Friday, January 31, 2003 11:52 AM
To: Sharp, Wayne

 I recently inherited a small chair my Grandfather made. It had a wood seat screwed on but there are caning holes. Also it is round. I have never attempted to cane anything but would like to tackle this project. I measured the holes and the distance between and assessed the size cane to be fine fine so I purchased a kit. After reading the instructions I am still confused as to where to start the cane. Do I start in the middle of the front or to the side? Also should I stain the cane to match the chair before or after completion? On a round chair will the weave be a lot different than on a square. Thank you,  Sheila

To: Sheila,
Round seats are a challenge, especially for a first caning project. A round cane seat chair will "logically" weave the same as a square seat chair. However the round seat will have more "fish-eyes", were horizontal & vertical cane pairs use the same hole.

Where to start? Think of the round seat as square. It might help you to use a piece of cardboard in a square shape to keep you thinking this way. Lay over the round seat & mark corners with a pencil. Now treat your round seat as a square seat.  Find the center-most hole in the back & also match it with the center-most hole in the front. Peg these holes. While your at it, you might as well find center holes on each side & peg.

Now, you must keep the cane running straight to your eye, for both horizontal & vertical runs. This will be important as you follow the curve of the seat.  Also keep the width between the parallel cane runs equal. You may skip a hole to keep the cane width the same.

Now follow the 7-step caning instructions you can find on my website.

I personally prefer the natural look of cane, so I don't stain or paint my cane. However, if you want to stain it, do that after you've completed caning.  Good Luck with your project. Wayne.

This picture shows that Sheila started by finding the center holes in the top, bottom & both sides. She also found the "corners" & marked them with golf tees.  The "corners" will be were she will need to "fisheye" to double up on some holes.

To: Wayne,  Feb 6, 2003
I wanted you to see the end results of my project. I know I have a few mistakes and the bottom does not look as neat as I would have liked due to the use of many pieces of cane resulting in many tie offs. Maybe some hints on the tie off process would be helpful on your site. I found the cane dried out before I could tie off sometimes and made it difficult. I do agree a square chair would have been much simpler to start with, but it was a lot of fun anyway. Your site was very helpful and I am so glad you put it out there for people. Thank You so much. As you can see from the pictures I decided not to stain but I did put tung oil on the finished piece. Sheila