A Good Filler?

Doug Gemmell

SGF, Supreme Grumble Framer
Joined
Jun 17, 2002
Posts
2,703
Location
Everett, WA
I'm writing this after spending 1/2 hour puttying a particularly nasty frame. We use Amaco Nail Hole & Corner Filler that we get from LJ. It works pretty well but is stiff and difficult to work with unless you heat it up but that's a pain also.

Does anyone have a favorite that may work better?

Oh, and those who always have perfect corners and never use the stuff....keep it to yourself....I'm in no mood! :D
 
Oh, and those who always have perfect corners and never use the stuff....keep it to yourself....I'm in no mood!


Doug this portion of your post is pricless! Don't people always tell you how good they are without helping with your problem?

I color the corners and fill, heat em up if needed. I am not blessed enough to be the keeper of the "Golden Corner"

d
 
I've found that some colors are worse than others. White is WAAAY too gummy - but the blue and gray are just hard and nasty.

If you use a razor blade and a piece of glass you can scrape/smear colors into submission without too much trouble - and it saves you the dirty finger prints later on. Good thing if you are considering committing a crime..........(against one of the people who tell you how perfect their corners are!)
 
Whew! I glad I'm not the only one with imperfect corners. The fellow grumbers have nearly convinced me to get a disk miter sander. If it elliminates using that messy gunk, it is the first item on my list of my next batch of equipment I'm going to purchase.
John
 
I on the other hand AM the keeper of the "Perfect Corner".

It is a little piece of metal that says righ on it "The Perfect Corner" and it is for truing things in a machine shop....

I keep the dang thing around to remind me that there is a perfect corner, and all others aren't.

And because of that, I have one of those lighters restraunts use to light the candles... and it's turned up about full blast..

I also have several pieces of 5x7 glass (reg or NG) that are pencil ground on the edges so I can handle the a bunch...[ouch!]. And on them is mixed colors...

I heat the Amaco wax then spread it around and mix it with wooden clay modeling tools. I have one that is old and rounded off that works nice.

Also the rolled paper pencil for smudging charcoal or pencil works great for working the wax down into the creavases.

One thing to note: the more you "cook" Amaco wax, the more you cook the vaseline out and the harder it "drys" and less likely to rub off on your customers clothing.

Unless it's white wax.... then your ****ed for life on that one.... I've got a piece that I've been cooking for 30 years and it gets on my black shirt when I just walk in the room... Hanna knows what I'm saying... :D
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Tomorrow I'm buying a plasma torch....

Doug, sorry, but it's the best I've got for you. It's just one of those jobs that you can either hate or just surrender to the fact that untill your eyes go, it's a job you have to do.

And when the eyes go, there are always glasses.
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Wax nail hole filler can cause pollution problems, around the shop, since it never dries.
The black is a particular problem. One can use acrylic paint to fill nail holes. It can be mixed
or applied straight from the tube or jar, with a
spatula and the dross can be wiped of with a damp
paper towel.


Hugh
 
At first I thought there was a misprint in the subject line and we were about to toast a good "fella"...

I think I might try Hugh's suggestion...especially if I'm mixing bronzing powders and other stuff to approx. a finish. The one caveat of using acrylic is the speed with which it dries. There are retarders that can be mixed with the acrylic and the palette can be misted with H2O and then covered with a seal or celophane.

I currently am using wax and have taken to putting the canisters on top of my dry mount press. They really become creamy and make mixing waxes and smoothing them much easier.

Sometimes, when I'm fixing that "not-so-perfect" corner or a dent, I'll mix my white glue with the wax and it then will harden.

I presume what Hugh means by "polution problems" is the fact that the wax can very easily get all over the place from a touched up frame...on the fitting counter to the sales counter to the upholstered sofa at your customers home.

From experience I can tell you that you can not be to cautious using a heat gun anywhere near finished mouldings...

Dave Makielski

"Everybodies crazy but me and thee and sometimes I worry about thee!"
 
Our shrinkwrapper is in the vicinity of our putty storage, so a quick shot of the heat gun on a scrap of matboard with the appropriate color on it softens it enough to mix as well as coax into those tight spots (of course, that's all we HAVE is "tight spots" ... no gaping holes here ........yeah, sure..... ;)
 
For actual gaps or divots, try filling with Elmer's wood filler (comes in plastic squeeze tube or tub) and then color with acrylics when dry.
:cool: Rick
 
I know that you all hate to get the stuff on your hands but I have found that the easiest way to soften and mix is to roll it around with your fingers. It softens without becoming too thin and is easy to thoroughly mix that way. Now that your hands are dirty try applying it with your fingers. Easy to get into all the little crevices and you will never mar the finish.

