Wood Stain/Filler recommendation

Hello,

After ignoring my part built wooden sail ship model in the loft for the past 30 years, lockdown has persuaded me to try to get it finished.

I have been looking online for walnut coloured wood stain and filler products, but have not found any that are sold in the UK that look suitable for models. What products do you recommend? At present my best option seems to be a DIY product that is sold buy the litre.

Cheers

Liberon have a wide range of stains etc. in small quantities.:

**LINK**

Rustins also do a range of water and solvent based wood dyes plus stainable filler.

**LINK**

Colin

Keith. Welcome to the forum.

not sure why the various stains you have seen are not suitable for models?.

Wood is wood, wether it’s a door or a model. Personally I am always suspect of staining wood with filler...in my experience the filler never colours the same. It may be I have been doing it wrong?

I prefer wood stain varnishes, but obviously the effect may be slightly different.

Ashley

For fillers, I collect the sawdust when wood cutting & mix it with diluted PVA as required.

'Ronseal' do wood filler in small pots, available at B&Q in various shades (other outlets available).

Kip has a good point there, not that I remember such useful tips.

Most useful if you are filling dark woods as obviously the filler nicely matches the wood.

Ashley

My favourite wood stains for model work are without any doubt those from JoTiKa/Caldercraft, sold under the Admiralty Stains brand. They can be bought from various sellers -- I usually get them from Cornwall Model Boats (see **LINK**). The bottles may seem ridiculously small at 18 ml, but they go a surprisingly long way! As an example, I only needed about 25 ml (i.e. +/- a bottle and a half) to put two generous coats onto the stand for my Moonbeam build a few years back (see **LINK**).

Their extremely good cover rate is thus one of the reasons I like them so much; another is the quality of the pigments and the resulting beautiful colour of the finished piece. They are also very easy to apply.

Mattias

Thank you for all the suggestions.

I have tried with some 'walnut colour stain', but although I have walnut planking, the finish with this stain is so dark that the definition of the detailed work has been lost which is very disappointing.

I am now contemplating what to do next. I definitely do not want to paint the rest of the model the same colour and I am regretting using this dark colour and think my mistake was to assume that walnut planks must have walnut stain.

Fortunately I have only used the stain on the the masts and crows nest, so I will probably get away with what I have done.

Any and all advise welcome!

I would go for a wood stain varnish, as you can deepen the colour to suit by putting more coats on. Generally the varnishes are not too pigmented.

Ashley