Jackson's : Professional Wooden Stretcher Bars : For 18mm Deep Bars

Jackson’s Professional Wooden Stretcher Bars offer a high quality, sustainable solution for artists who want to build their own canvases. They are PEFC-certified, ensuring they come from responsibly managed forests where biodiversity is preserved and felled trees are replanted. Using European wood also helps reduce the carbon footprint.

With a depth of 18mm and a width of 43mm, Jackson’s Professional Wooden Stretcher Bars are solid and easy to assemble. They are sold in pairs. Matching centre bars are available with a profile dimension of 13 x 43mm and are designed to fit stretcher bars with a single centre bar slot on each side. These slots are included on stretcher bars measuring 76cm (30in) or longer.

In the Professional range, the 18mm deep bars accommodate only a single centre bar. However, the 43mm deep bars feature two crossbar slots, allowing centre bars to pass over one another. This design makes it possible to use both horizontal and vertical centre bars to form a crossbar, providing additional support for larger canvases. Centre bars are sold individually.

For more in-depth information on stretcher bars, read Everything You Need to Know About Stretcher Bars on the Jackson's Blog.

You can fit the bars together without tools, but a mallet (or a hammer with a scrap of wood) and a measuring tape or stick can be helpful. The bars come with small wooden wedges, also called keys, which are used later, after stretching, to add a bit more tension at the corners before you start painting. To learn more about the canvas wedges that come with stretcher bars, see this Jackson’s Blog post.

Each bar has a slot at the end so the corners fit together at a right angle, creating strong, stable joints. When assembling, make sure the bevelled edge of the bars faces inward, forming the inside edge of your canvas frame. Once all the corners are slotted together and any centre bar is inserted, use a mallet to tap everything fully into place.

For step-by-step guidance on how to stretch canvas, watch A Guide to Stretching Canvas on the Jackson's Blog.