What wood glue or filler to use to repair some toy bricks?

Question

I have some toy wooden bricks that I want to repair, they are fairly intricate in shape as they have a keyway thats slots onto a vertical T-shaped key.

I can get them basically back together by gluing but that leaves some dents (the dog chewed them!) and splits that need filling.

So what would people suggest for finishing the repairs (and/or some of the initial gluing), am I after a glue that can fill cracks or am I after wood filler (or some other sort of filler)?

I'm concerned that wood filler may not adhere well enough on the fairly small dents and splits. On the other hand I can't find any glue that seems to have the properties I need. PVA glues mostly specifically say that the joints need to be tight and well fitting, polyurethane glues expand and fill gaps but I don't see it being easy to use them to fill and smooth cracks. Would I be better off using a silicone sealant of some sort? The bricks are painted so the colour and texture of the result don't matter too much.

Any ideas would be most welcome.

John Rumm · Accepted Answer

Use a PVA/Aliphatic resin glue to stick em back together, and then use a

2 part wood filler (like the Ronseal[1] one) to fill the dents. Lightly sad the filler flush when done.

{1] or if you don't care about it being wood coloured then plastic padding / car body filler, or just an epoxy with filler in it.

Chris Green · Answer

I was wondering if epoxy might do for both gluing and filling, though I don't like working with it, sticky stuff (which I suppose is the idea).

newshound · Answer

Some wooden toys (Brio for example) have a slightly oily feeling surface. I'm not sure if that is from the timber used, or a treatment. I suspect that epoxy might glue these better than "normal" wood glue. Epoxy will also fill the dents but will be a bit visible. You will probably get a better finish by using an inert filler in the epoxy, filling oversize and then sanding down with wet and dry. Car body filler will be easier than messing around with epoxy though. I certainly wouldn't use silicone.

tabbypurr · Answer

Wood can be glued with PVA, epoxy, PU or various other things. Filling can NOT be done with PVA or PU, and can be done with wood filler, e poxy putty, epoxy + filler such as sawdust or sand. Or you could fill with nomorenails type products, £1 a cartridge from poundland. Silicone wou ld fill it, but isn't paintable.

I've not much idea about the child safety of the above, other than that you can get PVA for kids to use in crafts. If they're to be used as toys perha ps you could try filling with a little child friendly PVA plus a very high percentage of wood dust. You'd need to clamp that lot in place until fully set, then sand/plane/etc the surface level.

NT

Chris Green · Answer

Yes, I guess body filler may be a reasonable thing to use, it's not too messy to work with and I've used it before for other things so I sort of know a bit about it. Thanks.

What wood glue or filler to use to repair some toy bricks?

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