Product Review: Timbermate Wood Filler

The product that I wanna talk to you about today is Timbermate Wood Filler. Now, no matter how careful we are on our woodworking projects oftentimes there's some little spot that isn't quite perfect and we need to fill it in. So an example would be maybe use brads or pins to assemble a project. You wanna cover those heads over or maybe you just have a little bit of a mistake and you wanna mask that. So it's not uncommon that we need to use wood fillers in order to make our projects look, absolutely perfect. One of the things that's cool and that I wanna really talk to you about today is that with this timber made product it can be used not just as a wood filler, a wood dough but also as a grain filler. So in this case, I'm gonna be using it in order to fill the grain on the body of this guitar. More about that in a second first, let's just have a look at the product and what it's all about. Here's some product information for you Timbermate is a water-based product and that offers a couple of advantages. I'm gonna talk more about that in a second. It's available in different colors. I've only got three of them here. And what you wanna do is make sure that you're matching the timber made product to the color of material that you're gonna use. Now here's the deal with water-based and I really liked this a lot like me. You may have experienced with some other wood fillers. You get them in your shop you use them a little bit and they dry out once they're dry, It's pretty hard. If not impossible to reconstitute them, get them into a place where you can use them again. What's cool about this water-based stuff is that if this should dry out, all you have to do is add some water to it, and you're gonna have it back again. If it freezes, no sweat, let it pour out. You can use it again. So very, very user friendly in that regard. Now let's have a look at just what we've got here. This is the mahogany one. This is the one I'll be using on the guitar. The consistency here is just like what you would expect in a wood door. What we need to do in order to try this as a grain filler on that guitar is we're gonna mix some of this with water. Once that's mixed with water, it forms into a slurry get that brushed on the guitar and that's, what's gonna help it act as a grain filler, a little bit of sanding and we'll be able to finish over the top of that. So, first step, let's have a look at mixing this up with water to make that grain filler Now to put it on here's the deal I'm gonna put this away. We're done with that done with the water. All we need to do is brush the grain filler onto the material, the plastic or the white that you can see on the side of the guitar, that's plastic binding. So I'm not worried about that. What you wanna do in order for this to work is gonna brush it all with the grain just like painting the surface. Then I'm also gonna come back and go across the grain in order to make sure I have the pores completely filled. I'm gonna finish squeeging this thing off. Once that's done next step, let it dry, then we'll come back, have a look at what we have to that point. It's gonna be ready for some finished sanding. A few hours have gone by, sun is down, I'm still working. And the grain filler, the Timbermate that I put on here is dry until it's dry to the touch. Now, next thing is, I'm gonna work on sand on this out so we can have a look at what that's going to look like. One thing that's pretty cool is that this slurry that I mixed up here, all I need to do don't throw out whatever's left because it's water-based. I can let this sit in the cup and dry out, once it's dry and kind of turns back into a putty. I can put it right back in the jar, or I could seal this, If it dried the next time I had a mahogany type project like this one, I could add a little water, reconstitute it, use it again. So of the four ounces I mixed to do this whole guitar took maybe half of that, not a lot. So I over mixed it, but what's pretty cool for this product that there's not a lot of waste because I can use that again later if I want to. Now for sanding I've got a 220-grit on my sanding block and couple of strokes across here and we'll see just how this grain filler starts coming off of the surface. One of the things that I can tell just by touching this, is that it's definitely closed up the pores here previously when I would kind of drag my fingers across here especially my nails a little bit. You could feel them catching cross grain in the mahogany itself. So I'm gonna keep going on the sanding. I'm gonna get this whole thing, finished, sand it out get all the grain filler off the surface here. And then the next thing I'm gonna be able to do is, get some finish on this and we'll have a look at just how much better the finish applies with the grain filler. We'll see just how this goes and have a look at the finished product next. Its a few days later, I've got the guitar body here finished I finished it with lacquer and I am very very pleased with the way the finish looks on here. Comparatively, I did a guitar like this on a couple of years ago and same finish. I used lacquer on it, I did not use any grain filler on the mahogany body. And the difference between this one and the one I had done previously is that when you look across the top of the finish there are kind of high and low spots. And there're spots where the finish kind of bury down into the pores a little bit it took me a lot more work to get that finished looking good on that guitar than it did on this one. So my overall impression from the grain filler the Timbermate, is that it really made a huge difference in the uniformity and the levelness of the lacquer I've got on this guitar body. So for me, I would say I'm this Timbermate passed my shop test, I'm using it over nail heads using it to fill small voids. You could say, in fact that the Timbermate wood putty has filled a void in my shop, along with filling some grain and filling over nail heads. So I think it's a pretty cool product. I like the fact that it's water base. I like the fact that I can reconstitute it if it gets dry. And I really liked that a double duties, as both a wood putty and also as a grain filler. And as you can see here it's a very effective grain filler, real happy with it. So check out this timber made product, have at their website, you can get a feel for all the different colors that they offer and make sure you get the color that's suitable for the wood you're working with, check it out.