On Mon, 17 Aug 2009 17:25:46 -0700 (PDT), NT
wrote:

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.

In fairness there's nothing inherently wrong with this method, but the
jointed timber can be undersized just as solid timber can be,

Manufactured timber got a bad reputation during WW2.

Clearly it's when something has not been done properly you get a
problem.

leading
to failure either way. Such wood always needs to be larger, as the
finger joints are inevitably weaker.

Such as when manufacturers are tempted into making one cost reduction
too far. Most folks here would be happy to settle for the saving
implicit in having their item of furniture built at Vietnamese wage
rates, without taking on the risk of ending up knee deep in odd bits
of wood when what you really wanted was a bed.

Derek