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I've heard people say you can mix sawdust from your workpiece with wood glue to make an invisible patch, but I've tried it twice (once in oak, once as pictured on ash) and both times it came out significantly darker and the surrounding wood. The glue is Tite Bond 3.

Does a different glue work better? How wet should the sawdust paste be? This is on the back so it doesn't matter a lot, but I'd like to have a good process for filling little mistakes.

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[-] pageflight@lemmy.world 1 points 4 days ago

Oh interesting. Current piece I'm just finishing with oil, but often I'll be using polyeurethane.

[-] ellisk@lemmy.ca 2 points 4 days ago

If you're going to try it, my advice: mix some very fine sanding dust (maybe 120 or so) with some poly with a putty knife until it's a really thick paste, and then jam it into the cracks... it'll shrink a little so be liberal with it and just sand it before you do the final finish. If you're really artsy too, you can actually paint on matching grain with acrylic and an incredibly fine brush to help it match. I've also just filled up cracks with sawdust and applied a few drops of poly, but it never seems to match quite as well for me that way.

I actually need to try something new for my next oil finish project too, so I'll be keeping an eye on this post, haha.

this post was submitted on 25 Sep 2025
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