I screwed up a miter... how to hide it....

[Bill Huber]

I some how screwed up a miter on a project. I am putting a walnut edge on a 14 x 14 inch board and 3 of the miters are just fine. From the bottom all 4 look great but on the top there is one that for some reason did not meet when I glued them up and I missed it at that time.
It is a very fine opening about the width of a line on a ruler.

So what or how would the best way be to hide this, there is just no taking it apart and redoing it.
I know I can't fix it but I would like to hide it a little some way.

Any ideas???

[Lee Schierer]

You can make your own wood filler. Take a piece of the same wood and sand it until you have a pretty good pile of saw dust. Mix the sawdust with wood glue to make a thick paste. Force the paste into the opening. Let the glue dry, sand the paste flush to the rest of the surface. Because you used the same wood, the color should match exactly.

Note: This will not work if you are going to stain the item in question, unless you also mix stain with the paste.

[Raymond Fries]

I have shaved really thin pieces of stock with a slight taper to them and tapped them into the gap with glue. If you are careful to match the color and grain orientation at the joint, it is almost invisible. Sometimes a thick shaving from a plane is great.

Good luck.

[Bill Huber]

You can make your own wood filler. Take a piece of the same wood and sand it until you have a pretty good pile of saw dust. Mix the sawdust with wood glue to make a thick paste. Force the paste into the opening. Let the glue dry, sand the paste flush to the rest of the surface. Because you used the same wood, the color should match exactly.

Note: This will not work if you are going to stain the item in question, unless you also mix stain with the paste.


Will my Titebond glue work ok or should I use something else?

Thanks for the help..

[Bill Huber]

I have shaved really thin pieces of stock with a slight taper to them and tapped them into the gap with glue. If you are careful to match the color and grain orientation at the joint, it is almost invisible. Sometimes a thick shaving from a plane is great.

Good luck.

I will have to play with that and see if I can do it, the opening is so small that I am not sure I can get a shaving into it.

Thanks...

[frank shic]

bill, i just did this last night with the titebond woodglue. it should work fine. don't feel too badly about whiffing that last miter. they're much trickier than most people realize.

[Bill Huber]

bill, i just did this last night with the titebond woodglue. it should work fine. don't feel too badly about whiffing that last miter. they're much trickier than most people realize.


I am going to give it a go tonight.

I did look at it again this morning and I think what happened was the blade vibrated when I cut the joint.
I am having this little problem now and then and have send Forest and email but have not heard back.
When I am cutting hard wood at times the blade will vibrate a little, you can see the kerf get wider at the point it vibrates. I have a Forest I blade and I think I need to get a stabilizer for it, just not sure what size I need for my 8 inch blade.
I have cleaned the arbor and blade and the big washer that holds the blade really good and see nothing on them that would cause the problem.

[Lee Schierer]

Just about any wood glue will work. I wouldn't use the urethane types as they tend to foam.

[Mike Steinhilper]

have you tried to burnish it? just rub the length of a screw driver up and down over the miter. if the opening is that small, it should bend over the edges of the miter enough to close it without anyone noticing. worth a shot before you get into trying to fill it.

[Alex Berkovsky]

You can make your own wood filler. Take a piece of the same wood and sand it until you have a pretty good pile of saw dust. Mix the sawdust with wood glue to make a thick paste.Lee,
With all due respect, I read somewhere that shellac should be used instead of the glue.

[Dwayne Watt]

Your apparent blade vibration may mean it is simply time to get the blade sharpened. I am presuming that this blade has some time on it, of course.

[Richard M. Wolfe]

If you use wood glue to make a paste to fill a void you need to leave a little mound of it higher than the surrounding area and sand off what may be too high when it dries. As the water evaporates out of the glue the patch will shrink and if you flushed the repair to start with you will end up with a small pit.

[glenn bradley]

A picture would help but, is the gap is along the edge where the thin points come together and is it very slight? I have rubbed a round screwdriver shaft or a scraper burnishing rod along the edge very lightly causing the gap to close.

[Gary Keedwell]

Lee,
With all due respect, I read somewhere that shellac should be used instead of the glue.
In over 25 years of woodworking....I have never heard of that:confused: No offense given.:)
Gary

[Eric Gustafson]

In over 25 years of woodworking....I have never heard of that:confused: No offense given.:)
Gary

Neither have I, but you know, it might be a good idea. If you screw it up you could remove it with wood alcohol. If it shrinks you could add more. I will have to try shelac as a binding agent some day.

[josh bjork]

Will my Titebond glue work ok or should I use something else?

Thanks for the help..

If you are staining, use something like hideglue that will take the stain. Waterproof glue won't. If you can fit the shaving in there, you kind of avoid that problem when the line is small.

[Mike Steinhilper]

burnish. no mess.

[Doug Shepard]

The shaving that you'll need to glue into the gap to get the right grain orientation to be invisible will need to be a cut across end-grain rather than along an edge. That's not always easy to get a shaving of the right thickness with a hand plane. I'd try cutting some on the TS (at a 45) with the blade not cutting all the way through so it remains attached where you can find it.

