During recent years more interest has been emphasised on wood as a construction material. This is so because wood is a renewable resource and also because problems with waste do not emerge when the wooden structure is taken out of operation. On the contrary this waste is still a resource even if the structure is demolished. Wood could always be used as a biomass fuel which is not expected to contribute to the greenhouse effect. In Sweden most of the interest has been emphasised on our conifers while broad leaved species are much less examined. This paper shows the result from the Finite Element Method applied on indetermined chair frames and compares these findings with actual testing in our laboratory. The conclusion is that there are considerable discrepancies between calculations and real behaviour even for relatively simple structures such as a chair frame. It seems that the real chair is stronger than expected even if the joints between the furniture members must reduce the overall strength found by the FEM calculations.