Repair a gouge in a tabletop

[Chris Fiore]

I just cut my tabletop to size, it consists of a 7x2 maple plywood sheet. After making the cut I made the horrifying discovery that there was a screw left on the workbuench , ant it tore up the veneer. I repaired some of the dents with the iron steam method, but there are two unrecoverable dents where the veneer is actually punctured. I planned on staining or dyeing the maple to finish it. Does anyone know how I van fix it so it doesn't look terrible?

[Erik Loza]

Epoxy + some sawdust?

Erik

[Paul Girouard]

Inlay a decorative patch??

[John Lanciani]

Start over. A flaw like that on the show surface will bug you a whole lot longer than the expense of a new piece of plywood. The time and effort of a handmade piece far outweighs the cost of materials.

[Prashun Patel]

Let's see a picture before informing him to start over.

Depending where it is and what your veneer looks like, it may be quite possible to mask the defect so it's acceptable to you.

I've had some catastrophic errors that don't look so bad after completion.

[Wayne Lomman]

Chris, as Prashun said, don't start over yet. Look carefully at the figure in the veneer and work out a shape for a patch that follows the natural lines in the timber. The patch should taper to a long point at each end so that you have no joins at 90 degrees to the grain. Cut out the damage and use a scrap from an offcut of the same sheet to fill in the repair. This will be the best chance to salvage the job. Practice on a piece of scrap first if you are not confident. Use razor sharp tools. Good luck. How about some before and after pictures? Cheers

[John T Barker]

I don't know how the edge is done but I once had a gouge in the middle of a maple table top and it occurred to me that all I need to do was rout down an 1/8" and then glue on a piece of stock to fit that. This table was solid made of glued up pieces 4-5" wide so all I needed to do was put in a piece that wide. Same applies to your top. Glue in a repair piece and do whatever necessary to bring it level with the rest of the top.

[Chris Fiore]

I took some pictures of the two gouge locations. One of them is about 3/8"x1/8" the other is 2/8"x2/8". Both these gouges are located in the middle of the table top. I tried to demo the sawdust and titebond 3 on a scrap piece, but the results were horrible. My plans for the table top were to attach 1x2 maple hardwood on the edges and route the corners. I've done some edge bending on this project, my first ever, but I don't have much veneer experience at all.

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[Prashun Patel]

Can you show a farther shot of the whole table top?

How are you planning to finish this? Are you coloring or glazing it?

[Michael Pyron]

no insult intended, but that looks like plain Jane maple veneer...point being I'd just save it for utilitarian use and replace it...what's the cost of a sheet of domestic maple veneer these days?? ~$50 or so?

the lesson to be learned here (and yeah, I learned that in the typical hard way) is to make sure your work area is clean of all things that might mar a project...and this includes globs of glue left behind from other work (on that note I've found UV finished plywood to be great as glue cleans off real easy, though admittedly the slick surface creates other issues)

[Chris Fiore]

It was an A1 grade sheet, so it's actually about $100 a sheet. I plan on dyeing it to finish it.

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[Robert Engel]

No way you will ever patch it without it being noticeable (or even worse as you've already found). The way I fix things like this is thinking of an inlay, but it needs to be centrally located or you'll be making more than one to keep it symmetrical.

My take is the best option for your situation is start over. A sheet of Maple ply is the cost you didn't loose that much.

That being said, IMO a table top should be of solid wood, not plywood. Most plywood is too subject to denting and doesn't hold up well in certain applications like a dining room table. Nowadays the veneer layer is extremely thin.

[edit]After seeing the location, I think an inlay would work. I would use a contrasting wood like walnut.

[Chris Fiore]

Is it feasible to make an inlay in a plywood surface?

[Tom Ewell]

If push comes to shove you can try a hot wax repair after most of the finish work is done.

Picobello has a kit primarily for repairing flooring and furniture dings but it might work on your project if used during the finishing process. It comes with an assortment wax colors and a battery heat pen.

Since it is a wax, dyes and colorings won't take, you'd need to dye and get some clear on first to be able to apply the wax fix then seal over again before applying the final coats of finish.

