[oh'mike]

I usually wait to fill holes until the wood is stained and the first coat is on.

I know of no stainable filler that looks good.

 

[Ron6519]

As Mike said, the stainable fillers are somewhat of a myth. They stain, just not the same color as the wood. For counter sinks, I'd use wood plugs. for nail holes, I stain and poly and then fill them in with the wax crayon sticks from Minwax.

 

[user1007]

Some times, with patience, you can get a gel stain on a patch to come close to the surrounding material. Use a q-tip.

 

[Daniel Holzman]

Another option is to mix sawdust from the actual wood with glue, and use the mix to fill the nail holes. It works pretty well, and will take stain, but due to grain issues, will not look perfect. Plugs look pretty good, but due to the round shape, they are also visible, even though they take stain correctly.

 

[joeg679]

Great. Thanks for the replies!

 

[tpolk]

have you tried mixing stain pigment from can with filler then hole filling? try on scrap first

 

[zircon]

You can also get in a craft store a basic set of acrylic artists colors and a few small artists brushes. Mix red,yellow and blue and you have brown. Add a little water and it is a stain instead of paint. Need golden oak-add more yellow, cherry-add more red, walnut-add more blue. You can match any color. Results vary with skill level. Guys that are sent out by furniture stores to fix dings in furniture shipped to customers if they are good can make invisible repairs.

 

[user1007]

Stealing real crayolas from kids when they are not looking and melting matching color wax into scratches and things can buy you time. Could work for plugs?

 

[jules4]

have you tried mixing stain pigment from can with filler then hole filling? try on scrap first

This is what I do too - it works really well, but if doing a dark stain you have to add quite a bit of stain to the filler and this slows down the curing time so plan accordingly (rather than 24 hours, I've had to wait as long as 3 days for the filler to fully harden).

 

[oh'mike]

Another old time filler --shellac sticks--There is a learning curve with those--however,I find them handy in certain circumstances.

 

[jules4]

Another old time filler --shellac sticks--There is a learning curve with those--however,I find them handy in certain circumstances.

Do you mean lacquer sticks (i.e., the solid coloured, sort of glassy sticks that you melt to fill holes?)

I've used shellac buttons and shellac flakes, but I've never encountered shellac sticks.

 

[joeg679]

This is what I do too - it works really well, but if doing a dark stain you have to add quite a bit of stain to the filler and this slows down the curing time so plan accordingly (rather than 24 hours, I've had to wait as long as 3 days for the filler to fully harden).

I have actually tried that, but it didn't really work that well for me. I'm going to try a bunch of these suggestions on a scrap piece of wood, including the above one, again. Thanks a lot

 

[jules4]

If you want to try lacquer sticks Lee Valley sells them (like Mike said, there's a learning curve to using them, but after that you can get pretty flawless results): http://www.leevalley.com/US/wood/page.aspx?p=42999&cat=1,190,42997&ap=1

 

[oh'mike]

Do you mean lacquer sticks (i.e., the solid coloured, sort of glassy sticks that you melt to fill holes?)

I've used shellac buttons and shellac flakes, but I've never encountered shellac sticks.

I never hear of them called 'lacquer sticks' --but yes,melt with an alcohol
lamp and apply with an artists spatula.

They are getting hard to find.

I use a scrap of aluminum foil to protect the surrounding area from getting unwanted material on it.