Derek Geldard wrote:
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 the
usual mattress and adds considerably to it's weight. This has caused
some of the wooden members of the construction to break, and I set out
to fashion a repair.

To my horror I found that these wooden parts which are about 200 cm
x 3 cm x 2cm have been fabricated out of short lengths of rubber wood
around 20 x 3 x 2 which have been joined together by being machined on
the ends into a male and female tapered comb, and then glued to form a
single piece of material which can be used as virgin timber.

To all intents and purposes all the glued joints have failed as the
structure progressively deflected, about 50 of them, and a repair is
more or less impossible.

Just something to watch out for when buying commercial furniture
nowadays.

Very common indeed these days, shelving especially. Must be a way of using
up short offcuts. Very common in the absolute ****e flatpack Argos sell.
IKEA use this technique a lot, but with their stuff it seems to hold up.


--
Dave - The Medway Handyman
www.medwayhandyman.co.uk