Fixing caned canoe seats

I used to do a bit of caning (no, that's not a typo for canning haha, though I do that as well!) --as in I used to have a bunch of chairs with caned seats and they needed re-doing, so I learned how to do it and did them! I also fixed the caned seats of all of my relatives who needed fixing as well :) 

That was about ten years ago. I haven't done any because none needed to be done! So, needless to say, I kind of forgot how to do it. 

This summer upon our first canoe excursion, my husband noticed that his canoe seat (which is caned) was coming apart--so instead of purchasing new seats, I revisisted my caning practice! 

In case you are not familiar with doing caned seats, there are two types--in one, the piece of furniture has holes drilled all arond and you are basically weaving the thin strips of cane material. The other type (the SUPER EASY type) just uses an already-woven piece of cane material and a piece of spline to press it into a groove around the seat edge (kind of like re-doing a screen door). 

The canoe seats were the easy type (yay!) and so I bought some pressed cane materials and spline online (and a few wooden wedges) and got to work. The toughest part, really, was removing the old glue and seat materials from the groove. Once that was cleaned out I could just trim, press, and insert the spline. You soak the materials in water, so they're all flexible when you use them and easy to work with. When you're done, they shrink up a bit to be nice and taut.  

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If you have a caning project to do, I'd encourage you to give it a try! It is really not hard once you try! There are tons of instructions available online as well as in book/booklet form, and materials are readily available online.