I wouldn't do it if they were my chairs. You kinda need more than one inch of wood for the nails, aside from the issue of altering the chairs which maybe you don't care about but it would bug me on a chair of this quality.
Do they have seats now, and if so, could you post photos? I just spent 10-15 minutes looking at images online and found at least two sets with real rush seats (not paper rush, which looks a lot like paper cord but isn't), two or three sets with paper cord in a basket weave, and one beautiful set with original caned seats in a basket weave pattern.
Real rush is tricky to work with but you could do the same weave in paper cord with less trouble. I would go that route rather than pounding a hundred nails into each chair and risk splitting the rails over time. It is easily reversed if someone in the future wants to restore them to the original, whatever that was.
More cord-related heartbreak! But in all seriousness, thank you for the guidance. The chairs that I have have the basket weave pattern with this...I'm not sure what to call it...4 ply caning?
The seats are in fine structural shape, but have some stains. The wood, on the other hand, is in dire need of some cleaning and oiling, so I want to remove the seats to tend to that. As I mentioned in the original post, I am also simply interested in undertaking this challenge for the first time.
Which version are you referring to as the original caned seats in a basket weave pattern?
I'm leaning towards rush style seats with danish cord. A few questions about that: how much would I need per chair? Would I use the 1/8" laced cord? Are there any special considerations give that I'd but using cord and not rush?
Same here---I would be thrilled to have those chairs with those seats. They're very, very special.
You can definitely clean and oil the frames with the seats in place. Just don't slop the oil on, obviously---work carefully and maybe always have the chair tilted so that the seat is above the area you're working on and gravity works with you. You could even mask off the seat but I always worry that this will give me a sense of false security. Oil can still seep under masking tape if you aren't really careful.
We have talked about that weaving material here before---not sure if it was in one of the three big threads about seat weaving or in another thread. Someone who wasn't a regular at the time popped in and explained what it is. I *think* it's actually a paper product, not cane---but I could be wrong. If it's paper, you can probably clean it with soap flakes, which will lighten the stains and maybe get rid of them altogether. But maybe not, I dunno.
(At my local ReStore there is a newish bed headboard woven with that stuff--I'll give it a closer look next time i'm over there, if it's still there.)
The rush-style seat (which has a name in Denmark but I can never remember what it is) takes some practice to master. I cringe to think of my first efforts at it. I have a Wegner rocking chair whose original seat was intact but had some light stains. At the time I didn't know about cleaning paper cord with soap flakes, so I ripped it out and started weaving. It didn't look great but it was so much work that, and my standards were much lower at that time, that I thought OK, just leave it. I read that sealing it with shellac was standard practice (???!!! no, it's not!) so I promptly RUINED it by spraying shellac on it. It came out terribly blotchy and no amount of additional spraying would even it out.
So i ripped it out and rewove it---two more times. It still looked like crap but I was sick of working on it and left it for quite a few years. Finally I learned out to do the weave properly and redid it and now it's ok. I've done many more seats in that weave since but I'm not as good as the Danish guys who do the originals---whereas I CAN do the basketweave seats like on M
No, natural definitely rush---the set of chairs is on the Marketplace on this site, actually.
The color makes me think they are newer but I don't know enough about how natural rush changes in color over time to say for sure.
I couldn't find the photo of the underside that I saw yesterday. Obviously it wasn't one of these chairs so it must have been some one chair that I'm confusing with these, after looking at so many photos. But regardless, natural rush seats have a lot of knots, or lot of little ends sticking out at the turns--just how the material is.
In west Europe that would be easier to find them; however I have rarely seen moller chairs with paper cord in very bad status for sale. You see paper cord dirty, worn out or sometimes a bit loose. It seems to me that paper cord of good quality is a very durable solution. I think in Germany you could find some for as little as 70 euro/chair or less sometimes, but you need to keep looking.
I see paper cord chairs all the time that people got for ridiculously cheap (one was $4!) because the seats are worn, dirty, sagging, and/or have broken cords. Grown kids get them as hand-me-downs and want to buy new chairs as soon as they can afford them. People assume the seats can't be repaired (one guy told me it was a "lost art"!) People assume it will cost a ton of money to redo them because they look at all that weaving and think it must take days and days to do. And some people just want new stuff, even if it's cheap junk from Target or Ikea.
Keep looking, you'll find something.
PS, my best score was a Wegner CH23 for $10 at a junk auction. It was absolutely filthy and the seat was completely trashed. I still have it.
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