Hairdressing Furniture
So, how to do you take forward your DIY skills to develop hairdressing furniture?
Step 1 - Plan your design. Take your time, get it right first time. I have basic CAD skills and use to be a draftsperson for 3 years, giving a solid grounding in the design process.
Step 2 - Materials. Decide what materials you will be using. What will it cost you to buy them and even find a supplier.
Step 3 - Build Quality. Your skills will need to ensure that your finished hairdressing furniture will actually last, without breaking, causing damage or injury to clients.
My first peice of hairdressing furniture was contructed over a period of 5 weeks. I built a seat / chair, constructed from a laminated wooden base and back support, with shapped legs, and soft leather cushion attached to the base of the chair, providing a firm but gentle and pleasant seating experience.
I used a number of vices and moulding techniques to shape the wooden laminate. The wood iteself was birch, providing strength and flexibility. You can use a wide range of timbers, north or south american, european or selctions from the far east. Your local timber merchant can advise you on appropriate timber selection. Always ensure that you have the most appropriate wood working tools too before you decide to embark on building hairdressing furniture. Poor tools or lack of apprpriate wood working tools will lead to weak jonts, damaged surface finishes and models thtat do not match initial design decisions. This can cause expensive mistakes or even force you to restart the project, bringing forther expense and delay.
Before starting my project I actually visited salon suppliers and went to exhibitions to examine the quality of hairdressing furniture. It gave me a great opportunity in which to closely examine the type of metals, woods, leathers, sewing, finishes and plastics within any given furniture peice. You will find that people use the term salon furniture and hairdressing furniture to represent the same items of equipment. I very quickly identified a number of weaknesses within certain manufacturers designs, based on a quick design and second rate production techniques. The high end hairdressing furniture always had superb craftsmanship and appropriate use of materials and finshes creating well designed and manufactured products.
So, oncve you have planned your design, have chosen the best metals, plastics and leather you are ready for the construction process, which will take a number of weeks, based on your initial design. more to follow in the next update.
