Dealing with Holy Wood

The proper way to deal with holy wood is to build a crucifix with it. Unfortunately, this is completely irrelevant to the subject of this blog. On the other hand, I noticed that I am dealing with holey wood. A few days after my sanding session, I gave the body another inspection, and I noticed that the wood is filled with lots of holes along the grain. My guess is that these holes were originally the tubes that fed water up to the trunk of the tree that the wood is from. So why is this a problem?

Two pictures of the imperfections.
It's like a wasp. Small, but deadly, and looks bad when covered in paint.

A few years ago, I helped out with a summer research project by assisting with the construction of a fleet of wooden robots. The chassis of these robots were made entirely of wood, and we learned rather quickly that any imperfection in the wood, like holes, were especially noticeable after they were painted. So before I move onto painting, I need to fill the holes in with some wood filler and sand the surface until it is perfectly smooth.

Artfully placed wood filler and putty knife. 

So wood filler and putty knife purchased, I'll probably get down to filling and sanding out the body some time tomorrow.