Repairing Light Scratches on Rustic Furniture

No matter how hard we try our furniture is going to get scratched. Many times it is when we are moving items into the house for the first time, just to make it extra frustrating. After investing in high quality furniture you want to keep it looking great, so a little bit of time doing some repairs is well worth the effort. In this piece I am just going to look at very light scratches. Scratches can come from something rough sliding over the top, dragging something by that bumps in, maybe you scrape the legs with the vacuum, it can happen easily in a million different ways. And it is not only in the soft woods, the hard woods will scratch through the finish and still look scuffed up. For light scratches, try taking some wood finish oil on a rag and rubbing it over the spot. I have got some light colored, danish oil around the shop that I often use. When you rub it over it will fall into the scratch and soak into the spot that has lost it's finish, but it will wipe off easily from the other parts. Sometimes this is enough to make the scratch less visible and not catch any one's eye. A tung oil works well too, and there is a dark and a lighter color so that you can best match to your original finish. For other shades or colors you can try using a matching stain and just do the same thing, a little bit of wiping with a rag over the spot. Of course you always want to be careful and dispose of your oily rags properly, so that they do not catch fire. Another thing you can try is a furniture repair pen or similar product that is made for hiding scratches. Look in you hardware store for these, in the area where you would find wood glue and filler. I have a set that was very inexpensive and has three different shades, so I can best match the finish on the damaged item. It is basically a magic marker that you draw over the scratch. I like to immediately follow with a towel so that I can wipe off the excess around the scratch before it dries. Because of the depth of the scrape you should be able to wipe without taking it out of the repair line. That is just a couple of ideas for repairing light scratches on your rustic and Adirondack furniture pieces. Later I will cover deeper scratches and cracks. www.RusticFurnitureGallery.com