rant

Those following this blog will know that I’ve had many hassles with Lansdowne Boards. This is the second time I’ve run across this specific problem, which is that the board goes through the machine at a slight angle, which means that things don’t line up.

It’s not a lot, but it makes the front of the shelf stand proud by half a millimeter or so, and that looks bad.

The whole point of Lansdowne Boards‘ system is that they have the precision machines so that you can just assemble the stuff without using any complicated tools. In theory this is good. But if your machines are out of calibration or your operators just don’t care, this is the result — one pissed off customer.

So, sadly, I can’t recommend using them. If you don’t know what you’re doing, you’re going to suffer, and if you do know what you’re doing, you don’t need them anyway. Go to Davidson’s or someone else instead.

So last night, it being Tuesday and as such a kid-free evening, Tanya and I started assembling the latest units.

The 2400mm tall Colossal Cupboard (it’s also 900mm deep) had to be assembled upright, in place, because there’s no way to tip it once it’s assembled, it’s only about 100mm short of the ceiling. So the assembly was a bit of a mission, 720mm wide 900mm deep chipboard shelves are *heavy*.

I pinned and dowelled the two sides, slotted in the bottom and the backing board, and then realised that the top had no groove for the backing board. So with Tanya holding things from falling over, I rushed to the garage and chopped eight or ten millimeters off the bottom of the backing board — not the best plan of action but the best I could do under the circumstances.

Eventually got the whole thing assembled and in place and screwed to the skirting and to the piece of skirting I used as a spacer against the wall. Tanya has pictures.

So then I wanted to assemble the bookshelf that goes next to the Colossal Cupboard. And I noticed that the cam & dowel holes in the top didn’t match those in the bottom. The sides are correctly drilled, however — and this means this unit won’t work. And I noticed that neither the top nor the bottom had the slots for the backing board.

So I stripped my moer, commented on the stuff the guy in the workshop was smoking, made nasty remarks about his parents and siblings, and the like. And I checked the other three units.

Yup, groove on the one side, no groove on the other.

Went back to Lansdowne Boards this morning, voiced my extreme displeasure, and after much pondering over CAD drawings and many incredulous looks at the offending shelves (“Oh, look, the holes are *still* wrong!) they realised that yes, indeed, the fellow driving the machine was indeed high on… life… or… err… something.

So we went over to the workshop, waved hands all over the place, and the fellow jigged the stuff up and added the neccessary holes and slots. Got to see how the machine works. Impressive, although it doesn’t go “ping“.

/me renames his blog to “Dealing with Idjits”.