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Discussion Groups / English Usage / January 2004"A few lenghts of MDF"?
Hi there! Again, I have trouble with a phrase in a british book. This is a book of self-help, and the chapter talks about how women sometimes give men a chance because they believe that, although he is not exactly everything they want, there is room for improvement. The sentence is: (quote) The social attraction element has been taken care of: either we think you already look right or we guess you might scrub up well with a little patience and a few lenghts of MDF. (unquote) I get the general meaning, but I would like to know exactly what MDF stands for. The meanings I found in acronym dictionaries don't seem to apply here. Thanks a lot!  SignatureElsa T. S. Vieira > Hi there! > > Again, I have trouble with a phrase in a british book. Answered in aeu -- John Dean Oxford De-frag to reply >> Hi there! >> >> Again, I have trouble with a phrase in a british book. > >Answered in aeu I suppose that in the UK it stands for "Medium Density Fibreboard". Best regards, Spehro Pefhany Signature"it's the network..." "The Journey is the reward" speff@interlog.com Info for manufacturers: http://www.trexon.com Embedded software/hardware/analog Info for designers: http://www.speff.com In alt.usage.english, Elsa T. S. Vieira wrote: [...] >I get the general meaning, but I would like to know exactly what MDF stands >for. The meanings I found in acronym dictionaries don't seem to apply here. Medium-Density Fibreboard, beloved of all DIY (Do It Yourself home improvement) bodgers. On the telly, anyway. I can't stand the stuff. I suppose it's quite useful but British telly has been totally over-run by DIY programmes - wall-to-wall tat and greed and fiddle-faddle preciousness - and at any time of day or night you can turn on the telly and find at least two programmes devoted to MDF. I hate the programmes, ergo I hate MDF. The notional woman who talks about improving her man with a few lengths of MDF is undoubtedly a fan of DIY programmes. Her main staple of conversation would be house prices. My advice to the notional man: make yourself some roller skates out of MDF and some IKEA all-purpose castors and get the hell out of there as fast as you can. SignatureMickwick > In alt.usage.english, Elsa T. S. Vieira wrote: > [quoted text clipped - 17 lines] > yourself some roller skates out of MDF and some IKEA all-purpose castors > and get the hell out of there as fast as you can. I live in a proudly MDF-free zone. The stuff is Evil, and a Mark of the Beast, and the badge of a Civilization in Decline. Mike. On 08 Jan 2004, Mike Lyle wrote -snip- > I live in a proudly MDF-free zone. The stuff is Evil, and a Mark > of the Beast, and the badge of a Civilization in Decline. I wouldn't be overly proud of that: it's a matter of judicious use. The material is fine when used for what it was designed for: it's the misuse of it that's evil, and which badges the civilisation that misuses it as flawed. MDF is an excellent *structural* material -- it's neutral, non-warping, has no grain or splits, and is perfectly suited for what it was designed for: underlying structural work, which *won't be seen*. It's just like construction-grade bricks and knot-ridden pine/deal doors: entirely suited for what they were designed for, but hideous when exposed. (Cleaning render off bricks which were always intended to be rendered -- or stipping interior doors which were always intended to be painted -- is where the error lies.) I'm willing to bet that any architect I know will agree with that. Self-styled "designers" and salesmen, on the other hand, push MDF as a WONDERFUL material for finished work -- that given enough paint, varnish or top treatment, it could be left exposed and look "just like wood". As usual, "designers" and salesmen are wrong. SignatureCheers, Harvey Ottawa/Toronto/Edmonton for 30 years; Southern England for the past 21 years. (for e-mail, change harvey to whhvs) > I'm willing to bet that any architect I know will agree with that. > Self-styled "designers" and salesmen, on the other hand, push MDF as > a WONDERFUL material for finished work -- that given enough paint, > varnish or top treatment, it could be left exposed and look "just > like wood". I suspect that this is much like the plywood that we made lofts and bookcases out of at school. (College, that is.) It was cheap and easy to work with and you needed few tools. Replacing this stuff with "real" furniture is a rite of passage. (Actually, we still have one of our old plywood bookcases in the garage, twenty years later, holding magazines, but it's the last one.) SignatureEvan Kirshenbaum +------------------------------------ HP Laboratories |Well, if you can't believe what you 1501 Page Mill Road, 1U, MS 1141 |read in a comic book, what can you Palo Alto, CA 94304 |believe?! | Bullwinkle J. Moose kirshenbaum@hpl.hp.com (650)857-7572 http://www.kirshenbaum.net/ >> I'm willing to bet that any architect I know will agree with that. >> Self-styled "designers" and salesmen, on the other hand, push MDF as [quoted text clipped - 5 lines] >bookcases out of at school. (College, that is.) It was cheap and >easy to work with and you needed few tools. I thought it was what we call "particle board". Cheap