The Truth About PARTICLE BOARD...Is It The Worst Material?! (Pros + Cons...Particle Board)
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Particle board is everywhere in the world of cabinet furniture...but should you use it for your projects? This short video from The Honest Carpenter will explain the pros and cons of particle board!
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The Truth About PARTICLE BOARD...Is It The Worst Material?! (Pros + Cons...Particle Board)
Particle board is an engineered wood product, similar to MDF and OSB. It is made of compressed wood fibers mixed with 10% resin and glue, and pressed into sheets or panels.
MDF (Medium Density Fiberboard) is essentially a higher grade panel than particle board, which is an LDF (Low Density Fiberboard).
Particle board is prone to deterioration and fracturing at the edges. It is also highly susceptible to moisture penetration. However, due to its layering, it has a greater surface density than plywood and natural wood products.
Much particle board is sold with veneered faces of a plasticky white laminate known as melamine.
Melamine particle board makes a very good material surface for craft tables.
Raw particle board sheets are also sometimes used as a sacrificial subfloor material in dry work places. However, they are not code worthy, and therefore shouldn't be used as subfloor in a residential home.
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I can tell you this much, when people bring their old kitchen cabinets to us as firewood, it's surprisingly easy to break apart by stomping on it.
I am not sure it would be safe to burn them, binder might contain toxic chemicals when burned.
@@CemKalyoncu not in the EU at least
I'm pretty shure everything wrong in my life right now is because everytime I've "knocked on wood" and it was particle board.
Lol😂
Correlation vs causation; anyone who has all particle board furniture very likely has some other problems in life : )
We learned the hard way when we were a young married couple that shelves made with this material, though cheap, was completely useless within 6 months. Spend the money on decent furniture.
Funny part is, a lot f people think cause a piece of furniture is heavy that it’s made of quality materials. Sorry wrong! Particleboard or chipboard very heavy compared to most hardwoods. Other thing is, furniture store salesman con customers legally. Long as there’s even one tiny piece of hardwood on furniture the stores or salesman can legally say the furniture made of solid wood. I’ve had this conversation with so many people saying their furniture they bought is all solid wood. Now with almost all furniture there’s some area where you can see the edge of the materials and I’ve turned furniture around or flipped it over and low and behold there’s the raw edge of particleboard! Needless to say the people are not happy and shocked what they bought! Furniture stores or their sales y don’t like me very much cause when they tell me their furniture made of solid wood, I’m quick to show them it’s not!
Now with all that being said, if the furniture is actually made of all solid wood, it needs to be in consistent temperature away from moisture. Changes in temperature and/or moist areas will make the solid wood warp, twist, shrink or swell. Any place where the wood glued together like a dinning table or a side of a cabinet where there’s joints that has two or more boards glued together. Those glued joints are prone to fail and split apart. For example I’ve had numerous people have wood stoves or large windows (Sun generates a lot of heat thru windows) not too far from their dinning room table and chairs that’s has their table and chairs split apart at the joints in numerous places. Some cases the joints can be Glued again and clamped together till the glue dries. But not always a easy project to do and get it where it looked like new again without some sanding and refinish work. So as nice it is to have a real solid wood piece of furniture, it does need special care to lasts a long time. Plywood with veneer is much more stable and can handle some temperature changes better then solid wood and can look just as nice in many cases. If your wanting furniture that can take a little more abuse plywood a better choice with the exception that if plywood veneer gets damaged you may not be able to repair the veneer damage. Especially if the veneer is a import product since the veneer is so thin on the plywood that it’s literally less then paper thin. Domestic veneer on plywood is usually over a 1/16” thick giving you some veneer to work with if it gets damaged. You can steam the veneer with a iron and a wet cloth that will raise the grain and make it so you have less sanding to do to make your veneer look like new again if necessary! Usually not that lucky with a import veneer plywood! Of course solid wood you can steam and sand a lot and never worry you’ll sand thru a veneer! They all have their advantages and disadvantages depending on damage?
