A steady horse
(Filed: 11/09/2004)
Modern farriers face a life on the road, so they need a comfy van that doubles as a mobile forge. Giles Chapman finds the ideal vehicle
It takes up to 25 years for a hard-grafting farrier to completely wear out his anvil. His back, always vulnerable in this line of work, is likely to give up long before the anvil's crucial sharp edges have been bashed smooth.
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A farrier's van, on the other hand, won't last anything like that time. Not necessarily through abuse, you understand, but more because it's tax-efficient. With anvils virtually a once-in-a-lifetime purchase, there's not much else in the way of equipment a good farrier needs to spend his hard-earned income on.
Blacksmiths and farriers went their own ways long ago. Although most will have their own forge at home, farriers are mostly wandering artisans, eschewing the baking-hot smithy and blackened visage for a life on the road between stud farm, stable and riding school. And for this, a decent set of wheels doubling as a mobile forge is today deemed essential, if not a right.
Car enthusiast and graphic designer Pat Eddon uncovered the arcane motoring needs of the farrier through his friend, and now partner, Adam Watts. Pat was invited to the pub one day and there were 20 farriers, who'd all gone to the same training college in Hereford before undergoing their intense, four-and-a-half-year apprenticeships, downing pints and horse-trading anecdotes.
"It's a very closed circle," says Pat. "This is a job for life and all farriers are closely regulated, so standards are kept high. They're in the farming community but they're really more of the wider country community.
"They all buy vans but some have a pretty low opinion of main dealers, who often get snotty when a dirty, sweaty farrier comes in, despite the fact they have money to spend. We saw a gap in the market so we set up Falcon Vans to supply farriers with these vehicles and a bespoke fitting service."
At the same time, Pat resolved to offer a vehicle that was custom-designed to the farriers' needs. A few years ago, most struggled along with their own, home-made adaptations of any old van, carrying a coke-powered forge and a chimney cut into the roof. But Pat has found that the Volkswagen Transporter is just about the best base vehicle.
"You've got to have a lift-up tailgate," he explains. "It acts as a shelter under which the farrier can work if it's raining. That's only available as an expensive option on a Ford Transit. There also has to be a sturdy, sliding side door for lugging propane gas canisters and welding gear in and out."
That's also where the anvil lives, and it will have to be hoicked out before being put on its own stand behind the van, ready for a good hammering.
The height of the working anvil is crucial to farriers; it needs to be at fingertip level when your hands are by your side, about halfway down the thigh. That's why the seemingly logical option of an anvil that can slide easily out of the van on its own track suits only certain farriers.
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The forge itself, a bolted-in, gas-powered, red-hot oven called a Porter, faces out of the rear tailgate, beside storage racking for tools and horseshoes that can be arranged in any configuration or height the farrier requests. Farriers tend to carry a range of machine-made shoes averaging 10-14in in circumference that can be worked to fit most animals, with smaller ones for ponies and 18in giants for shire horses. For really tricky yet truly satisfying jobs, there are straight, mild-steel strips that the farrier can expertly fashion to fit the weirdest hoof. Pretty much the only thing the horse owner needs to supply to the farrier's equipe is a bucket of cold water. And a mug of tea.
In the last year, Falcon has supplied about a dozen mobile forges, mostly Volkswagens. Nick Record has just received his sleek, black-painted example. "I work in an area that covers a radius of 25 miles around Buckinghamshire," he says. "Five or six visits a day is plenty, although I can shoe eight or nine horses a day at one yard. You can do cold or hot shoeing; hot shoeing is a lot easier but there are a few horses who don't like the smoke."
If most van drivers said they actually needed an expensive Volkswagen over lesser rivals, you might question their motives. Farriers have the ultimate rationale, however: VWs have superbly comfortable and supportive seats.
"It's not the time spent working but the overall strain of the job," says Nick. "Most farriers have a bad back, bad wrists and bad elbows, and very few say they don't ache. I see a physiotherapist once a month routinely. If you have poor seats in your van, like I once had in an old Toyota, then you can get terrible lower back pain on top of everything else."
So why would anyone want to be a farrier? "Well, it's very addictive and very enjoyable," explains Nick. "Making a shoe from a piece of unshaped metal and putting it on a horse is a great buzz. You're often within a quarter-of-an-inch of sensitive tissue - blood, basically - when you're working, so getting a performance animal to come right from a foot problem is uplifting too."
But while the equipment, layout and comfort of a Falcon farrier's van are vital, four-wheel drive isn't, despite the rural working environment.
"Horses much prefer to be shod while standing on concrete," says Nick. "They hate to stand on gravel or uneven ground on three legs without shoes.
"Most horses are very trusting, and respond well as long as they know what's going on. It's usually the owner who gets a kick if they go behind the animal, not the farrier working out of the back of his van."
• To contact Falcon Vans, tel 0870 242 1924 or go to www.falconvans.co.uk.
The horse pictured here being shod by Adam Watts is called Feet First, and appears courtesy of its owner, Cindy Williams, at www.shardeloesfarm.com.
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