Official Luthiers Forum!

Hans, I've been playing around by adding some lamp black to the filler and can get it quite dark that way. Dark enough for amazon rosewood anyway.

_________________
Jim Watts
http://jameswattsguitars.com

-

can it smell worse than hide glue?

_________________
"Preoccupation with an effect gives it power and enhances the error"
from "Your Owner's Manual" by Burt Hotchkiss.

-

Tony, normally the filler I use is McFadden's black. Works well with rosewoods. I don't know how well the ebony Timbermate will accept being colored black, and how it will look once dry. I do know that black can be a difficult color to achieve. I was lead to believe that the Timbermate turned dark once the finish was applied. The answer is NO.
I have sanded the finish off the instrument, and scrubbed the wood with acetone and that seemingly removed most all the filler. I have re-filled with McFaddens, re-scraped the binding and sprayed a couple of coats of finish on. I'll take a look at it later today.
My advice is to TEST ON SCRAP before using this stuff. Basically, what you see in the bottle is not what you get.
Someday I will follow my own advice, but as they say, hindsight is 20/20.

The smell of this stuff is not totally offensive, but to me smells strongly like iodine. It is lingering and get's into your clothes, and a shower is necessary after sanding.

Well, I had to sand off the finish again and I ended up dyeing the BRW with a black solution of Trans-Tint and a water base. Sprayed a coat of vinyl and scraped the binding for a third time and shot a couple of coats of lacquer on it. It's pretty dark, but looks like old Brazilian...and it is. So, I think it's OK now, but I don't have any more chances to scrape the binding another time.
I had a few minutes to play with the Timbermate, and just squirted about 20 drops of black T-T into the jar, and mixed the top portion to as black as I could get it, did a real quick spread, dry, sand on a scrap and it looked pretty good, but tomorrow I will have more time to experiment and apply a bit of finish to a scrap. If it works I will try it on one of the white oak parlors.
Sure would be nice to be able to do a one coat fill on white oak!

Thanks for the info Haans. I was considering it for a mahogany fill, but may reconsider.

-

Sorry to hear of your problems Haans,

Especially sorry if you feel that it was I who had mislead you into believing that this product would darken with the application of finish. You say it does not, and I maintain that it does. However it must be said that my post about Timbermate is related more specifically to my own experience most of which is with local West Australian woods being more of the reds and dark browns. There is not too much wood around here that is dark chocolate to black like you find in old BRW.

In my defence I must say that I thought I had been quite clear in my post that each user should experiment to see what works best for them. Indeed if you go back and re-read you will see that my last posting finishes suggesting that each should go out into their shed and do just that. Back to my point about Timbermate darkening with the application of finish, your experience prompted me to do a small test of my own as I am not comfortable with being thought of as one who knowingly provides misinformation on internet forums.

I started my test by selecting the darkest and lightest colours of Timbermate that I currently have in the shed. The two tones chosen were 'Maple' (which BTW looks nothing like any maple I have ever seen so I call it pink) and 'Walnut' (which I call dark brown).

In this image you can see a small sample of each product as is appears in its container has been placed in clear view on the lid of its container. This is for comparison later:



Whilst performing this experiment to see if Timbermate does in fact darken from its pale appearance when dry and sanded, back to a similar tone to that which can be found in the container once whetted again by finish, I thought it a good opportunity to also have a look at the problem you had experienced with black fill.

In this next image we can see a shallow drill hole has been made in a scrap of gaboon ebony. This is not an attempt to recreate your experience as I did not have any 'Ebony' (black) Timbermate product available for this test. But to get at least 'some' indication of the issue, I used some of the 'walnut' product adding a few drops of black tint to see how it would match with the scrap of gaboon. (The bottle of mahogany prooftint in the image has been included to show the label of the product used, as the label on the bottle of black has been obscured by stain spillage and is now unreadable)



This next image shows the gaboon has been filled with the black tinted walnut Timbermate, you can see where it was mixed on the paper at the top right of the image:



I did the same thing with a small piece of radiata pine, drilled 3 shallow holes, and filled each with a sample of the Timbermate products. This next image shows those samples freshly applied, the product is still wet. Walnut is on the right, Maple is in the centre, and the tinted walnut used to fill the gaboon ebony is to the left:



The four samples were then left to dry, and when ready, were sanded flush ready for application of blonde shellac. The next two images shows the samples 'before' the shellac was applied, the first includes the shellac I intend to use and the second is a closer look at the samples: (Here the pine stick has been placed in the opposite direction so that from this point forward the walnut sample is to the left)





The next image shows the samples now coated with shellac.



I think the above images demonstrate two thing. The first is, that generally speaking, the product does in fact darken substantially with the application of a finish and does become a reasonable match with the tone of the product as it appears in it's original state in the container. The second is that even when tinted 'black' the product does seem to have a grayish tint that does not match so well with the true black that we see in the gaboon sample.

