Alright, from the top you can't tell just how bad it is.
But from the bottom you can really tell just how bad it was. If I had wanted to, I could have pushed my hand right through it (almost did).
So, first things first, I had to take off the outside wood. This chair was finished with wood (see the pictures above), and that was in the way of the rushing. Then, I had to tear out all of the rush. Man was this rush old. It was clearly done into the 19th century (there was wood instead of cardboard inside of it), and the rush was clearly homemade. The seat was homemade too. The inside edges were clearly made with hand tools.
Once all of that was off, I did a couple of things I should have done on the last chair. First, I soaked the rush for only about 20 minutes. 2 hours last time was WAY too long. The rush kept breaking, and once it dried it left a few gaps where if you look you can see the cardboard showing through. Secondly, as you can see, the front of the chair is wider than the back. Because of this, I ran into problems with the last one. I made do, but it's not as clean as this one turned out. So, I measured the back wood piece, and measured the front one. Then I put caning only on the front edges so that the front and back ended up the same length:
Once the edges were the same width, I started doing the caning (rushing really, since I was using rush and not cane) around the entire seat. Like last time, I just kept going. It was alot easier this time because I knew what to expect, and I cut the rush into more manageable pieces.
Once you're a few inches in, add your cardboard. I used the cardboard from the box that the rush came in.
Once the rushing was done, screw the finishing boards back in (this was easier said than done. Some of the boards split while removing them, so a lot of glue played a part here.
The finished product. It's so much more firm and comfortable! It was so much easier and cleaner using the measuring method at the beginning. I'll have to get some black fingernail polish to clean up a few places where the paint came off while re-drilling, but otherwise it's as good as new!
