OK! So here’s the photo story of re-rushing that chair.
The seat is wider at the front than the back. When I took it apart I found that there were lots of tacks holding the paper rush material, which looped right back to the front rail rather than going all the way to the back. That continued until the un-rushed length of rail at the front was the same size as the whole back rail. I tried to do the same. Here’s the start —
— and a close-up of one corner —
The biggest problem with the first coil of rush was that it got all tangled. I didn’t want to pull the full length of rush through the middle every time, so I tried to keep it coiled, but didn’t do anything to bind the coil together. It was a mess! When it came to the second coil, I worked out a way to hold the coil together with rubber bands. In this picture, after three evenings work, I’m almost done.
You can see that the two coils are slightly different colors. Oh well. Whadda ya want with natural materials. That’s a lot of corrugated cardboard stuffed in between the layers of rush.
And here it is, in the living room, all set to sit on.
And sit on it I did. It’s good and firm. I like that it came out looking exactly like rush seating is supposed to look. Conoisseurs of rush seating will probably note that there’s a slight gap in the center of the chair where the rush is not really parallel. I say, not bad for a newbie, and it keeps my butt off the floor. Maybe next time, and in the right foreground of that last picture you can see a corner of a rocking chair which is a candidate for being “next time”, I’ll be better at keeping all the turns of rush parallel and perpendicular.
Oh, and that Lincoln rocker behind the rush chair? Needs recaning. That’ll be tougher, but some day.