Advice on how to fill Mahagony

[cspencer]

Hi,

It's about filling a Mahogany neck. There's nothing wrong with the neck. I'm just trying to improve the looks – e.g. get rid of the natural indentations. Question is: how would you deal with patterns (grains) on the Mahogany? If you use Mahogany wood filler, they come in one color ‘Mahogany.’ But we know Mahogany have grains of black, brown, reddish and streaks of light wood colors. How would the end result be if you use something like Liberon Wood Filler? Would you see spots of fillings on the wood?

Thanks

[redir]

It would most likely look horrible if you use wood filler. Does this neck have a finish on it already? If so I'm not sure what you could do, unless it's a French Polish finish, but I doubt it would be.

What you need is a grain filler or pour filler NOT wood filler which is like a putty. If you use epoxy as a filler then it will keep it the closest to the original look and color.

[charles Tauber]

If there is a finish already on the neck, and the pores of the wood were not filled, leave it alone or buy another guitar. Short of "re-finishing" in one form or another, there is no quick/inexpensive fix other than to not look at it. As redir pointed out, you want a pore filler, over which a "top coat" of some finishing material must be applied.

[arie]

what you would use to pore fill depends upon the type of final finish you plan for the neck/guitar. poly?, lacquer?, shellac?, other?

for me i like to use a transparent pore fill -i'm a fan of the water based acrylic glass bead stuff. imo having the grain filled in with some color other then the parent wood color seems odd although if i had no choice, darker would be better then light. some models from collings and santa cruz pull it off real well on mahogany.

p.s. as charles points out, is this a raw neck or already finished?

[charles Tauber]

Originally Posted by arie

imo having the grain filled in with some color other then the parent wood color seems odd

It is a technique that can be used to great effect and can produce stunning results.

[arie]

Originally Posted by charles Tauber

It is a technique that can be used to great effect and can produce stunning results.

of course you didn't read me disputing the technique and i don't won't to go down that tangent. IMO I don't care for the aesthetics nothing more, nothing less.

thanks for sharing!

[Tom West]

With mahogany I seal with shellac and then fill with the blackest fill I can get. I just love the look.
Tom

[cspencer]

Guess what? I’ve fixed the problem, or rather, mitigated the problem for now. Basically, I sanded the neck down with very fine 1200 sandpaper and it leveled the bumps. I used tan shoe polish to darken the exposed wood and it looks fine. It’s as good as new, with a nice satin finish. The problem wasn't serious to begin with. There were very small, small, pores on the top of the neck near the fret board from 1st to 5th fret. But that bothered me because I could see and feel the bumps. Thanks to everyone who contributed and I have taken everyone’s advice including Charles Tauber’s advice, which is always invaluable.