When I was drilling the headrest holes into the left rear leg of my Grandson’s rocking chair, I let the drill slip and greatly enlarged the screw hole. This repair was especially challenging because the leg had already been glued to the seat as well as to the rocker and couldn’t be removed and replaced. Enlarging the hole and inserting a plug wasn’t appealing. The repair would have been obvious. The only solution I could come up with was to find a matching piece of Walnut and align the grain pattern to match that of the remaining part of the leg.
So I took my Japanese saw and removed the top portion of the leg trying to follow the gain line as much as possible. I then glued a wedged shape block to the leg.
After much sanding and blending, the original shape began to emerge. After re-drilling the headrest mounting holes, I saw that the grain patterns had matched much better than I had expected.
At this point I knew that the topcoat would enhance the grain pattern and contribute further to the blending.
Before attaching the headrest to the rear legs with glue and screws, I inserted maple to match the maple in the rockers.