I use particle board shelves in my garage and they have held up for a year with no problem…I put heavy totes on them and they hold just great
Your one of the first I’ve seen mention the pros and cons of particleboard or chipboard. One that you missed with the melamine is there’s also another brand called Coretron
and I may of spelled it wrong? But how the word sounds anyway! Another issue you didn’t bring up though with these vinyls on particleboard is the fact that the vinyl will shrink with a little heat. If the material near a windows where the sun hits it the vinyl will shrink leaving raw particleboard showing on the face of the boards. Unfortunately there’s very little you can do to fix it once it shrinks either! It certainly doesn’t look pretty after it shrinks and you can see the particleboard on the outside of the cabinets! Plastic laminate be more expensive to cover materials with and it’s capable of shrinking as well. But usually more stable than the vinyl is! Personally I’m not a fan of particleboard nor any of the vinyl veneers on particleboard and I’ve had to replace both numerous times over the years that was only a year old after installing it.
Set cheap cabinetry next to good quality cabinets and when both are brand new you can’t notice much difference in looks. But take those same cabinetry and look at them side by side even a year later and there will be a huge difference how well they hold up! Although hardware quality is every bit as important too! Cheap hardware won’t hold up long either!
@@ghostridergale fairly recently Stumpy Nubs posted a video showing the construction of an antique chest of drawers. Very interesting, carpenters have understood the way wood moves for a long time and taken that into account when building but lots of new stuff is just built to a price just to make a buck and ends up in the trash when you move somewhere else...
Same. My wife and I bought some Ashley furniture and found out the hard way.
The melamine coated boards are good for mold making. Specifically for epoxy or concrete molds because of the glossy surface. Have used it a few times for making custom concrete slabs for flower pots.
Thats about all its good for lol
I’ve been a Facility Manager for 23 years and our department absolutely loathes this stuff. Every time we get a work order from some well intentioned employee who ordered a piece of office furniture made from this crap we cringe. I can’t begin to tell you the number of times we’ve had to send stuff back (really fun process) because some component has been damaged, usually along the weak edges as you point out. If by some miracle it arrived unscathed, we’re usually carting it out to the dumpster in a year anyway because it’s fallen apart. At least it’s easy to carry it out there.
😂😂😂😂😂 I'm in the first year of my wood custom build business, and one of the things I build is custom wooden bed frames outta real wood due to my personal experience with my frame falling apart because of this crap 😂😂😂😂 before I became a carpenter.
Really good review. There is a use for lesser quality products and knowing how to make that decision, when to use, or not use it, is important. I recently re-did my sewing room using all IKEA products. It works well. It won’t get hard or long use (because of my age) but was very easy for me to assemble alone, came in modular units, and was affordable. I now have a space that looks very nice and is both functional and practical.
I have an ikea desk and table that have been with me through 6 different houses! They outlast any type of cabinet or desk I’ve ever bought from Lowe’s, HD, Staples etc
I use particle board as sacrificial surfaces on my work benches. Once on side gets dinged up I flip it over so I get double duty out of it. Great review.
I just took an old entertainment center (all particle board), ripped all of it into usable pieces and topped my workbench with it. Glad to see I'm not the only one that uses that idea.
It all depends on the project. I made a home library with cabinets about 25 years ago from melamine coated particle boards, and it still holds as good as new.
Right tool(material in this case) for the job - as always.
i have found that screws dont hold in it.
@@roccoconte2960 well the mix of pre drilling and using dowels and glue makes it pretty freaking strong, especially when making kitchens where you have multiple elements fixed together and supporting each part from multiple ways
In Turkey we have a lot of budget tables made with particle board. In our house we have 6 tables made by this thing but there's no problem of expanding due to high humidity.
Interesting information. I realized a long time ago that true solid wood is a lot lighter weight than MDF or particle board. I also found out from the particle board used as subfloor under the carpet in my house that it's terrible used that way! There is another plywood subfloor under the particle board but that particle board is nasty! As carpet and vinyl flooring have been removed so has the particle board and another layer of plywood put down in it's place.
