Styles of furniture,
Types of Woods
Popular Furniture woods
Rosewood
Rosewood refers to a number of richly hued timbers, brownish with darker veining. All rosewoods are strong and heavy, taking an excellent polish, being suitable for flooring, furniture, turnery, musical instruments, and wooden chess sets (black pieces). In general, supplies are poor through overexploitation. Some species become canopy trees (to 30 m high), and big pieces can occasionally be found in the trade.
The pre-eminent rosewood appreciated in the western world is Dalbergia nigra, Brazilian rosewood (now CITES-listed). It is also known as Rio rosewood or Bahia rosewood. This wood has a strong sweet smell, which persists over the years, explaining the name "rosewood".
Another classic rosewood is Dalbergia latifolia known as (East) Indian rosewood or sonokeling. Other rosewoods can be found in tropical America, Southeast Asia, and Madagascar. About a dozen species of the large genus Dalbergia, are recognized as rosewoods.
The woods of some other species in the genus Dalbergia are notable, even famous, woods in their own right: African Blackwood, cocobolo, kingwood, and tulipwood. The Indian souvenir trade tries to sell objects made of Dalbergia sissoo (sometimes stained purple) as if they were rosewood. The wood of some other species is usable for toolhandles, at best.
The timber trade will sell many timbers under the name 'rosewood' (with an adjective) due to similarities in figure. A fair number of these timbers come from other leguminous genera: one that is often mentioned is Machaerium scleroxylon.
Rosewood In musical instruments
Because of its density and strong resonance, Honduras rosewood, Dalbergia stevensonii is a favourite choice for makers of marimba and xylophone keys, although many such instruments are not made of this wood for reasons of cost or durability in outdoor playing environments. Brazilian rosewood is (was) a popular wood for guitar fingerboards, and acoustic guitar backs and sides. However, due to its protected status and spiraling prices, Indian and Madagascar rosewood are being used extensively in its place. Rosewood is also used in limited quantities for clarinets; the various qualities of rosewood give the tone of a clarinet made of it a richer, darker sound than is generally obtained from traditional clarinets made of mpingo wood. Also, rosewood is occasionally used to make oboes, especially in chamber orchestras where less projection is needed (grenadilla has much more projection). Instruments from the violin family sometimes use rosewood for their tuning pegs, fingerboards, tailpieces, and chinrests.
Teak
Teak is used to make outdoor furniture, boats, and other things which require resistance to the elements. Teak is used for outdoor furniture because of its natural durability in extreme weather conditions and because of its relative rarity. Being more expensive than most other woods, teak furniture has become something of a status symbol. Not only is it common for a teak bench, chair, or table to last 70 years standing out in the elements, it is also common to pass down such furniture to future generations as an heirloom.
more: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teak_furniture
Woods from Brazil
Jatoba
Jatobá (Hymenaea courbaril), also known as Brazilian cherry, is a tree common to the Caribbean, Central, and South America and Brazil. It is a hardwood that is used for furniture, flooring and decorative purposes.
Jatoba or brazilian cherry is a very hard wood measuring 5.6 on the Brinell test or 2350 lbf on the Janka scale, approximate measurements of hardness. For comparison, Douglas Fir measures 660 lbf, White Oak 1360 lbf, and Brazilian Walnut 3800 lbf on the Janka scale.
Jatobá is a huge canopy tree, growing to 30 m in height, and is indigenous to the Amazon rainforest and parts of tropical Central America. It produces bright green leaves in matched pairs, white, fragrant flowers that are pollinated by bats, and an oblong, brown, pod-like fruit with large seeds inside. The fruit is considered edible although hardly tasty; one of its common names, "stinking toe," is used to describe the smell and taste of the fruit! In the Peruvian Amazon the tree is called azucar huayo and, in Brazil, jatobá. The Hymenaea genus comprises two dozen species of tall trees distributed in tropical parts of South America, Mexico, and Cuba.
