A Heady Proposition - Part 1

this video is brought to you by ren a website where you can calculate your carbon footprint and then offset it by funding projects that plant trees and protect rainforests you know paintings are unique amongst the visual arts in that they exist not only as static objects for viewing but also dynamic ones that have an existence all of their own most paintings happily spend their lives hanging on the walls and are enjoyed by their owners yet for some such a pastoral existence is out of reach and their fates are well a bit more colorful somewhere between 1495 and 1541 in the city of nuremberg the german master peter gertner took his hand at creating a painting of siloam presenting the severed head of saint john the baptist on a tray now for nearly 400 years this painting led a relatively boring life hanging on the wall being enjoyed by its owners until 1908 when unceremoniously the bottom portion containing said severed head was removed from the larger painting in an attempt perhaps at making the image more pleasant while saint john was decapitated the painting was i suppose decorpestrated now reuniting these two pieces into one painting would of course be ideal unfortunately multiple inquiries to the auction house that last sold the top portion and consultations with medieval art experts as to the possible whereabouts of the top of the painting have yielded no fruit it's probably hanging on the wall which is precisely the fate that this small section deserves diminutive as it may be getting this painting back up on the wall will be complicated by some unique challenges around which i will have to wrap my head [Music] the wood from this panel is 470 years old it's from a time when taking down a tree or two to make art wasn't an issue at all when forests were healthy enough to absorb all the carbon on the planet and while i can conserve this wood there's not much i can do to conserve the earth unless maybe there is and that's where ren comes in ren is a website where you calculate your carbon footprint by answering a few questions about your lifestyle you can find out your carbon footprint and how you can reduce it since no one can reduce their carbon footprint to zero you can offset what you have left after reducing by funding projects that plant trees and protect rainforests it's an easy way to start doing something about the climate crisis and just think maybe in a thousand years some art conservator will be making a virtual reality holographic video about a painting on a piece of wood from a healthy forest that you helped grow kind of wild huh it's going to take a lot to end the climate crisis but you can start today by learning more at ren.com i've partnered with ren to protect five extra acres of rainforest for the first hundred people who sign up using my referral link so head to ren dot co join julian baumgartner or click the link below one of the ironies about conserving this panel is that before i can actually work on it i have to disassemble it now this cradle is likely not original to the painting it's a different species of wood the construction is different and i believe that it was applied to address the split in the panel we can see that the center batten is wider than the others and it covers the crack in the original panel but this cradle is old it is at least from when the painting was cut down in 1908 and i can tell because this cradle has been cut flush with the panel so i'm trying to be careful here when i remove it so that i don't completely destroy it because this is over a hundred years old and i would like to try to save it for my client even if it's not doing a good job of stabilizing the painting so i'm going to do my best to disassemble this cradle and not completely shred it now some of the battens came off fairly easily because the glue was completely deteriorated and with a little bit of force it just well gave and you can see that one of the ribs is not attached to the original panel which is as it should be it's supposed to be free floating to allow the panel to expand and contract a little bit but this bottom rib well somebody glued it down and not only does that negate the whole concept of the cradle but it puts unneeded tension and pressure on the wood which is probably why it's split in the first place now this is not yielding as easily as some of the other pieces of wood the adhesive is stronger or the second dose of adhesive that was used to bond this because originally it wouldn't have been bonded whoever made the cradle would have known better so rather than just trying brute force i'm gonna try to work a little smarter and i'm gonna use some warm water and inject it into and around all of the areas in hopes that this is a rabbit skin or hide glue and that the water will soften it up enough that i can pry it off one of the benefits of these old adhesives is that they can be reconstituted using warm water or a little bit of vinegar in warm water and that means that if this glue is fighting me instead of just keeping on fighting it and running risk of damaging the panel i can try to soften it up and hope that the capillary action of the wood will draw that water down into that crack and after letting it sit for a little while it's clear that it did and the adhesive has softened up enough that i can start to pull the panel apart now remember this panel was split and that's probably why this cradle was added but i need to fix this split so i have to detach the panel from the cradle and separate the two parts the first part comes off pretty easily and i'm hoping that the second part will too with just a little bit of encouragement it does now when i did remove some of those battens a couple pieces of wood came with and i want to salvage those so i'm going to place the battens into a bath of water and weigh them down with one of the other battens and let them sit for a day or so in the meantime i'm going to start to remove all of that old