Do you have a screw loose?

I mean literally, not figuratively. When we moved into our new house about five years ago there were some stripped screws on the door hinges for a few kitchen cabinets. I repaired them by inserting the ends of three round wooden toothpicks dipped in white glue to plug and refill the holes. That’s one common repair method reusing the same screw. You also could either use longer screws or larger diameter screws, or drill out the hole and glue in a wood plug (cut from a dowel rod). These options and others are discussed in an article at The Spruce Crafts titled How to fix a screw that has stripped out.

My repair on the most used hinge finally let loose. As shown above, this time I redid it by cutting three pieces from the middle of those 0.08” diameter by 2-1/2” long toothpicks, and using a lot more yellow Titebond PREMIUM Wood Glue.

When we had breakfast with one of my wife’s friends I mentioned doing that repair. She had also used the “toothpick trick” for fixing loose screws on her tap shoes. There is a risk of damage to wooden floors when a loose screw starts protruding. The Tight Taps web site sells three different sizes of screws, and they also have a 1-1/2 minute YouTube video on How to fix a tap shoe screw.