Hi Chaps
Do any of you have preferences on exterior wood filler, we are going to be filling and sanding our end platforms down prior to priming and painting. Whats your choice ?

Whilst on the subject we have three huge boxes of 2 part epoxy wood filler made by Quickwood, the stuff you knead together and use. If anyone would like some for a donation to our project please let me know.

Mike Pannell

Cheyenne

Bondo...cheap, easy to use, dries quickly, weather proof...holds paint well.

I use WoodEpox frequently in my home restoration business:

http://www.abatron.com/cms/buildingandr ... depox.html

Apparently, WoodEpox is spec'd by the Park Service for many of their projects.

It doesn't expand with moisture, as Bondo does.

WRM also uses Abatron's Wood Epox for all our exterior wood restorations.

Also, we use their companion product GitRot to stabilize wood adjacent to the area to be filled before we apply the filler. This is critical unless the wood is sound with no signs of decay.

A warning - do NOT use FixAll filler for exterior restorations on wooden cars. It may be good for interior drywall repairs, but not for wooden railroad cars. It pops out after a few years.

On our ongoing restoration of our Lawndale boxcar, we have used the Abatron product (which was suggested by members of RYPN) with great success.

Matt Bumgarner
Alexander Chapter-NRHS

Abatron is one of the best products on the market. Everything positive already said is true. Bondo is OK for interior work but not for exterior. Bondo will swell as was already pointed out. It also doesn't have much of a bond strength. And somebody mentioned Fixall for wall repairs. That stuff was originally made for underlayment repairs when installing linoleum. Beyond that use it is crap. Don't use it anywhere, it is old school and the new products out perform it by miles.

We have tried almost all of the commercial restoration wood fillers, with some success and some failure.

Our best success has been repairing damaged either eroded or physically present but deteriorated framing members, but we have also patched special moldings like corner and window posts, and have tried repairing siding and letter boards.

A few years ago we started treating all checks and splits on new sills in an attempt to exclude moisture. I suspect we will see more of this use in the future.

We don’t use it for smaller exterior parts like battens or moldings.

We have used Abatron, thinning it per instructions to consolidate old wood, then filling any voids… and West System (from West Marine) with Get-Rot to consolidate punky wood.

West System uses a large selection of fillers to allow you to match your filler to the physical demands of the situation. Their instruction book (costly, many pages) should be required reading. West System was designed for wooden or fiberglass covered wood frame boats, so is designed for a moving structure (like railroad cars)

I find the two systems equivalent to each other, but recently have used Abatron more often.

We have tried a variety of epoxy and polyester putties for repairing siding and letter boards.

We have used brush on and Swedish (knife on) putty from http://www.finepaintsofeurope.com/primers_info.aspx to smooth damaged and weathered surfaces with success.

Fillers work well on framing members… they work well on corner posts. They don’t work on car siding… if its damaged and eroded just replace it.

The surfacing putties are fine when used as a heavy primer, but don’t as a filler. They can be used to get rid of the weathered look on old siding.

Polyester filler (bondo, etc.) doesn’t work well on exterior applications, particularly thin applications but is great for repairing interior moldings, and I have had success with using it to build up window sash on my house.

Most of these products look good at first, but can fail in as little as 2 years outdoors.

We continue to use the epoxies, but keep wood replacement in the mix, and if anything are replacing wood with wood if its visible.