I like factory-finished hardwood flooring because it installs quickly and with little mess. Dings and nail holes, though, are difficult to disguise, especially in even-toned woods where the grain doesn’t offer any natural camouflage.

On a recent installation of Santos mahogany flooring, I tried at least a half-dozen different touch-up pencils, paste fillers, and wax sticks, but the nail holes along the last row of planks still stuck out like a sore thumb. In a last-ditch effort, I forked over $30 for FastCap’s SoftWax kit, hoping it would ease the customer’s growing nervousness and get me out of this jam. Thankfully, I got a near-perfect color match within minutes.

FastCap’s kit includes a plastic scraper, a small buffing pad, and 20 wax blocks in a variety of colors, all organized and protected by a hard plastic case. Each shade of wax is labeled with a number, and FastCap sells individual replacements, making it easy to replenish a partially depleted kit.

I like FastCap’s wax better than the Minwax and DAP products I’ve used in the past. It strikes a good balance: hard enough to last a long time, but soft enough that it can be rubbed in without much, if any, pre-softening with heat. If the surface you’re trying to match requires a shade of wax other than the included colors, you can shave off narrow slices of two or more waxes and melt them together with a heat gun or hair dryer.

The price for this kit is steep, but when I consider the hours I wasted going back and forth to the store and the $20 investment I made in products that will now likely never be used, it would have been far cheaper for me to buy the FastCap kit from the start.