A Review of DAP Plastic Wood
For some reason, after our long winter, there was a 1/16″ gap in this wood trim, and I could see that the filler I applied earlier had shrunk somewhat. I wasn’t sure what I could fill this with, so I spent a great deal of time at Home Depot looking over all of their wood fillers and caulks. I found several small jars of wood filler, and they were clear so you could see the color of the contents. Although they said “maple” on the label, they didn’t look anything like my maple cabinets. I ended up buying a 1.875 ounce tube of DAP Plastic Wood, in the natural color.
Description
This comes in a tube, which is packaged inside of a red box. The box states that DAP is “America’s Number 1 Brand”, and that it is acceptable for either an interior or exterior use. It claims that the wood filler is a cellulose fiber filler, and that it is sandable, stainable, and that it won’t shrink.
The tube says that this DAP Plastic Wood is a “high performance wood filler that hardens to give a wood-like surface that can be painted or stained”.
How To Use
The directions are printed right on the tube, and are very easy to follow. You break the seal with the pointed end on the cap, and apply it to the hole with a putty knife. If you are staining your wood, it says to stain the wood before filling the holes.
My Experience
I purposely wanted to buy a wood filler in a tube, because I was hoping to be able to squeeze out a small amount into the crack, making my job less messy. I initially poked a small hole into the seal, thinking I could squeeze out a thin stream that would go into the small crack easily. However, this filler is way too thick for that and it wouldn’t come out of the tube until I enlarged the hole to the maximum size.
Even then it was hard to squeeze out of the tube, but I managed to get some out and wiped it off the end of the tube with the tip of my finger, and applied it to the hole. I was extremely happy that the natural color was almost a perfect match for my maple wood door trim! It’s just a tad bit lighter, but not very noticeable. It sure looks better than the hole that was there previously!
What I didn’t like about this product is that it is very hard to remove if you get it where you don’t want it. I had a hard time washing it off of my finger, and I smeared some onto the trim when I was filling the crack, and it was also very difficult to remove. I even took my Mr. Clean Magic Eraser, which usually works on everything, but the stuff wouldn’t budge. I resorted to scraping it off with my fingernail, and was able to get most of it off, but I can still see that the wood doesn’t look as shiny and nice as it did before. The directions do say to avoid contact with surrounding surface, but when you are dealing with such a tiny hole, and you can’t thread this into it in a nice thin stream, it’s pretty hard to avoid the other surfaces!
All in all, the door looks much better than before, and probably nobody would notice the small areas on my trim that look a little dull. My husband certainly didn’t notice them, but I am a perfectionist and I notice mars and imperfections that he never see’s.
If I were to use this again, I would be much more careful with it, as it really dries fast and it difficult to remove from any surface once it has been applied. It did the trick for me, and filled the gap in my maple trim. DAP also makes a wood filler that is a latex plastic, which can be cleaned up with water. I would try this the next time I needed to repair any gaps in my wood trim.
