Pre-assembled chairs with mortise-and-tenon construction or flat-pack chairs? Which are better?

The strength of the chairs depends on the material used. What wood is more suitable for quality wooden chairs?

Various types of wood and construction methods are used for the production of wooden chairs. Spruce or pine, as well as beech, oak or American walnut are used for the production of chairs in Europe. However, chairs made of soft wood, such as spruce, do not have the strength and durability of beech or oak chairs do. Therefore, at Kaplan furniture we only make chairs from solid beech, oak or walnut. Quality chairs made of beech or oak will serve you well for many years without the need for repairs.

Chair, a story not only about the wood, but also about the construction used. What types of wooden chair construction are there?

In terms of design, we can distinguish between ready-to-assemble chairs and firmly glued pre-assembled chairs. Most of the chairs imported from abroad are of bolted construction with screws. This enables easy, cheap and safe transportation in a disassembled state. Then, assembly of the chair is in your hands or in the hands of the seller. Chairs in boxes delivered unassembled are very efficient for long-distance transport, which is the reason, why they are often imported to us from Eastern Europe or Indonesia. Most often you will come across these chairs in stores with cheap furniture or in large furniture stores. You can assemble the individual parts of the chair yourself at home and screw them together. Depending on the intensity of use, do not forget to tighten all screws once in a while. If you do not tighten them from time to time, there is a risk of loosing of the chair will and its lifespan will begin to decrease rapidly. At the same time, you need to be very meticulous when assembling a bolt-on chair. Inaccurate assembly can be manifested, for example, by wobbling of chair.
 
We can also find pre-assembled chairs with screws from renowned manufacturers on the market for decades. Here, special screws are used for screw joints, most often to simplify production and reduce production time. Such chairs are delivered in one piece without the need for self-assembly. Even with such chairs, you cannot avoid regular tightening. With all screwed chairs, the screws in the wood loosen over time and gradually. Due to fatigue of the material, it becomes impossible to tighten them further. In such a case, the only thing left to do is to throw out the chair and buy a new one.

All chairs made by Kaplan furniture have glued mortise-and-tenon construction. What procedures do we follow and why during chair production?

Directly during the production of wooden chairs, an emphasis must be put on the high precision of individual mortises and tenons. After the tenons and mortises have been precisely made, a quality glue of category D3 is applied to assemble them. The correct joint must not be assembled either too loosely or too tightly, just so there is room for a layer of glue, which must optimally penetrate all contact surfaces. The glued joint prepared in this way is pressed in a hydraulic or pneumatic press, where it dries. After being released from the press, the joints are left to dry for several hours, so that their strength and service life are as high as possible. Chair joints made in this way cannot be disassembled.
 
You can find several screws even on a chair with glued mortise-and-tenon construction. These are most of the time used to secure corner reinforcement when gluing it to the chair frame, or to attach an upholstered seat. The seat attached with screws will allow it to be easily dismantled if new upholstery is needed after many years of use. The screws that firmly hold the seat to the frame are secured with high-quality glue. This is so even when chairs undergo intensive use. Therefore, the screws cannot loosen and there is no need to tighten them for the entire lifetime of the chair.
 

Are there exceptions where bolted construction is preferable?

Yes, it's garden furniture. For wooden chairs that are intended for exterior use, a bolted construction with screws is more suitable. Even when using adhesives resistant to the influence of the exterior environment (D4), the chairs with screws will serve you longer. This is due not only to the properties of the glue, but also to the influence of the environment, in which there are frequent fluctuations in temperature, humidity, rain and sun. However, this does not mean that you can use all bolted chairs outdoors.
 
All the dining chairs that we produce in our family business are intended for interior use. This also corresponds to the solution of their highly resistant pre-assembled construction. Thanks to this traditional method of production, which we pass down from generation to generation and constantly improve it thanks to better technologies, we can afford to create a top design while maintaining excellent strength and durability. In the interiors of our customers as well as in hotels and restaurants, we still see chairs made by Kaplan furniture many decades ago, which are still in excellent condition.