Loose tenon joint separating.. need filler advice


Cygnus A

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Bondo is harder and inflexible. I've known the inventor for years, his houseboats have been " Bondo One, Bondo 2 etc.  You can use it for filling a missing knot in softwood but I would never use it on a thin crack on interior casework . If you are that close to installing doing a final fill and touchup in place is smart. I would still take a razor knife and ever so slightly undercut the joint before filling it.1/32 to 1/16 deep, just a tiny bit wider below the surface .  Spackle or wood filler should suffice, both are slightly soft which should minimize future cracking. Hell look at it this way, by the time the doors and drawers are in place who's gonna notice it besides you ?

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1 hour ago, Alan G said:

What I have found is that for small filling on paintgrade stuff using the Bondo Glazing and Spot Putty is better.

That stuff is great for really fine cracks, scratches & pits, but because it is solvent based & dries rather than cures, it will shrink. In the case of a crack like yours that is deep (that didn't come out right :wacko:) it would require multiple applications & longer dry times. The 2 part Bondo will cure hard in a fairly short period of time, even in a deep crack.

1 hour ago, wdwerker said:

You can use it for filling a missing knot in softwood but I would never use it on a thin crack on interior casework

My house has those rounded drywall corners, so when I installed the MDF base I had to bend it around those tight radius corners. I made many cuts with an extremely thin kerf blade, almost all the way through, to get it to bend & then filled them with bondo before fitting it to the corner. Some of the cuts cracked at the surface & I used Bondo to fill them. That was 25 years ago & none have opened up.

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8 minutes ago, wdwerker said:

I can see regular Bondo working with MDF it's fairly soft stuff. I have no experience with the putty stuff. 

I figured the putty was essentially  the regular stuff just premixed. It seems like it behaves the same. Curious if it is. 

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The face frame is going to expand and contract anyway due to being glue starved causing the paint to crack again and again. Why not start over and re-build the frame and get the proper amount of glue in the joints. Or use a square and razor knife to score all the joints and just having a line showing.  

 

-Ace-

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38 minutes ago, AceHoleInOne said:

The face frame is going to expand and contract anyway due to being glue starved causing the paint to crack again and again. Why not start over and re-build the frame and get the proper amount of glue in the joints. Or use a square and razor knife to score all the joints and just having a line showing.  

 

-Ace-

I am afraid to admit a beginner's mistake here. The face frame is permanently installed for multiple reasons, so getting it off isn't an option. Like others have already stated: I am in cover up mode at this point. I have the benefit of living in the desert, so joint expansion due to moisture is not going to happen.

Cutting a groove to hide the problem did cross my mind.

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