Ipe
ipê, one of the common names for trees in the genus Tabebuia and their wood
Tabebuia is a neotropical genus of about 100 species 1 in the tribe Tecomeae of the family Bignoniaceae. The species range from northern Mexico and the Antilles south to northern Argentina, including those on the islands of Hispaniola (Dominican Republic and Haiti) and Cuba.
Tabebuia serratifolia (Yellow Poui, Ipê, Pau d'arco, Ipê roxo, or Lapacho) is a commercially farmed hardwood notable for its extreme hardness and resistance to fire and pests. Its inner bark is used as a treatment for fungal infections.
Tabebuia serratifolia (Chonta or Yellow Poui; syn. Bignonia serratifolia Vahl, Tecoma serratifolia (Vahl) G.Don 1) is a tree native to forests throughout Central and South America. This plant is grows up in the Cerrado vegetation of Brazil.
The bark of Tabebuia serratifolia contains more than 20 active compounds including lapachol, quercetin and other flavonoids. It is one of the largest and strongest of tropical forest trees, growing up to 150 feet tall while the base can be 4 to 7 feet in diameter.
Species in this genus are important as timber trees. The wood is used for furniture, decking, and other outdoor uses. It has a fire rating of A1 (the highest possible, the same as concrete) 2, and is denser than water (it sinks). It is increasingly popular as a decking material due to its insect resistance and durability. FSC-certified ipê wood is now (as of 2007) readily available on the market.
It has been broadly used as ornamental tree in landscaping gardens, public squares and boulevards due to its impressive and colorful flowering. Many flowers appear on still leafless stems at the end of the dry season, making the floral display more conspicuous.
The bark of several species is used medicinally (particularly the Inner Bark of Tabebuia impetiginosa also known as Lapacho or Taheebo). Its main active principles are lapachol, quercetin and other flavonoids. The inner bark is dried, shredded and then boiled making a bitter or sour-tasting brownish-colored tea. It is also available in pill form. The herbal remedy is typically used during flu and cold season and for "curing" smoker's cough. It apparently works as expectorant: by promoting the lungs to "cough up" and free deeply embedded mucus and contaminates.
Ipe Exploitation
The demand for ipê has risen dramatically in recent years, especially in the United States. By the 1990s, numerous environmental organizations working on preservation of the Amazon Rainforest reported that about 80% of logging in the Brazilian Amazon was illegal. The Brazilian government has confirmed this figure, most notably in a ‘leaked’ report from the Brazilian Intelligence Agency, the Secretaria de Assuntos Estratégicos (SAE) or Strategic Affairs Secretariat, in which it was confirmed that five times the amount of wood sanctioned to be cut from legal Amazon concessions was being exported and that numerous staff of the environment agency, IBAMA, were taking bribes. In one Greenpeace report, The Santarém Five and Illegal Logging — A Case Study, five companies were reported to be logging illegally in the region around Santarém, Pará. At that time exports from that region were most notably going to the Netherlands and France. Ipê was among the illegal exports.
Much of the ipê imported into the US is used for decking. Starting in the late 1960s, importing companies targeted large boardwalk projects to sell ipê, beginning with New York City Parks and Recreation (“Parks”) which maintains the city’s boardwalk, including along the beach of Coney Island. The city began using ipê around that time and has since converted the entire boardwalk — over 10 miles (16 km) long — to ipê. The ipê lasted about 25 years, at which time (1994), Parks has been replacing it with new ipê. Given that ipê trees typically grow in densities of only one or two trees per acre, large areas of forest must be logged to fill orders for boardwalks and, to a lesser extent, homeowner decks.
A Rainforest Relief report, Deep Impact, stated that average yields are 76 board feet per acre (44 m³/km²) of FEQ (first export quality — FAS four-side-clear) grade ipê over seven feet (2.1 m) in length. Typically, wooden boardwalks are composed of 30,000 to 40,000 board feet (70 to 90 m³) per city block. For New York City’s 10 miles (16 km) of boardwalk, this would yield an estimate of 83,360 acres (337 km²) of Amazon rainforest logged.
