Beautiful wood!

What are people's thoughts on rubberwood?  It seems to be everywhere now.

Wow!!!

Ah, the daily product to pat ourselves on the back over and feel smug about owning while decrying the typical mass produced faire. Yesterday was 600 dollar blenders, today we all replace our ottomans and end tables with semicustom handmade hardwood furniture.

That said I can't stand that stuff that's plywood with an adhesive affixed sheet attached.

That is not "very nice" furniture. It is cheap particle board trash with a faux woodgrain sticker on the surface. You can buy the same shit at KMart, WalMart, Value City or pick it up off the curb on trash day in any area with lots of apartment dwelling transient residents. The old saying about putting lipstick on a pig comes to mind...

My oldest son is a craftsman. He builds custom high end furniture and cabinetry in a predominantly Amish furniture shop that is the manufacturing arm of a high-end custom furniture store in Holmes County OH. Business is booming and they just completed a doubling in size of their manufacturing facility/capacity and are already planning the next expansion. Visit Homestead Furniture in Mt. Hope OH if you want to see what "very nice" furniture is. Make sure your checkbook is full because it isn't cheap.

So you agree or disagree? I'm confused.

I for one stand by that you get what you pay for.

I approve.

Do I have to do either? I'm sitting in a room of mostly antique furniture (thanks for the furniture, great-grandad!) but have no problems buying new stuff if its what I want.

However, I think the smug sense of satisfaction that the near daily threads like this put off is so thick it's almost hilarious. I jus find the attitude that pops up here whenever it comes to any given consumer good to be funny- as if people fall over themselves to tell everyone else how expensive their random shit was. Like I mentioned about yesterday with the 600 dollar blender, where suddenly a thread full of premium blender owners were discussing what a life changing event purchasing that blender was.

I'm not one to rail against consumerism, I buy a lot of dumb shit too, but sometimes the threads here crack me up with how silly they are. If I need some crappy end table so my guest room doesn't look so empty, I'm just going to go pick something decent looking out, not contract some Amish barnbuilders.

So I thought of this thread this morning while repairing this dresser.  It's a perfect example of why you do not want plywood in furniture.



When I'm done you'll never know the top is plywood, but the fix will diminish the overall look of the piece.

I see. Like I mentioned, the couch in my photo was bought at an auction, but it was solid quality, and was still in great shape. I dare not brag about the lack of price tag associated with it. If you inherited quality furniture then you're ahead of the game. To me, it makes more sense to do research and find a balance between quality and cost. Don't buy crap, but don't buy the most expensive just for the name.

For as long as most people keep their furniture nowadays, non-hardwoods seem fine enough.

My god there is so much miss information about wood furniture its mind boggling.

Before I offer an opinion I'll share my experience. I've been a woodwotker since junior high school. In highschool I helped teach shop class. I also workee for a small custom shop manufacturing residential furniture from lumber recovered from of barns I. I worked summer during college at a lumber yard. I graduated from NCSU with a degree in Industrial Engineering with a Furniture Manufacturing Management focus.

I then spent a little over a decade in the furniture manufacturing industry as a product engineer, manufacturing engineer, production supervisor, engineering manager, and superintendent at an 800,000 sqft plant for one of the most high end and respected furniture manufacturers in the US.

I have experience working in everything from a little custom shop to a massive manufacturer. So I know a little about wood furniture.

With that out of the way, here is my opinion on engineered wood in furniture.  Its awesome, if (and a big if at that) it used appropriately. It must also be good quality engineered wood. All particle board for example  is not the same. There is a big difference between what I used to use as the substrate for the tops on the $25,000+ dining table I made and the shit they make Walmart ready to assembly book shelves out of.

Good manufacturers use things like particle board in certain applications because it is superior to solid for some things. For example say I were making a table top and I wanted an intricate pattern of highly figured woods of various species. Say swirled mahogany, and walnut burl, ornsomething similar.solid wood with that sort of grain is extraordinarily expensive, incredibly unstable, very brittle and only available in small pieces. That table top simply has to be made from veneer. Now I need a substrate for that veneer. It needs to be dense, flat, stable, and preferably available in a size that allows it to be one contiguous piece for the entire top. A good quality dense particle board fits the bill nicely here. I'll flu strips of sold wood to the edges of that particle board and then laminate the whole assembly with my intricately patterned veneer face and have my table top.