My conclusion is that whilst the Timbermate product can work well for most all wood colours, I would not be overly thrilled with the results in 'very' dark and completely black woods if the product were used direct from the container. As for tinting, I remain concerned about adding straight tint to the product for fear it will also stain the wood to such and extent that sanding the tint clear again may require so much effort that the fill would also be removed making application pointless. That said, if I were to require a more natural fill for such wood a dark old BRW, I would look at adding a dry pigment to the 'ebony' Timbermate product such as 'burnt umber' and I would test again with that. It may also be beneficial to look at sealing prior to fill to prevent penetration of any pigments into the wood surrounding the pores.

Cheers

Kim

Thanks for the clarity Kim. I blame no one but myself and the tendency I have to rush when I'm wanting something badly for myself. I would really love this stuff to work, and I have a little time today, so I will find out.
I have a lot of experience with dyes, so I'm pretty bold using them. My plan is to dye the Timbermate very dark, fill some oak and then rub on my "special white oak dye", then finish. I'll post photos of the process and folks can decide for themselves.
Your photos show pretty much what I experienced, and while it seems to darken some, it seems the ebony is NOT ebony. My purpose was to point that out. Something else I noticed while trying to correct my mistakes is that in some spots I seemed to find areas that after refinishing had a grey cast which indicated to me that ALL the filler was not sanded off, and I really though that I had it sanded very well...120, 150, and 220. It also may have been residue from trying to get the filler out of the pores with acetone, although I washed it very well with acetone twice...
So, it seems that the problem is procedural rather than a problem with the product aside from color. I'm hoping to solve that problem.

FWIW, the image below is ebony Timbermate over mahogany (rosewood backstrip), followed by a shellac seal coat and mahogany stain; finish has yet to be applied.

George, looks like it works for mahogany if dyed after application...that's good news. Same with oak, although straight out of the bottle is not my choice for ebony filler on oak. To me darker is better on oak.
Here are the photos of my experience with BRW. Even the large amount of black I put into the filler is not enough to make it black under the finish, but you can see the horror of straight out of the bottle. Definitely gray.









So, my recommendation is to test on scrap for dark wood and be prepared to add a ton of Trans-Tint black.

So George, am I correct in assuming you stained after a seal coat of shellac to color the fill only. The shellac didn't block the stain? I've used it on two Mahogany guitars. I got caught by the color thing too and had to re-do with tinted fill. I had kind of a hard time getting it sanded off and keeping the color of the wood even (I did seal with shellac prior to filling).
There's definitely a learning curve with this stuff. Are you guys scraping it off or wiping?

_________________
It's not what you don't know that hurts you, it's what you do know that's wrong.

I'm surprised by the amount of blue/gray cast that has shown up on the BRW Haans and can clearly see why you would be disappointed. Still wondering about how the addition of a burnt umber pigment would work though? Must give it a try.

George, your effort looks 'very' good, what product did you use to stain over the shellac, Transtint? Also, just to clarify, did you only apply the stain because you had experienced problems with the colour of the fill? Or was the stain simply part of your standard finishing regime?

Terrence, can you tell us what base colour Timbermate you had started with when filling the mahogany guitars? I would have shot for Walnut myself and just thinned as is with water by about 15%. When removing the product I sand back to clean wood with abrasive, sand and wipe until only the pores remain with filler. The product does sand very well so I leave it just proud of the surface rather than trying to scrape or wipe away the excess too much. I find there is less chance of pulling it from the grain this way.

Cheers

Kim

As a non-expert, it is highly probable that my processes are unorthodox. Here's what I did:

First, I spread the Timbermate across the bare wood and wiped off some of the excess as it dried, leaving an even covering. Once dry I sanded back with 220 and repeated these steps. When the second pore filling effort was dry I sanded back again and wiped the entire area with a very slightly damp cotton cloth. That seemed to do a pretty good job of removing the remaining Timbermate from the surface of the wood, while leaving it in the pores. I then lightly sanded everything with 400, cleaned up any dust and then wiped on two thin seal coats of shellac. When that was dry I wiped on Minwax red mahogany and let it sit for a couple of days. When that was good and dry I wiped on two more thin seal coats of shellac. That's where things stand in the picture above.

(Kim - I planned to stain no matter what, but in my testing I did notice that the color of the Timbermate filled pores were a bit darker with the stain than they were with just the shellac.)

Putting stain over shellac seems kind of weird to me, but I've read about others doing it this way and my own tests on scrap left a nice, even coloration, as opposed to the blotchy results I had when I stained before applying the shellac. Like I said, probably unorthodox, but I like the way it looks and it seems to have dried just fine. If someone knows that this is a bad, bad idea, please speak up! I'd rather sand it all off and start over now, as opposed to later.

