Cane seats

I have found these two mail-order suppliers to be good sources of cane materials, tools, and instruction books.

H. H. Perkins http://www.hhperkins.com/
Frank’s Cane and Rush Supply http://www.franksupply.com/caning/index.html

Both have information on how to choose the proper cane size, depending on hole spacing and size.

I have never bought cane or cane supplies from Lee Valley (though I have had good experiences when buying tools and hardware from them), but they have a good basic choice of cane and tools -- p. 242 of their current catalog. Leevalley.com.

Rockler and some other woodworking suppliers also sell cane and supplies.

A full hank or bunch of cane (about a thousand feed) is enough to do 5 or 6 canoe seats. Most dealers will sell a half bunch or half hank (about 500 feet), and some sell a "chair kit" -- a half hank plus a few of the basic wedges and pegs.

Greg
 
Greg has provided good information. However, if this Old Town canoe was built in the 1940s, it most likely left the factory with pre-woven cane seats. This material is also available from Perkins, but they call it cane webbing. If your seat frames have lots of little holes, the cane was hand woven. If you see a groove all the way around the frames, about 1/4 inch wide, 1/4 inch deep, then it was machine-woven cane, pressed in, with a spline on top. Tom McCloud
 
Yes. With cane unavailable, some WWII era Old Towns did have wood slat seats. Tom McCloud
 
Perkins, Frank's, and Lee Valley all sell pre-woven cane and the spline needed to hold it in place. If this is what you need, as seems likely, you will probably need a 1/8 inch chisel to clean the old cane spline out of the groove. Lee Valley has a chisel specifically designed for this task, if you are planning to do a lot of this, but any chisel will work.

Greg
 
Didn't the WWII era canoes have slat seats?

Yes they did as Tom mentioned. However, my research so far indicates that the slat seats most frequently appear on canoes with serial numbers in the high 144K range while his canoe as described at http://forums.wcha.org/showthread.php?11568 is in the 135K range.

My next research project is to determine when Old Town switched from using straight ribs to tapered ones. This appears to be between 1914 and 1919 but I am still narrowing this down. Does anyone have a canoe in this range who can send some pictures and the serial number (at the risk of thread drift)? It is also interesting to note that the Indian Old Town canoe shown at http://forums.wcha.org/attachment.php?attachmentid=27140&d=1383597034 and described at http://forums.wcha.org/showthread.php?11487 has tapered ribs. This change may be another suggestion that came from J. R. Robertson. Another mystery,

Benson
 
I have found that the quality of cane can be very spotty among suppliers. Jeanne Bratton is one of our expert caners and has taught many others the ins and out of caning. Jeanne gets her cane from a particular supplier who reliably provides cane of consistent high quality. Unfortunately I don't have access to that info where I am right now but I'm sure that if you send a private messag to Al Bratton Jeanne will answer and give you that info. Jeanne also has a great handout that walks you through the entire process.
 
This is what Lee Valley currently sells. Weavemaster Brand. 270ft hanks.
 

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