Dents (dings) in wood

[Steve_M]

One top tip I've done to my other basses (not my Smiths as they're not too badly dinged even after 5 years of gigging) is to use superglue (crazy glue as you guys in the states call it) on poly finishes instruments.

The glue seeps in under any lifted finish and if you build it up in layers its possible to abrade it back with a nail manicuring/buffing/polishing pad until its flush with the existing finish. Then just use the polishing side to bring the superglued repair up to the same shine as the surrounding finish.

I've done a couple of repairs on chips on poly finished graphite necks and it was virtually impossible to tell where the repair was unless you held the finish to the light and looked at slight distortions in the reflections.

I've tried it on a satin finished Spector 6 that I have and it wasn't quite so successful but it still passed all but the closest of inspections. The trick is to get a nail buffing pad that is as fine an abrasive as you can get without it being polish. The pad should have other surfaces for polishing and such. But having that fine abrasive side is the key.