Replies

1. 
   joinerswork | Aug 28, 2011 10:07am | #1

   Had a similar situation with the heavy doors on the church I used to attend.  I used the longest brass threaded inserts I could find, and replaced the wood screws in the hinges with approriate sized flat head machine screws.  Be sure and get the inserts back into the framing, and not just in the thin door jamb.

   Ray

1. 
   DonStephan | Aug 28, 2011 07:54pm | #2

   The 2x4 framing should be no more than 1/2" behind the door casing., and reachable with long wood screws.  In that case you wouldn't need to fill the holes in the door casing.  As for filling the holes with dowel, end grain doesn't hold screw threads well, and dowel will be end grain.  Much more effective to drill deep plugs in the face of boards and glue them in place.

1. 
   joinerswork | Aug 29, 2011 09:44am | #3

   Don,

   Long(er) screws are the first resort in a case like this, I agree.  In my instance, the double doors at the church had been replaced with a pre-hung, slightly smaller pair, which had been simply slipped into the re-framed old opening.  The short screws had stripped, then longer screws had stripped out of the cheesy balsa-textured spf studs used to re-frame the opening.  By the time I was asked to take a look, there just wasn't much to work with inside those boogered out holes.

   Ray

2. 
   bones | Aug 29, 2011 11:35am | #4

   easy

   take the hinges off, drill it, fill it with bondo!  It will set in 15 min and sand and  redrill and place hinges back in.   NP.  Bodo like duct tape it can do anything.  

3. 
   forrestb | Aug 29, 2011 01:57pm | #5

   How many hinges per door?

   If you have 3 per door, you can drill out and plug 1 hinge at a time to allow the epoxy to cure.  The doors should be okay even if they are heavy.

   I agree that end grain dowels will not hold as well.  Use plug cutters to cut them on face grain hardwood - the larger the better.  If you size the plugs so that they do not stick out, the hinge will close okay even though it is loose.

   I have done this to my front doors but I have 3 hinges per door.  Why did I do this?  Because I twisted off a brass screw one time and had to remove the deep remnant.

   Forrest