I'm resurrecting two doors which a friend of mine bought at an auction when a bar went out of business many years ago and plan on installing them in my house at the entrance to a hallway. The doors are solid red oak with nicely textured glass inserts. I've done quite a bit of re-gluing and filling gaps in the joints with slivers of wood. But, I'm undecided on how to address two areas where the wood has been bashed, creating gashes about 1/8" deep and 1.5 - 2" long. See photos below.
My plan is to sand the doors down to bare wood, then finish with a clear satin finish. I suspect that with a clear finish these two gashed areas will be pretty noticeable. I think the gashes are too deep to sand out without creating significant hollows that will grab my attention every time I look at the doors. So the options I'm considering are to just varnish over the gashes and live with them or to repair the areas with Dutchmen, trying to match the wood color and grain pattern with the Dutchmen. Doing such matching well is probably beyond my woodworking skill level, so the Dutchmen will probably be quite noticeable as well. I recognize there's no perfect solution, but I'm trying to figure out which option will be the least noticeable.
Which of these two options would you guys recommend? Or, are there other options that I should consider?
Thanks.
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