The Framers Forum

I've been looking at the possibility of making myself a ratchet strap operated canvas stretching tool. It seems pretty straight forward, but are they a worthwhile thing to have and do they save time when stretching canvases? I've no experience of anything like this at all, but I'm moving from one shop to another and while this will mean that I will have much more space, I need to turn some jobs around much faster make a larger set-up cover it's costs.

My thanks in anticipation,
Mark.

I had the quickmate one and it works fine, but I actually found it no easier than using a good set of handheld stretcher pliers and it was a little slower.

Thanks Chris,

Mmmm, That's interesting! For me the really large canvases are a bit of a pain as at present I not only don't have much room, but I feel like I would cope better if I had an extra hand free.

I'm not particularly sure whether this will turn out to be an advantage, or not, but I am thinking that maybe the ratchet strap job might make life easier on the larger canvases and in veiw of what you have just said, the stretcher pliers might be a better solution for more manageable, smaller canvases.

I don't reckon that it would be much of a problem to make my own ratchet strap stretching tool at quite low cost, so it might still be something worth thinking about.