Lorne Cline Cradle with Cane Sides
Lorne Cline contacted me by email June 2009, with this Beautiful project that
he custom created. Take a look at his Beautiful work & read his story.
He used the contrasting colors of Black Walnut & Maple woods. Added in the
cane & did his own twist of using leather for the binding. Here is his
story in his words & pictures.
Wonderful work Lorne. Excellent.
Thank you for sharing with the caning community.
Sent:
Monday, June 15, 2009
Thanks for your webpage on caning instructions. Also, thank you for showing
different projects. If you are interested, I have attached a photo of a cradle
that I just completed following your instructions. Please feel free to add it to
your webpage.
One thing that I do that deviates from your instructions is to use leather lace
to finish of the border. I was having too much difficulty with the cane border.
Lorne Cline
The Side Rail Design.
Wayne,
I have attached the rail design here. I cut a channel in the back of the rails
and drilled into these. The cane on the inside is inside this channel and I
covered this with a ¼” x 1” strip to hide all of the inside work.
This is the first of two that I am making. One is for a grandchild due in August
and the one in this picture was given to my wife’s cousin as a shower present
for their child due a week earlier. The shower was yesterday. I was pleased to
hear that she cried with joy when she saw what I made.
I used Black Walnut for the sides and Maple for the ends and stand. I finished
this with 100% Tung Oil since this is non-toxic. The oil created a nice finish
even on the back of the natural cane. Since Tung Oil tends to build up layers it
fills in the underside of the cane as well.
I used 2.5mm cane but spaced the holes at ¾” instead of 5/8” This turned out to
be a mistake since I was originally going to use the daisy and buttons pattern
but it didn’t look very good with that spacing. The sides are dimensioned at 15”
x 36” overall so I thought that I could cheat by drilling fewer holes with the
larger spacing. Even with this cheating the caning took me approximately 20 to
25 hours each side. Maybe I will get faster with practice. I started with the
longest dimension for steps 1 and 3 since this minimized the weaving in step 4
to the shortest dimension. The diagonals were easy with the ¾” spacing (this was
my second project with cane)
I learned a new trick for the finishing border using the leather lace. I would
pull up on the cane to make it tight on the back side and hold this in place
with very fine needle nose pliers as I pulled down to loop over the lace. Since
one side of these pliers would be on top of the lace it held that in place as
well to give me a cleaner finish. I can send you a photo after I start on the
second cradle to show you what I mean.
I wanted to use cane since I have read non scientific studies that link SIDS to
closed-in cradles and bassinets. I like the look of cane and felt that this
gives a lot of ventilation.
The design was loosely based on free plans found on the web which I revised to
suit the tools I have available. The overall size was based on typical Cradle
mattress dimensions at 18” x 36”. Once I had the length at 36” the height was
based on looks. With the length of the side at 36” anything shorter than 15”
didn’t look right.
Lorne Cline