Brad Nail Holes What's Best Way to Fill Them?

[Alan Smithee]

What's the best way to fill 18 gauges brad nail holes? I'm finishing a cupboard. Thx.

[Jim Stuyck]

I use glue...don't use brads where the holes will show. ;-)

But tiny holes will disappear, pretty much, if you use a wood filler ("Plastic Wood") before finishing or even a wax stick wood filler after finishing. The "trick" is to confine the filler to the hole, not the wood pores surrounding the hole.

Jim Stuyck

[Upscale]

Are you using a lot of brad nails? If not an excessive amount, then I'd recommend another option. One of my favourite tools is the blind nailer that I picked up at Lee Valley Tools. It works great and with a small amount of practice on scrap, you can use nails to attach wood while leaving no marks whatsoever. Each nail hole takes me less than two minutes. It works very well with hardwood trim or faceframes and has marginal effectiveness on veneered plywood, the thickness of the initial face veneer being the most crucial aspect. Cheaper veneered plywoods usually have a thinner surface.

use white glue instead of the fish glue that LV suggests and to speed up the process, I've purchased two edging clamps. Holding time for the shaving to stay down with the hand and white glue is four to five minutes, the edging clamp only takes 30 seconds and then I'm onto the next point for attachment.

other thing I do is to raise the shaving, drill a slightly undersized hole for the nail, hammer it in and then countersink it a bit. The advantage is that less strenuous hammering is needed to insert the nail which goes a long way to preventing crushing of the edge if the hammer slips off the nail.

[Alan Smithee]

How do I confine the filler to just the hole. What's the trick? Thx.

[Duane Bozarth]

...top posting corrected...

There'll always be a little or you probably won't get the hole fully filled. On a flat a stiff putty knife will help. On a curve, find anything that will get to the surface.

How is the piece going to be finished? If it's painted, doesn't matter, the plastic-resin fillers will be covered. If not, they're almost impossible to match at all closely. In that case I'd use the wax stick after finishing.

For any of the other fillers, you'll have to lightly sand it flush to get a good surface in all likelihood.

[Leon]

VERY SIMPLE Nail or shoot the brad through a piece of maksing tape. Put a piece of masking tape at the location for the brad, nail through the tape, apply putty on top of the tape and into the hole then sand it off when the putty dries. The putty ends in the hole only.

[Leon]

VERY SIMPLE Nail or shoot the brad through a piece of masking tape. Put a piece of masking tape at the location for the brad, nail through the tape, apply putty on top of the tape and into the hole then sand it off when the putty dries. The putty ends in the hole only.

[Alan Smithee]

I've not built a lot of cabinets. This is the second since I acquired my brad nailer. The carcass is 48wX13dX28h with one shelf dadoed into the middle. I'm using a lot of dados and rabbits on the edges and then glueing and brad nailing everything together so I've got holes on the sides and edges. I'm using 3/4" cabinet grade birch plywood and then I'm facing the edges with 3/4 by 3/8 strips of solid birch to hide the edges. The facing strips are also being brad nailed and glued. All totaled I have probably 50 to 80 holes to fill. On the bright side the cabinet looks pretty good otherwise. I'm going to stain it walnut coloured.

[Upscale]

Very carefully? :)

[Alan Smithee]

Ahhhh. That's smart. Thx.

[Swingman]

Simply put a piece of blue painter's tape on the nail/brad site before you nail. Apply the filler to the nail hole while the tape is on. Let the filler set, then peel off the tape ... you will be left with a perfectly clean area around the nail hole.

[TeamCasa]

Are you painting the cupboard? If so, wood filler, sand, prime, paint. Staining? If so, apply stains, first coat of finish, fill holes, final finish.

Dave

[Alan Smithee]

Yes I should have said I'm staining. Why fill "after" the first coat?

[Alan Smithee]

Sorry about the top post...I rebooted and forgot to run Quote-Fix.

[Upscale]

I don't consider 50 holes to be excessive, but that's me. On my 6' long, 5' high entertainment center, I probably blind nailed close to 50 nails to attach the face frame. On the plus side of nailing when building it, I used countersunk finishing nails to attach the sides of the cabinet to the shelves and then filled the holes with filler. Over the two 5' x 21" sides, it's extremely hard to find where I've filled nail holes. Of course, I used regular, smaller headed finishing nails instead of the bigger headed nails that a nail gun uses.

If you're going to stain it walnut, I'd say just go with the countersunk nails and filler. I'd expect the dark colour of walnut stain to hide most filler colour imperfections. A few simple practice tests on some scrap would tell you yea or nay. Knowing one way or another could save you quite a bit of construction time.

[Mike Marlow]

You should not have to rerun Quote-Fix Alan. Check the help pages. Once you install it you should be able to configure it to startup automatically. It's been a while since I ran it so I don't remember it well, but I know that I did not have to run it after a reboot.

[Joe Wilding]

I use the Minwax brand filler sticks that match the stains they produce. Works quite well.

[TeamCasa]

It keeps the filler confined to the hole, you don't need as much and it will not take stain the same as the original wood. The filler will not be as noticeable and you can match the color of the finished product much easier with dyes or melt in filler.

Dave

[Upscale]

I didn't know Minwax had filler sticks, but I use similar ones that I purchased from Lee Valley Tools a number of years ago. They've changed products over the years and although considerably more expensive than my initial purchase, the ones below accomplish the same thing. One advantage to the ones below is that specific colours can be purchased whereas I originally purchased a single package of about a dozen different colours, some I'll likely never use.

[foggytown]

Ask Norm. He has more experience than anyone I know. The other day there was a close-up shot of Brad-O-Matic and it clearly showed that his brads are slightly countersunk. This means he MUST be leaving them in after the glue sets otherwise he's have to make craters to get them out. And this was on an exterior piece of gingerbread (fancy trim) too!

FoggyTown