Precision-cut "puzzle furniture"
Jaap sez, "This furniture looks rather run-off-the-mill until you watch the assembly animations. There are no fasteners. No screws, no nails, no dowels, no fiddly bits of IKEA hardware that dare not speak their Swedish names. Just cleverly cut wooden boards that fit together like a 3D puzzle."
This looks like a triumph of the laser-cutter's art to me. I like that it's real wood and not particle board. Seems like it'd be sturdy stuff. Link (Thanks, Jaap!)
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Very similar to the storage units from here: http://www.housefish.com/furniture
But I also like the ones above because they're wood, and they only use the one material. For the record the pieces are likely cut with a CNC router rather than a laser cutter, simply because a laser cutter burns the edges (obvious when you think about it) which then requires sanding afterwards.
This looks like a great find - Get to look at the construction details....are there any adhesives involved. If there are not that would make moving much easier.....
@GLShade:
It appears there are no adhesives involved, simply plywood bits that slot together securely.
My only real complaint is the cost: an unfinished 3-shelf narrow bookshelf unit is $150 (well, $149.99). A 5-shelf wide bookcase is $500. They can't be that expensive to make oneself.
Plans for similar furniture has been around for a long time. I just bought from a library book sale Nomadic Furniture, dated 1972, which included designs similar to the stuff from Real Simple Furniture -- no fasteners, just plywood designed to slot together.
This just seems to make sense.
If there are no fasteners, how does everybody think they'll hold up to vibrations? Either an earthquake or the garbage truck driving through the alley. Having it collapse would be quite a hazard if it was covered in large, heavy books.
And as far price, real wood is real expensive. Especially if the back of it is wood as well.
Most excellent work!
It wouldn't be quite as good, but I do believe you could DIY this with a router, some plywood and a steady hand.
Not only that, change the proportions a touch and you have a desk.
Heck, I can see designs for chairs, too. You could make a whole set of collapsible furniture. It'd be great if you need to reconfigure a room periodically or move frequently. Very cool.
The shelves are pretty cool, but some of the other pieces on the site are sketchy. Especially the coffee tables -- the table surface snaps on with a tiny twist. Looks like it could easily pop back off with just a bump.
The shelves rock, though.
Okay, so if plywood is real wood and medium density fiberboard isn't, what do we call MDF with birch veneer? What do we call actual solid birch? How about three cubic feet of solid nonlaminated wood -- just a myth?
"More wood than wood."
-Tyrell Lumber
You people are so easily impressed. Arts and Crafts /Mission furniture has been doing similar techniques for over 100 years. It may not be the "snap tite" design, but most well designed mission furniture uses tenions with pegs, dovetail joints, and mortised guides. It's not really hard to make great furniture that uses very few (it any) mechanical fasteners, but it certainly costs more. I own a fair amount of Stickley furniture and if $500 for a 5 shelf book case is upsetting, then I suggest you not look at their website. Why spend $1500 at Rooms to Go (ect..) when it's going to fall apart in 10 years. I'd rather spend 5 times that and have it last 3 lifetimes.
And what do you call these woods?...
MDF, plywood, laminate, ect - not real wood
(the exception could be birch laminate over solid pine, but I wouldn't think that to be a good idea).
Solid any tree - real wood (cherry, birch, oak, even pine).
Oh and 3 cubic feet of solid wood...probably I'd call it firewood or planks. (3 feet is pretty short, no one would want to mill that, unless it was exotic).
That back panel means side to side racking is quite impossible-- fasteners and hardware does not a sturdy structure make. Look at the Todai Ji in Japan; the largest wooden structure in the world and survivor of more than a couple earthquakes. There is a rich history of interlocking wooden joinery. This is decidedly less sophisticated, of course, but I wouldn't dismiss it for lack of fasteners.
What's so difficult about assembling Ikea furniture? It's a cool shelf, but you can see plans for these in any old DIY woodworking book.
I'm curious about the environmental tradeoffs of real wood vs. manufactured wood like MDF and particle board. I'd guess at this point that real wood might be worse than MDF since it requires older/better trees to get a good grain. Manufactured woods use a thin veneer and leftover scrap which sounds like a more efficient use of materials.
Green Design in Maine has been doing upscale furniture using using similar assembly methods. They provide sample instructions and an assembly video on their site.
Their stuff is largely solid cherry which I assume gets around the "is it real wood argument".
The price of course reflects the solid wood construction and is probably well out of the reach of most people. But the assembly methods are very cool. I don't know of another high-end furniture maker that does anything similar.
http://www.greendesigns.com
Most MDF, particleboard and plywood products contain UF (urea formaldehyde) binders. This stuff releases nasty vapors throughout its lifetime.
There are low and no-UF alternatives. In fact, these products are an entirely "green" alternative to solid woods harvested from over forested sources. Of course, if a no-UF product is being trucked from Oregon to upstate New York...
Similarly, if "real" (solid hard or softwood) has to be transported a thousand miles to a secondary manufacturer, where are the benefits from stepping away from substrates like MDF and particleboard?
I say, seek out bamboo! It grows very quickly and in a variety of climates. It has a higher strength to weight ratio that graphite, higher tensile strength than many steel alloys, able to leap tall buildings in a single bound!
http://www.plyboo.com/
And it can be just as attractive a material as solid domestic hardwood.
I have a couple of bookshelves from Legare (www.legarefurniture.com). They work the same way, but I think they look a little sleeker. Still, it's a great concept.
And at the other end of the spectrum, see Playatech.
"Oh and 3 cubic feet of solid wood...probably I'd call it firewood or planks. (3 feet is pretty short, no one would want to mill that, unless it was exotic)."
Unless of course it was a roll of veneer with a volume of three cubic feet, three 8/4
boards six inches wide by twelve feet long,etc.
Reminds me of the sorely-missed Slip Slot furniture by Casey Lurie.
unless the finest hardwood and precise cutting are used, insert tab A into slot B always becomes too sloppy to use after a few cycles.
Uh... next to no labor, no special fasteners, basic clear finishing, and flat packed so they can move thousands of units at a time... someones making a KILLING here! This looks like two sheets of Baltic Birch. At $40 each, and 50% markup from the manufacturer, distributer and retail levels would result in a price of $320 for the big shelf (and usually markup is closer to 35%). As a woodworker I can see who's gouging who here... but thanks for the idea - I might make these as Christmas gifts!
#18:
Even if the finest hardwood and precise cutting are used, insert tab A into slot B always becomes too sloppy when the seasons go from hot and humid to cold and dry (or the other way around).
I suspect that the clever design holds these together, and not sub-millimeter tolerances. Wood moves too much for that.
As far as wear and tear, if these are baltic birch plywood (it looks like they are), I think you'd be surprised how many times you could assemble it before the wear made a difference. This type of plywood is prized even by makers of solid wood furniture for use as drawer sides for how well it holds up when sliding against another wood surface over and over for years.
looks to me to be pine, edge glued planks rather than plywood. The t shaped locking pins are the original bit.
For more stuff like this you should check out Clement Meadmore's book "How to Make Furniture with Out Tools." The book seems to be unavailable on amazon, but maybe I'll get around to scanning in my copy someday. Great how-to book though.
To BK:
GreenDesign has some interesting things, but in general it would fall under what I might call modern arts and crafts. Check out www.stickley.com
Under their mission section you can see prime examples of this American style. My wife and I love. And stickley's been around over 100 years...
I agree with General Specific- I got a desk about a year ago (I think it's the Legare "50-inch desk," but Pier One called it "the Tool Free desk"), and it's great. I am not stacking cinderblocks on it, but it's pretty sturdy.