I do LOVE your ground. Adding sand into the oil based ground is great- and also pretty foolproof in terms of archival. The only thing I'd worry for is not being able to sand that surface without breath protection for the silicates of the sand or lead (if you add it)... Holy shit. Just wow. I am so triggered... I am triggered due to the fact that I love your content- but this... Well I grew up in a workshop, and not much of the things you show hear as far as making the panel are good practices... lol. I have been making "combination panels" my whole career. Before learning anything about archival, before archivalness was even considered by most artists, I was making panels nearly the same way I do today. You know what I did? Wood glue. Yep, PVA WOOD GLUE. Nothing more. No art grade stuff which is mainly made by stealing all the premium stuff that Titebond put into their mix... did you think they innovated all the next level chemistry of these things? I sealed the panel, glued the cradle of the panel together, and stuck the canvas onto the panel, all using only PVA wood glue. I have examples of this dating back over 35 years, none of them are showing any ill effects or degradation of any kind. What baffles me is how you use several different types of material bonding agents, ENDING with PVA on top to "seal" the canvas? That made absolutely no sense to me. Moving on to your assembly methods... First step, gluing the cradle, you used clamps. *Side note: When you use a popsicle stick to disperse the stress of the clamp- it's doing nothing significant, you need to use something MUCH more stable. something at least a half inch thick. It has also been proven that the dispersion of the cone of stress (within wood) will only spread out about a quarter inch for every 3/8th inches of thickness- an engineering factoid for you! When you use a clamp, you do not have the ability to take out any bend in the wood, and there is no guarantee your piece will remain flat as gravity will pull the pieces down as you clamp them one by one. With larger pieces, this will become an issue. By using a totally flat work table, you can press the wood onto the surface of the plywood using heavy flat dead weights, knowing they will stay flat as they lay. I have six bars of steel, each weighing about 40 lbs. each, that I use to press the bracing onto the back of the panel. They won't mark the panel becuase they are on the back and flat themselves... The only reason I do not use hide glues is for the extreme cost and the hardship of mixing it up- takes forever! Hide glues are fully able to be restored without use of chemicals or things that harm the ground or oil. For that reason they are preferred over PVA. Also they provide a way of preserving the wood with the ability to re-glue into the old hide glue, by simply adding more into the older hide glue after taking the old away. What kills me about the cradle you made is how you bought hundreds of dollars of archival art stuff then reverted to friggin' wood glue yourself to make the support for it all! Beyond this, you also revert to commercial products (which God know what they put into poly urethane products these days, as the companies themselves don't even know how their formulations are running depending on what country they are made in! Urethane is not any better than a wood glue with hydrophobic properties. Beyond this- when you sealed the panel, now you have a hydrophobic layer BLOCKING the adhesive properties of the Rublev mounting product's advantages for mounting onto WOODEN surfaces! The water borne part of the adhesive is meant to soak into the wood, and thereby create a more lasting bond into the wood fibers, interlocking it to the fabric! The adhesive is now only as strong a bond as the stickiness of the bond to the slick surface of the urethane... not so good, I'd bet I could pull them apart with one hand. By using a PVA to seal and to glue the fabric to the panel, these two steps become faster- seal the panel, and as soon as the glue is dry, put a second layer of PVA onto the canvas, and the panel, then stick them together. Oh, and what the hell is up with staining the back, and front of the panel??? Wood will age and yellow all by itself with the passing ages, turning golden brown. PVA wood glue is yellow and will partially protect it from UV, but with the price of having yellow tint. None of this matters if you cover the panel with fabric, and could have some ill effects - you have no clue what they are using to tint the stain, or what the active stain ingredients are off gassing into your ground later. The fabric matters only in that what it is made of will determine how well it bonds with the adhesives, so it is best to stick with natural fibers such as cotton or wool or linen made of flax. Each of these work with PVA wood glue, and have are locked into a solid state which will age at the same rate as the PVA after sealing them in. It is the ground that will provide the lasting sustainability for your artwork, not the panel itself, but the PVA will provide a level of protection for the wood and the fabric which last as long as the PVA itself. Polyester is NOT a good strata for gluing, it simply will not combine into the PVA or nearly any adhesive that is long lasting. Oh, and btw, PVA glues are more like cements, not adhesives in the true definition of the word, they bond, and become inert, unlike adhesives, which bind only as long as the compounds retain their moisture or gel-like properties. As soon as an ""adhesive" dries out, it begins to delaminate, like when duct tape falls off when you leave it in the sun too long, or off boxes when you leave them in the attic? Yah. PVA doesn't do that. Over the years I have found that by making the panels super simple, it eliminates the possibilities for me to get things wrong- all I need worry about is the thickness of the wood glue and the way I make the ground, saturations strength of the glue and the glue properties are something I shop for online, and talking with the chemists that develop the products. They tell me that PVA these days is good for about 350 years at the very least, and the premium products they make are even better- having a UV stabilizer added as well as some other water repellant features that also prevent mold and mildew. You can buy wood glue by the gallon, I get it in 2.5 gallon tubs. Way easier all the way around.
