A caution -Rubber Wood Furniture from the Far East.

Derek Geldard · 2009-08-17T22:45:53+00:00

My son sleeps on a Muji double bed about 5 years old.Recently my wife bought him a "feather bed" which sits on top of theusual mattress and adds considerably to it's weight. This has causedsome of the wooden members of the construction to break, and I set outto fashion a repair.To my horror I found that these wooden parts which are about 200 cmx 3 cm x 2cm have been fabricated out of short lengths of rubber woodaround 20 x 3 x 2 which have been joined together by being machined onthe ends into a male and female tapered comb, and then glued to form asingle piece of material which can be used as virgin timber. To all intents and purposes all the glued joints have failed as thestructure progressively deflected, about 50 of them, and a repair ismore or less impossible.Just something to watch out for when buying commercial furniturenowadays.It's good to be able to buy a bed or a table built at Vietnamese wagerates but less good if it's prone to collapse without warning into apile of sixty or seventy bits of flotsam if overloaded by a few kilos.8-((((Derek

Aug 17, 2009 26 Replies

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Jules 16 years ago

I suppose that might explain all the looks-nice-but-not-very-strong furniture around too, then - they can't skimp on the labour or man-hours because the thing still needs to look good in order to sell, so they start cutting corners in the raw amount of material used. It doesn't save them much, but they figure it's better than nothing.

(I suppose it's not that big a deal to me, because I can always strengthen things as/when needed without altering cosmetic appearance - it's just a little annoying that I know I'm going to need to do that in a few years, when something of supposed 'good quality' built a few hundred years ago would have gone much longer without any attention)

cheers

Jules

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NT 16 years ago

It does, you just have to score it twice.

I've not done it, but am told a regular hand grinding stone is fairly quick.

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The Natural Philosopher 16 years ago

I simply went to a glazier and asked for some 1/4" bevelled toughened glass.

And got it.

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Jules 16 years ago

Hmm, maybe I'll give it a go, then... I've still got the broken bit that I can play with (I actually bust it trying to cut it, because I hadn't realised at that point that it was a laminate; it splintered badly all the way along the score line)

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Mark 16 years ago

its only 100 quid (now nearer 200) if you collect it, :) as you say, thats when most of the labour and processing costs start to add-up.

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The Natural Philosopher 16 years ago

NO!!

Never ever attempt to cut or polish hardened glass, and never use anything else for furniture use.

You finish the glass first, *then* toughen it by heat treating it.

Any glazier will do this, or get it done.

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Jules 16 years ago

Well, I don't actually know if it's hardened or not - only that it's laminated. Maybe there's some sort of identification mark on it somewhere

- I'll have a look later...

That's useful to know...

cheers

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