Restoring chipped up wood finish

[nicolewi]

We bought 8 wooden bar stools on Facebook Marketplace. Long story short, 6 are fine but could use touch-ups, but 2 are really beat up. Overall, this will still work for us and I'm fine with what we paid, but I'd like to touch up the "good" stools and try to fix the "bad" stools. All I can find online is about sanding down and refinishing or repainting. I do not want to totally re-finish these cheap stools. I just want to touch up the finish but need more than a furniture marker. 

They have a medium brown rustic-type finish but the top edge and the bottom rails where feet go are almost white on 2 stools b/c finish is totally off in spots. The "good" ones mostly have worn finish on some foot rails.

Anyone know if I can literally just rub stain right on without sanding or sealing or anything? Or...other ideas to fix up rough finish? 

Anyone used something like "Restor-a-finish"? Seems like I need something that adds more color but people seem to like this product. 

[lessel]

We got a free vintage record player (hollowed out) that we used for TV gear under our wall-mounted TV. There were a couple of pretty visible scratches across the top of the cabinet. But it was free, so we took it. My husband read something about rubbing walnuts on wood scratches and I thought he was bonkers, but I'll be damned that it actually worked. He kind of mashed the walnut in and rubbed it around. Ours were like long, thin scratches, so I'm not sure how it would work on a wider area. If I remember correctly we cleaned it with a barely damp cloth to remove dust, then used used Old English polish, then did walnuts. Or maybe did walnuts and then the polish.

[nicolewi]

I'd just like to give a huge shout-out to Weiman furniture markers. For all the SMALL worn off areas, dents, etc, those things are AMAZING. I just did a bunch of touch-ups on the small imperfections. I've used them in the past with great success, too.

Still not sure how to deal with the really beat-up stools. We don't really need all 8, so that's good.