This bed was one of the most challenging projects I have done. Having a Queen sized bed made entirely out of cardboard and glue is a joke to many, as cardboard is mostly looked at as brown filthy boxes used for packaging. But one of the main properties of cardboard for packaging purposes is that they are bendable but rigid if weight is put on its sides. this is used as an advantage by using it as boxes as the rigidity is evenly spread out. Keeping this in mind, I made sure I took advantage of this by making sure the weight of the bed is on the sides of the cardboard. I used the slit mechanism I used in the previous project and made a criss-cross setup of all the cardboards together. The height of each cardboard was going to be the height of the bed so I decided the regular size of one and a half feet (45 cm). The length and breadth of the mattress I had was 160/200 centimetres. which was the lcgth of the vertical and horizontal lengths accordingly. I decided 3 of the vertical 200cm planks and 5 of the 160cm horizontal planks would be enough to make the bed pretty sturdy.
I first made a prototype of how the structure would be using signboard with a scale ratio of 1:10 . I could easily stand on this and the whole structure wouldn’t budge, giving me confidence that the structure would be sturdy.
I then got a lot of cardboard from various places in yelahanka, many from newspaper sellers, and many from supermarkets. I got most of the cardboard for 15 rupees per kg, and got an overall 90 kg of cardboard.
I cut all the cardboard to pieces and cut them into rectangles so it would be easier to to place them when I glue them together. I also cut the pieces to match the measurements of the plank and leaving around five centimetres gap around it, so that when cut to measurement it would be clean and sqaure.
I then glued all the cardboard pieces, layer by layer, until there were six layers of cardboard for each plank. I placed a plywood plank on top of it and placed the foosball table on top of it as weight.
I then cut each piece of cardboard into the appropriate size and cut out slits 40 cm apart on the sides of the planks. I did use the cutter for some time, and I used the jigsaw to cut the slits.
This process taught me a lot about how paper as a material if crafted in a particular manner like corrugated cardboard used in boxes can be used as an advantage to create rigid objects like furniture. I am pretty glad the overall structure and rigidity is good and pretty satisfied with how the bed turned out. I learned a lot of skills such as cutting numerous cardboards all at once without using a scale and even the process of how much glue to be used.
