Beach Horseshoe

[Halmstad]

Found this horseshoe at the beach encrusted in sand and shells. Any way to tell how old it is by looking at the shoe or by how thick the crust is?

 

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[vonfatman]

That thing had some serious crusties! What was your cleaner? Heat & Vinegar?
Good clean-up!
I use vinegar to clean the lime scale off that gets layered onto the scrapers, blades, knives and the like...while searching in wet areas it is the worst. For me, that is creeks.

vfm

 

[creskol]

That is called a concave shoe with a full-cut fuller. It isn't terribly old, though.

 

[Halmstad]

That thing had some serious crusties! What was your cleaner? Heat & Vinegar?
Good clean-up!
I use vinegar to clean the lime scale off that gets layered onto the scrapers, blades, knives and the like...while searching in wet areas it is the worst. For me, that is creeks.

vfm

I used CLR first and then tried vinegar. It really only slightly loosened the crust. I still had to chip away almost all the crust.

 

[Halmstad]

Found this horseshoe at the beach encrusted in sand and shells. Any way to tell how old it is by looking at the shoe or by how thick the crust is?

It's magnetic so it's either cast iron or cast steel. Don't know how to tell. There are little tiny pits all over it when you look close. I don't know if that is weathering from the ocean or from the casting process. It seems to me they still make horseshoes in this style. I dont know how long it takes to build that much crust in the ocean. 10yrs? 100yrs? Under the outer layer of sand the crust was pretty much solid black crust inside.

 

[vonfatman]

Sounds like it was work,

vfm

 

[creskol]

It's magnetic so it's either cast iron or cast steel. Don't know how to tell. There are little tiny pits all over it when you look close. I don't know if that is weathering from the ocean or from the casting process. It seems to me they still make horseshoes in this style. I dont know how long it takes to build that much crust in the ocean. 10yrs? 100yrs? Under the outer layer of sand the crust was pretty much solid black crust inside.

just a steel horseshoe.