The $60 grain filler that nearly ruined my oak restoration

Picked up a can of that fancy water-based grain filler from a shop in Portland last month, thinking it would save time on a coffee table. Sanded and applied it exactly like the label said, but it dried chalky and pulled the stain uneven, looked worse than bare wood. Spent another 20 hours stripping it off with acetone and redoing the whole top, so that bargain cost me more in labor than the piece is worth. Is there any filler out there that actually behaves on open-pore oak without turning into a nightmare, or should I just stick to shellac and pumice like the old-timers?

1 comments

1 Comment

jason_fisher414d ago

Ditch the fancy stuff and grab some paste wood filler, the oil-based kind that comes in a tube. It's thicker, so you can force it into those big oak pores with a putty knife, and it sands back down to a smooth surface without that weird chalky mess. Yeah, it takes a bit longer to cure, and you gotta wipe off the excess before it fully hardens, but you ain't stripping it off with acetone a week later. Shellac and pumice works too, but only if you got the patience of a saint and a whole afternoon to burn. Save yourself the headache and just go with the old school paste, it's boring but it never lets you down.