Man, it's funny you ask ...
Ive been sanding, and filling ---my bottom--- off for the past 3 weeks or so. Wood filler is a bunch of crap. I started off with the Elmer's. It seemed great at first, but just cracked a lot and was overall too soft for my comfort. I was afraid of denting and what not. So I moved to Minwax filler. Which was indeed a lot harder, and a much better product. I recommend it for small items. But in my case, I am trying to reshape curves, so I am putting a bunch down and trying to sand it into the shape I need. You talk about raw fingers and dusty garages. I got it to the point to where I thought it looked pretty good ...
Then I went ahead and primered it.
It looked pretty neat, but put under the light of the garage at night, I could really see some inconsistencies. A few lumps here, a little unevenness there. I have plans to have a cathode under the control panel, and know it will end up throwing all kinds of shadows and those bumps will stand out. Cant have that!!
So I toiled over it for another week or so, building up filler, sanding down problems ... rinse and repeat. Have I mentioned yet how much I hate filler? I guess I should have given kerfing a bit more of a chance. Anyway, I did this until last night, I was working one of the troubled spots for the 100th time, it was somehow separating from the wood underneath it, and enough was enough. I did some research on bondo, thinking that was where I was headed. And while it seems like it would work, it is a little crude and hard to work with. As I dug deeper though, I stumbled into the Epoxy options. Namely WoodEpox and Sculpwood. Expensive yes, but can you put a price on sanity?
This morning I stripped the damned filler off of the machine with some hardcore grit ...
Then ran off to the one place in town that carries this stuff and bought it.
From everything I have read, this stuff is playdoe that turns into wood. It can easily be sanded, drilled, screwed into and routed. I have played with a little bit of it and wow. It really is awesome.
So now that I have what I need, I am going to stock up on beer, get some chicken for the grill, and spend tomorrow night sculpting my curve. I am stoked and think it will turn out kick ass. My hope is to have it back on it's rollers by Sunday so I can get the back and top on it. I need to hurry up and get things ready as I have a Makvision 29" CRT in transit as we speak!
Pass or fail, Ill post some pics on Saturday of tomorrow nights progress.