What to buy at Ikea?

The Jansjo lights are good but I find that the arms sag under the weight of the lamp. A rough and ready cure was to wrap the arm in masking tape and when in the ideal position, a few drops of super glue holds them in place. If necessary, there is still enough give in the reinforcement to reposition the lamp.

Dave
The Emerald Isle

steamdave:

A refinement of your idea would be to wrap the arm/stalk in "Spirap" - the spiral plastic wrapping used by electricians. This might also limit movement due to machine vibration.

The jansjo lights suffer from poor switches after a while. Change them for a new inline switch cures them.

The new version of the helmer draws is inferior, not nearly as solid as the originals, which aren't fantastic anyway!

It's possible that natural maple would look nice but you rarely see it there. Mercans can't seem to stop themselves from staining maple in bizarre colours like dark brown or even black so you can barely see the grain. They seem to regard maple as a bulk material, not a natural and potentially interesting product.

Technically, balsa is a hardwood. Similarly, maple isn't actually a very "hard" wood and dents easily in my experience. In contrast, oak is beautiful and robust - but almost impossible to find over there. Obviously there are a lot fewer oak trees growing there but that's only a part of it. The just don't seem to like the sight of natural wood.

Murray

Except when making guitars...

Fortunately we can buy American White Oak and Maple here, both are very light coloured. IKEA make extensive use of Birch plywood and from a distance both these woods look the "same" colour.

I just returned from my shopping trip. I bought a Forså instead of a Jansjo. The Jansjo didn't impress me. The flex was to much to my liking. But http://www.ikea.com/nl/nl/images/products/forsa-bureaulamp__0438833_PE591860_S4.JPG in pale grey green looks very workshop like and all joints are adjustable.

I bought a thick piece of bamboo meant to serve as a smart phone stand. But I like to use chunks of it to clean my files. A piece of anti slip under carpet followed me home just as a 230 V lead with switch and euro plug. In the clearance section there was exactly the same lead but with 30% discount so the first one was left at the counter.

And the clearance had a big box of fittings. You could fill a paper bag for 2 euros. I collected a lot of dowels, hex rods with xorious 90 degree bends, bolts, hydrolic door dampers, spring mechanisms to open doors and drawers and all other interesting stuff.

And on the way out I grabbed a jar of that seaweed caviar.

I liked shopping at Ikea, never thought I would!

The Helmer drawers are steel. I have two sets of them bolted together storing taps, dies and thread chasers. They're a useful size being bigger than the Bisley drawers. The Helmer drawers are made of thin sheet. I put thin plywood liners in the base of mine.

I bought a pair of floor standing steel cupboards from Ikea that have proved to be very useful for my tooling.

I found the Moppe wooden draw sets quite handy in the workshop. Inexpensive and you can take a drawer right out easily to dig around for what you are looking for.

They sold these some time ago but dropped them amid a chorus of complaints but have just brought them back.

I bought some of the steel drawers. Pretty handy for tooling.

Some of the smaller clip on lights as well.

B

Good strategy Duncan. I think these places are a complete wind-up and avoid.
Strategy can also be used for all supermarkets, shopping centres and places with 'outlet' in their name.

I'm not one for visiting shops, however my wife wanted to go and my son offered to take us both. The nearest Ikea is an hour away. I have to say it was not a nice experience, the place was crowded and the patronising theme of following 'the arrows' didn't go down well. There was nothing in the place that remotely interested me apart from the 'Exit' door, it was an experience I would never wish to repeat. However, Ikea does have it's followers though I'm unsure why anyone would put themselves through such an experience

When I'd just had my left knee replaced I couldn't sleep in a bed, and needed a chair I could sleep in for a few days or weeks until things improved. I remembered a type of springy-wood-framed armchair they did that wasn't expensive, so staggered around Ikea with the missus they day after they let me out of hospital, till I found it.

They do try to make sure they march you past all their retail opportunities before they let you go, so it wasn't as merciful an experience as it might've been, but I also made sure of my hot dog sausages, Scandi choc and fake caviare before we left.

It was also a fairly grim business assembling the thing once we got it home, in the condition I was in at the time.

But that was six years ago now, and I still nod off in that chair on tired evenings - so do other people who sit in it... :D

Edited By Mick B1 on 31/01/2018 14:37:17

I think I have been to Ikea twice, I can only think my lapse of concentration resulting in the second visit was a rare blip.

From memory I went to buy some bedroom wardrobes and matching cupboards etc.

After selecting only some of what was required (I think large furniture had to be collected after payment), we queued for ages at the checkout, only to be told that the stuff we had picked was discontinued, they did not have some of it in stock, and they could not guarantee the order and could supply all that we wanted.

Hours had been wasted at this point, so I politely told them to keep their furniture, and got a refund.

I vowed at that point never to set foot in Ikea again, and some 16 years later that is still the case.

As far as I can see the whole basis of the way Ikea is set up is to maximise profits for the company, and make shopping there a miserable experience for customers.

Just be glad you didn't have a prospective university student in need of two trolleys full of stuff with you... I did p[ick up a couple of Jansjos and one of those tables people use for 3D printers (not sure why, I made a plywood stand which is much more rigid and includes storage).

My reward was a veggy hot dog, two in fact as I put strawberry jam on my wife's instead of ketchup by mistake.

Well at least you were rewarded for your efforts, albeit jam on your veggy hot dog. The fact you noticed the difference in taste does score Ikea a couple of points!

On what sad planet is a veggy hot dog a reward?

I could do with the drawers since advised they are metal but my nearest store is an hours traffic jam away so will just keep an eye on the used furniture store. If one survives long enough to get to be second hand they are probably useful.

Given a little time, I could probably dream up many hundreds of companies and/or websites for which that is true. It's pretty ubiquitous these days (yes, I do know there are exceptions).

Can't say for the UK, but the local Ikea here in Mississauga/Toronto is not nearly as bad as some of you guys paint it. Yes they have the "follow the arrows" path that takes you past everything. But they also have very obvious shortcut doorways in the walls which let you short-circuit anything you don't want to see. They also have a shortcut to "Marketplace" just inside the main entrance, which is the place I usually most want to visit when I go (3 - 4 times a year) and skip the rest.

If you guys stay away on principle, that's entirely up to you - you're big boys. I can't help feeling though that it's your loss as well as Ikea's

+1