furniture is made from particle board with a wood-grain laminate covering. Particle board looks like sawdust glued together and dried in a board form. It swells and crumbles if it gets wet. tony_cooper213@mungedyahoo.com spake thus: > >> I'm willing to bet that any architect I know will agree with that. > >> Self-styled "designers" and salesmen, on the other hand, push MDF as [quoted text clipped - 10 lines] > Particle board looks like sawdust glued together and dried in a board > form. It swells and crumbles if it gets wet. MDF is not particle board (which I at least call contiboard) - it's difficult to shape or drill contiboard, but MDF behaves almost like wood - you can work it with a router and get smooth edges. But it's not very strong compared with plywood. SignatureDavid ===== >tony_cooper213@mungedyahoo.com spake thus: > [quoted text clipped - 17 lines] >wood - you can work it with a router and get smooth edges. But it's >not very strong compared with plywood. I think I'm with you now. I noticed some panels in Home Depot that were similar to particle board, but appeared to be made from some sort of solid chemical composition. Artificial wood without grain. Next time I'm in HD I'll have to look and see what they call it. On 09 Jan 2004, Tony Cooper wrote re: difference between particleboard and MDF > I think I'm with you now. I noticed some panels in Home Depot > that were similar to particle board, but appeared to be made from > some sort of solid chemical composition. Artificial wood without > grain. -snip- Ah, yes: the chemicals in MDF. I think's there's some sort of health and safety/carcinogenic consideration about breathing the sawdust -- formaldehyde content or something like that. SignatureCheers, Harvey Ottawa/Toronto/Edmonton for 30 years; Southern England for the past 21 years. (for e-mail, change harvey to whhvs) << [David] MDF is not particle board (which I at least call contiboard) - it's difficult to shape or drill contiboard, but MDF behaves almost like wood - you can work it with a router and get smooth edges. But it's not very strong compared with plywood. [end quote] >> << [Tony Cooper] I think I'm with you now. I noticed some panels in Home Depot that were similar to particle board, but appeared to be made from some sort of solid chemical composition. Artificial wood without grain. Next time I'm in HD I'll have to look and see what they call it. [end quote] >> I am pretty sure they called it "fiberboard". Home Depot a year ago only had one stack of it, but many stacks of plywood. I was there a week ago looking at wood and did not notice any fiberboard, but I was not looking for it. -- --------------------------------------------- Richard Maurer To reply, remove half Sunnyvale, California of a homonym of a synonym for also. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- david56 filted: >tony_cooper213@mungedyahoo.com spake thus: > [quoted text clipped - 17 lines] >wood - you can work it with a router and get smooth edges. But it's >not very strong compared with plywood. I wonder if it's anything like what we call "masonite"...from earlier descriptive posts it doesn't seem to resemble OSB ("oriented strandboard"); that has recognizable chunks of actual wood in it....r On 09 Jan 2004, R H Draney wrote > david56 filted: -snip- >> MDF is not particle board (which I at least call contiboard) - >> it's difficult to shape or drill contiboard, but MDF behaves >> almost like wood - you can work it with a router and get smooth >> edges. But it's not very strong compared with plywood. > > I wonder if it's anything like what we call "masonite"... I don't think so: as far as I know, masonite is called "hardboard" in the UK -- a layered product, with one very smooth side and one roughened side. > from earlier descriptive posts it doesn't seem to resemble OSB > ("oriented strandboard"); that has recognizable chunks of actual > wood in it.... You're right: it's not OSB. MDF is uniform and undifferentiated throughout its thickness -- there are no strands, grain, layers or particles in it. Also -- and unlike most ply and hardboard -- there aren't "good" and "back" faces: the two sides are finished identically. SignatureCheers, Harvey Ottawa/Toronto/Edmonton for 30 years; Southern England for the past 21 years. (for e-mail, change harvey to whhvs) > >I suspect that this is much like the plywood that we made lofts and > >bookcases out of at school. (College, that is.) It was cheap and > >easy to work with and you needed few tools. > > I thought it was what we call "particle board". That was what I thought, as well, although particle board is actually too dense to work with easily with the tools we had. I suspect that the "medium density" means that it's more amenable to home projects. The "much like" was meant to mean "used in the same way as", not "identical to". SignatureEvan Kirshenbaum +------------------------------------ HP Laboratories |Pious Jews have a category of 1501 Page Mill Road, 1U, MS 1141 |questions that can harmlessly be Palo Alto, CA 94304 |allowed to go without an answer |until the Messiah comes. I suspect kirshenbaum@hpl.hp.com |that this is one of them. (650)857-7572 | Joseph C. Fineman http://www.kirshenbaum.net/ > On 08 Jan 2004, Mike Lyle wrote > [quoted text clipped - 26 lines] > > As