THE FOOT AND SHOEING 



229 



that the farrier can see whether the nail is accurately fitted or not ; (3) 

 that it makes the shoe lighter. 



That two narrow surfaces will, under certain conditions, give a better Fullered 

 foothold than a broad, smooth one is, no doubt, correct, but they will wear and plain 

 out quicker and the other advantages claimed will not stand examination, shoes 

 A nail supported on two sides by a fullering cannot be so secure as one ^^'"P^^^ 

 supported on all sides in an accurately " stamped" hole. It certainly 

 cannot make the shoe lighter than it otherwise would be, for no metal is 

 removed in its making. There is one distinct drawback to fullering froni 

 a workman's point of view, viz., that to accurately correspond with a nail 

 head it must be deep and narrow. In altering machine-made shoes, this 



Fig. 47. 

 A plain toe fullered shoe. 



deep groove easily gets closed in at the top, and unless the man is specially 

 careful to re-open it subsequently, the nail head cannot be driven home, Rising 

 the neck no longer fits all the way down, and when the shoe is part worn clenches, 

 the nail head becomes loose and the clench " rises." If a farrier makes 

 a fullering, he makes it wide and shallow, so that the broken surface for 

 increased foothold is obtained, and the danger of nails not being driven 

 home avoided. A reason why all heavy machine-made shoes are fullered 

 is, that the manufacturers find it impracticable to stamp nail holes by 

 machinery through metal over a certain thickness, and it is therefore 

 unavoidable in such shoes. Fullering may extend all round from heel 

 to heel, or be confined to the region of the nail holes, leaving the toe 

 and heel " plain." 



