Patching window frame with car body filler

[robgraham]

This is a top hung DG window frame in pine - possible someone like Magnet as the source. It's done 23 years so I perhaps should be grateful that just one of the six in the extension has deteriorated.

It's the bottom bar (of course!.)

The rotted area is some 12" x 1" x 1" - that of course is at least !!

I see 5 options

1 See if there is a replacement frame on the market - suspect unlikely

2 Get the local joiner to build a new frame

3 Build a new one myself

4 Cut out and patch with wood

5 Cut out and patch with car body filler while perhaps I do #3 over the winter.

Replacing the bottom bar is really a no-no as the frame will have to be out of the window for a period and this window faces the main road.

How good is body filler for this type of bodge ? My thinking would be to anchor it to some screws into the less rotten wood.

Rob

[Andy Cap]

I certainly did a very substantial repair to the bottom of a stanchion, where it joined the bottom rail, using the blue plastic padding and it lasted for many years. I'd certainly give it a try before shelling out on having one made up.

Andy C

[Chris Hogg]

Dig out all the rotten wood back to some reasonably solid stuff, then let it dry out and paint it very liberally with Ronseal wet rot wood hardener. When that's dried, use the car body filler. Ronseal do a wood filler, but it's just a resin that goes off with a peroxide curing agent, much like body filler. Perhaps just a different colour depending on the filler used in them.

See

I have no connection with Ronseal BTW.

[stuart noble]

+1 I find it helps to use a former to get a straight edge. This can just be a strip of hardboard pinned in place and smeared with vaseline as a release agent.

[Lobster]

+1

When I did this a long while ago, using a Ronseal kit, it also included some tablets of preservative about the size of the last joint of your little finger, which you shoved down holes adjacent to the repair; I think the idea was any further damp would dissolve the tablets and protect the wood?

I did as you suggested and put quite a lot of screws in there to act as a scaffold for the filler.

Certainly worked very well for me; IIRC it was done a couple of years before we moved out of the property and was still perfect when we left.

[Andrew Gabriel]

You can buy wood filler, which is basically the same stuff. You start by digging out the rot, and then liberally paint on a resin stabiliser which soaks in and converts what's left into resin with rot proofing for the timber fibres. Then mix up resin-based filler to replace what's missing, and it sets quickly. Can be sanded down afterwards, and painted.

[robgraham]

Thanks guys for your replies and encouragement. With the reasonably obliging weather at the moment I'd better get on with it.

The question now of course is whether such a repair will last another 23 years as that will probably comfortably see me out !!!

Rob

[Andrew Gabriel]

Probably not. The weak part is the join to the existing timber which will still change in size as the humidity changes, and the resin won't. The best chance is probably if you use a resin-based hardener on the existing timber, and you paint with a good quality external gloss undercoat and topcoat (such as Weathershield), which will last longer than standard gloss when the timber underneath does move, before it cracks.

[The Natural Philosopher]

most of the cars I repaired with CBF ended up scrapped because the restof the metal that connected the CBF had rotted away :-) protected from UV polyester resins certainly last a hell of a lot longer than wood.

[Brian Gaff]

Yup, just had one done here and the guy reckons the rest of the frame will go before the repair does due to the expansiong and contraction eventually leting more rain into the wood that is left. Brian

[stuart noble]

IME (mainly Victorian softwood) the gap that sometimes occurs at the join is a one off event which doesn't recur after subsequent filling.

[mark]

I've done a similar job and used clean small pebbles to make the filler go further after I'd discovered that I was getting through tins of it at a rate. I used a flat bladed screwdriver to rake out the rot.

mark

[pastedavid]

+1 A very handy method.

[alan]

I bodged the bottom of a couple of window 3 years ago using Ronseal wet rot wood hardener and then filled the hole with a car body filler (paste

• catalyst). I'm currently stripping paint from the windowsills prior to getting some double glazing fitted and the bodged repair is still in very good condition.

[robgraham]

as the source. It's done 23 years so I perhaps should be grateful that ju st one of the six in the extension has deteriorated.

ut of the window for a period and this window faces the main road.

anchor it to some screws into the less rotten wood.

It's worth posting back some experience comments on this. Because the hole got rather bigger as I went along, I opted to go for a wood in-fill bedded onto the 'body filler'.

Of course having gone to Halfords for the Isopon 'Car Body Filler'(B&Q don' t stock this sort of thing now), I found when hunting my storage shed for t he container of wood hardener, that I had a remarkably similar looking cont ainer of Ronseal's 2 part Wood Filler already in stock!. Similar to the po int that the instructions were almost word-for-word the same, the hardener in the same container, etc. Do Ronseal own Isopon or vice-versa - this can' t be chance?

The Ronseal stuff would have been better as it doesn't contain fibre-glass fibres and is a bit less viscous. The one thing I found was the instructio n on both tins of so much catalyst to a golf ball size of epoxy, is difficu lt as who knows how big a golf ball is in this situation. By the time I sw itched to using the Ronseal stuff for another hole, I had reduced the catal yst amount to a couple of drops and then it stayed workable for pushing on

10 minutes.

Rob