Furniture, Wood and Cabinetry Finishing - dent in top of a new chest of drawers

I bought a newchest of drawers for my grandson from a good furniture store. My son in law accidently knocked it over onto the garage floor when taking it out of the cardboard box & packing. It put a dent the size of a quarter on the front top edge and a small but deep scrape also on the top edge. How can we fill in the dented area? I thought of wood filler but my husband thinks the top isn't solid wood as I thought.

The chest is a dark cherry color.

Sometime dents can be repaired by steaming, take a corner of a towel that has been dampened, hold it over the dent and warm it with a clothes iron. The dent is comprised of wood fibers that have been compressed. the steam will cause the fiber to swell back up and minimise the dent. This works better with unfinished wood, as far as the scratch goes, you can find touch up sticks (like a crayon) that can be rubbed into the scratch.

On the scratch, you can also take a pecan meat and rub on it. The oils in the pecan will help swell the wood back up and will also bleed the stain back to the area. I have done the steam thing on newly lain hardwood prefinished flooring where someone would slide something and dent the floor. It works just fine.

Pecan meat? Only an old country Georgia boy would come up with THAT!

I'll file that one away for the future!

Shouldn't it be peanuts though? lol

When the boll wevil wiped out cotton in much of the south many farmers went to pecan orchards - you can graze cattle in the same area and get twice the use of the land.

PS: Raw peanuts don't have enough oil to do the job on furniture...