About 10-15 years ago, in some magazine, I read an article about the reconstruction of furniture made by ancient masters. The reconstruction was carried out in separate wooden elements, found during archaeological excavations in Veliky Novgorod. The publication interested me, and I decided to try to repeat the technological techniques used by Novgorod craftsmen seven or eight centuries ago.
The basis for the manufacture of all items of Novgorod furniture, various utensils, and toys is the use of a simple connection of a bent wooden rod with a rod with a figured head. Wooden rods for such furniture can be made from fairly thick willow branches or other freshly cut wood.
Tree branches like raw material do not have an ideal cylindrical shape along their entire length. Therefore, the grooves and necks are cut out and adjusted to each other manually with a knife and chisel. Careful fitting ensures the strength and reliability of the connection.
The dimensions of the groove and neck must match each other to ensure a reliable connection. So. The length of the line of the cut transverse groove should be approximately equal to length the circumference of the neck, and the height of the neck should be slightly less than the diameter of the bent rod at the groove location. The depth of the groove is approximately equal to the radius of the rod.
Let's consider the manufacturing procedure the simplest, in my opinion, a piece of furniture - stool, It can be represented in the form of a cube, in which top edge serves as a seat. The cube, as you know, has 12 edges. In our case, the edges of the stool cube will be blanks bent in the places of the transverse grooves. To make a stool, you will need four identical blanks - rods with heads at the ends and two transverse grooves. The length of the blanks is determined by the dimensions of the future stool.
In the assembled stool, the transverse grooves of one workpiece (when it is bent) cover the neck of the other head and are held by the head. The vertical ribs serve as the legs of the stool, the lower horizontal ribs will become the legs, and the upper horizontal ones will serve to secure the seat. The latter can be made from plywood or thin boards inserted into longitudinal grooves, which are pre-made in the upper ribs of the stool cube (in blanks).
To facilitate bending of the workpiece, before assembly it is necessary to steam or soak (mainly the grooves) for 8-10 hours. The ends of the workpieces with heads and necks must remain dry, otherwise, after the wood dries, the joint density will be compromised
An ordinary trough with water is suitable for soaking the rods. The workpieces must be placed in it, pressing down their middle part with some kind of weight so that the heads and necks protrude above the water level. To speed up the soaking process of wood, you can use hot water.
Once you are sure that the wood is flexible, you can begin assembling the stool. The neck of part B is inserted into one of the grooves of part A, and a wooden pin with a diameter equal to the diameter of the neck is temporarily fixed in the other groove. Part A is slowly bent around the neck of part B and the inserted pin. The ends of part A are temporarily tied with twine or twine. Then, in a similar way, part B is connected to part C, the ends of which are also temporarily tied with twine.
After this, the stool seat boards are inserted into the longitudinal grooves of the parts. The assembly of the stool is completed by connecting parts B and D.
The stool is ready, please take a seat.
Using the techniques described above, you can assemble not only a stool, but also a chair, table and a whole range of other products.
For those who see this furniture for the first time, the reaction usually consists of four letters - IKEA. Of course, there are certain similarities: the assembly is carried out by the buyer. But there is a serious difference: during assembly, no nails, no screws, no glue - nothing is used.
Furniture that is assembled without any fasteners is, as a Chukchi from an anecdote would say, “a trend, however.” Take designer Paul Shenton, for example. One day in 1998, he rented a small unfurnished apartment on the fourth floor.
It is clear that the problem with chairs, table, bed, etc. had to be urgently resolved. But in addition to everything, a narrow twisted staircase led to the apartment, along which, let’s say, it was not possible to lift traditional furniture.
Shenton began to look around the shops in search of items that, firstly, he could afford for the money, and secondly, he could drag up the stairs to new apartment. And then pull it out and, for example, throw it away, leaving the temporary shelter.
And although IKEA with its prefabricated furniture is not the most high-budget option in this case, the designer never found anything suitable.
Perhaps fortunately: the Swedish supermarket could theoretically solve the problem, but then Shenton would not have designed furniture himself and would not have done what he did.
This is how a chair is made from one sheet of plywood (photo from thechipfactory.co.uk).
When Paul began designing his own furniture, he focused on what he believed was the most important thing: items should be easy to assemble and just as easy to dismantle.
The simplest solution was for the components to be folded together using a system of slots, in other words - grooves into grooves, cut into cut.
