Starkville, Miss. ? The next time you drop anchor into your recliner to watch a Bears game ” and don’t hear the sound of wood cracking or find yourself flat on the floor amid a pile of kindling ” you probably can thank some folks at Mississippi State University.

It’s there at the Furniture Research Unit, part of the school’s Forest and Wildlife Research Center, that items such as recliners and sofas are pushed ” and punched, pulled and jiggled ” to the limit and beyond to make sure they’ll be able to withstand the stress consumers put on them.

As with companies everywhere, furniture manufacturers want to get the most out of their designs. Is a frame strong enough? Is it stronger than is necessary? What happens to cushions over an extended period of use? It’s questions such as these that are answered in the three testing buildings on the MSU campus where manufacturers from around the country send furniture.

“I can’t think of anybody we haven’t tested,” says Dan Seale, a professor in the College of Forest Resources and coordinator of furniture research in the Department of Forest Products.

Material ” natural and manmade ” is checked for strength, joints and frames are examined to make sure they’ll hold up, cushions are examined for cushiness, springs are tested for springiness. If you’re a furniture manufacturer, this is where you have your questions answered.

The first question might be, why Mississippi State?

“The furniture industry in Mississippi is second only to North Carolina; 70 percent of all upholstered furniture comes out of Mississippi,” explains research associate Bob Tackett. “We’re here basically to help the industry.”

Through their testing, Seale, Tackett and their associates at the 15-year-old unit provide research data and technical assistance that will make furniture manufacturers more competitive. Every year, some 40 pieces of furniture are shipped to the facility.

When a piece of furniture arrives, there’s usually a specific test the manufacturer wants done.

In one of the facility’s buildings, Tackett shows a visitor a white sofa ” well, it was white when it arrived; it has since been splotched with grease from the machine enveloping it, a massive collection of pipes, fittings, pistons and hoses. The goal is to see how this model will stand up to repeated use.

“It’s the butt test,” Tackett says.

Sure enough, three large pads pounded away on the two-cushion sofa, each pad’s contact points shaped, well, like a person’s behind.

The machine will go through almost 25,000 cycles, or individual impacts, applying pressure on the front and on the back of the seat. The weight of the pressure starts with 50 pounds on the front of the seat and 100 pounds on the back. Then Tackett will increase the hydraulic pressure and put the sofa through another testing cycle with a higher load, cycling all the way up to 137 1/2 pounds on the front of the seat and 275 pounds on the back. Data is collected and later analyzed.