Information

Cabinetmaking wood fillers do not always work well in timber floors. This may seem odd because both industries, cabinet making and flooring, work with timber. However the sanding constraints with timber furniture are very different to the sanding restraints with flooring.
With a timber floor the coatings are very different and react differently with timber fillers. Because timber floors are a vast area of timber in comparison to a piece of furniture, they are prone to a certain amount of movement. This does not occur over the small surface areas of furniture. Therefore the choice of timber filler becomes extremely important. Some timber fillers are naturally porous and this is often the case with the off-the-shelf colours used in furniture production. It is not always the case but it certainly is the case with a number of mainstream products. Where these fillers are used in flooring the porosity of the filler can cause the finish to pull into the surface. This in turn can create issues because it creates uneven sheen levels in the floor.
This is where purpose designed floor fillers for flooring are important. Depending on the size of the gap in the timber floor there are several approaches that have been taken.
For example there is a product called Mix’n’Fill. This is produced by Bona. This is designed for small gaps such as you would find in our parquetry. It is essentially an acrylic solution into which timber sanding dust is mixed and then it can be used as a floor filler. If the gaps are very small this is a very good filler. The advantage of this particular approach is that as the floor changes colour in reaction to light the timber dust inside the filler will also change.
The second approach to filling timber floors which has been very successful and works in much larger gaps is a product called Redifill. Redifill is a revolutionary timber floor filler that has been around now for over 10 years. Redifill has the special benefit of not being none porous. Instead of the coatings soaking into the surface which creates differences in sheen levels, Redifill allows the coating to sit on top just as the coating does on timber.
Redifill has one additional advantage that we have noticed locally. The colours are much richer and darker. It is extremely important when filling the floor to ensure that the average colour of the filler is darker than the average colour of the floor. Light filler can make a very nice look cheap. Pink dots in a Jarrah floor draws attention to the filler and just looks poor. It is much better to have darker and richer colours. Redifill is much better. In part, one of the reasons for the success of the product is the fact that it was developed by a floor sander.
We strongly recommend the use of the Redifill product It has so many benefits to a timber floor that it is the filler of choice among many floor sanders.