Hi all,
I'm about to buy some flat packed dining room furniture from Homebase.
No doubt it'll come with a bucket load of dowels and adhesive sachets. Is
there such a thing as a 'better class of dowel' ? Are plastic dowels better
? Basically, I want to take little bit more time and make the joints as
strong as possible. Is the adhesive provided with these units up to the job
or can/should everything be upgraded ? If so, can someone recommend a
supplier of upgraded little bits ?

Cheers,
Keith

P.S. I know I could spend a bit more and get pre-built furniture but money
is a bit tight (like me).

On Sun, 27 Feb 2005 10:16:34 +0000, KD wrote:

Hi all,
I'm about to buy some flat packed dining room furniture from Homebase.
No doubt it'll come with a bucket load of dowels and adhesive sachets. Is
there such a thing as a 'better class of dowel' ? Are plastic dowels better
? Basically, I want to take little bit more time and make the joints as
strong as possible. Is the adhesive provided with these units up to the job
or can/should everything be upgraded ? If so, can someone recommend a
supplier of upgraded little bits ?

Cheers,
Keith

P.S. I know I could spend a bit more and get pre-built furniture but money
is a bit tight (like me).

Hi

Much of the flat pack stuff I've has had either too little glue in
sachets, or none at all, using the dowels to lock the pieces laterally and
using screws or custom metal joint thingies too hold the pieces together.

The dowels themselves I find are fine. I would recommend having some PVA
wood glue handy in a bottle. All the sachets I ever had were just bog
standard PVA. Fine, but seldom enough supplied.

HTH

Tim

"KD" wrote in message
news
Hi all,
I'm about to buy some flat packed dining room furniture from Homebase.
No doubt it'll come with a bucket load of dowels and adhesive sachets. Is
there such a thing as a 'better class of dowel' ? Are plastic dowels
better ? Basically, I want to take little bit more time and make the
joints as strong as possible. Is the adhesive provided with these units
up to the job or can/should everything be upgraded ? If so, can someone
recommend a supplier of upgraded little bits ?

IME, simply glueing all the butt-joints improves the stability of the item
tenfold.

tim

On Sun, 27 Feb 2005 10:16:34 -0000, "KD" wrote:

Hi all,
I'm about to buy some flat packed dining room furniture from Homebase.
No doubt it'll come with a bucket load of dowels and adhesive sachets. Is
there such a thing as a 'better class of dowel' ? Are plastic dowels better
? Basically, I want to take little bit more time and make the joints as
strong as possible. Is the adhesive provided with these units up to the job
or can/should everything be upgraded ? If so, can someone recommend a
supplier of upgraded little bits ?

Cheers,
Keith

P.S. I know I could spend a bit more and get pre-built furniture but money
is a bit tight (like me).


I buy a buckel load of metla "L" brackets, and use them, especiall for
kitchens bedrooms, where you can bracket the furniture to the walls
and floors adding huge amout of extra rigidity.

Rick

KD wrote:
Hi all,
I'm about to buy some flat packed dining room furniture from
Homebase.
No doubt it'll come with a bucket load of dowels and adhesive
sachets. Is
there such a thing as a 'better class of dowel' ? Are plastic dowels
better
? Basically, I want to take little bit more time and make the joints
as
strong as possible. Is the adhesive provided with these units up to
the job
or can/should everything be upgraded ? If so, can someone recommend
a
supplier of upgraded little bits ?

Cheers,
Keith

P.S. I know I could spend a bit more and get pre-built furniture but
money
is a bit tight (like me).

if youre short, better quality second hand is both cheaper, longer
lasting, and better lokoing. Real wood really is much better than
melamine covered chip.

NT

"KD" wrote in message
news
Hi all,
I'm about to buy some flat packed dining room furniture from Homebase.
No doubt it'll come with a bucket load of dowels and adhesive sachets. Is
there such a thing as a 'better class of dowel' ? Are plastic dowels
better ? Basically, I want to take little bit more time and make the
joints as strong as possible. Is the adhesive provided with these units
up to the job or can/should everything be upgraded ? If so, can someone
recommend a supplier of upgraded little bits ?

Cheers,
Keith

P.S. I know I could spend a bit more and get pre-built furniture but
money is a bit tight (like me).

Hi Keith,
I've just completed a Homebase flat pack assembly of a kitchen (u don't
say if that's what you're getting, but I'll assume it is) so I am 'current'
on the Homebase system. IMHO their product isn't bad at the moment, and with
careful assembly you should have something that will last you a good few
years - I'm intending mine to see me out, anyway!

They don't actually provide any glue at all. In their system, the drawers
are this new metal sided style, where dowels, glue etc do not feature. The
assembled finished drawers are very nice - robust and free running.

