Reply To: Workbench Top–
I think the best fix would be a graving piece. Where you replace the defect with a good piece of wood glued in then plane it level. It will look good and be strong. Won’t crack or crumble over time. Won’t cause you problems if you need to re-flatten the top. It’ll be just like the rest of the top for the depth of your patch.
You might be able to scrape out the hard glue enough that you could simply cut a wedge cross section strip of wood to match the gap well enough, put glue on it, and tap/weight/clamp it into the gap (but don’t be so forceful that you split the whole top!). Alternatively, you would cut a groove to get a good clean gap of known width and depth and glue new wood into that.
Wood filler/sawdust and glue will stop stuff falling in, and would be easy, and wouldn’t stop you doing that more elaborate fix in the future. I don’t think it would add strength, however.
Epoxy would put a hard plastic seam in your bench. Seems a little dubious to me. Might be too strong and hard.
Ignoring it is another good option. Workbench just has to work!
