Oops! I accidentally drilled a hole a sixteenth of an inch off the mark. I would like to glue a dowel into the hole, but all my dowels are too big. I suppose I could buy dowel, but why can't I just find a twig in my yard of the appropriate diameter, snap it to length, and glue that in the hole?
This joint needs to resist a fair amount of tension, both along the screw axis and laterally.
I do this a lot. I tend to use hardwoods in situations where they need to hold up to lots of tension, and softer woods where ease of assembly is more important, but in reality a softer wood will expand when the screw goes in and resist breaking.