Hi Chris, thanks so much for watching the video and commenting! I appreciate your support and I’m sorry you felt so “triggered”. In my opinion, one of the best sources of information on the subject of painting supports and grounds is Virgil Elliott’s book - Traditional Oil Painting, which I have provided a link to in the description. In his book, Virgil explains that combination panels are an option favoured by some painting conservators who restore old paintings on a regular basis. In addition to stabilizing the paint layer, and thereby reducing the likelihood of cracking, it allows the canvas to be more easily removed from the panel with the painting surface intact, should the panel itself ever develop problems and require replacing. To address your comment on wood glue and to avoid confusion, there are many types of wood glues, but none of them are good for canvas. Polyvinyl acetate (PVA) is a common type of wood glue, but its acid pH would accelerate the rotting of canvas, especially if the wood panel is not sealed. There is a buffered (acid-free, pH neutral) PVA that’s made to be used for sizing fine art canvas; Gamblin PVA Size (the one I use in this video) but it isn’t the same as a PVA wood glue. Conservators often glue old canvases to honeycomb aluminum or other rigid panels in order to arrest the cracking of the paint layer and extend the life of old paintings. The adhesive used in such instances is always one that allows for future removal of the canvas from the panel without harm to the painting itself. The advantages of using honeycomb aluminum rather than wood are that it is lighter in weight and insects do not eat it. The disadvantages are its high cost and difficulty in finding it. Conservation techniques aside, wooden panels, including braced plywood and braced pressed-wood panels, properly prepared, should suffice for the purposes of most painter. I will admit, I’m not a carpenter, but I’ve made panels up to 4’x 8’ with the same technique - just like the ones in the background of this video. For those I use weights to apply pressure instead of clamps, as you suggest in your comment. However for smaller sizes I find clamps do a great job and help avoid the dreaded hydroplaning that sometimes happens with this technique. If the adhesive chosen to adhere the canvas to the panel is reversible, the canvas can always be removed from the panel and glued to a new panel of whatever material conservators of the future determine to be best at the time. Rublev mounting adhesive is an adhesive currently in wide use in conservation circles. Alternatively, some artists simply stretch the canvas over a braced wood panel without gluing it, instead tacking it to the reinforcing framework as they would to stretcher bars. Each method has its benefits and drawbacks. A canvas tacked to the panel would be easier to remove for restoration, but it would not immobilize the paint layer as surely as if the canvas were glued in place, and cracking might still occur if the canvas were to grow slack. With either method, it is necessary to seal wooden panels on the front and back before mounting the canvas. This isolates the canvas from the acids in the wood, which would otherwise accelerate the rotting of linen or cotton canvas. Polyurethane is one of the better materials for this purpose. Polyester fabric does not seem to be affected by the acids in the wood in the same way as natural fabrics are and might be considered a preferable support for that reason. Yet another option available for oil painters who are concerned about the longevity of their work is aluminum panels with canvas attached, again with a reversible pH neutral conservation adhesive. These can be expensive to build but perhaps worth the cost to the painter concerned with the utmost in archival quality. These are expected to last into the next millennium, but only time will tell.
@@themeansofmeaning I believe the relative humidity is the key factor in activating any changes for the canvas through acidity- otherwise, the inert state of the cement is just that- inert. Sealing away the canvas from the wood is fine- something I believe the wood glue is good for- now if moisture reaches the glue, yes, this will not be good- but when the glue itself is hydrophobic, moisture has a tough time penetrating into the surface to begin with, and I seal the back side using poly-urethane to keep it from reaching the glue, another layer of protection. If the artwork stays in dry climate controlled conditions, then nothing should reach the glue or the canvas. I feel like testing this is only going to be achieved by letting my stuff age 200+ years, and I am pretty sure it will last that long in the least, and if you are correct, then some aging will be apparent at that time, if not- then a new paradigm should be adopted for how things age!
