Two good friends of mine are having their first babies this month so I decided I’d like to try making something for them as a gift.
I really liked my rocker design, but when I checked it against the relevant safety standard I realised I would have to modify it quite a bit. The sides would have to be much taller and the base dimension had to be increased to fit an off the shelf mattress. I know I could have built it how I liked and cut foam to fit – but if anything was to happen to the baby using it, well, it’s not worth risking quite frankly.
By the end of the modifications, the small gift I was planning turned into a giant ark that would take up a whole corner of the room, an ark that would not even be used once the baby was over 6 months.
So I decided to instead make either a step stool or rocking horse. Wifey wasn’t a fan of the stool idea so rocking horse it is! Searching around I found a few free and paid plans that I liked, but ultimately settled on a plan from toymakingplans.com. I really like this design, I think it looks beautiful & elegant, and it is something the child will be able to use for 3-4 years as opposed to the 6 months use that a rocker brings.
I toyed with the idea of designing my own horse, but realistically I just wouldn’t be able to come up with a design better than this one so I’m happy to pay. I was pleasantly surprised to see just how thorough the templates / patterns are in the pdf. I’ve printed out and taped together the patterns and with luck will be able to start cutting routing templates out of mdf tomorrow.
Have you ever made a rocking horse before? Any tips for me?