Filling in Furniture Scratches

LESLIE: Linda in New York, you’ve got The Money Pit. What can we do for you today?

LINDA: Yes. Hi there. My daughter has a pine dining table and some deep scratches are in it. We were wondering how she could sort of fill them in, other than, you know, just trying to put a piece of glass over the top so we don’t get anymore scratches.

TOM: Minwax has a scratch-filling pencil that’s sort of like a freezer pencil, you know, where you peel the paper back and sort of …

LESLIE: China markers.

TOM: China markers – and it kinds of unwinds; the paper comes off and then you have sort of the wax underneath.

LINDA: Wow.

TOM: And what you can do is you can get – if you can find one that’s the same color, that’s great. If you can’t, you know, find one that’s a little lighter and another one that’s a little bit darker and mix them together. When I use them I usually take like a butane lighter and I’ll heat the end of the pencil to make it really soft and sort of dip it in there. And you can be a little bit sloppy with it. And then with your finger or like with a credit card, you can kind of rub off the excess and it really blends in very, very nicely. And I’ve used this stuff to fill everything from a scratch to a quarter-inch size hole in wood.

Now, it’s not real durable in terms of, you know, washing the table and rubbing stuff on it. That’s the only downside to it. But it does do a really good job of hiding scratches.