Well the cane weave finally let go in my seat so I figure its time to pull the thwarts and seat frame from my Old Town Discovery and refinish 'em. How many coats of what do I need to slather on?
Also, has anyone tried weaving a new seat like this http://www.knotworkn.com/resources/Canoe+Seat+Frame5b.jpg ?
spar varnish
I usually prefer varnish on thwarts and seat frames but I use some type of penetrating oil on gunwales.
You could use a urethane varnish if you like. I find that bright finish on the gunwales is subject to getting scraped off to easily and after it is all scraped up it doesn’t look too good.
The thwarts are reatively easy to get at to reoil, so sometimes I will just use oil on those.
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You may want to save yourself a lot of effort and buy new stuff from edscanoe.com. very good people to work with, and their prices are extremely reasonable…great workmanship too.
Chair weave
I’ve done a weave that I think was more difficult than the one you pictured. It was worth the effort, IMO, and will outlast cane even if abused, I think. I have a link to the instructions for the one you pictured and next time I need to redo seats I intend to use that pattern. Should work very well. Use braided poly cord to minimize stretching.
http://i85.photobucket.com/albums/k63/swb9321/BUSH1126.jpg
weave
Thanks Steve, thats what I needed to hear. I’m thinking of using parachute chord, that stuff is really easy to work with. I was thinking about leather chordage but that would look out of place on a royalex canoe.
Oh, and I would much rather put the sweat equity into my canoe than throw more money at it, I will check out that site for other gear though.