A Primer on Quality

WHAT’S ON THE MARKET?
Wood furniture can be constructed using a variety of wood products such as solid wood and plywood veneers. Quality furniture is made of solid wood.  You may, however, find certain pieces made out of veneer plywood. Plywood is used for strength and to eliminate warpage, splitting, expansion, and contraction.  Plywood is also less expensive than using glued boards.

All woods can be divided into deciduous and coniferous. There is some relationship between the hardness of the wood and the type of tree the wood comes from. In most cases deciduous trees consist of harder wood than coniferous trees, but not always. Deciduous simply refers to all leaf bearing trees such as teak, walnut, oak, maple, mahogany, cherry, and birch. Coniferous refers to cone-bearing trees such as pine, fir, redwood, and cedar. Most high quality wooden furniture is made of deciduous trees. Generally, wood from coniferous trees are used for the less expensive furniture. However, some high-quality furniture is now being made out of coniferous trees such as pine. While furniture made out of pine may be high quality, it is still more subject to scratches and dents than harder woods.

Some common hardwoods used to construct furniture are ash, beech, birch, cherry, mahogany, maple, oak, pecan, poplar, teak, and walnut. The most common softwoods used to construct furniture are cedar, pine, and redwood. Characteristics of these woods are the following:

Ash: The characteristics of ash are pleasant contrasting color when stained, distinct straight grain with open pores, toughness, heavy weight, hardness, and good shock resistance.

Beech: The characteristics of beech are hardness, greater strength, good shock resistance, and conspicuous wood rays with tiny and virtually invisible wood pores. Beech is used for curved parts of furniture and in Scandinavian type furniture.

Birch: The characteristics of birch are hardness, weight, greater strength, beautiful natural finish, small wood pores, and good shock resistance. Birch is used for structural and exposed parts of furniture and veneers. It is also used as a substitute for mahogany and walnut.

Cherry: The characteristics of cherry are moderate hardness, greater strength, durability, good shock and wear resistance, rich color, and straight grain with small individual pores. Cherry is often used as a veneer and for Provincial and Early American Furniture.

Mahogany: The characteristics of mahogany are even texture, medium hardness, greater strength, heavy weight, easy to carve, beautiful finish, and predominate grain pattern with open wood pores. Mahogany is used for veneers and carved wood pieces.

Maple: The characteristics of maple are heavy weight, hardness, greater strength, good shock resistance, and straight grain with tiny wood pores. Maple is often used in bench tops.

Oak: The characteristics of oak are heavy weight, hardness, greater strength, durability, carvability, wearability, and striking grain pattern when stained. Oak is often used for paneling, veneers, and solid wood furniture.

Pecan: The characteristics of pecan are its greater weight, closed wood pores, contrasting grain color when stained, hardness, and strength. Pecan is used for furniture and wall paneling.

Poplar: The characteristics of poplar are its closed wood pores, even staining, durability, and greater strength. Poplar is often used inside of upholstered and wood furniture.

Teak: The characteristics of teak are heavy weight, expensive, greater strength, oiliness, and toughness. Teak is often used in paneling and furniture. Teak is often found in Oriental furniture.

Walnut: The characteristics of walnut are hardness, greater strength, great stability, expensive, heaviness, durability, carvability, and good shock resistance. Walnut is used for veneers, paneling, and solid furniture.

Cedar: Cedar is knotty, highly aromatic, moderately hard, brittle, resistance to decay, light weight, holds paint, and (red cedar) repellent to moths. Cedar is used for unfinished and outdoor furniture. Red cedar is used for lining drawers and chests.

Pine: Pine is soft, light weight, easy to work, less strength, and holds paint and varnishes well. Western pine is a little harder than the other varieties of pine. Pine is used for cabinets, unfinished furniture, outdoor furniture, and some high-quality furniture.

Redwood: Redwood is light weight, moderately hard, stable, very strong, and resistant to decay, rot, and weather. Redwood is used for outdoor furniture and unfinished furniture.

WHAT’S QUALITY CONSTRUCTION?
Quality is mainly determined by two characteristics: method of joining parts of the piece and sturdiness of the assembly. All joinings should be glued together. For quality, the joints should be tight without any glue showing.

Joints: How various parts of the furniture piece are put together is very important to durability and appearance. Furniture is put together using one or more of the following methods: mortise and tenon, dovetail, tongue and groove, rabbeted and butted, doweled, corner blocked, screwed, glued, and bolted.  When using glued joints, increasing the surface area of the joint for each piece to be joined is key.  This is why dovetail, mortise and tenon and box joints are widely used by quality craftsmen.  Due to their design there is a lot of wood surface in contact between the joined pieces.

Dovetail joints consist of and interlocking “V” notch in one board and a matching “V” projection on the other board.  When locked together this joint is extremely strong.

Mortise and tenon joints consist of a socket and projection made of two different pieces of wood. The projection fits into the socket making the joint.

The doweled joint consists of a wooden pin that fits into a hole drilled in the wood. Once glued, the compressed dowel swells inside the joint.

The tongue and groove joint consists of a lip and groove that extends the length of two boards.

Rabbeted and butted joints are sometimes used for inexpensive furniture. The rabbeted joint has a groove cut from the edge of one piece with the end of the other piece joined to the cut out space. A butted joint consists of two boards placed at right angles, glued and stapled. Sometimes rabbeted or butted joints are used with screws or bolts and boards for reinforcement, which can be sturdy construction. Screws are preferred over staples because screws do not work loose the way staples do. In higher-quality furniture, screws are counter sunk, with wood plugs used to hide screw heads.

