Contributor Madison Ricard recently relocated her talented string of jumpers to a dressage barn which welcomed her with open arms, but it did mean having to get creative developing her own jump equipment. Madison has kindly agreed to share her secrets with us over the next few weeks in a series of DIY arena gear! See Madison’s previous posts here and here.
Pallet Fill Update
Since my last post, I’ve made two other sets, and painted the “natural” version from the last post. Here’s what I’ve made, with instructions!
Stars and Stripes Fill
This fill was pretty simple to make! It has the same hinge type as the previous pallet fills (read how to make that hinge here).
For the stars, I printed out a star shape on heavy cardstock, cut it out and used it as a stencil to paint the stars. This was done with a large paintbrush, with touchups afterwards done with a smaller paintbrush.
To prevent bleeding on the stencil, I find it helpful to start on the cardstock and paint towards the middle of the star, all the way along the edges. That way you aren’t pushing paint underneath the cardstock inadvertently going from the wood to the paper.
Lattice Fill
Another straightforward pallet pattern, I painted the top boards with yellow and green, and the bottom boards with straight black. Then, I used some old 1 foot lattice we had lying around our house and nailed it onto the bottom boards, over the top of the black paint.
It makes for a nice hunter-y type fill, without the heavy lifting of boxes! These also have the standard hinge pattern.
Rainbow Fill
My advice, don’t ever do this! It takes a TON of time and back pain, but it looks awesome.
To draw out the rainbow, I took a measuring tape and pinned the end of it to the corner of the pallet. For the left pallet, I pinned it to the bottom right hand side, and for the right pallet, I pinned it to the bottom left hand side.
Take a measurement of what you want the “height” of your rainbow to be (basically the height of the pallet). Move the measuring tape around the circle, leaving marks at your desired distance as you go. Then, connect the dots! Rinse and repeat for each band of the rainbow. I use approximately 1.5″ bands, but that will depend on your pallet height.
For this pallet, I elected to do a slightly different hinge configuration, so that I would be able to use the rainbow in multiple positions as shown in the photo above!
This hinge was made by drilling a hole through the middle of the 2nd and 3rd boards of pallet. Then, get a long bolt that fits through your drilled holes and your door hinge’s holes, and a wing nut. Slide the long bolt through one of the holes, through your door hinge and secure it with the wing nut. This way, the hinge is detachable, and you can flip the pallets in any direction you like!
Hope you guys enjoy these designs, and let me know what you come up with!
Madison Ricard of ThreeBaysJumping.com grew up on the Arabian show circuit, but was bitten by the show jumping bug at an early age. As a teenager, she and her two intrepid Arabians took the show jumping world by storm, with great success up to 1.10m. After taking down one too many rails with her own feet, she moved onto bigger warmbloods who actually take up her long legs. Her current show string is Manny, Diego and Seven (the three bays in Three Bays Jumping!), competing up to 1.30m. She is most likely found either at the barn, or studying for her veterinary degree.