I once red an article written by Ed Fowler.He cold forged mild steel to a decent blade.In this case Cold forged means reallly cold forged like hammering the edge of a scythe.

no fire and heat just patiently hammering the blade.....it showed good results, not a winner in edge holding but because of the fine grain fairly tough and as good as it can be used....but horse shoes still got their holes

 

 

 

IIRC Frank Turley once told me about a set of horseshoes that were forged from HC steel and were found to be worse than useless in the mountains as they didn't allow the stones to "bite" into the metal and so the horses were slipping and sliding and in danger of severe injury.   (Might work on strictly unpaved dirt roads; but would be terrible on cobblestones!)