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Originally Posted by Julie Deane
. . . I recently have glued up to 36 x 48 inches on Dibond panels successfully. Also smaller wood panels. I've used either PVA glue or Liquitex gloss medium. With the wood, one needs to add a protective coat to it before gluing.
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Julie, thanks for the vote of confidence. What I recommend is to "do what works", and test to make sure your methods are sound. If I contradict a suggestion, or make one of my own that doesn't "set well" with some readers, the test is the final arbiter.
Gluing
raw canvas to a wooden panel, I would use rabbit-skin glue. Hide glues "draw". The easiest way is to temporarily tack the canvas to the edges of a wooden panel (that includes plywood) and saturate the canvas with glue. Some shrinkage is desirable, and the "draw" as the glue sets makes for a flawless interface. I would NOT apply a coat of any kind to raw wood, it's been my experience that a film of anything, shellac, varnish, "sealer", etc. interferes with the glue bond. If it were desirable to apply coatings to glue joints, you can be sure luthiers would do so when building instruments; they do not.
Di-bond and alumalite are faced with aluminum sheet, which makes a glue which becomes brittle (such as PVA) a questionable choice. Currently, conservators are not averse to gluing canvas to such supports with "Beva-Gel" which is also a modern option to traditional maroflage. It's marketed through Kremer pigments, and is mighty "spendy". The material is a vinyl-acrylic adhesive, not chemically dissimilar to construction adhesives used to set tile or hang heavy, fabric wall-coverings at a tenth of the cost. I have used these adhesives and so far in testing, they certainly seem adequate. These substrates would not be ideal for a support under raw canvas, although the adhesives would be suitable for gluing pre-primed canvas to a wooden panel, and in this case, a coat of sealer would be necessary to keep the wood from absorbing too much of the adhesive - I believe this is what Julie had in mind in recommending an isolation coat over wood. RSG would NOT be a good choice for adhering pre-primed canvas to any support material.
Using acrylic medium would be functionally very similar, although with an attendant high cost.
??? Who knows what the likely failure modes and life-span for urethane and styrene foams will be? They are essentially stable, the foam makes for a structural cross-section, and they are not susceptible to decay from organic causes, or attractive to vermin. The only thing that seems to degrade them is UV, and that shouldn't be a problem as a support under a painting. I feel any difficulties the stuff will cause will occur long after they've laid lilies over the current generation of painters.