I do LOVE your ground. Adding sand into the oil based ground is great- and also pretty foolproof in terms of archival. The only thing I'd worry for is not being able to sand that surface without breath protection for the silicates of the sand or lead (if you add it)...
Holy shit. Just wow. I am so triggered... I am triggered due to the fact that I love your content- but this... Well I grew up in a workshop, and not much of the things you show hear as far as making the panel are good practices... lol.
I have been making "combination panels" my whole career. Before learning anything about archival, before archivalness was even considered by most artists, I was making panels nearly the same way I do today. You know what I did? Wood glue. Yep, PVA WOOD GLUE. Nothing more. No art grade stuff which is mainly made by stealing all the premium stuff that Titebond put into their mix... did you think they innovated all the next level chemistry of these things? I sealed the panel, glued the cradle of the panel together, and stuck the canvas onto the panel, all using only PVA wood glue. I have examples of this dating back over 35 years, none of them are showing any ill effects or degradation of any kind. What baffles me is how you use several different types of material bonding agents, ENDING with PVA on top to "seal" the canvas? That made absolutely no sense to me.
Moving on to your assembly methods... First step, gluing the cradle, you used clamps. *Side note: When you use a popsicle stick to disperse the stress of the clamp- it's doing nothing significant, you need to use something MUCH more stable. something at least a half inch thick. It has also been proven that the dispersion of the cone of stress (within wood) will only spread out about a quarter inch for every 3/8th inches of thickness- an engineering factoid for you! When you use a clamp, you do not have the ability to take out any bend in the wood, and there is no guarantee your piece will remain flat as gravity will pull the pieces down as you clamp them one by one. With larger pieces, this will become an issue. By using a totally flat work table, you can press the wood onto the surface of the plywood using heavy flat dead weights, knowing they will stay flat as they lay. I have six bars of steel, each weighing about 40 lbs. each, that I use to press the bracing onto the back of the panel. They won't mark the panel becuase they are on the back and flat themselves... The only reason I do not use hide glues is for the extreme cost and the hardship of mixing it up- takes forever! Hide glues are fully able to be restored without use of chemicals or things that harm the ground or oil. For that reason they are preferred over PVA. Also they provide a way of preserving the wood with the ability to re-glue into the old hide glue, by simply adding more into the older hide glue after taking the old away.
What kills me about the cradle you made is how you bought hundreds of dollars of archival art stuff then reverted to friggin' wood glue yourself to make the support for it all! Beyond this, you also revert to commercial products (which God know what they put into poly urethane products these days, as the companies themselves don't even know how their formulations are running depending on what country they are made in! Urethane is not any better than a wood glue with hydrophobic properties.
Beyond this- when you sealed the panel, now you have a hydrophobic layer BLOCKING the adhesive properties of the Rublev mounting product's advantages for mounting onto WOODEN surfaces! The water borne part of the adhesive is meant to soak into the wood, and thereby create a more lasting bond into the wood fibers, interlocking it to the fabric! The adhesive is now only as strong a bond as the stickiness of the bond to the slick surface of the urethane... not so good, I'd bet I could pull them apart with one hand. By using a PVA to seal and to glue the fabric to the panel, these two steps become faster- seal the panel, and as soon as the glue is dry, put a second layer of PVA onto the canvas, and the panel, then stick them together. Oh, and what the hell is up with staining the back, and front of the panel??? Wood will age and yellow all by itself with the passing ages, turning golden brown. PVA wood glue is yellow and will partially protect it from UV, but with the price of having yellow tint. None of this matters if you cover the panel with fabric, and could have some ill effects - you have no clue what they are using to tint the stain, or what the active stain ingredients are off gassing into your ground later.
The fabric matters only in that what it is made of will determine how well it bonds with the adhesives, so it is best to stick with natural fibers such as cotton or wool or linen made of flax. Each of these work with PVA wood glue, and have are locked into a solid state which will age at the same rate as the PVA after sealing them in. It is the ground that will provide the lasting sustainability for your artwork, not the panel itself, but the PVA will provide a level of protection for the wood and the fabric which last as long as the PVA itself. Polyester is NOT a good strata for gluing, it simply will not combine into the PVA or nearly any adhesive that is long lasting. Oh, and btw, PVA glues are more like cements, not adhesives in the true definition of the word, they bond, and become inert, unlike adhesives, which bind only as long as the compounds retain their moisture or gel-like properties. As soon as an ""adhesive" dries out, it begins to delaminate, like when duct tape falls off when you leave it in the sun too long, or off boxes when you leave them in the attic? Yah. PVA doesn't do that.
