Solid Wood Furniture That Feels Comfortable Has These Characteristics

People like solid wood furniture. In addition to its environmental protection, another important reason is that it feels very comfortable. The tactile characteristics of materials are generally evaluated by cold and warm feeling, rough sliding feeling and soft and hard feeling. The tactile characteristics of solid wood furniture are closely related to the tissue structure of the wood used, in particular, the expression of surface structure is closely related. Conversely, the surface tactile characteristics of solid wood furniture also reflect the very important surface physical properties of wood.

1. Cold and warm feeling on the surface of solid wood furniture

When touching the material surface by hand, the change of temperature between interfaces will stimulate people’s sensory organs and make people feel warm or cold. It is found that materials with small thermal conductivity, such as plastic foam and light wood, have a touch of warmth. The materials with large thermal conductivity, such as concrete components, have a touch of cold. When people touch the floor, according to different floor materials, the test is carried out at room temperature of 18 ℃, the decrease of skin temperature is the largest in concrete, second by plastic floor tiles and  the wood floor is slightest. It can be seen that the environmental temperature has little impact on wood. High quality solid wood furniture can give people an appropriate sense of cold and warm all year round.

The thermal conductivity along the grain direction of wood is generally 2 to 2.5 times that in the transverse grain direction, so the warmth of the longitudinal section of wood is slightly stronger than that of the cross section. Furniture made of wood with different density has different temperature changes after reaching the hand temperature: for wood with small density (light), the temperature increases very slowly; For the wood with high density (heavy), the temperature decreases slowly; For medium density wood, the temperature remains relatively stable.

2. Rough and smooth feeling of solid wood furniture surface

The rough and smoothness of a material is determined by the concave convex degree on its surface. Although solid wood furniture has been sliced or polished, the surface of high quality solid wood furniture is not completely smooth because wood cells are exposed on the section. The effect of surface processing such as slicing, grinding and finishing will affect the rough and smoothness of furniture surface to a great extent.

There are differences in the sense of rough slip between coniferous and broad-leaved trees. The rough and smoothness of conifer wood mainly comes from the width of wood rings; The distribution degree of rough slip of broad-leaved wood is wider than that of coniferous wood, which is mainly due to the surface roughness, and the wood ray and staggered texture play an additional role. In addition, the surface smoothness of solid wood furniture is also related to friction resistance. Most of them depend on the anatomical structure of the wood surface, such as the alternating change of early and late wood (in the direction along the grain, the smoothness of late wood is better than early wood), the size and distribution type of pipe holes, staggered texture and so on.

3. The soft and hard feeling on the surface of solid wood furniture

The surface of wood has a certain degree of hardness, which varies from tree species to tree species. The hardness of most coniferous trees is less than that of broad-leaved trees. The former is called soft wood and the latter is called hard wood. The end surface hardness of coniferous trees differs by about 3 times between the highest and lowest values, and the difference between broad-leaved trees is about 12 times. No matter what kind of wood, the hardness of the end surface is higher than that of the side surface, and the hardness of the chord surface is slightly higher than that of the diameter surface. Therefore, the hardness of different tree species and different positions of the same tree species varies greatly, some are light and soft to the touch, and some are hard and heavy to the touch.

Paint film hardness and impact resistance test of solid wood furniture is directly related to wood hardness. When the hardness of wood is high, the relative hardness of furniture paint film will also be improved. For example, there are often some scratches and indentation on the desktop. The appearance of these marks is not only due to the low hardness of the paint film, but also due to the low hardness of the wood itself. Therefore, we all like to use hard broad-leaved trees as desktop. As a polymer material, wood can also produce elastic and plastic deformation, making people feel comfortable.