What off-the-shelf filler for Wenge/Panga-Panga (First post)

[deadlydarcy]

Firstly, hello everyone. Hardwood Floor guy in Bristol here - specialising in parquet. Branching out into some simple furniture...

Only just found out about these forums. Looks great!

Anyway, I found some old Wenge blocks (from a massive parquet job nearly ten years ago!) and I'm making a table from them, laying them in herringbone style, just like on a floor. Normally for sanding and finishing a parquet, we'd collect the "flour" from the sanding and mix it with a clear resin (Lecol), fill the whole floor, then sand back. Repeat till back broken.

As much as I hoard, I don't have any of this flour left over, but will need to make up a filler for the table, as once the blocks are sanded flat, there are still plenty of small gaps (the blocks are machined somewhere in Africa).

As you'll all know, Wenge is a rich but very dark brown-black when oiled, so your common or garden "dark" wood-filler isn't really going to cut it.

Anyone got any suggestions for anything easily obtainable?

 

[custard]

Welcome to the forum.

If the gaps aren't too large you can generally get away without any colouring agent at all. On furniture I'd be tempted to use something like clear 5 minute epoxy and just apply it into the gaps neat. Try it on a sample, provided you do a good job of scraping and levelling afterwards you'd be astonished at how good the fix is. But if you're determined to add colour why not give one of the off-cuts a good blast with a belt sander, surely that would generate plenty of sawdust for a table?

Good luck!

 

[deadlydarcy]

Hi custard, thanks for the reply. Some useful thoughts there.

Indeed...I may just have to do that i.e. generate some dust with a beltsander, or orbital with clean bag attached on some spare blocks. The blocks are mounted on birch ply, so just a bit worried that anything "clear" might end up showing through to the ply. (The blocks are only 10-ish mm deep)

I might try a Morrells 2-part...just a lot of money for what might be only a 1-off table.

Perhaps an Osmo Ebony, lightened down a bit with Walnut might do it. Aaargh...coloured fillers, I hate 'em. :x

 

[Beau]

You can get a black powder for mixing with resin. Usually used for the black strips for teak decks on boats but might be just the ticket for your job. This stuff http://www.ecfibreglasssupplies.co.uk/p ... owder.aspx

 

[Normancb]

You can get black grain filler from luthiers suppliers, like ToneTech. However. bear in mind that wenge doesn't stay dark if it's exposed to much light - it fairly quickly turns to a milk chocolate colour and overdoing black filler may end up with black grain against a lighter background.

 

[rafezetter]

Welcome to the forum fellow Bristolian (now I think about, it there's almost enough here for a gang!) for colormatching filler / resin / urea woodglue I have used acrylic paint from an art shop - not the £5 a tube ones, the £2 squeezy bottles for kids art n crafts. The colour range is huge and mixing them to get the right shade is easy. A few drops is all it needs to get a very close match or complimentray colour.

If you are anywhere near the upper end of gloucester road (near the cricket ground) I now have access to an almost unlimited supply of some nice hardwoods including old teak from school benches, there's small offcuts all over the workshops you could have for making up some wood flour.

Send me a PM and I'll tell you where it is

 

[custard]

bear in mind that wenge doesn't stay dark if it's exposed to much light - it fairly quickly turns to a milk chocolate colour and overdoing black filler may end up with black grain against a lighter background

+1

It's one thing to make a colour match that's accurate when the piece leaves your workshop, it's another thing for it still to be accurate in a few years time. Personally I'll almost never use black on it's own, because the wood around is constantly changing. I'll maybe mix a bit of black with some burnt umber if I'm trying to simulate a resin pocket in Cherry, but that's about it. The benefit of clear epoxy is that it refracts the colour of the underlying wood so it's a perfect match that evolves over time, and some epoxies (such as Araldite 5 minute) are particularly clear with minimal yellowing or cloudiness. I know some makers who go a step further and use a special dental epoxy that cures with a UV torch which is that bit clearer still, but it's very expensive and needs to be kept refridgerated so it's a bit excessive for most applications!

 

[Beau]

Do you guys not find that a darker rather than lighter filler is less obvious? I often use black/very dark brown shellac sticks on defects and they just seem to vanish to the eye well maybe not on holly