Baskets, furniture, fences and other products are woven from vines. It is made from the branches of bird cherry, willow, grapes, alder, raspberry, rakita, willow, pickle, hazel, rattan. Willow rods are considered the best for weaving.
How do you get willow vines for basket weaving and furniture?
A vine suitable for weaving various products is obtained from one-year or two-year-old willow shoots. The best harvesting period is considered to be spring, October, December and January. The rods cut at this time are well sanded, they are flexible, strong. If the product needs to be decorated with openwork weaving, thin branches are used, which are harvested exclusively in spring with the beginning of active sap flow in the willow.
The vine for weaving baskets and furniture should be long enough (70-100 cm), straight, flexible, with a minimum taper. That is, the butt diameter should differ little from the diameter of the upper part of the bar. On average, its cross section is 5-6 mm. For the manufacture of hoops of baskets and the frame of furniture, rods with a diameter of 10-20 mm are taken. The best branches are those whose surface after sanding is smooth and shiny.
But the main indicator of the quality of the vine is its core. The best is the one with the thinnest one. To perform high-quality sanding, the vine is boiled in special containers. Then it is dried and sorted. For the manufacture of exquisite products, the vine is split into 2-3 parts with a special splitter. This job requires a certain skill that comes with experience. Then the rods are stored where they will not get wet and dirty. Then they begin to manufacture the product.
Rattan furniture
Rattan is often used for weaving baskets and furniture. This is the name of the liana growing in the tropics. Its stem can be up to a quarter of a kilometer long. Therefore, rattan is one of the longest plants in the world. Its table is flat, flexible, without knots, with a hard core. All this makes rattan the most successful choice for weaving furniture. It is also suitable for the manufacture of smaller products. The procurement of this material for weaving furniture is made all year round.
The material for weaving is harvested, cut into rods of the required length and boiled in large containers. In order to get white rattan, it is boiled for an hour. It takes two hours for the bar to take on a darker shade. If you need a dark brown rattan, boil it for at least 4 hours. Next, the rods are removed and sanded while they are hot. To do this, use gloves made of coarse fabric or a special tool: splitting. After that, each bar is split using the same splitter as in the manufacture of willow stems. This is how the rattan gets its presentation.
