A few months ago I got a call from a wood working friend asking me if I was interested in a "caning" job. I told him I had never made canes but I was willing to give it a shot. Went over to his place to get some details and he loads me up with this old rocking chair that is missing its back and the seat is broken. He says "can you re-cane it" and I says huhhhh!
This is the chair as I received it.
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Well as you can tell it had nothing to do with canes but I am always looking for a challenge. Took the rocker home and stuck it in my shop for a couple months. Meantime I call the owner and tell her that I have never caned before but I would like to give it a try for the experience and that I would only charger here material plus 25%. She agreed to the price and a delivery date of July 2013(it was sometime in Nov. 2012 when we talked, I had no idea how long it would take) Then I order a copy of "The Caner's Handbook", read it through, found out the kinds of materials and tools I needed, order an ice pick, some cane and a dozen pegs and some nippers.
While waiting on the material and tools I went to work making some repairs. They are illustrated it this collage.
1st Row: When I pulled the old caning out of the seat I found that it had originally been caned with per-woven cane, the front and back splines were still there. The sides had split away at some point in the spline slots and were gone. I removed the remaining splines and cut the seat opening in the front and back to match the sides, that is I cut the opening back to the splines.
2nd Row: The seat to back joints were all loose so I pulled them apart far enough to re-glue every thing including the bottom rail of the back. The last picture in this and the last row shows some staining being done to match the newly cleaned caning areas to the rest of the chair. The lady did not want the chair refinished because most of the "finish" was the result of the her grandfathers natural secretions.
3rd Row: Shows some detail of the caning process and staining of the cane to "antique" it a little.
4th Row: The arms had apparently been broken(screws) off several times because I found 3 broken screw tips inside the screw holes in the arm mount areas of the back verticals. I dug them out then drill out the area with a Forstner bit and plugged the holes a couple turnings made from the wood I had cut out of the seat. The other side had only one broken screw per hole resulting in a smaller plug.
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By the time I got the chair repaired the caning and tools had come in so I went to work following the directions in the book. This is the result.
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Thoughts:
I caned the seat first which was probably a mistake. The back looked much better then the seat when done, it was easier and would have given me experience for the seat.
Something the book doesn't mention is how much tension to put on the strands to start with.
It was a lot of fun and fairly easy to do and was a great as a new experience and I would probably do it again as a repair but I will not be considering taking it up as an occupation.However, I did buy a hot plate to keep the water warm on the next job(if) that is used to soften the caning.
If I had charged the customer at my current shop rate the price tag would have been in the hundreds if not thousands of $$$. The 25% over the cost of material(including any tools I needed) didn't even come close to the time spent.But I learned another skill right!!
C&C (especially from any caners out there) is appreciated.
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