How to Use Wood Filler Before Painting
Wood filler is used to fill up any gap or cavity among the woodwork. So for paintwork and stain work, you need to know how to use wood filler before painting. They are a quite handy item for people who do wood related work. They smoothen the surface of the wood and enhance the look of your woodwork. If you do not fill the gap or uneven surface of the wood, then after painting or staining it would look horrible. It is a basic item that almost every carpenter uses.
How to Use Wood Filler Before Painting
Generally, while making anything wood related, you will need these wood filler. They are a perfect tool to vanish those nasty scratches and mark upon the wood. To do the painting more efficiently, you need to know how to use wood filler before painting. They are widely used in the furniture business. At the time of making furniture, rectangular-shaped wood blocks are attached together by glue.
As the woodblocks edge seem to be uneven, you will see a little amount of space between the two adjacent woodblocks. Gum cannot totally level those gap. That’s why you need wood filler to level those gaps. Apart from that, the surface of those wood planks also tends to be uneven. Some of them even contain a cavity which will tarnish the good look of your intended furniture or product. Wood filler will easily fill those cavities and help you to regain the good look of your product.
The interesting thing about them is that they are not that costly. You can easily afford them. For paint job you need to first level the surface of the woodwork so that it doesn’t look awful after painting. You can easily do that with these wood filler.
The application process of the wood filler will be divided into several steps so that you can understand them properly.
Step 1 Clean the Surface
You need to clean the surface of the woodwork before applying gum or wood filler. So start with the wooden blocks remove the tiny wood particle from the surface of the wood. Clean both sides in order to remove the wood dust. You can clean the edge of the woodblock before applying gum. After applying gum, you can clean them one more time. If you do any kind of other operation after applying gum, then be sure to remove the sawdust created from that.
Step 2 Identify Areas for Wood Filler
Now that you have scan your woodwork thoroughly for places which needs wood filler. The type of area that you should look for should have a scratch, cavity, or uneven surface. You also need to examine the joining area of the wood. You will need most of your wood filler to fill these kinds of joining area between two adjacent wood planks. The reason for having an uneven surface between two adjacent wood planks is that all the wood are not totally straight. Some of the wood planks are not that much straight. They might have a little bit curvature in some wood plank.
Step 3 Choosing Filler
What kind of filler you will use will totally depend upon the type of work that you will do. If you want to paint the woodwork, then you can use wood filler from the market or wood filler made from the sawdust. In case you want to do any kind of stain work, then you will need wood filler made of sand dust. You can also do them with conventional wood filler but using wood filler made from the same sand dust is both money-saving and effective. For paint job, you can just buy some wood filler from the market and use them. You can save that money and make your own wood filler.
Step 4 Wood Filler From Sand Dust
Making your own wood filler is really easy. You need some glue which you probably use for day-to-day woodwork. You can collect them from the woodwork. While making any furniture, you will get some sawdust while making the wood plank. So you can use them for your wood filler, or you can collect them by grinding the small amount of surface from the wood plank. Then add them with the glue, and you got your readymade wood filler. You should use a knife or stick to mix them properly. Keep mixing until you make a dough that you can roll between your fingers.
Step 5 Using Wood Filler
Whether it is holes or uneven surfaces, just pour the wood filler on it. Then gently rub them over the area that you want to fill. While rubbing put some downward force on the wood filler so that they enter into the void and fill them. Keep rubbing downwards until enough wood filler has entered into the gap or hole. Then remove the excess wood filler form the upper surface. You should keep them for a little while to let them dry them up. You should leave them for about 6 hours for proper drying.
Step 6 Sandpaper
Then to level the surface and give it a look of continuous woodwork, you need to do some finishing work. Take a lath and rub the area where you used the wood filler to fill the gap or void. Keep rubbing them and stops after a minute. Then collect sandpaper and take a piece of sandpaper from there. A now rub the woodwork or furniture with these sandpaper thoroughly. Then remove the extra debris created from the finishing work. Now your woodwork is ready for getting painted or stained.
Step 7 Painting the Woodwork
Now take whatever painting you want to use and start putting the paint over the wood. Don’t paint unevenly it will look bad. For stain work, you have to the same.
Conclusion
While painting, you got to keep in mind that filler and wood should look alike. If they don’t look the same, it will diminish the look of your work. So I hope you got your answer to the query of how to use wood filler before painting.
