Was finally able to get coal to burn today and decided to try a heart again, the last one was pretty dreadful and this one isn't much better but I'm gonna keep trying with this. I had been thinking of keychain ideas and this being a fairly western part of nowhere everybody has horse shoe crosses and similar, some people have horseshoe hearts on the wall, I have not seen a horseshoe heart keychain though. This is just a rough shaping as I didn't know if I could work this size and have it still look like a horse and it's also bigger that I would like but I think it shows promise

That came out pretty well, a little tweaking to even the sides is all I can see to improve it. Well a thorough brushing and some wax but that's easy peasy.

Well done.

Frosty The Lucky.

Thanks frosty

The end idea is to forge a small complete horseshoe and then either sell as is or like this, I figured that the nail holes and stuff could come later. I think horse features will help quite a bit as well

Don't get yourself locked into making it look like a horse shoe, that is a secondary feature. The primary feature is a nice heart in an excellent size gift size. The horse heads are a much more striking and attractive feature than shoe features. I'd concentrate on refining the horse heads and their placement. Perhaps a little flowing mane or similar. Just keep it subtle and clean. The heart is the statement.

Frosty The Lucky.

I think a bit of tweaking on the horse heads and you'll have it. Eyes, mouth, mane... stamped in and a bit of tweaking on the head positions look to be all that you need to do.

This is a work in progress and proof of concept at the moment. I ran out of time to do mane nose ears and eyes. I would like to do horse shoe keychain as well and I figured that this would be more difficult that the actual horse shoe I think that both would sell well around here during rodeo weekend at least. 

Take it one step at a time, you already have a good representation of horse heads only needing a little refining to perfect, getting the necks arched evenly is a gentle tweak even now, cold. Then develop each new feature individually. If one new feature doesn't turn out right it can be corrected or sold as Egor the mutant pony. However if you try adding several features at once corrections can become too complicated to salvage.

Been there messed that up too. Just not a horse head heart. I think I'll wait to hear what you have to do to get it right before taking a lash at it myself.

Frosty The Lucky.

That's why I did the heads first and not the shoe, with something this delicate I want to get the hardest hit shaping down before I move to the relatively easy shaping accomplished. With something like this I figured that I may be better hammering rough, filing to shape and then doing hit chisel work for details, we shall see. I'll probably do a coupe more this size before I try smaller and will probably use my rail anvil for that.

Sounds like a plan, please keep us in pics. We LOVE pics you know.

Frosty The Lucky.

That's the plan, hopefully the coal will play nice next time I get some time