Crating/Building

This is my next project being the ants ate our high jump, too. So much so that we don’t even have a board, not even a piece of board, from that contraption to take a picture of!

I got most of the building materials today at lunch, but a wicked downpour of rain right when I got home to unload the goods soaked me big time! The shopping took longer than I thought because I had to ask for help THREE times from the Home Depot staff. Unusual. No one seemed to be able to change hats and come into the tools department to help me find the nuts, washers, wing nuts, and other paraphernalia I needed. I didn’t get a pair of peg board tool hooks because no one knew what it was or where they were…IF they were. And then I needed another two or so pieces of the white vinyl house siding, which the first “helper” told me to find in flooring? FLOORING? Ummm, no. There wasn’t any in the building section either where it would have been if it would have been. So those two pieces of the puzzle I still need to get at Lowe’s. Yep.

Meanwhile, I had a heck of a time convincing myself that indeed, I needed to get 1-1/2 inch PVC pipe. Do you know how big that is? It is HUGE! I had to really work that out in my head because not only is that a very big pipe, it’s nearly $5 a piece. Then we have the caps to go with it, and the tees, which are both on the high-end of PVC costs. All the materials cost about $70, without the missing two pieces I mentioned. However, when all is said and done, hopefully, I will have paid about $130 for a full set of jumps. J and J has a full set for $229 that’s before the tax, shipping and handling.  So I will have saved some moula when all is said and done, done, done!

Helen

OK…If I do this again, and I may, I have a great pointer for myself. The gluing part was very hard for me. I had to work fast and was guessing that the pieces were aligned. You will see from the attached picture that the two bigger jumps are bowed. Was I disappointed. By the time I got the whole thing together, they were too dried to adjust. So, next time, when I do the pre-arranging, I am going to take different color markers and draw a line from one of the elbows to the PVC bar that it attaches to, so when I’m gluing, I will match up those lines and everything will be aligned like it was before I glued. I’m really bummed about that mistake. I even put them on the ground and aligned as I glued, but I didn’t have enough time to fix mistakes because the glue dries so fast.

The other thing I did was on the “second” jump – OK, I had issue with that. Not all of us know which is the second jump. There are 4 jumps and was the second jump the second from the tall or second from the small? I figured it was the second from the small, but that was just too much work figuring that out. Well, that is the one where she says to put the PVC pole on top of the elbow instead of into it. Well, I put one into it and then I screwed one on top of it, too, so it would be sturdy. I had trouble screwing, just as I thought I would. Well, it was unscrewing that was hard because the drill put the screw in, but when I made a mistake, it wouldn’t take it out, so I had to do it by hand. I was afraid the screw wouldn’t hold the PVC in place, but after that, I knew it would! My arm still hurts. So I put two bars down instead of the one like she said on the second jump. I need a few more screws to secure it, though, because now I have tape on it.

Otherwise, the plans were pretty good to follow. They were well thought out and pretty thorough. That thinking part had to take somebody a lot of time! Thank you for the free plans! My broad jump cost about $40 to make, which is well over half the cost of what I’d pay for them on-line, not to mention the shipping/handling and taxes added to that.

Now onto the high jump!  I’m expecting that to be easier.  I am.

Helen