HELP !! Loftonline.net, Robin Day club sofa problem  

Damaged sofa
I use chipoboard on many jobs &I've seen Geoff's pictures, it looks more like he had a wild party! wood doesnt just break on its own it takes some sort of brute force to break something like that. The staples or nails or whatever are only to hold it until the glue drys If it was so simple to break this type of wood it would not exsist. Some facts about Chipboard. Chipboard is used in furniture, kitchen units, worktops and flooring. chipboard is hardwearing, rigid and heavy. There are exterior grades of chipboard available but most are for internal use. Chipboard is the most widespread wood-based material used and life would be unthinkable without it chipboards are used in a multiplicity of ways. As a coreboard for all areas of interior fittings & in a lot of application possibilites. Kitchens, bathrooms, offices and living furniture, Flooring boards, Doors, Wall and ceiling linings

Jerry, jerry, jerry...
I'm a licensed civil engineer and one of the fun things we do in CE in college is break stuff. We broke concrete, drywall, plywood, hardwood, pine cast iron, stainless steel and a bunch of other fun things used to build stuff (civil engineers build stuff) The "chipboard" as you folks call it (we in the colonies call it medium density fiberboard) is one of the weakest in tensile strength. In non CE terms it breaks when it's bent.
The test is simple, a board of the test material of a specified dimension is placed on a machine which clamps it at either end. Then the test material is pushed down in the center with gradually increasing force as a weight. The winner in the wood product category is plywood, by quite a large margin. Hardwood and pine have a huge variance due to natural imperfections. MDF snaps at a fraction of the load plywood and good hardwood can take. MDF lacks the continuous long fibers that give hardwood and plywood great tensile strength.
MDF is fine for uses that involve no tensile stress as in the above test. Good for siding, subflooring, sheathing. It is NOT a good choice for furniture, kitchen cabinets and any use where it might be bent. It's weak. No truly quality furniture is made from MDF. The sole exception is the Saarinen tulip table but that's a whole nother thread...

James, James, James
MDF and Chipboard are completely different products. I patiently waited for someone else to point this out to you, but you seem intent on strongly arguing against the facts. CHIPBOARD is a rough material, so named because you can see the chips it is made of whereas MDF is a much denser product with a smooth texture which is easy to paint. This is not to argue on the suitability of the materials - but they are NOT the same.

Chipboard
I apologize, I am not familiar with the word "chipboard" from my days as a CE as a building material so I assumed the word was being used colloquially to refer to MDF which is what is used in much furniture and kitchen cabinets. In any case as you describe it chipboard is clearly even more unsuitable for building furniture.

chipboard is particleboard
After consulting with a former colleague still in the CE business chipboard is what in my day was called particleboard. I wouldn't build a doghouse out of particleboard!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Particle_board

Back in my days!
James we are in the year 2006/7 with modern ways of making things, with modern adhesives,fixings. you are right abouit building dog houses as they are a exterior building but as far as modern furniture i is very widely used & not only in cheap items. Who would have thought only 10 years ago in the UK that we would be building houses & comercial buildings out of wood, but hey we can do it very well due to modern teqniquies & products. Its the FUTURE!

no sale
sorry jerry but no improvements in resin technology will change the fundamental weakness of particle board as it lacks the key long fibers and while MDF may be better than it was in the 80's it's still I beleive inferior to good handwood.
This stuff is absolutely fine for Ikea grade furniture but when you pay thousands of dollars or pounds for a high end sofa I think you have a reasonable expectation of the best materials and for me that's still good hardwood.

Duty of care
James if anybody spends thousands of $ £'s on furniture it dose'nt mean it is indistructable, you still need to take resonable care of it. it is simple to see if you put unessesary strains/leverage on certian parts they are likley to break. you would'nt lean on a door, sit on a table or push/pull or lift a sofa by its cushion. Common sense must play a part.

quality forgives clumsiness
Truly well made furniture can stand a tremendous amount of abuse as I'm sure many here will testify. That is one mark of real quality. A friend of mine from the summer of love here in SF tells of the bands staying in a local hotel where he worked as a kid and the damage they did to furniture but he noted with a lot of admiration that "those butt ugly Knoll sofas got beat to hell but we gave 'em a steam cleaning and they were good as new, unless some guy started a fire on it. Some of those guys did start fires with all the pot they were smoking".
I certainly don't advise abusing furniture but it's comforting to know that if there's an accident, say someody falls over the back of a Flo Knoll sofa dancing (personally I like to dance around the house to Madonna's confessions from the dance floor but I'm a big mo), that it's probably going to be perfectly fine. That to me is a mark of real quality. Shit after all does happen.
I buy furniture that I exoect to last not just my lifetime but a few more generations as well. A sofa made with particle board will probably last till the next change in fashion and for many that is perfectly OK, but it shouldn't be priced at the high end of the market like the products we've been discussing here. That level of durability is appropriate for Ikea and pottery barn but NOT for a sofa that pretends to be a reproduction of a known classic that is tough as nails.
I'm an old fart. I'll never be hip enough to think particle board is an OK material for expensive furniture.

serious design flaw. loftonline.net Robin Day club sofa
There's no MDF or high density particleboard in this sofa, just good good old fashioned cheap, low density chipboard.And yes, it has no long fibres,(see the picks)very poor tensile strength and yes it breaks very easily.(No wild party required) Don't get me wrong, there's nothing wrong with using cheap chipboard in furniture manaufacture.BUT ONLY IN THE RIGHT PLACES!! (i.e only where it is not expected to withstand any stresses such as leverage) In the case of the Robin Day club sofa from Loft International Ltd,its use is wholly inappropriate. Even light pressure to the back cushion panel,(which extends above the back of the sofa)can very easily cause it to break.Various shops I have spoken to have experienced the same problems, with the manufacturer calling out to the shops and customers homes to carry out repairs.Remember, this is no DFS cheapy, but a £4000.00 suite and rubbish build quality at this price is just not acceptable.
http://loftonlinechipboardsofa.spaces.live.com/