Filling Holes and low spots on a Cedar Stipper

[Tom Hoffman]

I am building a western red cedar stripper, I find myself in need of some filler for some staple holes and some low spots where the strip was not ripped exactly 3/8 thick. What can I use? I have tons of redcedar sawdust. Would it work to mix this with some titebond III glue and mix the dust with it???

Or would something else work better??

[FG]

no

you will have a color that is much darker if you mix the sawdust with the cedar. The epoxy will fill the staple holes no problem.

You can lighten the epoxy wood flour mix with regular bleached baking flour from the kithchen.

[Tom Hoffman]

The holes are really not the concern, I damaged the edge of one of the strips badly it had already been glued to the boat. I was looking for a remedy to fill in the gouges left by a sander wheel.

Don't have any epoxy yet, just glueing up the strips before I order my epoxy. I guess I could buy a small quanity of clear fast set and fill the gouges for now before the final sanding.

[FG]

Best I've seen on the gouge is gluing on a section of matching wood like an inlay would bedone. Are you sure it will not be removed with the fairing board? If not, wait. For broken cove edges, fill with a little darker eooxy/wood flour mix rather than lighter. I like to fill after I precoat, which can be a whole other debate. My take on precoating is with thick epoxy - no, with thin epoxy - yes. I have been using system 3 and precoat.

[Cuyahoga Chuck]

First things first, Tom.
Wet some WRC sawdust with water and see what you get. That is approximately the color you'll get if you mixed the dust with any clear resin. Most woods darken appreciabley except for the very lightest colored woods. You can match just about anything but you'll have to find a wood dust that works.
Next, any attempt you make to fake large areas of wood with a resin/dust mix will probably show. Laminating thin strips on bad spots, as suggested above, is a more reliable fix.
Charlie

[JimConlin]

To fill divots in white cedar strip boats, i've used mixes of epoxy and cedar dust and microsphere filler, which is white. In my case the microsphere/cedar dust ratio was 3 or 4 to 1. Life is too short to worry about staple holes. You won't get 'em all anyway.

[Todd Bradshaw]

And be quite aware of the fact that many fillers (like epoxy-saturated sawdust) are much harder than the plain cedar around the fill. You don't want to sand a big dent in the surrounding wood while sanding the patch down to surface level. Hand sand it with a block or fairing board to keep things level. Filling staple holes is a waste of time and quite often calls more attention to them than doing nothing. They will fill a bit with dust as you sand and shrink a little when the epoxy hits the wood. If you dazzle the viewer with the rest of your work, most will never notice them. Filled staple holes which don't match perfectly sometimes make for a polka-dot boat.

[JimConlin]

What Todd said. The microsphere-cedar mix sands easily.
I've found a couple of wrong ways to fill staple holes, so i've given up. If you fill 'em than fair, incomplete filling of the holes will be revealed by some (not all) open holes. Filling after fairing results in patches around the holes. Don't bother.

[FG]

Todd is right about the filler being harder than the surrounding wood. That is why you do not sand the filler until it has been scraped down to the wood level. One option is a sharpened handled paint scraper with rounded blade ends. Keep it sharp with 400 sandpaper on a smooth surface. Hold the scraper at a 45 dregree angle and sharpen. Best time to smooth the filler down is as soon as the epoxy is not tacky. Filling right after the precoat gives you a good idea of the final color of the boat.

No one I know uses the sawdust as a thickener for the epoxy, they all use the dust from the sander.