A Round and A Round

So as most of you know I grew up riding horses and I still own a couple.  But since we moved the horses down from Scottsdale to my brothers house we have not had an arena to ride in so the horses have been neglected.  Finally my brother decided to get the first step to a riding arena which is called a Round Pen.  He found a used one on craigslist that was in pretty rough shape.  We had to take all the wood off and re-weld all new legs on but it was finally ready to assemble!  If it had a top on it with red and white stripes it would be a circus tent!  Anyway these are the pictures of it going up.

 First you have to compact the dirt to make a solid base for the horses to run on.  This is the biggest compactor we could rent.  It also vibrates to help compact the dirt.  For about a day and a half I was watering the area down and then compacting and repeating this process.

 The first panels go up!

 We had to support the panels because they are designed to lean outward so the horses wont bump into the walls as they run around the inside.  The poles along the outside edge are holding up each panel until all of them are bolted together.

 Whew! the panels are up but we still needed to put two straps around the outside to hold it all together but the wood inserts to the panels go in first.

And wood inserts are gong in smoothly.  Each panel has two vertical 4x8 sheets of plywood with one horizontal across the bottom.