1) Handcrafted pieces from long ago were built better than today's furniture.
Actually, current methods and materials for joining/fitting furniture pieces together
have greatly improved over the age of hand-made goods. Contrary to popular opinion, one of the oldest methods of fitting furniture pieces together has always been glue -- and the glues we have now are far better than the older glues. In addition, recent developments in wood finishes are great improvements over many of the older finishes, with longer durability, protection for the wood and improved shine or sheen. It's also easier now to kilndry wood which means the wood is more seasoned and much more stable than airdried wood.
2) Wood finish needs to be fed.
This is something of a misunderstanding. Yes, a wood finish can lose essential oils
over the years (which causes cracking or crazing of the finish), but you actually
don't need to feed the finish more oils. Eventually, no matter what you do, the
finish of a wood product will wear out with day-to-day use and no amount of "feeding"
the finish will protect it from that normal use.
Does that mean it's pointless to wax or polish the wood? Not at all. Waxing the wood
with a hard wax gives the best protection for day-to-day use and only has to be done
about once a year. Tabletops or other areas that see heavy use might need to be waxed
as often as four times a year. This wax helps prevent some scratching, keeps the wood
looking nice and actually helps prevent dust build-up. After all, a good wax surface is slippery, so much of the normal dust will blow off the piece. Oil, on the other hand, holds dust to it.
3) Wood is alive, needs to breathe, must have essential oils periodically replaced.
Wood is only alive while it's still a living tree or bush. Wood found in furniture and lumber is, by definition, already dead. Since it's not living, it doesn't need to breathe or to be fed any kind of oils.
4) Engineered wood is bad.
Whether it was your office desk, a conference table, or your entertainment center, we've all seen engineered wood furniture before. This wood might be particleboard, pressboard, chipcore or plywood. Depending on the type of engineered wood used, you might be able to move that ready-to-assemble bookcase once or twice or it might last you forever. Engineered wood comes in a variety of grades for different uses and particularly when talking about a board made of multiple plies of wood, it can actually be much stronger and more stable than a board made from a continuous section of the tree. The best pieces of engineered wood have each ply's grain facing in a different direction to prevent the whole board from shrinking and expanding as happens with a "regular" board. Five and seven ply boards are often used in quality furniture (particularly if one layer is a veneer).
5) Wood veneer is bad.
This is one of the biggest misunderstandings in furniture. Most consumers, when looking for fine furniture, will say that they don't want any of "that veneered stuff." Most furniture people know some of the best, most durable and most beautiful pieces of furniture have veneered wood. What's the misunderstanding?
Many inexperienced furniture buyers are looking to upgrade their furniture from the
ready-to-assemble pressboard furniture. Much of this furniture (although not all by any means!!) uses a paper veneer with wood grain printed on it. Eventually, the paper peels up and looks bad, often the type of engineered wood is quite inexpensive and not a good quality and the whole piece of furniture eventually falls apart. To many people, when they say they don't want "that veneered stuff," they really mean they don't want any more inexpensive furniture and they're afraid that the word veneer means cheap.
Actually, true veneered wood (rather than a paper veneer or a vinyl veneer), dates back to ancient Egypt! Using a thin (about 1/32") layer of more exotic-looking wood is a way to conserve the wood and actually strengthen the piece of furniture. (See Engineered wood is bad.)
6) All of the wood in a set or suite will match exactly.
Even if an entire table and chairs set was made from a single tree, chances are we would see some color and grain differences in each piece of the set. The joy of
natural products like wood, leather and stone are the natural and irregular patterns that make them distinct.
Sunday, June 15, 2008
Understanding Wood Finishes
Stains, colors, paints, oils, penetrating, film, lacquer -- there are so many different parts that can go into the process of a wood finish. In fact, about 30% of the manufacturer's cost on a good piece of wood furniture is tied up in the wood's finish.
One of the first "problems" that all furniture-makers have (even artisans who handcraft their furniture) is the natural variation in the woods they use. It might take several small trees to make a dining room set with eight chairs, a long table with several leaves, a buffet and a large china cabinet. Each of the boards coming from these trees will take the stain color a little differently -- and in some cases, even within a tree, different boards will react somewhat differently to the coloring process (stain, paint or oil).
Manufacturers who use "engraved," "roto" or "photographic" finishes to create a consistent wood color and finish on less expensive furniture can sell their
pieces much more cheaply because they're using more inexpensive pressed wood rather than plied-woods and veneers. Since the wood grain is created by the finish process rather than showing the natural variations of a solid wood board, each piece matches exactly. This is why so many inexpensive furniture sets match in color much more closely than more expensive sets. The variation is the charm of any natural product, whether wood, leather, stone or plant.
Of course, repairing the inexpensive furniture if the finish is damaged becomes a lot more complicated. The damaged area would have to be filled with wood putty, sanded down and then the grain pattern would have to be painted back on, using the precise colors of the original in order to match the whole piece. Then a finish coat
would need to be applied -- again it would have to match the surrounding finish exactly or the repaired area will still stick out like a sore thumb. On the other hand, a real wood piece (yes, even a real wood veneered piece) can usually be fixed with a wax stick or furniture "crayon" sold in almost all hardware stores. Some marks can even be repaired just by using an appropriately colored furniture polish!