adhesive from the panel and this is either a rabbit skin or hide glue and so it's not exactly lovely but it comes off pretty easily once swollen and i can use my scalpel just to scrape off as much as i can after letting the wood sit i can come back and take off the pieces of the panel that's stuck to these battens i'm going to use this piece of wood later to fill in that gap and you can see that fully saturating the wood made quick work of that adhesive unfortunately this is not a process that i can use to remove the entire cradle from the painting of course putting the entire painting in a bath of water would probably spell near disaster and so that's not something that i can do and now on to the bonding of the panel it should be clear now why i didn't face the painting because of course the facing would interfere with this step and subjecting the painting to multiple exposures of adhesive and moisture or solvents is something that i'd like to limit and so i can bypass the the facing process just by being a little careful with the painting and using felt whenever it's face down so i'm going to set up the clampinator to receive this painting and this is one of the great benefits of a modular clamping system is that it can adapt to whatever project on which i'm working and so for this painting which is really quite small i can bring in all of these vertical clamps and tighten them up i can also move the horizontal clamping rig in closer so that it better fits this panel now this table was designed to exert the most pressure horizontally with the vertical clamps you mostly use for registration just to make sure that the two panel halves align so i'm going to go ahead and start setting up the clamps as close as i can while still allowing a little bit of movement so that i can get into the painting and apply the adhesive i'm also going to work on setting up the vertical clamps these like i mentioned are going to press down on this seam from the top and up from the bottom and they're going to ensure that when the horizontal pressure is exerted the panel doesn't deflect or bow or bend and open up in addition they're going to make sure that the two edges of the split are perfectly flush now i am using a hide glue here i believe it's a 390 gram so it is a very strong hide glue i'm not using a standard wood glue here because there is always the possibility that this panel needs to be worked on in the future and that somebody may want to undo the repair that i have made and using a hide glue here just like high glue was used on the cradle ensures that that's possible now i'm flexing this split in the panel a little bit so that i can get access to the joint and apply some adhesive this split doesn't go all the way through so it's a little bit more difficult to get the adhesive in i don't have an exposed surface but i do want to make sure that this gets bonded back together when i bond the other panel to this one now the main joint is accessible so i can paint on or brush on the hide glue and i don't have to worry about being particularly clean or neat here if i spill some on the table who cares and if i get some on the surface of the painting well the painting still has surface grime and varnish on it so the paint layer is protected but this hide glue is also removable with warm water as we saw earlier so any squeeze out isn't really consequential though this hide glue is modified to have a longer open time that is it doesn't dry as quickly as unmodified hide glue i still have to work fairly fast because once the hide glue starts to set it needs to be in its proper orientation and registration i can't just force it if the hide glue has already started to set the bond won't be strong enough and this will be considered a failure i'm using little pieces of mdf with felt and siliconized mylar on the end to press down on the face of the painting this ensures not only that the painting doesn't get scratched but that it doesn't stick to the surface of the painting and doesn't dent it the combination of the siliconized mylar and felt provides a receptive and slippery surface with everything in place i'll raise up the clampinator and i will go underneath the table to get a better look at the underside and align all of the vertical clamps from that point again these are clamping down on the joint to not only make sure that it doesn't deflect or open up but in order to make sure that it is properly aligned that's the whole point of this table these vertical clamps are effectively taking the place of calls that would be used if i were clamping this by hand and this is just a much easier way of doing it and i have much more control so just checking on the joint before i do the final tightening everything is nice and flush and so we are all good to go after a couple of days on the clamping table with the glue all dry i can come back and slowly release the pressure once i've gotten all of these clamps loosened up and the panel is free to move i'll start removing the pressure from the vertical clamps and then i can simply remove this relatively small and easily handled painting from the clamping table now i had mentioned that i had saved that piece of wood that had popped out of the back of the panel here i am using a little bit of wood glue and the reason i'm doing that is because this is going to be an area where the cradle is going to go back onto the panel and so i need the absolute strongest bond possible here now in this case i am just going to be using some clamps and a couple of calls to exert pressure on this but i'm going to put some pieces of mdf with the mylar and the felt on the front and a couple on the back and set up a spring loaded clamping system and you'll see what that means once i get it all put together a picture is worth a thousand words here and well you'll see once i put a clamp on one end the other end will pop up and then as i put the clamp on the other end it will pinch down on this area in the