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Last Updated: Wednesday, December 17th, 2003, Created: Wednesday, December 17th, 2003

Techniques for hiding furniture scratches.

Scratches on furniture can often be camouflaged by any of a number of simple techniques, especially if the scratch follows somewhat the grain of the wood. When there is no stain on the wood, so the finish is actually the natural colour of the wood, simply putting a bit more finish over the scratch can blend it in. Wipe-On Polyurethanes are excellent products for touching up such finishes, or even for putting a light protective coating over the following products. The advantage of a wipe-on finish is that you can put it on thin enough that it blends easily into the rest of the surface, where-as a brush stroke of a thicker material would show. Use this same technique for a scratch in a finish that does not penetrate the stain.

The traditional method of matching colours for scratches that have gone through stain and exposed un-stained wood below is to use coloured wax crayons. Although kids colour crayons can be used, ones specifically sold in paint stores have much closer and more consistent colours. Note that you can kneed together several colours to get a closer match.

A bit of a revolution in hiding scratches is a product called Scratch Match. One clear tube to match all colours! So how does it do it? If you have scratched through the stain it means that you have definitely scratched through the protective finish. When you apply Scratch Match, it actually flows under the finish and causes the original stain on both sides to bleed out into the scratch, essentially re-staining the wood with its original stain. The Scratch Match evaporates off and you can apply a protective finish, like Wipe-On Poly and the end result is as good as fixing a stain that was only in the finish.

Of course none of these techniques actually remove the scratch and under certain lighting, it will still show. They are always more successful when the valley of the scratch itself goes with the grain rather than against it. But they are always worth a try, because the next alternative is to sand or strip it all down and re-finish the whole piece of furniture.

Keywords: Finishes, Refinishing, Repair, Stains

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