bluplanet

Several years ago I was ripping some oak T&G flooring. I wasn't using a push-stick and was pushing the stock with my right hand up to about an inch from the visible blade that was protruding about 3/8" up out of the oak. As my fingers got close, I would switch from pushing with my right hand to finishing the cut by pulling the stock the rest of the way through with my left hand about 8" to 10" past the blade. I had been watching each piece I cut to make sure the cut was not closing up past the blade (I always look for that). On some of the pieces, the cut was coming through where there was a relief on the underside of the flooring. As I was just ready to pull my right hand away, the piece I was cutting split the rest of the way to the end of the board. The now de-bridged relief had no support and my thumb pressure pushed down 1/4" closer to the table. I just got a nick on the tip of my thumb and a perfect rectangular notch in the tip of my thumbnail. It took about a month to heal to where it looked good and there's no scar now, but I'll never forget that experience. I was shaking for several minutes after that incident thinking of what might have happened. Since then, I always use home made feather-boards and push-sticks. I've drilled and tapped several finger-board mounting holes in my table saw top and use them frequently. I've been known to make jigs that take over an hour to make just to make one or two cuts (I have to say that often the jig isn't just to make the cut safer, its the only way to make some cuts possible.) The jigs are kind of fun to make actually. They sometimes are for ripping small parts and require blocks the length of the table with a profile running through the center and internal plastic fingerboards so stock doesn't vibrate as it traverses the blade. Its amazing how much control this achieves and all I have to do is shove a stick in one end, walk around to the back side of the saw and pull it through.

Expounding on Neopanax's comment.
I'd like to comment on his "Not for fine furniture" disclaimer.
Purists might object on ideological grounds to using dissimilar materials and part of my motivation for this post is to mess with their brains, but the real issue for me is having a drill bit drill into a surface that has different densities and grain directions for one half of the bit than the other. Denser material might shift the bit's center toward softer material. Bamboo can be a pretty hard material. I've done flooring and found it wears carbide tipped blades, but those skewers seem splintery to me and not the same material as the flooring or my old bamboo flyrod. On the other hand, drilling an oversized repair hole and inserting a plug that will completely contain the new screw doesn't sound like a great idea.
I've pounded wooden match sticks with plenty of glue into stripped holes in door hinges with good results. You have to consider the glue is as significant a component of the new material as whatever is used as a plug. In demanding applications, 5-minute epoxy used with the bamboo or with several wood toothpics driven in with a hammer might provide a better anchor than the endgrain of a wood dowel. (My flyrod has an extra tip but I'm not using it for this purpose.)