Am I the only one hacked off by MDF furniture ?

[boggen]

woops i just sat a beverage on the furniture, and the ice is melting causing some condensation on the outside, woops, there goes that furniture. *frowns*

 

[jmurray01]

Talking about condensation, if you get MDF wet at all and the moisture seeps into the fiberboard it will soak it all up like a sponge and end up lifting.

Ugh.

 

[jinman]

I have a full hobby cab shop, and there are lots of places to use MDF, but I won't use LDF partical board. The latter is used a lot in modern furniture making.

Pete, I thought it was all called particle board, but your post got me to searching and I discovered only the lighter weight LDF is called particle board. I guess they all look alike until you pick up a piece and see how much heavier it is. I once had a fairly cheap pool table that had the bed lined with what must have been HDF. I never had any problems with that table staying true and flat, but I also never spilled any liquid onto it. I think if these products are laminated or sealed properly, they have lots of good applications. It's nearly impossible to find any other material that is dimensionally perfect as these products.

 

[jmc]

Well, one of the Google ads that popped up at the top of this thread is for a wood burning furnace, if that tells us anything...

One bad testimony for this stuff is the floor samples of furniture on display at Sam's, Office Depot, etc. are often damaged just sitting there.

 

[radrock]

Oh heck. Maybe we should make furniture out of PVC. Everything else is!!

 

[jinman]

One bad testimony for this stuff is the floor samples of furniture on display at Sam's, Office Depot, etc. are often damaged just sitting there.

Considering that the metal racks are also damaged, I'd expect solid wood furniture made from ebony would not hold up to the forklift drivers at Sam's.

 

[Dr Dave]

My son built 2 toy boxes for his kids, 2x4s and plywood,:laughing: he said all store bought are junk! He said, they cant destroy these!:cool2:

 

[wedge40]

HUGE difference between MDF and particle board. Particle board is inexpensive to make and easy to work with. Glue some laminate on it and most people wont know. It's not as strong as real wood or MDF, but for something that is suppose to just sit there it's ok, just wont hold up to abuse. You're right only way to get quality furniture these day is to find real wood, and I'm guessing that would require having someone make it for you, cause you wont find it in to many stores. And then you'll need a second mortgage to pay for it. There's still lots of second hand furniture out there that can be good as new with a little work.

Wedge

 

[CompactTractorFan]

Let me google that for you

 

[chkntrktr]

I'm not familiar with MDF, I have seen the guys on This Old House use it for interior door/window frames and molding. I worked one time at a place where we made sewing machine tops with particle board. They were really heavy.

Where I live, furniture factories or related businesses used to be about the only places to work. In the seventies when I went to work most of them were already using particle board. One local manufacturere still (last I heard) makes solid wood furniture. I said local, but they were bought out by a large company years back.

Most of the case good furniture is made overseas now. China, Indonesia, Vietnam, etc. All the companies bring it in. One company I used to work for turned one of their plants into a warehouse for imports. The only work now is unloading and reshipping and some repair work. But, supposedly it helps the consumer out by giving us cheap goods to buy. A man that owns a furniture store said a few years back that his wholesale prices hadn't went down any

Anyway, the Chinese particle board I saw on a sewing machine cabinet my wife bought last year isn't like what used to be used years ago. It seemed to have bigger chips and less glue and didn't seem as strong.

I have seen particle board used on some upholstery frames that came from overseas. Anyway, I digressed from the original question, but I am not a fan of particle board, and I could relate some more about Chinese made furniture and empty buildings around here, but maybe in another thread.