Fix it help needed

[Jim Young]

While chamfering the head board rail this weekend my router bit split the wood. It lifted the along the grain and took out some material below the finished surface. I've been trying to figure out how to fix it. Thought maybe some type of filler with glue to hold down the grain strands. Not sure what type of filler would work. Anyone have any suggestions?

[Garrett Lambert]

First, your tear-out was likely caused by your following a curve and cutting uphill, i.e. into the grain. You must pay attention to grain direction. In these cases, even though a little more difficult, rout from the other direction. Just takes a little more care to keep the router against the pattern.

As for fixing your problem, I'd suggest there's no way to glue the tear-out back in place without the repair's being obvious. SO, what to do? The best solution is probably to trip and glue some matching wood into the damaged area. With care, an almost invisible joint should be possible.

Cheers, Garrett

[Todd Burch]

I've done this numerous times. Stupid routers.

A Garrett suggested, the piece that came off is probably all garbled up, and even if you could find it, gluing it back on would still require filler.

Here is what I would do. First, make a nice clean "flat" out of the headboard where it tore out. You can do this with a handplane or with a router and a guide clamped to the headboard.

Once you obtain a flat, cut out from scrap wood a piece to glue back on. You can use a biscuit joiner if the flat is large, or a mini biscuit, or a dowel, or you can just glue. You may have to figure out a not-so-obvious clamping strategy to get the new piece to hold tight, but the key is to get it VERY tight so that the repair line is as slight as you can make it. If you can, when you cut the new piece from scrap, line up the grain and color as best you can. If you still have the scrap from cutting the curve on the headboard, that is where I would look first for the right color/grain.

As for finishing, make sure you have excess NO glue around the repair.

And most importantly, MOST IMPORTANTLY, don't go pointing it out to everyone that looks at it. If they find it by themselves, then do a better job nex time. If they never see it, considered yourself trained on error-recovery aspect #485 out of 1,000,000,000 of becoming a proficient woodworker.

Todd.

[Jim Izat]

I don't want to sound flip, but is there any chance the piece could survive being a bit smaller? Without a picture it's hard to know. This happened to me once (okay more than once) and I was able to get by with a little less width on the piece I'd mucked up. Looked better that way I thought. I never could find a grain and color match that looked okay and I'm not nearly talented enough to stain or dye everthing to match......

Jim Izat