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Suppliers: Look for the right mix

By David Perry -- Furniture Today, February 22, 2004

NORTHBROOK, Ill. — NORTHBROOK, Ill. — Suppliers of fire-resistant materials offered a variety of tips for bedding producers gearing up to meet California's open-flame safety regulations.

"There is no silver bullet," said Steve Ogle, an executive with Leggett & Platt, which offers a number of FR products. "There is no one single solution. You need to look at systems. The right combinations of products will pass (California's test)."

Among products available to bedding manufacturers, he said, are FR wood for the box springs, FR insulators, FR fill layers and toppers, FR highloft products, thin FR barrier products, FR thread and FR tape.

Tom Taylor of Western Nonwovens said bedding makers can choose from a wide variety of FR components which have been thoroughly tested, and "all of which work." He stressed the importance of quality workmanship.

"The best (FR) barrier plus the best (FR) thread plus the best design, minus good workmanship, equals failure," Taylor said. "We have seen beds fail with just a few skipped stitches."

Clay Helpinstill of DuPont called attention to the "grin," the area on the side of the sleep set where the mattress and box spring meet. The grin on single-sided sleep sets is often smaller than that on two-sided sleep sets, he said. And since one of the two burners used in the California burn test is aimed directly at that grin, fire can propagate in that area, he said.

Amelia Tosti of Freudenberg Nonwovens referred to "the grin that doesn't make anyone smile."

While some bedding flammability experts say that single-sided mattresses, with their generally smaller grins, have an inherent advantage in the burn tests, bedding producers successfully have tested a number of two-sided models.

Lou Hahn of Elk Technologies said it is probably a good idea for bedding producers to test beds for longer than the 30 minutes required to pass the California test, giving themselves a margin of error.

Tim Ladd of Coats North America, a supplier of FR thread, said quality sewing is important. FR thread should be used in critical areas of the sleep set, he said.

Those suppliers were among those making presentations during the Shoptalk: Flammability seminar here. More than a dozen FR suppliers exhibited at the event.

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