ᐅ How to Secure Loose Screws on a BILLY Shelf?

Sure! For the Billy shelves, I recommend using dowels with a diameter of about 6mm (1/4 inch), which usually fit well with the standard screw holes.

It’s important to cut the dowel so that it fits perfectly into the drilled hole — not too loose, but not too tight either. A tip: first insert the dowel without glue to test the fit. If it goes in easily, you can coat it all around with wood glue and insert it into the hole. After drying for about 24 hours, the stability will be much better. Then you can carefully screw in the screw.

Make sure the dowel does not protrude, otherwise assembling the shelf will be difficult.

Wood glue alone is usually not enough when the hole is worn out. Using dowels with glue is the right approach. If nothing else is available, you can also press in a small piece of wood.

Alternatively, you can also use special thread-locking paste. It is available at hardware stores and prevents the screw from loosening.

Great idea with the locking paste, glamo8! 🙂 That was the icing on the cake for me – especially when you move the shelf a bit. Since then, my screws have stayed super secure!

Guys, this sounds really exciting! 🙂

I also had this wobbling issue and just tightened all the screws without using any of the suggested securing methods. Unfortunately, that didn’t hold up for me for long. I’m going to try dowels and glue next—that can’t hurt! Thanks for the great thread here, very motivating!

Thanks for your tips so far! I will probably try the wood glue plus dowel method first, as that seems the most plausible to me.

Out of curiosity: Does anyone have an idea if it's possible to replace the original screws from the BILLY shelf with other screws that provide better hold? Or is that rather difficult because the holes are already pre-drilled?