 degrees. So anything below 60 is going to take considerably longer, which usually urethane pour-on pad will set in like 45 seconds to a minute in 60 to 80 degrees. But if you are going to 90, 95 degrees, it might be 30 seconds. So once you start pouring in hot weather, you want to keep pouring, you don't want to stop. Because once that material sets in the tip, you're done. You're going to have to take the tip, change tips, put it again.

If you're in cold weather, it's going to be a lot denser. So you're going to feel the resistance on the gun, and it's going to take you longer to set up. For example, on a urethane, you don't want to put the foot down immediately if it's super runny, because it's, you're going to see it run right out the back of the foot. So if you preheat your foot, prewarm it up with a heat gun, and you prewarm your glue, it's going to pretty much set at the same rate that it would in a normal summer day.

Jeff Cota:

All right. So when you have that pour-in in storage, for example, what kind of tips would you suggest for those different-

Roy Verocay:

Really, really important: urethanes do not like cold weather. Urethanes, you do not want to keep it in your rig if you're below freezing. When a urethane freezes, then the mix is not proper and it might not set. And you guys might have seen, sometimes you make a pour, and it's really gummy and it really does not set firm. That's probably because that product was frozen at one point, overnight in your rig or whatever. So here in Florida it's the opposite. I keep them, like my acrylic glue that does not like the heat, I keep it in my refrigerator at home. I have a refrigerator in the garage where I keep all my glue on stuff, and I don't advise you to put it where you put food because that smell is going to stink up your food. So if you have a dedicated small refrigerator that you can buy in any kind of Lowe's, Home Depot, Walmart, like a little college dorm-type refrigerator, keep your acrylic glues in hot temperatures, keep them cooled down.

And if you do have urethanes, that you're in the northern states, and you're going below freezing at night, you want to make sure that you keep those from freezing. So keep them in your house where you have your heater going at like 60 or 70 degrees, whatever you guys do. I don't know, we don't have that problem. So as long as they don't freeze, they should be good. So just take the material you're probably going to need for that day, and then if you didn't use it, put it back in the house. Don't let it freeze overnight.

Jeff Cota:

Okay, great. Now do you have any tips on how to hold the foam board in place when doing a pour-in?

Roy Verocay:

Okay, the foam board actually has got a sticky side to it. You just peel the film, and the way that I like to do it, I put it on the shoe. Once I have my shoe nailed, my mesh in, I put it on the foot, let the horse stand, and that will make a little recess on it. It won't be absolutely flat, just concave it just enough because the foam board's going to push in the center of the foot. And so then I make my pour, and then once it's set I peel the foam board. There's some foam boards now that actually a friend of mine was telling me today that the sticky part is super, super sticky and the urethane will stick to it. And when you try to peel it, either it is going to start ripping your urethane off the foot, or you're not going to be able to, there's going to be chunks of it.

So what you can do is just trace. Before you nail the shoe, just trace the inside rim of the shoe, and then only peel the sticky part on the outside where the shoe's going to be in contact. But the center, where the urethane's going to be in contact, don't take the cover film, and the urethane will not stick to that and it's going to allow you to peel that foam board a lot easier. If you do not have a foam board, the best thing you can do, and I had to do it because I have run out of foam boards in the middle of the day, and it's not something you can go pick up at Walmart. So I make me a pad with duct tape, and I stick it over the shoe, and then I put a flat pad, any kind of plastic flat pad, leather pad, and take that to the foot and then you can make your pour in between those.

But as long as you have something that will create a flat surface, you should be good. I remember a long, long, long time ago, when I was in farrier school, the one clinician came over and showed us how to make a pour-on pad. And we ran out, eventually, out of foam boards. So what he did, they used to come in a plastic bag, so he cut the plastic bag and laid it flat, and then just taped it to the foot and just boarded under that. And with his hand, just work it smooth, just to make sure there wasn't any high spots on it. As farriers, we're pretty creative. So whatever you can find in your trailer to make sure that that thing is flat, it should work.

Jeff Cota:

That's great. Now, using Vaseline is a great tip when applying copper sulfate. How do you apply it to the impression material?

Roy Verocay:

To the impression material? When I have my 2 50/50 parts of part A and part B, I will put them together and start working and working and working them until it's almost completely smooth and in color. And then I'll pour my crystals on top of the patty, and then I work that into the material. And then right before I apply it to the foot, I sprinkle copper sulfate on the foot surface of the dental impression material, and then I put it on. So usually the dental impression material gets a little sticky when still setting, but when you have the copper sulfate it won't.

So you kind of have to hold it in place before you put your shoe on your pad and then it'll keep a lot of contact. Because if you only mix it on the dental impression material, sometimes the copper sulfate gets encapsulated into the dental impression material, and actually the amount of copper sulfate that you're going to have against the sole is not going to be sufficient. So I do that, and on top of that, I put the sprinkles on and then I just put it against the foot directly.

Jeff Cota:

I see. How much copper sulfate do you typically use?

Roy Verocay:

I just use enough to create a dusting over the foot layer of the dental impression material. And then just as long as you have full contact of dental impression material with the copper sulfate against the sole, it should be plenty. You don't have to waste a ton of it. Just enough that it's a nice thin coating that that's what's going to be against the sole.

Jeff Cota:

Excellent.

Roy Verocay:

So it depends, because it's hard to tell. If I'm shooting a triple lot foot or a size four foot, it's different the amount of copper sulfate I'm going to use.

Jeff Cota:

That makes sense.

Roy Verocay:

And by the way, a friend of mine gave me this tip, and I order at Amazon one of the sugar shakers, and that's where I'm keeping my copper sulfate. It's great, because the little bottle, sometimes it's hard to squeeze out enough. This way, you just pour it out and it's like pouring sugar on your coffee. It's just boom, it works great. And they sell them in plastic so you don't have a glass container in your trailer. So that works really good.

Jeff Cota:

That's a great tip. That's a great tip. Well, that's a great place to conclude tonight's webinar. Once again, we'd like to think Roy and Glue-U Adhesives. You can learn more about Glue-U's products at glue-u.com. If you've missed any part of this webinar, or would like to rewatch it, please check your email in the AFJ e-newsletter for more information, or visit americanfarriers.com tomorrow to find the video. On behalf of Roy Verocay, Glue-U Adhesives, and American Farriers Journal, thank you for watching.

Roy Verocay:

Thank you so much.