This is the handle from a garden rake. It was made by gluing up 4 side pieces around spaced square blocks and then turning it round, so that the resulting handle is mostly hollow. How expensive does solid wood have to be that this makes sense (to say nothing of plastic or alternative materials)? How cheap can labor, glue and machine time be for this to save any money?
From building boxes and fitting face frames to installing doors and drawers, these techniques could be used for lots of cabinet projects.
"I have learned so much thanks to the searchable articles on the FHB website. I can confidently say that I expect to be a life-long subscriber." - M.K.
Dig into cutting-edge approaches and decades of proven solutions with total access to our experts and tradespeople.
Start Free Trial NowGet instant access to the latest developments in green building, research, and reports from the field.
Start Free Trial Now
Replies
It probably has to do with making handles out of lower quality wood. It takes a fairly high quality piece of lumber to make a solid handle. A handle such as this can be made of much lower quality wood, and be lighter but just as strong, and straighter than a solid handle. I'm not picturing a lot of labor involved in my mind.
Besides, where it was made labor is free.
(And since when does anything have to make sense?)
It could be a highly mechanized operation. Put a plank in, it gets sawn to the correct dimensions, machine vision kicks out defective parts, sawn pieces get molded, square blocks are automatically attached to one molded stick, other 3 molded sticks get attached with glue and microwave cured, blank goes through another molder that rounds the handle, then it gets paint to hide the odd looking wood grain.
Well, that's how it would be done in the USA. Offshore, who knows.
Replace all the machines with 12-year-old kids.
Replace all the machines with 12-year-old kids, pay them $2 a 14 hour day and charge them $1.95 for their dorm room and fried rice.
dont stop at just machines...
We can use them to replace all the bees and butterflies to pollenate our fruit and nut trees as well.
Quality.
If this were a product of any quality at all I could maybe understand, but if I wanted a quality rake I'd buy one with a fiberglass handle. This is a small rake that probably cost less than $8. Home Depot has a solid handle, for a broom or paint roller, with a threaded metal end for less than $5 retail. The mark-up is probably about a dollar. Transportation costs are probably most of the price. My guess is the material is less than $1. Brooms are cheap and they have solid handles that don't warp. Bamboo can probably be used for handles with virtually no manufacturing cost. This laminated handle still amazes me. I think these were used to smuggle something.
My push broom at work has a handle made of bamboo sticks laminated together. I bought it from McMaster Carr, and they really don't sell any junk. I never noticed that before, I looked at it today and saw the way it was made. 4 pieces around the outside and 3 pieces in the center. It's a strong handle. I think it is done to make a consistent quality handle, using cheaper material.
Bamboo it!
Heck yeah. It's not like that stuff grows on trees you know.