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This overview is not intended to say that this way is the only way but

rather to offer some insight on one way that is used to repair wood and

that includes rifle stocks. Occasionally there is a need to make a patch for a blemish in the wood being worked on. Store bought patches rarely match the wood being worked and on generally cannot be colored. If in fact they can, the color will not match the wood and the solvents in the patch material can migrate out around the patch and make that area almost impossible to color except with some type of gel stain or the stain at the bottom of the can. This type of blending (Gel stains etc) adds significant color to the wood and with each coat the subtle colors of the wood and the depth of those colors are adversely affected. Finally premixed patches look like pre mixed patches. Filler used is the same particle size and looks like it. Another way is create your own patch material from sawdust. If you are sanding the wood anyway then it pays to save all the sawdust that results from that sanding as it will match the color of the wood exactly. Even a small patch will take a large amount of sawdust and often you cannot generate that amount unless some drastic sanding is being done. There is another way to make a sawdust patch and that is to acquire sawdust and color it to match the wood on the piece being worked on, or possibly some type of grain pattern that is darker or lighter than the wood which then helps disguise the patch. It really does not matter what type of wood is used since it will be colored anyway. Woodworkers have access to a whole bunch of sawdust either through the collection bags on various hand tools or even through the collection containers from table saws. If the person needing to patch say a gunstock, does not have access to either or does not want to spend a few days generating some via powered hand sanders then sawdust can be acquired from a variety of local (generally) places. Cabinet shops are good places and there are usually a few within driving distance. They will give you all you want. Generally though the “sawdust” you acquire from shops like that has a variety of particle sizes but that is not a problem and is addressed later. The issue is coloring the patch and how to do it inexpensively. Stains will work but then you are left with a bunch of stain you cannot use. In addition, stains add color with each coat and are difficult to control color wise. Dyes will work and they are easy to control, don’t add color with each coat but again are expensive since you have a lot left over and may never need it again. Another solution is to use Artist Colors which are inexpensive and can be acquired at Walley World, Michaels, Hobby Lobby and a variety of other places. They come in either an individual tube, large or small, or in a packet with a variety of colors. Looks like this:


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The top is a “kit” which contains a variety of colors and the bottom are examples of large tubes of selected colors. They work on patches but also work well if you want to do a whole stock. Depending on your imagination and how much time you want to mess with coloring, the colors and shades of colors are almost endless. So what do you need to make your own patch out of sawdust?

• Artist colors

• Small glass bottles, like those for air brushes but baby food jars are ok. Around that size.

• Lots of sawdust. 2 quarts is not too much when you are learning.

• Toothpicks

• Popsicle sticks or craft sticks that look like Popsicle sticks.

• A small artist pallet knife. You can use an old butter knife but the pallet knife is far more flexible and comes in handy every once in awhile. Inexpensive.

• Scrap board that is flat and fairly smooth. Shiny poster board works also. But a board, does not matter what kind of wood, plywood, solid wood etc. is the best. These are where you do the mixing. The color in the “paste” you are gonna make will bleed out around the paste and you can you can see it.

• PATIE�CE


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When you go to mix your colorant, you only need about a “glob” the size of an aspirin in like 1-2 oz of water. Artist colors are very concentrated. The following examples show a variety of colors that can be achieved with the Artist Colors. They contain the color using the indicated strength both wet and dry. You can either compare the wet to a wet stock or the dry to a dry stock but IMO and IME it is better to do wet/wet. Water is fine and raising the grain is not gonna hurt you much. No real horror story results when you do that. Easy to knock it back. The shade and color of the wet vs. dry is not precise in these pictures cause the wet was taken on a board while wet and the dry had be take inside of partitions for a tackle box insert. On a couple of dry pics you will see some particles that do not match. That came from a fan blowing the stuff around when I tried to scrape the dried sawdust off the board. In person the colors are more vibrant but I don’t have photographic lighting equipment to catch all that indoors and there was no way in H$ll I was taking this stuff outside where the wind could get at it. The first picture is some original “sawdust”. This stuff was taken directly from a container that receives saw dust etc. from a table saw. The particle size is not important right now.

The second picture is the board that the sawdust mixed with the color was put on. Actually I mix the color first on a 3”x5” card until I get it close to what I think is what I want then scrape that onto the board unless I am lazy and then I just leave it on the car. The filler is wet. The carrier is water in all cases. When you are happy with the color match MAKE A BUNCH of this stuff, like a baby jar worth. Gonna need to do a final test with whatever binder you are gonna use. When mixing you take a small amount of the color on a Popsicle stick and put the stick in the water and mix it up in the jar. If you got a sealed jar you can scrape off the Popsicle


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stick on the inside of the neck of the jar, seal it and shake it up. Too much color more water, too little a touch more color. The glass will give you a pretty decent idea of where you are at but when you mix it with the filler the color will generally be a tad darker. When you mix it with the filler, the toothpicks are good for that as the stuff is pretty small particle wise.