Sucupira
Pau Ferro
Pao Ferro or Pau Ferro (Caesalpinia echinata) is an exotic tree in Bolivia. Its wood is used for making fingerboards for basses and electric guitars. It has a similar feel and tonal qualities to Rosewood but has a slightly lighter colour.
Wood Finishing
finishing
Wood finishing refers to the process of embellishing and/or protecting the surface. The process starts with surface preparation, either by sanding by hand (typically using a sanding block) or power sander, scraping, or planing. Imperfections or nail holes on the surface may be filled using wood putty or pores may be filled using wood filler. Often, the wood's colour is changed by staining, bleaching, ammonia fuming and a number of other techniques. Some woods such as pine or cherry do not take stain evenly, resulting in "blotching". To avoid blotching, a barrier coat such as shellac or so-called "wood conditioner" is applied before the stain. Gel stains are also used to avoid blotching.
Once the wood surface is prepared and stained, a number of coats of finish may be applied, often sanding between coats. Commonly used wood finishes include wax, shellac, drying oils (such as linseed oil or tung oil), lacquer, varnish, or paint. Other finishes called "oil finish" or "Danish Oil" are actually thin varnishes with a relatively large amount of oil and solvent. Water-based finishes can cause what is called "raising the grain" where surface fuzz emerges and requires sanding down.
Finally the surface may be polished or buffed using steel wool, pumice, rottenstone and other polishing or rubbing compounds depending on the shine desired. Often, a final coat of wax can be applied over the finish to add a slight amount of protection.
French polishing is not polishing as such, but a method of applying many thin coats of shellac using a rubbing pad, yielding a very fine glossy finish.
Different tools used to apply wood finishes include rags, rubbing pads, brushes, and spray guns. The processes involved, and even the terminology for the materials used are quite different in Britain from those in the USA. For instance, the process of replicating the look and feel of traditional French polished wood is more commonly done in the UK by "pulling over" precatalysed lacquer, whereas in the US a "rubbed" finish is more common. Also, Americans seem to be more casual in their approach to wood finishing, using products available from local hardware stores whereas in Britain supplies are more often ordered via the manufacturer's representative and are for "Professional Use Only" with no instructions on the tin.
morë: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wood_finishing
Upholstery
Upholstery is the work of providing furniture, especially seats, with padding, springs, webbing, and fabric or leather covers. The word "upholstery" comes from the Middle English words up and holden, meaning to hold up. The term is applied to domestic furniture and also to applications in automobiles and boats. A person who works with upholstery is called an upholsterer; an apprentice upholsterer is sometimes called an outsider or trimmer.
Upholstery of domestic furniture
The materials which are important to the quality of an upholstered product, such as a bed, sofa, chair or ottoman, may be considered in four categories: the frame (usually wooden) on which the upholstery is to be constructed; the spring system; the cushioning or padding; and the final fabric or leather covering.
Frames
The life of a piece of upholstered furniture begins with its frame: although the underlying wooden framework cannot be seen in the finished product, the type of wood used to create it will have a bearing on the quality of the final product.
Some furniture employs softwoods, but may suffer from its difficulty in supporting the joinery that is required for the best quality furniture. The tight graining of hardwoods allows for pegs, screws and nails to be set securely, reducing the likelihood of their becoming loose over time. Hardwoods used in upholstered furniture include oak, alder and other woods with tight graining. Hardwood laminates are often used for blocks and braces because laminates are actually stronger than solid wood in these applications.
Most wood employed in upholstered furniture is kiln-dried. In this process, the wood is heated in an industrial oven to remove excess sap and moisture (and reduce its tendency for absorbing any moisture in the future), which can cause frames to warp, swell, shrink or change shape, or to succumb to rot or mildew, during their life.
The wood for a piece of upholstered furniture must be assembled into a sturdy frame. Generally, the more rigid the frame the better, because a loose frame can crack or fail, and several craftsman processes can be used to create a good, strong frame. A variety of woods and laminates are used for joining, blocking and doweling and sometimes several techniques are used.
Joints are the places where one piece of frame wood intersects to another part of the frame at an angle. Joints must be reinforced with blocks or dowels for extra support or the frame will be susceptible to loosening over time.