Practice on some scrap done up to your finish schedule first.

Of course for the price of the repair kit you're almost at the cost of a new sheet of stock so unless you have further use for the kit it's not a cheap fix.

In my case, I'd probably eat the stock buy new and use the damaged stuff on another project and consider it a lesson learned.... another one of many. ;)

[Doug Hepler]

Chris,

First of all, this does not look as bad in the photo as you seem to feel it is. This is common among us woodworkers. We sometimes lose perspective. It appears to be 1/4 =3/8" long and maybe 1/8" wide?

Normally correcting a defect like this is not worth the time unless it occurs in a finished piece. This is where the advice to start over comes from. But you get to say what your time is worth. If you want to fix it you can. Here is how I do it.

Do not try to correct the problem until the top has been stained and partially finished. You will just make it worse. Go ahead and finish making the piece, color it and apply a few coats of dewaxed shellac. Now you will see the defect against the finished appearance of the top. At the same time you finish the top, finish a small cutoff of plywood from the same piece. Your cutoff should match the colors near your defect as closely as possible. You will need this to take to the art store.

Next, you want to level the defect. You can do this with a burn-in stick (shellac stick) or with a filler made out of wood flour (fine sanding dust). Wearing latex gloves, moisten some light-colored wood flour with shellac, make a ball, and press it into the defect. Smooth it more or less level with the top (a tiny bit proud) using a plastic putty knife. Be careful not to make the problem bigger by disturbing the surrounding area. Let it dry overnight. Carefully level it with a sharp card scraper if you have one or a single-bladed razor blade. Sanding it level is very very difficult because you may mar the surrounding area. Now, take the plywood color sample to an art supply store and buy at least two colored pencils that match the colors in the grain of the plywood. You are lucky that the defect is near to a bit of figure. You should lay down a base color that matches the lighter color. Then draw a tan line from the undamaged grain into the defect so that the defect looks like a natural part of the wood.

Finally, depending on what kind of pencil you used, brush or spray a coat of dewaxed shellac over the repair and the immediate surrounding surface.

Then finish the piece with whatever finish you were going to use.

I hope this helps. Please respond to let me know what you decide to do

Doug

[Peter Aeschliman]

I would recommend starting over as well. Don't think of it as $100 down the tubes- you can use that sheet for something else later!

An inlay could work if the core of the plywood has no voids... but honestly I think an inlay patch would be more obvious than wood filler for a dent that small.

FWIW, I also don't recommend using plywood for a table top. All table tops end up with dents eventually, but dents in a super thin plywood veneer could ruin the table, whereas the same in a solid top would be considered patina. :)

[Glenn de Souza]

Hi,
Last time something like this happened to me, I got gutsy with the repair attempt thinking odds were I'd have to start over anyway, so what's to lose. What I did was take some matching wood (maple in this case) and shave a whole bunch of irregular splinters off a corner with a chisel. Look for one or a combination of 2-3 that comes as close to the shape of the gouge as possible. It will undoubtedly be bigger than the gouge, meaning proud of the surface, which is fine. Take this splinter match and dab it with some white glue, not yellow. I use Elmer's Glue All for things like this because any glue residue will be mostly clear when dry. Use only a dab or so. Press and pack in the splinter(s) with a piece of melamine or something similar on top. You're in no man's land, so a curved caul would be the way to get clamping pressure there. Once dry, sand your now glued in proud irregular splinter of wood flush and with a little luck, it should look fairly unnoticeable and will take finish reasonably well.

When I did this I didn't think it would work very well but it did. Maybe it's a Hail Mary but what do you have to lose?

If you like and if you have the time, you could gouge a scrap offcut of your plywood to simulate the damage and try what I am suggesting on the scrap to see how it works.

[Mel Fulks]

Do a "Wendal Castle" . See table with carved gloves and keys.

[Prashun Patel]

*I* would personally not even try to repair it. I would just continue and finish it normally. Once complete, I would steam it out as you have, then just blend it in with sanding . You'd be surprised how light and finish and time and objects on the table can make defects invisible. In addition, you will surely acquire more defects once in use.

