Making a Teeter Board-and you can drag it in the house or on the road!

It was pouring this last Saturday so I decided to make a little teeter board to play with Cricket on and to work on contact behavior with the other dogs in the house.



This is a SUPER SIMPLE teeter board, I made one in a couple of hours. You can use it in the house, take it on the road and use a different size pipe so the board suits your needs! I did think about cutting several different sizes and drilling the holes to match so I could change the pipes out, but then I thought I was getting a bit obsessive-I can put a board over my little jump bumps if I want a smaller drop.



1. First get a board-you will need to drill some bigger holes though this so I would get a softer wood, not oak-ask me how I know this....BUT anyway you can choose how big you want. I chose a 6 foot long board because I figured it would be big enough for my bigger dogs to hop on and practice their end contact behavior, and still small enough to be easily transportable and I can use it in my tiny, little, microscopic house on rainy days! I got a piece of pine 12 inches wide, 3/4 inch thick, and 6 feet long. You could get an inch thick board if you choose, or an eight foot or even a tiny little board if that suits your needs.




2. Next I went to the plumbing section and found some pipe that is the diameter you want. I took the pipe and put it on the floor, laid my board over it and saw if I liked the drop that I got with that pipe. They have 2 foot long sections of pipe. The pipe is easily cut with a handsaw, that just took a few seconds. I liked the 6 inch diameter pipe-it is a white pipe and in the same area as the pipe shown here that is 4 inches in diameter. The 6 inch pipe I got was a lot more expensive then the 4 inch pipe I have pictured here but it just seemed like it would meet my needs better.




3. I drew a line across the board from side to side in the middle of the board so I knew where to position the holes I was going to drill. I wanted them both in a straight line across the middle.
I also drew a line along the length of the pipe so I knew where to drill holes that were straight along the top of the pipe.

I drilled two holes in the pipe about 2 inches in from each side. I put a pen in the hole I had drilled in the pipe and made a mark on the bottom side of the board along the line I had drawn-this showed me where to drill so the holes would line up perfectly. I was using a 5/16 inch carriage bolt-which is pretty thick, so I started with a small drill bit, then drilled with a slightly bigger one and then an even bigger one-this prevents the wood from splitting.



4. I got a 5/16 inch carriage bolt that is 2 inches long, and a nut and washer. The carriage bolts are rounded on the top so there is nothing to catch on paws ;-D.










5. Next I put the carriage bolts through the holes, and then through the pipe to attach the two together, the bolt goes into the inside of the pipe, then you put the washer right next to the inside of the pipe and then the nut holds it all together.













6. Next I used this little dohickey tool, I believe it is a wrench ??? to tighten the nut on the inside of the pipe, I wanted it nice and tight so it stays stable!






7. Next comes the more fun part and we are on the homestretch! I sanded the sides, I like rounded edges and you want to make sure your board is not going to have splinters. The top of the board is going to be painted with a non slip surface--so do not worry too much about having a perfect top of your board, no one will ever know.

I like to buy the mis-mixed paint. There is usually a section by where they mix paint where they have marked down paint that was mixed with a color and then people changed their minds. It is always less then half the price of new paint, it is unused and perfectly good quality and most of the time I can find a color I do not mind for my agility equipment I make. Today when I went there were not as many good choices as usual, so I was skeptical about this peachy pink, but what the heck for $2 and it was a good quality paint... what the heck.





To paint my non slip surface, I first painted the board-
If I had been smart and had more patience, I might have painted the board AND THEN attached the pipe, but this worked out fine.
I painted the first coat as normal.
The second coat was painted on the top and then I put on some sand and sort of pushed it into the paint a little bit and let it dry.
I did two coats of paint mixed half and half with water, followed by another coat of paint.

Let dry and have fun!
I just sort of guessed on how to make this so of course feel free to adjust the sizes of things to your needs!