It's used as sub flooring in movie sets. In two overlapping layers it is quite durable. It's also used for restoring period veneered furniture, marquetry even.
I was at my local Lowes the other day and MDF was $60.00 for a 4’ X 8’ X 3/4” sheet. Wood products are insanely priced these days. Tom R
All the videos on TH-cam are great but you all have great tools in your workshop this makes it a lot easier for you
Tony
You've done nice work making the acoustics better in your new workshop! Thanks.
I appreciate video and I enjoy your clear descriptions. I don’t hear the word "frangible" used very often.
thanks for the helpful info, once again! i've built out 3 closets in my home with the melamine boards from home depot and they are all holding strong, 3 years running. if you "design around the material" so to speak, it can be great, low-cost stuff.
When I was a young parent, I made book shelves for the kids with partical board. Fortunately no long spans were involved. Only one small one survived. I graduated to birch plywood in their middle school years. All of that still is around.
Love all ur vids. Very informative and straight to the point
Agreed... great for melamine work surface, but pretty horrible for anything else. Especially when moisture is an issue.
One of the best wood working channels on youtube. Always great and focus content. I really like and apreciate his videos ! ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Thank you, Eugenio! 😄
Thank you! I am never disappointed by your videos - you make it easy to understand for a beginner DIY-er, aka, me 😀
Thank you, Red! 😄
Perfectly clear explanation! Thanks!
exceptional explanation , great information .. another great educational video .
You missed one large use for particle board, building speaker enclosures. It is the one of the best and most used choices for it. Some expensive brands use it.
What makes it better than some of the other woods for speakers?
@@JS-tb9hu Maybe omnidirectional resonation? Normal wood has direction of fibers so it will resonate diferently in diferent directions. I am guessing.
@@PeKlim I think it would be its sound insulation qualities maybe. Reflecting sound back out of the front.
@@PeKlim it is more dense and has less vibration, no hollow spots and of course the lower cost. There are probably others but that's the reasons given to me when I started making custom enclosures.
Question, if you're willing -- does it help absorb/insulate against bass frequencies, d'you think?
I'm building a tiny house trailer & need all the bass insulation I can get, so I'll be lining the walls/joints of all types with loads of rubber ... But I'd cut weight from my materials elsewhere in order to add particle board to my walls, and take the time to waterproof the hell out of each panel of it first, if there's decent evidence that it would help reduce vibrations from bass and/or the road. If it does enough to reduce the amount of rubber that might be good for costs, and rubber ain't exactly lightweight either so it could work out, idk, just seeking thoughts on cheap materials and hadn't previously heard of particle board being useful in the context of sound.
No pressure to take time answering unless it's convenient for you of course! Thanks in advance for any help, to OP or anyone else :D
Wow this is amazing, I'm getting all this wisdom because someone from my apartment threw out a damaged Ikea shelf.
And yes I did drag it back home with me this morning, haha!
It does work well for small jigs and fixtures where deflection resistance isn't an issue. I recently made a tenoning jig with a melamine base. Slides smoothly across the table saw and is dead-flat.
My workshop floor will be 2 layers of loft board particle board (chipboard here in Ireland) running lengths in opposite directions and then self made end grain cedar parquet on top of that with adhesive between every layer and 100mm of poly-iso insulation under it all.
It definitely has its uses but you have to work with its strengths. My first 6 months of training was making full custom kitchens from 2.44m x1.22mx11mm sheets of white melamine, the guy teaching me did the countertops and custom fixings. Almost 25 years later almost all of those kitchens are still where we installed them. So yeah work to the materials strengths and it can last a lot longer than you might expect.
100% idk, about US but where i live in EU the kitchens stands for a long ass time especially if "installed" properly and ofcourse siliconed where necessary
Thanks for all that information it was easy to sit through too. Very informed
Very informative video thank you
Tony
Great video, as always and super informative.
Another excellent educational video. Thanks.
Perfect explanations, as always.
Very informative. Thanks!
I used melamine particle board for shelving supported by a 1x2 for closets and a pantry. Worked great!