Bolts used to join different pieces of wood furniture should be self-locking. If bolts are used, they should be hidden from sight. Bolts are durable, if they do not work loose.

Corner-blocked joints add strength where rigidity is important. They are placed in hidden locations. The better quality corner blocks are dadoed into frame and screwed. Dadoed corner blocks mean that the reinforcement wood pieces interlock with the frame. The less expensive furniture have corner blocks glued into the frame rather than dadoed.

The cheapest joining used for furniture is stapling. Problems with staples are that they work loose and rust. Staples are generally used to hold the pieces of wood together until the glue dries.

Sturdiness: Trying to determine sturdiness is very important when selecting wood furniture. This is because sturdiness is a good indicator of how long a piece of furniture will last. The following are some features to look for when trying to get an indication of sturdiness.

As mentioned earlier, check that the joints are tight, there should be no gaps in any quality joint.  Secondly, the piece should sit flat on the floor or against the wall.  A piece of furniture with four legs should sit on all four legs. Third, the piece should not flex, deform or wiggle.  If you find any of these deficiencies you may want to reconsider your purchase of that piece.

WHAT’S A QUALITY FINISH?
A quality finish involves three main steps: sanding, staining, and finishing. If any one of these steps is not done properly, the finish does not look as good as it should.

Sanding: The manufacturer may do a good job of staining, finishing, and polishing, but if the beginning surface has any trace of roughness, not enough sanding, or sanding across the wood grain, the stain and finish will only emphasize all the bad points. Areas not sanded properly absorb more stain. To check for adequate sanding, look at the finish from different angles with the light reflecting onto the wood surface. Is the finish blotchy or cloudy in some areas or does it have dark lines running across the grain? If the wood surface is blotchy, cloudy, or has dark lines running across the grain, the wood surface may not have been sanded smooth before staining.

Staining: A good stain can enhance the natural beauty of wood, add color and character to wood, make one wood type look like another, and make different woods look similar. To evaluate the quality of staining, check the wood surface to see if the stain is evenly applied. There should be no dark spots where there is more stain in one area than another.
One side of the furniture piece should not be darker than the other, and the ends should be the same tone as the other surfaces. Sometimes additional color is added to make the furniture look old. In some cases the wood surface is actually hit with a chain to make dents and nicks. This is called distressing.

Finishing: Finishes range from high-gloss to low-gloss in varying qualities. A high quality finish is satiny smooth and free of rough spots, dust specks, or bubbles. A good way to check the smoothness of a finish is to put a nylon over your hand and run it over the finish. If the nylon catches or snags, it has not been sanded or finished properly. Look for depth and richness in the finish, which comes from several light coats of finish with sanding between the coats. Inspect the finish in good light. The edges and ends of the wood piece should be coated with the top finish and free from finger marks. Make sure the filled cracks and holes are covered with the top finish. High quality furniture should be finished on the back and on the underside, to reduce the chances of swelling or shrinking.

Poorly finished wood may have any one or more of these characteristics in the finish: rough, cloudy so you can not see the wood grain, splintered edges, scratches, dents, or dust specks. Look for dull spots, which indicate that some areas of the wood were either missed or not given enough coats. In addition, a poor finish will have “teardrops” around the edges and on the up-and-down surfaces of the wood. Teardrops are formed when excess finish dries on the edges and vertical surfaces of the wood.

WHAT’S ON THE LABEL?
All labeling for wood furniture is voluntary. Therefore, if you do find some labeling, feel lucky. If the manufacturer decides to put a label on wood furniture, there are some rules that must be followed. The Federal Trade Commission in 1963 established Trade Practice Rules for the Household Furniture Industry. This ruling prohibits misleading and false representation of wood and wood imitation. The Commission specifies four classes of labels for wood:

(1) Genuine—means exposed structural parts and flat surfaces are made from the wood named (this could be a walnut veneer with a label “Genuine Walnut”)
(2) Solid—means exposed portions of both frames and panels are made of solid lumber, not veneers or plywood (this could be a label with the words “Solid Oak”)
(3) Combination—means that two or more woods are used and both must be named on the label (this could be a gumwood frame stained to match mahogany panels, with a label
“Mahogany with Gumwood Frame”)
(4) Imitation—means printed or painted grain pattern on hardwood, metal, plastic or lumber (this could be a label with “Imitation Oak Grain on Hardboard”).

Other words found on labels can also be misleading to the consumer. For example, just the name “Oak” or an abbreviation of walnut “Wal” does not mean real oak or walnut but means that oak or walnut stain was used on a less expensive wood. If the label says “Made in Denmark,” it means the furniture is made in Denmark, but if the label says “Danish Style,” it means the furniture is made in the style of Danish furniture. The words “Walnut Finish” mean the wood is finished to look like walnut and does not refer to the type of wood.

QUALITY CHECKLIST
After each question, answer with a yes* or no.
1. Is the wood furniture made from a hardwood?
2. Are the joints tight fitting?
3. Are the joints glued carefully without any glue showing?
4. Are the joints either dovetailed, mortise and tenon, tongue and groove, bolted, or screwed, not stapled?
5. Are the corner blocks tight fitting, glued, and screwed into the frame?
6. Are the stained surfaces uniform in color?
7. Is the finish satiny smooth and free of rough spots?
8. Are the edges and ends finished evenly throughout without finger marks or teardrops?
9. Is the furniture finished on the back and underside?
17. If there is labeling, did you read the information?
18. Is there a warranty?
* If you answered all these questions with a yes, you can be assured of getting high quality wood furniture.