For a quick repair, nail a short piece of leather belt over a broken hinge - it's flexible and surprisingly strong. Apply boot dubbin to keep the leather from drying and cracking.
Replace a damaged or lost hinge pin with a snug-fitting nail or a machine screw. Coat the replacement pin with lubricating oil. Here's an easy way to silence a squeaky gate hinge. Cut a washer out of felt and saturate it with light oil. Then remove the hinge pin, push it through the washer and reinsert it. Add more oil if the squeak returns.
Hinge screws often pull loose and lose their holding power. To repair them, whittle down a wooden stick to fit tightly into the screw hole. Coat it with glue and jam it into the hole. When the glue is dry, cut the stick off flush with the hole, and then drive in the screw. As an alternative, jam several toothpicks into the hole and cut off the excess; you don't need glue in this case.
