If your door hinges are loose and you can’t tighten your wood screws, your screw hole has become stripped.
Wood screw holes become stripped when the fibers around the hole deteriorate. This could be from overscrewing, putting too much weight on the screw, or expansion and contraction from the weather.
Stripped screw holes can make wood doors bind or sag and handles rattle loose. Then, it’s only a matter of time before the door falls completely off its hinges or you yank that handle right off.
If you have a stripped screw hole, you don’t need to go out and buy a new door. You can save it.
There are products out there specially made to fill stripped screw holes, like anchors, but here’s a solution you can do with items you already have in your workshop.
- Remove the screw from the stripped hole.
- Snip off the end of a cable tie, or zip tie. The tip of the cable tie is smooth, so you need to use the part with ridges so you can get the most resistance in your hole.
- Fill the hole with a cable tie until the tip of it reaches the bottom of the screw hole. Mark on the cable tie how far it goes into the screw hole.
- Remove the cable tie and cut it to size.
- Put the measured piece of cable tie into the stripped screw hole.
- Then, screw in your screw.
The ridged cable tie gives the screw something to bite into, so your screw will be held securely in place.
This trick works for screw holes in wood. If you have a stripped screw hole in metal, you can use an oversized screw.
Watch the video above to find out more.