Super helpful. Thank you.
Great information, thank you!!
Perfect presentation as usual.
Great review of both pros and cons.
Thank you for the Informative video.
Awesome info. Thanks!
Thanks for all the info. I do have a craft table made from the particle board with melamine. Works great! I have a glowforge and I was tryimng to figure out what are the best woods for different projects. Checking out your other videos.👍
As usual you made a great informative video. I always learn from your videos. Thank You!!
Thank you, Kerry!
I recently talked to a master wood worker whom I purchased some nice white oak veneered particle board. It's his go to for large builds that he mostly gets orders for. Bands it with real white oak strips. It's strong and the straightest boards according to him. He likes the fact it won't warp. Stains beautifully too.
Thanks! I never really understood the differences in mdf & particle board...OR that particle board is good for crafting surfaces ( if enough support is available). 👍
Very helpful. Thanks!
Like you mentioned, great for a small craft or sewing table.
Good morning and thanks
We actually just used some to fix a sagging couch. It's an old couch and didn't want to spend too much money to fix it. It was over $20 cheaper than plywood and the guy at Lowes gave us 50% off the piece cause we chose the one that had broken edges (that would not affect the pieces we needed) so we actually saved a lot more over plywood. We made it fit over the frame and springs and then wrapped it in the cushioning and cloth, the couch feels like new again.
Nice bargain
I use 2 sheets of Melamine for my assembly table, I edge banded it with hardwood on the bottom piece and let the 2nd piece float inside. It's worked great so far
Seen it in a hot press floor where the cylinder leaked.. & the floor gave way.. caused a serious problem with the heavy cylinder
very fair assessment
Thanks Ethan for the great info!!!!! 👍😎
we use a type of particleboard called yellow tongue in Australia for subflooring
This was great!!! Thanks
Thanks for the info.
Was asked once by the manager of a cabinet shop I worked at what we could do to improve quality
I said take all the particle board and set it on fire and use only plywood
They never asked me anything again
Did the company chage to plywood or stay with making cheap products
@@tcbridges stayed cheap
No longer in business in my town
Good info that I can’t find anywhere else. 👍🇺🇸
Thanks so much for this detailed video! Helped me with the decision to buy plywood cabinets.
Good information video 👍👍👍👍
At last. Thank you! This is mostly used in Turkey, and I didn't know its name in English. Very useful info.
Thank you😊
I built a work table out of melamine and properly supported it. I weigh in at 210 and I sat on it after I built it and it held me without any issues. Going on just over two years and it's still solid as the day it was built.
🤗👍😎 THANKS ETHAN …for sharing this ONE REDEEMING QUALITY for particle board 😁😍😍😍
I do a lot of mobile home repairs and they use 3/4 particle board as subfloor and then install carpet and sheet vinyl over it. You cant really use osb or something not as smooth to replace it in this case because then you'll have small dips and bumps in the vinyl. But I guess the mdf sheets would be the more expensive replacement but that's usually not in the budget.
There are certain jigs that benefit from the slick durable of Melamine. Surfaces like fences, some work surfaces like router tables provided your shop is in a dry place where the exposure to heavy moisture is low. Also I always use edge banding to help keep the moisture out. That being said I don’t use partical board that isn’t Melamine. In many cases it is pretty much free because people of put bookcases and other furniture on the curb for free (still need to add the edge banding). Lastly it makes great dust containment boxes under router tables and such because it contains noise as well as being a surface dust slides off of.
Very fair and measured. Too easy to say, as many do, "Oh, that stuff is c__p." And one important spec often glossed over is $$$, often a major consideration in some homeowner apps.
Your videos are so awesome!
Thank you, Findlay! 😄
Thank you 🙂👏!
It is the worst !!!! . I live in a double wide and the floors are all going down . I hate it , I hate it ,
I had a moble home in the 1980s, so much particle board ... even for the floors. A bathromm leak could cause the toilet to fall through the floor.
