The urge to tinker with something seems as much a part of being a farrier as is the smell of hoof smoke. It seems there are a lot of shoers out there who pick up a tool or product they use in their daily work and think, “I can make it better.” Or they run across a particular footcare problem and come up with their own method of fixing it.

It’s usually not long before the farrier inventor finds another thought crossing his mind: “Hey, I wonder if I could sell some of these?”

Every year, there are new products out there that had their genesis in the active imagination of a farrier. Some of them go on to find a place in the toolboxes, shoeing rigs or workshops of farriers across the country. Others find their way to the scrap heap of shoeing product history.

Here’s a look at four new products that were seen at the winter trade shows. All would seem to have the possibility of capturing a part of the market. But only time — and farriers — will tell whether these products find their home in your toolbox or on history’s scrap heap.

New Measuring System

Product Name: Bulb-N-Shoe Grabit.

Product Description: A tool designed to give reliable and consistent measurement of a horse’s hooves.

Developer: Alan Folkman, Green Bay, Wis.

Available Through: Centaur Forge, Burlington, Wis.

Alan Folkman, a farrier from Green Bay, Wis., was never comfortable with the information he could get from…