How do I fix this?

[Robert Hayward]

Not sure what I did, but a chunk is missing from the 1/8" thick walnut ring. Fortunately it is on the inside but I would still like a nearly invisible repair. I have more of the same 1/8" thick piece of walnut. Suggestions?

[Dwayne Watt]

Walnut sawdust and CA glue or coffee grounds and CA glue are a couple options. Clear epoxy also works well to fill small voids and will essentially disappear when you finish the wood. Alternately, fill it with dark CA glue alone. Or...fill it with something colorful in the CA or epoxy to highlight the "feature".

[John K Jordan]

Walnut sawdust and CA glue or coffee grounds and CA glue are a couple options. Clear epoxy also works well to fill small voids and will essentially disappear when you finish the wood. Alternately, fill it with dark CA glue alone. Or...fill it with something colorful in the CA or epoxy to highlight the "feature".

To keep the repair from looking "too uniform" I sometimes make very thin irregular slices of the same material, jam them into the void, and add CA glue. I've done this several times using pieces cut from bark to fill in a void from a bark inclusion.

If trying to repair the walnut ring shown I'd probably jam it full of very thin shavings (cut with a knife or plane) aligned with the grain, press some walnut sawdust between them, then glue. Note that CA glue will definitely change the color of the surrounding walnut in this case so I might instead try using Titebond or something and omit the sawdust at first. After that sets up, I might try either adding sawdust between the shavings or wet sanding with CA glue, a technique I learned from John Lucas. He puts a bit of thin CA on a piece of relatively coarse sandpaper then sands with the grain. The sawdust created gets coated with the glue and forced into the void. I've done this several times and it's perfect for small defects like chipout. I have no idea whether there is enough of the ring to provide enough sawdust or how hard it will be to make it look good. I don't have a good feeling about it...

I guess another option might be to cut out the ring and glue in a new one, a lot more work but might give a better result.

JKJ

[Robert Hayward]

Fixed! Not completely invisible but better than I imagined before I started the repair. I used John's method of small thin slices of the original material with CA. Then filled the remaining voids with sawdust and CA.