middle that i couldn't otherwise reach with clamps and this spring provides adequate pressure and will make sure that this area in the middle that i'm trying to glue down is glued down so everything's good with the glue dry and the clamps removed i can begin reassembling this cradle onto the painting but looking at it well i think i can do better so i've designed a solution and it may seem weird that i'm going to put a cradle back onto a painting when i've often talked about how cradles create problems such as built up tension and splits but this panel has had a cradle for over 100 years and so i'm concerned that simply removing it and not putting something in its place will leave the panel vulnerable and result in a massive distortion so i've designed a cradle that has a little bit of play there's a gap in between the two battens and a spring that can be pressed down with a bolt this is going to allow me to specify the amount of tension that exists on this cradle now this spring will allow the cradle now this spring will allow the panel to distort slightly while resisting that movement and also encouraging it back into its flat state and i can change the tension by changing the spring or the compression with the bolt so on to the shop to begin fabrication and this is one of my favorite things about this studio that i have a wood shop where i can do these types of projects if i didn't have these tools in these facilities i'd have to farm this work out to somebody else and hope that they did exactly what i wanted i'd have to skip this project altogether or i have to come up with some halfway solution that will leave everybody feeling well not great now once i have cut the free-floating battens i'll take them over to my table and start measuring out for the fixed battens and those are the ones that are going to be adhered to the verso or back of the panel and are going to hold the free floating battens in place i'm using my marking gauge to mark out where i need to create a dado into which the free-floating battens will slide i'm going to do this on my table saw and once i've set up my my fence i'll also set up my blade i need to make sure that the height is just so because i want them to be consistent across all of these batons once that's all done i can begin actually hogging out this material and full disclaimer here woodworkers turn away because i'm not using a dado stack yes i could and it would make very quick work of this one inch wide dado in fact it would be two passes and well that would be it but i am lazy sometimes and i don't feel like digging out my dado stack changing the blade running a couple of test pieces and then doing the actual work when this approach is fine remember don't let perfect be the enemy of good and luckily for you folks you don't have to watch in painfully slow detail how i do this i've sped it up for you so once i have hogged out all of that material i'm gonna run this block through my table saw and create five battens and these are gonna get bonded to the back of the panel with all of those cut i'm also going to mark the center point and the dado on each one of these battens and then when that's done i'm going to head over to my drill press where using a brand new very sharp forstner bit i'm going to bore a hole into each one of those patents actually two holes and these holes are going to be the place where the spring resides and into where the bolt is threaded to exert pressure down on that spring so with all of those drilled i'm ready to continue on and i'm also going to drill some holes into the battens that are free-floating and these are only going oh about 3 16 of an inch down into the wood not all the way through i've got my stop set and these are actually going to hold some washers so that the springs don't slide but we'll see that in just a minute now in a little game i like to call how many times can julian order from the same company and pay extra shipping because he ordered wrong the first time i have a lot of hardware in front of me and all of this is going to be used to create that spring-loaded mechanism i mentioned that i was going to put some washers into the free-floating battens and the reason i'm going to do that is so that there is a recess for the spring to sit in and something hard for the spring to press against i don't want it pressing directly against the wood because it's going to chew up that wood and without this recess the spring could slide and pop out so as i do a dry fit just making sure that everything is just so we can see the springs that i'm going to be using and i bought a whole bunch of different springs with different spring rates so that i can adjust and i will include those with the final painting in case the owner or the next conservator feels that there needs to be more or less spring tension now i have these threaded standoffs that are going to receive a threaded bolt that is the same diameter as the hole and the spring that's going to ensure that when i tighten down this bolt it presses on the spring and that the spring exerts its pressure down onto the batten i'm going to mark where the holes are for these standoffs and then once i've done that a billion times i'm going to head on over to the drill press and use possibly the tiniest drill bit that i have in the studio to drill some pilot holes for the screws that are going to hold those standoffs down onto these battens last thing i want to do is split this wood and finally before i start assembly i'm going to put a chamfer on the end of all of these batons this serves absolutely no functional purpose whatsoever is potentially a waste of time and energy but makes them look just a little bit more refined and so i am completely willing to spend the time and the energy to do this because i like the way it looks and it makes me feel good about the product that i've created and honestly who doesn't like a little chamfer on the edge come on now before i can assemble this cradle