Layer 01 · Section
The Support
Oak, grain direction, and the movement that never stops.
Two boards glued edge to edge. The glue is meant to be the weakest part of the assembly.
Photo: Digital Buggu / Pexels
Everything else on the panel is glued to this layer, and this layer is the only one that was once alive. It takes up water from the air and gives it back, swelling and shrinking as it goes, and it will keep doing that for as long as the painting exists. The entries here cover how a board was chosen and cut, how two of them were joined, and what was done later to hold them still.
Entries in this section
05Oak never stops moving
A panel responds to every change in humidity for as long as it exists, and it moves far more across the grain than along it. Almost every structural problem a panel painting has begins there.
Tobias Freem · 6 minQuarter-sawn
Boards cut radially move least. What the grain pattern tells you about the cut.
Anders Lem · 2 minThe join
Two boards glued edge to edge, and the seam that opens first.
Anders Lem · 2 minBevels and barbs
The thinned edge and the ridge of ground at it — evidence of the original frame.
Marijke de Haan · 2 minThinning a panel
A treatment once routine and now regretted. What it removed and what it caused.
Anders Lem · 2 min