Repairs to 100 year old oil painting on canvas?

[traighbum]

I am a relatively inexperienced framer and recently took in a couple of really old, small oil paintings on "canvas".
When I took them apart, I found that some of the edges of the canvas had split. Whilst these have some sentimental value to the respective owners, I think they would be unwilling to pay for professional conservation work.
The canvas is very light weight, more like linen, and sized on the painted surface. This hard edge, coupled with 110 years or so of movement ,have conspired to split the material.
The customers are happy for me to try and effect some sort of glued repair, but what best to use. I imagine it would need a degree of elasticity?
Most grateful for any input
Colin

[Roboframer]

The damage could only be seen when you took the old frames off, so was under the lip of the frames?

How about treating them as you would something on paper and covering the damage with a mount/mounts?

[traighbum]

Yes, the damage is on the outer, upper corner of the canvas, coincident with the inner edge of the frame rebate.
One painting was complete with an original, narrow, gilded mount, the other had had one, but was missing.
Is your recommendation , not to try and glue down the split, loose canvas, back onto the stretcher frame?
Colin

[Roboframer]

Not a recommendation, just a suggestion, something you know already that you can do as opposed to something you've never done before - also assuming you can remove the things from their stretchers with no further damage to make them mount-able.

If repair was what the customer wanted, after being given other options I'm capable of, I'd not attempt it - I'd give them a business card of a very good restorer and they might be surprised at the cost because it's the sort of thing these types can do on auto-pilot.

If you were to get enough advice/info on how to do this - and it's probably a 're-lining' job - to give you the confidence, went for it and achieved a good result, you'd take ten times longer than a restorer. How much are you going to charge for that time? Probably ten times less than the restorer I'd guess.

The customers are happy for me to try and effect some sort of glued repair

They won't be happy if you cock it up. If this is an area you want to 'get in to' then go and learn how to do it - don't learn on 'live' stuff.

[prospero]

The usual way of doing this is to stick the whole thing to a new canvas and re-stretch. Proper techniques and proper materials.

Quite a lot of restoration work in public galleries and museums involves reversing previous 'restorations'. My advice is - don't.

[traighbum]

Thank you for the various advice to date.
As I stated earlier, both canvases are extremely thin and quite fragile and hard.
The edges of the canvas were originally glued (Rabbit Skin?) to the sides of the stretcher also pinned.
I think there is a strong possibility of damaging them further, by trying to remove them from the stretchers.
Re-assembly into new frames, leaving the damage as is, is looking increasingly attractive