Wood filler as strong as wood?

F

FoghornLeghorn

New member
I've got an old model Super Blackhawk w/some recent manufacture grips.

The holes in the bottom corner of the grip panels (that secure onto the little studs on the grip frame) are off.

I'm going to fill in the holes with some kind of filler and redrill.

Plastic wood?
 
Specialized epoxy putty designed for use as wood filler, is available. I can't remember the brand right now, but I get tubes of it at Home Depot, for a few dollars. The stuff comes in the form of a round bar, in a plastic tube. You simply cut off the needed amount and kneed it , to mix the two components (resin and hardener). It sticks to wood surfaces very well and is very strong once set.
 
I used the old Micro Bed for stuff like that for many years, but they are out of business now. Brownell's has a version that is similar...just a brown two part epoxy. After an hour or so of hardening, you can place the grip over the repaired area and put a little pressure and it will make a mark for your drill bit after the final curing.
 
Micro Bed's gone, but Bisonite is still available. It should not be confused with the polyurethane product by the same name. It's the one made by Saturn Products mentioned here. Brown color.

But if you are filling a hole in a grip panel, the question I have is are you going to have to re-drill into the filler material as part of correcting the hole location (is the hole location now off just a little bit)? If that's the case, you really want the filler to have the same hardness as the wood as closely as you can manage it, or the drill will tend to grab and walk toward the softer material an not stay on location (though using a small end cutting end mill rather than a drill could work).

Two ways to approach that come to mind: One is to obtain a dowel of the same wood and drill and glue it into place. If you get a plug cutter that's small enough you could even wind up with grain you could align to match the rest. The other is to get a clear epoxy and a bag of brown phenolic micro-balloon filler from Woodcraft and mix that in different proportions until you get a matching hardness. If you can't get that soft enough, you might need to go to a water thin epoxy like Rot-Fix.
 
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