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Comment by mholmes680 | Hacker News Reader

re: laymen-friendly guides: http://www.ana-white.com/plancatalog

I recently had to buy an entire house's worth of furniture due to a fire. We shopped every store we could find, and apart from any store that sources from the Amish, its all crap. The prices are obscene. We also got to see the innards of the old burned furniture... there's so much chip-board and laminating that I think there must be more plastic/glue than wood fiber. Just like electronics are being designed with obsolescence as a requirement, maybe more so is the furniture in your house...

Its so much more rewarding to build a giant custom table and be able to grunt, "hey look what i did". OR even pick up some older pieces at an estate sale and upcycle with a new varnish or paint and some modifications.

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The Ana white designs are okay for something short term but are prone to problems due to using only pocket screws and construction grade lumber. Veneered particle board would actually outlast from a construction perspective as it's less prone to expansion/contraction.

Table tops will warp if you just screw the boards together and to the base. You can avoid this by gluing the panels then attaching to base with proper fasteners to allow for expansion/contraction.

You can build them properly but this requires using true edge s4s lumber or removing the dimensional round edge with a table saw, band saw or jointer. Your glue up then requires a good number of large clamps. Even out of poplar, adler or basswood which are cheaper hardwoods you'll have $250-$300 in the table. Oak would be $500+.

>there's so much chip-board and laminating that I think there must be more plastic/glue than wood fiber. Just like electronics are being designed with obsolescence as a requirement, maybe more so is the furniture in your house

The problem is people want things cheap and nice looking. You can get a solid white oak table from Crate and Barrel for $1500; which isn't really that bad considering that's around $750 in ready to go s4s lumber from a mail order supplier. It's a lot cheaper to do as Ikea did and have a particle core with a 1/8" oak 'veneer'. Ikea's table is $600.

yeah, but marking it "rustic" solves all my rough-looking problems :) The warping is definitely happening, but my table is also an outdoor patio table so its fine in this case. Thanks for advice though... will help on later projects.

I would like to get some time back this winter and make some inside pieces.. I agree with the pocket screws, but I think I can get around some of that with a joiner. I feel like a joiner and planer are the next tools I will invest in.

>>people want things cheap and nice looking

I agree 1000% but, after the aforementioned fire, I personally have a new perspective. "Collecting" things is way below being able to say I invested in myself/family and built something.

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