Whereas most sofa brands rely on quick and cheap stapling, we want to build sofas that will last a lifetime and more. For that to happen, you have to build the frames properly, with dovetail joints, dowels and glue…
“Dovetail joints are what enable us to guarantee the frame for life. Very few sofa companies bother anymore.” Rohan Blacker - Schplendid founder
When you sit on a sofa, you’re trusting something you never actually see. Beneath the fabric, cushions and springs is a wooden frame; the skeleton that takes every flop, stretch, collapse and Sunday afternoon sprawl for decades to come. And the single biggest factor in whether that frame lasts a few years or a lifetime, is how the pieces of wood are joined together.
A sofa frame is not a box
A good sofa frame – unlike, say, a box – isn’t a static object. It’s continually put to the test with all sorts of uneven stresses, including but not limited to:
-
downward force from sitting
-
lateral force from people slumping sideways
-
twisting force when someone drops into one corner
These are repeated micro-movements, day after day, year after year. A frame that simply holds together on day one won’t cut the mustard. It needs joints that lock and share the load, and actually tighten cover time instead of steadily getting looser.
That’s where proper, time-honoured, painstaking joinery comes in.
Dovetail joints: mechanical strength, not just glue
A dovetail joint is a way of cutting two pieces of wood so they interlock, using a flared, fan-shaped ‘tail’ that slots tightly into a matching shape on the other piece. Like this:
It’s one of the oldest and strongest joints in furniture making. Because of that flared shape, the pieces physically cannot pull apart without breaking the wood itself.
Rather brilliantly, dovetails mechanically lock the joint even before any glue is added. They resist twisting and racking forces, and they actually get stronger under load rather than weaker.
True, they’re slower to make and need skilled hands to do it. And true, they cost more. But they’re the reason a 200-year-old Howard sofa frame can still be sound today – and why a Schplendid one can be guaranteed for life.
Dowels and glue: strength through alignment and surface area
Now, not every joint needs to be a dovetail, but it does need to be properly engineered.
Dowels are short wooden pins – little pegs of hardwood – that are glued into drilled holes to lock two pieces of timber together, like this:
They do three crucial jobs:
-
Alignment – keeping components precisely positioned
-
Load sharing – spreading stress across the joint
-
Bond strength – increasing the amount of glued wood-to-wood contact
When done well, a dowel-and-glue joint is enormously strong. When done badly (or skipped altogether), the frame relies on fasteners alone — and that’s where problems begin.
The staple gun problem
A staple is exactly what it sounds like: a thin U-shaped piece of metal fired into the wood with a staple gun to hold two pieces together quickly.
Staples have their place, they’re not intrinsically evil…For example, they’re useful for holding things temporarily while glue sets, and for fixing non-structural elements where strength really isn’t critical. The problem comes when staples are asked to do a job they were never designed for.
When a sofa frame is built mainly with staples, all the stress is concentrated at a few tiny metal points. The wood fibres slowly compress and loosen around them, and repeated movement works them free over time.
That’s why stapled frames often start to creak, flex or wobble years down the line. Nothing has “broken” as such, the joints have simply worked loose.
As Rohan puts it:
“The alternative is a frame that’s glued and staple-gunned. It’s fast, it’s cheap – and it’s why most sofas aren’t expected to last very long.”
At Schplendid, we do use staples here and there for suitable purposes, but never as the thing holding the frame together. Staples can assist good joinery but they certainly can’t replace it.
The importance of beech hardwood
Now, all the joinery in the world is pointless if the timber itself isn’t up to the job. Schplendid frames are made primarily from FSC-certified solid beech: the traditional choice for high-quality upholstery frames.
As Rohan says:
“Beech has a lower moisture content than birch or softwoods. It’s the traditional timber — if you look at Howard sofas from 200 years ago, they’re still made of beech.”
Beech is dense and stable, resistant to splitting, excellent at holding joints and fixings, and it’s far less prone to warping over time
Plywood on the other hand... well it’s a bit like staples: we’ll occasionally use it where it makes structural sense and to prevent the sofa being absurdly heavy. But we’ll never use it for critical stress points.
The Schplendid lifetime guarantee
We really do think this proper traditional joinery business is critically important.
Of course, you’ll never admire your sofa’s dovetail joints over a cup of tea or put a photo of a dowel on Instagram, but you will experience them, in the sense that your sofa won’t get creaky or wobbly over time, it’ll still feel satisfying solid decades from now.
Most importantly, this joinery enables us to offer you a lifetime guarantee on your sofa frame. If somehow it does fail, we promise to fix or replace it – which is precisely why we build it properly in the first place.
Read more about Schplendid's sofa ingredients here.
