Leon Fisk writes:

Interesting. Thanks for the info. I'm up in snow country and like old
odds & ends. I've seen several different versions of caulks through
the years. My Dad use to call them sharp shod, or something that
sounded like that. He hauled logs out of the woods with a team of
horses in his younger years. If you dig around in old patents you
will find a lot of rabbit holes to explore searching on shoe caulks

I once had a draught horse that was falling to his knees on ice so I
got a farrier to put shoes on him. They were old but factory made to
take drive caulks -- one end a tapered cylinder to wedge tightly into
holes in the shoe, your choice of blunt or sharp edge to the ground. I
still have the tool, rather like a small ball joint splitter, for
removing the caulks from the shoes. I once had a couple of boxes of
the drive caulks but they've gone walkies sometime in the last 50
years.

I presently have a bucket of premade (but hand made) toe caulks in 3 or
4 sizes. Each one had had a little pointy spur turned up at one
end. You could heat the shoe red hot, hammer the caulk in place. The
cold spur would drive into the hot shoe and hold the caulk in
place while you fluxed and reheated for the forge weld. Hadn't heard
of that refinement until I got the bucketfull from a retired marine
smith who also did some shoeing.

--
Mike Spencer Nova Scotia, Canada