Brodak Is Back

A few months ago, I learned from Bill Cooke's Rocketeer's Corner blog that my favorite sanding sealer, by Brodak, was out of stock.

I learned about Brodak from Bill's blog, and I love using it to seal the wood grain on balsa fins.

Everyone has a favorite method of hiding wood grain on balsa fins to make them nice and smooth for painting. The top three favorites include sanding sealer (which goes back to the early days), Elmer's Carpenter's Wood Filler, and papering fins. I did a detailed study here on The Rocket N00b blog a while back, focusing on how much weight each method added. CLICK HERE to read that post.

While I use each of these methods occasionally, by far my favorite is sanding sealer. Not only does it add the least weight, I find it the least frustrating.

This is just a personal taste thing. There is no "best" method.

A popular brand of sanding sealer in the past was Aerogloss, but it went out of production a few years ago. There are other brands of sanding sealer out there, but Brodak is my favorite to work with of the ones I've tried.

Brodak was out of stock for a while, and I worried it was simply not coming back, so I emailed the company to ask when it might be returning.

Patti from Brodak replied:

Hi Daniel,

We are waiting on the metal cans to come in. This should be back in stock within the next 2 weeks.

Sorry for the delay.

This was in early September. It must have taken longer than anticipated for the cans to be resupplied, because I kept checking the website, and long past a two-week period, the sealer was still out of stock.

But it's finally back, so I ordered more.

Sanding sealer, particularly this one, is more expensive than other methods of hiding wood grain. It puts out fumes, and should therefore only be used in a well-ventilated area. And, unless you can find a local supplier of it, you'll have to order directly from Brodak.com and pay shipping. But I like the stuff, so I consider it worth the price tag.

Also, I like the quality of it. Every time I opened a new jar of Aerogloss, if I didn't use the whole thing up in a few days to a week's time, it would crystalize and become useless.

I've used an opened can of Brodak on multiple projects for nearly a year, and only at the end did it start to thicken up. A dash of lacquer thinner made it useable one last time.

Brodak comes in 4 ounce or 16 ounce cans. The 16 ounce is a far better deal.

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