On 4 Nov, 12:32, nog wrote:
On Sun, 04 Nov 2007 12:06:52 +0000, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
Appelation Controlee wrote:
The paint on our heavy panelled exterior front door has cracked along joins
between stiles and rails, as well as along the edges of some of the panels.
I spent much time last year on preparing the door for painting, including
filling all the crack lines with car body filler, but the (moderately)
immaculate finish I then achieved has been marred by cracking has recurred
in a similar fashion to how it was before.
Presumably this is because of expansion/contraction, and "working" of the
different parts of the door against each other. (?)
SWMBO is agitating for me to remedy this, in order to reinstate the finish
that was in place when I finished the last round of work, but I'm at a loss
as to how to achieve this without the same problem showing up again within
months.
Any suggestions? I've been trying to think of ways I can improve the
stability of the door but haven't come up with anything that's practicable.

Flexible decorators caulk,putty, mastic, or don't use wood.

Perhaps I should have added that it was the flexible variant of car body
filler that I used. That leads me to wonder whether it was its flexible
charcteristic that contributed to the problem?- Hide quoted text -


It doesn't really matter what filler you use as nothing will stop the
relative movements of the wood hence whilst a flexible filler won't
itself crack it's the paint overcoat that will.

Any chance of filling the cracks with a coloured caulk/sealant/wax? Of
course the closer the match the better but I would've thought even
something moderately close would stand out less than what I assume are
black/dark voids of the current cracks.

Mathew