Anybody know how to construct low cost ones? Bear in mind I am a lousy carpenter. Especially the poles. I think PVC is too light. Could you cap the PVC pipe and fill them with sand? I have tons of sand I had to remove from my arena so sand is not in short supply.
How long are they normally?
We made ours 10ft wide. Not so heavy to move, not so narrow they could run out easily. Pressure treated lumber.
Do you have access to a table saw or circular hand saw? We purchased 10ft lengths of 4" x 4", then cut off those 4 corners with the saw. Table saw is nicer, but the circular saw works too. BIG THING is to cut slowly, NOT push on the saw hard, while cutting thru the wood. A tip is to open the long cut with a piece of wood between the rail and cut off corner, behind you. This prevents saw blade being bound tight in the cut, making saw woork too hard as it cuts. Cutting the 4 corners evenly will leave you with an 8 sided rail, no sharp corners. You may want to make extra rails, they are handy without the X ends as trot rails on the ground, jump rails. Sell them to others at a profit, to pay for your cavaletti. Jump rails get broken all the time, they need new ones.
Husband did the German style Xs, different height on each side of the X, for three settings of rail height. Bolted thru the center of X into the rail.
I personally hate PVC for rails. They do not stay straight if left in the sun. The can get brittle, shatter when bumped, throwing the sharp edged pieces all over to land on! Saw that happen at a pony club meeting with our horse! She missed getting cut, but I hauled our own wood rails to meetings after that!! She also had learned bad habits with the PVC, dragging a hoof to check plastic or wood? She then would not jump, just blast thru the plastic rail jumps. Wood, she jumped in good style, clean. It was worth hauling the wood rails to prevent bad habits escalating! And over time, the kids avoided the PVC jumps because their horses were also developing bad habits!
Goodhors - can I borrow your husband??? I have some saws but don’t know what kind. That is probably the best way but may be beyond my skill set. I won’t try PVC as that sounds like a mistake/ accident waiting to happen.
I have a set of 6 homemade PVC rails that are over 20yrs old.
I use them as cavaletti with an equally old set of Blox.
My TB Hunter never had a problem knocking them, but then, he tended to have a “wood allergy” - never touched the jumps :rolleyes:
DH & I made them from PVC plumbing pipe - 3" diameter.
The pipes come in all sorts of lengths, IIRC, we got 10’.
We did not cap the ends as the poles themselves are heavy enough.
At the time Dover sold rolls of decorative tape we used to decorate the poles, adding striping.
We also used 5-foot 4X4 PVC fencing to make jump standards & did cap those with decorative finials.
Drilled every 6", starting at 9" from base & added plastic jump cups with attached pins.
DH made wood bases for the standards that are removable for ease of storage.
These we would backfill with sand for stability when the standards were inserted.
They were used many years later as ground poles with my WB former GP Jumper to slow down his canter depart & more recently with my TWH to teach him to trot.
Both WB & Walker have knocked/ trod on the poles, both on the ground and set as cavaletti.
There has never been a break in any of the poles.
Stored in my indoor for the past 16yrs with no particular care, both bases & poles are still very usable.
www.texashorsemansdirectory.com
Easy how-to instructions for building cavaletti. Having some built this week using these directions with wood landscape timbers, 8’ long rails 😀
I use cinder blocks (which I already had) & stick landscape timbers in them. Works great, & I don’t 'lose poles to a permanent cavalletti set up. They definitely don’t roll away, lol.
Rail razers might be a good alternative to building real cavaletti! Not sure if this link will work but:
https://www.sstack.com/rail-razer/p/30796/
I have 3 sets (come in packs of 4) and they are very handy! I keep them in a plastic crate and take that around to lessons as needed. I have used wood and PVC poles. A hard hit can knock a pole off but they aren’t unsteady. They interlock with each other and can be stacked to adjust the height. I haven’t used them more than 3 or maybe 4 high, at that point I might as well get jump standards out, but they sure do the trick for the lower height cavaletti.
I have the IKEA potty-training chair cavalettis :lol: and they’re great. They raise the pole just enough, and they’re safe and easy to stack in the barn when not in use.
Here’s an earlier thread on these, with links: https://www.chronofhorse.com/forum/f…i-potty-chairs 8ft is plenty long for the pole-- let’s face it, if your horse is bending away to successfully avoid them, it’s not the width of the pole that’s to blame. But a wider pole is more flexible for stuff like working on a circle where the poles are arranged like spokes on a wheel.
Another DIY cavaletti is to take some cheap 5gal buckets with lids. Cut 3" hole in the sides of the bucket, a few inches from the base. Your pole slides through these holes. If you just want to do raised poles, flip the bucket so the base is on the ground, and the pole will only be a few inches high. If you want to do grids, flip the buckets onto the other end, and your pole will be about 12" high. Like this:
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Some sand inside the buckets will keep them from blowing over.
I use landscape timbers for cavaletti, 8’ wide and already rounded so no need to rip, though I do have the saw to and have ripped many poles in my time. If you don’t need anything fancy and they won’t get heavy use, you can just use 2"x4"s for the “Xs on the ends” instead of 4x4s, then you can just screw them into the pole instead of having to use bolts.
Rail razers are awesome, I used to have a few pair but have lost them in the move to Florida.
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