Where they do use dowels is in the carcass construction, which I will try to
describe. Each carcass corner joint consists of 4 dowels, half in the 'end
grain'(!!) of one carcass piece, and half into the 'side' of the other
piece. In addition there are 2 specialised alloy dowel systems that are
intended to drag the joint together and hold it together - the wooden dowels
seem to be only included to stop lateral dispacement. In the Homebase system
the special bits work as follows:

An alloy pin with an enlarged head and a slightly trumpet shaped tail has a
ridged nylon sleeve around it's trumpet shaped end. The idea is a bit like a
masonry fixing - as the pin is pulled, the nylon sleeve which is in a dowel
hole in the wood is supposed to grip the chip, which as the trumpet tries to
pull up thro the sleeve is expanded and therefore gets tighter and tighter.
The enlarged head of the pin engages with one on those alloy 90 deg twist
components (looks like a small squat alloy cylinder) that you turn with a
screwdriver and it bears progrssively on the underside of the head, pulling
to joint together.

I've worked with these and am somewhat underhwhelmed. If u want to do an A1
job, would suggest:

1. When u push these pin/sleeve assemblies into the chip, put some good
superglue on the barbed area of the sleeve just before pushing them into the
chip, & wait 15 mins before assembling the joint.

2. Dowels. The additional dowels they use are the wooden ones, and if u
intend to glue em I'd stay with them - plastic would be inferior. For glue,
u can use PVA, but take care not to flood the blind dowel holes in the 'end
grain' with adhesive, otherwise either the dowels won't go in properly, or
in extremis the chip will split. You just want to wet the hole sides. An
alternative is a liberal application of superglue (from one of the larger
Scrwfix bottles) providing you a very slick with getting the joints together
as open time is to be measured in seconds. I guess I'd stay with the PVA.

If using PVA, once u have the carcass assembled go around all the joints
again piching up the tighteners and probably tapping the joints together
with a mallet and wooden block. Then leave for 24 hrs to let PVA set
properly.

Hope this helps - any more queries just ask!

Cheers

Tim

In message .com,
wrote


if youre short, better quality second hand is both cheaper, longer
lasting, and better lokoing. Real wood really is much better than
melamine covered chip.

When did they last make reasonably priced furniture from real wood?
--
Alan

It is not the dowel or glue (only strong with long grain) which is the
weak link but the chipboard itself. Not much to be done with it really.
Just use superglue when it crumbles. YPFWYG

In article , "Alan"
says...
In message .com,
wrote


if youre short, better quality second hand is both cheaper, longer
lasting, and better lokoing. Real wood really is much better than
melamine covered chip.

When did they last make reasonably priced furniture from real wood?

1940s

In article .com,
"David" says...
It is not the dowel or glue (only strong with long grain) which is the
weak link but the chipboard itself. Not much to be done with it really.
Just use superglue when it crumbles. YPFWYG


If stuff is properly assembled in the first place it should be rigid
enough to prevent movement in the joints, so the only way it's going
to crumble is if it gets damp or battered. Why would you use
superglue on wood?

In message , Rob Morley
wrote
In article , "Alan"
says...
In message .com,
wrote


if youre short, better quality second hand is both cheaper, longer
lasting, and better lokoing. Real wood really is much better than
melamine covered chip.

When did they last make reasonably priced furniture from real wood?

1940s


Unlikely. Decent wood wouldn't have been wasted on furniture during the
war or for the years after. Utility ware was made from the same quality
wood at tea chests
--
Alan

In article , "Alan"
says...
In message , Rob Morley
wrote
In article , "Alan"
says...
In message .com,
wrote


if youre short, better quality second hand is both cheaper, longer
lasting, and better lokoing. Real wood really is much better than
melamine covered chip.

When did they last make reasonably priced furniture from real wood?

1940s


Unlikely. Decent wood wouldn't have been wasted on furniture during the
war or for the years after. Utility ware was made from the same quality
wood at tea chests

The stuff I used to have was reasonable quality timber and well
constructed, just very plain and functional. It may have been early
fifties rather than late forties - it was from the period when
melamine was rather new and expensive :-)

In article ,
says...
In article .com,
"David" says...
It is not the dowel or glue (only strong with long grain) which is the
weak link but the chipboard itself. Not much to be done with it really.
Just use superglue when it crumbles. YPFWYG


If stuff is properly assembled in the first place it should be rigid
enough to prevent movement in the joints, so the only way it's going
to crumble is if it gets damp or battered. Why would you use
superglue on wood?

Because he doesn't know what he is talking about.
--
Paul Mc Cann

Alan wrote:
In message , Rob
Morley
wrote
In article , "Alan"
says...
In message
.com,
wrote


if youre short, better quality second hand is both cheaper,
longer
lasting, and better lokoing. Real wood really is much better than
melamine covered chip.

When did they last make reasonably priced furniture from real
wood?

