Perfectly Flush Screw Plugs
This tutorial shows how I achieve a glassy-smooth finish over my screw plugs without sanding.
I’m not a fan of sanding. The harmful health consequences of sanding have inspired me to try to eliminate all sanding from my woodworking. It’s been a chore and I’ve had to change some of my beliefs over the years. It’s been worth it—and it’s been enlightening. Trying to move past sandpaper, I’ve found myself going back through history. I’ve found that our forefathers and mothers didn’t sand much at all. If I step back in time, before the modern sandpaper era, I find myself in the world of hand planes and cabinet scrapers—no sandpaper.
These tools take a while to get used to but they produce a smoother surface than sandpaper without so much dust. They still produce some dust. But my workshop if mostly filled with shavings, chips, and ribbons of wood. I prefer these because they don’t fit into my lungs.
Here’s a tutorial showing how I create a smooth finish over a screw hole plug. I hope you find it helpful.
Step-by-step
Here are the screw plugs after they’ve dried. There’s about 1/8 inch left.
First I saw the plugs almost completely off. To protect my work I lay an old thin saw blade over the area to be sawn.
Then I lay my saw on top of that old blade and saw the plug.
This leaves about 1/64th of an inch left.
With a sharp chisel, I shave off the remaining plug. I wriggle the chisel blade from side-to-side and slowly push the blade though. Notice I’m cutting diagonal to the plug’s grain. This helps reduce tear-out.
Keep shaving a little away at a time until you’re flush with the wood around the plug.
Once it’s level I like to gently shave back and forth over the plug to fine-tune it and give it a glassy finish. Try to keep your chisel blade as flat as possible. This smoothing step is like using your chisel like a very low angle smoothing plane.
That’s it. This is what my final plugs look like. They are ready for the finish—without sanding.
I hope you found this tutorial helpful.