Stretching Your Own Canvas

In the article I posted a few days ago, I mentioned stretching your own canvas. So today I thought I would actually talk about that in detail for those that are interested. I'll show you everything involved from start to finish. (Well I will leave varnishing your painting for another article.) But I will take you from cutting your wood to priming and stretching your canvas.

The basic idea is you have 4 pieces of wood that are joined into a frame, and you have a piece of canvas that is larger than the frame by at least a couple inches on all sides (preferably more). You then pull or stretch the canvas over the frame and secure it in place, but I'll get to that later let's start with the frame. The wood pieces used for stretching canvases are called stretcher bars or strips. You can get wood molding by the foot from a frame wholesaler, called strainer bar. Whether you use stretcher bars or strainer, they are both strips of wood cut with an angle or curve on the front so that when the canvas is stretched over it, it sits only on the outer edge. Otherwise you get a large underlying wood print all the way around your painting.

The much easier route is to buy stretcher bars; individual wood strips sold by the inch ($1- $3ea.) with grooves cut in the end for easy attachment. You just insert the grooves to join each side and then hammer in strips of wood to wedge them tightly together, (very easy). Stretcher bars come in standard sizes and are sold at art supply stores, or for more heavy-duty professional bars try these online sellers: Madison Art Shop, Upper Canada Stretchers.

If you use strainer stock, (available from wholesale frame suppliers for >$1 a foot) you will need to cut the wood yourself. You can even just get a miter box and cut it with a handsaw (it doesn't have to be pretty, you can sand it down after if you want.) Remember to measure from the outside edge of your cut; end to end. This will give you your finished size.

You will need a vice grip or two for this next part. Take your now cut strips of wood and join the two opposite ends, taking care that you actually have the correct corresponding pieces. Join them permanently by putting the two ends in the vice with wood glue in between, getting a fair amount of glue on both pieces of the wood, don't just do one side. Coming from a professionally trained framer, you can never use too much glue when joining wood molding, just make sure the vice is really tight and wipe the excess glue off. While the glue is setting you can gently tap a small nail into the end, one on each side for larger pieces. Leave it set, depending on your wood glue, but 40 minutes should be plenty of time. Repeat this for the opposite side and then the two remaining angles. And there you have your frame, it doesn't have to be especially pretty, you're just going to put canvas over it.

Like I said before, obviously the outer edge of the frame is the size of your finished painting. Get your canvas, (cut from your own roll is the most inexpensive way, or any art store usually can cut you a custom-sized piece) a few inches larger than each side of your frame. If your frame is 16 x 20" get a piece that is 22 x 26"(3 inches extra for each side), this gives you plenty of room to work with.

The canvas can be bought primed or un-primed. Acrylic gesso is what is usually used to prime canvas. It's used to seal the fabric so that the paint just doesn't sink into and get absorbed by the fabric, (although Helen Frankenthaler just soak-stained much of her canvases). Buying pre-gessoed canvas is what I like to do, but if you're really gung-ho you can do it yourself. Just get a tub of gesso and some cheap brushes and cover the unstretched canvas (or stretched I suppose it doesn't matter) with the paint in 3 or 4 good coats.

So now you have your piece of canvas and you're frame and you're ready to stretch. You need canvas pliers, (long flat-nosed pliers). Thin pliers will just pull and tear the canvas. You also need an industrial staplegun, found at your local hardware store. You're going to shoot the staples through the canvas into the back of the frame, (this way the staples don't show and you won't need an outer frame). To start stretching, center the canvas over the frame, pull the edge over on one side and put a staple into the back of the wood in the center. Then use your canvas pliers to pull the opposite side (again from the center) pretty tight and shoot a staple in the back of the wood through the canvas.

Then choose a remaining side and again stretch from the center and put a staple in the back, until all four sides have one staple in the center point securing it. These are your test points, if the canvas is reasonably tight and you have the same 2 or 3 inches of extra canvas edge all the way around, continue to stretch your canvas. Otherwise pull the test points out and re-center it. To continue stretching start with one side and find the approximate center point between the edge and the center-point you just made. Stretch the canvas and shoot the staple in. Do this for the other end of the same side, again finding the point between the center and the edge. So now you have 3 staples in this side. Repeat this for the other three sides, and hopefully your canvas should still be centered.

Continue to pull and shoot your canvas following the pattern of; starting from the center and working your way out, going side by side. If you stretch one side at a time, it's going to pull the canvas in ways that will not make it flat when it's done. Remember we are shooting the staples into the back of the wood frame. It's a little more of a pain in the butt than stapling in the side, but it looks nicer and you get a gallery quality stretched canvas.

So all in all you really don't need a lot of equipment (in addition to the wood and fabric) to completely stretch your own canvas. You need a miter box and a hand saw, a vice or two, canvas pliers, wood glue, nails and a staplegun. As I said, the easy thing to do is to go with standard sizes and use the pre-cut stretcher bars. Taking into account the time spent cutting and joining strainer stock, this probably saves you money. Stretcher strips are maybe not quite as sturdy as strainer stock but they allow for tension and are easier to join, just make sure to get the ones that are 1-1/2 inches thick.

The easiest thing to do of course is just to buy your canvas pre-stretched, it is a lot less hassle. But if you want to really get into all the processes of creating every element of you work, you can have fun doing it, and it is a lot less expensive especially in the case of larger canvases. Take for example a 40 x 60" size gallery-stretched (stapled on the back and 1-1/2" tall) canvas. It can run you 50 or 60 bucks. Compared with less than twenty, easy, to do it yourself; after you've made a small investment in the equipment listed above. I am not going to say I don't buy pre-stretched canvases, but I have stretched pleeeenty of my own and I am darn good at it if you ask me. I hope this article helps you with your artistic endeavors. -Ed T.

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