Planter Renovation

Friends from the village asked me if I could repair a couple of planters that were falling to bits. As usual, I forgot to take a ‘before’ picture, so can only show the finished result. The second picture, however, includes the 5-inch pieces cut off the bottom of each leg and does show how rotten they were. The bottom rails were in a similar state, with one missing completely and the side boards hanging loose. I initially thought that I could just move the rails up after shortening the legs to remove the rotten areas, but of course as the shape is tapered, the rails were then too short, so I had to make all eight new ones. Again because of the taper, I could just about prise the side boards out of the top of the frame without dismantling completely, but it was a struggle to get them free for shortening on my bandsaw.
I did intend to use dominoes to fix the new rails, but the Domino tool was too large to go in the gap between the legs, so I resorted to pocket hole screws. Even then I had to shorten the star-shaped driver bit to get that in. After repainting with garden paint – three coats on the new wood – I added some nail-on nylon feet to the bottoms of the legs to reduce water take-up, so perhaps it might take longer for the repaired planters to need renovation again.

-- Don, Somerset UK, http://www.donjohnson24.co.uk