Wood and assembly help

[browna]

Hi,

I'm doing an A-Level project to make a storage unit. This unit needs to be black, and strong.

I'm looking at using a white veneer and painting it black. Would this give a nice finish, is this what I should do?

It needs to be strong, which wood would be best to use, would 18mm chipboard, Plywood or MDF be useful, or would I need something else?

Also would using Cam Lock Knock down fittings be strong, and could I use them to assembly the unit?

Thanks!

Any other information would be helpful!

 

[JohnD]

what have you learned so far on your A-level course, and the GCSE you did first?

 

[browna]

I've learnt about the Cam Locks fittings.

But at this moment, we have to figure the things out for ourselves, and research!

So this is my primary researchQ

Thanks!

 

[JohnD]

If you are doing a Design and Tech project, camlocks would do. If you are trying to demonstrate woodworking proficiency, you need more traditional joints.

No point in painting a veneer. If it is a veneered surface, stain it black and apply a matt polyurethane varnish. This will leave the wood grain visible. Black Ash finishes used to be quite fashionable ten years or so ago. You will have to put iron-on edging on visible unveneered cut edges.

If you want a painted finish, use MDF. The dust is very harmful so use a mask and overalls when working it.

Some large suppliers of boards may have black melamine finish in stock. For a D&T project you would want to minimise the number of manufacturing and finishing processes so it would be better to buy materials in your desired colour rather than buy white and paint it.

 

[Scrit]

I agree. Buy a "pre-coloured" material, such as melamine faced chipboard or melamine-faced MDF and only edge this with iron-on edging tape where the cut edges will be visible. In terms of strength (hardwood) plywood is much the strongest but difficult to finish well, MR-MDF is probably the best intermediate material as it is fairly rigid and will withstand abuse (one reason it's used for point-of-sale stands in shop) whilst MFC is the cheapest but also the weakest. In terms of strength glued dowels or biscuits will be considearbly stronger than KD fittings, although if acceptable a reasonably strong construction can be made by glued butted joints screwed together with black carcass screws (developed for fast assembly work in the low-end carcass trades). In that case, though you'd need to consider pinning and possibly bracing a back onto the structure which gives you half of a torsion box in effect and is much stronger than an open structure. If you want to calculate the sagging effect of loading your project, then refer to the "Sagulator"

Scrit