How to Stretch a Canvas

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Today is going to be great because I am starting a new painting. And to do that, I need to put together a canvass and a structure. So what I have done is I have gone out and purchased a stretch bar and these are really great. Take a look at it.

They are nice and thick and they just are solid, really, really quality. And I love this, they make it so easy. I mean someday we will make one from scratch but right now we are just going to need the one from the store.

Okay, so what we will do is to use the four pieces and you just kind of put them together. Sometimes it goes stubborn, you want to use a hammer. So what I do is lay it out on the floor, fix this and then we will just put all the pieces together.

Okay, so let us put it together, I am going to kind of put them together in the new bar. Whack it with a hammer. Perfect, now all the corners are put together as we see. So I have got me my special brand.

Now the next thing is we could carry this around but before we do that, I want to make sure that this thing stays square because sometimes, we stretch it one way and it might have the tendency to tweak and we are going to have a bad shaped canvas, we do not want that do we?

No, no, and no; so we need to brace all the corners. Now there are several different ways to do that. The one I will be using is just simply take a 2x8 or 1x2 and then I cut them with the little angles.

Okay now, I am going to shoot the thing right here. I have been going around on all four corners and I am going to make sure everything is square before we actually attach it. Do it. So what I did first is I take my angled 1x2 and I am going to predrill using a drill bit that is larger than the head of the screw that I am going to be using. I am just going to get going right here so I can sink the head in. Just do do this in all the pieces.

And yes, okay here we go. This is better. I think we got it all square. We first have to check that it is square and that is where it is good. I need to hammer on these now. Put that in. We are going to tweak it until it is right. Then you can take this, our little corner brace and everything is all ready to do rock and roll. I am just going to simply screw it in.

And it is so easy to do this with all the four corners. We will have a nice square very solid structure to put our canvass around. Yes we are all done here, is this not great? Just what we need, a nice solid canvass. It is not going to bump or anything like that. Now, we need our canvass. What I like to do is cut these, just a little bit bigger, not too much larger. We roll it out and lay it down. We get our scissors. I just like to make it so we can fold it up over like that. Not too much extra. Let us cut it off. We will be ready to work.

So here we have canvass on the floor stretched out and now all we need to do is tuck this round and stapler, as simple as that. First I need to tell you about, you really should if you are going to do any quantity of these things, have a stretch of our tool I do not know if I have the formal name or not but that works for me, stretcher bar tool. So we are going to use that and we are going to use a staple gun. I like to use an electric one. It really saves yourself from the pain of applying pressure to it with a regular one, if you are going to be doing this a lot so here we are, the thing is laid out.

I like to do this on the floor. I know there is stuff underneath and you clean the floor and I am using pre crammed canvass and with that, it is really easy to clean everything else so I can have a perfect surface for painting. Back to this, what we do is start on one side, pull it up. You are going to want to staple it and then we are going to top it around to the exact opposite side and pull it up around. That is nice. I do not really want you to use too much muscle. Let us see some pull going on there.

I think I will pull up at this corner. Do you see what I am doing? I am going around in a circle, not exactly a circle but one side and then the other side. I am going to take this and I am going to pull this under. Do you see what I am doing, I am just tucking this under. Then just pushing back on it and then it pulls it right in there and then you just staple it. So you can see, just take your stretcher tool and pull the canvass back, staple it and we are going around, here, there, there, there so we just go back and forth on either opposite side of the canvasses until we get to the corners. Then I will show you what we do there.

So we are down to this corner, this is so great. What we are going to do is I put another staple here. Nice and snug. Then one over here, not too close to the corner, there is still a couple of inches here and then what I want you to do is fold it over so it is tucked under. Then we come up with a very nice clean edge and it is very professional. Yes, here, finished. Is this not perfect? I love it. Now, I have got a whole new canvass to paint. What am I going to paint?