Armed with only a jigsaw and a few sheets of plywood, Shenton made his first sofa.
Subsequently, the selected and finalized system of slots over three years became the corresponding SlotSystem trademark, and the Slot Furniture company was born.
The company is guided by four unshakable principles. The first is simplicity: the process of assembly and disassembly is as simplified as possible and does not require any tools.
The second is that there are no restrictions on the access of furniture to the consumer’s home, that is, he does not need to worry whether the sofa will fit through doorway, and will it be possible to carry dinner table through the hall.
The third principle is adequate prices, and the fourth is modern design. That's all, actually, that's how they live.
Like this without single nail and glue, a sofa from Slot Furniture is assembled (illustrations from slotfurniture.com).
We deliberately did not call Paul Shenton the inventor of the slot system for assembling furniture, although he probably has all the necessary patents.
The fact is that the principle itself has been known since time immemorial. You probably also had to cut pieces of paper into strips, make cuts on them with scissors and build paper sculptures from them.
But I still want to find the origins of furniture assembled without fasteners and tools. And the search results inevitably lead us to a man named Victor Papanek, who tragically died just when Paul Shenton rented an apartment on the fourth floor.
Not to say that this two-seater sofa from Slot Furniture was cheap - almost $500. But it can be assembled without tools (photo from slotfurniture.com).
This man's name should be known to everyone involved in industrial design. Papanek was born in Austria, graduated from school in England, and worked in America. He was a designer, architect, anthropologist, writer and teacher.
But we are interested in the fact that it was Papanek who coined the term “Nomadic Furniture”. He and James Hennessy wrote two books about it: “Nomadic Furniture” (1973) and “Nomadic Furniture 2” (1974).
By this term he meant a minimum of tools and fasteners, light and cheap but reliable materials, the ability to send furniture to a landfill without harming the environment, the availability of these items for low-income groups, and so on.
Thus, the furniture in Papanek’s imagination could almost be made of cardboard.
Victor Papanek’s most famous book is “Design For The Real World” (photo from jidpo.or.jp).
It seems that IKEA designers could not help but pay attention to the concepts presented in books about “nomadic furniture,” because the Swedes are the first to come to mind as the modern “embodiers” of these ideas.
What's the first thing that comes to mind when it comes to furniture production? The imagination pictures huge workshops, dozens of workers, warehouses, shops and delivery services. Designers from England offer a different approach.
In the age of digital technology, instead of going to the store to buy the table or chair you like, you can download the drawings and make the furniture yourself. To do this, the British have developed a series of projects called opendesk, the assembly of which does not use fasteners, nails, screws or tools.
Tables, chairs, and cabinets are assembled from individual parts cut from a single sheet of plywood using a 3D milling machine. In fact, the furniture is a construction set reminiscent of children's ship and aircraft model kits.
All parts in the furniture are fastened together using L and U-shaped locks and tongue-and-groove connections. Thanks to computer modeling, the assembly process is simple and intuitive.
Due to the simplification of all production processes And small quantity waste, such furniture is cheaper than industrial production.
Having tested the idea and launched a small production, the innovators moved on. They created a unified electronic database of drawings and 3D models. The designers called this project “Open Source Furniture.”
From this database, being in any country in the world, the user can download a drawing of a furniture model he likes and modify it to suit himself: change the size, material, or offer his own design option. After this, professional designers make appropriate changes to the basic design, creating a new series based on it. Next, the drawing becomes available for downloading to other users.
The main obstacle to the widespread implementation of this technology is the need to use 3D furniture for the manufacture. To solve this problem, you can order a completely finished, pre-cut kit, or, as an option, simplify the drawings by removing complex shaped elements and hidden grooves. In this case, you can make furniture yourself using a minimal set of tools: a jigsaw and circular saw, but the parts will have to be fastened in the traditional way.
The future plans of the British include the maximum expansion of the geography of network production. To do this, it is proposed to purchase or rent a 3D milling machine, or, if such equipment is already installed (for example, there is a CNC machine), download the appropriate software.
Because The entire production cycle consists of cutting parts out of plywood, so such production can be organized even in a garage. According to the British, such an approach, as well as access to the “collective intelligence” of the database, will make it possible to quickly rebuild production and independently produce a variety of furniture.
A similar idea, only in a simplified form, is proposed by Israeli designer Ruti Shafrir. The girl developed a design for a shelving unit that is shaped like a honeycomb.
