By age 20 I was working at a lot of horse barns and an annoying thing kept happening to me. Older and more senior horsemen would spot my hoof pick and claim it was theirs, because they had lost theirs and assumed that I’d found it and picked it up. I would buy another one, and the same thing would happen.
Finally I took some baling twine and covered my hoof pick with braided baling twine. Since no one else could braid, no one could possibly claim it was theirs. That’s why I still have that hoof pick to this day.
That’s right: when I first started to braid, I used baling twine. It was both affordable and available.