Periodic table - make cardboard furniture

Ever wanted to make your own furniture, but don’t have tools, space, or woodworking skills? Well it is possible to make sturdy, usable, unique furnishings yourself, out of something most people have lying around at home – the humble corrugated cardboard box. Flimsy though it may seem, cardboard furniture can be very strong. Today I’m going to show you how to make a cardboard table – to indulge my geeky streak, it’s a periodic table! Of course, you can have lots of fun creating your own designs to make completely unique – and extremely cheap – home furnishings.

You’ll need:

• Cardboard – lots of cardboard! if you don’t have much lying around at home, grocery stores often give away cardboard boxes for free.
• Wood glue – you’ll need quite a lot of this, too. I used almost 200g for a small table
• Craft knife/stanley knife/box cutter, cutting mat and spare blades
• Clamps, bulldog clips, clothespins or some other way of holding the cardboard quite flat until the glue dries (I simply tucked mine under the mattress!)
• Pencil and ruler
• (optional) paper tape for finishing edges
• (optional) varnish or shellac
• Large printout of the periodic table, or coloured paper, marker pen and/or letter stickers/transfers

Flatten out all your cardboard boxes, and plan how you are going to make up your pieces. You need 3-4 layers for each piece – my table was 65x30x25cm, so I needed -

• 4 pieces at least 65x30cm for the tabletop
• 6 pieces at least 25x25cm for the legs (3 for each ‘leg’)
• 3 pieces at least 60x10cm for the centre strut.

As a guide, see the cutting plan.

Once you have all your bits, you need to layer your cardboard – this is what makes cardboard furniture so strong, you make a ‘sandwich’ of cardboard, with the corrugated ‘grain’ running in opposite directions. To do this, take a sheet of cardboard and apply wood glue liberally in a criss-cross pattern. Lay a second sheet, with the ‘grain’ at 90 degrees to the first sheet, on top. Slide it around a little to spread out the glue, then press down firmly. Now add another layer of glue and a third sheet of cardboard, with the grain in the same direction as the first sheet (so the layers alternate direction).

You can add as many layers as you like, depending on how strong you want your finished piece to be. Three or 4 layers is ample for an occasional table, more may be required for something that will see heavier use, such as a bookcase. It is even possible to make cardboard chairs which will comfortably support an adult’s weight. If you are using more than about 4 layers, you may find it helpful to cut out your pieces first as the finished board may be too thick to cut with a craft knife!

Clamp the cardboard together and lay flat to dry completely (see your wood-glue tube).

While that’s drying, you have time to get your periodic table ready. You could print one out, I chose to make mine out of coloured paper with the lettering in black paint-marker, colour coding the paper to types of element and making each element 3.5x4cm (hence my finished table being 65x30cm at the longest edges – don’t forget to scale up or down if your tabletop is a different size). Make the main table and the lanthanide/actinide series separately – the lanthanides and actinides will go on the supporting strut. A web search should find many examples of the periodic table which you can print out or use as reference – or if you would prefer a round table, check out the rather cool spiral format periodic table by Jan Scholten.

If you’re making one out of coloured paper, you’ll need a craft knife, cutting mat, ruler, and paper in 8 different colours. Rule out the squares for each element in pencil and cut the pieces out with a craft knife. You can paste them to a piece of backing paper, or glue them directly to your coffee table when it’s finished. Add the lettering now, and rule black lines between the squares once it’s assembled.

OK, by Wednesday your cardboard should all be dry, and we can start cutting out and putting the whole thing together!

You may also like:

1. Periodic table – make cardboard furniture (part 2)
2. Cardboard craft – Tetris organiser
3. Weekend Quickie – cardboard tube drum