It's the time of year when many of us start thinking about making toys for kids and grandkids (and then panic in 4 weeks because there's been no progress!) so I was just looking around for detailed safety spec guidance and was surprised that a copy of EN71.1 is freely available here:
formatting link
you're not familiar with ENs they can be slightly hard going but, in this case, the general principles are given in Annex 2 of the "toys Directive". The Directive is tough but the annex is fairly easy going:
I mean, just as an example, whoever though that a baby?s cot with bars far enough apart for a baby?s body to fit through (but not its head) was a good idea?
With the benefit of hindsight some faults are obvious but seemed to elude everyone until a problem occurred.
Indeed. Car windows that wind up by standing on a child sized lever, with the ignition off.
Wind Turbines as a source of electricity.
Marxism as a viable political theory.
The world is full of stupidity. Darwin of course says that it doesn't matter how miserable impoverished or enslaved you are, provided you manage to produce offspring...
Because I'm not sure it's always the case, especially when being tested in the courts.
You design and make a wooden log carrying toy truck / trailer for your sensible and careful young niece / nephew and use 1/8" diameter dowels to support the logs on the trailer as they are 1) reasonably in scale for that job and 2) more than adequate to do the job.
The niece / nephew takes it to the playgroup and some other kid trips, falls on it and takes their eye out on said upright.
You now find yourself in court and having to justify your competency to design and make such a dangerous toy and what safety standard you followed during it's design?
The Mrs used to work in a large educational suppliers (producing the yearly catalogue that used to fill two artic trailers) and they sold cheap plastic storage boxes and very (comparatively) expensive plastic storage boxes.
Both were fine for storing all sorts of things but only one was tested not to split and trap a child's foot when they turned it upside down and used it as a step.
Again, quite, and if 'goD forbid' a child get injured by something you have made, even if it wasn't from anything obvious to be a potential danger / risk, at least you can demonstrate you have made 'best efforts' and at the same time acknowledge an awareness of any rules and have tried to follow them (that still might not help you being sued etc).
One of the things I have to be careful of is assuming anyone else has the same skills / experience (FWIW etc) as me when suggesting they do something themselves, just because I may happen to find it easy?
Like getting daughter and her ex, both reasonable / practical people (both have chainsaw tickets and familiar with all sorts of dangerous plant) to replace the front wishbone on their car when it failed an MOT on it. TBF, they did get the replacement wishbone, had access to all the tools, the HBOL and started on the job but it was soon obvious they didn't have the confidence and it was quite a safety critical component ... and had they got the old one off but broken something on the car in so doing that they couldn't resolve themselves, the cost
*then* would have been even greater than getting the garage to do it in the first place.
The chances are I would know what sort of torque / effort was needed / acceptable on each part and therefore know that I need to apply more penetrating oil and give it more time, or heat or that it has to be cut off to give access to the other side etc.
Cheers, T i m
p.s. I recently talked a young and not-really-technical family friend though installing W10 on what was previously her D: drive the other day. What took most of the time was guiding her though things like getting the side off the PC and finding the SATA cables (to isolate each of the drives in turn to be sure we were dealing with the right one), accessing the BIOS boot menu (not the Linux / Windows one) and getting the PC to boot from the USB boot drive I'd made on her laptop (remotely) previously.
We had catapults and bows and arrows before progressing to air rifles and then shotguns/rifles. Somewhere I still have my sisters smooth bore Webly air pistol!
I always think shagging in a bed where she hasn't had the brains to change the sheets is a dreadful thought. And can you imagine if she says, "Go down on me"? Argh! Then going to the bog for a post-coital piss and finding it all stinky because she hasn't cleaned it that day! I hate the idea of a mucky woman. Ugh!
HomeOwnersHub website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here.
All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.