No Pain, No Cane

Dan and I were recently given the assignment to recane a few of our chairs. You have no idea what I'm talking about, huh? That's ok, when we were given the assignment we didn't know what it meant either.

In short, that lattice-like wooden screen that you often see on chairs is called "cane" or "caning". It's actually not wood at all, but the skin of the nonporous rattan vine. Its impermeability makes it ideal for furniture because it won't stain or react to humidity.

Behold the odd and strangely useful things you learn as an innkeeper...

We have a few chairs that feature a lovely woven cane backing. They had unfortunately taken a bit of a beating over the years though, and two out of three chairs had holes ripped through the cane. Rather than replace the whole chair, John opted for Dan and I to re-cane it ourselves. One benefit being that it's significantly less expensive, but another being that it's the greener decision because fixing an old chair instead of buying a brand new one means less resources are used. It's a win-win!

Anyway, this is how the process looks currently:
Kind of a mess. You'd think that throwing a screen into a panel would be easy, right? Not so much... First off, the directions are really vague and don't have any pictures.

Through process of elimination [and some pieces being kind of obvious] we determined that these two pieces are the spline and the cane.


See how they fit into the finished product? (By the way, that's an old, unbroken chair, not one that we've finished.)

Aside from the spline and cane, the wedge, chisel, and hammer were pretty easy to identify...

One line in the directions mentions using "4 wedges to hold the spline in place, and the fifth to pound it into the groove". How do I hold 4 wedges in one place, a fifth in another, AND somehow manage to hammer at the same time? And why in the world do I need 4 wedges to do what two of my fingers are doing in the photo above?? What kind of crazy person invented this process???

As much of a pain as this is, it's going to be neat to be able to proudly say when it's done, "Hey Bob. I caned a chair once. Did you know that?" And he'll be confused and have no idea what I'm talking about. Then I'll be able to rant on about rattan vines and permeability and spline chisels and prewoven cane and...

...I'm doing that right now, aren't I?


With Love,
~Brande N.