Well success, finally! Sort of.
I kept fighting with one canvas sheet trying to get it to load in the rear slot. Just didn't want to cooperate. Turned it to the opposite end and it fed immediately! I saw the head pass and no yellow "Skew error. Reload paper" light came on so I assumed it was good. It was a little crooked ahead of the black bar so I pulled it back out on one side to even it up. Went into Qimage and hit the Print and it ran fine.
However, for some odd reason, the first one only printed about 12 inches of the 17 inch width. The rest of the canvas was unprinted (white) past the 12 inch area. The 25 inch length was okay. I set a custom profile up in the Epson printer driver for 17x25 and I guess the cleared "Fit image to page" setting messed it up. I check it "On" and the next sheet did the same thing; One end wouldn't feed, and the other one did? Guess one you bang up one end, the chances of it ever loading right or easily is slim? At least the second one looks fine for all the fussing on loading - and some driver setting issues too.
On the second sheet of canvas, I cut it to about 27 inches figuring if I had to trim the ends to get it to feed I'd have some leeway. May help prevent a scuff mark on the image itself when the rollers go for the eject too. Used a roller cutter as well. Stiff canvas might be good too.
I used the matte ink too. Don't know if it mattered, but the canvas setting kicked it to matte ink. On the canvas it does look a bit glossy, but not bad. I sprayed it today with Premier Art Lacquer (or is it a varnish?) out of the HLVP Sata Mini-Jet gun and it looks quite nice. Two coats took about 5-6 ounces of the lacquer. Helped with some dull areas of the canvas and evened it all up. Great stuff, and no spray marks and overlap lines as when I used a can of McDonald's SureGuard Gloss aerosol.
So it can be done without the damned taped leader idea! That method I can see leading to disastrous results if you have to dig into the machine with Goo-Gone, tweezers. needle-nose pliers, and whatever else to dig the tape out of the thing. Talk about a nightmare!
SG