Wood for furniture (3 ‘man-made’ woods)
// November 9th, 2009 // wood
‘Man-Made’ Woods , There are a number of reason why it is necessary to manufacture ‘man-made’ woods, and among these is the fact that natural wood is becoming more and more scarce and increasingly expensive. Another factor is that large, natural-wood boards tend to warp, whereas ‘man-made’ boards are much more stable. Built-in kitchen and bedroom units, in particular, would be very difficult and prohibitively expensive to produce in natural wood.
Medium-density fibreboard (MFD) : this board is manufactured by reducing wood to very fine fibre, mixing it with rein and then compressing it under pressure to form sheets. Standard sizes and thicknesses vary from country to country, with 12 mm or the closest available thickness being the most suitable for general furniture-making. Your local hardware store or woodyard should be able to supply sheets of almost any size you require. This wood has a very smooth finish, which can be hand or spray-painted, and is also very versatile as it can be routed and shaped relatively easily. In blocks thick enough, it also turns remarkably well.
Plywood : in woodworking, there is often a need for relatively thin boards that have a high strength-to-weight ratio, for example panels in doors or cabinets, and drawer bottoms. This is where plywood comes into its own. It is made by laminating thin sheets of wood so that the grain of each sheet is at right angles to the one adjacent to it. Plywood is usually produced in sheets of 2.44 m by 1.22 m and it a variety of thicknesses, ranging from a very thin tree-ply (about 3 mm) to multi-ply (about 25 mm). Although the surface is not as smooth as MDF, plywood has a natural-wood appearance and is far stronger than MDF.
Blockboard (copine, pre-glued panels) : while long, wide boards of natural wood can be unstable, there is still a demand for them. To meet this demand teh timber industry has come up with the solution of gluing together strips of pine or oak, which are about 35 mm wide and 6-22 mm thick, to form boards up to 700 mm wide. Blockboard, while being very strong and stable, retains the appearance of natural wood. Boards are manufactured in a variety of widths and lengths, up to about 700 mm wide by up to 4 m long and usually in a standard thickness of 22 mm.
Chipboard : Similar in some way to MDF, chipboard is made by mixing wood chips with resin and then compressing it under pressure to form sheets of similar size and thickness to MDF.
