fixing a ding

I had posted this earlier in Wisdom of the Hands , but since it pertains to box making, I decided to post it again here. I had a small and distracting defect in the lid of one of the boxes I made using the Gifkins jig, and needed to fix it. So I used a technique featured in this month's Fine Woodworking. It is something I had done before and Fine Woodworking was a great reminder. You make a small diamond shaped piece of wood in a matching color, then place it over the defect, trace around it and chisel out the space for it to fit. It is easiest to make the diamond first and cut the space to fit rather than the other way around. I used a 1/4 inch Forstner bit in the drill press to remove most of the waste before chiseling. This provided a target depth and made it much easier. Then I glued the diamond of matching wood in place. Use a pencil to sketch in some of the grain to complete the effect. While attempting this technique on multicolored spalted maple is not as effective as when used on more uniform colored stock, you can see that it works! The photo at the top shows the ding. Photos below show the fix and the result. If I weren't pointing at it, you wouldn't see it.