Giant dent in finish help!?!?!

[Chris Mudd]

OOPS!!!

I had finished spraying all of the coats of a nice Fiesta red strat when something in the shop fell on the face of the guitar and made a nice DIG in the front. I hadn't begun clear coats yet, which may make it easier to fix.

The dig goes all of the way into the wood and I don't want to go relic or anything.

Can anyone make suggestions how to fill/fix and refinish a dime sided dig in the guitar top?

Chris

[Peter Wilcox]

Is it a dent (no wood loss, just compression) or a dig where wood has been removed? If it is a dent, you might try scraping the finish off the depressed area and then apply steam to see if the wood will expand up close to its former level.

[JC Whitney]

Can you post a picture?

[David King]

Definitely try to swell the wood before attempting other repairs as the wood will eventually try to swell back to shape over time and you don't want to overfill the dent. Rather than trying to scrape all the finish off the dent i try to perforate the finish with a lot of pinpricks so that the steam can get into the wood fiber.

[Jim McConkey]

A trick that has been mentioned many times before here is to put water in the depression, and stick a hot soldering iron into the water. The water heats quickly and turns to steam, and the dent often pops out. You can read more about it in the Library.

[Barry Daniels]

My technique is to place a clean cotton cloth with a damp spot over the dent. Then place the tip of a household iron on the wet spot to create steam. It may be necessary to do this two or three times. I think this is potentially less damaging to the finish than placing water and a hot iron directly into the dent.