Quick hardwood repair
I have been busy in the shop and can’t really share what my projects are yet. This is what I was working on last year, and if you click here, here, and here, you can see how it was done.
I can share a trick I tried on the piece of walnut in the picture above. The grain pattern around knots in walnut can be very dramatic looking, but most of the time they can also have serious defects. Large splits, twists, warps, and partial or complete blowouts of the knot are common problems. I have a small collection of cut offs with the most spectacular patterns, but they are going to require some extra work to make them usable for any project.
I liked the pattern on this board and it only had one tiny flaw. The very center of the knot had a pithy bark-like center. It was only a centimeter by a couple of millimeters. A couple of coats of varnish would almost fill it in completely.
I just had to find out how deep it went. Using a wire I found that this knot went diagonally completely through the board. This hole was going to take a little more than varnish to fill it.
A toothpick could fill this, but they don’t make walnut toothpicks. A small sliver of wood just a hair thicker than the hole and several millimeter longer makes a good substitute. Use some dark wood glue and give it enough time to dry.
Now just cut or sand it off smooth.
This fix took about ten minutes working time to make a serious flaw almost invisible. If you really want to use some of these patterns you might have to work a bit more for them, but I think they’re worth it.
