Chair renovation, recane or upholster?

[Fuzzie]

I have a chair with woven cane seating that has given way. I suspect the original cane was of poor quality rather than the seat being subject to abuse as we have other caned chairs in the house that get daily use and are all fine.

I am considering upholstering the seat rather than recaning. However the seat is dished front to rear and I think it might be difficult to make a drop in seat. The seat rails don't meet squarely at the legs, they are set into the corner bits of the front leg turnings. A drop in seat would also need a rebate run around the frame and there are corner blocks flush with the top of the rails that would have to be dropped before the rebate could be run. Then there would be the problem of creating a drop in frame that is dished front to rear.

The other upholstery option would be to do a stuffed over seat but I'm not sure that would look right on this chair. There is also the problem of the front to rear dishing.

Are there any upholsterers out there who can comment on whether a curved drop in frame is possible? How would you go about tensioning things so the seat doesn't look like it is popping out?

If it is not feasible to upholster, where can I get good quality seat cane materials from? How do I work out how many kilometers of cane I would need?

Thanks,
Franklin

[flynnsart]

Some of those seats are seated with a "by the metre" prewoven rattan fabric, with a spline around the edge. Is yours like this?

Donna

[Fuzzie]

Hi Donna,

No, it is properly laced to the frame. I think the original cane was just too brittle.

[flynnsart]

Try here, they even have a booklet to show you how to do it. http://www.andwovencane.com.au/materials/materials2.htm

Donna

[neilb]

Franklin,
You can get the Rattan (cane lengths and mesh) from R.B. Grays at Evans Road Salisbury. They should be in the yellow pages under Upholstering Supplies.

You can either put in new cane mesh or directly upholster onto it . If you choose to go the mesh way, its not a hard excercise. The secret is to soak the mesh for 1/2 hour or so before you start. This makes it very plyable and easier to work with. Make sure that the groove around the chair is clear of all previous materials including staples and is deep enough for the new mesh as well as the cane beading. You may even have to use a small router or trimmer to widen / deepen the groove.

Staple with stretching from side to side first and then front to back with much less stretch. Staple it just about touching one another but dont push down on the gun too much or you will go right through the mesh. When the mesh has dried, it will shrink and be much more taut than just trying to put it on dry.

Same with the cane beading. Start in a less conspicuous position and go around the chair . Seeing that you have not much room to staple over the top of the first staples, glue it in with either hot glue or you can even use superglue.

If you choose to upholster onto the seat frame, use seat webbing (elastic or jute 50mm) and do the same, sides first as per above. Foam it and then staple your cover on. Then you can get " Continuous Upholstery Nail strips" and this will cover your fabric edges. It is like nailing side by side each nail except that you have the fake nails already in a strip and you just fill in the missing nails every inch or so. This is seen on a lot of antique restoration work. Or you can use "Gimp" - fancy woven lace / material edging to do the same.
Hope this helps. Give R.B. Grays a call 9 - 4pm Monday to Friday and Im sure you will get all you need.
Neil.

[Ali G]

I never liked the nail strips, we used to call them strip studs.

Web it out or run some timber battens front to rear with a 25mm gap, this will follow the curve of the seat. You could hessian or put a piece of 3 ply over the battens then foam up.

I prefer to use two different pieces of foam, a hard one on the bottom ( rebond or 50/250 ) with something softer on top (36/130, 38/200 ).
You could pull the material over the edges of the seat and staple it underneath instead of studs.

[Fuzzie]

Thanks guy/ette/s for the suggestions.

A drop in seat seems to be out of the question, even though I found a great video on doing a seat on the Woodwright's Shop and assuming I could find the horse hair and springs and the rest of the stuffings to do it.

One of the problems I see with upholstering is how to disguise the existing caning holes. I don't think this particular chair would look quite right with the upholstery carried around to the outside and under the seat frame. I'd also be concerned that tacking webbing close to the caning holes might be unsound.

The idea of fixing battens underneath might work, but I would be dubious about fixing them in a manner strong enough to hold and the corner bracings are still in the way.

There's a method described on the Finewoodworking site that might have some chance of making a thinnish slip seat that wouldn't look out of place sitting on top of the existing frame, if I could just work out how to mould the ply base to start with. Using this method I thought about not using the suggested t-nuts but rather fix battens on the underside of the plywood to make it stay in place when dropped onto the chair frame.

I am however getting to the point where I think recaning is the right thing to do and it may also be the simplest and cheapest way to go. Here's a picture of the cleaned up frame showing the corner blocks.

[Fuzzie]

Well R.B. Gray has closed it's Brisbane outlet and just left a Melbourne contact number behind. Ron at andWovenCane isn't open Mondays.....

[flynnsart]

Isnt that just typical, just when you had made the decision

I cant quite see from the pic, but before you recane it, make sure the edge of the chair where the cane died last time is rounded over, so the same thing doesnt happen again.

donna

[neilb]

I also just found out about R B Grays. If you ring their Brisbane number you will get an answering machine telling you the Sydney office's number.
Neil.

[Fuzzie]

Finished the recaning and have enough cane left over for another seat! Didn't guesstimate that too well!

All went relatively smoothly, I only broke a couple of canes while knotting on the underside. The original cane had been mostly pegged rather than knotted, but I followed Ron's advice to knot. The underside however does look quite congested with all the knots.

The lacing was a bit difficult around the legs and support blocks. I think I could have made a couple of better choices about holes to skip on laying down the orthogonal canes however it wasn't entirely obvious to my eye when there were just the first few saggy lines in place. The edge pattern didn't really start to show up until much later...

Donna the front rail was already arrised but I did round over all rails substantially more before I started. I began to wonder while lacing whether it wouldn't have also been a good idea to countersink the holes a touch. I hadn't seen that raised as an issue in any of the how-tos I read on caning, but looking at other caned seats it certainly looks like a weak point.

[flynnsart]

The chair looks great, I bet you are pleased with yourself Well done. So are you going to make another chair now, or stool to use up your leftovers?

Donna

[madsciencechik]

Hello!

I just purchased a rocking chair with a caned seat that is falling apart. I've never tried recaning before and am hesitant to use the material since it sounds like it may be a bit difficult. I was thinking of using some sort of synthetic twine to weave the octagonal pattern, but have no idea what type or size would be appropriate for carrying a weight load of a person. If anyone has experience using this sort of material in woven seats, any information would be truly helpful.

[Fuzzie]

Welcome to the forum. A mad scientist should probably be trying to use Telurian spider web for its extraordinary tensile strength, however as a mere retro bodger I would recommend attempting it with real cane. The material is not difficult to work with it is just time consuming. It took me about 2 weeks to recane my chair. I cannot see it would be any quicker to use a synthetic twine and it would be an unknown about how stretchy the material would be. The cane also 'locks in' nicely when it is tied off and dry.

I think the instructions I followed came off this link

Most of the people on this forum are in Australia and the source for materials above are in Australia. The website in the link however is in the US and if you contact the author he might be able to give you a lead on where to buy materials locally.

[Joe Townsville]

I've just read this thread, and found it interesting. Thanks for the comments.

I agree with those recommending recaning. You'll never get a chair that was originally caned to look right upholstered. Doing the job is easy, but time consuming, if you follow some basic rules.

1. Do all the repairs and refinishing (e.g. varnish or PU) first.

2. Clean out all holes, grooves etc.

3. Start in the centre of the front, and work out to the sides.

4. Then do side to side.

It helps if you can either have a photo of the original pattern, or a piece about 5 cm square to refer to.

Keep up the good work.