Ironing out dents? Yes lets talk about how to remove dents from wood. Its more like steaming dents out of wood. You need the raw wood, water and an old iron. I found my iron at my local thrift store, no sense on buying new when you can get it old. But if you must buy new here try this one.
Why You Shouldn’t Sand Out Dents
First lets discuss why we don’t want to sand out dent. Well sanding should not be the solution to everything! I don’t believe sanding should be the option for removing a finish or in this case dents. If the piece is veneer you can blow through the veneer very easily. You can also create divots in the wood where you have sanded heavily.
How To Steam Dents Out of Wood
When the wood fibers get wet and hot they will expand there for removing the dent. If it is a very large dent you can drop a little bit of water into the dents and let them soak in. Shallow dents I just use a damp rag and an iron on its hottest setting place the iron on the damp rag for a few seconds and then you can check the results.
Other things to know: This needs to be done on raw wood! You can do a little sanding before after and maybe in-between.
Here is my how to video
Check out these before during and after photos
Like most things with woodworking this isn’t fail proof so if you have a very dense wood or the scratch / dent is very deep this might not work. You can try filling the scratch will a wood filler but some wood fillers don’t take the stain the same way as the natural wood. You can read my one of my posts on the difference in wood fillers here. Hope you get some good dents out of your next project and really take your refinishing to the next level.
Many Blessing
Tara Lou