Messy but works great.
 
I didn't know there was any other brand. I'm glad to hear there is.

The only one we find too hard to deal with is the black, Everything else seems fine.

Is there such a thing as colored putty to match the kids stuff from LJ? I just did a green frame and never did match the corners right. I hate that. The customer would never notice but boy it bothered me!
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It's just frustating.

Jennifer
 
Jennifer, If you're talking about the moulding with the bright colors and textured surfaces, I think LJ has a putty to match them. I didn't hear about it until we had done a few with the same frustrations you experienced.

Great suggestions everyone...thank you.

I shall now approach puttying with renewed confidence and vigor! :eek:
 
If you're talking about the LeCirque colors, I stopped using them because the rubbery finish was just too delicate for my liking. It would flake or pick up markings or fingerprints practically just by looking at it. Knowing that customers never treat their frames as carefully as we do, I had concerns about its long term durability. Nice (although odd) colors, though.
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Rick
 
Actually, isn't "Kid's stuff" a series that LJ supplies from Framerica? Don't they have thier own putty for them? Or, my guess was the LeCirque and I pulled those myself! PITA moulding!
 
I don't like heating up my putty. I don't like how it gets oily. Even with the "nasty" ones I find that a few mean swipes with my putty tool softens it into submission. By the time I finish mixing a color, it's pliable enough to use.

I also like to use Liberon creams sometimes... Where do you get that stuff anyway? Does NEI still carry?
 
Originally posted by Jeff Rodier:
I know that you all hate to get the stuff on your hands but I have found that the easiest way to soften and mix is to roll it around with your fingers. It softens without becoming too thin and is easy to thoroughly mix that way. Now that your hands are dirty try applying it with your fingers. Easy to get into all the little crevices and you will never mar the finish.

Messy but works great.
I definitely do that a lot, too
 
In my first job as a framer I got tired of the uber-tedious work of puttying the corners. I thought I'd be pretty smart if I just perfected my cutting and joining, and I'd never putty another corner as long as I lived. 'Came darn close too... I showed my boss some of the work I'd done and bragged how much time I'd save since the corners were so tight. What he said brought me back down to Earth, "...that's pretty good, but don't you want your frames to be perfect?"

Here's another thing about putty he showed me: get some scrap mat-board (I like using 8-ply or 3X mount-board for this nowadays) and go to the mat cutter. Cut yourself some strips about 1/2-3/4 inch wide with a bevel edge on both sides. Make some more bevel cuts across the strips about 2 inches apart and you'll end up with a bunch of 1/2 x 2 inch putty applicators that have a nice sharp edge on all four sides. Use the edge to scrape a fine bead of putty off of your glass or mat scrap that you use to mix or soften the stuff, or right out of the tin even, and place the bead right on the joint witout smearing too much of it all over the surface of the moulding.

Another thing that I've started using to clean the putty from around the joint when a paper towel just won't do is kneadable eraser. It even works to clean putty out of that toothy surface on LeCirque frames. Sadly it doesn't clean the greasy black finger-smudges that the clowns who chop frames for LJ get on the moulding at the warehouse. If anyone can tell of an efficient way to get those off I might put the samples back up on the wall at our shop. The kneadable eraser is also great to clean around the joints on gold compo frames that have that grey-brown wash stuff in between the relief without rubbing it off down to the gold underneath (what's that grey-brown stuff called anyway?).

Still tedioulsly puttying my corners,
Cam
 
CCH, I use a tooth pick for hard to reach places.

When I read Hugh's post I wondered how, after 30 years as a framer and scads of classes, trade magazines and books could I have never heard about about using acrylics as hole filler. It's brilliant and so clean.

I would love to try the mica powders. Would anybody be interested in splitting some jars of it?
 
For tiny crevices I use dental tools. MY hardware store even sells them for 1.99 works great.
 
I use either Amaco, UMSCO, or acrylic paint. As long as I keep the lids of the fillers, they work fine. I tried the Liberon frame fillers but got very frustrated trying to work with them before they hardened.
 
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