Furniture Species: A Forecast of Tomorrow’s Trends

The total volume of lumber, plywood, and veneer will increase in furniture manufacture, but the utilization per unit volume of furniture output will decline because of the substitution of particleboard and hardboard. More species will be imported for both structural and decorative purposes. New processes such as the wood-plastic composites will allow substitutions of low-value species like aspen, cottonwood, and soft maple for walnut, cherry, and maple. Grain printing will help retain markets for less expensive woods, but will reduce the market share of the more costly decorative woods. New veneering processes that cut extremely thin veneers and join them to vinyl faces and aluminum backs may compete in many furniture lines with plastic laminates. Improved manufacturing methods such as the sliced-wood process, numerically controlled machining processes, and abrasive planing may improve the efficient use of labor and materials.

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