This is my second wooden aircraft, but thankfully I got rid of the last one before needing to address the problem of small trim/panel screws working loose.
How do amateurs of CAPs, Jodels, Robins etc. deal with this? A drop of glue in the screw hole? If so, which type of glue?
Adhesive bonded nut plates are one solution, with the right adhesive for adhesion to wood structure.
The wing fairing screws in my Champ, would always rattle out of the wooden rib they were screwed into. My mechanic suggested gluing them, with ‘wood’ glue (which I interpreted as aliphatic resin), but I didn’t get around to it before the aircraft met an untimely end (fuselage corrosion). Hence, I can’t confirm the best glue chemistry to use.
I would get some brass nutserts
and epoxy them into the wood.
Or use standard aviation type rivnuts, but they are aluminium so the thread won’t last as long if frequently unscrewed.
I have used this solution for the screws which hold the Socata door trim to the composite doors. The doors are a honeycomb material so almost “fresh air” and nothing holds… Araldite does the job just fine.
If a hole in the wood is too big for the screw I normally fill it with Epoxy resin / microbaloon mix and re-drill
A short offcut of a cabletie inserted in the hole before replacing the screw. The nut insert thing is the permanent solution.
( You do know that with old wood-and-fabric you do NOT fly if you haven’t found any loose screws – you do your preflight again, properly this time. 
)
Well, yes, if you want a temporary fix then that is one. There is a risk of splitting the wood, perhaps. Another, which I have just had to do on a really crappy door in someone’s house, is to drill the holes out, push in plastic rawlplugs with epoxy on them, let the epoxy go off, and then the screws can go in. It worked well enough to hang the door.
Yes, but now we are starting to digress… there are lots of solutions to this problem. For example, in my distant memory, having done a lot of composites work, I am sure that I have dipped screws in mold release and then set them in holes with epoxy (or filled epoxy as appropriate to the size and orientation of the hole). The epoxy cures and the screws are pretty well fixed, but can be extracted without damaging the substrate or the screw. This is probably better for larger screws and best to test it out before doing it to your airplane!
This could be a fine solution…. however, I think Jacko was asking what the ‘industry’ standard is, which I am also curious about. It is a pain when your pre-flight bag contains packages of various sized screws to replace the ones which have come out!
