Hitching Posts

Now that we have the saddle room set in place, it's time to plant a couple of hitching posts for saddling our ponies. The job went about like I thought it would, which involved a lot of grunting in the summer sun. Good stuff. 

Each side of the saddle room is an ideal spot to build a hitching post for parking your horse or getting them ready to ride. 

Of course, our building material of choice was 2 7/8" tubing. 

This stuff came from south of Shoshoni and has a lot of paraffin still in it, which is a high gravity of oil that only liquifies in hot temperatures. Cutting the pipe into lengths was enough to get it moving and catch it on fire. 

Once everything cooled down, we took the four 7.5' posts and pounded them in the ground.

The ground was hard and you pretty much just have to let the posts go where they will, which in this case was crooked. 

Instead of trying to pull them straight, I just took the cutting torch and cut a half slice out of the pipe just below ground level. Then I could pull them straight and weld the gap back up. 

For a job like this, we got ole ranch truck outfitted. Worked good. 

Then we found our level and saddle the vertical pipes. 

After everything was ready to go, we set our 8' horizontals and got to welding. Once again, the paraffin fought me. 

Eventually, we got the saddles all welded up and the cross bar trimmed and capped. 

Works for me.

Classic. I'm thankful to have this job done. It trims out the building nice and allows for an efficient way to saddle a horse. Now we just need a reason to put them to work! That day will come. Until then, we ranch on.