The Framers Forum

Hi
New to the forum and new to framing as well. However science I’ve started I’ve noticed there’s a big demand for canvases to be stretched. Has any one had training on it? Is it worth it. Or easier to give it a practice and trial and error.
Thanks

I'm not sure there's enough to it to warrant training on its own, maybe as part of a larger course.

Have you done any, and are you having any issues?

I've never heard of a canvas stretching course and anyway how many canvases do you need to be able to stretch, before you are ready to go ahead and stretch customers own canvases? I wish fortunate when I started stretching canvases, the company I was assigned to for my initial training had hundreds of cheap foreign oil paintings and after showing me how to stretch them, started me off with a few that did not matter too much, if I got it wrong.

Once they thought I was O.K., I had at least a hundred to do for their post Christmas sale at the time, I was staggered how many they managed to sell in such a short space of time. There's a certain amount of having the right feel for the appropriate level of tension and using a manual staple and the cheapest possible stretching pliers, will ready do your hands in very quickly if you have much to do at that time.

I very quickly learnt to use a pair of cantilever type stretcher pliers and a decent pneumatic stapler very quickly, after starting with much cheaper equipment and getting cramps and pains as a result. I don't have any difficulty stretching canvases these days, but it's not exactly one of the jobs that I'm looking forward to doing. I don't much like stretching canvases which just don't have large enough margins to easily grip sucesfully grip with the stretcher pliers and unfortunately, there seem to be too many like that for my liking.