I would feel guilty wasting a good sheet of plywood for such a minor defect. But that's personal; I like some war wounds in my work. It's more of a story when you can explain the defects. That defect looks natural to me. Putting an inlay or otherwise botoxing it would in this case IMHO be inappropriate because of the otherwise stark plainness of the maple.

[Mel Fulks]

I agree with Prashun ,and having put the ding in yourself might temper your anger "to spare the life" of a guest who drops a fork.

[Cary Falk]

Here is another option that I have not seen mentioned. I make a lot of dyed black and expresso maple pieces. When I do a glue-up I mix dye into the glye since wood filler does not dye very well. When finished you can't see the glue line or any imperfectins in a joint. You might test this on a scrap and fill a similar scratch with dyed glue and then finish and see how it turns out. Most of my pieces are very dark. I nevertried it with a lighter dye. My other suggestion is to cut a small piece of maple and glue it into the scratch with some dyed glue. I have never had any luck with glue and sawdust or wood filer matching.

[Chris Fiore]

I'll definitely be doing some experimenting on some of the scrap pieces that I have. Has anyone used timbermate wood filler? I've seen a lot of good reviews on it and how well it works for stains and dyes. I know that it's a water-based wood filler so I wasn't sure if a water-based dye would mess with it. Does anyone have any information on this sort of competition?

[johnny means]

I just finished a job involving hundreds of veneer and edge banded panels. Of course with that many parts there were bound to be a few chips and gouges. My technique is to cut a slightly over sized piece of veneer and glue it onto and into the area. The key is to use a hot iron to work the patch into the void. The heat and moisture will allow the patch to conform to the void shape. A minute or so of heat will leave a finished and dry repair. Simply sand flush carefully and you should have an almost invisible patch. Google burl veneering or dashboard veneering for me on this technique. Veneering 3 dimensional surfaces inherently leaves lots of tears in the veneer which have to be filled with matching material in a discreet manner.

[Mike Henderson]

Doug Hepler gave you the best advice. You can repair a dent like that so it is not noticeable. If you don't want to tackle it yourself, there are "finishers" who will do it for you. I've repaired similar things using a variation of the advice Doug gave you and I can't even see where I repaired it.

Remember, the goal is not to make it perfect but to make it so that no one will notice it.

Give it a try before you start over. If you mess it up, you'll have learned something. And if you are able to fix it to your satisfaction, you'll have learned a valuable skill - one that I guarantee you'll use again if you keep building furniture.

And to add my advice, if you fill the hole with something that's the same color as the wood and then use a pen of the proper color to make the grain continue over the filled area, people will not see the repair.

Mike

[Tom Ewell]

I'll definitely be doing some experimenting on some of the scrap pieces that I have. Has anyone used timbermate wood filler? I've seen a lot of good reviews on it and how well it works for stains and dyes. I know that it's a water-based wood filler so I wasn't sure if a water-based dye would mess with it. Does anyone have any information on this sort of competition?
I've used Timbermate, if plugged into the raw wood (trying to match the raw wood color) it doesn't quite match but you may be able to mix the dye (in solution) pre tint the Timbermate to match the dye color.

Might need to let the tinted Timbermate set for a while in order to get it back to 'putty' consistency.

We used a similar method back in the day using the goo in the bottom of oil based stains to color match nail hole putty for stained trims.

As mentioned above using pens and the like to simulate grain patterns will also help disguise the boo boos.

Also, Timbermate does not like metal putty knives for application. I use plastics or whatever's handy, SS knives might work haven't tried them though.

[John T Barker]

I'll try again. The repair is not difficult. Rout a groove wide enough to take out the dents from one end to the other (this is 3/4" ply, right?) You don't need to rout very deeply, maybe 1/8" or 1/4", whatever you are comfortable with. Buy a piece of lumber that you can mill to the same dimension as your routed groove. Be careful about the width, cut it close then handplane the width slowly. You want a snug fit. Glue it into the groove. It should be slightly proud of the surface so you can sand it down. Once flush it will look like the veneers of the plywood. Clamping it in place would probably be easiest to do with weights.