Automation in the old smithy

Press, 13 October 1982, Page 26

Automation in the old smithy

By

NEILL BIRSS

An engineer and a farrier have pooled their skills in a new business: the automatic manufacture of horseshoes.

Mr Tony Calvert, the engineer, and Mr Jim Pattinson. the farrier, have developed a machine they believe is unique. •It electrically heats selected lengths of rods of specially rolled steel, presses nail holes, and bends the lengths into shape. This has allowed the partners to hold production costs, and sales are rising at 50 per cent a year, providing strong competition for the country's only other manufacturer, the New Zealand Horseshoe Company, of Auckland, which has been in the business since the 19205. Mr. Calvert and Mr Pattinson are the principals of Mus-Cal Research. Ltd, which trades as the Forge from its factory in Bexley Road, Christchurch.

The company was formed in 1973, but Mr Pattinson, a Southland farrier, joined Mr Calvert, originally from Liverpool, in the firm about two years ago. They feel they are just at take-off point in sales and production, but are still drawing only very modest wages while they plough the surplus back into the business.

“We're working up to 12 hours a day for pittance wages, to get things going," says Mr Pattinson.

The centre of the business is a machine designed and built in two years and a half by Mr Calvert. How it works is secret. So secret that Mr Calvert has not- patented

"I believe that if you patent a machine anyone is allowed to make one copy for themselves provided that they do not sell it. That's why I haven’t patented it.” Their only employee tends the machine, the main job in running it being to watch for malfunctions. Near the machine, which uses electronic hydraulic, and pneumatic processes, are stacks of completed horseshoes, piles of steel rods

that the firm imports by the container, and more machinery (this is for Mr Calvert to use in developing his next shoemaker).

At first the Forge produced shoes of traditional mild steel, but farriers asked for something harder and better wearing. Spring steel and, finally, high-carbon steel shoes ' were the outcome.

The Forge's shoes in highcarbon steel have the advantage that the farrier may shape them bold, dispensing with the need for the traditional smithy forge. Despite the. technology, some atmosphere of the old smithy remains. Occasionally Mr Pattinson shoes a horse in the factory, and outside graze horses of the Calvert family, including a white. part-Welsh pony mare and her foal, born on Tuesday. The Forge produces horseshoes in all of the eight sizes tnat fit from small ponies to the large hacks, though it does not yet cater for draught horses, which are increasing in number. A different shoe is made for each hoof of a horse. There are’ different weights, too. ranging from heavy wear for station hacks, able to stand months of scrambling over hill country, to light racing shoes that may survive only three weeks of pounding on the hardened track at Addington. The firm is the South Island agent for gallopers' aluminium shoes from the Waihi firm. Helvetia. It also makes its own steel shoes for these horses, and for trotters, pacers, ponies, and hacks, each in its own pre-shape for the farrier to fit. (Local farriers provided much help in the design of the preshaping.)

Sales are in minimum orders of 100 to farriers, stock agents, and other retailers. Retail prices typically vary from $4.60 to $6.15 a set.

Mr Calvert and Mr Pattinson produce many other lines of horse footwear. These in-

clude a wedge to build the heel up and shoes with polyurethane rim pads, much as galoshes go on humans' shoes. They are also designing moulds to manufacture full pads to protect horses' soles.

Nicely plated shoes are made for weddings. “They're in carbon steel and they outlast marriages often these days." says Mr Calvert. Book-ends and wall racks of horseshoes in the office of the Forge are evidence of the search for new products. But providing shoes lor New Zealand's farriers and farmers remains the priority, and is why export inquiries from most' of the Australian states, from Canada, the United States, and Singapore have not been turned into sales contracts.

This may change, however, with the second, bigger construction unit Mr Calvert is planning to design and build.

He and Mr Pattinson have not borrowed heavily in building the firm. Still, assets have grown, and the shoemaking machine is valued at $BO,OOO. The pair plan further growth from retained earnings. and are confident they can ride out any short-term recession.

Not that they do not have times of doubt. “We're both in our forties and we wonder sometimes if what we get out of it eventually will be worth all the years of hard work.” says Mr Pattinson.

But the doubts soon pass, dissolved by the knowledge of the growing population of horses in New Zealand for leisure use. of the export potential, and of the cost of producing the shoes with their machine and its successor.

“We can sell shoes to a farrier for less than the cost of making them himself," Mr Calvert says.