In general, the finish system for wood goes through three major stages: Filling, Sealing, Finishing.
Applying any fillers is necessary to make the wood more completely smooth. Open grain woods cannot always be sanded into a perfectly smooth state, so if the piece of
furniture requires a smooth finish, some filler has to be used (particularly for ash,
elm and oak). Sealers are then typically sprayed on, allowed to dry and then sanded to create a smooth base for the next stage.
Finishing Terms
Finishes can take several different forms. Walnut and pecan, for example, generally
have a linseed oil finish applied since the wood itself is so richly colored. Finishes like this require another coat of the oil applied to it regularly. The polyester finish, another type of finish, comes in a wide variety of colors which can give the wood a beautiful sense of depth. These finishes are easy to maintain and quite durable, often producing a mirror-shine and resisting
scratches admirably. These finishes -- and other synthetic finishes -- do not require
hand rubbing to produce a high gloss finish as many older finishes did.
• Glazes: Have finely dispersed pigments in a slow drying solution. Generally has
an opaque color to the finish.
• Color Washing: Using thinned paint or glaze, the color is applied over a dry
surface, and then wiped off using a cloth, feathers or a brush depending on the look or pattern desired. Surfaces look best if only a thin layer of wash remains.
• Combing: Using a cloth, cardboard or decorator's comb (the comb might be plastic, steel or rubber), the "comb" is run through a wet surface, paint, glaze
or a light plaster. This produces a checkered or parallel effect.
• Gilding: Thin gold leaves are applied to the wood.
• Lacquer: A form of resinous varnish capable of taking on a high polish. Applied
in layers, each layer must dry and be slightly sanded before the next layer
can be applied.
• Spattering: Paint is flicked onto a dry surface from a wet brush using a variety
of hand movements, creating a random effect.
Wood Veneers
The use of veneers dates back to ancient Egypt where they often used veneers of African ebony trees and glued them to boards of the less expensive cedar -- sometimes
for a decorative pattern, sometimes to make the piece look like it was made wholly
of ebony. The use of veneers has continued throughout our history. In fact, the most
respected and re-known furniture makers, Chippendale, Sheraton and Hepplewhite, all
used veneers in their furniture. Veneer has been around for a long, long time. It has a reputation among some that it is not as good as a piece made solely of that
veneer wood. Actually, current woodworking techniques mean that veneered woods are generally a more stable and better quality than a solid piece of wood! Solid wood has the potential to crack, warp, expand and contract with the weather and is
generally not a stable material over a long period of time. Veneered wood is lighter
and generally more stable. They resist cracking and warping somewhat. The best
veneers use five to seven different plies of wood with the grain turned 90 degrees with each ply. In conditions which would make a plank of wood warp, expand or contract, this type of ply-wood would remain more stable since each ply of wood would
want to move in a different direction from the plies surrounding it. So each ply helps keep the other plies from moving. These 90 degree turns, then, create a much more stable piece of wood. The final ply is the veneer, which is typically only 1/32 of an inch thick.
If you are looking at furniture which needs any long panel or piece of wood, you should look for a piece which is veneered. Bookcases and tall dressers, for example, should have veneered sides. If not, the piece will probably warp out of square or even develop cracks as the wood continues to settle and change with the changes in temperature and humidity in your home.
Veneer gives us the ability to have beautiful and rare woods in our home at a lower cost and modern veneering techniques actually strengthen the wood to withstand our modern environment.
One of the first "problems" that all furniture-makers have (even artisans who handcraft their furniture) is the natural variation in the woods they use. It might take several small trees to make a dining room set with eight chairs, a long table with several leaves, a buffet and a large china cabinet. Each of the boards coming from these trees will take the stain color a little differently -- and in some cases, even within a tree, different boards will react somewhat differently to the coloring process (stain, paint or oil).
Manufacturers who use "engraved," "roto" or "photographic" finishes to create a consistent wood color and finish on less expensive furniture can sell their
pieces much more cheaply because they're using more inexpensive pressed wood rather than plied-woods and veneers. Since the wood grain is created by the finish process rather than showing the natural variations of a solid wood board, each piece matches exactly. This is why so many inexpensive furniture sets match in color much more closely than more expensive sets. The variation is the charm of any natural product, whether wood, leather, stone or plant.
Of course, repairing the inexpensive furniture if the finish is damaged becomes a lot more complicated. The damaged area would have to be filled with wood putty, sanded down and then the grain pattern would have to be painted back on, using the precise colors of the original in order to match the whole piece. Then a finish coat
would need to be applied -- again it would have to match the surrounding finish exactly or the repaired area will still stick out like a sore thumb. On the other hand, a real wood piece (yes, even a real wood veneered piece) can usually be fixed with a wax stick or furniture "crayon" sold in almost all hardware stores. Some marks can even be repaired just by using an appropriately colored furniture polish!
