I will be building kitchen cabinets with cherry face frames. What is a good wood filler that also takes stain well.
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famowood
I assume that you're talking about wood filler for nails and not paste wood filler. If so try building the cabinets with as few nails as possible especially the money views. You can use pocket screws and/or biscuit joinery and avoid nails in the face frames. Doors are joinery, glue and clamps.
It makes a nicer job and you don't have to worry about the putty matching
Barry
Also many people, including myself, don't think that cherry should be stained.
It has it own nice rich color with improves with age.
If you want to speed it up give it a coat of BLO and put out in the sun for a couple of hours.
Robb White the boat builder saves some sanding dust from the same wood and uses that to fill where he needs it. You could conceivably use whatever kind of glue suits you. For a lot of filler for a boat, Robb White mixes the dust with epoxy. For really tiny places, he pushes in the dust, drops on some cyanoacrylate and spritzes it with the hardener. I've also known him to use that dust trick on beech when the planer gouges it because of that cross graining thing. My clear finished beech library stand has some fills of that kind. They are a perfect color match, but I can still see them because they interrupt the grain. It doesn't bother me too much. If it was a kitchen cabinet door at eye level it would, though. Try not to need any putty.
Cherry will definitely darken in UV light. So if you don't stain it, then be sure you don't ruin your plan by applying a UV inhibitor clear coat.
Good luck!
B
For Cherry we use Famowood Cherry or believe it or not Plastic Wood. It actually does take stain pretty well. BUT I prefer cherry when it gets to age naturally without staining.
"Do not go where the path may lead, go
instead where there is no path and
leave a trail."-- Ralph Waldo Emerson
Famowood or FIX are the fillers I use. But whatever you do, don't expect "cherry" to take stain the same color as cherry wood does. Oh, no, that would be far too easy. Take a scrap of the wood you intend to use, and fill cracks with several different colors of filler, making notes where each color is along the board. Then sand that scrap the same as you would for the finished cabinetry - probably 150 or 220 grit, depending on what tools you sand with.
Then stain and apply finish coats just as you will for your cabinetry. THEN select the appropriate color putty to go with that species wood AFTER it's stained and finished.
I have never once seen "light oak" filler come out right for filling oak, or "birch/fir" be the right color for birch, OR fir.
If you need grain lines, don't use "filler", use "Color Putty", which you apply after the wood is stained and the first coat of finish has been applied. You can mix bits of two or more colors to get an almost perfect color match - then mix in various ammounts of "White" to lighten the tone to match different areas on the same board. Then weave bits of "Pine Cone" (which is almost black)to get your grain. I've also seen painters mix color from tubes with (I think) exterior spackling putty to makes almost perfect color matches, but Color Putty has always worked well for me.
Edited 5/27/2002 10:37:06 PM ET by jim blodgett
Jim, don't you find yourself using "oak" fillers for birch and vice versa all the time. Ya know I should've also said the cherry famowood filler isn't really the right cherry color and I "cheat" it at times to get a better color match with some of the dyes and colorants I keep around.
"Do not go where the path may lead, go
instead where there is no path and
leave a trail."-- Ralph Waldo Emerson