Glen-L.com

I wanted to share a little experiment I did regarding filling the screw holes on meranti plywood.

I filled a few holes in the Meranti with Famowood Mahogany. After drying and sanding it, it matched the plywood perfectly. However, when epoxy resin was brushed on, the wood was a different color than the Famowood, which turned much darker. The three filled holes in the upper left of this scrap piece show the result.

In an attempt to hide the screw holes, I bought some Minwax water based stain in Mahogany. It comes in squeeze tubes and is wiped on. I stained a new filled hole and some of the plywood and then epoxied it when dry. This didn't change the plywood tint by too much but it darkened it enough and kept the Famowood lighter to get a much closer match. There is one filled hole at top middle of the sample which is almost invisible.
I plan to stain the plywood sides with this stain.

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Bob
Completed Malahini (launched 6/24/2012)
http://bobsboatbuild.blogspot.com/

Like you I tried the famowood mahogany filler, most of it is under paint or the rubrail covers it. I had a heck of a time experimenting with different fillers and colors, mixing several colors to a perfect custom color just to find out it drastically changes color once encapsulated in epoxy like you found out.
Looks like you have a very good match now. I found that just using the sawdust from my sander mixed with epoxy gets pretty darn close and should never chip or crack.

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