1940s


Unlikely. Decent wood wouldn't have been wasted on furniture during
the
war or for the years after. Utility ware was made from the same
quality
wood at tea chests

The point being that both the wood and the items made from it were
better value for money than any flat pack you can buy today. My parents
utility settee finally went to the tip after 60 years (recovered at
least once in that time). Not because there was anything wrong with it,
but it didn't meet fire regs and no one was interested in it.

MBQ

MBQ wrote
| Unlikely. Decent wood wouldn't have been wasted on furniture
| during the war or for the years after. Utility ware was
| made from the same quality wood at tea chests
| The point being that both the wood and the items made from it
| were better value for money than any flat pack you can buy
| today. My parents utility settee finally went to the tip
| after 60 years (recovered at least once in that time). Not
| because there was anything wrong with it, but it didn't meet
| fire regs and no one was interested in it.

A neighbour still has her parents' *aluminium* utility kitchen cabinets,
used as storage in her workshop.

I bet they'd be worth a fair bit if the paint was removed and they were
polished up as 'retro'

Owain

It was somewhere outside Barstow when "KD" wrote:

No doubt it'll come with a bucket load of dowels and adhesive sachets. Is
there such a thing as a 'better class of dowel' ?

Biscuit joints. Bigger glue area and you only have to align one axis
at a time.

But if the stuff's made of chipboard, who cares anyway? When did you
ever see Pikea stuff failing at the dowels? They're the strongest bit!

It was somewhere outside Barstow when Alan
wrote:

When did they last make reasonably priced furniture from real wood?

1920's After that there was plywood commonly available and the
"reasonably priced" (ie cheap) stuff inevitably used it.

There's some lovely build-quality mass-market solid timber stuff from
the '50s, but it was at the higher end of popular, not the brightly
coloured mainstream. It's also very '50s Scandiwegian in style,
inevitably teak, and the style is something of an acquired taste
("Tage Frid plays Esquivel").

Even these days, Nathan are building ugly-as-sin "hutches" that look
just like contiplank, but they're technically very well-made solid
timber, and their signature stopped chamfering is straight out of '20s
Gimson. Then there's Darrell Peart, who is some sort of chair-making
god http://furnituremaker.com/Rocking_Chair.htm

I spent yesterday doing a flat clearance where an old lady had died
and left behind a lifetime's collected furniture. A huge number of
wardrobes and dressers from the '20s to '50s. "CWS Enfield plywood"
was certainly in evidence, but so was a '30s sideboard with solid
walnut slab doors an inch thick.

Sadly the woodworm had beaten me to it. We got three useful pieces
out of the flat, two truckloads for the tip (mainly upholstery) and a
Volvoful that went into either my timber racks or the firewood pile.

It was somewhere outside Barstow when "Owain"
wrote:

I bet they'd be worth a fair bit if the paint was removed and they were
polished up as 'retro'

Big drawer fronts with a sloping overhang ? Then yes.

Also remember the basic rule of furniture valuation. 19th century
furniture isn't valuable unless it's European. 20th century isn't
valuable unless American. Got any '50s Eames or Steelcase ?

"Andy Dingley" wrote in message
...
It was somewhere outside Barstow when "KD" wrote:

No doubt it'll come with a bucket load of dowels and adhesive sachets. Is
there such a thing as a 'better class of dowel' ?

Biscuit joints. Bigger glue area and you only have to align one axis
at a time.

But if the stuff's made of chipboard, who cares anyway? When did you
ever see Pikea stuff failing at the dowels? They're the strongest bit!

LOL.
From the blurb on the website and description in store it's limed oak ...
but I suspect the words 'style laminate' are missing. Here's hoping though.

Actually the much despised IKEA has some interesting pieces made out of real solid wood - just don't expect any size to the individual bits. I got a table(18" cube, which I turned into a toy/laundry chest with a couple of hinges) in walnut for £16. Once sanded and oiled, it looks really good.

Oh - and I glued all the joints with EvoStik!

Davide

You try buying any piece by Phyfe or Belter (19th C Americans) or Majorelle or Ruhlmann (20th C French), then you tell me about valuable... ;-)

Davide

It was somewhere outside Barstow when Davide
wrote:

Actually the much despised IKEA has some interesting pieces made out of
real solid wood

Lovely slate-topped coffee tables in solid oak.

Mind you, they're not cheap. I'll do you a similar sofa side table for
the same price, and mine has real mortice and tenons holding it
together, not a steel bracket.

It was somewhere outside Barstow when Davide
wrote:

You try buying any piece by Phyfe or Belter (19th C Americans)

Phyfe is nice, but it's really a hang over from the 18th century,
IMHO, US Federal is the best-designed furniture ever made - even
better than the slightly earlier and rather overblown Goddard-Townsend
stuff.