Building With Cardboard
I come from a background which always appreciated frugality. I'm lucky enough that it's not purely by necessity: I simply find that being able to use inexpensive materials to bring yourself joy and practice new skills is something that I find aesthetically pleasing. In particular, I'm not interested in spending tens of thousands of dollars on computer or shop equipment to feed my hobby desires. I often weigh my hobby expenditures on what I call the "afternoon at the movies scale". Let's say that movies cost $10, (I know they are more, but I'm old and often now go during $5 Tuesday screenings anyway, did I mention that I'm basically cheap?) and last two hours. If enjoying my hobby costs less than $10 an hour, then it is basically cheaper than movies, and I feel virtuous in doing it. If I spend a lot of money on a tool, it's with the expectation (admittedly, not always realized) that it will give me many hours of enjoyment.
Anyway, that's background. Onward to the subject of today's post: cardboard.
My wife and I get a lot of stuff shipped to us, and so we often have a fair amount of scrap cardboard lying around. In the past, I have cut this up into smaller pieces and put it in our recycling bin. It is mostly a nuisance, and I kept thinking it is also quite wasteful. Just last friday I cut up several large boxes that filled our recycle bin for the week.
But over the weekend, I was watching my usual round of Youtube videos, and came across this video about building stuff with cardboard.
And this got me thinking, are there projects where building stuff with cardboard would make sense?
And the more I thought about, the more I realized the answer was very likely "yes, there are."
I've already mentioned my genuine admiration for wheat paste as a glue. It's cheap, available, easy to make, non-toxic, and biodegradeable. And as Ben demonstrated in his video above: it is easy to work, strong, and can be made waterproof. What's more is that I have most of the necessary materials needed to do construction with it lying around my shop.
Or would have, if I hadn't gotten rid of a bunch of it last week. Isn't that the way of it?
But I'm sure I'll have more of it soon, not to worry.
I did have some lying around though, so I thought I'd do a small test. I cut some random chunks into roughly square bits, and then used some of my left over wheat paste from last week to laminate four layers of cardboard into a roughly square blank. I intended to alternate the grain direction of the plywood to maximize strength, but afterwards discovered that I screwed up and did two layers which were in the same direction. Oh well, it's a test. One thing that Ben mentioned in his video is that you shouldn't be too worried about getting them in precise size/alignment: you can use conventional tools to cut them down later. So, that's what I did. I let them dry, and then trimmed the edges using my table saw. And now I have a blank which is roughly eight inches square which is a little over 1/2" thick, and quite sturdy. And staring at it, I'm beginning to get some ideas as to uses for it.
A couple years ago I wanted to build some boxes to store optics that I was working on in various telescope making projects. I used some 1/2" hardwood plywood and the boxes look nice. But they are not exactly cheap. If you go to Rockler and buy Baltic Birch, a 30"x30" panel of 1/2" plywood will cost about $35. That's kind of a lot for what is basically a utilitarian box. Is there any reason that I couldn't make a sturdy and reasonably attractive box out of recycled cardboard? I don't think so.
In fact, all kinds of storage boxes could be made from this material. By laminating boxes into thicker panels, they can be made almost arbitrarilly sturdy. And, if you follow some of the design principles of people who have some experience with this kind of thing, they could even look nice. Itoshige Studios has a lot of cool ideas for elevating your cardboard game:
Googling for "cardboard furniture" should give you even more ideas. Some don't even require glue, and are meant just to be slotted into each other. But I do think the ability to manufacture large panels which are then cut to shape and fixed together with glue is more interesting to me. I also think the possibility if combining wood with cardboard pieces has the potential to create items with unique combinations of sturdiness, weight and economy. I think that's pretty exciting.
Combine this with some 3D printing, and even more possibilities leap to mind.
I'll be experimenting with this going forward. Stay tuned.