I put a gouge in my nice wooden desk chair

[yankey-sparky]

I recently had to fix my nice wooden desk chair, and the actual fixing turned out beautifully. But in the process of repairing it, I accidentally put a big gouge in the seat with my electric drill. It's about 20mm by 10mm and is a bowl shape maybe 2 or 3 mm deep.

I figure I can probably fill in the gouge with a bit of wood putty, but I was wondering what I need to do to match the stain/varnish/whatever it is of the surface? It's a pretty dark brown with nearly black woodgrain in it, and the gouge is very light.

 

[IanDB]

Rather than use wood putty you could try and get a better match with a coloured wax stick - I don't know what you can buy in the US but in the UK you can get special hard waxes about the size of medium candle sticks. You can melt the wax into the indent, smooth off and then polish off with a wax polish. A wax filler should be OK as it's a fairly narrow score (although I bet it looks enormous at the moment!)

I think you might have problems getting a stain to take on wood putty and matching it in is always tricky.

 

[yankey-sparky]

Thanks, I'll check around at my local hardware stores and see what I can find.