onto the back of the panel i have to figure out where the battens are going to go and prepare the panel to receive the adhesive you see this panel is covered in oxidation grime dirt wax oil varnish who knows what and all of that stuff will interfere with a good adhesive bond so i have to get rid of it so i'm going to mark where the battens go and then i'm gonna remove my inventory label don't worry i've got a few thousand extra that i can use and then i'm gonna head over to the shop and place the painting down on some felt and some bench dogs and use a card scraper to remove all of that stuff from the surface of the wood the card scraper will remove all of that gunk and grime without taking off a lot of wood and it leaves a more open surface than sanding sanding effectively destroys the pores of the wood whereas the card scraper keeps them open and now on to assembly a piece of plywood covered in felt the panel the cradle and lots and lots of small clamps and of course the question is why am i not using my clamping table well the clamping table was designed for a different method of clamping and this one i need 10 points of vertical clamping pressure but i need a lot of clamping pressure and the vertical clamps on my table aren't meant to exert the same type of pressure i need to bond wood together to achieve a good glue joint you need something like 200 psi while the clamping table can certainly do that i don't want to stress it out and also i've done this before by hand and i'm comfortable doing it if i had another painting maybe that was larger that i needed to clamp a cradle onto i would modify the clampinator to perform that task but here it's small i've done it before and so i'm comfortable with this approach and so where i have marked the location of the battens i'm going to apply some hide glue again because it's fully reversible and in the future somebody may come along and say well this cradle needs to go for whatever reason and so i want them to be able to remove the cradle as easily as did i by using warm water or a little bit of vinegar so that's why i'm not using a wood glue which would be much more difficult if impossible to remove addition to applying the hide glue on the panel itself i'm going to also apply it onto the battens and you'll notice that i'm just applying it onto the vertical battens not the horizontal free-floating ones the whole principle of a cradle support is that the horizontal free-floating battens that run perpendicular to the grain of the wood are allowed to move so that the wood can expand and contract ever so slightly with humidity changes if you don't do this the whole point of a cradle is moot and you will inevitably create more problems than it's worth the tension will be built up the wood will not be allowed to expand and contract and it will start to crack and check and split which is precisely what we saw in this panel so by just putting the adhesive on the vertical battens i can ensure that these horizontal ones remain free-floating and can even be removed if necessary they can be replaced with something else a different wood a different thickness if somebody decides that these springs are just not doing their job well thicker battens can be created and slid into place so that they occupy the entire space of the dado so having these free-floating and not adhered to the back of the cradle is really important for a lot of reasons and so with all of the adhesive placed on both the panel and the cradle i can start the assembly again using the modified hide glue i have a little bit more time than if it wasn't modified so i don't really have to rush but of course i can't take my sweet time i don't want any of this glue to start drying in the middle of the process of clamping it so once i have everything where it should be and i've taken care to align it i can start the clamping and here you can see the benefit of using a single piece of plywood underneath i'm using a little shim so i don't mar the battens and then i'm just using some basic c-clamps to clamp these battens down these are going to provide plenty of clamping pressure and they're going to ensure that i have a really good bond now the reason i'm using lots of little clamps as opposed to sandwiching the whole thing together in between two sheets of plywood and then just clamping the heck out of it is because that would inevitably damage the panel and i want to make sure that i can modulate the amount of force based on the battens and the location of the panel the panel is not all the same thickness and so i don't want to stress any of it again speed is not of the essence here precision is and while i do need to be conscious of how long this takes it is more important that i get everything right because while i can remove this cradle if something goes wrong that would be a disaster it would be a huge consumption of time and it would probably mean that i would have to start all over and fabricate a new batten system and i don't want to do that for all of the reasons and so yes it seems like this is an antiquated or silly method of clamping but this works perfectly and i don't need to reinvent the wheel here so once i have all of these clamps in place i can torque them down a little bit more make sure that there's a good bond on all of the surfaces and then well there's nothing left to do but wait i've got to give this a couple days to make sure that the glue dries and everything is set so i'll move this over to another table and wait that's it for today and for this video but come back next time to see me put it all back together you

Channel: Baumgartner Restoration

Views: 439,779

Rating: 4.9478612 out of 5

Keywords: Baumgartner, Julian, restoration, ASMR, paintings, cleaning, scraping, repair, Art, fine art, conservation, painting restoration, old art, painting, painting conservation, oil painting, new again, restore

Id: HEBwOClRZg8

Length: 28min 52sec (1732 seconds)

Published: Mon Jul 26 2021