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A Quick Guide to Wood Furniture

With all the improvements in our lives in the past few decades—cell phones, digital cameras, email—it’s hard to imagine that other things we take for granted wouldn’t improve as well. Just like how corded phones are a relative thing of the past, certain furniture pieces are too. Wood furniture and its construction process have changed, and as a result, it’s harder to find solid wood furniture and more common to find new blends of engineered wood. Here’s a brief rundown on the new ways your wooden furniture is being built.

Solid wood furniture is generally defined as wooden furniture where all the exposed parts are made from solid board. No engineered wood is involved, and the wood grains are more visible, displaying a timeless beauty. Words such as oak, birch, ash, walnut, mahogany, cherry and maple often indicate what wood the furniture was constructed from. Follow a seam to the end and look for the end grain to help determine whether a dining table or a writing desk is made from modern materials or if it’s the real deal. Solid wood is guaranteed to last quite a while and keep its integrity intact. However, solid wood furniture is pretty expensive, considering the amount of time, energy and craftsmanship that must go into, say, a coffee table.

Because solid wood is so pricey, new technology has created ways to combine solid wood with engineered woods. Veneers are engineered woods with a thin layer of solid wood on top. This is also referred to as “all-wood” furniture, although it is not actually solid wood furniture. Instead, the veneers are meant to resemble solid wood. Many veneers are glued over the edges of a dining table, but don’t show the end grain, thereby displaying their difference. The best veneers have solid wood cores that add to the strength and shock absorption of the furniture.

Other engineered woods include medium density fiberboard and hardboard. Particleboard involved grinding wood into small chips and particles that are bonded with resins under heat to form panels. Medium density fiberboard, or MDF, is constructed in this manner. Hardboard has a greater density than MDF, but is made the same way. Both of these kinds of wood are as durable and resilient as wooden furniture, but at a more affordable price than solid wood furniture.

Article Source: http://www.eco-furniture.com

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