Fence 14, water end. Ground jury's in for tea. Don't lean on the lid, it's hot.
Trish, to Deano, across the esky
Right. Hands off. You get a go after two of mine, that's the deal, that's always been the deal.
Bottom rail's the fat one. Put the fat one down first. Bottom rail is always the fat one, because the heavy timber down low keeps the middle of the whole thing low, and the bottom rail is the one nobody hits anyway. Hemi says if you're picking up the heaviest rail last you've built it backwards.
Now: a rail sitting in a cup falls. You nudge it, it drops, that's it, nothing else moves. A rail pinned solid does not fall. It can't. So every bit of the hit goes straight back into whatever hit it. That's the whole reason the pins exist — a soft aluminium pin cut to let go at a load we know, so the top rail drops instead of the horse pivoting over a fixed lump of pine. That's it. That's the whole sum.
Hemi: "You're not building it to stay up. You're building it to come apart in the one way you chose."
And you can't just look at a pin and go, yeah, that's a fat one. Strength goes with the diameter squared. Eleven to thirteen is not two millimetres. It's about forty percent more load. That is why they're banded orange and kept in a different bag, and why I'll growl at you if you mix them in the bucket.
Twelve minutes on the flick before you go again — no. Forty minutes till dressage finishes. Roughly. I'm not completely sure, Mum's got the times.
Footprint against height. Get it taller than about twice how deep the base is, and it doesn't shed a rail — it goes over as a whole unit. Going over as a unit is the one everybody's trying not to have.
Where it's hit. It's not the weight coming at it, it's the moment about the contact point. A rail smacked high by a chest and a rail scuffed low by a hoof are two completely different sums, and a pin sized for one is the wrong pin for the other.
Brush isn't solid. It's drag. The horse goes through the top of it on purpose. So the solid part gets built to the height you want jumped, and the brush goes above that.
Sloping face. Same height, jumped better and hit softer, because the arc and the face are closer to parallel. Vertical is the mean one.
Ground line. Changes nothing mechanical. Changes everything about what it looks like from down there. Base set forward of the top face and it reads honestly; nothing at the bottom and it gets misjudged low every single time, by better horses than the one in my hand.
Drag a piece out of the pile at the left, drop it on the lid. It's got real weight. If you stack it stupid it will fall over before you ever flick anything at it.
Pins: pick 11 mm or 13 mm, then tap a rail end that's sitting on an upright. Pin seats with a tink. Sheared pins are gone. Eleven in the bucket and no more.
The flick: drag back from the horse and let go. How far back is speed, the direction is your line, and how far up the horse's body you grabbed sets how it goes up. Grab it high, it tips and tumbles and hits high. Grab it low, it skims flat and scuffs.
Corner box shows the fence's silhouette from down at approach height. That's what it looks like coming at it. Not what it looks like from up here.
Deano. Deano. You keep running it at the fence side-on. That is not a jump. That is a shove. A shove is a completely different load and it tells you nothing about the fence.
This one — short one, white paint mostly gone — lives in the truck and Hemi keeps saying he's going to burn it. It's got a good centimetre of bow in it. It'll never sit flat, it rocks on two points wherever you put it. Use it anyway, there's only so many rails.
Hemi: "Ground line first, height second. Horse jumps what it can see the bottom of."
Right — see, that. That's the pin doing exactly its job. Sheared clean, top rail's on the deck, the rest of it hasn't moved a millimetre. Good. That's what it's for.
Wasps are into the rubbish drum again. Leave them. And don't sit on the lid, it's roasting, it's been in the sun since eleven.
Hemi: "Eleven and thirteen never go in the same bucket. I don't care how much of a hurry you're in."
Nine pins. And I think the 13s are for the big timber only — I might have that wrong, honestly. But that's what I've been told and I'm going with it.
Hemi: "A fence on a downhill landing eats the balance, and then everyone stands round blaming the fence."
Two more of mine and then you get one. Side-on again and I'm taking the horse.