Make a DIY rattan chair with rattan mesh very easily. How to make a wicker chair

I have wanted to work with cane webbing for a long time and I had so much fun working with it to make this chair. I have all the plans and all the details you need to know to make this yourself. It's a great easy weekend project so let's get right to it. The chair is built using two by three boards. Now you could rip off the rounded edges if you like, but I decided to keep them.

The cuts are pretty straightforward and can be made either with a miter cell or a circular cell and the plants have the complete cut list to help you. Once the cuts were made, I sanded all the boards. It is always best to sand them before assembly so you get the best finish. It is a lot of sanding but a few tunes on your headphones can definitely help. Next up where the pocket holds.

How to make a wicker chair

The drill and the jig are set up for 1 1/2 inch material. The plans guide you through exactly where these pocket holes need to be Now to assemble. I started with the side frames. I attached the arms and the bottom apron to the back and the front legs using pocket hole screws.

Then the front of the arm is attached to the legs using a countersink screw. I used a countersink drill bit to make the holes and then a larger drill bit to accommodate a towel that I will be using later to fill the holes and these are the two armrests now for the slats.

The plants actually called for two by three boards, but I am using two by four boards because I had enough of these in my scrapbook pile. I mean, you could even use a 2 by 6 board if you wanted to. I attached them with pocket holes crews to make the slats, and I would tell you that I measured the spacing between them, but the truth is that I just eyeballed it.

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Now, with the slats ready, I actually realized that I had to attach the front of the chair to the arms first so that I could access the pocket holes. So I went ahead and attached that and built the frame. Then I attached the slats to the entire frame with pocket holes.

And that is the chair complete, but not yet. I actually forgot to add pocket holes to connect back apron to the chair. So yeah, I fixed the problem and the last part was to add the back support on the top.

Now for the finish, I added dowels to the holes in the arms and trimmed them with a flash cut saw and then I sanded it. I went ahead and gave the entire chair a coat of dark brown gel stain. I've really started to like using gel stains for bare wood because I don't have to use pre stain conditioner to get the consistent finish.

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Now for the cane webbing. The cane webbing is actually attached to frames that are inserted into the arm and the back. These frames are built out of one by two boards and are just about 1/4 inch smaller than the openings to accommodate for the cane webbing thickness. I built these using pocket hose screws and went ahead and stained them.

So it's time to add the cane webbing. Now cane webbing comes in A roll like this, and it really is quite stiff and it's kind of hard to manage and to get a nice tight stretch across the frame. So the way to get it to work is to soak this in lukewarm water for about half an hour. And you also want to kind of.

Pulled it flat inside the water. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to cut it up into the sizes that I need and then put those in the bathtub with some warm water. The gain webbing is quite easy to cut with a regular scissor, and once I cut it to size I took it over to the bathtub and laid it down in the lukewarm water. Used a few bottles to keep it flat inside the bathtub for about 30 minutes.

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Well actually it was more like 2 hours. Then I brought them over to the workbench one at a time, laid them out and started attaching it to the frame. The webbing was noticeably more flexible and a lot easier to work with. Attaching it is like any upholstery project. I started with one side and then pulled the opposite side tight and attached, followed by the other two sides and then the corners.

With the cane webbing, you do need to use a lot of staples because you want to make sure that none of the fibers start to unravel. Also, you want to try your best to keep everything lined up, and the webbing itself is a good guide for that with all its lines on it. 

I did use a hammer to sort of make sure that all the staples were nice and tight inside and wouldn't come off. I took it over to the chair to insert it into the arm.

I did need to use a mallet to push it in because it was nice and tight, but then I realized that the cane was still sticking out. So I took out the frame and cut off the cane fibers till about half width of the frame and this time it worked perfectly.

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The cane was a little loose when it was still wet, but as it dried up it became nice and tight. In fact, there were a few wrinkles in the back that I was worried about, but they totally disappeared when it was all dried up the next day. And that is the chair. 

It was super easy to build and I have the plans available for you. Thank you so much for watching and let me know what you think of this project in the comments below.

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