Thread: what's the deal with baby cots and legislation?

We've got a baby on the way, due in Jan.
Advice I tend to get from anyone when discussing the subject is not to to do.

The regs are there to reduce the risk of hard to the baby. i.e turning over at night and suffocating themselves, or getting themselves stuck in weird positions.

So I've put my time into building cool little toys instead.

I built a pair of cots for my twins 14 years ago and following the regulations was not that hard. The main concern is with the distance (gap) between railings and the fit of the mattress. Just ensure that there are no gaps a baby can get itself stuck in. The drop side needs to be secure also to stop baby/toddler opening it.


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Yep, sounds easy! I would buy rather than make in todays world.

I made one 25 years ago. My suggestion is to buy the mattress first, then design the cot around it. That way, you can ensure a tight fit. The standards aren't difficult to meet. We used the cot for 3 kids. It's disassembled now, stored in the attic waiting for a grand child (eventually).

cheers,

ajw

The very first "real" bit of furniture I made was a baby change unit for the impending birth of my daughter. I was at sea in the Persian Gulf at the time with only hand and hand power tools available to me and the only timber was pine dunnage that I scrounged from dockyards. My beloved who was at the time many thousands of miles away bought a baby change mat and told me the dimensions over the phone; the entire build was designed around the size of the mat.

They were available commercially but for some reason the tops were designed with side rails on the back and the sides of the units so you worked from the front of the unit with the child lying at 90 degrees to you; yet any mat that you bought was clearly designed so that you laid it in front of you with baby's feet closest to you. I designed it so you worked from one end instead which is a more natural position for this activity.

There are two drawers; they are deep enough to store a "top and tail" bowl. They have knobs rather than handles so a nappy bag can be hung from one; and they run on wooden runners rather than slips so the drawer sides could be lower than the height of the carcase opening. This allowed me to have a sliding wooden platform half the length of the drawer. In operation you pulled the drawer out, slid the sliding piece to the rear of the drawer thus exposing the top & tail bowl which you then lifted out and filled with water. The sliding piece was then brought back to the front of the drawer allowing it to be used as a platform for the bowl to sit on. The other drawer was used to hold all the potions and lotions, ready use nappies, nose clips and emergency rum supplies.

Under the drawers the carcase was left open with just a shelf; this was where bulk nappies were stored. At one point I added cupboard doors but in the end they were removed again.

As she was always intended to be an only child I knew that as a change unit it would only have a working life of a couple of years so the actual top was made flat; but with an additional change top with side rails to hold the mat simply placed over it. It was made from 1/4" ply with 4" high side rails. When she outgrew nappies the top was then just lifted off and the unit was the repurposed as normal bedroom furniture. Over the years it was joined by a matching chest of drawers and a bookcase.

My beloved's father designed and made the cot; the base could be mounted in an upper or a lower position and one side also had two positions so there were four iterations possible. As a newborn the base was mounted high and the side mounted low; this meant that the child was easily accessable yet still had sufficient height on the cot side to stop her from rolling out. When she became able to actually roll around and do push-ups the side was moved to the upper position. When she became able to sit up the base and the side were lowered down and when she could crawl the side was again raised up so even if she pulled herself up to a standing position she couldn't escape.

We still have the furniture we made although it all lives in the granny flat; I'm hoping that she'll want it for her own offspring. Seeing as she's only 17 it'll be years before it gets pressed back into service. Many, many MANY years....

Cheers guys. I think I will probably do it. I'll get my sister to buy an appropriate mattress. Then I'll build it from there, just like a little bed with guard rails. With a bit of luck the price of solid timber might scare her away anyways.....hmmm, I think I might suggest US Walnut @ 7k/cube

Here's some AS/NZS specs.

https://www.betterhealth.vic.gov.au/...re-safety-tips

Just a comment. Meeting the required Australian Standard may not be difficult, depending on your skill. Bear in mind, though, that if it doesn't comply with the standard, you are not allowed to sell it: not even at a garage sale or flea market, not even if you put a

...put a sticker on it saying "don't put your kid in here, it's unsafe".

I agree with cal & ajw, that it's not at all difficult to comply with the standards. And let's face it, you are probably more concerned about the safety & welfare of your offspring or offspring's offspring than the people in some factory churning out their wares at the cheapest possible price, so you're not likely to settle for a sub-standard job.

I made a cot for our first grandchild a couple of years ago. I was a bit flippant about the design process in my post, but I did make sure it complied with the Aus. standards linked-to above, and found them easy enough to follow. From my readings on cot accidents, the main issues are with getting stuck between mattress & sides, particularly if the base partially collapses (very likely to end in major injury/death!) or getting bits of their anatomy stuck between rails, which is not as likely to be fatal, but could be pretty distressing for all involved. The other issue is getting clothing caught on corner posts when they get to the climbing-out stage, which can also have dire consequences, so keep those very short & well-rounded-over to prevent that (all of my kids were super-agile little stinkers & each in turn surprised us by climbing out much sooner than expected!).

