A. Michael Dresdner: "If you are not refinishing, stay away from wood filler which is designed to go on raw wood and must be sanded flush after it dries. Go with either wax sticks or the oil-based putty known as painter's putty. Both come in lots of wood colors, go on easily and the excess gets rubbed off with a credit card edge or buffed off with a scrap of brown paper bag."

A. Rob Johnstone: "There are about a quad-trillion answers to this question, but my solution is colored putty applied after the final coat of finish has been on a bit. You can get various colors of the stuff and mix it to match the hue of whatever you are filling. If you wait for the finish to cure a bit, apply the putty and then a light coat of wax, it is amazing what you can hide."