# Best shooting board I've seen



## Graham Orm (30 Jan 2016)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pwYJhfChDdM


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## Wizard9999 (31 Jan 2016)

And so beautifully simply. Seen it before, but thanks for reminding my by posting.

Terry.


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## Steve Maskery (31 Jan 2016)

What a coincidence! I have just taken delivery of a piece of UHMWP and was going to use it to make that exact same SB, but with a slick track rather than just the bench top.
The only bit I don't like is the way he clamps the stop for 45 degrees. . Much better, I think, to have the block triangular at the back so that it can be turned round. Better still, a separate mitre shooting board, with l & R-hand fences, for doing moulding like picture frames where you can't necessarily just turn the workpiece over.


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## Jacob (31 Jan 2016)

That's neat. Normally the words "shooting board" make me yawn with boredom. But his minimal gadgets are just slightly more advanced than the ad hoc shooting board set ups you'd normally cobble together from bench hooks, scraps, laths nailed to the bench top etc.


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## custard (31 Jan 2016)

That's pretty much what I use most of the time.












No shooting board is ever perfect for everything, but this one suits me fairly well. In particular by running _along_ the bench instead of _across_ the bench it means you can shoot the edges of longer pieces. I find this very useful for squaring up the long edges of 8mm thick Cedar of Lebanon which I use for drawer bottoms. That's just too thin to balance a bench plane on for the usual jointing technique, so _shooting_ the long grain edge is the sensible alternative. This design of shooting board will easily handle a 600mm+ length (which is great as I rarely make a drawer that's wider than 600mm) where as with a shooting board that works across the bench I find the limit is about 400mm. 

Also there's nothing glued together with this design, so it's easy to adjust to keep square (in the real world, shooting boards are constantly drifting out of square, so if they're not easy to adjust then they're useless) plus when it's clapped out (and I'll generally wear out a shooting board after a year or two) you can re-cycle the parts into other jigs and make a replacement in an hour or two.

I hear Steve's point about the mitre facility, but for me that's a strength. I generally mitre on a panel saw or with a Morso, but when I shoot a mitre it's usually because I need it fractionally off from 45 degrees, and this is dead easy to play around with when you're looking for 44.6 degrees or some such oddity.

I don't want to sound like a fan boy, as I said at the beginning no shooting board is perfect for everything, and this design also has limitations. It's not the best for shooting long veneers. Neither is it the best for shooting thicker boards, once you go over about 25mm thick you really need a much heavier arrangement of shooting board and plane to retain accuracy. But for 90% of the shooting that I do, this is the design I find myself reaching for. Your work but may take you in different directions, but this is the one that works for me.


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## custard (31 Jan 2016)

Incidentally, the main part of this particular shooting board happens to be made from some good quality marine ply (the next one might be MDF or yellow pine or whatever stable stuff I happen to have kicking around at the time), because the edges of ply are so abrasive and knock seven bells out a plane when you trim them, I lipped the edge of this with a bit of mahogany. No big deal, just it's that bit kinder on my tools and makes it a bit easier to trim that edge dead straight and true.


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## Steve Maskery (31 Jan 2016)

Custard
How do you get on with the operating position? Shooting along the bench does mean it is easier to handle longer lengths, I agree, but the stance looks a bit awkward to me. But it is such a simple thing to make then if I don't like it I've lost little.

The one I had until recently (junked because it was damp-damaged) I had at 45 deg to the front of the bench. In my last workshop my bench was up against the wall, and by skewing the SB I got a couple of extra inches out of it, and I was less likely to ram my plane into the brickwork. I don't have that limitation now, so I can see me making two of these, a short one that fits across my bench, for a comfortable stance and a long one like Tim's for those longer shoots.


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## custard (31 Jan 2016)

Steve Maskery":8uznda96 said:


> How do you get on with the operating position?



That's partly what I meant about it not being the best design for veneer shooting. If I'm shooting the two mating edges of veneer that's say 2000mm long by 600mm wide then I want the plane to be running on the _near_ side of the shooting board. But for 90% of the work I do I don't find it a problem to be working on the _far_ side of the board.

