Building Jump Standards & Poles

If you're going to paint the uprights, do it after you drill the holes. If you paint first, the wood will splinter when you drill the holes out the other end. Found that one out the first time I made jumps. If you don't need really tall jumps, look at the fencing corner posts. They are 3' tall, have nice decorative tops and makes for a solid but portable wooden upright.

Ohh, thanks for the tips, MyBoyPuck!

Just read in a magazine about buying Christmas tree stands when they're on clearance (coming up to that time!), and a 8ft 4x4 post, cut it in half to make two, one for each side, into the tree stand, and walla, cheap jump standards (hope that made sense?). I'm going to be doing that :)

I read that article too.

Oh and when I was talking about the 8 ft being too narrow that was training a young horse to jump. When doing this I like to have the 10 ft wide jumps so that they can get their barrings. After they are comfortable with that then I would train them on different widths. If I was going to only build a couple jumps like I did when I was boarding and training at a place that did not have any I would make them all 10 ft. So the youngsters could start to do more then just one jump over and over again.

That is just my strategy, I guess I should have explained it better.

The hubby made me these last year ... he used pvc pipes with caps on the ends for polls.

I had the same problem with there not being any jumps at my new barn. So a few weeks ago I used this website to build the standards.
Building Jump Standards

I found it helpful because it showed pictures lol. Not sure about home depot having the wooden poles. I just found the pvc poles there.