[Bill Huber]

I didn't have any shellac so I just used glue and it looks like it is doing the job. I use a monofilament fishing line to work it down into the opening as far as I could and then built a little up on top.

So we will see tomorrow night how it sands out.


Thanks to everyone for the help.

[Dean Thomas]

(not having heard about the use of shellac to hide a gap) Neither have I, but you know, it might be a good idea. If you screw it up you could remove it with wood alcohol. If it shrinks you could add more. I will have to try shellac as a binding agent some day.

There is another solution. It's to shellac, but not the liquid kind. Rockler sells "burn in sticks". Furniture repairmen use them in a wide variety of colors to hide blemishes and repairs. It could work pretty well in this application.

One reason for not using Titebond on walnut is the very reason that they sell a DARK version of Titebond. The whiter glues can show up and emphasize your fix rather than hiding it. Thick orange shellac with sawdust in it might make a darker line than you want and blonde shellac might be too light.

Shellac as a binding agent is a very old timey fix. One could use hide glue to achieve the same thing. Both are the stuff that furniture makers had around all the time. That's why they use them. That and finishes stick to shellac much better than to Titebond.

Just a couple of thoughts.

[Rich Engelhardt]

Hello,
Dean's got it.
Google "shellac sticks".
They're made just for this purpose.
A person with a steady hand & a "good" color eye can make scratchs &/or cracks disappear using shellac sticks.

Practice a lot with them before you actually try it out though. They're a bit tricky , plus you have to have a knack for using them.
I have a pretty fair "color eye", but I'm a total bumbler with shellac sticks.
I've known some people though that could work sheer majic with them.

[Alex Berkovsky]

In over 25 years of woodworking....I have never heard of that:confused: No offense given.:)
GaryGary,
I went through my "Finishing folder" since I usually print and save information like this and was able to find it. It was posted on one of the other WW forums but the thread has expired. It says the following: "mix a little shellac with some fine dust flour of identical species from your ROS bag. Do not use sawdust. Make a paste and apply with a plastic spatula. Sand and repeat is necessary. This works, but this is even better. Use Titebond liquid hide glue instead of shellac. This is the best I've ever found for filling grain pores and hairline pores and voids. Use epoxy and wood flour for larger voids, tearouts, and defects."

This was another reply in the same thread: "Clear shellac would be better, but amber will work too. These instructions are from a professional finisher. Sand a piece of scrap from the project with 120 or 150 grit sandpaper. Dump the dust into a paper bowl. In a 2nd paper bowl I'll pour in the pre-mixed shellac (you can mix your own #2 cut). About 1/8" will do since you can always add more later. You can always fix it if it's too dry, but if it's too wet, you'll have to start over. With rubber gloves on, take the sawdust in the opposite bowl with your hand and put it in the bowl and start mixing with your hand. If it's too thin, add more sawdust... too dry, add shellac. You want to have a meatball type of texture on the filler ball. Do not try to dump in a pile of sawdust and mix because it will dry out too fast. Use pinches of sawdust and keep adding until you get to that meatball texture or until it holds fairly well a ball shape.
Now this is where you want to work pretty fast. When the alcohol dries, your "meatball" will start to harden and crumple. Know where you're going to fill and fill ASAP. Let it be proud of the surface. When t dries, you can sand it down and it will blend in. When you're finished, knock off any clumps that might be on the piece and let it sit overnight. The next day sand it starting at 120 or 150 grit and work your way up to the finish sanding grit. The key to this method is fine dust (120 or 150 grit) - no lower or higher and mixing pinches at a time. The only drawback to this method is you have to work pretty quick before alcohol evaporates."

[Tim Quigley]

I just read about "fixing" miters in one of the magazines. Perhaps this is the rough way to fix this, but one option is to joint the inside edge of the piece. Doing so effectively lengthens the piece eliminating any gaps at the mitered corners. The tradeoff is that this piece is then just a tad skinnier than the rest. But, depending on what you plan to do with the outside edge, some subtle sanding can eliminate what would likely be less than a 1/16 difference between that piece and the two adjoining it.

[Matt P]

I wonder if either has distinct advantages to mix with sawdust for patching: shellac or glue?

[Gary Keedwell]

Been a real good thread....thanks for all the shellac and hide glue tips.:)
Gary K.

[Dean Thomas]

I wonder if either has distinct advantages to mix with sawdust for patching: shellac or glue?
Glue does not take finish or color well. Shellac will take either. That is a VERY distinct advantage, yes? Shellac also can be tinted in addition to the choices between blond, amber, or orange base colors available, glue comes in normal and "for dark woods".

[Greg Crawford]

When I got my clock finished, I had a couple of less than perfect miters. After finishing, I rubbed it with dark wax. The wax filled in some of the little gaps, and also gave a slight bit of toning there and in some of the corners where I couldn't get it all rubbed off. Any gaps that were still there were almost un-noticable.