Incidentally, the MDF board underneath the actual shooting board in the photographs is just a loose piece to keep my bench clean or if there's a chance that my bench top has drifted out of flat. It's not attached to the shooting board in any way. Sometimes I use it, other times I don't.

I also keep a second shooting board for working transversely across the bench. But that's a much beefier shooting board that takes the LN 51 (or whatever it's called, I forget, the dedicated skewed blade shooting plane). That's so heavy it's a pig to lift on and off the bench, and I only use it for thick boards that are too short to cut safely on the panel saw. Why so many amateur woodworkers lust after these planes/shooting boards I don't know. To my way of thinking it's expensive, cumbersome, super specialised, and just a waste of money and space for most woodworkers.


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## Steve Maskery (31 Jan 2016)

Thank you.


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## Graham Orm (31 Jan 2016)

Interesting input, thanks guys, I've always shot across the bench with a bench hook type. I'll definitely be making one of these.


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## Rorschach (31 Jan 2016)

This is something I really must build, a lot of my power tools are on the cheaper side such as my SCMS, the cut isn't always quite accurate enough for fine work such as boxes, frames etc. A shooting board should help me take care of that last little bit. Question now is what design to make! lol


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## Steve Maskery (31 Jan 2016)

Well I've had a productive afternoon. I copped out of the long SB and settled for the more trad across-the-bench size. I think it will do fine for most of my requirements. I've kept the "loose fence" arrangement, though.











The slick plate was a pressie from my friend Brian who described it as "virgin grade - it doesn't get any better than this", so thank you very much Brian.

I was a tad concerned when I first tried it, to find that the sole of the plane was not square to the SB. And it wasn't the plane, that is square. I can only assume that the 6mm base is slightly curved. It doesn't take much to see daylight. The base is 6mm screwed to 16mm. The UHMWPE is 10mm, so the workpiece is lifted up 6mm into the path of the iron. I think that perhaps I should have glued the two pieces of MRMDF together, rather than just screwing.

I've fettled it, though, by planing a shaving from the inside edge of the UHMWPE strip, so now the plane sits properly square.

One more Tuit ticked off.


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## Doug B (1 Feb 2016)

I like the look of that Steve, with the added bonus it leaves loads of UHMWP left for other projects, my first thought was to screw a bed of MDF to the sheet of UHMWP, :-k


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## DennisCA (1 Feb 2016)

I like that, I was looking at shooting boards a while ago but never did anything about it. I'll keep this in mind however. Like the design.


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## bugbear (1 Feb 2016)

Steve Maskery":1yl4ythb said:


> The slick plate was a pressie from my friend Brian who described it as "virgin grade - it doesn't get any better than this", so thank you very much Brian.
> 
> I was a tad concerned when I first tried it, to find that the sole of the plane was not square to the SB. And it wasn't the plane, that is square. I can only assume that the 6mm base is slightly curved. It doesn't take much to see daylight. The base is 6mm screwed to 16mm. The UHMWPE is 10mm, so the workpiece is lifted up 6mm into the path of the iron. I think that perhaps I should have glued the two pieces of MRMDF together, rather than just screwing.
> 
> ...



Assuming you had a fully wooden SB before, how do you like the UHMWPE?

BugBear


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## Steve Maskery (1 Feb 2016)

Well I've not really used it in anger yet, obviously, but it seems good. I would have used formica if I'd not got this.
The biggest resistance is from the workpiece though, end-grain shooting is hard work.


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## custard (1 Feb 2016)

Steve Maskery":2pdp5al0 said:


> The biggest resistance is from the workpiece though, end-grain shooting is hard work.



You make a very good point. End grain planing _is_ hard, and if you're working Oak or Rosewood or Beech then it's _really_ hard. 

One solution is to use a mighty plane, an 07 or the Veritas/LN modern versions of the Stanley 51 dedicated shooting board plane. The 51 may seem like an appealing solution, but it brings with it a host of problems.






