Home made jumps?

Switcheroo

Switcheroo

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My horse and I don't have access to facilities in the summer; he's kept at a family members farm where I have access to lots of fields to ride in. For jumps I've had to improvise; logs, barrels, that kind of thing, but I'm in serious need of poles for schooling. Why do they have to be so bloody expensive? :(

Just wanted to ask if anyone had any experience of making jumps, or if they have been able to buy wooden poles and prepare them in a way that would be safe to jump or use for flatwork. People have suggested to use plastic piping but if that was to be stood on it would shatter quite easily, so a big no-no with that.

Is this even possible? :L most poles I see go for 40-50 quid for ONE, and I can never seem to find any second hand ones in my area.
 
I go to a local wood merchants and buy fence posts, they're not very expensive, I think I paid about £6 each, once home I then saw off the points and voila! I use them as trotting poles, and the sawed off points go in the log burner at home. Your also free to paint them whatever colour you like or leave them natural. :)
 
I have erm "acquired" some roadworks. Such as cones, piping, plastic pipes and my favourite is barriers with the cups that the planks go in. £170 worth of jumps as long as you dont mind looking like a low end gypsy yard!
 
Call in at your local carpet shop and ask for the cardboard tubes out if the centre of the rolls....they are normally 5/6ft long.
You can paint them, fill them with sand to make them heavier and if they break then they are free to replace.
Only downside is you need to keep them dry so to be stored inside.
 
i paid £8 a pole from covers cut at 8ft long show jumping bsja is usually 12ft but we dont have that much room :) we made our wings and they cost £10 per wing and fillers were about £30 for 4 and then i have planks which cost £15 including brackets and then just how ever much you pay for paint!

fillers (sorry about the grass it wasnt an intentional photo!)
fillers.jpg


wings and poles (in the back ground. again i dont have a decent photo of them!)
showjumps.jpg
 
I've made some fillers out of pallets, cut in half and attaching feet to the bottom. then you can stuff the tops with brush.
Last time my dad came up to visit he had a rummage around the farm and found some old rotting scaffolding planks, cut the ends so they'd hang off cups (rather than buying metal brackets for them). And recently he made me some sheep-shaped fillers, used a jigsaw to cut the basic shape out of plywood then put feet on the bottom, and he's painted them too. I havent actually seen them yet though, so will have to wait til he next comes up!
There are some super cheap poly fillers on ebay at the moment, i was looking at making some myself but i couldnt make them cheaper than this company was selling them for.
 
got my poles from the local timber merchant they were in the region of £8 each. They are quite hefty being 12 foot long and 4 inches in diameter. Admittedly I have cut them down to 10 foot as I just couldn't handle them (or transport them)

My Father and I made the uprights last easter. here they all are before I attacked them with the paint brush

270842_10150914823788499_316881892_n.jpg


Also have a pair of fillers from some left over marine ply that super Dad made feet for... no photos of those yet though
 
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This are brilliant! Just as professional as the real thing, fraction of the price. Timber merchant's it is for me. Liked the idea of using an old pallet with brush at the top and the carpet tubes. Great ideas everyone, thanks :D
 
I made 6 pairs of jump stands similar to Angua2 & bought some new 10'x 4" round poles, ready painted in red & white, blue & white etc from an ebay seller at £10 each. The galvanised cups I bought at about £6 a pair. I made some fillers using pallets cut to size with wooden feet attached to them & treated with preserver. The highways dept were doing some re-surfacing around the area & didn't bother collecting some of their plastic speed & slow signs so I used a couple of these on the front of some of the fillers.

These have lasted for 4 years so far, this year I'll treat them again so they'll last longer, We use them to jump to about 1.20m. In a 40 x 20 arena you don't need any more than 5-6 jumps really.

For placing poles I bought some 1.5" x 3.5" x 8' planks & have painted them white. These are better than using round poles as they don't move when a horse steps on them.

Generally pallet wood isn't good enough for building jumps, it has too many knots in it, it's very poor quality & soaks up water like a sponge.

Be careful when using plastic drainage pipes, they are quite brittle, specially when it's very cold & they will shatter. Likewise cardboard carpet roles will break up when they get wet so not ideal.
 
Have you looked at Jump Stacks (www.jumpstack.co.uk). They're brilliant and so simple - just pop the covers over square straw / hay bales. You can stack them up to build height and only use ones width which is great for skinnies. They're really brightly coloured too so super for youngsters.
 
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