Agreed. It's in the old cabinets in the house I live in and the walls in the shed and as it deteriorates, it smells sooo bad. Especially when the laminate is missing.
Was it really a particle 0:38 board. That's what most cabinets boxes are made from. He's holding some laminated particle board.
I know I'm late to the party on this video but man does it bring back some old memories! My dD was a professional house painter and carpenter back in the 70s and 80s. He would bring home the sink cutouts and used them to make small end tables and kids craft tables. I bet he sold hundreds of those things and probably didn't have 10 dollars of material in them. We had melamine sink and counter scraps everywhere 🤣🤣!
That’s a thriving side business, James 😆
That was excellent! You told us that (as even inexperienced woodworkers know), particle board is cheap, prone to bend, prone to soak up water, and doesn't take a screw in the edge, but ALSO has some genuine uses where its dead flat quality, dead smooth, impervious laminate top, and resistance to denting on the surface, makes it actually attractive as a craft table top, where better quality wood cannot easily do the same work.
This video was so helpful to me because I will soon be needing a countertop in my garage to place over an existing cabinet on casters, to work on. I didn’t know what I should use. I didn’t want anything too heavy but wanted a smooth surface to work on. I need at least six feet in length and at least a foot wide and thought about pine or MDF, but didn’t know about particle board, so thanks for the heads up. 😊
Don't do it, unless you're ready for a learning experience.
Please elaborate.
MDF also has melamine option too. In fact my entire home furniture is made out of them. Melamine coating is crazy durable, textured ones can easily grind softwood, can take quite a beating before chipping and resists even the hardest chemicals I can throw at them. However, unless melamine is coated as a single piece, it has very little protection against water as it seeps through edges quite easily.
How do you coat the edges? And do you mask off the melamine?
@@jimnasium452 There are bands which you can apply on with some heat. However, they often leave tiny gaps which is enough to ruin your table/cabinet if water reaches there and stays a while. I think you might have some success by applying band first and coating with sides and edges with thick poly to reduce water transmission.
Laminated MDF has only started catching on in GB the past 5 years. Chip board is still widely used in the manufacturer of bedroom/kitchen/office furniture
@@jimnasium452 edge banding strips come pre clued heat activated or non pre glued. I use it when having g to cut down kitchen cabinets
@@CemKalyoncu Thanks! I suppose you align that banding slightly below the melamine top so there's nothing to catch when you say, wipe down the work surface?
I made a gigantic custom wall unit entirely of oak-veneered particle board, about 25 years ago, when I was younger and dumber. After 3 moves, incredibly, it's still in perfect shape. But I would use veneered plywood if I was doing it again and could get the materials.
I've found epoxy coated zinc wood insert and standard machine screws work pretty well to replace the standard wood screws - also infinite assembly/disassembly Particle boards are relatively easy to repair with putty made of epoxy and sawdust.
How do you compare melamine to MDF and Particle board? Oops! You answered that too! Thank you!
I think you covered it well.
Great video
Hey …. Just wanted to let you know ever since you made the video on your work table I have been looking for a solid door , well today 4/28 I finally found one from a company that was moving, this door was heavy !!! The best thing about it was only 5.00 dollars….. LOL going to start the table project in a couple of days…… thanks again ….. by the way im in greensboro also ……
we had particle board subfloor in a remodel we did. Moisture had gotten to some of it turning it into powder. The remainder was easy to remove after cutting and a pry bar. Two rooms had plywood subfloor and they were nearly impossible to remove without cutting into 6 inch squares and a lot of pry bar effort. However, the restored original red pine floors are gorgeous. Worth the effort. But if putting in a new subfloor it would be plywood not particle board.
You are literally my teacher. Thanks😇
Thank you, Sony! 😄
I am ripping it out of my bathroom. A gap in the laminate flooring has had the water get into the particle board. I am replacing with 1/2 inch plywood and ripping out the whirlpool tub. I have been running fans and heaters to dry out the particle board to make it easier to remove.
