Home Removal Services Blog

All too often, novice woodworkers don’t realize the power of wood putty. No doubt, they have heard about it and perhaps worked with it once or twice but had poor results. Chances are they either used the wrong product or the wrong application or maybe even both. It is sometimes referred to as wood filler or wood patch. It may be a water base or a solvent based. Solvent base has probably been the favored choice in the past. The water-based products have really made some excellent strides in their performance and are now being used more.

There is nitrocellulose-based putty. This dries very fast. To clean up all you need is some diluted acetone or lacquer thinner.

A gypsum-based putty comes in a powder form and you have to mix the proper ratio with water. If you clean up while it?s wet, it?s simply done with plain water. If you let the gypsum dry and try to clean up with water, it just isn?t going to happen.

Finally, an acrylic based putty will clean up with water as well until it dries then after that you will need to clean with acetone or toluene.

There are advantages to working with water wood-based fillers because they don?t have the heavy fumes to them that the solvent-based ones do and they are easier to work with. What woodworkers like about it the most though is how easy it is to clean up. It is also more economical for storage as it doesn?t? dry out as fast as the solvent-based putties do.

All wood putty is really is a glue mixed with material such a sawdust or gypsum for example. It creates a binder that holds the filler together.

Once you get used to working with wood putty ideally, you will want to keep both on hand if you are an avid wood worker or do it yourselfer.

Knowing which putty to use in the beginning may be a bit of a challenge. You want one that is going to stick and not shrink once it has dried. Another attribute about a good filler is you should need to sand it a great deal and it should have a satin finish to it afterwards.

Woods like poplar, rosewood or walnut just to name a few have very large pores and open grains. You can use wood filler to even out some of the grains in these types of woods.

Another good feature about wood putty is that it comes it different colors, which makes it much easier for blending. Ideally, before you use any of the colors check it on an unobserved piece of the wood to see what the end result is going to be. It may come out lighter or darker than you intended. If you are new to using wood putty ask your local paint supplier which seems to be the favored by most of their customers. This often gives you a good indication on how good and effective a product will be.

For novice woodworkers there are a multitude of things to learn when first getting into the hobby or business whatever the case may be. One of the simpler tasks may seem like reading a ruler. We all had to do it when we went to school right? For some us though that was a while back and we may be a bit rusty when it comes to basic math. It really is not all that difficult and it doesn?t take long to figure out once you get past the panic stage. This is the stage when you go to look for the measurement your pattern calls for and its not specifically marked on the ruler.

Ok so let?s go step by step regarding the markings of the basic ruler: ‘ – is for the feet markings ” – is for the inches

We are going to be dealing with the standard US ruler here. This means that the ruler is going to be divided into inches and feet. In some other Countries, you will be dealing with the metric system. In those cases when your pattern is in US measurements then you have to do conversions. If you are not adept at this there are many conversion charts that you can take advantage of online.

Getting back to the basic ruler it is divided into twelve inches, which equals one foot. Where the confusion can set in is when you are trying to break down the inches. Unfortunately, many patterns don?t call for even numbers such as 5 inches or 7 inches. The pattern may be for 5 ? inches or 7 ? inches.

If you look at the ruler between the longest line starting at number one going over to the next longest line is marked number two. The distance between 1 and 2 is one inch. In between these two numbers, you are going to see several small lines. A quick way to help you remember the markings is to know that the longer the mark the bigger the measurement as you see where the one and two are and so forth? Now if you look in between these two numbers you will see the longest line which is at the half way mark, so this is a half inch. The next longest line after the half inch one is the quarter inch. Then after the quarter inch follows the one eighth inch then the last or the very shortest is the one sixteenth. Some rulers will go beyond this breaking it down even further but that?s not the standard.

Now if you were to count all of the lines between the one and two you will find there are 16 lines. So if you have a pattern that called 8/16 inches then you could simply count over 8 lines. However, another way of saying the same thing is ? inch, which is the same as the 8/16. Now you simply have to look at the half-inch mark rather than doing all that counting.

Those are the basics of using a simple 12-inch ruler.