all,
I have an indoor door to one of the bedrooms which is a typical core construction (not solid wood). Top hinge screws were stripped out during initial installation and screws were put in at an angle to achieve grip. there is splitting and the hinge is not holding.
How can I fix this? Must be a way short of buying a new door.
thanks in advance
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Replies
I gather it's the door that's stripped out, rather than the frame? (Not that it makes that much difference.)
The thing you have to do is to plug the old holes and then carefully redrill them and set the screws.
Some people favor drilling out and using dowel rod for plugging screw holes but I prefer to whittle down a splinter of wood to fit. Split a piece of scrap 2x4 or whatever with a hatchet and break off some splinters about four-six inches long and maybe 3/16" across. Whittle each into a slight taper, test fit, then coat with wood glue and tap into place. Do this with all the bad holes, then, after the glue's dried, saw off the protruding parts with a fine-tooth saw or a sharp knife.
Make sure you have decent screws for the hinges. Often the stock screws aren't very good. I prefer something that looks a bit more like a deck screw than the standard wood screw -- less taper and deeper threads. Use screws that are about 2.5"-3" long -- longer will do no good since the edge of the hollow-core door isn't that wide.
Drill pilot holes for the screws. The drill diameter should match the inner shank diameter of the screw. Set the screws, tightening them in rotation rather than tightening one at a time all the way tight. If a screw hole ends up in the wrong place plug the hole as above and try again.
Use longer screws to get to the framing or glue in some pieces of dowel in the existing screw holes and drill new pilots. If the jamb splits are large enough, you can try getting some glue in the crack then clamping the jamb till it dries.
just plug the hole.
dowel rod, golf tee, hunk of a shim, something carved off the side of a 2x4 with a utility knife ... any kinda hunk of wood will do. Make it tapered and a but oversized ... unscrew that one hinge and beat it in with a hammer and beat it flat .. then trim the hairs with a utility knife ...
new hinge screws from HD, Lowes or most hardware stores tat come in the little plastic bag ... they usually are self drilling ... work great. Better than the screws that come with hinges.
Jeff
Buck Construction
Artistry In Carpentry
Pittsburgh Pa
"Top hinge screws were stripped out during initial installation and screws were put in at an angle to achieve grip. there is splitting and the hinge is not holding"
Hollow core doors have only about 1 1/8" of wood on the edges nowadays, some less than that, so screws longer than 1 1/4" offer no benefit.
Since the door edge is split, gluing dowels or slivers of wood in the holes will likely be of little value.
The solution for split wood is to drill holes through the face of the door about 3/4" in from the edge and intersecting the screw holes, then glue 3/8" dowels in them. you can then drill new pilot holes for 1 1/4" screws and the hinge will hold.
By the way, a 3/8" dowel is actually smaller than 3/8", so you may have to drill a 11/32" hole or some such to fit snugly.
BruceT
Edited 3/8/2009 3:23 am by brucet9
All, this is helpful. one thing I did not mention is this door seems to be predominately of MDF construction. where this hinges is sitting is def MDf. May work best to squeeze as much glue in as I can and redrill the holes.
MDF? Cross doweling would still work since the dowels would transfer all the stress to the door skins. Look at the top or bottom of the door to see how wide the stiles are. You'll see a seam where the rail is glued to the stile.BruceT
Put toothpicks in glue, stick toothpicks in oversized holes, screw screws back into holes.
Family.....They're always there when they need you.
You'd get the dog biscuit, 'cept you forgot to specify round toothpicks <;-)Guess they don't put those nice chipwood backers inside hollow-core doors anymore (or some numbnuts installed it backwards.....
Kabob skewers come pre-tapered, and they’re way cheaper than dowel stock.
Make sure you don’t wedge the splits further open: clamp a piece of 1x to each side of the door to squeeze the splits shut before you drill out the holes to match your skewer size.
Then unclamp the door, fill the holes up with glue, and tap in the plugs. This will force glue out sideways to fill the cracks. Then re-clamp the door. For really long cracks, drill for more glue-injecting dowels.
