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Coloring Finishing And Painting Wood

A coarse filler is ordinarily needed only on woods that have large tracheal vessels which formerly served as the water courses for the upward moving sap of the growing tree. The other kinds of wood cells, except possibly the larger fiber tracheids which are found in some of the conifers, have small cell openings whicli can be sealed up with a liquid filler, because they do not require masses of coarse material such as are contained in paste fillers.2

CLASSES OR TYPES OF FILLERS

There are three types of wood-fillers, as follows:

1. An absolutely transparent filler, which is used as a sizing on woods that have such small cell openings that they are invisible to the eye. Such woods do not need to have the pores plugged or filled full of coarse material, and may be sized by oiling or shellacking.

2. A liquid filler, which is made of drying-oils, varnish, turpentine, japan, and a coarse material such as silica or some substitute, such as cornstarch, China clay, whiting, carbonate of magnesia, or talc. Such a filler is intended for use on nonporous or diffuse-porous woods with small cell openings.

3. Paste filler, which is usually made from a silex, or some other ground rock base, that furnishes coarse nonshrinkable transparent material for plugging cell openings and leveling the long narrow hollow places or depressions that are left by cutting thru the tracheal vessels of ringporous or coarse diffuse-porous woods. In addition to the silex, paste filler contains drying-oils and some thinner or solvent that makes it easier in application with a brush to the surface of wood.