what do you reckon to a design like this for doing 45 mitres, is it overkill or underkill. not sure about putting a clamp on or not i think a bit of sandpaper glued on should stop any slippage but how i'm going to hold both knobs of the plane and the workpiece simultaneously i haven't quite worked out yet
Ian... I'd best put in a disclaimer first... the little I know about shooting boards is based on designing them around shooting with the #9 held in both hands... I say this because firstly, I'd never seen any other board "in the flesh", much less seen one used. My results apparently are unconventional, but... they work... for me at least...
To date I haven't built one to make the cut you've illustrated (kewl drawing btw...) But that said, I've a board that can take an insert that'd set the desired angle.
I based my design on "The Improved shooting board", Making Woodworking Aids and Devices by Robert Wearing... I say based cos I couldn't figure how his design would work, so I ummm.. changed it...
All my boards are built so that the plane runs down the axis of the bench, with the plane between me and the stock. Your board seens set up to plane away from you?? I know I'm making a half ass'd job of the description, my apologies...
To adapt your design to suit my "style", firstly I'd rotate the fence that locates against the bench edge by 90 deg, and centralize it (retaining your "works from both sides" idea). I'd want to stretch the overall length just enough to give the plane some space to complete a stroke without falling off the edge of the board; I'd add maybe another 75-125mm past the fence.
The fixed sandpaper is an effective ploy as I discovered with the last project, but to make the sandpaper "bite" I found I needed a fair bit of clamping force; I reckon a single toggle clamp might be struggling to get enough purchase on the top of the stock to hold it still while you work, but a pair of decent sized ones oughta do it.
Like I said... unconventional...
Your board looks like it'll cope well using a traditional single hand technique and a long plane on its side, nothing wrong with that at all.. bottom line is it doesn't matter how ya get there, it's the results that count, right...????