In this photo you can see that the tote on the 51 is a good way _behind_ the blade position, so unless it runs in a track it will tend to run out of the cut and fail to give a square result. If you're cutting _long_ grain the cutting action tends to pull the plane into the workpiece, but when cutting _end_ grain the cutting action is more neutral or can even act to force the plane away from the workpiece. Consequently the track needs to contain the plane really tightly, so there is zero play. The accuracy of the tool is really determined by the accuracy of the track, your left hand will be holding the workpiece, and because your right hand is a good 100mm or so behind the blade you can't bring any hand pressure to bear. What this means in practise is that you absolutely have to engineer a really precise (and adjustable) track if you use a 51 style plane, or you're virtually certain to be disappointed in the result. 

I've tried the original Stanley 51 in the dedicated 52 shooting board, despite being an almost mint version it still wasn't a particularly great tool. By adjusting the track tight enough for accuracy you add so much friction that cutting hardwoods over about 10 or 12mm thick becomes difficult despite the heft of the plane. Veritas make a track which uses UHMW tape, it's a good solution but not a perfect one. Firstly there's yet more expense, secondly the shooting board needs to be that much beefier to take the track fastenings (MDF isn't a great material for screwing into), and thirdly you're limited to the dimensions that Veritas supply (you could use multiple tracks in sequence, but would you then get the one thou accuracy you're looking for?). So it's easy to see that going the 51 route means the engineering, weight, and expense all compounds pretty quickly. Sure, for a deep pocketed and experienced woodworker that might not be a problem, but for the newcomer to woodworking this really isn't the "straight out of the box", silver bullet solution to shooting that it might at first appear. Frankly I generally get better results from a panel saw than I do from a shooting board, and I'll only use this particular shooting board for thick and very short workpieces that I can't take safely through the saw, or for obtaining really quirky angles (often compound angles) where I'm going shaving by shaving to get a tight fit. These aren't tasks that the beginning woodworker is likely to be dealing with.

As an aside, the eagle eyed will have spotted that the blade on the 51 in the photo barely reaches the shooting board table. This is my particular solution to the problem of all the blade wear being concentrated in one spot. The fence is higher than usual so MDF shims can be put under the workpiece to vary where on the blade the workpiece lands. It's a lot simpler than the ramped design of shooting board.

Another solution, and the one I personally prefer for most shooting, is the simple longitudinal design of shooting board that the OP linked to, allied to a bevel up plane such as the one shown in the above photo. What this allows is simple switching of the blade to match the job in hand. Low angle for end grain, and perhaps even high angle for shooting the edges of say drawer bottoms, where the grain might alternate along the run and you want to avoid tear out. This is a much lighter, simpler, and cheaper solution to shooting. Especially if you happen to use a bevel up plane as your default bench plane.

By the way, I'm not trying to say that one solution is necessarily better than another, I know nothing inflames the passions like shooting board design! I'm just pointing out to newcomers to woodworking that you can sink an awful lot of money and time into some of the more elaborate shooting board solutions when you might be better served with something simpler (like the OP design or Steve's more traditional design) that allows you to crack on with actually making some furniture! As Steve points out, planing end grain is hard, so you're likely to find that it's only really practical to shoot fairly small sectioned timbers no matter what you do! 

I knew a hobbyist woodworker with a not very good site saw that just wasn't that accurate. He was determined to build some large garden gates and he spent a lot of money on a 700 Domino. But then he discovered that a Domino references entirely from the end grain cuts, and his saw wasn't accurate enough for this. So he spent months trying to build super duper shooting boards to tackle the 30mm Oak components he was using. It just never worked out for him and he was left with embarrassingly gappy joints that let the rain in and started to fail after a year or two. IMO he'd have done better by sinking that money and effort into a better table saw and an old pig sticker morticing chisel. But like most of us, the appeal of fancy, complicated solutions trumped the direct and simple approach. Ho hum!


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## Phil Pascoe (1 Feb 2016)

Back to the original film. He says if the plane sides are square the cut edge will be. Which it will be - assuming the cutting edge is parallel to the sole of the plane. It makes sense to check, especially if the irons been honed mid job.


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