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Comment by tristor | Hacker News Reader

I had never heard of bog oak before, but this material is absolutely stunning. I really wish there was more appreciation of proper heirloom-quality furniture and things in general. I think it's part of making living more ecological, and it's a form of generational wealth. Unfortunately we live in an era of cheapest possible items, and disposal of things when they go out of style. Something like this never goes out of style.

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One reason for less interest today in heirloom products that last forever: falling birthrates often mean that just one person is inheriting all the possessions left behind by multiple people. No surprise that that one person doesn't have that much room in his or her home, especially since sometimes younger generations are likely to have smaller living spaces than their parents.

I was watching that show called Antique Archeology.

It’s basically two grifters from Iowa who take the good stuff from hoarders, and collectors.

This one guy (Jersey John) pull out a 1886 Windsor chair, and acting like he’s doing the owner a favor by offered the guy $25. The owner shot back with, “I can get $40 at a yard sale?”

Anyhoo—it just reminded me how far we have gotten away from buying beautiful handmade things that will last forever, and going with junk make in the cheapest country.

People have different tastes. Just because something is old or handmade, that doesn't make it desirable.

Plus, 140 year old furniture takes specialized maintenance if you want them to last. It's kind of expensive to properly maintain or refinish antique furniture. Chairs, especially, need proper maintenance, they experience much more wear than something like a chest, and an improper fix can destroy it.

Older furniture can be much easier to repair its just a shame that the knowledge is somewhat less commanplace than it once was. Shellac finishes are a known quantity, easy to touch up or remove an re-apply. The animal glues used in woodwork of the past also allows joints to be easily disassembled for repair and often you can just reactivate the existing glue with some moisture and heat.

Of you break a spindle or a stretcher, especially at a tendon, then doing a proper fix does take skill and specialized tools. Disassembly really isn't an issue, because, like you said, some heat and pressure will release most joints with ease.

But actually fixing a break does take skill. If you're lucky the pieces will mate back together seamlessly and you can use wood glue and maybe some wax to get the piece looking like new and just reassemble them. But if the break is not clean, or there has been a previous repair (maybe involving screws or nails) then replicating a piece is pretty difficult. Turning a new piece requires a lathe, color matching stains is definitely a skill you acquire through experience.

Chips on surfaces and the like pretty much require you to have a decent collection of veneer on hand, in order to luck out and find something with similar grain patterns.

I do a fair bit of antiquing and (proper) refurbishing of old furniture (not 'upcycling'). It's not for the faint of heart. It's a time-consuming labor of love that's akin to maintaining a classic car.

> it just reminded me how far we have gotten away from buying beautiful handmade things that will last forever, and going with junk make in the cheapest country.

selection bias. all the cheap junk your grandparents bought was disposed of before you were born. you never even saw it.

I first encountered bog oak (morta) in the world of tobacco pipes. Turns out that some pipe makers have been using the material for quite a while because the grain patterns are stunning.

Ikea has made millennials think furniture is disposable.

We're not stupid or tasteless, we just don't have enough money to buy furniture that is actually nice. Also, it's not like we can afford to own homes so Ikea futons in a studio apartment it is.

That's a shallow dismissal.

IKEA has been around longer than millennials have.

And some IKEA products last forever.

I think that's a bit misplaced, as millenials are in their 40's now, so they probably don't just throw things away like you assume. But also...

I used to live out in the woods and had to haul my garbage to the dump every few months. (I didn't want to burn plastic, like some of my crazy neighbors did.)

The city dump changes seasonally. After Christmas, there are piles of old toys that were replaced. After summer, there are hundreds of discarded blue-plastic kid pools. After fall there is a TON of furniture. I have no idea why: do people buy more furniture in the fall in preparation for holidays?

Anyway, I see more cheap furniture from Target and department stores than I do IKEA. Ikea is inexpensive furniture, but vastly better than Walmart, Target, Sam's Club, etc. So I didn't see a lot of IKEA at the dump.

> After fall there is a TON of furniture. I have no idea why: do people buy more furniture in the fall in preparation for holidays

Students moving into new places/moving out and going home.

I have no idea why: do people buy more furniture in the fall in preparation for holidays?

Veteran's Day furniture sales :)

yeah, spot-on, it's less IKEA and more the cheap assemble-it-yourself knock-offs you find at Target and Wal-Mart and the like that gives that kind of furniture its poor reputation. IKEA furniture I bought a decade or more ago is still in great shape.

Quality IKEA furniture is made of solid fir/pine/spruce and is finished with a resin paint that resists scratching pretty (though, pine is still soft and dents easily). If you put it together using some wood glue, it will hold up for years.

IKEA absolutely sells cheap furniture made of laminated MDF, and it's often half the price of the quality stuff. And it's not fair to lambast IKEA for sacrificing quality to hit a price-point when they do allow people to pay more to better stuff.

The step up from the good IKEA tier is a big step. Even cheap hardwoods like oak are a lot more expensive than s/p/f. And that's not even getting into how much more wear hardwoods put on tooling or the weight difference.

Half the time it's not even MDF anymore, it's just laminated reinforced cardboard with chunks of MDF here and there for screw points. What I find really sad is how a lot of expensive furniture also uses MDF.

Solid wood is expensive and it does have a lot of seasonal movement. I do some furniture building and there's something to be said for how workable MDF is. It doesn't warp, it's dead simple to cut through, it's pretty light, and it's cheap.

If it's used correctly, MDF is a fine material for furniture. The key to quality pieces with it seems to be in the finish. A piece that's primed, painted with high quality, durable paint, then sealed/lacquered will last a good long while.

I wonder if the original purchaser of that antique dresser you love would have chosen a nice Ikea one if given the choice? (Especially if you adjusted the prices for relative purchasing power.)

Or that you don't need to own it - you can just rent it... Isn't that the "exxagerated" trope regarding that these days?

Don't need to own a car, just use Uber! Don't need to own your servers, just provision (rent) them from AWS! etc.

Wonder when it'll apply to furniture?

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