Using Yellow Glue to Fill Small Voids
George VondriskaDescription
Using wood dough filler is a great way to fix small gaps in your woodworking projects. George Vondriska shares his tip for creating seamless repairs of small voids with a shop-made wood dough filler made from yellow glue and wood dust. A WoodWorkers Guild of America (WWGOA) original video.
As I was working on this cabinet, I found that I've got a spot here where the face frame didn't quite close against the case. And as a result, there's just a small void right here. Wood dough would do that but let me show you a great trick that makes an invisible repair of these small cracks like this. I'm gonna use wood glue and squeeze it over the top of the opening and then using my finger, I'm gonna work it down in there so it fills that in. I do want to get the excess off the surface here. Now on my sander, I'm going to use 150 grit sandpaper but I'm going to intentionally turn the paper so that the dust collection holes in this paper do not line up with the dust collection holes in the pad because I want to leave the dust behind. What'll happen is that as I'm sanding, the dust on the surface from this oak is going to mix with the glue, end up in that void, make a seamless film. The beauty of this is that basically you're making a homemade wood dough that has to match because it's the dust from this material. It's mixing with the glue in order to fill that bad spot. So it makes it very, very seamless. If you've got glue on hand, you've always got wood dough on hand. Works great on these small voids.
I've tried wet sanding with shellac as an alternative. Yellow glue is unstainable in my experience.
All wood fillers must be sanded to original wood and a little below. The solvents in putties seal the wood to some depth. Some solvents will actually raise the wood a little bit.
Nice tip, but if you were going to stain your project, doesn't the glue seal the wood somewhat and make for a blotchy looking color?