Nice afternoon so I made a start on my back yard gate repair. Colin gave me two suitable lengths of T&G with slightly different offsets on the tongues and grooves. Fortuitous as it turned out as when I took the outer panel off I found the second one was also water damaged so I got that out as well. I decided not to replace the entire top rail as it double nailed on every panel and it would be a bit of job in itself. I chopped the rail back to good wood.
My replacement timber is not the same width as the original rail although it is the same thickness. I think I will put two verticals as replacement rather than one lateral it will look better. At the end of the day it doesn't have to be posh but serviceable, two verticals will provide a good platform for the latch bits. You can see from the photo that I have not cut the outer panel to width yet. After manhandling the gate on top of my bins as worktop for the work so far I had enough by the time I got to this stage.
It will take a bit of sawing anyway with a cross cut hand saw along the grain. I can plane it up a bit if required after sawing. I also needs a tad more off the bottom.