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How I made a pair of Pony Boots

I picked up a leather horse head mask on Ebay (from Zvenig) and put together a costume to go with it.  I found some rubber horse hooves at Fetish Factory in Fort Lauderdale, FL plus a saddle at a flea market.  The tail was made from wig hair pieces and for the final touch I decided it needed "Pony Boots".  I started out with a pair of knee high "Ellie" platform boots in shiny black PVC and cut off the platforms and heels.  I chose a size three sizes bigger than I normally wear because there would be new hardware inside the boots that would need padding over it.  Then I made pieces to look like hooves.  Here are pictures of the process and the results.  In hindsight, if I made another pair, I would make the hooves narrower (they are very stable though!) and I would make the bases more hollow to save weight.

This is what the Ellie boots looked like after I had cut off the platforms and the heels.  The groove running down the center of the sole is a steel rod to keep the boot from flexing too much.  I left it in place.  Cutting was accomplished with a hacksaw, the heel is plastic with a steel insert.  The sole is all plastic but the hacksaw still worked well.  Try not to cut into the vinyl that makes up the sides, cut close to it with the saw and then trim as needed.

Here are the wooden bases that I made along with the steel plates that go inside the boots.  The steel plates are cut to the shape of the inside of the boots and then nuts were welded to them to run the screws into.  When I did a trial fit, I marked the threads of the screws that held the hooves on and cut the screws off so that they did not project above the plates.  These plates were covered over with foam shoe liners when assembly was completed.

Here is how I built up the hooves.  Each piece is 1" thick red oak cut by the "onagar estimate" method*.  They were cut out on a band saw and then lined up and drilled so that three screws would go through and hold them together.  These are independent of the three screws that hold these to the boots.

*The onagar is the Asian wild ass from which donkeys were domesticated... you figure it out!

This view shows the bottom of the hoof before I drilled lots of holes in the bottom to lighten them.  Notice the long tongue out the back, this gives support where the heel would normally be for those of us who might occasionally forget and relax for a moment and go crashing over backwards.

Here is a trial fit of the hoof on a boot.  At this point, I found that the steel rod in the boot without the platform was not strong enough to keep the boot in shape, and so I came up with a strut to go up the center to brace it.

This shows the hooves with the added strut and a heel plate so that the boot heels can be secured.

In this shot, I have taken auto body putty and filled in the steps in the wood.  You could cut the wood larger and shape it so that the hooves are entirely wood, but hey, that means more work!  Ehn it was set, I smoothed it down with a vibrating sander, then primed it with auto primer.  It was then sanded out to 280 grit.

Here are the hooves with struts after painting.  This is high gloss enamel, takes a bit longer to dry, but is tougher and smoothes out to a good shiny finish despite only going to 280 grit sanding on the primer.

Here are the boots with the fooves attached.  To help hide the platforms a bit, I put a fringe of hair around the heels (left over from making the tail).

This shows the bottom of a finished boot with holes drilled to lighten them up a bit.  In finished form they weighed four pounds each!  Next time, hollow out more and maybe go with pine!

Here I am showing off the boots.

A view a bit from the side.

Front view showing how wide the hooves are.

And one more side view for good measure.