The Beatles song “Fixing A Hole” comes to mind as I post, hence the title: My storm door is about to fall off the house. Three screws hold the pneumatic arm to the door jamb (or, door frame?), but two of the holes are shot. What can be done at this point? As you’d guess, the screws have nothing to grab. If it matters, the pnuematic arm is located at the bottom of the storm door. You might suggest I relocate the pneumatic arm to the top of the storm door and drill new holes into the door jamb. I have one concern, though… I got the door at low cost from a friend who does handyman work (and is no longer available to help me.) It appears the holes at the top of the storm door look worn. (Maybe that’s why it was cheap, but he wanted to move it out of his storage unit, and the price was right, so I can’t complain.)
Anyhow, what options do I have to salvage the bottom holes, if any? I could try larger diameter screws. While they may grab in the worn door jamb holes, they won’t pass through the holes formed in the metal of the pneumatic arm. Am I…screwed?
Cover a few toothpicks with wood glue and shove them in the hole. Make sure you use enough of them that they’re really packed in (maybe even use a few light taps with a hammer). Snap/hammer/chisel/cut off the part that still sticking out, let the glue dry and you should be just fine to put the screw right back into that same spot.
Can you move the arm a little higher or lower so you could drive the screws into undamaged wood. Or you could go to home depot and ask about inserts. You drill a larger hole and tap in some inserts.
I once had that problem. I just hacked a big splinter off of a 2x4 in the garage and hammered it into the hole, then cut it flush. It was just like new wood.
Joey_P got it right off the bat. That was exactly what I was going to say. And what others with carpentry experience might suggest.
If you don’t have wood glue or don’t want to buy it, but you do have plain old Elmer’s glue, mix some sawdust into the Elmer’s. It will work about the same.
You are filling the too large hole back up with wood. And the screws will bite and they will hold. DO NOT substitute wood filler or putty, they won’t work the same.
There are a of of interesting suggestions here, but I am going to add my own:
First, I have never gotten the toothpick trick to work reliably for any extended period of time.
What I DID do was go to the hobby or hardware store and buy some wooden dowels slightly larger than I needed. I then put some wood glue all over the sides of them (don’t be stingy with it, it will be messy but you really want enough glue to stick well) and used a hammer and whacked them sumbitches into the worn out holes. Then drill a small pilot hole in the dowel and put the screws back in.
I find this works really well because I can cut the dowels to length (if needed) and you can get them nice and flush with the surrounding wood (most anchors will protrude from the hole a bit, and sometimes that’s a problem). It also nearly completely fills the hole with material, meaning it should provide really good grab. Buy larger dowels than you think you need, because you can always make the hole a little bigger with a drill, but it’s near impossible to make it smaller.
I have also used Gorilla Super Glue for this (it works on wood) but be careful because it sets up fast and you could end up trying to explain why you now have dowels for fingernails.
I don’t actually know when the move came about to stop calling them “cripples,” or where “jack” came from. Perhaps with the advent of ADA? I do know that jam has forever and always been for breakfast. Door jambs, however…
It’s kind of amazing how well, and how often, this works.
I’ve used old-school Ohio Blue-Tip type matches before, too.
The ‘formal’ way to do this is often to buy some dowel stock, a bit larger diameter than the existing hole – let’s say that’s 3/8" diameter (for a hole that’s now 5/16" diameter).
[To be clear … I’m making up numbers]
You drill out the messy hole with a 3/8" bit, slather some glue onto a cut piece of the dowel stock (length equal to the depth of the hole you drilled), and tap the dowel segment into the newly-enlarged hole with a hammer.
When you let it dry, you can drill a new hole in the dowel stock … of the original hole size.
I’ve only seen it done once IRL. When I was little my dad had pretty much the exact same problem as the OP. A screen door with a stripped hole in the jamb for one of the hinge screws. My dad, not a woodworker, just smart about this kind of stuff, grabbed some toothpicks, stuffed them in the hole, smacked the ends off with a hammer and put the screw back in. I’m not even sure if he used glue, but so far as I know, that door is still hanging 30+ years later.
Other than that, the only reason I even know it’s a ‘real’ method is that I’ve read about it on the internet a few times and I think Tommy on This Old House did it once as well.
