A Long Tapering Piece Of Wood

[Old_Geezer]

Anyone any ideas on making that job of creating the above as easily as possible ?

The thing is that a fence panel blew out its top left corner from the concrete post in the recent high winds, and on measuring the gap between the posts I was amazed to find that it is not consistent top to bottom ! The "obvious" solution as far as I can think, is to screw/glue a tapering 5' long bit of wood to one side of the panel so it fits better.

But the thought of trying to saw a 5' length piece of wood so it reduces from ⅝" to 0" is not something I like to contemplate. Sounds horrendous. Anyone know an easy way to produce that which I'm not presently spotting ?

[jno]

if this is a panel made of overlapping strips of wood, you could just align the last one with the fence post and hide the not-quite-straight join behind the next strip so only the neighbours see it?

[Old_Geezer]

You have a point; although I think a solid edge would be required if the fence is not to break the stuck out bit of strip in the next high wind. It's not simply cosmetic. Thus my thought of adding a solid piece to the edge.

[FrogNog]

plane it?

[-Talbot-]

Nail the piece of wood to another much bigger piece of wood And plane it (you would obvious need to sink the nail heads to stop them hitting the plane's cutting blade.

[Old_Geezer]

Ah. Temporarily attach to 'waste' wood. That's well worth considering. Thanks. I'll give that some thought. Doubt she'll get the fence fixed today though :-)

[The Builder]

Running that down on a table saw would be easy, OG. By hand, or using a portable circular saw is quite difficult. Also, running from 5/8 to nothing will give you a very flimsy piece that is likely to split unless you use a piece of hardwood.

My first thoughts would be to try and clamp the panel to the concrete post to reduce the 5/8 gap. These panels are quite flexible. It would probably "stretch"

There's usually a way of re-aligning these things to eliminate the gap, using wedges and/or clamps.

[Old_Geezer]

I have a saw table and did think of it, but past experience suggests it's not that accurate. I think that unless one has paid top wack they're only good for approximations. Plus I'd need to set it up in the garden to be feeding 5' lengths through. I'll take another look at the panel to see if something can be done but don't fancy pulling it apart and rebuilding it if I can avoid doing so.

[-Talbot-]

They are easily (depending on the style of panel) stretched wider, OG.

[stuey]

How about an oscillating power tool using the semi-circular wood-cutting blade?

[Peaspeculiars]

OG, we had a wobbly fence panel and just wedged in a wooden door stop at the top and pushed it down a bir until it stopped - you can't see it as it's in the groove of the fence post but it works a treat

[Old_Geezer]

Thanks for all the suggestions. It seems to me that stretching the panel can't lengthen the capping piece, so I'm unsure that the result would be durable should I opt for that. I've jammed a stone in for now, to hold it, but will need to do a better job soon. Cheers.

[BRIGHT SPARK]

OG...glue and clamp a 5/8 piece to the edge and when its dry run the jigsaw from 5/8 to nothing...if its ok put some nails in it.

[Old_Geezer]

Just an update. Never got around to doing a proper job on this, and recent storms blew out the jammed panel and broke it. The time seemed right to get a builder in and return the post to a more upright position (it was leaning a bit which is probably the cause of the problem) and replace the broken panel. Seems ok for now.