PATTON WOMAN GIVES NEW LIFE TO OLD CHAIRS

Vera Webb Yount and relatives sit on chairs whose seats have been woven by Yount. She describes the weaving process to Donna Brotherton and Tommy Thele.

To some people a good chair is as important as a good cigar. Since most people probably spend half their lives sitting, a comfortable "landing pad" can be a necessity.

Vera Webb Yount of Patton considers comfort -- and support -- when she weaves splint chair seats out of her home on Highway 51.

Splint, also known as slat, chair seats are made of wood that has been cut in long thin strips and woven in various patterns. Chairs on which splints can be used must have seat rails so splints can be wound around them.

Splint is suitable for chairs simple in design, with few turnings, such as the early American ladder-back chairs, the kind of chairs easily found at garage sales.

Yount gets most of her chairs from auctions. "I'd pick up the old chairs and restore them," she said. "And I used to have an antiques shop where I'd sell them."

Weaving splints into seats is an art Yount first learned of "a long time ago." Arthur Hartle, father of her friend, Dorothy Ellis, practiced the craft and showed her how it was done, "although at that time I wasn't too interested," she admitted.

Years later Yount decided to indulge herself. She sent away for some books on seat weaving and those, coupled with what she remembered from Hartle, were enough to get her started.

The first seat she weaved was on a tiny rocking chair. "I remember it was fun doing it," she said, pointing to the rocking chair behind a larger chair that's ready to be "seated."

Splint is generally obtained from native ash, hickory and oak. It can also be cut from tropical palm trees. The native splint is cut from selected second-growth timber with straight grain. Ash splints, says Yount, wear well and are sturdy; hickory splints often vary slightly in width, and can be especially pleasing to look at; oak splints splinter badly.

The tropical palm tree from which materials like splint are made grows in the Indian Archipelago, China, India and Ceylon. Without its leaves, it is known as rattan. The outer bark, stripped in various widths, is sold as cane.

Although Yount has a book on making cane seats for chairs, she prefers weaving ash splints.

Once she's chosen the chair frame, she scrubs it down: "Some are so old they have layers of paint on them -- I clean them up -- some have gobs of enamel on them, I get it all off."

If there are old splints on the chair, Yount cuts them away from the seat. She pulls out all nails and tacks, and cleans any dust from the seat rails. If she refinishes the wood, she lets it dry before weaving.

The splints are soaked in water until saturated. This, says Yount, who's 75, makes them softer and more flexible.

Weaving is done in two directions. The first is called warping -- it's the wrapping of the splint around the seat rails. This is done from the back to the front of the chair, or the long way of the opening, so that the second step, called weaving, can be done across the open rails, from side to side or the short way of the opening.

All splints warped one way on the top of the seat are at right angles to those woven the other way. If the front of the seat is wider than the back, Yount warps the center first and fills in the corner later with short lengths.

"The pieces do come in different lengths," she said, pulling a long length of ash splint from a pan of water.

As one length is stretched as far as it will go, Young uses a clothes pin to clamp it to the chair so it doesn't slip while she pulls another splint from the water.

The splints are joined together on the underside of the chair where they are stapled together.

"The old-timers would say they would cut slits in the slats to secure them, but this is easier," said Yount, crunching the stapler. She then uses pliers to flatten the sharp edges of the staples.

Once the warping of the seat is complete, it's time to start the weaving, and how it is weaved determines the design.

For example, a common design is created by weaving the splints over two warped splints, then under two, etc. Other designs depend on the number of weaves over and under the warped splints. A geometric design is possible by weaving alternate rows alike, and diagonal designs can be created by moving weaves at angles.

"I do different designs," said Yount, who demonstrated the art last weekend at a crafts fair at Oak Tree State Park.

When finished with a seat, a knife is used to trim off hairs or rough places. Splint that has a hard glossy surface can be left without a finish, or several coats of a thin type of penetrating wood sealer can be applied to both sides of the seat.

The seat can be darkened to blend with the color of the chair finish, and a sealer can be used over the stain. Wax can also be used, says Yount, but it may stain clothing and collect dust.

Yount says she's not exactly sure how long it takes to do a chair seat, because she's never clocked herself; however, she says she can "do one in a day without hurrying."

If the weather's hot, she'll splint seats in her home that's air conditioned; in more moderate weather, she might move the operation to large metal shed nearby, where her antiques store was.

Yount has been quilting for 30 years and she says a lot of people know about that, but not too many people are aware of her other talent.

"Just recently, like at these craft shows, I've been showing off," she said, laughing. "It's good for me to get out and mingle with the public."