Why has my hinge pulled out of the chipboard, and how do I repair it properly?

The whole weight of a kitchen door hangs on four small screws in a material with no continuous grain. Chipboard grips a screw by the resin bond between individual chips, and once the door's weight has worked those chips loose, the hole gets bigger every time the door swings. It never recovers on its own, and every attempt to fix it with more screw makes the void larger.

What you'll need

• Hardwood dowel, 8 or 10mm
• Drill bit to match the dowel
• PVA wood glue
• Fine saw or a sharp chisel
• Small drill bit for pilot holes
• Threaded metal inserts, as an alternative (optional)

Step by step

1. Take the door off and unscrew the plate.You need clear access and you need to see whether one screw hole has gone or both. Support the door as the last hinge releases.
2. Decide between repairing and relocating.If the panel has good 32mm system holes above and below the failed position, moving the plate one step is quicker, free and permanent. It shifts the door about 32mm, so you can only do it if the hinge is not already at the top or bottom of its usable range. Otherwise, repair.
3. Drill the damaged hole out to clean material.Use a bit matching your dowel — 8mm is usually enough, 10mm for a badly torn hole. Drill straight in, no deeper than about two-thirds of the panel thickness, so you do not come through the outer face. Blow the dust out.
4. Cut the dowel so its grain will run across the panel.This is the part people get wrong. Cut a short length of dowel and push it in sideways, so the wood fibres run across the direction the screw will travel. A dowel with its grain in line with the screw splits along its length and fails.
5. Glue and drive it home.PVA on the dowel and in the hole, push it in, and tap it flush. Wipe the squeeze-out. If it stands proud, that is fine — it gets trimmed later.
6. Leave it to cure properly.Overnight. PVA reaches useful strength in an hour and full strength in a day, and this joint is going to carry a door for twenty years. There is nothing to gain by rushing it.
7. Trim flush and drill a pilot.Pare the dowel flush with a sharp chisel or a fine saw so the plate sits flat. Then drill a pilot hole through the centre of the dowel, sized for the screw's core rather than its thread.
8. Refit the plate and hang the door.Drive the screw home firmly, not brutally — it is in timber now and it will grip. Rehang and readjust the door.

Tips

• If both screw holes on a plate have gone, do both. A repair alongside a failed hole simply moves the failure.
• Threaded metal inserts are a good alternative where you want to be able to remove and refit the plate repeatedly: drill oversize, screw the insert in, and you have a machine thread in chipboard. They are not stronger than a well-glued dowel, but they take repeated assembly better.
• Matchsticks and glue is the same idea done badly — it only re-packs the crumbs and it fails again within a year. A single solid dowel is a different repair entirely.
• While the door is off, look at the other hinge. If one plate has failed the other is carrying more than its share and is usually not far behind.

Common mistakes

• Driving in a longer, fatter screw — Chipboard fails by crushing, not by pulling out of a thread. A bigger screw crushes more material, splits the panel, and can burst through the outside face of the unit where it shows.
• Using a plastic wall plug in the hole — A wall plug works by expanding against solid material. In crumbled chipboard there is nothing to expand against, and the plug simply spins in the void.
• Not letting the glue cure before hanging the door — PVA that is still green will creep under a constant load, and the dowel works loose over weeks. Overnight is the whole cost.

If it doesn't work

Questions people ask