replacing rail on two five foot wooden gates

[jackg]

I have a pair of wooden gates made by AJ Charlton of Frome. They are at the end of the garden to access the geese paddock.
They are about 20 years old. The top rail on each is rotting but the other parts are fine.
So I am considering replacing the rails.
They are mortice and tenon joints.
The rails taper from 155mm at the hinge end to 75mm at the latch end, with a thickness of 70mm. The purpose of the taper is to lighten the latch end.
What type of wood would be suitable for this and the chance are I would have to cut the taper, so how best do you treat wood that is cut?

 

[Deleted member 174758]

I presume they are softwood (joinery grade redwood?). If not then oak would probably be the best domestic timber but that is going to require 7 x 3in timber to start with (machined to final dimension 3in will give you approx. 70mm thickness). You might be best casting around your vicinity to see if any of the fence manufacturers or timber yards have their own pressure vessel and can supply a sawn treated piece of timber to spec or treat your made-up component. That way you can possibly make the component and then have it treated. In my part of Lancashire, for example we have Empress Fencing at Chatburn near Clitheroe who have their own saw mill and pressure vessel as well as Hills (timber merchants) in Oldham who certainly used to have a pressure vessel not so many years ago.

Other than that your other approach would be to do the taper cut on the underside and treat it with Cuprinol or the like, which is not as good a solution

 

[jackg]

Thanks for your advice.
The gates are standard redwood, maybe treated.
I guess I'll phone a few yards to see if they can help.

 

[Deleted member 174758]

I see you are in Avon, so I'm sorry that I couldn't give you a more local supplier, however talking to local saw mills might be your best option as they will know who does what.

 

[big-all]

i would get down and poke hard with a screwdriver under the bottom as i would expect similar decay at the bottom, possibly not seen as 2 top decayed and bottoms ok would need to be from the same or similar tree for rails with a soft one on top and hard one below ---hope that makes sense