The rack is made of long plywood or aluminum plates with narrow slits. The workpieces are joined using the cut-to-cut method. The width of the slot depends on the thickness of the workpiece (the workpieces will be pressed together). The depth of the slot is equal to half the width of the plate.
To assemble the rack, no tools, glue or fasteners are required. Thanks to the slots, the panels are inserted into each other, forming an original appearance and a stable design that fits well into most interior designs.
Changing the size of the panels, their thickness, length, finishing coat, you can assemble a variety of racks to store a variety of things. For example:
Books
Small things
This bed is more like a construction set that can be easily assembled and disassembled, because there is not a single nail, screw or a drop of glue in it! Great option for people moving from apartment to apartment.
A couple more advantages: the bed is quite easy to make and looks nice. Go!
You will need the most basic tool, no matter whether it is manual or electric. A bed can be made using only a saw, a screwdriver, strong hands and a keen eye.
But if you have a power tool, it would be a sin not to use it; I used a jigsaw and a drill (a screwdriver would also work in place of a drill). You will also need boards and a round block for legs with a diameter of 15 cm.
Sizes depend on your preference and the size of your mattress.
Everything should take you no more than 3-4 hours.
First, you need to decide on the size of the bed. I approached this simply - I took the dimensions of the mattress as a basis. As a rule, that's what everyone does.
A fairly simple process, which can be seen in the photo. What you should pay attention to is that the cuts must be even, and in order for the connection to be strong, the width of the cut should be slightly less than the width of the board that will be inserted into it (by about 0.7-1 mm). Thus, you will have to slightly hammer the board into the cut with a hammer.
When I said that the bed would be made without any screws, I was lying a little. You will still have to use screws, but not a lot. We will use them to attach the strips to the inside of the frame we just made. The boards will be placed on these strips.
I secured the planks with 10 screws on each side.
The strength of the bed depends on the legs, so be careful. The first step is to decide on the height of the legs and cut them out of a round block.
Then depressions for the frame boards are cut out in the legs. They should also be a little narrower (0.7 - 1 mm) than the thickness of the boards in order for the fastening to be strong.
About 10-15 years ago, in some magazine, I read an article about the reconstruction of furniture made by ancient masters. The reconstruction was carried out using individual wooden elements found during archaeological excavations in Veliky Novgorod. The publication interested me, and I decided to try to repeat the technological techniques used by Novgorod craftsmen seven or eight centuries ago.
The basis for the manufacture of all items of Novgorod furniture, various utensils, and toys is the use of a simple connection of a bent wooden rod with a rod with a figured head. Wooden rods for such furniture can be made from fairly thick willow branches or other freshly cut wood.
Tree branches, as source material, do not have an ideal cylindrical shape along their entire length. Therefore, the grooves and necks are cut out and adjusted to each other manually with a knife and chisel. Careful fitting ensures the strength and reliability of the connection.
The dimensions of the groove and neck must match each other to ensure a reliable connection. So. the length of the line of the cut transverse groove should be approximately equal to the circumference of the neck, and the height of the neck should be slightly less than the diameter of the bent rod at the groove location. The depth of the groove is approximately equal to the radius of the rod.
Let's consider the manufacturing procedure the simplest, in my opinion, a piece of furniture - stool,It can be imagined as a cube, the top face of which serves as a seat. The cube, as you know, has 12 edges. In our case, the edges of the stool cube will be blanks bent in the places of the transverse grooves. To make a stool, you will need four identical blanks - rods with heads at the ends and two transverse grooves. The length of the blanks is determined by the dimensions of the future stool.
In the assembled stool, the transverse grooves of one workpiece (when it is bent) cover the neck of the other head and are held by the head. The vertical ribs serve as the legs of the stool, the lower horizontal ribs will become the legs, and the upper horizontal ones will serve to secure the seat. The latter can be made from plywood or thin boards inserted into longitudinal grooves, which are pre-made in the upper ribs of the stool cube (in blanks).
To facilitate bending of the workpiece, before assembly it is necessary to steam or soak (mainly the grooves) for 8-10 hours. The ends of the workpieces with heads and necks must remain dry, otherwise, after the wood dries, the joint density will be compromised
An ordinary trough with water is suitable for soaking the rods. The workpieces must be placed in it, pressing down their middle part with some kind of weight so that the heads and necks protrude above the water level. To speed up the soaking process of wood, you can use hot water.
