Weighty hand hooves

I don't normally make hand hooves with shoes on them - Since the hoof is latex, it gives the wearer some dexterity like opening doors while maintaining the hoof shape - but the customer requested real iron horse shoes.
Horse shoes, especially iron ones, are really heavy! Each hoof is about 2 lbs. It may not sound like much, but for costume hands, lugging around 2 lb shoes is awkward at best.... so I needed to come up with a solution....


First, the shoes needed to be glued and reinforced onto the hoof.
I added a layer of 1/4 sheet foam to the base of the hoof with a coat of latex to glue it in place. The shoes were then epoxied to the base of the latex hoof. With real horseshoe nails, I secured the hoof further. The nails were twisted and hammered down so they would hold securely.


I added an additional layer of black sheet foam for a nice finished look (and to avoid those sharp pokey nails!), then glued and screwed down a set of handles for the wearer to hold onto while wearing the hand hooves.



Fur sleeves were added, leaving a reinforced thumb hole in the back. As the hooves lost all dexterity by adding the shoe, having an accessible thumb can be a godsend!



Although they are quite heavy, the hand hooves are quite handsome!