September 12, 2004

I've mentioned Ikea before. We purchased two bedside tables, a TV stand, lighting fixtures, a complete office system, and other assorted things and bobbles over the last several years. This weekend we picked up one Hemnes chest with 6 drawers. All Ikea's product lines are in a language foreign to Mr. Noded so please don't ask for a pronunciation of Hemnes.

The chest comes in 2 boxes. Each box weighs about elventy two hundred pounds and together are approximately the size of the back of our van. As a supposed guru I'm fascinated by the manufacturing necessary for of these products. There is a lot of planning going into each assembly. To make the chest of drawers I figure that Ikea must use close to twenty jigs to line up the holes where the screws, clips and other thingies, screw, lock and otherwise align the finished product. Just getting all the correct pieces into the shipping boxes seems like a daunting task. In our case nothing was missing and we had no extra stuff left over.

The sides to the chest of drawers is already assembled. There is no glue or power tools needed to assemble the chest. They use a nifty locking system where fasteners are attached to one board and then inserted into another where by some magic, at just the right place, a small locking device can be popped into a hole an twisted to lock the two pieces together.

Most of the weight is in all the hardware. There where 40 locking fasteners, assorted dowels, plastic pins for attaching the draw sides and tiny nails to attach the backing. The backing when applied correctly will square up the unit and make the drawers fit correctly. Mr. Noded was real close on getting it square.

There are no numbers on any of the pieces. The fasteners have full size drawings so you can get them right. There are no words to the instructions you just look until you find the right piece. Of all the pieces in the chest, I don't think there was any possibility of getting the wrong tab in the wrong slat.

It didn't take long to get the second side attached. The backing gets tacked on then the top is added.

The most repetitive part is building all the drawers.

It took about 2 hours for Mr and Mrs Noded to assemble the chest. There were no surprises. A few helpful hints.

• Make sure that all things that screw in are screwed in tight without over tightening. If not tight enough they may bind-up or deny movement to parts that are supposed to move.
• It takes at least twicefour times as much space to build a chest than it will take up when completed. We spilled over into another bedroom.
• It doesn't hurt to give your spouse their own set of tools. This will keep them from walking off with the tool you need "right now or my foot will cramp and my ears will fall off"

I hope you enjoyed this evenings entertainment. Next week Mr. Noded will attempt to assemble an ATM machine to pay for the chest of 6 drawers. Here is the final product.