When you're looking for new ways to get better performance out of your shoeing tools, the best way is to swap ideas with other farriers.

With the best-of-the-best ideas gathered from clinics, meetings and interviews with 27 American Farriers Journal readers, these proven shoeing tool techniques will help you get more performance and efficiencies out of the tools that you use in your shoeing work.

General Tools...

1. Don’t judge a tool by what it costs. Instead, look at the cost per use for a tool rather than its price. Know whether a tool can save you time on a shoeing job. If a tool can save you 10 or 15 seconds each time that you use it, it will help you. If it can’t, it decreases your productivity.

—Jim Keith, Tucumcari, N.M.

2. The best way to care for a riveted tool is to wash it in water at least once a week. Slosh the tool around in your water bucket, wipe it off and spray WD-40 over the rivet to draw out the water while you continually open and close the tool.

Wipe the rivet off and use a few drops of a light machine oil such as 3-In-One or gun oil. As you open and close the tool, apply a few drops of oil on the rivet and between the reins. Wipe the tool down and that’s all you have to do. Since dirt is your enemy when it comes to a riveted tool, a clean tool…