Erik Christensen
03-03-2013, 9:37 AM
There is a lot of criticism here about the quality of wood and sheet goods found at the BORG retailers - much of it justified IMHO, but to me not accurate in every instance. A few weeks ago I needed to build a pair end tables that would hold 2 laundry baskets each - we are moving to a small 1 BDR apartment soon when the house remodel starts and space will be at a premium. This would be a painted project that only needs to last 6 months - not fine furniture by any stretch of the imagination. So to get the materials for this project I can dive my 12 mpg truck burning 4.50$/gal gas 4 miles round trip to HomeDepot & get whatever or 60 miles to the hardwood store for baltic birch plywood and maple for the legs.
Just for the heck of it I went the BORG route this time just to see how it would turn out. They had some 3/4" ply that had a luan looking face veneer that did not seem to have too many voids from what I could see and 'seemed' to be reasonably flat and was 40% the cost of the BB. I also rooted through the 2x4 stack and found 2 that were reasonably straight and knot free (operative word here is 'reasonably'). The ply was actually pretty decent and the legs using the pine 2x4's did take a bit of extra labor. I made a half dozen extra so when I got bad chipout when finishing the curves on the shaper I just trashed it and went to the next one.
So here are the finished tables before paint:
255873
And after paint - not sure I would do this again unless I had a similar painted project in mind but nice to know I don't have to use expensive materials to get a quality I can live with.
255874
Just for the heck of it I went the BORG route this time just to see how it would turn out. They had some 3/4" ply that had a luan looking face veneer that did not seem to have too many voids from what I could see and 'seemed' to be reasonably flat and was 40% the cost of the BB. I also rooted through the 2x4 stack and found 2 that were reasonably straight and knot free (operative word here is 'reasonably'). The ply was actually pretty decent and the legs using the pine 2x4's did take a bit of extra labor. I made a half dozen extra so when I got bad chipout when finishing the curves on the shaper I just trashed it and went to the next one.
So here are the finished tables before paint:
255873
And after paint - not sure I would do this again unless I had a similar painted project in mind but nice to know I don't have to use expensive materials to get a quality I can live with.
255874