Re-caning Chairs: Part Two

I'm slowly coming along on my re-caning project.  Since my last post, I completed the second row of verticals, the second row of horizontals (which requires weaving under and over the verticals) and have started the diagonal rows (which requires weaving under and over verticals and horizontals).



Second row of verticals and horizontals completed.



Beginning of diagonals.

 
I am going up to Connecticut this evening, so I won't have a chance to work on my chair until probably the beginning of next week, but I'm hoping I'll be finished with it by the end of next week!

Chair Re-Caning

It's been a long time since I have posted on this blog, but I've started a new project and I thought it would be fun to write about it on here.  I got these beautiful chairs from my Aunt a few weeks ago, but the seats need to be re-caned.

I thought at most it would $100 a seat to be re-caned, but boy was I wrong.  I called around and the average price was $3 per hole. My chairs have an average of 75 holes, so that is $225 per chair! That was WAY above my spending limit, so I looked into doing it myself.  There are a few different ways of re-caning, all depending on the type of chair you have.  These chairs are all hand-woven. Hand-woven caned chairs have holes around the perimeter of the seat. Cane is woven back and forth through the holes, which creates a sturdy seat to sit on.  After some research and watching a few youtube videos, I found many sites that offered kits to re-cane chairs yourself. The kits are about $15 (shipping is $10), with enough supplies to re-cane one chair. I decided to go for it and spend the $25 and take on another project!

Last night I started my new project. Here is the chair before the cane has been removed:

The first step is to soak your cane in some cool water for at least 20 mins. While it is soaking you can remove the cane from you seat.To remove the cane, I just used some scissors to cut around the seat.  The rest of the cane was removed by cutting the loops on the bottom of the chair.  Some of the cane was stuck in the holes, so I used a small screwdriver to poke it through.

Once all the cane has been removed you can begin the weaving process. I won't go into detail of the weaving process (the kit and youtube videos give great instructions), but basically you first weave back and forth vertically:

The next step is to weave the cane back and forth horizontally.

This was as far as I got last night, but once I do more I'll post my progress.  If this works out, I plan on buying more cane and finishing the remaining three chairs.  From there, who knows, maybe I'll started my own side business!