This appears to be a great system but still needs a few small improvements. After I try a chop/wrap I'll let this forum know how it went.
OK. I have over a dozen canvases to wrap and a large order of EasyWrappe Pro bars of various sizes arrived today. As it turns out, almost all the images have fractional inch sizes in at least one dimension, so I have to chop bars to size, as I expected. Plus, BC doesn't offer bars in some sizes-19", 25" and others that would have worked if they had been available.
Cutting to the chase, it takes about 20 minutes for me to prep, chop, assemble and stretch a custom sized canvas. Let me explain the issues that crop up when not using their precut bars, and the simple solutions.
I have a power miter saw, and it's much better than trying to do the chopping with a hand saw. Some of my cuts were a quarter inch or less from an end. When an end is cut from these bars, the plastic corner braces/guides featured in the demo video no longer work, as a needed notch in the bar is removed or it's placement from the bar end is changed by the cut and that notch will now no longer fit appropriately in the corner brace.
The braces are a convenience but not a necessity. Measure the distance from each edge of the canvas to the point at which the image and border for that side meet and transfer that measurement to the back of the canvas, then draw a rectangle on the back that represents the extent of the image. Everything outside the rectangle is border. Now you can easily lay the bars along the drawn lines, corner to corner and use the double sided tape that is on each bar to hold it to the canvas in the proper alignment.
When chopping off one end, the piece of tape that folds over the cut end is also removed, so buy a roll of heavy duty double sided tape and just replace what you cut off. Easy.
Continue to trim the outside edge of canvas as shown in the demo video and apply the bead of bookbinder's glue that BC sells at along the edge of the bars as they lay on the canvas, then fold as necessary and insert the U-pins/nails supplied with the bars. On an uncut bar, there are slots you can insert and hammer the pins into, but a chopped bar will be lacking these on at least one side of each corner. In any case, simply use a pin to make a little indentation and drill a starter hole for the pins to be hammered into. The started hole itself may not even be needed-the pins are sturdy enough just to hammer in.
While not as fast to assemble as precut bars, chopping these to a needed length is a great boon if you frequently need to accommodate odd sizes and the results are just as good. I should mention that BC sells an extender bar that will allow you to simply cut a piece out of the middle of a longer bar with a straight, non-beveled cut. The extender bar will hold the two new lengths together to create the needed length without destroying the ability to use the corner braces or the need for any of the other work arounds I came up with to deal with the removal of a bar end. But you have to buy the extenders and I don't see the time saved by their use to be significant.
The EasyWrappe system is pretty darn good. The resulting pieces look very clean and avoid the hassle of staples and the sometimes awkward folded corners on traditional stretcher bars. If you just do the occasional stretch and don't mind limiting you images to the sizes you can make from precut bars, it's a super-simple way to finish your canvases. The results are sturdy and the 1.75" thick bars look good even on smaller pieces and are really welcome on the bigger sizes. As designed, the canvas does not wrap around to the back of the bars, but is held by the double sided tape that runs along the edge of every bar. If you want to staple, it's a simple matter to add 1/4" to 1/2" additional border and staple away after the frame is assembled.
Chopping and custom sizing is not at all difficult with this system. Cleaning up all the sawdust from the chop saw after doing a over a dozen frames...that's something else!