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Well, it was bound (pun intended) to happen at some point. I made my first major binding channel mistake today. I was finishing up my last purfling channel today and the guide bearing fell off of my binding bit. So the bit dug into the back leaving a nice half circle ledge. I don't see this one getting repaired, so I think I'll have to get creative. It's not a commissioned build, so I'm free to do whatever I please. I'm thinking maybe a large decorative back inlay could be cool. I've never done anything like that before, so it may be just the time to try. The only thing making me rethink that idea is that it is a three piece back (Jatoba/Mahogany/Jatoba w/ Rosewood strips at the joints). So much variation already might not make the best canvas. Anyway, give it a look and let me know if anyone has any ideas. Thanks everyone!

Eesh....I had a router disaster like that on my last build.
I just filled it with CA glue and its surprisingly invisible. You'll just look through it at the back.
I guess you could do a big inlay on that middle section. No idea what would look good....some type of vine pattern maybe?

How about a rising sun with rays coming out of it. A friend of mine did that on a similar defect and it looked kind of cool. You could maybe repeat the figure somewhere else on the guitar so it would look like you meant to do it!

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It's not what you don't know that hurts you, it's what you do know that's wrong.

My 2 cents . Get a scrap of the back material . Line up the grain lines and glue in a matching piece with white glue or titebond . after it has dried flood the witness line glue joint with water thin super glue and sand quickly with 220 grit for an invisible repair. Use a filler and stain and rerout your channel. This also happened to me doing cabinetwork gud luck ernie

Ellison : Don't try to repair to make it blend in,go with something like Terence says.That's more likely to give you a result you can be happy to show to the world.
Tom

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A person who has never made a mistake has never made anything!!!

I dunno.... the grain on that back would be so easy to match. I think I would try to match and blend. If you can't pull it off you could always try the contrasting inlay bit later..

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I would tend to agree with Ernie and Michael... looks like an easy repair to me. Use the offcut from the cutaway, find a piece that matches the grain of the bad spot, and inlay it. It's a nice smooth curve at least, so it should be pretty easy to match the shape precisely. Might be visible to you when it's done, but I doubt many people would spot it until they'd owned the guitar for a while and looked it over regularly. And if you're keeping it, that should never be a problem

And besides, if it turns out to be too visible still, you can just go back and inlay something else there. Not sure what though... I generally do inlays as a matched set with a theme over the whole guitar. If you don't have a theme going already, then one little thing in a corner of the back would look too random and obviously a cover-up, unless it's not so much a character/object kind of thing, and comes across as part of the binding/purfling scheme. But since you brought up large inlays, that would solve that dilemma as well. I would say, unless you have an inspiration, keep it confined to the upper central area. Large inlays take a long time to do, so unless it has some artistic purpose (at least more than just a random design invented to cover up a mistake), then keep it as small as possible without being too obvious what it's for.

Well, I've played around with a couple ideas, and I think I'm going to do some inlay with an autumn theme. I was considering doing some falling leaves on the fretboard, so I think I'll do that and continue it down the back middle piece. I made a few leaves and placed them randomly on the back and it looks nice. The entire guitar is made up of browns, tans, yellows, and pinks so I think the coloration will work pretty well. I'm planning on adding a side sound port as well, so I think some kind of leaf shaped port could be pretty cool! I'll be sure to post pics when I get it going!

There's that inspiration! Go for it