Suggestions on clipping horses and keeping clipper blades sharp an essay by John Fuhring Introduction I would like to present some of my ideas that I believe will
make clipping a horse's winter coat easier and the finished job better looking.
If you use these suggestions, I am sure that your clipper blades will stay sharp
longer, the job will be done quicker and with less fatigue for you and the horse. In the following paragraphs I
will outline my suggestions, but first I'd like to start with my
opinion regarding the value of experience to guide you.In my opinion, clipping a horse is not for someone who has had no prior experience. There is a certain art to cutting a pattern on a horse's body which takes some thought and practice. In addition, there is a lot of skill in the proper handling and care of clippers and their blades. You must know your clipper, which includes how to handle it while cutting hair and how to care for the blades. Finally you must know how to prepare the horse's coat for clipping or the clippers will clog, the job will take forever and look bad. Be sure to give yourself plenty of time to do the job. A clipping job, done by an experienced person using powerful animal clippers (such as the Masterclipper) with good cutting blades and the proper kind of lubricant, will take around two hours. If things aren't working at top efficiency, the job will take a lot longer. In most cases, a quick and easy job is the exception, not the rule, so give yourself plenty of time. Items to make the job more comfortable Clipped horse hairs go everywhere and get into
everything, into your clothes, under
your clothes and on your skin (and is terribly itchy) and therefore I recommend wearing a
"hazmat suit" or some form of coverall. Hairs and particles will
get into your nose, so you might be more comfortable wearing some kind of a dust mask. It is possible to clip a very well prepared horse with small A5 type clippers, but you should not use the standard number 10 blades that usually come with such clippers because they cut too close to the skin. The 7F blades are the blades to use. 7F blades work the quickest and cut to the same depth as as the large animal clippers (such as the Clipmaster). Speaking of large clippers, it is so much better and faster to use a large animal clipper with a powerful motor and larger blades and reserve the small clippers to places too narrow for the larger clippers. In all cases, the blades should be sharp and kept well lubricated, but NOT WITH TRADITIONAL BLADE OIL. I'll say more a little later about how important it is to keep blades lubricated and the importance of the RIGHT kind of lubricant.. Importance of a clean and vacuumed horse
Perhaps the most important thing (next to lubrication) is the
preparation of the
horse's coat and that includes scrubbing, brushing and vacuuming.
To keep the clipper's
blades sharp and cutting, the
horse's coat must be very, very clean, much cleaner than a simple
shampoo. Even the best cleaned horse has
an amazingly amount of nasty stuff under its coat and next to the skin
that even vacuuming can't entirely remove. The stuff I'm
mentioning consists of a mass of
bunched up old hairs all mixed in with dirt, dust, natural skin
oils and old skin
particles. All that grime will clog up even the best clipper
blades and stop the blades from cutting. In preparing the horse
for clipping, it is important that you remove as much of this trash as
humanly possible otherwise the job will take hours and you
will become fatigued and frustrated and the finished job will look
bad. My best clipping experiences were with very clean horses. I'd scrub the horse's coat while giving it a bath and then the coat was brushed with a stiff brush until it was mostly dry. After the horse's coat was dry, I'd then brush it again until sand and other particles stopped falling out (mostly). I follow the scrubbing and brushing with a detailed vacuuming of the coat to suck out as much of deeply embedded grime as possible. I admit that this sounds like a lot of time consuming work, but it actually saves time and frustration when you are actually clipping the horse. Just lately Rob and I did a nice looking job on his very (very) hairy horse and it only took two hours including the brushing and the vacuuming. By the way, after I had removed the hair to near the skin, it was amazing to see how much grime was found under there even with all the bathing, brushing and vacuuming. The importance of keeping the blades lubricated and the type of lubricant you should use
I would
like to turn your attention to what I consider the most important keys
to successful trimming. What I am referring to is the vital
necessity of keeping the clipper blades lubricated
and the equally important choice of the right kind of
lubricant. First, let me state right up front that you
should
NOT use traditional clipper oil on your blades, but instead use a good
quality
"dry" lubricant such as 3in One Dry Lube. Of course, the "dry"
lubricant comes out of the bottle as a liquid, but it almost instantly
drys to form an extremely thin, but very effective lubricating layer
between your clipper's blades. This layer does not attract hair
and grime particles such as liquid oil does and because the blades are
allowed to be so
close together (not separated by a thick film of oil), hair and grit
can not get in between the blades to separate them and thus stop
their cutting action. During my last
clipping session, I used 3in One Dry Lube while my friend Rob
used
ordinary clipper oil. I was able to cut much much faster and my
cutting was much neater. When we took a break and removed the two
sets of blades out of our clippers, we could
