Repair to desk

A variation on #1 would be to put the screw into the hole before the filler hardens. Saves drilling. But you need to support the load while the filler is hardening.

I'd do a mixture of (2) and (3).

That's not a problem as the shelf is removeable.

Charles, please check your system clock!

What's wrong with it? It's right now. The 23:30:03 time shown in your version of my message does not agree with the time I sent it, which was at

Would you wait for the glue to dry before inserting the screw?

car body filler, drill when still soft, insert screw, tighten when totally hard

I'd go for glue and match and then put in a screw later.

I presume that you can't use a longer screw because it would come out of the other side? If so, you could consider a machine screw, washer and nut and just bolt it straight through. My keyboard shelf runners are like that - although in my case, that is how they were designed, as the sides are steel framed and not wood.

I'd drill out the hole, carefully and straight, to the size of a dowel just larger than the hole. Glue the dowel into the hole, and when set, drill a pilot hole for the screw.

That should work well with pine. Wouldn't hold my breath had it been chipboard.

To strengthen chipboard which might break up (or already be breaking up), it's a good idea to flood the hole with superglue, and allow it to soak in and 'go off'.

Simply use car body filler. its polyester resin which glues the chips together loaded with a filler that takes screws magnificiently

Dowel is old school and crap

I've tried similar but how do you get it to fill the hole?

Nope, worked well for me at least in some high stress situations - hinge screws for a heavy door for example.

Noted, ta.

This is CHIPboard dude. Lightweight stuff with no strength. You need to stablisise it and spread the load. Car body filler does both.

I read this was a "pine desk"?

Given this is a pin desk, I would use a dowel and glue it in place, and make sure the dowel displaced the glue.

Next option; if I had a wreck of a car and had car body filler at hand then I might use that, otherwise I'd use plastic wood filler. However it is quite difficult to get anything like this into a hole, hence the dowel approach would be the preferred option.

Indeed.

Yes, I tried asking about that.

I've used both methods.

If you don't have any two part car body filler to hand (or the equivalent sold as wood filler) then the dowel method will be a lot cheaper as a tin of car body filler isn't cheap.

Maybe the advantage of the dowel method with chipboard is that you tend to stabilise the surrounding area with PVA glue. If a screw has already pulled out the surrounding wood chip has probably already been compromised and is weak. PVA will soak into this weak area and set hard.

I cannot see the problem of getting car body filler into the hole. With both methods you first drill out the (screw) hole to make it bigger. With car body filler you just pack it in and use the flat end of the drill bit to push it into the hole so that there are no voids.

Chipboard does vary greatly in quality. If had some with the strength less than Wheatabix where the only thing holding it together was the laminated coating. I've also come across chipboard from cheap flat pack furniture that has been tough and the "chips" well bonded in resin.

The hard bit (no pun intended) is stopping the drill before it breaks out the far side. Difficult to do without some form of depth collar. However one is easy to make with a piece of flat scrap wood. Drill a hole the same size as the dowel then adjust the drill protrusion so that it is less than the thickness of the side of the desk.