See also:
Solid beech hardwood and proper joinery: Why we build Schplendid sofa frames the old-fashioned way
Precisely-calibrated comfort: Why we use Eight-Way Hand-Tied Coil Springs in our sofas
10 Ways We’re (Nicely) Shaking Up the Sofa Industry
Sofa frames that last: why we use traditional joinery instead of staples
Whereas most sofa brands rely on quick and cheap stapling, we want to build sofas that will last a lifetime and more. For that to happen, you have to build the frames properly, with dovetail joints, dowels and glue…
When you sit on a sofa, you’re trusting something you never actually see. Beneath the fabric, cushions and springs is a wooden frame; the skeleton that takes every flop, stretch, collapse and Sunday afternoon sprawl for decades to come. And the single biggest factor in whether that frame lasts a few years or a lifetime, is how the pieces of wood are joined together.
A sofa frame is not a box
A good sofa frame – unlike, say, a box – isn’t a static object. It’s continually put to the test with all sorts of uneven stresses, including but not limited to:
downward force from sitting
lateral force from people slumping sideways
twisting force when someone drops into one corner
These are repeated micro-movements, day after day, year after year. A frame that simply holds together on day one won’t cut the mustard. It needs joints that lock and share the load, and actually tighten cover time instead of steadily getting looser.
That’s where proper, time-honoured, painstaking joinery comes in.
Dovetail joints: mechanical strength, not just glue
A dovetail joint is a way of cutting two pieces of wood so they interlock, using a flared, fan-shaped ‘tail’ that slots tightly into a matching shape on the other piece. Like this:
It’s one of the oldest and strongest joints in furniture making. Because of that flared shape, the pieces physically cannot pull apart without breaking the wood itself.
Rather brilliantly, dovetails mechanically lock the joint even before any glue is added. They resist twisting and racking forces, and they actually get stronger under load rather than weaker.
True, they’re slower to make and need skilled hands to do it. And true, they cost more. But they’re the reason a 200-year-old Howard sofa frame can still be sound today – and why a Schplendid one can be guaranteed for life.
Dowels and glue: strength through alignment and surface area
Now, not every joint needs to be a dovetail, but it does need to be properly engineered.
Dowels are short wooden pins – little pegs of hardwood – that are glued into drilled holes to lock two pieces of timber together, like this:
They do three crucial jobs:
Alignment – keeping components precisely positioned
Load sharing – spreading stress across the joint
Bond strength – increasing the amount of glued wood-to-wood contact
When done well, a dowel-and-glue joint is enormously strong. When done badly (or skipped altogether), the frame relies on fasteners alone — and that’s where problems begin.
The staple gun problem
A staple is exactly what it sounds like: a thin U-shaped piece of metal fired into the wood with a staple gun to hold two pieces together quickly.
Staples have their place, they’re not intrinsically evil…For example, they’re useful for holding things temporarily while glue sets, and for fixing non-structural elements where strength really isn’t critical. The problem comes when staples are asked to do a job they were never designed for.
When a sofa frame is built mainly with staples, all the stress is concentrated at a few tiny metal points. The wood fibres slowly compress and loosen around them, and repeated movement works them free over time.
That’s why stapled frames often start to creak, flex or wobble years down the line. Nothing has “broken” as such, the joints have simply worked loose.
As Rohan puts it:
At Schplendid, we do use staples here and there for suitable purposes, but never as the thing holding the frame together. Staples can assist good joinery but they certainly can’t replace it.
The importance of beech hardwood
Now, all the joinery in the world is pointless if the timber itself isn’t up to the job. Schplendid frames are made primarily from FSC-certified solid beech: the traditional choice for high-quality upholstery frames.
As Rohan says:
“Beech has a lower moisture content than birch or softwoods. It’s the traditional timber — if you look at Howard sofas from 200 years ago, they’re still made of beech.”
Beech is dense and stable, resistant to splitting, excellent at holding joints and fixings, and it’s far less prone to warping over time
Plywood on the other hand... well it’s a bit like staples: we’ll occasionally use it where it makes structural sense and to prevent the sofa being absurdly heavy. But we’ll never use it for critical stress points.
The Schplendid lifetime guarantee
We really do think this proper traditional joinery business is critically important.
Of course, you’ll never admire your sofa’s dovetail joints over a cup of tea or put a photo of a dowel on Instagram, but you will experience them, in the sense that your sofa won’t get creaky or wobbly over time, it’ll still feel satisfying solid decades from now.
Most importantly, this joinery enables us to offer you a lifetime guarantee on your sofa frame. If somehow it does fail, we promise to fix or replace it – which is precisely why we build it properly in the first place.
Read more about Schplendid's sofa ingredients here.
See also:
Solid beech hardwood and proper joinery: Why we build Schplendid sofa frames the old-fashioned way
Precisely-calibrated comfort: Why we use Eight-Way Hand-Tied Coil Springs in our sofas
10 Ways We’re (Nicely) Shaking Up the Sofa Industry