Whether you use birch dowels or bamboo skewers, they will be much harder than the surrounding MDF. This is good, they’ll hold screws better, but it’s easy to get off-center with your new holes. Then you’re right back where you started!
So use a VIX (self-centering) bit. Push it in just enough to dimple the hole, then check to see that the dimple is indeed centered before you continue. If it’s not, you can center it by tipping the drill a bit, and re-dimpling. Once you’re truly centered, drill it full depth, and you should be good to go.
AitchKay
Lee Valley has a kit for fixing stripped screw holes
comes with a tapered counter sink and some cedar dowels that yopu sharpen with a pencil sharpener , put some glue on then clamp door
best to start screw hole with a vix bit also lee valley , done a bunch since finding the tool , very professional results
Bruce is correct except that i've found the wood strip is 3/4" with the door skin applied over this.I have seen but not used hinges with an oddball hole layout that misses the old holes. Try a hardware store,take the old hinge with you. Also longer hinges could be used that bypasses the old holes.If you have a 3" long hinge maybe a 3 1/2 or 4 " hinge will do. The idea of cross doweling will definitely work but if the door skin is wood grained it will show thru.
I imagine you are not in the trades, try the wooden golf tee glued in or toothpicks first.Try to glue them in without crushing the wood.Wait 4 hours and bore a pilot hole 3/4 the size of the screw, probably about 1/8",drill as straight as you can and lube the screw with a drop of liquid soap.Install the screws, hope for the best.If it works great, if it don't try something else.
mike
i just ran into this on some "custom from the door supplier double hung doors" seems they took about3/4 of an ince off each door to make them the "custom size" no way would it hold a screw...
it was way too easy to take the entire fill piece out of the door... the faces with just a razor knife let go of them pretty easy... i ripped some old 2x stock down to 1 1/8 i think... and slipped it in with glue and alot of clamps... only took about 15min per door... i use the old 2x stock because i thought it'd be more stable... routed for hinges and now i know i have 1.5" of good wood...
btw... hollow core 6 panel door slabs at lowes are $19ea any size...
p
Yeah, if plugging the holes doesn't work out then a dutchman such as you describe would be the way to go. A MultiMaster would be the ticket for notching out for the new pieces.
The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness. -John Kenneth Galbraith
in mine i replaced the full filler ... they weren't even wood... i alread had a heads up in that i had to modify 6 doors clip'n the corners where the doors were under stairways.... so i knew what was there....
p
I do the full 2x trick alot.
either for making real short doors ... or "custom" widths.
usually the cheapest if a hollow core cut down.
the fill is right around 1 1/8th thick. Trimmed down 2x works great.
get all the cardboard inside outta the way, glue and clamp.
bang! custom door!
Jeff Buck Construction
Artistry In Carpentry
Pittsburgh Pa
There is a video on the FHB site that addresses this problem.
Search for Tucker Windover, and he has a video regarding common door fixes. Also, if you post a pic of your door, we can get a better sense of how sever the splitting is.
http://www.vandykes.com/product/sb1300151/wood-screw-hole-restorer-tool
View ImageView Image
Jeff
Well I consolidated these thoughts and what I did was first fill in all the holes and cracks with glue and clamp them all up. After this dried overnight I drilled holes where the screws were and glued/tapped in 1/2" wood dowels roughly and inch long (though this pushed into the core - edge mdf is not very deep). pre-drilled the screw holes and put hinges back on. good to go.Tricky part was perfectly centering my screw hole on the oak dowel. Made it work ok but if I had to do a bunch of these I would have used a better centerpoint bit.
Even in the best of circumstances centering hinge screw holes is tricky. Best approach is probably a self-centering Vix bit, but you don't generally have those unless you do a lot of hinges, so you have to wing it.
The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness. -John Kenneth Galbraith
Edited 3/11/2009 12:03 pm by DanH
Bondo. Done it lots of times on doors and jambs. Can be re-drilled and screwed a lot faster than any putty, or glue.