Wood Grain Filler on Body

Before applying a finish to the body of the guitar, I needed to fill the pores of the walnut with a wood filler.  Walnut is very porous and if you look closely you can see lots of holes in the surface.  The wood filler fills those holes without changing the appearance of the wood too much.  I used a medium brown tinted filler.

I taped off the inlay on the spine and on the tail to protect them from the filler and painted the filler first on the back and then later on the sides.  Here's the before and after on the back.  The blue stripe is the tape over the inlay before the filler was applied.  The second picture was after the back had been scraped and sanded, leaving it much as before, but with the filler in all the holes.

You can see that the appearance did not change much, but you can really tell a difference when you run you hand across the back.  It is much, much smoother now.

I did the same process on the sides.  Here's a picture with the filler applied.

The front is curly maple and it does not need a wood filler.  It is not a porous wood and so I could skip it.