Once you are sure that the wood is flexible, you can begin assembling the stool. The neck of part B is inserted into one of the grooves of part A, and a wooden pin with a diameter equal to the diameter of the neck is temporarily fixed in the other groove. Part A is slowly bent around the neck of part B and the inserted pin. The ends of part A are temporarily tied with twine or twine. Then, in a similar way, part B is connected to part C, the ends of which are also temporarily tied with twine.
After this, the stool seat boards are inserted into the longitudinal grooves of the parts. The assembly of the stool is completed by connecting parts B and D.
The stool is ready, please take a seat.
Using the techniques described above, you can assemble not only a stool, but also a chair, table and a whole range of other products.
What's the first thing that comes to mind when it comes to furniture production? The imagination pictures huge workshops, dozens of workers, warehouses, shops and delivery services. Designers from England offer a different approach.
In the age of digital technology, instead of going to the store to buy the table or chair you like, you can download the drawings and make the furniture yourself. To do this, the British have developed a series of projects called opendesk, the assembly of which does not use fasteners, nails, screws or tools.
Tables, chairs, and cabinets are assembled from individual parts cut from a single sheet of plywood using a 3D milling machine. In fact, the furniture is a construction set reminiscent of children's ship and aircraft model kits.
All parts in the furniture are fastened together using L and U-shaped locks and tongue-and-groove connections. Thanks to computer modeling, the assembly process is simple and intuitive.
Due to the simplification of all production processes and the small amount of waste, such furniture is cheaper than industrial production.
Having tested the idea and launched a small production, the innovators moved on. They created a unified electronic database of drawings and 3D models. The designers called this project “Open Source Furniture.”
From this database, being in any country in the world, the user can download a drawing of a furniture model he likes and modify it to suit himself: change the size, material, or offer his own design option. After this, professional designers make appropriate changes to the basic design, creating a new series based on it. Next, the drawing becomes available for downloading to other users.
The main obstacle to the widespread implementation of this technology is the need to use 3D furniture for the manufacture. To solve this problem, you can order a completely finished, pre-cut kit, or, as an option, simplify the drawings by removing complex shaped elements and hidden grooves. In this case, you can make the furniture yourself using a minimal set of tools: a jigsaw and a circular saw, but you will have to fasten the parts together in the traditional way.
The future plans of the British include the maximum expansion of the geography of network production. To do this, it is proposed to purchase or rent a 3D milling machine, or, if such equipment is already installed (for example, there is a CNC machine), download the appropriate software.
Because The entire production cycle consists of cutting parts out of plywood, so such production can be organized even in a garage. According to the British, such an approach, as well as access to the “collective intelligence” of the database, will make it possible to quickly rebuild production and independently produce a variety of furniture.
A similar idea, only in a simplified form, is proposed by Israeli designer Ruti Shafrir. The girl developed a design for a shelving unit that is shaped like a honeycomb.
The rack is made of long plywood or aluminum plates with narrow slots. The workpieces are joined using the cut-to-cut method. The width of the slot depends on the thickness of the workpiece (the workpieces will be pressed together). The depth of the slot is equal to half the width of the plate.
To assemble the rack, no tools, glue or fasteners are required. Thanks to the slots, the panels are inserted into each other, forming an original in appearance and stable structure that fits well into the design of most interiors.
By changing the size of the panels, their thickness, length, and finishing coating, you can assemble a variety of racks for storing a variety of things. For example:
Books
Small things
For those who see this furniture for the first time, the reaction usually consists of four letters - IKEA. Of course, there are certain similarities: the assembly is carried out by the buyer. But there is a serious difference: during assembly, no nails, no screws, no glue, nothing is used.
Furniture that is assembled without any fasteners is, as a Chukchi from an anecdote would say, “a trend, however.” Take designer Paul Shenton, for example. One day in 1998, he rented a small unfurnished apartment on the fourth floor.
It is clear that the problem with chairs, table, bed, etc. had to be urgently resolved. But in addition to everything, a narrow twisted staircase led to the apartment, along which, let’s say, it was not possible to lift traditional furniture.
Shenton began to look around the shops in search of items that, firstly, he could afford for the money, and secondly, he could drag up the stairs to his new apartment. And then pull it out and, for example, throw it away, leaving the temporary shelter.
