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Comment by midoridensha | Hacker News Reader

You can't make Ikea-style furniture out of high-quality wood: particle board is FAR higher quality than real wood. Quality is a synonym for consistency (not luxury), and particle board is far more consistent than real wood. Most importantly, particle board is dimensionally stable. This is why even high-end furniture uses a lot of plywood. Real wood has horrible dimensional stability: it warps as humidity levels change. That would never work with Ikea-style furniture.

If you wanted to make Ikea-style furniture with higher-end materials than particle-board, you'd use Baltic Birch plywood, and certainly not solid Walnut.

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I think you mean plywood, not particle board. Very different things. Particle board is crap.

You can also construct with hardwoods in a way that prevents warping and cupping, like using rift sawn cuts and orthogonal grain joiniery. It’s not some secret, this is taught in woodworking 101.

I’ve built a lot of my own furniture with hardwoods and none of it has warped in a decade.

>You can also construct with hardwoods in a way that prevents warping and cupping, like using rift sawn cuts and orthogonal grain joiniery.

No, you can't. Not if you're making IKEA furniture that customers assemble themselves.

>I think you mean plywood, not particle board. Very different things. Particle board is crap.

No, it's not, if you're making inexpensive furniture that customers self-assemble. Good plywood is very expensive.

>I’ve built a lot of my own furniture with hardwoods and none of it has warped in a decade.

Great, let's see you make something that way that ships in a flat box, and which some idiot can put together with pictogram instructions using no tools except a screwdriver for turning cam-lock fasteners.

>Great, let's see you make something that way that ships in a flat box, and which some idiot can put together with pictogram instructions using no tools except a screwdriver for turning cam-lock fasteners.

You've clearly never dealt with old furniture. Tables, chairs and beds used to be and some still are packaged and assembled in this manner. Granted they used threaded inserts instead of cam-lock stuff.

You seem to conflate "good" with "cheap"; particle board is "just" cheap, it's not good.

Plywood will be stronger, lighter, and deal better with humidity, it is "better" as material on pretty much every measure.

Plywood is far more expensive.

Good, cheap, fast: pick any two.

For the price, particle board is good.

IKEA used to ship solid wood products -- and laminated pine-strip items too -- in flat boxes.

Back in the 90s, I bought a solid wood bookshelf and a laminated pine strip coffee table from them. They were structurally sound and very durable. In fact, a couple of years ago, I repurposed the bookshelf to create a built-in.

So it's definitely do-able!

They still do this, fwiw. I have a TARVA dresser in my spare room which came unfinished. I used...probably too-expensive (for what it is) gel stain and lacquer on it and it came out pretty nice for a couple evenings' work.

I hate this sort of Reddit-engineer comment where you redefine a word and then use that redefinition to back up some garbage opinion.

No, particle board is not "high quality". It has inferior mechanical and weathering properties to real wood, chip board and plywood. What particle board is is cheap enough and good enough.

A fast growing birch tree would be amazing. Baltic birch is an incredible material, I have two torsion box workbenches made of it.

properly done glued wood boards don't have a warping problem, and sometimes are even stronger than whole wooden planks. In fact most of Ikea furniture is made from those, except wardrobes and cupboards, which are not expected to have much pushes from aside.

Particle board may be dimensionally stable but is terrible in every other way- weak, poor water resistance and not durable. Sealing a hardwood with lacquer/sealer pretty much eliminates warping and cupping.

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