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