Repair Stripped screw holes

[IanG]

The trick with a toothpick and super glue is to apply the glue indirectly, I find it's particularly good with soft crumbling wood as it gets drawn in giving a very strong repair.

Ian

[TheDeardorffGuy]

I have repaired more screw holes than all of you combined! I guarantee it. The fix is simple. 1/10 in diameter hardwood dowels .090 diameter drillbit. I do prefer ACC glue but alphetic resin (fancy word for yellow carpenters glue) is fine too. Drill. insert a bit of glue, insert dowel. Cut flush, let dry a few hrs. Now look at the screw. There are 2 diameters. A major and a minor. On a tapered screw? Measure 1/3 up from the tip. That diameter is your pilot drill diameter. Now with a good eye center the pilot drill and have at it. I have turned brass inserts that center the hole.
So why do screws get loose? Metal polish is one. I'm doing V8 Deardorff #13 now and someone polished the brass with Brasso. It rotted the wood. It is an acid with pumice.
It gets under the wood and stays.

[c.d.ewen]

One other carpenter's trick is to mix sawdust and glue and poke the slurry into the hole. Somewhere on the shelf I've got a can of very fine mahogany sawdust, kept for this purpose.

Charley

[John Schneider]

One other carpenter's trick is to mix sawdust and glue and poke the slurry into the hole. Somewhere on the shelf I've got a can of very fine mahogany sawdust, kept for this purpose.

Charley

I've had very good luck doing this, except that I use epoxy. I coat the inside of the hole with straight epoxy to get a good wet bond, and then fill the hole with the epoxy/wood slurry. After it cures I redrill and reinsert the screw.

[Vaughn]

All these methods sound better than my method -- which is to use a bigger screw!

I need to do this with a few screws on my Ries!

[cyrus]

Sailors (ahem) have to deal with this problem all the time. We enlargen the hole, clean it out, then pour in some fiberglass resin, and once that solidifies, we re-drill a new hole in the place of the old one, through the new resin.....which I see someone else has already mentioned.

[Roger Thoms]

All these methods sound better than my method -- which is to use a bigger screw!

I need to do this with a few screws on my Ries!

That's hilarious, just my though when I saw the thread. Seriously though, there's a lot of good advice here. I'm actually more of the toothpick and glue type. I generally use the same or similar type of wood and cut slightly tapered plug to fill the hole. I also have some Fuller tapered pilot bit for drilling a new pilot hole.

I really like these bits. http://www.wlfuller.com/html/taper_point_drills.html

Roger

[Peter Gomena]

I had to re-fit some screws on my old camera. I couldn't use the toothpick method because the wood was too thin and the holes went all the way through (it's an antique). I found a hardware store that carried larger diameter screws of the same length. Problem solved. I will remember the dowel technique, however. Sounds like the best fix.

Peter Gomena/1

[Jim Ewins]

If there is a Rot Doctor in your area, they carry wood epoxy fillers (manuf by Smith in Calif) that are stronger than the original wood and can be sanded, drilled and hold wood screws. Yes I too have a Weisner.

[Louie Powell]

The trick with a toothpick and super glue is to apply the glue indirectly, I find it's particularly good with soft crumbling wood as it gets drawn in giving a very strong repair.

Ian

There is a wood turners trick that is similar to this.

Find a scrap of wood, using sandpaper, make a pile of sawdust. Carefully fill the screw hole with the DRY sawdust - use a toothpick to pack the sawdust into the hole. Then, carefully apply a couple of drops of super glue to the hole. The super glue will be drawn into the hole, filling the voids between the grains of sawdust. Allow the glue to dry. The result will be hard wood that can be drilled to reinsert the screw. And the beauty of this approach is that the screw is not glued into the hole.