clearly see hair between the cutting surfaces of Rob's blades, but
absolutely no hair between my
blades. My hypothesis was well proved to
my complete satisfaction, oil attracts grime which stops the blades
from cutting, but dry lubricant does not. I might add that when I
looked closely at
my clipper blade's cutting surfaces, the almost invisible scratches
from the factory were still visible showing no visible wear to the
cutting surfaces.If you use an A5 type clipper, the pressure keeping the blades together is set and can not be adjusted while the clipper is running. Under these circumstances, it is even more important to keep the blades from accumulating hair and grime between the blades by using a dry lubricant. With large animal clippers (such as the Masterclipper), the pressure holding the blades together is adjustable using the knob on the top. Before beginning a job, apply dry lubricant to the blades and then adjust the blade tension. Start by screwing the thumb wheel knob all the way counter clockwise to relieve all tension on the blades. Begin to screw it clockwise (several turns) until you first encounter resistance. After you first encounter resistance, screw it down clockwise another half turn. With the blades set this way, start clipping and notice how the blades are clipping. If the clipper isn't cutting as you think it should, screw the thumb wheel clockwise to increase the pressure, but only just enough so that the blades are now cutting properly. The more pressure the blades are under, the more often you will have to squirt the blades with lubricant. If you have the blades screwed down pretty tight, try a lighter setting after you have been cutting for a while to see if the blades might now be better seated and might now be cutting better. Use only the minimum amount of tension necessary for good cutting action. As mentioned, tight blades need frequent lubrication, so I recommend slowly counting to 100 or to perhaps 150 and then squirt in some lube while the clipper is still running. If your forget lubricate, you may notice the blades aren't cutting so well, but if you squirt them with lube, the motor will speed up and they will start cutting again. I suggest you keep your bottle of lube in your shirt pocket or somewhere on your person where you can quickly get to it. Having the lube handy enables you to give your blades a quick squirt and then immediately get back to the job. If it is at all possible, reduce the thumb wheel tension, and perhaps reduce the speed of the clippers while still maintaing good cutting because this will greatly extend the lubrication intervals and everything will run cooler too. By the way, after my last job was mostly done and I was doing some touch-up work, I tried reducing the blade tension and running the clippers at half speed. I was surprised at how well they continued to cut the leftover patches of hair and how cool the blades were at this lower speed and reduced blade tension. I guess I should have tried this earlier, but I was so busy cutting hair and the blades were working so well, I just didn't think to experiment this way. Dealing with blade and motor heating
Poorly lubricated blades and especially blades under a lot
of tension can quickly get really hot and the motor can get hot too.
During my recent job using my new lubrication method, I noticed
that the blades got mildly hot, but did not
get so hot that I had to stop and I noticed that motor didn't get hot
at all.
I should also mention that it is very important that the rear
screen, that admits cooling
air into the motor, be kept clear of hair and debris at all times.
As you are working, be sure to wipe all the accumulated hair off
the intake screen in the rear and check this area every time you
lubricate the blades. Lubricating the blades and cleaning the air
intake screen only takes a few seconds, but it makes the entire job go
much quicker and is much easier on your clippers. As mentioned
before, when I disassembled my clippers after the last clipping job,
they showed no wear at all and I believe I will be able to do many
clippings before I will have to resharpen the blades.Ceramic blades
Last year, on the Internet, I came across a deal for a
package of four ceramic top blades to fit A5 type clippers.
The blades were so cheap, I didn't think they would be any
good, but I sent for them anyway. Boy I was wrong, these blades
are amazing. These ceramic blades are nearly diamond hard
and are not brittle like traditional ceramics. What is more,
they are super sharp and they do not dull. To add to their
outstanding qualities, they require little or no lubrication.
When you have steel rubbing against steel under
tension, you get microscopic "welding" of the two friction surfaces and
this causes heat, galling of the steel and the necessity to apply
lubricant frequently. Because a ceramic top blade does not "weld"
to the steel of the bottom blade while sliding past it under tension,
the need for lubrication is much less and so the blades and the motor
run much cooler and the blades do not clog nearly as easily. By
the way,
these ceramic blades make resharpening unnecessary.
Should your blades get dull, simply put in a new, low cost,
ceramic blade and your
clipper will cut better than ever.So far, these outstanding ceramic blades are only available for my A5 clippers, but not for my larger Clipmaster. The Clipmaster's steel blades, with adjustable tension control, makes having a large ceramic top blade somewhat unnecessary if you use dry lubricants and apply it as necessary. Because of the way the top blade operates and the way tension is applied to it, I doubt that ceramic blades will ever be available for the Clipmaster, but a metal/ceramic hybrid may someday be available. |