My husband and I spent long holiday weekend laboring (ha ha) to make some cross country jumps. We made all but one of the jumps at our barn and if we want anything new, it’s up to us. We have a trail that leads along a ridge line and we wanted to make some XC jumps to put along the trail for XC practice.
We made three jumps this weekend and I’m going to start with the easiest. We actually made everything except for the “brush” out of scrap lumber we had around the yard, but you can purchase the materials very easily. You can even get stores like Home Depot or Lowe’s to cut the wood for you making it possible to make this jumps even if you don’t own a saw. You will need a hammer and a screwdriver.
Materials:
2 2″x4″x8″ boards
2 2’x8′ lattice board
2 2″x6″x2′ boards
2.5″ deck screws
1.5″ nails
47 fake onion grass/brush looking flowers
- Start by cutting one of your 2x4s into four equal 2′ pieces. If you own a saw, cut 2×6 inch triangles out of your 2×6 boards to make them trapezoids.
- Use your deck screws to screw the 2′ sections of 2x4s onto the 8′ board with one at each edge and the 2 middle ones evenly spaced out. Screw through the top of the main 2x4x8 into the perpendicular pieces.
- Nail your 2’x6′ lattice boards onto each side of your frame.
We were using scrap lumber and some of it was warped. Yours should not look this bad.
- Screw your 2×6 wings onto the sides of your box at the base.
- Drill holes every 1.5″ down into the top board of your box frame.
- Remove the stickers from your brush. We emptied out 2 different dollar stores of their onion grass and brush grass and still didn’t have enough so we needed to add a few flowers to the end. I also had to buy some onion grass with decorative butterflies. I pulled those out.
- Insert your grasses, brush, and flowers into the holes. We only put the flowers at the edges where we don’t plan to jump anyway. I wouldn’t put them in the center as they’re not really brush and won’t bend out of the way as easily as the fake grasses.
Disclaimer: I am not a professional woodworker or course builder. Build and use this jump at your own risk and with your own discretion.
Cool!
Thanks. I’m excited to try it out.
Ha I love it! I made brush boxes out of a pallet cut in half last year… But still haven’t managed to put any brush in them lol
That was my original plan, but then I figured I’d never gather enough brush to fill it and dollar store fake brush might actually happen.
I love all your jumps! you guys are so handy!
We have to be. Either that or we’d have to move to a new barn and I like my barn.
Great job! You could probably sell those 🙂
As with the fly bonnets, I am 100% sure the price I could charge would not come close to the cost of time and materials. In this case, almost everything was free since we sourced it from scraps in our yard.
No lizards hiding in that brush?! ;D
Not yet, but I’m sure some will move in.
Awesome!! We are planning to make some jumps soon, so I showed this to my partner. Thanks for the share!
We’ve made a bunch of jumps over the years. This one was particularly easy.
That came out great! You’re so handy! I’m not to be trusted with power tools.
You could do this one. It really just requires an electric screwdriver and a hammer.
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Fun jump! We have made basic standards and poles but nothing this fancy.
We like to expose ours to weird jumps so that they go to shows and don’t care what they see.