The following pics are in order (I hope) from top to bottom left to right.


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This is an extremely mild red mixture. You can mix up the red to make it

bright red if you want. This mix could be used as a “wash” to kinda tint either the entire stock or with a combination of the other colors to match the wood. See artist colors to see the true color.


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Again a very mild mix. The true color is very bright. See artist colors above to see the true colors.


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The next one “Brown Mahogany Mild” has a lot of particles in it from the original sawdust and that is what the light ones are. Fan blew em in there.


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When the patch material is dry you can do a couple of things. You can mash it up with a piece of board and maker smaller particle sizes, you can get you a tobacco grinder, small hand held thingy that grinds down pipe tobacco to really small particles, you can simply use it as is or if you got enough and simply want smaller particles, you can sometimes put the dry stuff in an old salt shaker and simply shake out the smaller particles. Want different particle sizes? Drill larger holes in the salt shaker. So now you have the patching material colored the way you want it then the next question is how to bond it to the wood as a filler. There are a variety of ways you can do this. I you are a fan of oil type finishes, you can simply put a couple of drops of oil on the dry stuff, mix it up, check the coloring and stick it in the hole etc. using the pallet knife and the oil, when it sets up, will bond it. Problem with that is that if you strip the stock the patch is gonna come out. Same for Poly’s. If you sand the topcoat off then there is not a problem. Another way that is more permanent is to mix up a glue with the colored sawdust and then using the pallet knife squish into the hole or whatever and leave it a tad proud. There are two types of glue. Synthetics and natural product glues. For this type of work the Poly Vinyl Acetate (PVA) wood glues, which are synthetic glues, are sometimes used but they have some side affects. Natural glue which is as strong as most of the PVA formulas is Hide Glue which is made from animal connective tissue. Bones, tendons, hooves etc. Yes, Dorothy, the animals that died back in Kansas because of the cyclone got turned into glue. There is evidence that Neanderthals used hide glue in there pigments to guard against moisture and “set” the colors so the stuff has been around for a long time. Takes two extra steps to use hide


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glue well though. One is a small amount of thinning and the other is heating it up a tad and you gotta be pretty fast. This stuff sets up like mo quick but it is reversible. You can, sometimes, get hide glue and the box stores like Lowe’s or Home Depot but that depends on the store. Ditto for craft stores. Woodworking stores like WoodCraft always has it and of course the internet. Titebond makes the best. The major difference in the two glue types is that PVA’s won’t take a colorant while Hide Glue will. Any colorant you add to the PVA glue after it has set up will simply lay on the surface and adding colorant while the glue is wet will get you some really odd colors and again if you add color to the stock it will not stick to the glue. In addition, PVA glues have a solvent in them that in many cases will migrate around the glue into the wood and that will bleach the wood, seal it and you can’t color that either. You can wipe it off with a moist rag but if you do that you will screw up the patch. For anyone who has ever watched stuff like Norm Abrams they will remember he always wiped down the glued joints thoroughly with water and even after he colored the pieces he was making they never showed the glue joints. If they did you would have seen noticeable color differences. Like so:


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The “bubbly” stuff on the sides is the Polyvinyl Alcohol and the polymers reacting to

the colorant.


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IME, I always use Hide Glue on my woodworking projects and if I have to patch a stock, I use it also. In closing, this stuff is not hard but it does take some time to get the color you want, especially when you first start messing with the process etc. but if you have a gouge or whatever and you take the time to make it look like the surrounding wood and make sure it is NOT symmetrical you can blend stuff it and make it look really well.


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As an example:

The above picture has a simulated nail or screw hole. Simply a hole that is not generally created in nature. If the hole was elongated out on both sides (1 o’clock and 7 o’clock) and deliberately left in a non symmetrical way, like the blemishes above, you could fill that “new” gouge with a corresponding sawdust patch and a color similar to the natural colors in the blemish and you could easily blend that in the wood and make it look like it was there in the first place.


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This protocol is not for everyone but something you can keep in your

pocket if you want to do the best patch you can.

Good rainy day project. Get you some el cheapo knotty pine and see if you can match the knots. You might surprise yourself. noremf(George)

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