My Secret Weapon Nail Filler

Last week I posted on using caulk to fill nail holes because it’s a question that has come up often. To be honest, it’s something I’m tempted to do as well because it’s just so dang easy, but often the easy way isn’t the best way. In fact, it rarely is.

This week I felt like I could take it a bit further and show the most excellent way to fill nail holes that I see so few people use. It’s kind of like the untold secret that nobody knows. Nobody is trying to keep the secret, they just don’t talk about it because it doesn’t come up much, but it really should. After all, how many nails have we all needed to fill over the years?

World’s Best Nail Filler

So what is this secret weapon? It’s glazing putty! Most carpenters don’t have this laying around the shop but anyone doing historic window restoration sure does. While glazing putty can’t cut the mustard on structural repairs to wood or big gouges it is an absolutely all-star for filling nail holes.

Austin’s Glazier’s Putty is my go to since, well, it’s formula is a collaboration between me and Sarco Putty Co. to meet our needs at Austin Historical. Here’re the reasons I love it so much:

Quick-Skinning

While it may take a few days to skin over for painting when you glaze a window, for small holes like nails it is usually ready for paint the same day. The putty gets a skin very fast when you don’t have the big gobs used for finish glazing a window.

No Sanding Needed

Nothing is more annoying than the multiple steps to filling nail holes. Filling, drying, sanding, cleaning, etc. It’s so many steps it drives me nuts. If you use glazing putty you just rub a small amount into the nail hole with your thumb or finger and smooth the surface until the excess is rubbed off. That’s it!

Stainable

Unlike a lot of wood fillers that are pre-tinted to supposedly match your wood color (nice try!), glazing putty can easily be tinted to match your wood if you are doing stain grade work. We keep brown glazing putty in stock in our store, and we also have the natural color that looks pretty gray and can be tinted by adding some dry pigments to achieve the perfect match.

Don’t wanna bother tinting putty beforehand? You can also fill your nail holes with putty and then go over top of the putty and wood with an oil-based stain before it skins over to have the putty match your stain color precisely. That’s huge since traditional wood fillers don’t always take stain the way I want them too.

Minimal Shrinking

Lastly, glazing putty doesn’t shrink a whole lot as it cures like caulk does. It does have minimal shrinkage so I try to leave a bit more than I need, but for nail hole filling we’re talking very, very minor shrinkage. Even George Costanza would be left happy.

When to Use It

Like I mentioned earlier, this is a strategic tool for a very specific use. Yes, it’s my go to for glazing wood and steel windows, but also my go to for filling nail holes. Don’t try to use it in place of a structural wood filler or epoxy like Abatron WoodEpox or something similar. It will sag out of the patch and fail early.

But for nail holes? YES! Use it, fill it. It will save you time and save you trouble. As a little anecdotal proof I used some glazing putty to fill nail holes and a mitered joint in a railing I built when I first started my business 15 years ago. I didn’t know what I was doing and honestly got lucky.

When I go back and look at that railing, it’’s still holding strong after all these years. From that one instance of dumb luck followed by a little research on my part, a process was born and now I have filled thousand of nail holes successfully with glazing putty and you can too.