And although IKEA with its prefabricated furniture is not the most high-budget option in this case, the designer never found anything suitable.
Perhaps fortunately: the Swedish supermarket could theoretically solve the problem, but then Shenton would not have designed furniture himself and would not have done what he did.
This is how a chair is made from one sheet of plywood (photo from thechipfactory.co.uk).
When Paul began designing his own furniture, he focused on what he believed was the most important thing: items should be easy to assemble and just as easy to dismantle.
The simplest solution was for the components to be folded together using a system of slots, in other words - grooves into grooves, cut into cut.
Armed with only a jigsaw and a few sheets of plywood, Shenton made his first sofa.
Subsequently, the selected and finalized system of slots over three years became the corresponding SlotSystem trademark, and the Slot Furniture company was born.
The company is guided by four unshakable principles. The first is simplicity: the assembly and disassembly process is as simplified as possible and does not require any tools.
The second is that there are no restrictions on the access of furniture to the consumer’s home, that is, he does not need to worry whether the sofa will fit through the doorway, or whether he will be able to carry the dining table along the corridor.
The third principle is reasonable prices, and the fourth is modern design. That's all, actually, that's how they live.
This is how a sofa from Slot Furniture is assembled without a single nail or glue (illustrations from slotfurniture.com).
We deliberately did not call Paul Shenton the inventor of the slot system for assembling furniture, although he probably has all the necessary patents.
The fact is that the principle itself has been known since time immemorial. You probably also had to cut pieces of paper into strips, make cuts on them with scissors and build paper sculptures from them.
But I still want to find the origins of furniture assembled without fasteners and tools. And the search results inevitably lead us to a man named Victor Papanek, who tragically died just when Paul Shenton rented an apartment on the fourth floor.
Not to say that this two-seater sofa from Slot Furniture was cheap - almost $500. But it can be assembled without tools (photo from slotfurniture.com).
This man's name should be known to everyone involved in industrial design. Papanek was born in Austria, graduated from school in England, and worked in America. He was a designer, architect, anthropologist, writer and teacher.
But we are interested in the fact that it was Papanek who coined the term “Nomadic Furniture”. He and James Hennessy wrote two books about it: “Nomadic Furniture” (1973) and “Nomadic Furniture 2” (1974).
By this term he meant a minimum of tools and fasteners, light and cheap but reliable materials, the ability to send furniture to a landfill without harming the environment, the availability of these items for low-income groups, and so on.
Thus, the furniture in Papanek’s imagination could almost be made of cardboard.
Victor Papanek’s most famous book is “Design For The Real World” (photo from jidpo.or.jp).
It seems that IKEA designers could not help but pay attention to the concepts presented in books about “nomadic furniture,” because the Swedes are the first to come to mind as the modern “embodiers” of these ideas.
This bed is more like a construction set that can be easily assembled and disassembled, because there is not a single nail, screw or a drop of glue in it! An excellent option for people moving from apartment to apartment.
A couple more advantages: the bed is quite easy to make and looks nice. Go!
You will need the most basic tool, no matter whether it is manual or electric. A bed can be made using only a saw, a screwdriver, strong hands and a keen eye.
But if you have a power tool, it would be a sin not to use it; I used a jigsaw and a drill (a screwdriver would also work in place of a drill). You will also need boards and a round block for legs with a diameter of 15 cm.
Sizes depend on your preference and the size of your mattress.
Everything should take you no more than 3-4 hours.
First, you need to decide on the size of the bed. I approached this simply - I took the dimensions of the mattress as a basis. As a rule, that's what everyone does.
A fairly simple process, which can be seen in the photo. What you should pay attention to is that the cuts must be even, and in order for the connection to be strong, the width of the cut should be slightly less than the width of the board that will be inserted into it (by about 0.7-1 mm). Thus, you will have to slightly hammer the board into the cut with a hammer.
When I said that the bed would be made without any screws, I was lying a little. You will still have to use screws, but not a lot. We will use them to attach the strips to the inside of the frame we just made. The boards will be placed on these strips.
I secured the planks with 10 screws on each side.
The strength of the bed depends on the legs, so be careful. The first step is to decide on the height of the legs and cut them out of a round block.
Then depressions for the frame boards are cut out in the legs. They should also be a little narrower (0.7 - 1 mm) than the thickness of the boards in order for the fastening to be strong.