Blocking refers to the process of placing additional blocks of wood behind or diagonal to joints and corners for support in areas where the furniture craftsman believes there may be greater stress. Blocks provide lateral support and a larger area for screws and fasteners to set wood elements securely. This extra bracing at stress points contributes to the lasting integrity of the frame. An alternative to blocking is doweling.
Doweling refers to the process whereby one or two dowels are drilled, hammered and glued into the wood at stress-points to provide extra strength and support to the frame. Nails, screws, fasteners and glue may also support many parts of a frame.
Spring systems
Once the frame is constructed, a spring system is installed to support the seating area. Furniture manufacturers employ two main types of spring support systems: standard springs and eight-way hand tied springs. When the spring system is finished with a top layer of padding, it is commonly called the "seat deck".
Standard Springs provide good support at a lower price than the alternative. Most manufacturers offer either sinuous springs or drop-in-springs as their standard, depending on how they make their furniture. Both types affix to the frame to support the seat deck. Standard springs have a formal, very firm "sit" and only move in the up/down direction. In contrast, eight-way hand-tied springs can move in many more directions.
Sinuous springs are heavy-gauge steel springs that have been heat formed into continuous "S" shapes. They are cut into lengths and affixed to the frame. Drop-in Springs are mass-manufactured welded units that are more cheaply manufactured and considered to be of lower quality than sinuous springs.
Eight-way hand-tied springs have a wide range of movement providing a very even and individual "sit", because they move up and down and side to side. In the construction of these systems, the craftsman individually ties heavy gauge coils from front to back, side to side and diagonally (eight ways) to provide the highest level of quality, comfort and durability. This process costs more because it is time consuming and can only be done by hand.
Cushions, pillows, padding and fills
Once a piece of upholstered furniture has its frame and springs, the next components are the cushions and padding. Seat cushions sit on top of the spring system and seat deck. Back pillows, if present, rest against the back and arms of the piece.
Most cushions are made of a high-density foam core that is then wrapped with either soft polyester, feather and down, or a hypoallergenic down substitute. Dacron adds resilience so that pillows and seats keep their shape, while the wraps form a soft envelope. Cushions and pillows are usually sewn into cotton cases to ensure smooth upholstering.
Feather and down offers the maximum comfort and softness in cushions and pillows that most people desire and designers prefer. Feather and down back pillows and wrapped seat cushions can always be "fluffed-up" to maintain an attractive look. Feather and down fills and wraps require a little more maintenance than polyester and high density-foam but they have greater comfort, durability and resilience.
Buckwheat hulls are also used as filling for a variety of upholstered goods, including pillows and zafu. The hulls are durable and do not conduct or reflect heat as much as synthetic fills. They are sometimes marketed as an alternative natural fill to feathers for those with allergies.
Fabrics and leathers
Textiles, a term used in the furniture industry, encompass both fabrics and leathers and the choice of textiles can account for up to 70% of furniture price.
Tightly woven fabrics and blends tend to wear longer than light or loose-weave natural fibers.
Leather is a durable and easy-care natural material that softens and improves with time. To create quality leather, top-grain hides are tanned, processed and dyed to give a certain color or look. Tanning refers to the process in which salts are used to cure the hide and to stabilize its shape. Dying refers to infusing the hide with different color dyes.
Aniline dying is a high quality process that imparts color but does not disguise the natural character of the hide. Some leathers are further treated with a pattern, texture, or polish
more: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Upholstery
Interior design
interior design is the process of shaping the experience of interior space, through the manipulation of spatial volume as well as surface treatment. Not to be confused with interior decoration, interior design draws on aspects of environmental psychology, architecture, and product design in addition to traditional decoration. An interior designer is a person who is considered a professional in the field of interior design or one who designs interiors as part of their job. Interior design is a creative practice that analyzes programmatic information, establishes a conceptual direction, refines the design direction, and produces graphic communication and construction documents. In some jurisdictions, interior designers must be licensed to practice.
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