usual, "designers" and salesmen are wrong. Actually it's you that is at least partly wrong. MDF is fine for finished work because it takes paint very well, and is by its very nature free of blemishes and doesn't warp. I have make bookshelves out of it and very fine they are too. I wouldn't personally make a table or chair out of it but I wouldn't attempt to assert that doing so was "wrong". People are entitled to find the look of raw, stained, varnished or painted MDF pleasant or repellent - it's not your place or mine to gainsay them. Your comments about stripping interior doors is not entirely correct either. Some years ago I was a decorator (BrE means "painter and decorator") and one of my first big jobs was to supervise the refurbishment of my parents-in-law's new house, a large Edwardian pile in Bristol. The house was full of heavily moulded doors that had been poorly painted in the past, and rather than rub them down (scour with production paper (scratch)) and repaint them, I decided to have them stripped. If they turned out to be poor quality wood, then I intended to fine-fill them and paint them and they would look beautifully crisp and new. It turned out to be unnecessary - they were made of beautiful quality Parana Pine, so I just gave them a few coats of matt varnish and they look as lovely today as when I did them over ten years ago. However, they were never "meant" (by the original architect) to be seen nude. Edward SignatureThe reading group's reading group: http://www.bookgroup.org.uk On 09 Jan 2004, Edward wrote >> -snip- >> MDF is an excellent *structural* material -- it's neutral, >> non-warping, has no grain or splits, and is perfectly suited for >> what it was designed for: underlying structural work, which >> *won't be seen*. >> It's just like construction-grade bricks and knot-ridden >> pine/deal doors: entirely suited for what they were designed >> for, but hideous when exposed. (Cleaning render off bricks which >> were always intended to be rendered -- or stipping interior doors >> which were always intended to be painted -- is where the error >> lies.) -snip- > Actually it's you that is at least partly wrong. MDF is fine for > finished work because it takes paint very well, and is by its very > nature free of blemishes and doesn't warp. I have make > bookshelves out of it and very fine they are too. To my eye, it looks much too flat and "even" when painted: it's too obviously inert, and gives an overly "dead" surface. In almost all settings it looks wrong to me -- the only exception would be an intentionally "arty" use of the material in a room which carefully excluded all natural materials which would spoil the visual impact of the "dead" surfaces. In most settings, though, whenever I've seen bookshelves, fire surrounds and carefully-constructed furniture made out of unveneered or otherwise-unhidden MDF, it always looks to me as if it's been well-made and carefully crafted out of inert structural material that ought not to be exposed. > I wouldn't personally make a table or chair out of it but I > wouldn't attempt to assert that doing so was "wrong". People are > entitled to find the look of raw, stained, varnished or painted > MDF pleasant or repellent - it's not your place or mine to gainsay > them. We disagree, but then it's sometimes part of my job to gainsay them. (I document historic buildings, and part the work is to assess whether materials have been appropriately or inappropriately used in restoration work.) > Your comments about stripping interior doors is not entirely > correct either. Some years ago I was a decorator (BrE means [quoted text clipped - 11 lines] > However, they were never "meant" (by the original architect) to be > seen nude. What I was really thinking of were Victorian and Edwardian stripped doors which show knots. No builder of that period would have exposed knotty wood: the doors would either have been painted, grained, or (if intended to be exposed) made from a better grade of wood. In your case, if the doors were of fine-quality wood, you may have uncovered doors which *were* intended to be exposed or just lightly grained, and which were painted at some later stage. In cases where the wood was clearly meant to be painted from the start, though -- and acknowledging that it was entirely up to you (and your parents, of course!) to decide to leave them unpainted -- if I was asked in the course of my work to assess the appropriateness of the treatments, I'd have no choice but to note that leaving pine doors unpainted or ungrained was not in keeping with an Edwardian house, and that the decorative treatment was therefore "inappropriate" or "wrong". SignatureCheers, Harvey Ottawa/Toronto/Edmonton for 30 years; Southern England for the past 21 years. (for e-mail, change harvey to whhvs) In alt.usage.english, Mike Lyle wrote: >I live in a proudly MDF-free zone. The stuff is Evil, and a Mark of >the Beast, and the badge of a Civilization in Decline. No, no, it's much worse than that. SignatureMickwick Ok, I got it. What I was missing to understand it was the reference to the (over?)abundance of DIY mania in the UK these days :-) Thank you all! SignatureElsa T. S. Vieira > Hi there! > [quoted text clipped - 15 lines] > > Thanks a lot! |
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