Finally, after all this, I doubt I will use Timbermate again. It has an unusual smell to me, kind of a plastic odor, which I don't like and it makes a lot of dust, all without being noticeably superior to any other pore filling method I've tried. However, I'm not very good at pore filling, so take everything I write with at least a tablespoon of salt.

_________________
George :-)

Nothing weird about staining over a sealer coat George, it's done all the time. Still I would like to know if you stained because the colour of the Timbermate was an issue for you or if it was just something you were going to do anyhow?

Cheers

Kim

When testing with Timbermate I tried the three colors they call mahogany, walnut and ebony. The first two looked very light and/or pinkish to me, so I rejected them for this project. The ebony looked promising, but I was disappointed by its light gray appearance when dry. However, I had read that it darkened under finish, so I kept with it and it did indeed darken considerably when coated with shellac. Would it have been acceptable at that point? I can't honestly say. As I was planning to stain the mahogany anyway, I went ahead and added the Minwax to my experiment. I do know that when I applied the stain to my test pieces I was greatly relieved to see that the Timbermate darkened even further, achieving what looks to me like a deep, natural color that compliments the wood quite nicely.

_________________
George :-)

Terry, I'm sanding it off after letting it dry thoroughly.

What I was actually wondering Haans was how you worked it into the pores and removed the excess. I tried both a plastic scraper and rubbing in with cloth. Almost liked rubbing it in better. Kim, I used the walnut stuff

_________________
It's not what you don't know that hurts you, it's what you do know that's wrong.

Terry, I just used some "industrial strength" paper rags. Rubbed it on thick against the grain, and as you can see from the photos, I left it quite proud of the wood. Still not sure of the best way to apply. It dries fast, so I think a heavy coat is the way to go. I just did the whole box and let it dry thoroughly.
Kim, any input on application?

I am honored to be able to answer your questions about Timbermate wood filler.

First, let me say that the Lutherie community has been a fun one to become involved in. Especially since my 6 year old daughter had her first guitar recital last night.

Haans, you mention that the filler did not darken back to its original finish once coated. This is unusual, and 99% of the time the colour is predictable in that it returns to its original colour once coated. The other 1% occurs if the finish has an unusually high alkalinity, which will bleach the wood/pore filler.

Please test your finishes' compatibility with Timbermate prior to putting it on your final piece.

Our application suggestion for pore filling is as follows:

1) mix filler with 15%-20% warm water to yogurt like consistency
2) Wipe across grain. Make sure to work the paste into the grain.
(if you are concerned about staining the field, apply a wash coat first)
3) Let dry. (If too thick when dry, use a damp cloth to remove excess and let dry again)
4) sand.
5) Stain (optional)
6) apply the final clear coat/paint

Also, Timbermate is water based. Other fillers are water soluble but Acrylic or latex based.

If you find you missed a spot after beginning your finishing process, you can apply Timbermate between coats.


Please feel free to email me at Barry@timbermate.com

Barry Gork
www.Timbermate.com

Hi Barry,

Thanks for giving us your insight into the use of the product.
As to the finish, I used 1 coat of Behlen's vinyl sealer and one coat of McFadden's lacquer to produce the result you see. As you can readily tell, the color did not darken to the original "wet" color out of the bottle. To me it looks more or less like the original dried color of the filled but not sanded photo. As you can see, the left side is the side I darkened with Trans-Tint black, better, but still not dark enough.
My only complaint about the product is the labeling of the color as ebony. I wonder if you folks can just make the filler black...even straight out of the bottle, it is not black.
Again, thanks for your input. Seems like it might be a good product.

-

I don't why I'm posting this again, I should probably just exit stage left, but pigment works great as I've posted twice in this topic, try it.

_________________
Jim Watts
http://jameswattsguitars.com

Barry pretty much covered what I have been doing Haans, I work the thinned mix in a circular motion using a rag to make sure I get the fill into the pores. I finish off leaving a cross grain pattern moderately proud of the wood surface and I find the visual indication this provides later when dry helps even out the over all sanding. All in all it is a very quick and easy process and best of all, I have not had any sink back whatsoever with the product....touch wood

I think Barry's comment regarding the possible bleaching effect that a predominantly alkaline finish can have on this filler is worth looking at very closely. I do not know that the Behlen's vinyl sealer you have applying over Timbermate is in fact an overly alkaline product and is therefore responsible for the problems you have encountered, but I think for the sake of this discussion, we need to clarify that now.

I also think Jim's advice re the lamp black is worth following up. I will be trialing something similar when I have the chance over the next few days and will post results here. For now, as I don't think they even sell their product here in Australia, it would be good if you could contact Behlen and find out the PH of their vinyl sealer...failing that, maybe trialing a wash coat of shellac to act as a barrier before proceeding with the rest of your finish regime may help, but then what is the PH of shellac?? I have no access to a PH meter so cannot test to see for myself. It would be great if someone else on this forum who has the PH numbers at hand could give us some insight.

Cheers

Kim