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I Forge Iron

Hipposandals? Urgent!


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the wire sutures have been the most common repair I have seen, dremel a few quick holes and lace it with some small metal guards so they dont tear through.. sometimes they are VERY severe and live flesh can be pushed out with loading then pinched back by the wall on release.. Qcracks are bad business

Edit: In rereading the post I'm thinking Pete is asking what if the sandals could be used to immobilize a qcrack, and while I guess if the rim was high enough all around it could but because of how they were held in place I don't think it would do as much good as a modern fix allowing too much movement and stresses where you don't want them

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I've no idea or strong opinion of what these things are for or whether they are good or bad for the horse, i'm not a farrier and my only brief interactions with horses have left me with a 5" scar. All I can say is that next time a student asks me to make one for her project I shall decline!

Catherine (who is a real person by the way) came by today and I had a crack at the hipposandal for her, since she couldn't find anybody else able to make one in time. A farrier (Cliff Barnes) had made a hipposandal a few years back for Time Team and had kindly passed on some good pictures of it. His was one of the style that is forged from a single sheet with a seperate hook welded to the rear. I figured that since that style had been recreated and tested, that ideally I should have a go at making one of a different style for comparison (and just to be different!).

Unfortunately, since it was such short notice (24hrs!) I wasn't able to get any plate in for the sole so I had to go old school on the material. The examples I worked from had soles that were between 3 and 8mm thick (thicker near the edges and thinned in the middle, whether to gain extra material to get the width or for some practical reason, I don't know), whereas the example that Cliff had reproduced was a fairly uniform 3mm plate all over. The only stock I had in the workshop was 50x6mm flat, so I folded it into three and faggot welded the billet before sledging (still waiting for my power hammer to arrive) it into a plate of 5 1/2"x 8" and 4mm at the centre, thickening to 8mm at the front edge.

Once the sole plate was welded and thinned I decided the easiest way to secure the strapping in place for welding was to rivet it on first. I did this because I'm rubbish with the 'drop the tong' type welds and I my stick welder is out of action currently so tacking wasn't an option. Got the bar welded in place and then forged it to shape and bent into postion. I brought the ends of the strap together and wedled them up to form the front loop. The rear hook on the original looks to have been forged out of the plate on some and welded on seperately on others, so I took the easy way out and drew it from the plate as I had excess. A bit of tweaking and shaping and here we are ;)

hipposandal0004.jpg
hipposandal0002.jpg

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my understanding of the hippo sandal was the were used by the armys for crossing hot sand. as to not burn the frog and mak the horse sore. The metal sandals were precedide by ones woven from fibers. they were not left on for long periods. that is the understanding I have on these shoes. Dave that is a good looking shoe .

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thanks folks. I'm not totally happy with it, but that's mostly because I dislike making things that are supposed to be symetrical! Still it should work, assuming the farrier who is fitting it can tweak it to the horse's foot.

RLD, there are woven rush (?) pads in Egypt that I guess would be good for hot sand, but metal tends to heat up rather a lot when in contact with hot stuff ;) The examples that I drew from were both from London, so really no chance of hot sand there! :D

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Nice work Dave,
I also pop a rivet to hold some welds as well - if it gives the required final result who cares?
It would be interesting to see how long these hipposandles were in use for, just to see if they were a common thing or just a passing phase.

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from what I know hipposandals were in use from about the 2nd century BC right through to the 4th or 5th century AD, so not a passing fad :-) I can't speak of the rest of the Roman world, but the few examples found in Britain are spread around the country quite widly and cover most of that time span (though I think most, including this one, are 1st-2nd century AD)

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Thanks for all the info guys! Beth, I am extremely chuffed!! No one else would have been able to whip that up in the time that I had left to do it so couldn't thank Dave enough! Thank you! I have shown all my family and friends and they love it! Just got to put it on now, which I'm doing tomorrow and will update you on how that goes! I know you weren't happy with it but with the such short notice and the materials you had to hand I think it is perfect! I got some weird looks on the train though!! :blink: Thanks again for all the information, will be very helpful in my coursework and thanks again Dave for whipping this up for me! :D

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