What is the Best Wood Filler?

5 years ago in July here it is uh first week of September I took this piece of old Cypress Wood it was actually new Cypress Wood and I drilled out a few pieces in it five in particular to test five of the most popular wood fillers and epoxies on the market um I have left this piece of wood out in my backyard in Central Florida for the Last 5 Years sitting like this exposed to the elements to see how these wood fillers did and uh I'm kind of impressed and kind of shocked on some of it so I'm going to walk you through each of these wood fillers how they performed over the last 5 years and uh we'll show you some pictures of how they were the first year and on through that how they've progressed but it's a pretty good test you might want to try this in your climate too because what do you need a really high-end wood filler is it a wood epoxy what what do you need to repair wood in your deck of the woods so we'll check it out and take a look at these and see what you think 5 years ago I started a test I repaired this piece of wood for the manufacturer specs with each of these wood fillers and epoxies and left it to the elements in my backyard the results I found truly surprised me and I hope this test will help you pick the right wood filler for your project and trust that if it can stand up here it will do the same at your house so let's take a look at the results and pick the winners the first wood filler I've got here is actually a structural two-part wood epoxy called abatron wood epox uh I use this in my shop a lot and I wanted to see how it held up down here it's still very solidly in the wood it is um got some Cracks around the edges as you can see but uh it held up pretty well the algae did was not frightened by it it grew on it no mold or mildew it doesn't look like but it held up there pretty well second product that I use to patch it is MH ready patch this is more of like a spackle and you can see it did not do that well um it just came loose this last year but uh it was pretty difficult to get this thing to hang in there it was a little bit uh it had shrunk after I sanded it it dried it shrunk a bit so it was a bit of a divot in the surface but um I would not recommend this for exterior wood application because that's the results you'll get after four or 5 years next product I use I was pretty surprised by but this is JB Weld quickwood quick Wood's a two-part uh kind of looks like a tootsie roll and you just smush the two parts together it's uh comes in a small stick and it's held up pretty well it's very difficult to dig out I haven't been able to get it to move um and the one of the cool things is algae mildew gr mildew growth on it absolutely nothing it stays pretty clean and seems impervious to just just about all of our Florida weather down here so that'ss off to you quickwood this right here is Minwax stainable wood filler and this is probably one of the least expensive and biggest surprises for me how this did um it is really solid in the wood no real cracking around the outside it's pretty level obviously mildew algae growth uh just like it would on the wood so no changes there but for a very inexpensive wood filler obviously this is not a structural repair but it held up really really well so very well done Minwax and this right here is Minwax high performance wood filler which strangely did not perform quite as well as the regular wood filler this is a um styrene resin kind of like a Bondo type product it's two-part and smells pretty bad when you put it on but it is a very hard uh repair and a little bit more resistant to algae and mold and mildew growth um it's a little bit too rigid it would appear for the wood because you can see right there you've got some cracks along the edges um a little bit more than some of the other wood fillers not quite as bad as the MH ready patch but uh it was also down here on the end and there's not much of that wood left so I think it held up pretty well for what it was so there you have it the results of my 5-year wood filler and epoxy test some great products definitely some dark horses and I'm going to be using this Minwax wood filler more often now and for structural repairs to me it seems like the abatron Woody pox was the way to go so some great products to give a shot in your area and definitely some ones to stay away from if you don't want them to fail you can find links to all these products in the description below as well as the yearly results posts on my blog while you're still here click the Subscribe button to keep up to date and join me on patreon for some individual coaching for your project thanks for coming by if you could yeah if you want to zoom in thank you it's just a little too far yeah I want to make sure that people could see everything that they need to yep there too great

Channel: The Craftsman Blog

Views: 293,561

Keywords: historic preservation, craftsman blog, wood filler, epoxy, rotten wood, wood rot, wood repair, product testing, minwax, abatron, woodepox, kwikwood, ready patch, patch wood

Id: 0Zd3-yiMNTM

Length: 5min 21sec (321 seconds)

Published: Sat Apr 04 2020