Clipping Lines: One Of The Top Causes (And how to fix them)

In this video I show you one of the top causes of clipping lines left behind when clipping your horse. Here I show you why using a broken toothed blade can cause you problems when clipping.

Watch the video closely; the second to end tooth is missing from the blade. So what’s happening is as I’m clipping into that coat, not only is it leaving a line where the tooth is missing because the hair isn’t feeding down to the cutter properly, but the blade is also snagging in the coat making it a very uncomfortable experience for the horse. I’m only using it for a couple of minutes just for demonstration purposes. I switched this blade out after making this video for you. 

It’s very easy for clipper blades to break, unfortunately it happens sometimes, it’s an expensive mistake. But it can happen, and so it is important to be aware of the problems that using broken blades can cause.

Using the broken blade is also leaving behind a line of unclipped fur.  Rather than continue with a blade that’s going to make the horse uncomfortable and leave a line through the coat like this (where the hair has not been fed through to the cutter blade) best practice is to completely avoid broken tooth blades completely. 

Dangers Of Using Broken Blades

Another danger of using broken tooth top combs is there’s nothing stopping the skin from being fed down to that cutter so you can potentially cut the horse very easily, there’s no protection for the horse’s skin for the skin being fed into that cutter blade so it’s best practice just don’t use broken blades.  

A2 Blades – top comb with a broken tooth towards the left of the image

Finally, How To Correct The Lines Left Behind

If you do find yourself in a situation where you’ve used a blade and it’s left the line you can always pick up a number 10 blade and a detachable style clipper and skim over and work out the lines that have been left behind.

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