Bolder Wrap: High-tech bandage for permanent repairs

Last year, the four wooden columns holding up my front porch were in pretty good shape, considering they’re pushing 90 years old. But their cheap wooden bases, replaced just 10 years ago, were cracked, peeling eyesores. With the house painters coming soon, those bases had to go.
I ordered four new fiberglass bases from Pacific Columns, which will never rot. But I also had to make sure the column’s staves would never splay out at the bottom and leave open, vertical joints that would spell the end of my nice old porch supports. So I put in an order for Bolder Wrap, a 2-inch-wide strip of heavy-duty fiberglass mesh impregnated with a special, low-foaming polyurethane glue. Wrapped like a bandage around the lower end of the column, it hardened overnight into a waterproof cast just as tough and hard as the column bases, which now hide the repair from view.

A couple of tips: As with any polyurethane glue, a few squirts with a water bottle speeds the cure time. don't forget to put on the latex gloves, supplied in the wrap's sealed package; polyurethane glue is difficult to clean off skin.   
The maker of Bolder Wrap (from Boulder, Colorado, natch) also says it’s just the thing for repairing broken household pipes (copper or PVC) aluminum gutters, tool handles, you name it, but I haven’t had a chance to test those claims. All I can say is that after one year my porch columns still look great. Given the wrap's industrial-grade pedigree - it was originally developed to repair broken pipes in refineries and deteriorating electrical towers - I'm confident my columns will be able to shoulder their load for another 90 years. Bolder Wrap costs $10 for 4-foot roll.