[Garth Herrick]

It is important to secure the corners of the stretcher bars with two screws each to keep the corners from slipping and changing alignment during the application of tacks with a hammer. After this, double check that the corner to corner dimensions still match so the canvas will be square in the end.

Now let's lay out the canvas and cut it to size. For these heavy duty stretcher bars, I allow an extra 2 1/4 inches in cutting the linen, to wrap around the sides and back of the stretchers and leave enough linen for the canvas pliers to get a proper grip.