In general, the finish system for wood goes through three major stages: Filling, Sealing, Finishing.
Applying any fillers is necessary to make the wood more completely smooth. Open grain woods cannot always be sanded into a perfectly smooth state, so if the piece of
furniture requires a smooth finish, some filler has to be used (particularly for ash,
elm and oak). Sealers are then typically sprayed on, allowed to dry and then sanded to create a smooth base for the next stage.
Finishing Terms
Finishes can take several different forms. Walnut and pecan, for example, generally
have a linseed oil finish applied since the wood itself is so richly colored. Finishes like this require another coat of the oil applied to it regularly. The polyester finish, another type of finish, comes in a wide variety of colors which can give the wood a beautiful sense of depth. These finishes are easy to maintain and quite durable, often producing a mirror-shine and resisting
scratches admirably. These finishes -- and other synthetic finishes -- do not require
hand rubbing to produce a high gloss finish as many older finishes did.
• Glazes: Have finely dispersed pigments in a slow drying solution. Generally has
an opaque color to the finish.
• Color Washing: Using thinned paint or glaze, the color is applied over a dry
surface, and then wiped off using a cloth, feathers or a brush depending on the look or pattern desired. Surfaces look best if only a thin layer of wash remains.
• Combing: Using a cloth, cardboard or decorator's comb (the comb might be plastic, steel or rubber), the "comb" is run through a wet surface, paint, glaze
or a light plaster. This produces a checkered or parallel effect.
• Gilding: Thin gold leaves are applied to the wood.
• Lacquer: A form of resinous varnish capable of taking on a high polish. Applied
in layers, each layer must dry and be slightly sanded before the next layer
can be applied.
• Spattering: Paint is flicked onto a dry surface from a wet brush using a variety
of hand movements, creating a random effect.
Wood Veneers
The use of veneers dates back to ancient Egypt where they often used veneers of African ebony trees and glued them to boards of the less expensive cedar -- sometimes
for a decorative pattern, sometimes to make the piece look like it was made wholly
of ebony. The use of veneers has continued throughout our history. In fact, the most
respected and re-known furniture makers, Chippendale, Sheraton and Hepplewhite, all
used veneers in their furniture. Veneer has been around for a long, long time. It has a reputation among some that it is not as good as a piece made solely of that
veneer wood. Actually, current woodworking techniques mean that veneered woods are generally a more stable and better quality than a solid piece of wood! Solid wood has the potential to crack, warp, expand and contract with the weather and is
generally not a stable material over a long period of time. Veneered wood is lighter
and generally more stable. They resist cracking and warping somewhat. The best
veneers use five to seven different plies of wood with the grain turned 90 degrees with each ply. In conditions which would make a plank of wood warp, expand or contract, this type of ply-wood would remain more stable since each ply of wood would
want to move in a different direction from the plies surrounding it. So each ply helps keep the other plies from moving. These 90 degree turns, then, create a much more stable piece of wood. The final ply is the veneer, which is typically only 1/32 of an inch thick.
If you are looking at furniture which needs any long panel or piece of wood, you should look for a piece which is veneered. Bookcases and tall dressers, for example, should have veneered sides. If not, the piece will probably warp out of square or even develop cracks as the wood continues to settle and change with the changes in temperature and humidity in your home.
Veneer gives us the ability to have beautiful and rare woods in our home at a lower cost and modern veneering techniques actually strengthen the wood to withstand our modern environment.
Monday, February 18, 2008
Bar Stool Buying Tips
Tip #1: Know Your Counter Height
Barstools are available in two heights. Approximately 23" high is considered counter height. If you are looking for bar stools for a counter no higher than your kitchen countertops, then you would want to purchase a counter-height barstool.
Barstools are available in two heights. Approximately 23" high is considered counter height. If you are looking for bar stools for a counter no higher than your kitchen countertops, then you would want to purchase a counter-height barstool.
The second height offering is 29" high. This height accomodates the standard bar or bar table.
Tip #2: Wood or Metal
Although making the choice between wood or metal is a personal preference, first ask yourself how open or large is your space. Wood barstools tend to be heavier in look, where metal barstools tend to look better in smaller enclosed spaces, keeping your small space area with a more open appearance.
Tip #3: Fabric vs Leather/Vinyl
People tend to eat or drink sitting in barstools. It is always easier to wipe down leather/vinyl than to clean upholstery. Therefore, it is usually recommended that you take into consideration the purpose of the stools you are purchasing.
Tip #4: Stationary or Swivel
If you have wood flooring, a swivel barstool will minimize sliding and scratching of your wood floors. Swivel barstools are also more accomodating to the individual sitting in them. However, if you are sitting a swivel barstool up to a wood countertop, beware because people tend to swivel the barstool back into the counter causing wood damage and scratching. For instance, how many times have you turned your desk chair into your desk or bumped your desk with the arms of your chair.
If you still have questions about bar stools, consult experts such as those found at TheCozyCasa.com.
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