Making the Baby Cage less 'Prison-y'

   Calvin has been getting a lot of use out of the baby cage play are that we set up for him. I had thought it would be fun to incorporate some play things in it, and finally got around to setting one up: a little pipe to drop toys through. Here he is with the two pieces of the barrier taken apart:

Max supervising

   I started with some 4" black plastic pipe. The two angles I hat to cut were real weird. I held it up and kind of roughly drew a line where I should cut it.

Precise measuring

   After cutting it, I traced the shape onto the top of the wood and cut it out with a scroll saw:

Hole traces and pilot drilled

  Once I had everything in place, I used some pipe strap and a couple screws to hold the pipe in place. It worked well because by tightening the screws further in, it really snugged up the pipe.

All in place

   All that was left was for Calvin to try it out. It took him a bit to understand why toys were hitting his feet was happening because things fall through very fast. If I were going to redo it, I think I would angle the pipe so that they came out a bit to the side of the top hole. 

Physics at work