Reweaving Cane Woven Items By Craftsman Furniture Service In Sacramento California. Also Serving San Francisco, Stockton, Carmichael, Davis.

	HOME > REWEAVING > REWEAVING CANE WOVEN ITEMS Cane woven seats are easily identified by their characteristic weave, illustrated in the photo to the right. This page provides information concerning the service we offer with: Hand woven cane Machine woven cane Specialty hand weaves and materials Specialty machine weaves and materials HAND WOVEN CANE The three chairs in the box just below show stages in the reweaving of a hand woven cane seat. With hand woven seats there are holes around the perimeter of the seat through which the cane is woven strand by strand. One rarely seen variation on this is "french", or "blind" caning. With this variation the holes are not drilled all the way through the seat frame. Blind caning is a bit more time consuming to weave and is a bit more fragile and is usually only seen on chair backs. In both forms of hand caning the final step is to "bind off" the cane with a wider section of rattan cane which is, not surprisingly, called "binder cane." This gives a finished look to the perimeter of the seat.

MACHINE WOVEN CANE

The work of replacing a machine woven cane seat is much different from that of hand cane. Machine woven cane is fastened to the seat by a spline which is glued into a groove. First, the spline and cane must be chiseled out of the groove so that the groove can receive the new cane. Care must be taken at this task or the wood to the side of the groove can be scratched or even chipped off. Machine woven cane comes in long rolls or sheets of cane (hence it is sometimes called "sheet cane"). A section of the roll must be cut slightly oversized from the opening in the chair to be covered. The cane is then pressed into the groove (hence it is sometimes called "pressed cane"). Finally the groove is filled with glue and a spline is hammered into the groove to finish the job and, with the glue, secure the cane. The pictures in the box below illustrate the stages of hand caning--the empty spline groove, the machine woven cane installed, and the finished job with the spline in place. Click the following link to view a brief video about machine caning.


		More Photos Coming

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SPECIALTY HAND WEAVES AND MATERIALS

The traditional weave seen in all the illustrations above is found in the vast majority of cane seats and backs. However there are some other interesting weaves and materials occasionally used. Most of the time, whatever was in the chair should go back in the chair, but occasionally a change to one of these other weaves or materials can be a good choice. One change we strongly encourage people to make (or not make) is when plastic cane is in view. Plastic cane is cheap in every sense of the word. Its primary use is for outdoor furniture. However even there sun exposure causes rapid degradation. Any way about it, plastic cane is short lived and looks like plastic not natural cane. We will want to replace it with the natural material. Paper cane is also available. It is not strong enough for a seat and we see no reason to use it when natural cane is available. The one interesting alternate material is cording, which was a poor-man's answer to the high cost of re-caning. Cording is not often seen but an example of it from a chair that went through our shop is in the box just below. Otherwise the variations that can be seen are all in the weaves, not the materials. The spider, snow-flake/star of david, and sun ray weaves are typically used only on chair backs because they are not strong enough for a seat. The five and four strand and the victoria weaves can be used on seats and backs.


Spider		Snowflake/Star of David


			Cord
	Four Strand

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SPECIALTY MACHINE WEAVES AND MATERIALS

There are several alternate patterns of machine woven cane. As with hand caning, most of the time, whatever pattern was in the chair should go back in the chair, but with machine caning the varying weaves are more interchangeable. Machine cane also can be woven from strands of plastic cane and paper cane. We feel the same about plastic machine woven cane as with plastic hand woven cane. It is so inferior we don't want to use it. Paper cane does come in some interesting patterns but because of its weakness is limited in how it can be used.

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