Sure, I could have taken several solid wood boards and glued them up to form a large panel, run it through a planer to give it a nice flat surface and them put my veneer on that. I could then tell my customers that my product is superior because I use all solid wood. I would probably also tell the customer that because it solid wood it willnaturally change with the seasons. The warping and cracking that's sure to occur, oh that's just part of the charm and character of top quality solid wood furniture.

Bullshit. The truth is that veneered panel with particle board underneath is vastly superior. It looks better now and still will long into the future. Its more stable, durable, and BETTER quality.

So I got long winded but here is the point. Those materials have their place even in furniture of exceptional quality.

What are your thoughts on rubberwood furniture?  I'm not looking for heirloom quality, I'm looking for a set step up from Ikea that will last a move or two and look decent.  


 

Lie Nielsen plane?

Overall, not bad for a lol@ncsu grad.

For veneered panels or tops, I'd use plywood or MDF substrates if  it was period appropriate and  was necessary for the application.   Too often engineered materials  are used to simply save money, either in materials or time.

Yep, a 5.

I have at least one of each.

This, a hour with a sander and a can of Minwax stain and urethane all in one and you have a quality piece that looks like new. Furniture refinishing is pretty damn easy on the handyman scale of difficulty.I check out flea markets and thrift stores for solid wood gems. Not necessarily antique but solid wood furniture rich people discarded because it got a few scratches and dents (easily fixed).

The looking good part is all subjective. So if it looks good to you it looks good. And I'm not familiar with any IKEA stuff other then the ready to assembly particle board crap. Which, for the record, I actually own. I still have an IKEA entertainment center from my college days. Lol. As far as RTA crap goes its not bad. But I digress.

Anyway, here is what I would say for anyone wanting to buy basic decent affordable serviceable furniture. Assuming it meets your expectations aesthetically learn to identify good well executed joinery. In my opinion well executed traditional joinery will result in furniture that lasts. If the whole thing is held together with cheap pot metal fasteners don't expect much.

Also, finish is often one of the key elements that separates good from exceptional quality furniture. I actually ran the finishing and decorating department for the last furniture manufacturer I worked at and our finish was one of the things that really set us apart.

For example we had one piece that was a fairly large desk/secretary. Leather inlaid panels, exotic veneers, gold leafing, intricate carving etc.  Its retailed for $85,000 and probably at least a third of its manufacturing cost was just the labor cost of finishing. Almost 40 different people would touch that piece in the process of finishing. Meticulous hand coloring, rubbing, polishing. It was really ridiculous. We would spend hours attending to details of the finish so subtle most people wouldn't even recognize it let alone appreciate it but that's what $85k gets you.

Anyway my point is your gonna really pay a premium for a premium finish. And often those finishes may be the most beautiful, but necessarily he most durable. The stuff we did was mostly hand rubbed nitro cellulose lacquer fnishes. Why? Because we couldn't make any other material looks as good. Its a delicate finish though. We could have used catalyzed polyurethane type finishes that are almost bulletproof but they wouldn't look as high end.

So here is what you do. Go lay hands on the stuff your considering. Crawl around it, under it, and look at how well the machining and joinery are executed. Take out drawers and shelves etc. If it looks like the manufacturer took the effort to make less conspicuous surfaces look good then they probably took some care in making the piece.

Do you see major assemblies held together with cheap cam lock fasteners or do you see tight, neat, well executed glued wood joints. Where possible examine the fitment of wood joints. Next look at the finish. Ask what type of finish it is. For good serviceable daily use pieces(as opposed to "heirloom quality") a catalyzed polyurethane, polyester, UV cured, or other high performance coating will look decent and hold up very well.

The price of furniture ordered direct from a dealer in N Carolina is maybe 50% what it would cost locally. There is a store in Williamburg that offers comparable
prices. I've saved a lot over the years that way.

We bought some tables and a buffet from World Market that I believe was made from rubberwood.  I am no expert but I was fairly impressed, especially with the construction.  As far as I know they are solid wood.  I know they were freaking heavy though.  Instead of using those stupid cam lock things, they had beefy bolts and required some glue for certain joints.  The finish was pretty good.  The World Market stuff is probably the high end of cheap, but all of our pieces have taken 5 years of abuse with no issues and I'd buy it again today if I had to.

My son has some too along with some nice Stanley BedRocks, some specialty planes from Clifton and others. He buys tools like I buy guns.