Building Children's Furniture
Even though there are a number of ways to build good children's furniture, some of it requiring skills and equipment which are well beyond the reach of the average home workshop hobbyist, advanced techniques are not absolute musts in the construction of sturdy and attractive furniture.
Following are the basic considerations in home projects, with some exclusive tips to make your job easy and inexpensive.
Why Plywood?
It would be an expensive deal to build a furniture of solid hardwood throughout. However, without sacrificing strength you can get much the same effect by using plywood or lumber core having an outside veneer of the wood you want your piece to be.
Plywood consists of 5 or more plys of thin wood bonded together with glue and pressure to form a panel of uniform thickness and considerable strength. Plywood is a laminated product. The plys are laid with the grain patterns alternately set at right angles to each other so that it gives considerable strength to the wood.
The surface that shows in the finished piece of furniture is the top ply which is a veneer of select wood.
Lumber core is different from plywood because it has a thick center core of butt-joined strips of solid wood sandwiched between four thin plys of veneer, two on each side. The top plys consist of the finish veneers which can be of any type of fine furniture wood while the plys directly underneath are laid with their grains running at right angles to the core and top plys.
Lumber core is highly resistant to warping and is much lighter than plywood. The glass-hard glue that bonds plywood and lumber core tends to dull tools, and since less glue is used in bonding lumber core, that material will be found to be easier on tools than plywood. For the same reason, it is easier to work with and is less inclined to splinter.