Thanks sir
Thanks
If you know how to make particle board cabinets, then they can last 50-60 years as in most 1950's and 1960's kitchens that are still around. Particle board can be used outdoors if sealed correctly or as I have personally seen, submerged in a pool for 10yrs (correctly sealed). I didn't believe it, but it was removed and cut in half in front of me to prove it.
I take it you are aware there a number of different grades of particle board. Choosing the correct one is imperative. It is a better choice in many cases. Laminate countertops are made almost exclusively using a PB core, but not the PB you find at the box stores. The melamine PB has the wear of a standard laminate, just not the impact resistance. YOu can also get PB with different adhesives for different applications. Not all particle boards are the same, it's difficult to say it's not a good product because the junk you see at the Box Stores, (typically imported PB) is just that, junk. It gets a bad name more from lack of knowledge of what kinds of PB is in the market place and using the wrong product.
I still have three bare thirty-year-old 7' high by 4' wide particle board shelf units that have survived 2 cross town moves and a damp basement floor. They look lousy but work fine in the shop.
This video is perhaps the biggest proof that this carpenter really IS honest. Most any other would have an extremely one-sided opinion and not mention anything about the other side of the coin.
Thanks, Property! 😄
@@TheHonestCarpenter (Especially in light of the "THE IKEA EFFECT" video, musta been hard to say anything good at all about particle board.) ;)
@@propertystuff7221 Actually the bulk of Ikea fame is their "honeycomb structure paper filling" - light and very sturdy for its weight.
I only use this when I have something that is sacrificial and requires no strength whatsoever.. I really dislike this product.. Great vid thank you for all you do. Peace Rolf
In the U.K., chipboard is the go-to material for flooring. We generally use 8x2 tongue and groove boards 18 or 22mm thick...the board is higher density than a standard particle board and treated for moisture resistance. Installation is by glueing the tongues to prevent squeaks and ring shank nails or screws to hold them down....carpet, vinyl or laminate goes straight on the top.
Well I made small bed side cabinets for me howse with it and mrdiu tool cabimets, for the tool cabinet I used alunium l shaped trim it protects the edge well I hasn't given up after aboud 2 year of use I like I can use scraps
I'm using Melamine for a bench fence because of the clean face, and straight edge. I initially tried using screws to hold it together, and it was a disaster. I am now using dowels with a much better result.
Cutting is, shall we say 'challenging'. I recommend scoring the top couple of millimetres, then doing the complete cut. Some cut edges will be exposed on the finished product, so I have purchased iron-on tape to deal with that.
As the item is not overly large, I still feel it was the right choice, but if MDF, with a plastic coating was available, where I live, I would have gone for that.
I lucked into a 2.5" thick 30"x5' particleboard desktop with maple laminate on the top, bottom, and edges. I turned it into a workbench top, and have zero regrets. It's tough as hell, and it's seen a lot of "abuse" over the years. It's also VERY flat. I had to dial in the maple top with an orbital sander and a straight edge to get it flat, but, it has stayed flat since.
I would never use OSB on the out side of a house! It soaks up water! I would use ply wood.
Sawdust is great for compost and compost toilets. Not much good for anything else.
'Frangible' - great word that you don't hear too often!
"We see particle board... especially in cabinet type furniture. Companies like Ikea seem to use little else in their manufacturing." Ikea uses MDF for their cabinets, not particle board. Their inexpensive furniture is usually particle board, but as a company they use a lot of both
The absolutely use particle boards, and mdf, and honey comb paper fill. Just an example: Kalax (likely their most popular shelving unit) --- Materials & care: Particleboard, Fibreboard, Acrylic paint, Honeycomb structure paper filling (100% recycled), Plastic edging
They probably use MDF on many of their kitchen cabinet fronts, but a ton of their bathroom storage cabinets are particleboard
@@soulmatic09 Yes. That appears to be an accurate generalization. I was thinking kitchen cabinets with MDF, but Ikea makes a lot of particle board furniture. They are usually priced accordingly.
It makes for a great sacrificial surface for a CNC router.
Bahan nya bagus
What is your view on ikea particleboard veneered kitchen worktops?