Really appreciate all the help! Meldy - I haven't seen Quikwood yet (not sure I had seen it in our local stores, either). But good news...I bought the Elmer's wood filler yesterday - came in white (couple of others came in what they called "natural" which was a putty white greyish color - natural what??) and works wonderful!! It isn't solvent based, came in a tube that I snipped and can actually just squeeze into a bunch of nail holes and then go back and flatten down, plus is water washable around the holes for a little while - probably 5-10 minutes, where the Dap was drying almost instantly. So I'm making progress now! thull - my thoughts had been to buy 2 colors of filler for the cherry, because as you probably have also on the natural cherry, there are light/dark variations - sounds like I should go a shade darker on each also, eh? I think I will use the MinWax for the cherry - that was really easy to work with especially if it could be dug out and refilled in the future.

I am wondering why there are so many nail holes---most tongue and groove flooring is nailed through the tongues and are hidden. However, if you can find the appropriate oil based stain (Minwax makes several oil based stains) to match the flooring color, Stain Putty---made by the Bix Company---can be used. It comes in powder form and is designed to mix with any stain---even plain water---to make a putty. Using the stain allows a very close color match when finishing a project---but getting close to a prefinished product should be possible. I've used Stain Putty with Minwax Golden Oak, Special Walnut, and several other colors and the putty has set and dried hard. Ace Hardware and HD carry it.

Go to HD, or an Ace Hardware store, look in the stain department for a product called Stain Putty. It comes in a plastic tub with a brown lid---about 6 ounce size. It is a powder that is made into a putty by mixing it with the stain used on the wood needing the nail holes filled. It will be a bit darker when moist, but will dry to very close to the stained wood color. You can sand it and put whatever finish on the wood you want.

It has been my experience that if a really good match---like with the Stain Putty---is not possible---like trying the color sticks/sawdust and glue/---making the filler lighter is less eye catching. I did several hundred feet of pine crown molding, stained dark walnut. The home owner specificially mentioned he wanted no conditioner---he wanted the color differences from the stain to show. And with even good stain grade pine, there was a LOT of difference. It was in a room with 7' ceilings and a soffit for HVAC in the center the length of the room that was 10" below the ceiling. I used a 16 gauge nailer and had a lot of nail holes to fill. I made up two batches of Stain Putty----one with the dark walnut stain and another with pecan stain. The dark walnut Stain Putty was a perfect match for the darker areas---but would have stood out like a sore thumb on the lighter areas. The pecan was a bit lighter than the light areas and was a fdair match---the HO could not see the filled holes----and he is a professional painter---has owned his own company for 30 years.