Cutting down a sprung mattress

[mamos]

Hi All

We are going to end up with a odd shaped bed so we need an odd shaped mattress.
I know we could just go with foam but we are going to be living full time in the AS and we have lived with a foam mattress before and it is not pleasant.

I am wondering if anyone has ever taken a conventional sprung mattress apart and altered it's shape then sewn it back up

The mattress is going to taper from 4' at the head to 3' at the foot and will have one rounded corner to match the corner of the Airstream

Anyone done this before?

mamos

[Darkspeed]

I would think with a curved mattress needle and some wire pliers you could do the mod. There is nothing magic in there. Please post photos if you do it.

[Phoenix]

A couple of mattress companies have manufacturing videos showing how they are built. I'm not sure I would take on this task without all of the special equipment they have. I would think some of them might make one to your dimensions, but I'll bet it would be cost prohibitive. That's probably why Airstream uses foam mattresses for their corner beds where one corner is rounded.

If you decide to do this, I'd think one of those with pocket coils might be easier to work on than one with the big spring arrays that are all wired together. However, I'd personally worry about ruining a perfectly good mattress that will end up in pieces in a dumpster.

You might want to experiment on a used mattress to see if it can be done, but those are pretty nasty things when you open them up. They have new covers, but all of the previous owner's cob webs are still inside. (Cob webs is a nice term for dust mites and their droppings, bed bugs, etc. -- Yuck!)

[BIGED52]

mamos, We did exactly that 2 years ago! Took 4 Curved corner mattress springs (from '90's trailers) apart to make 2 cushion/mattresses for our dinette/twin beds. The other 2 were used to make up cushions/mattress for the gaucho/sofa. They all have spring back cushions. The back cushion for the sofa is also the extra mattress segment for the gaucho bed. It all worked out very well. After I made up the new spring sets I took them over and had them padded and covered at a local mattress factory. I am very pleased with the results. You on the otherhand have a less daunting task as a '69 has a wider body style and may be able to use current AS factory mattresses without doing much modification. My curved sides had to be hand re-bent to the radius corners on the trailer so it was more involved than yours may be. There is currently a set of at least 2 mattresses for sale in the Classified Section here on the forums. Use the blue tool bar tab (classifieds) and scroll down to the parts/appliances for sale section. You must log in to the classifieds to contact a seller but don't let that throw you just use the login function with you screen name (mamos) and your password and then you are all set. Hope this helps. Happy Trails, Ed

[BIGED52]

Originally Posted by Phoenix

A couple of mattress companies have manufacturing videos showing how they are built. I'm not sure I would take on this task without all of the special equipment they have. I would think some of them might make one to your dimensions, but I'll bet it would be cost prohibitive. That's probably why Airstream uses foam mattresses for their corner beds where one corner is rounded.

If you decide to do this, I'd think one of those with pocket coils might be easier to work on than one with the big spring arrays that are all wired together. However, I'd personally worry about ruining a perfectly good mattress that will end up in pieces in a dumpster.

You might want to experiment on a used mattress to see if it can be done, but those are pretty nasty things when you open them up. They have new covers, but all of the previous owner's cob webs are still inside. (Cob webs is a nice term for dust mites and their droppings, bed bugs, etc. -- Yuck!)

Phoenix, We removed all the old ticking and padding from the wired spring sets and used anti bacterial spray to sanitize the wire coils before we took the sets over to be re-covered. FYI So it can be done with keeping any old Yuck built into the "new" sets. It was not cheap to have the new padding/ticking put on but they are "brand new" now and very comfortable! Ed

[Phoenix]

Ed, glad to hear that this worked out for you. Working closely with a local manufacturer sounds like the way to go. I should have noted that one of the videos I saw was from the TV news, which was reporting on what is inside rebuilt mattresses; so it obviously had a slant toward emphasizing the yuck factor.

[BIGED52]

Phoenix, No issue here. I'm glad you brought it up. Most folks would not have taken this Yuck issue into consideration when recovering a mattress. I was as concerned about clean and disinfected as I was about comfort. Ed

[mamos]

Thanks for all your replies

I went to a company today that builds furniture and they had a couple of dismantled mattresses as demonstration pieces so I got to have a look inside.

As Phoenix stated the pocket coil mattress looks like the one to go for as the coils are a lot smaller in diameter and are connected to one another by the cotton pockets, not the coils themselves. However they do have a heavier duty metal strip around the edges of the mattress which might cause a problem when trying to form the curved corner.

I'm sure we will come up with something to overcome it though.

Keep the suggestions coming though and I will keep you informed of my progress. I will start building the bed as soon as I have finished building the forward settee (started today).

mamos