Over the years I have found that by making the panels super simple, it eliminates the possibilities for me to get things wrong- all I need worry about is the thickness of the wood glue and the way I make the ground, saturations strength of the glue and the glue properties are something I shop for online, and talking with the chemists that develop the products. They tell me that PVA these days is good for about 350 years at the very least, and the premium products they make are even better- having a UV stabilizer added as well as some other water repellant features that also prevent mold and mildew. You can buy wood glue by the gallon, I get it in 2.5 gallon tubs. Way easier all the way around.
Hi Chris, thanks so much for watching the video and commenting! I appreciate your support and I’m sorry you felt so “triggered”.
In my opinion, one of the best sources of information on the subject of painting supports and grounds is Virgil Elliott’s book - Traditional Oil Painting, which I have provided a link to in the description.
In his book, Virgil explains that combination panels are an option favoured by some painting conservators who restore old paintings on a regular basis. In addition to stabilizing the paint layer, and thereby reducing the likelihood of cracking, it allows the canvas to be more easily removed from the panel with the painting surface intact, should the panel itself ever develop problems and require replacing.
To address your comment on wood glue and to avoid confusion, there are many types of wood glues, but none of them are good for canvas. Polyvinyl acetate (PVA) is a common type of wood glue, but its acid pH would accelerate the rotting of canvas, especially if the wood panel is not sealed. There is a buffered (acid-free, pH neutral) PVA that’s made to be used for sizing fine art canvas; Gamblin PVA Size (the one I use in this video) but it isn’t the same as a PVA wood glue.
Conservators often glue old canvases to honeycomb aluminum or other rigid panels in order to arrest the cracking of the paint layer and extend the life of old paintings. The adhesive used in such instances is always one that allows for future removal of the canvas from the panel without harm to the painting itself. The advantages of using honeycomb aluminum rather than wood are that it is lighter in weight and insects do not eat it. The disadvantages are its high cost and difficulty in finding it.
Conservation techniques aside, wooden panels, including braced plywood and braced pressed-wood panels, properly prepared, should suffice for the purposes of most painter. I will admit, I’m not a carpenter, but I’ve made panels up to 4’x 8’ with the same technique - just like the ones in the background of this video. For those I use weights to apply pressure instead of clamps, as you suggest in your comment. However for smaller sizes I find clamps do a great job and help avoid the dreaded hydroplaning that sometimes happens with this technique.
If the adhesive chosen to adhere the canvas to the panel is reversible, the canvas can always be removed from the panel and glued to a new panel of whatever material conservators of the future determine to be best at the time. Rublev mounting adhesive is an adhesive currently in wide use in conservation circles. Alternatively, some artists simply stretch the canvas over a braced wood panel without gluing it, instead tacking it to the reinforcing framework as they would to stretcher bars. Each method has its benefits and drawbacks. A canvas tacked to the panel would be easier to remove for restoration, but it would not immobilize the paint layer as surely as if the canvas were glued in place, and cracking might still occur if the canvas were to grow slack.
With either method, it is necessary to seal wooden panels on the front and back before mounting the canvas. This isolates the canvas from the acids in the wood, which would otherwise accelerate the rotting of linen or cotton canvas. Polyurethane is one of the better materials for this purpose. Polyester fabric does not seem to be affected by the acids in the wood in the same way as natural fabrics are and might be considered a preferable support for that reason.
Yet another option available for oil painters who are concerned about the longevity of their work is aluminum panels with canvas attached, again with a reversible pH neutral conservation adhesive. These can be expensive to build but perhaps worth the cost to the painter concerned with the utmost in archival quality. These are expected to last into the next millennium, but only time will tell.
@@themeansofmeaning I believe the relative humidity is the key factor in activating any changes for the canvas through acidity- otherwise, the inert state of the cement is just that- inert. Sealing away the canvas from the wood is fine- something I believe the wood glue is good for- now if moisture reaches the glue, yes, this will not be good- but when the glue itself is hydrophobic, moisture has a tough time penetrating into the surface to begin with, and I seal the back side using poly-urethane to keep it from reaching the glue, another layer of protection. If the artwork stays in dry climate controlled conditions, then nothing should reach the glue or the canvas. I feel like testing this is only going to be achieved by letting my stuff age 200+ years, and I am pretty sure it will last that long in the least, and if you are correct, then some aging will be apparent at that time, if not- then a new paradigm should be adopted for how things age!