Removing fine scratches from black finish?

Hello, first time poster, I have little experience with repairing furniture finishes and have a problem I could use some help with. I have a new dinning room table that has a semi-glossy black finish. Shortly after assembling the table I accidentally dropped something on it which left an ugly dent. I attempted to raise the dent by covering it with a damp cloth and carefully applying a hot iron to the spot. This just made matters worse as it did little to raise the dent and it damaged the finish around it by making it cloudy. I tried to gently buff this out with 600 grit sand paper wet with water but this left some very obvious fine scratches. I bought some black furniture paste wax thinking this would help hide the fine scratches but it did nothing.

I'm not sure what to do at this point, I'm wondering if I could try to get the scratches out with some very fine steel wool and paste wax but before moving forward and likely making matter worse I wanted to get some advice. I've given up on trying to repair the dent (is there any hope here?) but would still like to repair and/or hide the scratched finish if possible. Thanks in advance for any advice.

 

Welcome to the forums John!

When you sanded with the 600 grit did you sand with the direction of the grain? Sanding scratches are harder to spot when they go along with the grain, cross sanding or sanding in circles almost always shows.

 

Thanks for the welcome and for your reply. I sanded with the grain, you can see in the second picture I posted (photo11). The sanding scratches are obvious because they caused a dulling of the the semi-glossy black finish of the table

 

If wax won't bring back the sheen, I'm not sure there is much you can do short of applying a fresh coat of poly to the top. The wax will need to be removed and a light sanding done prior to applying the poly. It's always best to test the poly on a hidden portion to make sure it's compatible to the existing finish.

 

You forced moisture into the finish with the iron and wet rag. That's why it is cloudy. Try using the iron again with a dry rag to remove the moisture. Be careful so you don't make matters worse.

Now the scratches are a different problem. Steel wool and wax will not help. I'm not sure there is much you can do at this point. You could try some car polish on the affect area. If you can get finer grit sand paper, use that first. If you don't have a buffing wheel, try doing it by hand. It will be a lot work. In the end, the spot where you polish may be shinier than the rest of the table, but that may be better than what you can now.

BTW, you need something with a very fine abrasive in it. Not so called furniture polish. Don't ever use that stuff.

 

Hey John, how did you get on with your table ?

 

I ended up gently polishing the spot with some fine polish and a soft cloth and it did help remove most of the scratches, but as was mentioned that spot is now shinier/glossier than the rest of the table. It is definitely an improvement over the obvious scratch marks but now I'm wondering if there is a way to restore the matte finish so it matches the rest of the table better. I certainly don't want to make it any worse since it looks better than it did, but if there is an easy solution I like to try it.

 

Try the 0000 steel wool now. That may dull it a bit. What about the cloudiness?