I didn't have the time or facilities to make a cot for my own kids, so we had to make do with a rickety bought thing which would've complied with the regs at the time, but the way the base was attached would certainly not pass now. I can't say it was all that confidence-inspiring as a structure, either, I'd wager the cot I made for GD is about 150% safer & more solid than that was. To save complications, & keep it reassuringly solid, I made GD's cot with a single level, fixed base. Drop sides are a great idea, and some folks say they are essential, but I don't remember ever using that feature on our kids' cot, & in the event, neither parent found it a problem with the one I made. It's about to go back into service, for grandchild #3, so I'll soon hear if the lack of drop-sides is a problem there....

Cheers,

FWIW all my three went through a second hand safety cot, surely an Aussie invention worth revisiting...cannot find an image of one...

Bought it for $50, painted it, made new mattress, new bumper at the head end, new flywire, after 10(?) years got $100.00 for it..

My 2c as well, since I'm finishing up a cot for my daughter right now. This weekend should see completion (finally). https://www.betterhealth.vic.gov.au/...re-safety-tips has pretty much all the pertinent information a hobbyist requires. Timbecon sell a hardware kit for drop sides, I bought it but haven't used it, like IanW I don't think drop sides are necessary. Also, I read up a bit on the USA standards, drop sides are prohibited there, another reason to... wait for it... drop them.

Buy a mattress and design the cot around it. Be aware though that there are some fairly expensive and well known brands like Sealy that make cot mattresses that fail the firmness test. I don't know how it's legal for them to be sold but they are.

My personal notes from this build are:

-Mortise and tenons for the vertical 'slats' make the whole structure super rigid but they take a long time to mark, cut, and fit because there are just so many.
Took much longer than I originally anticipated. I used a combination of hand cut and router cut depending on the time of day. Using dowels would be a lot faster as you could just drill the mortise for the dowel. I prefer the look of squarish slats though.
-Don't do your finish sanding then ask the wife if she prefers a pickled finish, and then have to pickle and then finish sand, AGAIN.
-Scrapers are awesome.
-Don't second guess your design at 9pm on a Thursday. Long story there.
-Give someone else a ruler and the info on max and min permitted gaps and let them at your design.

Originally Posted by Alkahestic

..... Using dowels would be a lot faster as you could just drill the mortise for the dowel. I prefer the look of squarish slats though......

You can have your cake & eat it (a bit) if you run a long trench along the rail, the thickness of the slats. Then simply fit the slats with short lengths of matching wood glued between to fill the trench. Quick, automatic spacing, & if you do it neatly, you'll have to peer very closely to see how it was done.....

Originally Posted by Alkahestic

..... Don't do your finish sanding then ask the wife if she prefers a pickled finish, and then have to pickle and then finish sand, AGAIN.......

Or do something really stupid like slap on the wrong stain over almost a whole side before realising it! (As I did )


Cheers,

Originally Posted by IanW

You can have your cake & eat it (a bit) if you run a long trench along the rail, the thickness of the slats. Then simply fit the slats with short lengths of matching wood glued between to fill the trench. Quick, automatic spacing, & if you do it neatly, you'll have to peer very closely to see how it was done.....
Or do something really stupid like slap on the wrong stain over almost a whole side before realising it! (As I did )


Cheers,

I didn't trust my skills enough to pull off the trenching... I figured I'd make a hash of it and having something that looked like gappy lego blocks glued together. I was pretty confident with my mortise and tenoning and even more confident now, practice makes perfect right? This has been my first project using big boy power tools for joinery and dimensioning, so it's been an interesting journey. I think I still prefer cutting joinery by hand, since I'm a hobbyist, a bit of extra time isn't the end of the world and it's nice to hone a new set of skills. But my goodness, dimensioning and cutting stock is just so much faster with power tools. Turning 25lm of white oak from rough to S4S would have taken me many, many weekends by hand.

How did you fix your stain issue? Asking for a friend, because I'd certainly never do that . Sand and do over?

Originally Posted by Alkahestic

....I didn't trust my skills enough to pull off the trenching... I figured I'd make a hash of it and having something that looked like gappy lego blocks glued together. I was pretty confident with my mortise and tenoning and even more confident now, practice makes perfect right? .....

Well, it's just a way that might make things easier. I did mine with individual mortises, I must admit. I have seen the trench idea promoted a couple of times in mags, & although I think I could've gotten a neat enough result that way, the idea of each slat going into its own mortice seems far more satisfactory, to me, too.

Originally Posted by Alkahestic

...... I think I still prefer cutting joinery by hand, since I'm a hobbyist, a bit of extra time isn't the end of the world and it's nice to hone a new set of skills. But my goodness, dimensioning and cutting stock is just so much faster with power tools. Turning 25lm of white oak from rough to S4S would have taken me many, many weekends by hand......

Yep, with you there, I do like to do the grunt work with machinery. After you've dimensioned the stock with planer & saw, a few swipes with a hand-plane and who can tell if it wasn't done completely with hand tools, eh?? Save your energies for the bits that hand-work does best, I say.

Originally Posted by Alkahestic

......How did you fix your stain issue? Asking for a friend, because I'd certainly never do that . Sand and do over?

Partly with a rag soaked in metho & partly with a scraper (and a good many expletives!). Because I realised my mistake immediately, it hadn't dried much, so a good deal of it came out with the alcohol (you should've seen the pile of stained rags!). There was a hint of it left when I finished, but the stain I was meant to be using overwhelmed it, thank goodness.

Cheers,