Did you know that the amount of money that people spend on home improvement every year is expected to reach $465 billion in 2022? When you think about it, this is no surprise. The improvements you make to your home are an investment that will pay off every single day that you live there, potentially for years and decades to come!
Of course, improving your home is about more than just spending money. It also comes down to know-how. Anyone who spends a significant amount of time working on their home is going to encounter some of the common problems that crop up in this arena.
Stripped screw holes are one of the most common, and sometimes most frustrating problems, that people working in their homes will encounter. So how can you manage this problem when it happens to you?
Read on to learn all about the ways that you can deal with stripped screw holes!
Find a Larger Screw
First, it is important to understand precisely exactly what stripped screw holes are. When a screw is first inserted into something like wood, it carves a screw-shaped hole into the wood.
But if that screw gets removed and then replaced, it carves a second screw-shaped hole on top of the first one. Done repeatedly, this can result in a fully smooth hole that provides nothing for the screw to grip. At this point, the structure is liable to fall to pieces.
One strategy for fixing stripped screw holes is just to use larger screws every time you remove old screws. Larger screws will carve new, larger holes into the wood, ensuring that the screw threads always have something solid to grip on.
This is a great strategy for repairing screw holes that you only have to put new screws into once or twice. It is not a sustainable strategy for fixing screw holes that you need to put new screws into more often than that.
Create New Threads
Another way to fix a stripped screw hole is to restore the screw hole in the wood first. By injecting a liquid substance into the hole that later hardens, it can be like you are inserting the screw for the first time again.
Reinforce Stripped Screw Holes
The last strategy for managing stripped screw holes is the most sustainable. Before you insert a screw into a hole, you can reinforce the hole with a metal structure.
These threaded inserts for metal screws grip solidly onto the wood. Then the screw itself can grip solidly onto the metal threaded inserts. This creates a sustainable hold no matter how many times you need to replace the screw.
Be Prepared to Manage Stripped Screw Holes
We hope that you were able to take away something helpful from this brief article on a few of these strategies you can apply when you have to deal with a stripped screw hole. This is one of the most common problems you will encounter when working around the house, so it is important that, at some time, everybody learn how to deal with it. Although this problem is common and frustrating, ultimately the solution is fairly straightforward.
To learn more about how to maintain your home, backyard, and garage, take a look through our other articles!
