anyone else using repair care products

[sawdust1]

Good stuff but boy is it expensive, £57 for a small tube !
I do a lot of window repairs and have used two tubes of dryflex 4 this week !
I know the customer is paying for it, will need another tube to finish, thats a hefty
cost to stick on the bill just for filler !
I don't bother with the dry fix wood hardener as thats another sixty odd pounds !
I can't help feeling we are being ripped off !
Can't find a similar product, anyone know of one ?

 

[Setch]

Oxera repair resins are much more affordable.

 

[Doug71]

I often use the Timbabuild products from Reddiseals but it's about the same price as Repair Care.

https://www.reddiseals.com/?s=timbabuild

I think @johnnyb recommends this stuff which I keep meaning to try.

https://www.makewoodgood.co.uk/product/rotten-wood-repair-kits/

 

[Poundofcarrots]

When I had a lot of repairs to do in the past, I used Timbabuild as it was then about half the cost of Repaircare, but it’s not as nice to work with. I find Repaircare smooths and shapes more easily. It is ridiculously expensive though.

These days however, I try to use neither and fit a better tighter splice with exterior wood glue and fill any small gaps with linseed putty as required. I use linseed paint though.

 

[cemannion]

As has been said rediculously expensive, but using bits of wood as fillers reduces the amount of stuff used and compare the costs of not using it...

 

[HOJ]

I use it when its difficult to get a perfect splice, and to be honest use very little of it by bulking out any gaps with timber, its principal market is for Painters and decorators, where they need a quick fix without the need to call in a chippy or spend extra time patching in with timber, which they are not geared up to do.

Not tried any other options other than the typical 2 pack filler, agreed, it is pricey but so is time.

 

[johnnyb]

Tight splices are fine but my thinking is if it's not listed I'd prefer to rip out and replace en masse as any splice is vulnerable. Second I prefer a resin repair with at least a few mm space for resin and always using thin epoxy first. Third is a tight splice only using accoya. The smiths products are slightly different in that the thin epoxy is cheaper so say a cracked sill can be painted in epoxy and skim filled reasonably.(repaircare is cheaper trade from dulux)

 

[scholar]

I bought a starter kit of Repair Care which seemed reasonable value - so far I have only used the 2-in1 surface finish which I am very impressed with - very nice to use/easier (and obvs better) than my usual two part filler that goes off so quickly. About £36 for a small tube from Brewers, but it goes a long way.

Works well with gouging out any little splits etc with a Dremel-type carbide rasp.

I too favour option 3 above - proper repairs using Accoya, so think I will probably not use a lot of the dryflex 4.

Cheers

 

[johnnyb]

Those are in order of preference. Like a triage when quoting for repairs. Splices are number three because they take longer and are restricted in that they need specific paint and original steel fittings can't be used. If using anything but accoya they are significantly inferior.
Another little bonus with smiths cpes is it can be injected into slightly dodgy wood making a decent repair in a very simple fashion.(much better than any standard repair using pine and polyester/ caulking)

 

[johnnyb]

Dulux trade centre are around half what brewers charge btw. So these days I've dropped the slightly inferior timbabuild. They also sell toupret putty at £9 a tin.

 

[Ollie78]

Used to use it when we had to contractually and was trained by them how to use it all etc. but it has always been stupid expensive.
I use timbabuild ERC 10 mostly. My idea is that mainly I replace the timber with new timber and only use the timbabuild as a splicing adhesive/ filler. Using this strategy you need a lot les of the stabiliser as well.
The repair care strategy was always more to remove the rot with a die grinder and replace it with the resin, this uses a lot of resin. and a lot of their little sanding disks etc.
Also check out the 3C sealants own brand which looks very similar to the repair care stuff. Not tried it yet but might give it a go.

These are all epoxy based products and are fundamentally made by adding various fillers to a liquid epoxy, you can (if you can be bothered ) make up your own from something like the west system 105 with various fillers like coloidal silica, microfibres and micro balloons to make it behave how you want.