Wooden Baby Gym Tutorial

Alrighty then... This isn't something I usually do around here but we've had a few requests for explanations, measurements etc for the beautiful Baby Gym my husband made.  He's taken the time to write it all but I'm going to paraphrase ;)

- To those who asked when it was originally posted - I apologise for taking so long.  I hope you made do or can make one now!

How to Make a Good Looking Wooden Baby Gym.

Materials

Approximately:
4 x 740 mm x 40mm x 20mm (or close to it)
1 x 25mm wide dowel, 750mm long


Tools

Pencil
Ruler
Hand saw
Chisel
Hammer
Drill &bit
Wood glue
Coarse File or file
Sand paper
Danish Oil



Instructions
(This will be casual because... that's how we made it!)

Work out how high and wide you want it.  I wanted it to be high and wide enough to place it over our bouncer.

When you've done that you can work out how long the legs need to be and roughly what angle. Ours were about 740mm long.  Lay two of the legs on your work surface at the angle you want them to be and mark where they cross over.  Using your handsaw and chisel cut out that crossover section so the two legs fit together with a flush finish.  Repeat with the other set of legs.

Angle the bottom of each set of legs off so that they will sit flat on the floor.

Hold your joining legs together and drill through a hole for the cross beam dowel.

Glue the bits of legs together and clamp.

When the legs are dry add the dowel and glue that in.  You can probably drill the hole for the dowel at this stage too instead.

When it's all dry give it a good sand and a sealing coat of something nice like Danish Oil.

Hang your toys and enjoy!

NOTE:  When your little one has grown out of it it's quite easy to sew two folds on a wide piece of fabric and tuck the legs on the play gym into the folds for a tent.  (flash back to nearly 2 years ago...!)

A further note: if you ever move house with a  moving company take a real good look around and imagine all the damage they can do with your precious things then take that stuff yourself.  This play gym had one leg SNAPPED right off when we moved 3 months ago.  I was livid and claimed insurance for it based on a very fancy and expensive wooden gym equivalent because of the love, care an originality that went into making this one.