by Diane Widler Wenzel: Triangle strong painting support discovered while cleaning studio

The certain tolerance that I have for chaos in our home reached a limit when I had to move very large paintings to get into a cabinet for frequently needed supplies ranging from sketch books to picture hanging wire. Worse yet too many painting rags, a large box of acrylic paints on the floor, because every inch of the work bench was covered and piled high. When starting to organize the mess, I didn't expect to discover a better engineered way to make stretcher bars for large paintings from the poor quality of second growth wood now available.
        Organizing my studio space is easier if I can eliminate some of the stuff in it first.

        Looking through my work, I could not bear to select a single picture to retire by making it into a floor covering, tablecloth, or into a practical useful thing. Sifting through my work and retiring a few at a time periodically strengthened the meaningfulness of my personal body of work. After years of sifting, I have come to the point where I feel almost all my remaining works are worthy of keeping.        There were, however, the two large ones leaning against the cabinet. They were from Habitat for Humanity for $7.00 each. I thought they would be good experiments or canvases I could use for play with neighborhood kids. So last summer I  prepared them by painting acrylic colored gesso over the original owner's paintings. A few weeks ago I experimented on one to figure out what combination of glasses or contact lenses would work over my cataract replacements focused for only near vision.  But the other canvas had mildew where it was water damaged. The neighbor kids did not come to paint yet on a damaged canvas. I didn't want to put a lot of effort into painting something that would not be healthy to hang in our home so I felt good about preparing it for the bonfire.  I ripped through the canvas with my utility knife and pried the canvas free. Then the rough knotty pine completely straight was revealed to my amazement

How could the stretcher bars be straight and true made from such rough knotty wood?  My experience was that clear straight grained wood is necessary to make a canvas that would hang flat on the wall. All the warped stretcher bars to my experience had knots.
          The secret was revealed - triangle strength.  The triangular shaped corners kept the corners square and the holes in the pegboard helped to keep the paintings light. For such a big canvas it is amazing that no brace bars were needed. Laminated to the wood is quarter round that has a triangular cross section with one side curved. the triangular shape also prevented the support from interfering with the painting. So strong is the combination of corners and the lamination that there is no need for elaborate brace bars which double the weight of commercial stretcher bars. Another plus to this construction is the relative thickness. I could store two of these to every one of the good commercially built frames this size.

The canvas under the stretcher bars is also usable. The mildewed portion is trimmed away. The rest of the canvas waits for the neighborhood children to come and play with it. The canvas is heavy enough to become an area floor covering or table protector if not wall hanging.